anyone there?

i have been terribly delinquent at updating this site.

that's not to say that i haven't been doing anything technical. in fact, a lot has happened since i last posted here. (has it really been since April?) i've just been, as usual, really terrible at documenting it.

first of all, i have finally gotten a job in the computer field. (well, maybe not "finally", but it's something that happened since i last wrote anything here.) i've been working for a managed data center services company for six months now; i started at the beginning of June. i love it so far...the job is a mixed bag of tasks. some days i'm fixing hardware issues, some days i'm installing and configuring operating systems, some days i'm helping troubleshoot network issues...it's a little bit of everything, and working there is doing a lot to broaden my expertise, and give me the knowledge and the context that i couldn't get without working in an enterprise-level IT environment day in and day out. some days are more fun than others, as with any job, but every day i'm reminded that i made the right career choice. even the worst day working in the data centre is still more interesting to me than the best day working as an attorney.

the weirdest thing about the job is my schedule. sure, it's a regular schedule, but it's 4 days a week, 9pm until 7am. even though i'm a night owl, i've never been specifically nocturnal. left to its own devices, my body likes to stay up until about 4 in the morning, and sleep until around noon. the night shift is kind of stressful between the fact that it's not quite my body's natural state, and it's completely opposite to the time that all of my friends work. however, it's still not as bad to me as working early mornings; i still feel better starting work at 9pm than i do starting work at 9am. the real bonus about night shift, though, is that it leaves a lot of time to work on more interesting projects. there are fewer customer tickets coming in overnight, so i get the time to work on longer-term projects that improve our internal infrastructure. i had never done anything with PXE boot servers before i started working there; over the last few months, i've done a significant amount of work improving both our Linux netboot server as well as our Windows one. i've gone from knowing absolutely nothing about them to feeling like i have a decent handle on how they work, and how they can be configured. i've worked on other projects as well, but so far netbooting infrastructure is the thing that i feel like i've had the circumstances to delve the most deeply into.

i've attended a couple of conferences since i last posted here. in addition to speaking at Notacon and Penguicon in the spring, i gave an updated version of my Notacon talk at The Next HOPE back in July. i also attended Security B-Sides Ottawa last month. i didn't give any talks there, but i had a fun and intellectually stimulating time--the talks on fuzzing and on the NMAP Scripting Engine were particularly fascinating. i have a current project in the works that involves the NSE, so it was enlightening to hear from an expert!

unfortunately, because of my work schedule, i will not be able to make it to the Chaos Communication Congress this year; it looks like the next con on my schedule is going to be Shmoocon, in late January. (thanks to someone very awesome, i do have a barcode, so it's all systems go...and it's time to start planning my Barcode Shmarcode entry!)

probably the only other major development over these last months that would be relevant is about Pumping Station: One...specifically, the fact that i'm no longer a member of the space, and haven't been since September. i don't want to get into too many details on here, but it suffices to say...i miss being a member of a hackerspace, and i hope to be part of one again in the future, although for right now i think stepping back was the best decision i could have made given the circumstances.

that is, in short, what's going on with me nowadays. hopefully i will find a rhythm, and start writing on here more frequently. i know myself better than to make any promises, but i know it would be good for me to document my projects, discoveries, and plans here.