Chris Gerling

Juggling 30 is well, 10 times as hard?..

It’s actually not as bad as it seems sometimes.  Things usually have a way of working through their cycles regardless of your input.  Obviously if you care about the results you want, there will be participation on your behalf though.

SecuraBit is getting larger, but the cool thing is that we have an amazing selection of people behind it, and that really helps because no single person has to think of everything, run everything.  It’s a group effort, which makes for less pressure on each individual.  We’ll be doing our bi-weekly shows as usual, but also some spontaneous shows whenever we get the itch, such as the show Rob and Anthony ran the other night to get some timely comments in on the whole DNS fiasco that’s gone public.  If you haven’t heard about it, and you’re in some way or another involved with IT, I would highly suggest doing some quick reading on the matter and either patching your stuff, or getting the word out to your staff to do it.

Hak5 is about to start hitting full force again.  I’m looking forward to participating in creating some more technolust for all who are interested to enjoy.  We have some pretty good ideas kicking around so far, one of which involves possibly stomping all over the warranty on my 2008 highlander, and boy do I ever love voiding warranties on things.

I’m torn between staying in the area, and moving a few hours away.  There are some pretty kickass jobs up towards DC that would be VERY rewarding professionally, yet I hate the idea of being so far from the people who make life fun, my friends.  I’ll know more in a few weeks as I edge closer to the time in which I must make an absolute decision.  Either way, I already drive at minimum an hour each way on most weekends, so 3 hours wouldn’t be that much more painful.

     Christine and I returned last night from our weekend up in Western NY.  We left Friday morning at 5am and amazingly, hit no major traffic.  After arriving at my sister’s place in Springville, NY we went out to dinner with a good portion of the family and then saw the town’s display of fireworks near my old elementary school.

The following day a whole bunch of us went up to my uncle’s cottage by Java Lake, where we cooked out over the campfire, went fishing and paddle boating as well as swimming.  Later that night Christine and I were left with the cottage to ourself, and we were able to see a few different displays of fireworks over the treeline on the other side of the lake.  The cottage itself is very beautiful, something I wouldn’t mind owning someday myself.

Sunday brought a bit of sleeping in, and after a power outage in the area around the cottage we departed for my sister’s place to pickup some things we had left there.  On the way we stopped and picked our own strawberries in a field, 1 quart cost us $2 which is pretty cheap.  After that we randomly stumbled across an annual festival that the village of Sardinia has, which had some carnival rides, games, a horse show, chicken bbq, and a small park.  We had a great time in the few hours we spent there, and then departed for my grandmother’s house out in the country.  We swam in her pool, had bbq ribs for dinner, and then headed up to Buffalo, NY where my sister and her boyfriend took us, along with my Mom up to see Niagra Falls.

We took the pedestrian walkway and didn’t realize we needed our passports, but the canadian border patrol guy was nice, and believed we were U.S. Citizens so he let us enter.  A short walk past the Hard Rock Cafe led us to a small town center-ish area where a bunch of people were gathered.  Christine inquired about what was going on and we found out that there were going to be fireworks, which promptly started 5 minutes later and were quite amazing, shooting right over the falls, which were lit up and very colorful.  Returning to the US was a cinch, as they didn’t even ask us for passports, although we weren’t pointed to the correct exit so we had one last run-in with border patrol at the bus exit, and were allowed to go about our business and return home.

The drive was about 11 hours each way, and we returned last night at about 12:30am, just in time to get some sleep and get back to work!  Pictures will be included in this post later tonight.