I think I have mentioned in other postings recently about loading up my new T61p with VMware and experimenting around. I decided to try a different approach with my style of computing on laptops and use the horsepower I put in this thing to my advantage. What I am trying to do is consolidate my personal computing into this single laptop and have a virtual machine for each major branch of “stuff” that I do. A VM or two dedicated to linux for stuff I do with that, a VM dedicated to an XP installation to replace my old laptop which I used for Instant messaging, email, and general surfing the internet, and another one for office work and whatever else.
Obviously there is more, but that was the start and I am currently looking for some good websites that I can find new and interesting applications at to demo on the casual virtual machine. Where do you download your newest/coolest applications?
I had my tonsils removed yesterday, which went surprisingly well. I have a bit of a sore throat but other than that I am doing fine. I can’t wait to eat solid food again though. Matt was right when he told me you could start to count backwards from 6000 and not even make it to 5999 once they start to put you under.
While I was relaxing yesterday I put my 64 bit copy of Windows XP on the new thinkpad. I also downloaded the 64 bit trial of VMware and I must say, it’s very noticible from the 32 bit counterpart. I installed 32 bit XP Pro in a VM on it, and it’s literally like having a native install of it.
Hak5 Live will be up at http://www.hak5.org at 9pm EST. Tune in and enjoy!
I purchased a few months at Slicehost just to muck about with them. I don’t have the bandwidth at home to run a fully fledged server like this, and at $20/mo it’s probably cheaper than the electricity I would use at the house.
I just got done doing a podcast with the guys at secthis.com, whom I met at Shmoocon this past weekend (although there were so many faces and once you have a few drinks it’s a little hard to remember that many faces) which ran about an hour. I had a lot of fun discussing a variety of issues with them. I’m glad they let me connect up and throw in my 2 cents.
Once it’s all edited up you’ll find it at http://www.secthis.com.
I’ll have a more detailed writeup of my experience at Shmoocon this year sometime during the week. For now I am relaxing back at the Hak5 house and thankfully have the day off tomorrow to recover from what was one hell of a weekend.
I managed to attend G Mark Hardy’s talk as well as Simple Nomad’s which were both excellent as expected. The live show we did on Friday had a bit of a “glitch” and no audio made it to the recording. These things happen and we’ll rebound from it. I made some new friends and contacts, and learned a lot of fun new things as usual.
surbo from http://www.i-hacked.com got us into Katsucon Friday night, and that was a total blast. Saturday was the Shmoo party and that was a lot of fun as well. The alcohol tab lasted a LOT longer this year than last. I didn’t do too much drinking though.
More later, as I need to unwind.
We’re only two days away! It seems this conference just gets better each year it runs. I wonder if there will be a bigger venue next year, haha.
The live show is ~9pm Friday and should be really fun. We’re having some very cool guests. It will be the last time I will be having alcohol until after my surgery unfortunately, but I will enjoy it.
If you or anyone you know has an extra Shmoocon ticket I would like to get Christine in. There only seems to be one left on ebay worth pursuing and I don’t know if I will be at the computer in 4 hours to take a shot at it.
I ordered a Lenovo T61p Thinkpad today. It’s the 14.1 inch model with a T9300 (2.5Ghz 6MB L2 Cache), an nVidia FX570M Quadro card, with the display natively running at 1400×1050. I decided against widescreen as it is a personal preference on laptops. Along with it, I ordered 4GB of ram to replace the 1GB stock as it was far cheaper. I’m waiting to see if the stock card is Atheros or not, rumor has it it is.
I will be reviewing the laptop when I get it on here, not in a normal benchmark sort of way, but just what my thoughts are about it in reference to what I use it for.
The Hakme project is still being worked on. Slow and steady wins the race. This thing won’t be launched until it’s out of beta folks, so trust us and wait for it. 
In today’s InfoSec News digest is an article written by Scott Whitney from TechNewsWorld with some important tips on how to choose a data center that fits your needs.
The article talks about his bad experience with one data center and what he learned from it in order to choose the right solution for him, which he is graciously passing on to the rest of us.
There are some very very good questions in there that should be asked. You can find the article here.
I am trying to put together a proper hacking toolkit after reading an article on hackaday encouraging people to come up with the perfect hacker workbench.
I already ordered my oscilloscope kit today, it’s a PC based one, not a full fledged scope, but I think I will be happy with it as it’s been 4 years since I used a real one and this is a cheap entry level thing to get started.
What would you buy? Here’s the article with the comments.
