career

con-related busy season is right around the corner.

July 30 and 31 are Maker Faire Detroit; i'll be there from the 29th to the 31st. i'll be back from that for a whole two days, and then on August 2 i'm off to Vegas. i'll be attending BSides Vegas, as well as Defcon. i missed Vegas Con Week last year, so i'm over the moon that i'll be able to see everyone again this year.

then, less than two months later, i'll be attending DerbyCon in Louisville, Kentucky. DerbyCon is a first time con, but a lot of my good friends are attending, and there are a lot of speakers i recognize from other cons who i think are pretty neat.

(of course, if you see me at any of these events, come say hi! i'm not that scary, i promise.)

*****

as for my own projects...i feel like i'm at a bit of a standstill. i wish i could say more than just "i'm attending these events"; i wish i could say "i'm talking about this awesome thing i figured out". it's frustrating, and i'm thoroughly embarrassed that i don't have anything worth talking about or presenting about at any of these events.

part of it probably has to do with work: specifically, the fact that it has been really busy. i'm still working for the same company i've been with for over a year, and i'm really happy with my job, but there have been a few changes that have caused me to devote far more of my time and energy to work than usual, leaving me really just wanting to do things outside of there that don't require much brainpower.

most of it, though, i don't think i can blame on that. maybe i've hit a plateau, or a place where i lack direction. there are a lot of things i know a tiny bit about, or can explain at 30,000 feet. there's very little i feel i know well enough to use fluently, much less apply in new and interesting ways. my lack of natural aptitude in all things computer-related is a double-edged sword: it keeps the field interesting because i'm fighting uphill every step of the way to learn anything at all, but it also means i get frustrated by my shallow skill set, and intimidated by how much i have to retain in order to make it deeper and more useful.

alright, end of rant. back to your regularly scheduled radio silence.

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.