Month Three This is it! The end of my 3 month sabbatical. I can’t believe how fast it went! This is really bitter sweet as it has been such an amazing experience to have three months of no work, but at the same time I miss it. I love what I do, I love my work people and I have had some FOMO for sure. I am ready to dive deep in, especially with all of the leveling up I have been doing. I had...
TryHackMe Over at TryHackMe you can get into the Christmas spirit and hone some of your hacking skills at the same time! The Advent Of Christmas event is a free event geared at getting started with cybersecurity. It’s a lot of fun. So far it’s been very, very basic, but I hear the difficulty is going to be increased as the month proceeds. There are prizes for completing the challenges...
Month Two Last month when I posted my Sabbatical Update I talked a bit about my 4 goals and where I was. I thought I’d do the same update, because it’s easy to reuse the post. 🙂 I. FITNESS Last month around this time I had not yet started on the fitness goal, I totally blame both being busy and some profound laziness. But this month I have defeated laziness and settled into a fitness...
C++ This week as I am going through the Jr. Penetration Tester course on INE, we are covering programming in C++. This is leading up to a C++-assisted exploitation, the next section is much the same but using Python. Oh man, I am reminded of why I never got deep into C, despite my father having years and years of experience with it. It’s not C, it’s C++, but going through this course...
Month One My paid three months off started October 1st. Sadly my plans are not going as well as I had hoped. I have four goals I’d like to accomplish by the end of my Sabbatical in January of 2022. Goals I think are good. Maybe? Regain my pre-Covid fitness level.Level up on Python and build proficiency in Cybersecurity by spending several hours a day on HackTheBox, TryHackMe, and BugBounty...
Today I Learned: I studied for over 10 hours today! I learned quite a bit, as well as a lot of review. One of the most fun things I learned at HackTheBox was this: Using Burp Suite and the repeater (as one method, you could also use cURL, etc.) you can send the following: username=admin&password[$ge]=0 Along with changing the content type to: application/x-www-form-urlencoded to attempt...
LET’S BUILD A CLUSTER AND RUN KUBERNETES! PART II – Deploying NGINX (And A Service) In Part I we built the hardware and installed K3s on our Raspberry Pi cluster. Now we are going to deploy some pods and a service. The first thing we are going to do is deploy 12 NGINX servers across our cluster. We do this with a manifest file that we deploy on the master node. Manifest: Specification of a...
Let’s build a cluster and run Kubernetes! Part I – Building The Cluster & Installing Kubernetes I was doing some cybersecurity research on YouTube one day when I came across a somewhat related video where a guy built an 8 node Raspberry Pi cluster and got it to run Kubernetes, or K8s as it’s widely know. Well actually this is running K3s, which is basically K8s. I was hooked...
Here is a list of some of the things I am taking advantage of at Automattic. I am hoping these entice you to apply. You can see even more benefits of working at Automattic here.
An alternative to my daily use computer I feel a lot more comfortable accessing and using HackTheBox and TryHackMe from a different computer than the one I use daily. Tonight I took one of my Raspberry Pi’s and installed it with the Raspberry Pi OS with desktop image. Following this guide and using VNC to work with the two sites, I feel a bit more secure. As an added step I also have the...
*holds breath* It’s about 80% there. There is a lot I am not happy with, but I am proud of it. Every beat, every note, every sound is mine. Playing with synth, a drum pad, getting it all to mesh. It’s way more difficult than I imagined! I think the first thing I’ll be doing is cutting some sections out and making it shorter. The more I read and learn, the more I see my mistakes...
Updating WordPress Core via the CLI. Updating WordPress via the CLI is pretty easy. First make sure you have wp-cli installed. I’ll use my Linode as an example. # wget --2021-08-02 03:09:12-- Resolving raw.githubusercontent.com (raw.githubusercontent.com)... 185.199.108.133, 185.199.109.133, 185.199.110.133, ... Connecting to raw.githubusercontent.com (raw.githubusercontent.com)|185.199.108...
Return to creativity Music is probably one of the most influential forces in my life. Whether I am creating it, listening to it, or writing it, it’s something that brings me peace and fulfills that creator drive inside. Music has always been a part of my life. I learned guitar and piano when I was 6 and have always had a keyboard and guitars around. In college I studied classical guitar and...
What better way to get acquainted with the Wio Terminal than a project! I saw the Dual Band WiFi Analyzer with Wio Terminal example and decided to follow it. It was a pretty smooth and fun process. You start by setting up the Wio Terminal software, then you update the Wireless Core RTL8720 firmware and install all related libraries. python3 ambd_flash_tool.py erase python3 ambd_flash_tool.py...
One of my team mates at work started a project group for within my team to experiment with a Clue. This thing is so cool! The idea is to try project together as a group. So far there are 5 of us and I imagine it will grow even larger as word spreads. My Clue arrived today, along with a Wio Terminal which I plan to try several projects with as well. I’ll post updates as they come, including...
I recently grabbed a Linode and turned it into a web server. It was so fun! Securing Linux, installing, configuring, and securing services, getting it all working with WordPress and iptables, I spent a few hours having a blast. Keep an eye out for a tutorial. I’ll take you from sign up to launching a WordPress site. It’s under $5 a month for everything.
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I work for a great company. One of the many perks that I and my co-workers enjoy is a regular hardware refresh. That along with a paid three-month sabbatical encouraged every five years, home office, career coaching, time off (open vacation policy) and more! I am sharing so you come and work with me! So it was time for a hardware refresh this month, and it was also time to pick out my four-year...
I have been at Automattic for over 5 years! I am truly blessed to have found both a company and a role that fit me so well. One of the many benefits of working at Automattic is the 4/5 year anniversary Mac. Typically we are able to refresh our hardware every 18 months. This time around a few of us opted for the new 13″ Macbook Pro with the new M1 chip. What makes this laptop special is that...
Customer Success My favorite definition of Customer Success is very simple. Delivering value with a wonderful experience. If I were to imagine that I myself was in a Customer Success Manager role, I would see my function as making sure that post sale, our new customer stays our customer. I would be regularly taking their pulse to see if they are deriving value from our product and if they need...
After 5 years I have earned a sabbatical! I have planned it for the summer of 2021. Here are the things I want to do. Travel: 14 days in New Zealand (Bonus: Hobbiton!)Complete this rally school, get licensed and participate in a rally. While there drive and explore New England in a rally car, possibly WRX or BMW. (14 days)Camping trip in Tahoe or Sierras with family, including...
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