August 2008 Archives

CRC Error, and I'm on it. It's profane, irreverent, and probably would disappoint my mother.

On the other hand, it was fun to make, even if the first ep involved us BSing for 3 hours only to find that finchy's recording crapped out and only got 20-some minutes, he couldn't find his headphones, the power went out at CBass's house, and I had a mic fail for the first 20 minutes or so of "recording."

Hopefully we'll be able to release another one soon (in the next week or so) but in the meantime if you want one or two cheap laughs - hey, my wife thought it was vaguely amusing, if pointless - why don't you just go ahead and check it out?

If you try and like it, let me/us know. If you hated it, well, let us have it with both barrels, reload, and do it again. We don't cry easily.

I just now unpublished a post regarding customer service, since it was not supposed to be published - it was still a draft. Nothing in there I'm ashamed of, just it's unfinished. So all two of you who pay attention to the RSS feed, that's why it's likely still in your feed reader but not on the website. It will (eventually) reappear, and I'm sure you JUST CAN'T WAIT!

Back to the irregularly scheduled blather.

Edit 04 October: I finally posted it.

cynical joe at Five Hole Fanatics says:

More than once I've noticed that new or casual Hockey fans mention that they have a hard time following the puck when they're watching a game on TV. ... When you watch a lot of hockey, you stop watching the puck as much, what you're really 'seeing' is the patterns of offence and defence . . .

My wife started watching hockey with me more this year, and is getting it now, but in the past has complained about exactly the same thing. She said, "How can you tell where the puck is?" and I say, "I don't, but usually the players do. Watch them, and you'll soon enough know where the puck is without having to see it."

The problem hockey n00bs make is in trying to follow the puck from here to there. They don't yet know what Walter Gretzky tried to teach his most famous son at the age of about 4: it doesn't matter where the puck is now - where will it be later? There's no shame in that - even some NHL players don't understand this, never mind people who've never played the sport themselves - but it's still a key to being able to more fully understand the game.

Not sure how eBay know I'm a student, albeit part-time, but maybe they just blasted this out to everybody. Nevertheless, shows the perception (and maybe reality) of undergrads. The email included links to things that presumably students want, and it's an ordered list:
1. Laptops
2. Backpacks
3. Cell Phones
4. Sneakers
5. iPods
6. Jeans
7. Xbox 360
8. Shirts
9. Textbooks
10. PC Components

Hint: one of those items is actually directly related to going back to school, and another is handy for containing the first. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't see how buying things for an Xbox 360 has anything at all with actual schooling.

And yes, I fully understand the need for hobbies outside of school that aren't competitive drinking, but don't you need those hobbies when you're not in school too? Stupid marketing.

This is part of an email I sent to a security mailing list to which I subscribe, but really, the answer applies to any walk of life. The question is, "How do I get started?"

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Really though, the answer to "how do I get started in network
security" is the same as it is to virtually any hobby or career: just
dive in and start doing it. You'll know you're doing it right when
you're learning stuff. You'll know you're doing it wrong if you're
not having fun. If you're unwilling or unable to just grab some
hardware and start hacking, this area is not for you - the same can be
said for any skill. If that sort of thing doesn't appeal to you, then
this sort of thing will not appeal to you, and you're wanting to get
into it for the wrong reasons, which never ends well.

People with skills are rarely willing to just braindump what they
know. It's a lot of work for honestly very little return. If you
want to learn skills from others, best way to do it is to poke at
something a bit, then when you get stuck ask somebody else. Say "I'm
trying to do X and I tried Y and Z but they didn't work, here's what
happened... any ideas?" Hopefully they'll know, will give you some
hints, and that will be sufficient, then off you go again til you get
stuck again. If you get really stuck, back up, go around, try
something else for a while, get some fresh perspective.

There's no magic bullet, no set of books you can read that will make
you an expert at *anything*, and security work is no exception. The
secret is putting in the time and effort; that's all, that's it.

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Stephen King says it best.