Things on my Mind
Hello again from the Deep South of Alabama. It has been 9 days since my last update so I thought that I would jot down some things that I have been thinking about lately.
Forgot to Mention:
I did forget to mention in my last post that I successfully completed the requirements for attaining my first IT certification. I talked about it in some previous posts that I was attending the SANS Institute’s Security Essentials Bootcamp in Sept 2007. In February of 2008, I took the requisite two tests and passed with flying colors (90 and 89). So now I am a GIAC Security Essentials Certified (GSEC) professional. I was quite excited since it is my first certification. My next goal is to get a Cisco CCNA. I am putting 4 new Cisco routers in my enterprise so I think that I need to get proficient in using them. I would like to complete the study for this cert in 2008 and have the cert by the end of the 1st quarter of 2009.
Personal Password Policy
I have decided to revamp my passwords that I use around my life. I am going with a three-tiered levels of protection. I am using the great KeePass on my MacBook Pro and Ubuntu boxes, as well as 1Password for web stuff on my Mac.The levels will fall like this:
- Highest Level - Used on ALL sites that deal with my money, any work administrative passwords - these will be the greatest number of characters allowed or 20 characters; I will use KeePass to generate the passwords with their Password Generator. They will use upper/lower case letters, numbers and special characters.
- Medium Level - social networking sites, stuff that deals with my internet presence - these will be between 8 and 15 characters, will be more in the line of a passphrase that I will be able to remember
- Low Level - disposable passwords - these will be under 8 characters and will be used when signing up for sites; one-time usage
I look forward to any comments on this new policy as to strength at each interval or of the methodology in general.
Twitter Love:
I have gotten really active and really focused in my list of followers recently. A lot of people have asked me “What is the point of Twitter?” I have found so much value in using twitter lately that I cannot even think of abandoning it. My followers are generally grouped into a number of categories: Productivity folks, Mac folks, Ubuntu/Linux folks, Info Sec folks, Alabama folks, and real friends. Lee Lefever at commoncraft has created a GREAT video explaining what twitter is all about. I highly recommend watching this to anyone who is confused about twitter.
Instant Messaging changes:
I mentioned in my last post that I am in the process of moving all of my IM accounts to Jabber/GTalk. Jabber is an open source instant messaging protocol. It has some cool features that are not available to the closed IM services like AIM, YM, MSN, and ICQ. There is no one that could be monitoring your chats since Jabber servers are not operated by a big company. Jabber servers can be run by anyone…company, or individual. So, now I am using iChat on my MacBook Pro that is connected to my Jabber account, which is my GTalk account. I have been using Pidgin on my Ubuntu box to connect to my friends on MSN, YM, and AIM, but that will be changing. I will be recommending my friends to move to Pidgin so that they can connect to their closed networks and connect to my GTalk account.
Ubuntu/Linux Adoption:
My temporary machine at home has gone through a bit of identity crisis lately. It was running vanilla Ubuntu for the longest time. Then on the day that I was upgrading my MacBook Pro to Leopard, I decided to also reformat the linux box. I went with Xubuntu, but not for very long. I noticed that the Xfce Window manger was struggling on the box, and I am not really sure why. Anyways, after finding the Productive Linux podcast, I found the beauty of the minimalist window manager. I decided to go with Fluxbuntu on the machine for the next test. That is the standard Ubuntu install, but with the Fluxbox window manager, instead of Gnome. It is taking a little bit of time to get used to Fluxbox. It is a windows manager that is based on the right-click menu for EVERYTHING! I have to go through some docs and wikis, as well as spend a lot of time in it, to really get the handle of it. But like everything else in the *buntu community, there is a ton of support and help, so there will be no shortage of support for me.
Black Belt IT Department
I have been asked for an interview about Getting Things Done (GTD) by a Linux podcast. I am not going to name the podcast right now, but it is a podcast that I have been listening to for quite awhile. I met up with the host though…that’s right, TWITTER! We have been trying to get this done for a couple of weeks, but my headset went out and now my oldest has the flu. So we are going to try to get it done next week. I am very excited about the interview to spread the word about GTD. Please visit my other blog located at Black Belt Productivity to learn more about GTD and how it can help get your life in order.
Where can you find Michael
Here is a listing of where you can usually find me on the Interwebs:
- email: michael[at]1manit[dot]net
- twitter: michaelramm
- im: michaelramm[at]gmail[dot]com Jabber/GTalkv
- irc: Freenode server: #ubuntu-us-la, #ubuntu-us, #opendiscussion, #linuxbasement, #lottalinuxlinks
Feel free to contact me in any of the above ways about things in Tech, Info Sec, or anything that you see on this blog.
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