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My Resume

I’ve worked in professionally for a large discount retailer in the systems, networking, security, and programming arenas for the last 20+ years, much of it in leadership or management roles.

I have a couple of versions of my resume if you’re interested:

The compact version is more of a resume that people would usually expect, the verbose version goes into far more detail about actual projects and tasks. The security resume is more oriented toward potential security positions.

How to build a SLES minicd boot image…

Sometimes you’ll have a system that doesn’t have a DVD drive and/or it’s more convenient to use the network.  Making a “minicd” to boot from network is fairly simple:

  1. Set up Apache and copy the DVD media to a subdirectory of “/srv/www/htdocs”. At least in my case I ended up with two directories:
    • /srv/www/htdocs/SLES11SP1/SLES-11-SP1-DVD-x86_64.0432..001/
    • /srv/www/htdocs/SLES11SP1/SLES-11-SP1-DVD-x86_64.0432..002/
  2. Copy the boot images to seed a minicd:
    • mkdir /tmp/minicd
    • cp /srv/www/htdocs/SLES11SP1/SLES-11-SP1-DVD-x86_64.0432..001/boot/x86_64/loader/* /tmp/minicd
  3. Edit “/tmp/minicd/isolinux.cfg” and add an entry like:
  4. label slesinstall
    kernel linux
    append initrd=initrd splash=silent showopts install=http://MY.SERVER.COM/SLES11SP2/SLES-11-SP1-DVD-x86_64.0432..001

  1. Make the ISO image:
    • mkisofs -o /tmp/minicd.iso -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table /tmp/minicd
  2. Burn the ISO using whatever software you have available (eg: Nero, Roxio, etc.).

Another case of “With friends like these…”

Well, researchers have devised a way around most modern anti-virus software. Yet another example of, “With friends like these, who needs enemies.”

Again, I know “security by obscurity” is false security, but it’s not like the bad guys need as much help as they’re getting!

Beware of Outlook…

Just to save you the embarrassment I thought I would warn Thunderbird users about a little something I discovered today if you use HTML formatting with Thunderbird while interacting with users of Outlook 2007.

Attached are two views of the same email created in Thunderbird and sent out. One view is from Thunderbird, the other from Outlook. . . . → Read More: Beware of Outlook…

1 Reason Why Microsoft Bing Is Gaining on Google

eWeek has this “fluff” piece on why Microsoft Bing is “gaining” on Google:

10 Reasons Why Microsoft Bing Is Gaining on Google

I don’t usually like to go this far, but frankly it’s pretty shameless pandering.

Bing may or may not be a good search engine, personally the results it pulls just don’t cut it for me, . . . → Read More: 1 Reason Why Microsoft Bing Is Gaining on Google

How to kill a session on a Cisco PIX/FWSM

Completely different from Cisco IOS, so hard to remember:

Log into the PIX/FWSM and go to “enable” mode. Do a “who”:

fwsm# who
0: 192.168.100.80
2: 192.168.100.5

Choose the IP of the session you want to kill and grab the number. In this case I want to kill the “192.168.100.5″ session, so I want “2″. Then kill it:

fwsm# kill . . . → Read More: How to kill a session on a Cisco PIX/FWSM

A good Blackberry security primer…

ComputerWorld has published a good Blackberry security primer here:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9165238/Five_tips_to_keep_your_Blackberry_safe

I highly recommend all Blackberry owners . . . → Read More: A good Blackberry security primer…

Why Internet Explorer rules…

This article about the growth of Chrome has a little gem in it that shows just how anti-competitive installing IE by default as the only browser on Windows is. It says:

NetApplications reported, Microsoft’s [Internet Explorer's] 61 percent is a record low for the company as its market share continues to decline.

A key reason for that is . . . → Read More: Why Internet Explorer rules…

Blackberry Profiles

I’ve recently received a Blackberry Curve 8330 from my workplace. Unfortunately the documentation seems a little thin on a number of aspects, one of which is “Profiles” which is what controls alerts and ring tones. Below is my attempt to document a few of the settings based on Google searches (this appears to apply to OS . . . → Read More: Blackberry Profiles

Bash TCP programming hack!?

I had never heard of this until I ran into working on a recent project. In “bash” you can open sockets:

exec file-descriptor<>/dev/tcp/IP-or-hostname-here/port

so for example:

exec 3<>/dev/tcp/192.168.1.100/23

would open port 23 (telnet) to IP “192.168.1.100″ for read and write (the “<>”) on file descriptor “3″ (remember descriptors 0, 1, and 2 are used by default . . . → Read More: Bash TCP programming hack!?