A dream come true….

House and Hangar
House and Hangar

Today a childhood dream came true. I now live in a house on a grass strip airport right beside a lake with my own hangar for my own planes and a boat slip for my own boat.

The end is nigh!

semester 12 Started the final semester of coursework to for my doctorate. I’m finishing up my last elective course (covering virtual commerce systems), completing my data analysis, and concluding my dissertation. If all goes well I will defend after the end of this term, and be Dr. Moon before the end of the year.

Another term down, two to go!

Term11I survived my tenth term as a doctoral student. Great progress this last term, having completed exploratory research to validate my research methodology, defended my proposal, and begun the “real” research for my dissertation. If all goes well, I am only two terms away from defending my final dissertation and finally being “Dr. Shannon Moon.”

Two weeks off (spent working on my dissertation in my spare time from work), then the eleventh of twelve terms begins!

Data Science

I’ve started work on a Data Science Certificate through John Hopkins University. There are nine courses total. The first is “The Data Scientist Toolbox.” I’ve been meaning to get more up to speed on R and R Studio, this should help.

Reading RFCs for Fun

IP Pigeon
IP Pigeon


Whenever I am having a bad day, I like to read RFC 1149 – A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers which describes how “Avian carriers can provide high delay, low throughput, and low altitude service.” It contains gems like “Multiple types of service can be provided with a prioritized pecking order” and “An additional property is built-in worm detection and eradication.”


This RFC was actually implemented and tested by the Burgen Linux Group (read more here), although the ping log seen below does indeed show it is a high delay implementation. If you are technically inclined, read it here for a good laugh and the implmentation details here.

Script started on Sat Apr 28 11:24:09 2001
vegard@gyversalen:~$ /sbin/ifconfig tun0
tun0      Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol  
          inet addr:10.0.3.2  P-t-P:10.0.3.1  Mask:255.255.255.255
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:150  Metric:1
          RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 
          RX bytes:88 (88.0 b)  TX bytes:168 (168.0 b)

vegard@gyversalen:~$ ping -i 900 10.0.3.1
PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms

--- 10.0.3.1 ping statistics ---
9 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 55% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 3211900.8/5222806.6/6388671.9 ms
vegard@gyversalen:~$ exit

Script done on Sat Apr 28 14:14:28 2001