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fail blog?

"you're sure you're ok with dropping out of the competitiion?" ladyJ asked.
"of course i'm not *ok* with it. but you're more important."

that was the way my saturday morning opened. being forced to choose between my wife and my team and quals. easy choice, but an altogether sucky one.
thursday morning we received a call from her father informing us that her mother, one of my dearest friends, was in the hospital after sustaining what turned out to be a massive stroke. at first we thought the call was about her grandmum who had been in the hospital just a week before. never did it occur to us that this healthy, active, 52yo empty-nester would ever suffer this unpredictable fate.

ladyJ was admirable in her support of my commitment to lastplace, particularly since cutaway and mezzy were coming up to hang out at our pad for quals. when i first heard the news i offered to pull out immediately, but she told me i had made a commitment and i needed to keep it. while my heart was torn, i was happy to hear that. quals has been on my mind for a long time, and my team is very important to me. my thursday was a wreck, but cutaway, who arived early encouraged me to dig into binary and i felt better for it. overwhelmed, but somehow strangely happy.

friday was a mishmash of awesome and grueling challenges (wtf was up with pwnage100?? wrffr and i each owned it 6 ways from sunday including shellcode and rop, even bouncing through their own code to pop a format vuln to gain vis, but couldn't land anything on their box) but we were lovin it. eating raw packets for breakfast? sure why not. indeed, there were like two real categories, sliced up shuffled and arranged into six, with the point value not having the least bit to do with difficulty, but we were on it, all five and a half of us (mezzy's boss chained him to his desk on friday, his flights got delayed, and he ended up spending all night in airports). around 8am i fed the horses and then mezzy, cutaway and i crashed for a couple hours (seperately, i might add.... metr0). at 10:21am i get this call, and it's ladyJ. she'd had enough. she made her way through social engineering the hospital staff and basically capturing their comms (good thing since she's been keeping them in line ever since) but she needed her man. she called, i answered, and as painful as it was, i walked away, leaving mezzendo in charge. now don't get me wrong, lastplace doesn't need much manageement, but i needed to make sure someone had final say in disputes, someone kept track of who was doing what, someone who could make the call when enough was enough (like, 100 points for pwn100?? i needed to quit long before that and move on). someone who could keep the spirits high, focusednot only on the scorfeboard, but on the challenges we were bangin. basically, someone to enable each of the teammates to keep on rockin. we call it the 'buckstopper' and mezzy was teh right guy.

well, saturday came and went. b-Bomb (ladyJ's mom) was getting worse again. friday she has spoken directly with each of her kids and family, showing that the person that is my friend is still in there. but most of saturday she was less responsive, and by the end of the day, both sides of her body were flexing and trying to ball up. while that seems like good news since her left side is not under her control, the doctors explained that the brain tissue was swelling and they needed to remove part of her skull to allow the brain to expand without causing more damage. so at 3:30am the surgeon cut out about 15% of her skull and stuck it in deep freeze for a while. the brain kept swelling, and eventually shrunk back a bit. the surgery was necessary and seems to have done its job, but now she's got to wear a helmet to protect her brain. although i gotta say she looks pretty awesome in her punk-rocker hair-style with half a shaved head. i doubt she'll appreciate my saying so, but oh well, she can get her own damn blog and gripe when she's recovered.

sunday was rough. she was lethargic and fairly nonresponsive. she wasn't talking, although she'd squeeze and wiggle toes on command. good signs, both, but still not what i was hoping to see. i want to see my friend again. so this morning ladyJ sent me home, relieving the fourth babysitter and allowing me to hang with my kids and work most of the day. special perk was that mezzy and cutaway hadn't left yet, so we got to hang for a couple hours and recount the weekend highlights and just enjoy some chill-time (of course, after cutaway did a leisurely 6-mile run).

today (monday) has been pretty good for mom as well. she's miserable. that's good, though... it's promising. she got the breathing tube out today, her throat is dry, and she's miserable... but she's awake enough to be miserable... and as must as that sucks, i'm happy she's awake and responsive.

so quals was kind of a bomb. i'm not sure how good a job they did of measuring hacking ability, but they were fun. quals has progressively grown into its own game over the years. i think this year grew a little too far away from ctf, however. there may come a day when quals will need to be split off and simply run as its own game.

meanwhile, my team will keep hacking. i was very proud of the guys this year. i think each member of the team carried their weight and then some. it was good to see the l@stnewbs doing great things. the veterans did amazing things, and me, well, i got to watch some powerful challenges make and harden friendships. my werk was well paid back.
thank you ladyJ.
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