So this week is the first time I’ve been home in a whole month (**Long exhailing breath**).  First it was Alabama for a week (Business), Vegas for the weekend (DEFCON16) and then Puerto Rico for three weeks (Business and Pleasure).  It’s been a roller coaster of great experiences mixed with the feeling of missing home.

DEFCON16 was, as always, a blast.  It’s always great to meet up with old faces and catch up. I stopped by the lockpick village at the Sky box and picked up the ward lock key set.  Unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to check it out a client site, but I’m keeping my eyes open.  I think the talks this year were on par with previous years with Fyodor’s Scanning the Internet talk, the NTML is dead talk and the VoIP talk in the skybox being the highlights for me.  As with every trip to Vegas, even three days feels like I’m overstaying my welcome.  I’m happy to say I made the parties that I wanted to and I didn’t end up outside the gas station over by the Hard Rock on my hands and knees.

As for Puerto Rico… I was surprised.  It was not what I expected what so ever. I think the bigger item that started to wain on me was the language barrier.  Although the tourist areas had a number of bi-lingual individuals I had a difficult time trying to communicate when I visited the more remote areas.  I now have an informal commitment to the girly to learn some more Spanish before my next trip to PR.  By far the best part of the trip was the Tropical Rain Forest.  I didn’t know that Puerto Rico had a Rain Forest until I arrived at work the first day, but sure enough it was in my weekend vacation schedule as soon as I found out there was a mountain (El Yunque) to climb.  The girly and I took a trip up to a smaller peak called Mt Britton (40min) the first weekend and after a week of talking smack to my coworkers I decided to make the impossible trek from the mountain base to the El Yunque peak (3000+ Feet).  I made it to the top, surprisingly, in about 4 hours of straight hiking, but it was well worth the view once I got to the top. I wish I had my camera with me, but nothing could erase the image of sitting on the edge of the mountain face staring down at the clouds :).

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