I’ve started a Tips page, which you can find on the top bar of this site. If there’s anything you want me to add let me know. There will be some more stuff going up onto it later on tonight.
I’ve been VERY busy, between stuff with Hak5, work, personal life, and playing some games here and there.
First and foremost, I will be getting rid of this blog as it is right now, and putting a new site design online, to better represent myself in a professional manner.
Along with things I do with the Hak5 crew, I am undertaking a new project based upon some work I did this past week. Essentially I want to build my own CentOS 5 kernel to include EFI support for Apple Xserves.
Beyond that, I’m out for now.
Tonight will be RC2 of Hak5 Live, and should hopefully be much better than RC1.
I will be discussing the Nokia N770 Internet Tablet and my roommate will be talking about his fix for the Xbox 360 3 rings of death problem.
Tune in at the website here which is going to be powered by Ustream.tv and Stickam. IRC is irc.hak5.org in channel #hak5.
For those of you who never watched Mr. Wizard when you were growing up, you missed out on quite a show. I used to watch it before I went to school at least a couple of mornings per week for a couple of years, and it was downright fascinating every time. He made science easy and fun to understand.
Don Herbert died yesterday at the age of 89 from bone cancer. If you had never heard of him go check out his website, you might learn a thing or two. 
The site might experience some downtime as I switch from shared hosting to a VPS. Just a FYI.
The past week included one CISSP study group session, installing Ubuntu 7.04 “Feisty” on my spare hard drive, and the usual weekend partying/cooking out.
I’ve been using the latest Ubuntu release since early Saturday morning, and I have to say I am impressed. If my parents lived closer than a 10 hour drive from me I might actually consider switching them over to this, although I think we’re at least a few releases away from it being a smooth enough experience for them.
I had never really run a Linux desktop for more than a week or two as my primary desktop OS before, and I believe this one is going to stay for quite a long time. Beryl/Compiz makes things look nice and shiny, as well as providing functionality.
StumbleUpon has come through once again with an interesting tutorial on how to get started with picking locks. I now have something to keep me entertained at work tonight, as the entire site is chock full of good information on lockpicking. I might as well add a new skill or two to myself eh?
Work on the possible podcast progresses. I am working on a little project that I think might provide for an interesting commentary.
More later!
Yes, I haven’t forgotten, I’m still sticking to the minimum of one post per week.
This week has been mostly work, although I did get my favors in this past Sunday so I can call in some karma later on when I need it. Helping friends move can get pretty interesting sometimes.
Obviously I’ve neglected to mention much about what happened outside of Shmoocon this past weekend, mainly because I wanted the Shmoocon posts to be about Shmoocon, and not much else.
So here we go:
DC Sleeps Alone Tonight
I had never really partied in DC before, and it makes VA Beach look like an elementary school playground. There are so many places to go, it’s a bit overwhelming. I should’ve paid more attention to the actual names of the places we went, but I know The Reef, Bourbon, and Adams Mills were pretty decent.
Friday night involved roughly 50 people from the podcaster meetup at the Chipotle near the Marriott Wardman. It was basically a train of geeks bar hopping, and while we didn’t cause any damage or get into any trouble (c’mon, geeks!) it was very entertaining.
Saturday night was even bigger, with the entire Adams Mill bar being taken over by Shmoocon people. Picture well over a hundred geeks talking about linux or hacking or whatever with a billion attractive women walking around, and those women finding themselves lacking attention. Well okay i’m fibbing a little, but hey this is semi-professional right?
My new addiction when i’m at my desktop at home is StumbleUpon. I’ve been using it for approximately a month now, and i’ve discovered so many interesting and useful websites through it, I don’t know how I used to surf the internet the way I did to be honest.
The other day I was greeted to a YTMND page, and usually I don’t like those very much, but this one in particular is different. There’s nothing weird on it, just a picture, a very very humbling quote, and extremely good background music. The theme centers on a picture of our Planet Earth taken from deep space, and the quote by Carl Sagan is really spot on regarding the human race.
Yesterday I began the SANS Security 504 course being offered here in Norfolk, at the gracious expense of my employer, Uncle Sam. 2 days in, I can say that this is definitely helping me point myself in the right direction for when I exit the Navy in about 18 months and also opening my eyes to a lot of things I have not been aware of, embarassingly.
Tonight was the local ISSA meeting for the Hampton Roads area (ISSA-HR), and boy did I learn a lot. I plan on becoming a member as soon as their website is functioning again, and also participating in their CISSP Study Group, which runs from March 13th through May 29th. I have plans to take the exam with them in June as I already have a voucher.
Time to rest up and learn some more tomorrow.
