hackerspaces

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.

It has been an eventful December so far.

On December 4, I presented at Pumping Station: One's Pecha Kucha Night. My talk was entitled Setting Up FDCC Testing Environments on Non-Windows Systems (Or: How Nicolle Lost Four Hours of Her Life for Want of a Nine-Kilobyte Text File). It drew from my rather frustrating experience trying to get the FDCC Windows XP virtual machine image running on my Linux box on VMWare, since the federal government releases it in Microsoft VirtualPC format.

On December 5 and 6, nine of us from PS:One went on a weekend road trip to Detroit to visit i3Detroit, the hackerspace in Detroit. It was a fantastic trip! There are a lot of creative and talented people at that space, and they've set up such a nice hackerspace in a few short months. I'm so proud of them, and I'm looking forward to the next time I can visit their space for a few days.

From December 11 through 14, I was in New York City for Neighborcon NYC. I have been to all three Neighborcons to date, and all three of them have been fantastic. It's a chance to get together with a group of hackers from all over the country in a far lower-key environment than most cons. Neighborcon NYC was held in a bar called Local 138, on the Lower East Side. Both days featured a lot of socializing and casual exchange of ideas, as well as talks later in the day. I gave the first formal talk of the conference, a slightly expanded version of my FDCC Virtual Machines talk.

This week, I have been focusing on getting as much done on projects at PS:One as possible, since I leave for 26c3 on December 25. However, in the last two days I have found out about two very exciting things on the horizon for early 2009.

Yesterday, I was informed that I was accepted for Shmoocon Labs, so I will be helping to set up and maintain the network at the conference! This will be my first time on any kind of network operation crew for a conference. I will learn a lot about setting up networks, maintaining them, and solving computer and network problems under pressure, and I can't wait to make the most of this opportunity.

Then, earlier tonight, I found out that my talk proposal for Notacon 2010 got accepted! My talk is entitled Hey, Don't Call That Guy A Noob: Toward A More Welcoming Hacker Community. I've noticed that in hackerspaces and other organizations, there's a lot of emphasis on trying to find new people to join, but very little time spent thinking about what to do once these new people have found their way to a space or a club meeting. It will discuss ways to make someone new to the hacker community feel welcome and valuable there. I am really excited--it will be my first time speaking at Notacon, and I'm looking forward to discussing a topic that I feel so strongly about.

On Friday, December 4, Pumping Station: One is hosting a Pecha Kucha Night. This even is open to the public--so whether you're a member of PS:One, have visited us in the past, or have never come to the space before, you're encouraged to come, and you're encouraged to speak!

What is Pecha Kucha? It is a night of short talks. Each speaker may talk for twenty seconds about each of twenty different slides, for a total of six minutes and forty seconds about their topic.

What topics are appropriate? Talk about a project you've done. Talk about a technology with which you have experience. Talk about something you've broken in an interesting way. Talk about something you've fixed in an interesting way. Talk about something funny that happened to you. Talk about something weird that happened to you.

Talk about anything.

The deadline for notifying Pumping Station: One of your talk topic is November 21. Send me an e-mail if you are interested.

The event will be at PS:One, 3354 N. Elston, at 7:30pm.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been doing too much research and tinkering, and not enough documentation of it on here.

A web hosting company donated several servers to the space last month. We had a server or two before, but now we have enough to actually get a proper server rack going, and have services both internally as well as on the warzone. Members were allowed to grab one and start playing, if they wished, and I was not going to let such an opportunity pass me by.

My original intent was to use the server as a sandbox, but before I knew it I was actually contributing to the infrastructure of the space. I got Xen running on the bare metal, and one of the more experienced server administrators at the space suggested I get a Nagios server running to monitor our network. So, I spent some time delving through the documentation and deploying that, and I'm now responsible for it. I'm still tweaking it, making sure that it's monitoring the services that exist on each piece of equipment on our network. I've realised I really enjoy using Nagios. I've also set up a new DHCP server for the space's internal network, and will be helping to set up an LDAP/RADIUS authentication server.

As someone who is just trying to start out in this field, and has done a lot of reading about system administration, I find it exciting to have access to real servers, and real server administration tasks. These may be baby steps for the more experienced, but as someone who has never done anything but read about this stuff before, I'm invigorated that I can actually do any of this. I can do as much reading about it as I want, but I don't internalize it the same way unless I'm actually getting my hands dirty with trial, error, and deployment.

This Friday night, from 5:00pm until late, Pumping Station: One is hosting a get-together at Howl at the Moon!

If you live in Chicago (or will just so happen to be passing through this weekend) and want to get to know the hackerspace community in town, this is a great opportunity! This party is open to everyone, and the first 100 people who show up between 5:00pm and 7:00pm get two $1 drinks. There will be other drink specials all night for everyone, so even if you can't come before 7:00, the party will be going on well into the night.

Howl at the Moon is at 30 W. Hubbard St., in downtown Chicago. If you have any questions about it, send me an email, and I'll let you know any more details that you need.

I hope you can come out!