So I've recently decided to give S3 a chance, for media storage.  Mainly for the Iron Sysadmin Podcast episodes.  I've gotten one or two comments, not necesarily complaints, that episode downloads seem to tax my server.  It came down to bandwidth, and while I have some things to tackle to help that scenario, it was a pretty easy decision to give S3 a try.  It's something I've been meaning to try it out anyway, and this seemed like a great use case.

For work, I have to use Cisco Anyconnect as a VPN connection.  For a long time I would just use the Cisco AnyConnect official client for linux.  This software is problematic, buggy, and just plain out gives me heartburn.  So one day I came across OpenConenct, which is an open source alternative to the AnyConnect client.  It will talk to an AnyConnect gateway, and can be directly installed via Fedora's package manager.  This also works on Ubuntu, but I don't run Ubuntu, so you're on your own.

I have sort of a history of bending android devices to my will.  It's sort of what I do, and while I'm not going to claim credit for the work done in this post, I will say that that experience fueled it.  So as you read through this, bear in mind that I'm experienced, and have a pretty good idea of what to do to get myself out of trouble when android mods go sideways.  Yes, I've bricked a few devices, rendering them useless, but that's been few and far between.

I've been meaning to write about this for some time now.  Back in October of 2016, I found myself in posession of a Samsung S7 Edge that I really didn't like, and a brand new shiney Google Pixel, that I did indeed like.  So I did the logical thing, right before Christmas, I tried to sell it.  At first I tried cragistlist, as I've found it more effective than Ebay for some other things I've sold.  Nothing, not a single bite.  So I fell back to Ebay, as I really wanted to get this thing sold.  A day or so after I listed the item, I was contacted through ebay's messaging system, by a potential

So back in the late 60's, "The Internet" was in its infancy, several groups of technologists at various institutions were running a network called ARPANET.  ARPANET eventually evolved into what we call the internet today.  Systems connected to ARPANET, and todays Internet are each assigned an IP address, which is how other systems on the network communicate with it.  Your computer has one, your phone has one, your fridge might have one, the web server I run that you're reading this blog on has one.  Some have several.  The problem with IP

I've been interested in the Lets Encrypt project since I first heard about it, quite some time ago. It's a cool idea, automatic free certificates for everyone!  I've been using startcom for the majority of my personal sites, minus swbcrawler, which I purchased a cheap commercial cert for.  A few months back, Lets Encrypt finally opened up for publi use, and I giave it a little poke.  I didn't end up putting any of its certs live at the time though.

In 2011, Dave Kennedy and his crew started a little conference, called DerbyCon.  Named for its location, in Louisville, KY, it's an awesome infosec con, with a great atmosphere.  Because of the name, derby hats have been a staple. Much of the staff wear them, and many attendees also wear them.  Many of them are modified, lights, displays, whatever.  This eventually lead to a contest, in 2014 attendees were able to enter their modified derbies in the "Hack Your Derby" contest.

Yesterday, I received my long-awaited NFC ring in the mail.  And it is awesome.  Well, as awesome as you can expect it to be anyway.  I had backed them on kickstarter about a year ago, and now that they've worked through their issues, rings are coming to those who backed.  Its neat technology, and it's got some interesting uses.  At the moment all I'm using it for is unlocking my phone. 

So, years ago, I was working Technical Support for an ISP. This was late 90's, early 2000's. I was just out of business school, with a fresh Associates degree in PC Networking under my belt. At the time, computing was at what I perceived as sort of a standstill. Yea, things were progressing, but it was all just redoing the same thing better. Memory was getting cheaper every year, CPU's were getting faster, storage more affordable, OS's were being udated to newer better features, but it was all just the same muck. My 486 was replaced with a Pentium 3.