I am unaware of the specific details of MP7 upon which this accusation is being made however this statement is in disagreement with the accusation of attempting to use other's work as my own. As a precursor to my defense, I shall give my background information on this class. Low level systems programming has never been a favorite of mine. That is not a secret. I have missed many lectures and often procrastinated on doing work. This is no doubt reflected on my first exam's score. (I do not have access to my final grade) and my late submission time to MP7.

I planned and finished coding this MP in 2 days, the first planning and writing pseudo-code as gathered in the documentation. The instructions for this MP were laid out extremely clearly, especially as opposed to previous MPs which I struggled and often had to ask friends and TA's what the documentation meant. The second day was translation of pseudo-code, cleaning up, testing for memory leaks, and testing my code. I worked on this MP within my own apartment, on a VirtualBox VM that came with CS225 the previous semester. I began to test my work on my own VM, only to find that nothing was working. I could not connect to the server via any of the 3 ways offered on piazza or in the documentation. Around that time, I decided to try to connect via VPN to the EWS servers and grab my code off SVN. My code still did not work. In any of the 3 ways described. 

"Honestly?", I thought. I was frustrated, and tired of the class's MP's. I was done. This was the last MP for CS241, late at night on the due date, and I was just going to leave it alone. But then I remembered how I did the same for MP2. 0% on the second part because of laziness. I didn't want that to happen again. So I searched the internet. It was getting well into the night, approaching the deadline. I tried multiple pieces of code, in order to narrow down any problems that might have been preventing me from testing my code. None were successful. I even tried them on EWS machines via SVN. But it didn't matter, nothing worked. None of the code I had written, nor that I had tested had successfully worked. I officially gave up, submitted my code, even showing my frustration with the SVN commit comment "im crossing my fingers here". I had more pressing homework for another class due the following day that I needed to work on (specifically, CS357 Homework due on Tuesdays @ 5 P.M.). I couldn't risk 2 failed grades, so I opted for one. I thought for sure that I was going to fail MP7. Imagine my surprise when I saw that "Program Execution Score (90% weight): 45.0/45.0 (100.0%)" message on the autograder! I was ecstatic to say the least. I told one person how it really surprised me, because we often talk about our MP's together. If you would like that person to attest to this, to help remove doubt that I was in fact surprised at this outcome despite my thoughts of failing and attesting further to my statement, please contact me and let me know. I do not wish to involve him unnecessarily otherwise.

Other useful information includes that I did in fact, pull code from the server.c example used in lecture, and the linux man-pages for uses on various functions linked in the documentation of MP7. I have no doubt others have done this, and as a result code will be very similar. The example server source code was OK'd to use by Zhongbo Chen on the Piazza course page, and the man-pages contain examples and code pieces that would not work on the MP. 

I did, otherwise, write the code used in my submission of MP7. I stepped through the documentation, following it to the point and reading problems on Piazza to check against my own code, since I could not test my program. I sincerely believe that because of the straightforwardness of this documentation and the examples used, that there is a high probability that my code appears similar to other students, and I have received the short end of the stick. I was able to write about 75% of this MP gathered from the psuedo-code from the documentation, man-pages, and example code alone.

Here is a summary of this response, as condensed and relevant to my case:

-I did write my own code, with the help and guidance of the Linux man-pages and the example server.c documentation.
-I attempted, but was unsuccessful, to test my own code.
-I tested code in order to narrow down the cause of my inability to test the MP, BUT DID NOT, NOR HAVE ANY INTENTION, OF USING OTHERS CODE AS MY OWN, as described in the accusation. 
-The high probability of which code my can be viewed as similar to other students is due to the specific nature of server code along with the very precise order as laid out in the documentation and the example code from the linux man-pages and example server.c.
-My belief of failing this MP, and my surprise to seeing the 100%, as can be attested to upon request.

Thank you for your time in reviewing my statement.