T. F. N. N. Headline news update. Okay, folks, Larry Pesevento for T. F. N. N. Coming to you from frozen Arctic, Tucson, Arizona, 22 degrees this morning, folks. Only three degrees higher than the coldest day ever recorded here in Tucson about 60 years ago. It got to 19 degrees. So we had that hail storm yesterday that put a lot of snow up on the roof, but not on our roof, but on the roof of the mountains behind us. Anyway, we're looking at the Dow Jones here, folks. We've been watching this number here at 37, 38,000 in the Dow Jones, and that's what we've been paying close attention to. As you can see, there are multiple ABCDs. We think there's a few cycles here whether that is going to happen or not. You know, certainly remains to be seen. But today, what we were looking for on the shorter time frame was this particular pattern here. If you like ABCD, and we certainly do, this is where we were yesterday. Today's a low you see came down right after the reports came out and then straight up after the reports and then down again, and it measured to 38031 and the high was 38031. Hard to believe it hit it right on the money, but by golly, that's what's going on. So we're going to see what happens. Have a little bit of a bounce here. I think you could call this a bounce. It's only rallied about 100 points. That's a pretty good bounce. But we've got some other things going on. Those of you that follow what we watch here, we've been watching the soybeans for, you know, quite some time, and we're looking to see if we can get an area where we could be a buyer of these soybeans and see if they're going to hold up and maybe go a little bit higher. We'll cover that when we come back from our break-in. Rich Anderson will be our guest at the break-in. We're going to go over all of the grain stuff. We'll look at wheat, corn, beans, a meal, and Rich will go through those to see which ones look like could be the best of the group of things that we're watching here. So let's keep our partner dry, get ready, buckle up, and we'll have some fun here. So stay with us. We've got to pay a few bills for TF and Anna and they'll be right back.<PHONE_NUMBER>, Billy Ray Valentine, Capricorn. Everything in the universe.


Okay, so our next talk is given by Frédéric Vachant, so please give him a warm round of applause. Okay, so hello everyone. Thank you for having me today. I'm really happy to be here. So today I'm going to talk about a research that a colleague of mine, Jean-Yan Boutin, and I did earlier this year in which led us to the discovery of a UEFI root care. So very quickly, my name is Frédéric Vachant. I'm a malware researcher at ESET, and I've been working there for the last two years. And for the last year or so, I've been really focusing on boot-level threats and UEFI for more reverse engineering. So let's look at the agenda for this talk. So the first thing I want to talk about is what is said in it very quickly. Then I'll talk about Lowjack, which is an entity of software and past research related to this software. And the reason for that is that the UEFI root care that I'll talk about really mimics the architecture of this legitimate software. Then we'll move on, and I'll talk a little bit about compromised Lowjack agents that were found in the wild. And finally, I'll jump into the UEFI root kit, where I'll talk about the tools around the UEFI root kit and the UEFI root kit itself. So Cydnit. Cydnit is an espionage group active since the early 2000s, and it is also known as FancyBear, APT28, and Strunchium. So maybe you know this group by one of these alternative names. And Cydnit is the name basically that we use at ESET. So this group was very visible in the past few years as being allegedly behind some pretty notorious hacks, like the hack against the Democratic National Committee, the DNC, where some emails were leaked online. The hack against the world anti-doping GenC, as well as the hack against the French broadcasting network TV5 mode. But at ESET, when we're talking about Cydnit, we're really talking about the tools and the different campaigns that were led using these tools. And we're not talking about the people who are operating this malware, because we don't have the information necessary to draw such conclusions. However, in July 2018, the US Department of Justice named the group as being responsible for the Democratic National Committee hack in this specific indictment. And what's interesting is that the tools that we analyze are named in this specific indictment, and they also mention who's the authors of these malware. And also earlier, but closer from now, in October 2018, the Department of Justice issued another indictment naming pretty much the same people related to the world anti-doping agency hack. And the way that Cydnit will usually infect their targets is by sending phishing emails, so sometimes they will contain malicious links and some other time, malicious attachments. Okay, so now let's talk a little bit about LoJack. So LoJack is an Internet software, as I mentioned. It was previously known as ComputeRace, so maybe you know the solution by this name instead. And it is made by Absolute Software. So, yeah, and this solution is built in many laptops. But an Internet software needs to be as persistent as possible if you want it to be reliable. It needs to be to survive an operating system reinstall or a hard disk replacement. So, to achieve this, what Absolute Software did is that they added a module in the UFI bias itself. Yeah, and the solution needs to be activated in the bias setup. So, with a persistence mechanism like that coming from the firmware, it really attracted the attention of security researchers who looked into this to find vulnerabilities, basically. And at Black Hat in 2009, there was a talk there where the architecture of the solution was described and several design vulnerabilities in the agent were also described there. So, let's look at the architecture of LoJack back then. So, the first thing that we have here is a module in the UFI bias. And this module will write a file to Windows partition. So, this file is called autocheck.exe, which replaces the legitimate autocheck.exe, whose job is to perform file stem integrity check during early Windows boot. So, by replacing this agent during early Windows boot, it will be executed. And from there, it will drop RPCNet p.exe, which is the small agent, and will install a service. And when Windows will run, it will run this service. And RPCNet p.exe will be launched at this point. And it will inject itself into SVCOs. And then from there, it will inject itself into Internet Explorer, which is pretty interesting because it's very shady. And that's something that we see pretty much all the time in malware, but not often in legitimate software. And then from Internet Explorer, it will then communicate with the command and control server, and it will download the full recovery agent. So, now let's look at some of the issues that the researchers found in this solution. So, one of the vulnerabilities they found is very interesting for us, and in fact, that's really the only one that matters for this talk. And it is a configuration file vulnerability. So, the configuration is embedded into RPCNet p.exe, and it is encrypted, but it is encrypted with a very weak algorithm, so it is in single byte XOR key, and it is not authenticated whatsoever. And what's in this configuration file? Well, that's where you can find the server, so the command and control server. So, in Attacker, you can just change this configuration to point to its own Attacker control server. So, we knew that this vulnerability existed for a while, so it was back in 2009, but we had no evidence of it being used in the while. Until earlier this year, when Arbor Networks published a blog post where they described some modified, small agents with modified configuration, where the domains that were embedded in this configuration were linked to old sediments, old sedentate domains. So, let's go back to the Lowjack architecture and look at where this attack took place, so it took place at this level here. So, from there, we did some detection for this malware, and we hunted together as much samples as we could, and it was fairly simple because they always modified the same exact version of the agent, and they modified, so that's what we can see here, they modified the command and control server, and here we see the encrypted version, of course. So, by looking at this, we look at ESET's telemetry and found out that there was a few organizations that were hit, mostly in the Balkans and Central Europe, as well as in Eastern Europe. These were military and diplomatic organizations, and what's interesting is that we also found other sedentate tools in the same organization. So, at this point, we wondered how this malware got there, but since there was other backdoors of sedentate in the organization, we thought it might be the infection vector, but by digging a little bit deeper, we found another interesting component, and if we go back to the Lowjack architecture, the component that we found is at this step here. So, at this step in the Lowjack architecture, it's autochek.exe that lives there, but what we found is another file called autochek.exe instead of autochek, and it does pretty much the same thing, so it also installs a service, and it also drops RPCNetP.exe, but it is the RPCNetP version that has a modified server in it, so sedentate domain, basically. And we continue to look at what we can find in this organization, and we found another tool, which is called info.efi.exe, and that allows to dump a lot of information about very low-level settings of the machine, and this tool uses ReadWriteEverything's driver, and ReadWriteEverything is a software that allows you to manipulate very low-level setting of your machine, so using this tool, you can read and write to PCI configuration register, to memory map IOs, to IOPort space, and you can also access physical memory, and this tool uses a kernel driver, of course, if you want to do those things, you need a kernel driver, and this kernel driver is properly signed so that you can push it on even a recent version of Windows, and so, yeah, that's the driver that was used by info.efi here, and by googling a little bit around, what we found out is that this specific driver was used in the past by security researchers to exploit vulnerabilities at the firmware level. So, yeah, the last thing that was missing here to mimic the whole LoJack solution was a UEFI BIOS module, so at this point we wondered, did they get there? So because of the tool dumping information about the BIOS that I just spoke about, we were pretty confident that something more was happening there, and by digging a little bit deeper, we found other tools that strengthen our suspicions. So the first tool is called REWriterRead, and it will use to dump the content of the SPI flash memory, and it also uses ReadWrite Everything's driver, and it uses these specific IO control codes, so it allows it to read and write to memory map IO space as well as read and write to PCI configuration registers. What's interesting for us as reverse engineers is that this tool contains a lot of debug strings, so it really made our job easier, and it consists of the following operations. So the first thing it will do is that it will log information on the BIOS control register, and we'll talk in a lot of detail about this register a little bit later in this talk. Then it locates the BIOS region base address, and finally it reads the UEFI firmware content and dump it to a file. So another tool that we found is really complementary to the tool to REWriterRead, and it is called REWriterBinary. So it also contains a lot of debug strings, it also uses RWEverything's driver, and now that the UEFI firmware is dumped into memory, the next step is to add the root key to the firmware and to write it back to DSP slash memory, and that's exactly what this tool does. Okay, so now let's talk about the patching of the UEFI firmware, but before we dig into the subjects, there are a couple of things that I wanted to introduce here just to make sure that we're on the same page. So the first thing I want to talk about is UEFI, and UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, and it is a standardized specification that defines the interface that exists between the operating system and the firmware. It is kind of a replacement for the legacy bias. So a UEFI compliant firmware will provide a set of services to UEFI applications, and here read the operating system loader. There are other UEFI applications, but usually it's the operating system loader that runs. So the first set of services is called the boot services, and these are services that are available during the firmware lifetime, but once the operating system is loaded, these services are not available anymore, and they are the runtime services that are also available during firmware lifetime, but once the operating system is loaded, they are still available so that a kernel driver, for instance, can make call in these services. An example of these services allows the operating system to read and write to UEFI variables. And what's interesting with UEFI is that there's no more master boot record and volume boot record involved in the boot process, meaning that there is no easy way to hijack the early boot control flow. So the second thing I want to introduce here are the driver execution environment drivers, so the Dixie drivers. So Dixie drivers are PECOF images, meaning that they are basically Windows executables, and they are kind of the core of a UEFI firmware, so they can do many things. Some of them will be used to abstract the hardware, some of them will be used to produce the UEFI standard interface of the boot services and the runtime services, and they can also be used by firmware vendors or OEMs to extend the firmware by registering new services, the so-called protocols in the UEFI specification. And the Dixie drivers are loaded during the Dixie phase of the platform initialization, and they are loaded by the Dixie dispatcher that we'll also refer to as the Dixie core. The last thing that I want to introduce for now is the UEFI firmware layout. So the UEFI firmware is located in the bias region of the SPI flash memory, and this region will contain multiple volume, but let's look at it with a little bit more detail in this tool here, which is UEFI tool that is an open source software that allows you to manipulate UEFI firmware images. So here are loaded the typical content of a SPI flash memory dump in this tool, and let's look at what we have. So the first thing that we see here is the descriptor region, so this region contains metadata about how the remaining data in the SPI flash memory is laid out. The scan region that we find here is the ME region, which contains the Intel Management Engine firmware. And finally, we have the bias region, which is really the main interest, that we want to look at today. So the bias region contains multiple volumes, so let's look at one volume in a little bit more detail. So here we have a volume of type firmware file system version two, and this volume contains multiple files, and these files are identified by GUIDs. So that's what we can see under the name column here. And a file doesn't contain directly the UEFI executable, but it is composed of multiple sections, and one of these sections is the actual UEFI executable, but there are other sections, and in this case we see a DEXY dependency section that allows to define dependencies for this specific UEFI image, and we also see a version section and a user interface section, which allows to give the human readable name for this file instead of the GUID, which is very pretty difficult to remember for humans. Okay, so now that we have all this in mind, let's go back to our E-Writer binary. So what our E-Writer binary will do is that it will parse all of the firmware volumes that it can find looking for four specific files. So it looks for IPv4DEXY, NTFSDEXY, SMIFlash, and the DEXY core. So why does it look for IPv4DEXY and the DEXY core? Well, these files will look for to find the firmware volume where to install the UEFI root kit. So usually in UEFI firmware all of the DEXY drivers are in the same volume, so when the tool will parse, we'll find in fact IPv4DEXY, it will know that it is currently parsing the volume with all of the DEXY drivers in it, and it will keep it as a candidate for the UEFI root kit installation. And it looks for the DEXY core basically for the same reason, but sometimes the DEXY core is in a different volume, so when it will find it, it will keep the volume as another candidate for the UEFI root kit installation, and the chosen volume will be the one with enough free space available in it. Now NTFSDEXY, so NTFSDEXY is the American Megatron Incorporated NTFS driver, and if the tool finds it, it will remove it. And the reason for that is that the UEFI root kit embeds its own NTFS driver so to avoid any conflict with another NTFS driver, it just removes it. And now SMIFlash, so SMIFlash is looked for and if the tool finds it, it will keep some metadata about it in the structure, but in the version of the tool that we analyze, it's not used anywhere. But interestingly, SMIFlash is a non-vulnerable DEXY driver, so what we believe is that Sydney might have been fiddling in another version of the tool with some exploit for this driver in order to be able to bypass write protection mechanisms to the bias region of the SMIFlash memory. So now that it has found the volume where to install the root kit, it will add the root kit, right? So the first thing it does is that it will create a firmware file system file header. Then it will append the root kit file, which is a compressed section that contains two other sections. One of these is the actual UFI root kit image, and the other one is the user interface section defining the name for this root kit, which is SECDEXY, as in security DEXY. And then it will take this blob of data and write it at the end of the firmware volume that was chosen. So now that the UFI root kit is inside the firmware in two memory, the next step is to write it back to the SPI flash memory. And once again, there's a couple things that I want to introduce here. So I want to talk about bias write protection mechanisms. So the chip set exposes write protection mechanisms that need to be properly configured by the firmware, so there are no such thing as, you know, bias write protection mechanism enabled by default. It's really the job of the firmware to do that. And today we'll only cover relevant protections to our research, so only the protection mechanism that are looked for by RE writer binary. And yeah, the protection we'll talk about are exposed via the bias control register that we've seen a little bit earlier in this talk. So if you're a kernel driver and you want to write to the bias region of the SPI flash memory, what you need to do first is you need to set the bias write enable field of the bias control register to one and then you're able to write to the SPI flash memory. But of course you don't want any kernel driver to be able to modify your UEFI firmware and potentially break your machine. So there's a protection mechanism there which is another field in the bias control register and this field is called bias lock enable and it allows to lock bias write enable to zero. And this field is readable in WLO. WLO means write lock once and what it means is that once the firmware has set this bit there's no other way to set it back to zero than performing a full platform reset. But there's a problem here and it lies in the fact that bias lock enable implementation is vulnerable. So how it works is that when bias write enable is set to one its value will actually change in the bias control register for a small amount of time and then the platform will issue a system management interrupt and the SMI handler will set bias write enable back to zero. But yeah, the firmware must implement this SMI otherwise this mechanism is totally useless. But maybe you've guessed it but what happens if we write to the SPI flash memory before the SMI handler sets bias write enable back to zero so there's a race condition vulnerability here and there's a paper about it which is called a speed racer and to exploit this what you need to do is you need one thread that continually set bias write enable to one while another thread tries to write the data to the SPI flash memory and according to this paper it works on multi-core processors as well as on single-core processor training enable. So Intel came up with a fix for this issue and it was introduced in the platform controller hub family with Intel chipsets around 2008 and what they did is that they added a field in the bias control register and this field is called SMM bias write protect disable and the name is a little bit misleading but if you remove disable that's actually what it does and if this mechanism is activated there will be no other way to write to the SPI to the bias region of the SPI flash memory then if you don't have all of the cores of your processor running into SMM meaning that the job of writing to the SPI flash memory is now only available to system management mode and once again the firmware must set this bit otherwise it is otherwise this mechanism is not activated right okay so let's go back to RE writer binary so of course if I talk about all of these mechanisms because RE writer binary checks for them so it will check if the platform is properly configured and it implements the exploit for the rate condition that I just spoke about so let's look at the writing process decision tree so the first thing that it will look for is if bias write enable is set and if bias write enable is set there then there's nothing stopping it from writing the UEFI image but if it is not set then it will check oh is bias log enable activated and if this mechanism is not activated then it will just flip bias write enable to 1 and then it will write the UEFI image but if it is activated the last thing it will check for is SMM bias write protect set and if it is not set then it will exploit the rate condition that we spoke about and if it is set then the tool will just fail so the tool only works if the platform is misconfigured and we spoke about SMI flash the vulnerable dexty driver so yeah what we think is that by being able to exploit this vulnerability they would have been able to have a tool that works even when the platform is properly configured so it's a very good example of I mean if firmware vendors would have done their job correctly here this tool would have failed at flashing the UEFI firmware so that's a great example of how firmware security is so here let's just take a step back and look at what we have so what we have is a software implementation to flash the firmware remotely post exploitation meaning that as an attacker I can infect my target the way I usually do let's say by sending a phishing email and once I have a foothold in the machine I can use this tool to deploy the UEFI rootkit and what we knew about in the past was hacking teams UEFI rootkit and it needed physical access to be deployed so it's so much more convenient to be able to do it remotely and let's note here that there's no proof of hacking teams rootkit being used in an actual cyber attack it has never been found on a victim's machine or at least if it had it hasn't been publicly disclosed so what we did at this point is that we extracted the UEFI rootkit from the tool and we looked at ESET's UEFI scanner let me try to see if we can find something and it turns out that we found the UEFI rootkit in the SPA flash memory of a victim's machine making it the first publicly known UEFI rootkit to be used in an actual cyber attack okay so now let's look at the UEFI rootkit itself so the UEFI rootkit is a Dekshi driver so it is loaded by the Dekshi dispatcher every time that the machine will boot its file name is SecDekshi as we've seen earlier and here's the file width for future reference so let's look at the UEFI rootkit workflow so a UEFI firmware will go through multiple phases when it boots the first phase is the security phase the second one is the pre-EFI initialization phase and then there's the driver execution environment phase and that's where it begins to be interesting for this rootkit so that's where the Dekshi dispatcher lives so that's when all of the Dekshi drivers will be loaded so at some point the UEFI rootkit will be loaded and what will happen is that the rootkit will create an event attached to UEFI group ready to boot and it will bind a notify function to this event so in the next phase when the boot manager will run at some point it will signal this event and the notify function will be called so the notify function does three things the first thing is that it will install an NTFS driver then it will drop a tochee.exe and rpc.net p.exe using this NTFS driver and finally it will patch a value in the Windows registry so the NTFS driver is needed to get file-based access to Windows partition and send its operator did not write their own NTFS driver what they did is that they use hacking teams in TFS driver from hacking teams leak and so here's the code responsible for dropping the file so as we can see here it is dropping rpc.net p.exe and here it is dropping a tochee.exe and the last step is to patch the Windows registry so how it does that is that it will open the file backing the hqlm system registry hive and it doesn't have all the logic to parts Windows registry structures so it will only look for a textual pattern and the textual pattern it will look for is autochek autochek star and it will change it to autochek autochee star and it happens to be modifying the bootexecute key so the bootexecute key is the key responsible for launching autochek.exe during Windows early boot so by modifying it to autochee instead of autochek that's autochee.exe that will be executed instead of autochek and so here if we go back to the ufi rootkit workflow when the operating system will run then it will execute autochee.exe autochee.exe will drop the small agent the rpc.net p.exe and so on but what's interesting here is that it will revert back the modification in the Windows registry from autochee to autochek so that as a Windows user for instance if I look in the Windows registry I won't find that any modification occurred there so that's pretty interesting stealth technique that is enabled by the fact that the malware is coming from the firmware okay so the last thing that I want to talk about now is prevention and remediation so what can you do if in fact one can you do to protect yourself again this kind of attack and if ever you find out that you have a UEFI rootkit in your machine what can you do so prevention so the first thing in the most important thing which is also the most accessible thing thankfully is that you should keep your UEFI firmware up to date to make sure that if security researchers found some issues with your firmware and they disclosed it and the firmware vendor fixed them you want to make sure that you have the latest patches available on your machine then the second thing is that you should really enable secure boot but let's note here that secure boot itself would not have predicted you against this specific attack and the reason for that is that secure boot takes the content of the SPI flash memory as its root of trust meaning that what's inside the SPI flash memory is not subject for validation so what does it validate then right well secure boot will check what's coming from outside of the SPI flash memory meaning the PCI option ROMs and probably the most important thing the operating system loader so it's really a mechanism that checks that the operating system loader hasn't been tempered with so what can we do then right well what we need is a hardware root of trust so we need to move the root of trust from the SPI flash memory to some piece of hardware so it must be in a you know one-time programmable chip that is programmed during manufacturing time and that cannot be written to ever after and an example of this exists technology like Intel boot guard implements this and also Apple T2 security chip has a hardware root of trust and then you kind of need to hope that your firmware configures the security mechanisms properly and there's not much you can do about it if your firmware is up to date but thankfully there are firmware security assessment tool available out there and an example of that is Intel chip sec which is an open source software too so you can just download this tool put it in a USB key, boot from it and then this tool will check for all of the security mechanisms that we spoke about today will check if they are properly configured and it also checks for a bunch more stuff and now also chip sec checks if your firmware has this low jack low jacks root kit so if you want to know if your firmware properly configures the security mechanism that's really the way to go now about remediation so this slide is kind of short and the reason for that is that if you find out that you have a UEFI root kit in your SPI flash there's not pretty much you can do you really need to reflash your UEFI firmware that's definitely not something that is easy to do for anybody and well if it's not an option for you then you kind of need to get rid of your motherboard or your laptop and get a new one basically so that's how serious this kind of attack is now a conclusion so our research shows that UEFI root kits are not only toys for researchers to play with but they are real-world threats used in actual cyber attacks so it might be something that you want to keep in mind when you'll be defining your threat model also we won't stress this enough firmware must be built with security in mind from the bottom up and things are getting better because there are more and more security researchers looking into this but there's still work to do and hopefully our research will help share knowledge about how to prevent and mitigate UEFI-based threats so that is pretty much it for me today so thank you for having me and if ever you're interested to know more details about this research the white paper is available at willivesecurity.com and you can grab a copy there so thanks we have five minutes for Q&A so please quick and short questions number one please in this case well that's kind of the pretty much the only one we're aware of apart from hacking teams UEFI root kit and this one only works on Windows so we don't know about any other that targets Linux or Mac OS for instance please refrain from walking in front of the cameras when you're leaving thank you could we get microphone number two please hello thanks for the talk on your slides you mentioned the tool open source for checking out the layout what was the name of the tool it's called UEFI tool so you can find it on Github Sam the internet please thank you does the root kit also work when the UEFI is in BIOS legacy mode that is a pretty good question I think it should but I'm not sure about it that's a good question I'd have to look into this to have an answer I'm 100% sure about sorry for that microphone number three please it's you in the back no that's four I'm sorry so does the UEFI dropper still work with BitLocker enabled oh yeah we test that no it doesn't work if BitLocker is enabled so it doesn't wait for BitLocker to have decrypted all of the data so now it doesn't work if BitLocker is enabled number one please could it just say that the way it decrypted in that way I'm not sure I heard all of the questions but if it works if there's full disencryption is it the question right would it be possible to make it work with BitLocker? I think it should be because the LoJack software is a legitimate one the entity that solution they are able to make it work even if BitLocker is enabled or full disencryption so yeah it should be possible to do so one more internet question please thank you what if a rootkit doesn't fit in the SPI flash is filling up the SPI flash space completely valid prevention? I don't know if we could really call it a prevention mechanism but yeah if there's not enough free space available on the firmware volumes the tool will just fail number two please hi you said that there is no real possibility to secure everything but what are your daily choices that you use like on your personal computer to be feeling secured oh well I could say an alternative platform but yeah if you have a modern Intel CPU and you have secure boot enabled and you have all of the latest UEFI for more updates that's kind of the best you can do to be safe against that kind of attack I have my like this number one please so a really nice configuration by the way is the configuration from the previous system? no no no the configuration in fact it's not a separate configuration file the configuration is embedded inside the executable so it's embedded into rvc.netp.exe unfortunately we are already out of time so please thank our speaker again


It is Sunday, June 4th, 8 o'clock in the morning, I think. We're headed to the airport. I hinted last week that there was something going on. We're headed to California, my home state. Bob has to work. We're gonna do some visiting.  But anyway, we're waiting for our driver. Uber, Lyft, one of those. A driver. We've never called our own driver. It's always been somebody calling for us, so this is the first, but I'm sure it'll be fine. We're competent adults most of the time. All right, I'll be back. And it's safely in California. Checked into the hotel and all that jazz.  Actually, see their new house first and then meet them for dinner. So anyway, I'll show you what I can. I'll be back. It'll be a part. It'll be a part. I don't live at the old house anymore so I can show you whatever I want about it because it's not my house. But yeah. It's a house. It's a house. Don't be a creep though. All right, I'll be back. I'm sure every you guys, but if we see another one, I'll try. We just saw a bridge. A bridge. Did I care that? Yeah. A bridge covered in so much graffiti that the only way you knew it was a bridge was because it was floating over the highway. Very colorful. Very colorful.  Let's just say we found somebody on the freeway in front of us who couldn't make it up. Their mind went late to be in it. Which exit to take? Which exit to take. I don't think they were drinking and driving. I just think they were driving stupidly and lost. But I guess you never know. I'll be back. This is the last time I looked at a Google image of the house. They hadn't changed the dang thing. Now, does Google just have the same old picture? They put a new roof on there with solar panels. Yeah. And they did that. And that was in the Google picture. But the planner pots and stuff and the color of the house was also the same. And we left for them. Yeah. We should have took them with us, but that's okay. Yeah, we should have. We did buy new ones in our own success list. Why is it green? Oh my God, it looks like they painted the tiles green. Oh, hi. That's ugly. Why would you paint it green? Yep. Well, some of these houses were overgrown when we lived here, so that hasn't changed at all. Yeah, but it looks the same, dear. Yeah. Except it's a little bit grown. The trees are a little bit bigger. Butchers are bigger. Grass is taller. Let me go down to San Teresa. Okay. Free cabinet. No. I don't think it fits in a suitcase. No, I don't think it fits in a suitcase. No. Coyote Valley, South San Jose. Somewhere down here is a really great walking park that we used to like to go to. And yes, it's always brown. It's never green. It's California. It's kind of dark. It's kind of dark, dear. We're headed back to the hotel for a really great dinner with our friends, Shelley and John. It was so good to see them and their house that they bought like during COVID, which we hadn't seen yet. Oh my God, you guys, it's beautiful. Anyway, the old neighborhood has changed a bit. But I mean, that's to be expected, I think. Anyway, tomorrow is a work day for Mr. Bob. A hangout, maybe go shopping day for me. And then we're gonna head out to visit more friends when he gets off work. So I'll take you with me where I can. I'm on the hunt for a few specific things. So we'll see if we have a little bit of better luck finding them here for a decent price than in Oregon. I kind of doubt it, but we'll see. I also got a shopping list request from the daughter for Daiso, so that's a thing. All right, I'll be back, guys. Here's a little bit on the frizzy side today, but we are in San Jose. I am on Alamedin Expressway at the Joanne fabrics here in San Jose. I forgot there's a savers right next door. Now we have limited time this morning because I'm supposed to meet Bob back in Fremont for lunch. And I kind of wanna go to Daiso today, but we'll see how it plans out. I need to head back towards Fremont like no later than 11 o'clock. So I've got a couple of hours down here. We have Joanne's in Oregon, I mean, we do, but there's a kind of fabric that I've been looking at online. They don't have in my store and they never have in my store, a linen, 100% linen. So they do supposedly have some of it here. I do have a coupon. So while I love thrifting and buying used things and upcycling them into new things, linen's hard to find. And if they have this linen here and I like the quality, I think I'm just gonna get it here and use the coupon. I'll have to pay sales tax, which we don't have in Oregon, but you know, anyway. All right, so we're gonna see about doing that. And then if I wanna go to savers, they don't open for like an hour. That's a long time. So I'm more than likely gonna drive over to Daiso and do thrifting on a different day, but we'll see. I'll be back. Okay, I got some white linen. I can dye it whatever color I want. So white's a good choice. Nobody ever has like lots of fun colors in stock. My hair, yeah, it's been windy. Anyway, but I found some white and I got what I could afford.  And I found some scrapbook stuff for Grantsons scrapbook that I haven't seen at my local Joans. I had some of the same stuff, but then they had some different things. So now we're gonna head over to Daiso and then head back to the hotel. We'll do thrifting a different day. If I do thrifting it all while I'm here, I don't know, but we'll find out. We're gonna play it by ear. I don't do that well, but we're gonna play with it. All right, I'll be back. Okay, we have a few minutes before Daiso opens. So I'm gonna go to the Asian market that's also in the same shopping center, grab a couple of food things that I want, actually see if they have a restroom, and then we'll go shopping in Daiso. Now, I'm gonna shoot what I can, but I don't have a camera person. It's just me, and I need to pick up some specific things. So I'll show what I can, maybe a quick overview, and then we'll do a haul later. I'll be back. Geez, it's windy. Daiso opens in like five minutes. I was able to find some ice coffee and cookies, junk food, things I shouldn't be eating, but things I do eat when I'm traveling. So I got some snacks and some iced coffee, actually Hawaiian iced coffee, which I really love for back at the hotel room. And now we'll just wait and see when Daiso opens. There's a few things both the girls have asked me to look for, so I will. I don't really need anything. Does that mean I won't buy anything? No, that's not what that means.  And hey, you guys, if you've been watching my channel for a while, you know, I don't like to like do hauls because I don't wanna brag about what I have and make you feel like you have to go buy stuff, but I love a good bargain. I love thrifting, and I go to places like Daiso, which is a Japanese dollar store and Dollar Tree looking for tools, out-of-the-box tools I can use for my abstract painting. Sometimes I find something for my sewing projects, but mostly that. So let me show you what I got, and I picked up a few things for the kids that were requested, but let me show you what I got for me. Yeah, let's do that. So from Daiso, I got some stickers. Daiso is a really great place to get journaling stickers, scrapbooking stickers. I put them in my daily journals, and also I'm working on a scrapbook for Junior, our grandson, and they have all different kinds, and I really enjoy buying them there. The price is good, and the styles are different than what you see at like Jo-Ann's and everything. I know what you're thinking. This is like a cleaning brush. That's not what I'm gonna use it for. Abstract painting marks. This one too, and I have a pegboard on my sewing desk wall, and I have a bin on the wall that holds some symbols and things, and I keep knocking into it because it sticks out too far, and when I was at Daiso, I found these. I only got two of them, but I'm thinking they might work really well, and I can either use a clip or drill another hole in the other side and use a hook, but I think these might work really well. Stored solution I didn't know I needed. I also got one of these. I know it's Switchcase, but I saw it and I thought, I wonder if it would make a good travel art case. I don't really need another travel art case, God forbid, but you know, might be interesting, so we will maybe try that and do a travel art case video if you all want. I also got some linen and Joann's. I found, see, linen. I found some scrapbooking stuff I hadn't seen at my Joann's, some papers, and a few stickers, and, yeah, seeing a few stickers. And anything else? Oh, when I was at Walmart getting supplies that we forgot, I found these, this Waverly print cotton. It was really cheap. This is a one yard bundle. I got two of them. They didn't make a cute blouse or a dress or a skirt or something. Yeah. All right. That's it for the minute. I have to put everything away. I'll be back.  I feel like I'm back in Portland, but I'm not. I'm in San Jose, at the San Jose Masonic Center for those that don't know. There we go. My husband is a Freemason and he, there's a meeting tonight and there was a stated dinner.  I'm gonna read a book while he's doing that and probably walk around and take some pictures because it's what I do. And yeah, beautiful sunset's happening and it's all good. It was good to see a bunch of other guys and I was the only wife at the dinner, which is different, but that's all right. Anyway, all right. I'll be back. It's about nine, sorry, 8.52 a.m. Tuesday, June 6th. iPads, nice to me. I already took Bob to work this morning to the office. He didn't wanna walk. It's a little chilly outside. And had breakfast and all of that stuff. I am going to be going to visit a couple of thrift shops here in town that we don't have in Oregon. So I don't know if I'm gonna find anything. I'm not looking for a whole bunch of stuff. There are a few things I haven't been able to find in Oregon. So if I do find them, that would be great. But we'll see. I also need to pick myself up with a few groceries because I'm pretty much just having a chill day at the hotel here tomorrow. I'm not gonna have the car. Bob's doing work stuff all day. So I'm gonna try to pick myself up some groceries while I can. So that's the thing. Right now though, it's just not even nine o'clock yet. Nothing opens until 10. So no, I'm just gonna relax for the minute. We're gonna go visit with people after work today and go have dinner with my son-in-law's parents actually. They live in Los Gatos. So we're gonna go have dinner at their house. And yeah, it's all good. I don't like driving in California traffic, but I knew that already because you know, hello, California native right here. Anyway, I'll be back. I made a basic rookie mistake. I'm from California. I actually know better. It's raining. I'm also from Portland. So, and I didn't bring any coats or sweaters or, yeah. So one of the stops this morning will be to rectify that. But in the meantime, I'm at Hope Thrift here in Fremont and Blackhaw Road, blah, Blackhaw Road. Anyway, I'll let you know how it is. I'm gonna put you in my pocket and yeah, not film anything, but I'll let you know what I think. I'll be back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did all that and it wasn't on. Anyway, Hope Thrift. I will include a link down in the video description for their website. They don't have a lot of locations, but if you're near one, go check it out. I really liked this one in Fremont, California. And I found some brand new white leg, white linen pants, never worn with the tags on them that are perfect to remake. They're like a lot too big for me. I might make a pair of pants out of them. I might make something else. I don't know yet, but they are really cute. And a couple of t-shirts to do an experiment with that I wanna try that were real cheap, three bucks each that were in good condition. And a couple of uncut sewing patterns. One t-shirt I'm gonna wear just as is, but also like khaki green, avocado green, sweater with some pretty lace on the top that's very thin and drapey and way too big for me, but would be really cute worn over at tank top and bike shorts. So, and all of it was like 20 bucks. That's cheap for California, especially that's cheap. All right, on to the next. I'll be back. So Goodwill was cool. I found three things I really liked. It was more of a petite Goodwill though, where they have mostly designer stuff. Things aren't individually tagged, like everything on this rack is 10 bucks kind of thing, which is fine. You can still find bargains there, which I did. I found two blouse, well, a blouse and a sweater. Oh, where as is, their name brand blouses. And also some yarn. It's a good thing I brought an extra suitcase. And that Bob has room in his. Cause yeah. Anyway, I'm gonna go to Daiso and there's a couple of things I couldn't find at the other Daiso. I'm gonna look and see if they have. Plus, there's a safe way here. I need to pick up some food. There's also a Starbucks. I might need coffee. I'll be back guys. There I am. These linen pants, they're huge. They're a size, there are lane Bryant pants and there are two, I'm sorry, a 28. They were originally, the tag is still on here, $54.95. I paid $8.99 minus my senior discount stuff. I mean, look at all that. Now, they're linen blend. They're linen rayon, which is fine about half and half. I mean, just looking at them, I already have ideas on how to like, remake them into something else.  And at least part of it will make a great pair of pants. At the same shop, I found two t-shirts that I think I want to split in half from neck to hem and then sew the two mismatched halves back together. So this is one and this is the other one. We'll see, because I kind of like both of them as is. So we'll see if I actually do that. I found this top, which will be really cute as is with my khaki linen pants. I just got, and that's lucky brand. So I know that was a lot more expensive than the $3 I paid for it. This is the sweater, you guys.  And then two untucked patterns. Oops, still factory folded. This is a great basic top jacket and pair of pants. And this one's a cute wrap dress. And then at Goodwill, the yarn I couldn't resist. I mean, you guys, all three of them were, there was three bucks, which is that yarn, it's a lying brand yarn that's more expensive for one. It might be $3 for one or $4 for one. Probably more than that, I'm probably underestimating that. Then I found this shirt, which is Lauren Conrad. This was, I think, $6.99, I just saw that. Yep, $6.99. And this little sweater was $9.99. And this is Aunt Taylor Loft. How cute is that? It's a little cardigan. I did get a white sweater because of course I forgot one and it's cold here, but this is linen. It's 100% linen sweater. It's more than I usually pay for stuff at the moment, but I think that was a pretty good buy. It's less than it would have been normally.  I wasn't sure I was gonna find anything, but I found myself some more stickers I didn't see at the other one. I found a bunch of cat stuff I was looking for for one of the girls and some crazy snacks for the one son-in-law who never wants anything. And then I also bought myself some food for lunch today and then tomorrow. Anyway, it was a pretty good shopping day. I'll be back. We're just getting back to the hotel. We had a really nice dinner with our son-in-law's parents in Los Gavis at their beautiful house up in the hills. And a really nice drive through the mountains and past Lexington Reservoir. If you're seeing this clip, you saw that clip.  Anyway, now we're exhausted and we need to get to bed because he's gotta get to work tomorrow and all that stuff. Oh, dark 30. Oh, dark 30, yeah. What do I gotta do tomorrow? Take him to work. Maybe go shopping again? I mean, I'll be back. 100 feet, turn right onto Fremont Boulevard. Anyway, I wasn't supposed to have the car this morning, but I do. And I'm gonna be meeting Bob and a friend of ours for lunch and then he's gonna take the car. Since I have the car and I've got a couple hours before then we are gonna go to St. Vincent de Paul. I wasn't gonna go, but there is one here in the area. I don't have to go far. I mean, I already have a pretty full, thank goodness I did bring an extra folding bag. I always do bring one, but yeah. All right, I'll be back. Okay guys, I am back at the hotel room having some thing to drink and using the restroom before I go meet Bob and our friend for lunch. The St. Vincent de Paul up here in Fremont, California. Gigantic, oh my God. Depending on what you're looking for, I still think Hope Thrift was my favorite. They have a lot of clothing and a really good selection. It was very well organized, but St. Vincent de Paul is a good second runner up. They had a huge craft department, a lot of sewing patterns, 50 cents each, 50 cents. If you've priced them at the fabric store recently, you know what a bargain that is. Anyway, I started off with for 50 cents getting a children's book for our grandson for his library. Yes, he's only eight weeks. We're already adding to the library. That's not the first book I've gotten. And then I got five sewing patterns that were also each 50 cents. All factory uncut and things I can make work or basics so that I don't have to draft patterns, which I know how to do, but is a pain in the neck. And then I've been looking for a white men's shirt for a long time to upcycle. I found first a green one, which I just left as is and is in my closet. Then I found a pink one and I did upcycle that one. I'll put it here. I've been looking for a white one to do something with and I haven't been able to find one and I've had terrible luck. I found one today. And it was $8.99, which is a little more than I would usually like to spend, but it's in pretty good condition. And it looks like it's a designer brand name, but I've never heard of it before. Charles, Charles, somebody. Charles, maybe somebody knows. Anyway, I think it had one little light coffee spot. On the front, was it this one that had the coffee spot or was it the other one? I don't remember, but I mean, it is a U-shirt. No, maybe it was the other one. This one looks fine. Anyway, plain white men's shirt.  So anyway, I'm done shopping this trip now. I'm gonna have to figure out how to get all this in my suitcase on Friday, so it's gonna be a thing. Anyway, I'm gonna sit and watch some YouTube videos while I wait to hear where we're going for lunch because I don't have any idea. I'll let you know. I'll be back. Bob dropped me out from lunch. That was really good. We went to a Hawaiian place. I'm super full and I'm less worried about having extra food. I have to toss out. That's perfectly good because I'm seeing my cousin tomorrow and Bob's coworkers keep giving him food, some of which we can't take home. That's okay. She lives here. I'm gonna bring it to her house tomorrow. I think that's brilliant. Meanwhile, before I go upstairs, I'm gonna take a couple of pictures. I'm gonna go upstairs, sit and do a little painting and share some of the photos with the patrons and supporters, watch some YouTube and just chill and relax. I think that sounds like a plan. I'll be back. Guys, it is 7.30 a.m. on Thursday. Is it the 8th, I think? Yeah, June 8th. I got Bob off to work. We had breakfast together, which is what we've been doing every day that we've been here. Got my outfit of the day on, which is a, hold on. Can we, yeah, there we go. Thrifted white dress just below the knee. I've got my flat tennis shoes on. Gonna sit and have the rest of my coffee this morning.  My dad's side of the family. We're gonna be having a lunch thing. And I get to see my cousin's new house. I can't wait. And then later on tonight after Bob gets off work, we're having dinner with a friend. So, yeah. Almost done with his week and time to go home, but that's okay. Oh, and by the way, I just found a white men's shirt to upcycle when I was out thrifting yesterday. And guess what? It fits Mr. Bob perfectly. It was a brand new men's shirt. So, yeah, I don't get to upcycle that shirt. Why am I not surprised? He said he probably has an old one in his closet I can have that he'll replace that one with. I don't know. We'll see. I'll get that. I'll be back. We're back in the car. It was a really great visit with my aunt and cousins and aunt cousin. She's like 11 years older than me. Anyway, she's kind of more like an older sister. Anyway, Nancy, Annette, Tracy, Olivia, Teresa. You know, I love you. It was a really great visit. And oh my gosh, Teresa and Clay's new house is just beautiful. Now I'm sitting in downtown San Jose because GPS says it's best to go this way to get on 880 to head back to the airport which I need to do before 430 and I have like a seven minute window. We'll see. Cause I need to check in for my flight tomorrow, so. All right, I'll be back. I'm waiting in the parking lot of my husband's company and he'll be out in a few minutes.  I managed to pack everything I bought in suitcases that we can make at work which is a fricking miracle and that two suitcases are under 50 pounds. Another miracle. We do have one extra carry-on bag but I had two coming and he only had one. So now he's gonna have two. All right. California is a beautiful place to visit. There's some great things to see and do places to go shopping, places to eat. But yeah, I don't wanna live here anymore. I miss some people but that's it. Anyway, all right. I have a million ideas for paintings when we get back and of course sewing projects cause that's gonna be a permanent thing now. Anyway, I need to finish my coffee. I had to go buy some Starbucks. I'm tired of hotel coffee. Yeah, I'll be back. We have time on our way to the airport. We had lunch with some of Bob's coworkers. That was really great. Really nice group of people. And yes, I was the only one there that wasn't in the tech business but you know. We are now, we have extra time. So we are driving. We're in Santa Clara. I used to rent a room here and we're gonna go buy there and see if I can recognize anything. But I can tell you right now everything looks completely different. There were a lot of construction over here. Yeah, there's a lot of, there used to be a lot of open space. Yeah, hang a lot of open space over here and some of this was not here but now like with this building, there's just so much building going on. So much new. I mean. On the left side here, there's Levi's Stadium where the 49ers play. Yeah, is Great America Park where you're still here? All the street? Great America is right next to it. Yeah. So I lived here for a few years when I met Mr. Bob and yeah. Took the bus to work every day because I didn't, I have a car. So that was a thing. Anyway, I don't recognize any of it so far. So I'll keep you all posted. There's Levi's Stadium. Yeah. Home of the San Francisco 49ers and there's their playing field right over here. Sanctions where they practice. Oh, nice. They're off today. I hope so, because there's nobody out there so they're supposed to be practicing then. Somebody messed up. Yeah, none of this was here, you guys. In fact, Levi's Stadium was part of the Great America Parkway amusement park parking lot. When I lived here, it wasn't, there wasn't, yeah. Holy cow. The conventions. Yeah, there's Great America and Mr. Bob. And there's the convention center and that was here when I was here. Yep. But those hotels were not here. There were no hotels over here to stay at. This is Great America Parkway. You used to be able to go into the parking lots of all of these buildings here. Some of these weren't here. They were a lot smaller and you could park your car. People in the neighborhood would come over here and park their cars, have a tailgater in the parking lot. While we waited for Great America to set off fourth of July fireworks for fourth of July. Yep. They'd get there at about seven o'clock, party and then around nine o'clock the fireworks would go off for about 15, 20 minutes. Yeah, it's not anymore. But not anymore. It's all different now. Yeah. Hey you guys, this is the mobile home park I used to live in, rent a room in. I didn't have the whole mobile home. It's a long story, we won't get into it right now. But anyway, I was about 17, 18 years old until I was about 22, 23, when Mr. Bob and I moved in together and. It's down here at K Street. Yeah, and there's the parking lot. Yep, there it is. Yeah, it is. And ours was not that one. It was this one that's gray now. Move the flag. Yeah, this is it. This is it. This is the spot. That was it, 448. Yeah. Wow. That's the. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I've mixed feelings about that. You guys, it's a long story. Maybe someday I'll get into it, but it's a long story. Maybe with the therapist. Yeah, maybe with the therapist. It is kind of a therapy story. So anyway. Yeah. Nothing you turn and go around, go back. That mobile home that's there is not the one I lived in. That's a new one, by the way. That was a lot nicer. Yeah. The one I lived in looked more like that one. But it was not as well kept. It was pretty bad. What did Mr. Bob call it earlier off camera? A shithole. You really shouldn't say that, Derek. Well, they're going to demonetize me. I swear on my channel anyway. Okay, well, okay, it was a shithole. I didn't use the F word. No. Because I could set F as a shithole. Yep, we used to park our cars right here. Right in here. It was really fun the day that Mr. Bob went out of town and left his little stick shift Toyota Celica at my house to keep an eye on it. And it was in the driveway and I had to move it across the street into the parking lot. You guys see how far that is? It's like from there to there. Took me half an hour, because I don't drive a stick shift. And it ended up, I think I burned out his clutch. Yep. So there's that. Lessons learned. Yeah. All right, off to the airport. We'll see you back in Oregon. We're in a car again. Are you surprised? You're always in a car. I know. We are back in Oregon. Yay. Traveling and visiting is nice, but it's always nice to get home. I did spend the morning doing a lot of laundry because one of the things I forgot to do before we left was laundry. So we had all the travel clothes, plus what was already in there. So it's a lot. Watered the plants, do some chores. Mr. Bob was able to go to cars for coffee this morning and show it. Sorry, cars and coffee in Sherwood. They had a mo party. There's a mo party. Okay. A lot of mo parties. So yeah, that was good for him. And we both, more importantly, got a really good night's sleep. Now we're out to go run some errands. We have almost no groceries in the house and all of that stuff. So we need to go get that done. So we're gonna go do that and I'll be back. So I have my hat on because my hair looks horrible and I'm still in my pajamas because I forgot to close a vlog last night and it's Sunday morning.  Yeah, that. I was busy crocheting this new hat, which if you are watching the vlog to this far, you've seen the clips of me doing that anyway. Cause it's, you know, middle of summer-ish and I'm making winter clothes. I don't know. Anyway, I'm gonna start off this morning by cutting Mr. Bob's hair and doing a few chores, but that's for next week's vlog. I hope you guys have enjoyed the kind of weirdness of this vlog, some travel footage and all that stuff. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, leave it down below. We will get back to our regular Artie life content this next vlog, but anyway, like, share and subscribe. I'd appreciate that. Any relevant links will be down in the video description and I answer every single comment, so please leave one. And if you want to have ready access to me and my art and what I'm doing on the regular and patterns and videos, become a patron or a supporter. They not only have our own private Facebook chat, but they have their own private YouTube channel. So there's that. Yeah. All right, that's it for now. I'm gonna cut Mr. Bob's hair. I'll see you all next week. Go out and have a good day. Have a good week. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye guys.


you believe in international law based on secular humanism, not the manifesto that no one knows about and no one has read, but the secular humanism, the idea of separation of church and state, individual happiness, equality, etc. Those values that I focused on in my opening, do you think that should be the basis of international law and should there be consequences for violating international law? Didn't I make a very express thing in my opening about the separation of church and state and how I would be fine, and I'm a secular humanist, and I would be fine with a secular state, but not a secular humanist state. Didn't I make that clear?


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspys here doing a quick little mini promo. I said hey Next four spots person update. It's got chance to win extra spot that's tonight only we're really trying to kickstart this update box Break so we can unlock bowman's best. We've been still we've stalled out a little bit So hopefully this gets the people going a little so thank you to Evan and David for being sharp and taking advantage of this Little mini promo. Let's roll it randomize it four and a four eight the hard way. Let's see who gets that extra spot Four five six seven and eight and it's for Evan. Sorry David, but Evan. Congrats. Thank you Hopefully this kickstart that box break ladies and gentlemen make it happen Jaspys case breaks.com. Bye. Bye


Okay, awesome. Hi guys. Okay, perfect. We'll go ahead and get started then. So I'll start by introducing myself. My name is Ava. I'm the peer advisor for computer science engineering. I'm a third year in computer science. And today we have geeks with us here. If you guys want to introduce yourselves. Yeah, I can go first. I'm Kavey. I'm the marketing head for geeks. I'm one of the geeks that's e-board. And I'm a CS major. And I'm a senior. Hi, my name is Shreya and I'm in the marketing committee with Kavey. And I am a junior and I'm a CS major. Okay, awesome. Perfect. So get us started. Can you guys just tell us what geeks is, maybe what it stands for, and then kind of what your main goal is? So basically, a geeks stands for girls in electrical engineering and computer science. And it's pretty much a way for professional and social development for girls and eeks. And our professional side, we do a lot of workshops, information sessions, recruiting advice, and then we also have our social sites where we have a lot of like bonding activities. And we always have good food at those. Yeah. And yeah, just getting to know other girls and eeks, it's really beneficial. You can get advice or just even make friends. Awesome. And then you were just talking a little bit maybe about some committees that you have. Do you want to talk a little bit more about what different committees that you have in geeks? Yeah, so well, the both of us on the marketing committee we have been for a few years now, but we basically manage social media. We create like flyers, branding, merch, all that stuff for geeks. So marketing is marketing it mainly to like the members and geeks, but also externally. And then we have outreach where we do a lot of work with girls and non binary students in high school to get them interested in like CS encoding. So we have like coding, like, like sessions for a lot of high schools around Ann Arbor and just honestly, like, like schools outside of Ann Arbor as well, like we connect girls in high schools to get them more interested in coding. And then we have the professional committee that does work for geeks members they host workshops for like tech, like technical interview prep behavioral interview prep. And then we lastly have the internal committee where they release blog posts on what it's like to be like this, you know, a girl a student in Michigan. And just recently we actually just had a blog post I was just about like managing your stress and it was just like really nice. It's like, yeah, we like it. That's awesome. Okay, that's perfect overview and then you're mentioning a part of like the professional team maybe some like interview prep and stuff with that like what type of skills can people learn through geeks. Yeah, I think that so the thing with technical interviews is no many people have experienced with it and you don't really can't really get that from a book. So with geeks, what they're planning on doing with the next it actually starts this Thursday and they're going to be having sessions from now on, where you're going to get matched up like paired up with another person who signed up for this program. And you will be interviewing one another and I feel like that's a super valuable skill because you get you're simulating like a technical interview like experience with someone else in real time, which I think is super beneficial. And also they will be going over concepts as well like data structures and stuff like a lot of us took 280 a while ago. Yeah, those concepts are SD and recruiting is happening right now so you know it's a good refresher and just those communication skills as well. Yeah, that's awesome. That's a great opportunity. And then switching sides a little bit. I know you guys went to the grace hopper conferences here. Do you want to talk a little bit about what that is for people maybe don't know about it on kind of how your experience was. Yeah, so grace hopper is basically this conference that takes place every year around September. It's for women non by non binary students and professionals in tech to come together and it's this huge like recruiting conference. And it happened in Florida this year. And we took around 15 members and completely all paid for which was nice. I know. Yeah, it's such a great experience because the last few years it's been virtual. So it's really nice to have been able to go in person and a bunch of companies like a lot of big companies Google, Apple, Amazon, they all come up and they set up stalls and like boots and they decorate it and you can go and talk to recruiters and like people who work there like actual engineers and a lot of people have been like given internships like on the spot when they go and like talk to them and things like that or like full time roles. I know currently we're going to like a bit of a recession and yeah not the best time to be graduating but definitely a lot of internship roles that a lot of people got this year so I feel like it's a great way to just network and meet people from like different parts of the US different women in like these super high profile companies. Yeah, it was extremely like valuable experience. That's awesome. Yeah, I know great conferences like an amazing opportunity so it's awesome you guys had a great time. And with that too how do people get involved and I know you mentioned that you guys sponsor people fully to go how do people tend to get that. So actually the way we do it is we do have an application that comes out I think at end of like winter semester maybe the start of the summer. And I think the way we choose is of course it's pretty holistic we go through your application but we also see your involvement in geeks. So if you're on a committee if you're on a committee you do get more like we have something called geeks points that you earn by attending events. So the more events you attend the more points you get if you're on a committee you get more points if you're in a family you get more points. So we look at the points we look at your application and then we like also see if you're a senior like you're like if you're junior senior slightly more likely to go because you may not have you know as many chances to go later. So it's like a pretty holistic person selecting people. That's awesome okay that's great to know. And then with that too so you were talking kind of about some companies that were at Grace Hopper Conference. What type of companies or I guess what companies do people in geeks typically go to work at after being part of geeks. I think people at least tend to go to like the big big tech companies. We actually geeks are sponsored by a lot of big ones like Meadow, Meadow are sponsored by us. So a lot of these companies it is actually so geeks actually has a resume book that like gets these companies which is really great. So based off points like you can get like they'll reach out to you for it and then you'll have your book out there. That's awesome okay that's great to hear. With that too do you want to talk a bit more about those professional opportunities. I know you talked about having the I think you said the new program about coding interviews and tech interviews. What other like professional opportunities do you guys tend to work on? Is there any like resumes or like LinkedIn I'm not sure. Yeah so we have so with our sponsors we have a lot of events with them especially in the fall semester when we're like heavy with recruiting. So I know we've had like maybe in the last two months had events with Bloomberg and Google. I think we got over the 10% the bad apples batting. So we basically had like Google and Bloomberg come in and have their kudos talk to us. And basically we'd share like their resume book with them and then they would ask you to apply and then they could contact you later. So we have a lot of recruiting events in that sense. Tons of company info sessions info sessions. Yeah. And sometimes even like technical interview like perhaps Goldman Sachs did that with us where they like walked us through the like technical interview process. That's awesome that sounds like really great opportunities to come to companies. And on the other side of that, and you guys mentioned social events. What are some typical social events that you guys have I know I've seen that you guys have collaborated with other organizations. I know you mentioned food. If you want to talk about that. Thanks so Michigan hackers. We've done a couple of events together with socials and. Yeah, I feel like it's just a great way to kind of get to know other tech clubs at Mumech. Sweet sweet was another one. A shift to I wish we had more like events or chip but we did one with sweet where we went to use the ice and that was super fun. So I think we're bowling. Yeah. So we're constantly trying to like have events with other clubs on campus and yeah food we always have food at our events. Every time. It's so nice. Yeah. Avoid. I just avoid cooking dinner like yeah just go to a game. I love that. That's awesome. That sounds like really great social events with that too. I kind of want to ask like what the time commitment usually is of geeks. Do you expect a certain amount of commitment from members or like how do you guys balance classes with that as well. Sure. I can go as like a committee member and then. Yeah, I would say so before I was even on the committee personally I think that whatever you put in you got. So it's kind of like when you first come in you know you're getting your points you're attending small events and then I feel like once you're in a committee it's definitely a lot more you have deadlines like you're doing a lot more for the club. So I would say like if you were doing like an average like maybe like two hours a week like it's not too crazy but yeah. Yeah, yeah, I definitely think as a committee member your time commitment goes up a little but but it's not crazy. It's not crazy. Definitely as a board member goes up by now just because you look over committee and you also have to plan events like we have board meetings every week.  Genuinely is fun at least if you're passionate about your committee like I love making posters. I love branding and things like that so I would say maybe it's a five hour commitment. Sometimes it gets more sometimes it gets less planning people definitely went up by a lot. But you also have slump sometimes. Yeah, not bad. Yeah, that's a great overview of kind of how the time committed is and then with that too. How can people in CS kind of get involved in Geeks I know you mentioned committees there's certain application for that or for members as well. So we don't have any member fee like joining fee. It's free to show up and basically a member just sign in and we start keeping track of our members with like Geeks points. So at every session like at every event we have a sign in link and you sign in and then you get your point and committees. Yes, we do have an application. But once you're on a committee, the thing is the unofficial thing is usually at least me I love having Tray on my committee. She's like come right back. I'm like just come back. You have to submit an application but if the initial one was good. The initial ones usually the most important one and usually come back to the committee. Okay, that's great. And then with that too. I kind of want to ask like what events or maybe opportunities you have coming up maybe that people could start going to or just start attending. Yeah, we have one today actually with mine. It's with it's like hybrids you can join online or go to North campus that will be food. And then obviously super cool though but yeah for that one there's like a panel of some alumni coming and their female alumni who work at Minecraft. So yeah, and we have a Deloitte event to on Wednesday, and we have an elections info session because Geeks is like e-boat gets elected for the calendar year and not the academic year. Thank you. So we're going to have a new set of people coming in leadership. Yeah, fun. That's great. Okay, that's a great overview of the events and stuff I'm excited for the Minecraft events is here. So that's really, really cool.  I kind of just want to ask my last question and what's your as his favorite part of Geeks. Okay, personally, which I don't think we've brought this up yet but Geeks also does mentorship. Yeah. And so we have it's generally it's not really like a generally upperclassmen will be mentors and then underclass will be the mentees. Yeah, and it's just like, I loved my family when I joined it. It's really great. It's just like a nice way to have to get advice from like older, like students who have taken classes that you have know what it's like to be an eeks major. So yeah, that's my favorite part for sure. And I think my favorite part is just like finding a community in like eeks.  And I was someone who didn't have any coding experience coming in that wasn't a CS major for the longest time so it's like coming in I got to meet so many people in my classes could do like CS like projects with them and things like that. So it was finding a mini community within this like super big like campus. So, yeah, I've met all my partners through. Yeah, yeah, my ex partners. That's awesome. I know me too. I've also used geeks. I remember like for I was an internship. Yeah, I didn't know anybody and then geeks was amazing research for that. So that's awesome. Yeah, we love geeks. That's great. Well, that was awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us here and answering our questions here and giving us a good overview of geeks. And I hope you guys have a great Minecraft event tonight. I look forward to seeing the events for the rest of the year. So thank you so much. See you. Thank you. Thank you.


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I'm Beth Crawter from the University of the Sunshine Coast. We're a new university or we're relatively new, we're 15 years old. We've got one of the highest groups of mature age students in Australia and we've also got a lot of end of career researchers. They want their data to survive and be shared but because they're retiring or planning on not being here they need their data to be managed or curated in some way. They're willing to give it but they don't want to have any part in its future. He said when he started out working, he's a zoologist, when he started out working with his mammals they would sit and count and they'd come up with numbers. Now they set cameras and take photos and auditory information which creates an enormous amount of data. So it was really interesting that somebody who was a little bit disinterested in the data management project with a bit of discussion saw the enormous change even in his profession that his needs for data storage were and recognised the impact that would have on the university systems as well. So hearing the changes that are happening means we're going to have to think about how we're going to respond to those changes. For this university, for us in particular it was important because it highlighted a lot of needs that the university wasn't addressing. One of the things it really highlighted was that nobody in the university and I don't think we're alone in this had taken responsibility for data management because everyone thought quite innocently that it was somebody else's responsibility and in fact it was nobody's responsibility. And we had the option of everybody grasping for it or anybody taking a step back. And because we're small and because of the way our ANS project is happening we're in a position to have a look and see what will be some effective ways for the university to move forwards. As well as talking to researchers I'm talking to the people who manage what the researchers do. So we've just been really lucky that the ethics people are interested in our project as well so once they were given something to do they ran off and started looking for what other universities have done. So one of the things that this has revealed is significant points where there should have been data sets looked after where it had just dissipated and they were government funded things. Lots of money involved with lost data. It wouldn't have happened without ANS. It just, this would not have happened without ANS at all. It was $75,000 that's probably had a million dollars worth of impact on the university in the long term. That's my personal opinion but I reckon that's pretty valid.