I picked up the TA-50 today at the Reserve Center and now should have practically everything I need for the second drill of OCS Phase 0 this coming weekend. The issue filled two duffel bags. We don't need to report until Saturday morning, but are strongly encouraged to show up Friday evening so that we can square away our lockers, since all gear must be placed in the locker in accordance with a diagram. Of course, we are likely to empty our lockers on Saturday, haul our stuff to the field, and lay it all out to have it inventoried--then haul it all back and reset our lockers afterwards. I suppose this process is necessary, but this kind of inconvenience has always been my least favorite part of the military.

First thing Saturday, we'll do a physical fitness test. I've actually been running. In the past, I'd been so excited about training that I'd overdo it and experience over-use injuries. Now, though, I run at a comfortable pace and allow myself adequate rest between runs. Perhaps this year I'll finally achieve my goal of running a marathon.

The classes this weekend will be about troop leading procedures and land navigation, and on Sunday we'll do a four mile ruck march. I've always found these difficult. I keep good pace but my feet always hurt afterwards.

Sure, I may be mildly uncomfortable over those two days, but what else did I have planned? And the more I think about it, the more sensible the investment of time appears to be. I'm still not looking forward to this.


Book List: A2

A2: Hacking: The Art of Exploitation by Jon Erickson

I have always wanted to get into the machine and the network and understand their inner processes, but why? The dilemma here is the same as that of the sociologist: does he want to describe, explain, predict, or control the observable behavior? Whatever my reasons, this book begins by teaching just those things I have long thought of learning but of which I had not found a convenient presentation: C, assembly, GDB--the first steps in understanding the interaction between the user's language and the environment in which it acts. By reading and using the examples throughout the book, the reader gains familiarity with the Linux environment, i.e. the shell and other programming tools. Then you learn how to exploit poor language and the rules of the computing environment. But will you use this knowledge to make your code more robust, your network behaviors safer, or will you follow a darker path? This hefty book of almost 500 hundred pages comes with a distribution of Ubuntu Linux and costs about $50.