This year's been good to us at the College, and our RedHat rep's got me and my boss on yo a panel at Summit. Talking about real-world cases where customer's have switched to RHEV. So we got to go to RedHat Summit for free, in Boston, MA. I don't travel much, so its always enjoyable to get out and see new things. I've never been to Boston, so that was an experience in itself, even though I didnt exactly have time to sight-see. Boston seems like a very nice place.

As a former cross-country runner myself, I'd just like to send my thoughts and prayers out to those affected by the Boston Maraton bombing today. Such a joyous and exciting event, destroyed by tragedy. For what?

You may have gathered.. I'm not your average user. So when I needed a router for my house, it's no surprise that Linksys didn't fit the bill. I ran a linksys router for a while, the damn thing kept dieing on me. I'd reboot it once or twice a week to keep things online. I finally built, out of an old server, a Smoothwall Express box. It worked wonderfully, and i never had another issue.

So, today the Hacktivist group Anonymous took down the US Sentencing Commission website, and then released a video not only claiming responsibility, but also claiming a foothold on many government systems, and calling for change in how justice is currently being carried out in the US. This was all triggered by the death of Aaron Swartz. The story goes, and I'm sure this is covered much better elsewhere, that Aaron was caught "Stealing" academic work, with the intention of sharing the data for free. The punishment for this?

I've been a Verizon wireless customer for... A long time. I think it was around 2005 that I switched from my old Nextel service to Verizon. It was right after Sprint bought Nextel. At the time, My wife and I had switched between all of the major carriers that offered service in our area in search of one we liked. ATT was crap in our area, Nextel had good service, but they tacked all manner of hidden costs on to the bill every month. Verizon worked out perfect. Other than taxes, we paid what was advertised, and the service worked when we needed it. Unlike ATT.

So, it's no secret. I don't like "The cloud". I mean, "The cloud", has its uses, but I dont like cloud storage, and I dont like the false security it gives people. But it's damn convenient! Services like Dropbox offer some pretty nice features. A free 2gb storage container that you can put whatever you'd like on, available from damn near every internet connected device you might own. Mac, Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone. They have a client for every major platform. That's pretty sweet! So here's why I dont use it. It's not yours. Think about it this way.

Wow

That's the best way I can start this post. Wow.

I'm in the passenger seat of our rented VW Jetta, tethered to my galaxy nexus, typing this up on m tablet because I wanted to get some of these thoughts down before I started to lose them. Sorry for typos, touch keyboards aren't my speciality.

What a great conference! I already can't wait for next year. DerbyCon has got to be the humblest hacker conference around. I got to listen to the greats talk about their coon new projects, and then go out to eat, or drink, with them in the evening.

I am a sysadmin. So whether I call myself a security professional or not, security is fused with my daily tasks. I build servers, I administer servers. Web servers, database servers, identity servers. Servers that make the college I work for.. Work. If i don't keep security in mind, at worst our private data could be stolen, or our servers could be turned into spam zombies. So its important to keep a certain level of paranoia. It's a pain in the ass, I'll tell you that, but in the end, its worth it. I've had servers breached, trust me, its no fun.

Some time ago, around the beginning of the year, Google and Samsung released the next Nexus phone. The Galaxy Nexus. A number of my co-workers were waiting for this thing to release, so they could get one. Currently 4 of my co-workers have them, one on AT&T, the others on Verizon.

One of them accidentally dropped his in a toilet... A few weeks after he got it. He made an attempt to dry it out, without dis-assembling it, and it failed, so he went to Verizon who happily charged him full price to replace it.

The term, Hacker, has developed such a negative connotation over the past decade or so. I've fought to spread the good word, but no one seems to get it. Everyone pictures these skeesy guys that are interested solely instealing your identity, or credit cards, or bank account. That just isn't the case! A "Hacker" is someone who hacks.. Hacking is not just computer or software related. Its more of a mind set. Bending the world, and the items in it, around you, to your will. Computer hackers make their computers, and those of others if they deem in necesary, serve them.