To The Last Tribe Consulting

As a member of InfraGard, I was invited to the Great Lakes 2010 InfraGard Conference; this year’s theme was “Securing the Next Decade.”

I thought I would share a couple thoughts that I picked up throughout the day.

One of the first sessions was a series of presentations by the Detroit FBI Cyber Squad.  Hearing, (directly from the FBI), how the FBI is dealing with electronic threats was very enlightening.  Something that one of the agents  (Brian Concannon) said, caught my attention.  He said something to the effect that, “the solution for cybercrime is not better blocking of attacks, but being able to find, apprehend, and deal with the perpetrators themselves.”  I do not hear these kind of statements very often, as most of us are just trying to keep our heads above water when it comes to cyber threats.

Another of the special agents presented on his niche, which was Intellectual Property theft.  It was very interesting to see things like copyright infringement on movies and music, from the FBI’s perspective–how they really are in a no-win situation: companies are upset at them for not working faster/protecting better,  and the consumers themselves see it as a victim-less crime, and give excuses such as, “The recording industry is ripping us off! We deserve music cheaper!,” or “It’s just a copy! I wasn’t even planning on buying the album anyways!”  In other words, perception management is a key factor in the FBI’s prevention arsenal.

Most of the other presentations dealt with how the different government departments (DHS, FBI, etc) could better collaborate with the private sector, specifically in the area of detecting and dealing with cyber-crime.

Overall, I thought it was a very productive conference, that got me thinking in some new areas of I.T. Security.

-Josh

Amazon just posted by 4 star review of Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas A. Limoncelli–I have reproduced it below, for those who don’t want to click the link here.

Beneficial for ALL SysAdmins

So why read a book on Time Management?  I feel like I already do a decent job of time management, but I had seen really good reviews of this book, and so I thought I would give it a try.

I knew this book was going to be good when I read the following in the Preface:

“My home life looks alot like my work life–You should see the killer server I’ve setup at home.  Once I’ve finished tweaking it, I’m going to set up the same thing at work.  Very few occupations are like that.

He is describing me exactly!

This is the biggest reason why I enjoyed the book as well as I did–Because it wasn’t a generic time management book (a dime a dozen these days), but it was a time management book written specifically for system administrators.  So the situations and scenarios used in the book were very practical and applicable to me.

Limoncelli starts out with some basic time management principles (Focus vs. Interruptions, Routines, etc),  which I found helpful, but the main focus of the book is the Cycle System.

The Cycle System is made up of  three parts: a combined to do list and today’s schedule, a calendar, and a list of long-term life goals. It seems this system is a combined/modified system from other time management systems.

Overall, I found alot of the principles and tools of the Cycle System to be beneficial, and I have implemented about 70% of it into my workflow.  (The other 30% just did not fit my workplace environment.)

The last 6 chapters he deals with Prioritization, Stress Management, Email Management, Time Wasters, Documentation, and Automation.  Again, beneficial, except for the Documentation and Automation chapters, which I felt overlapped with the same sections of Limoncelli’s other book he has authored (The Practice of System & Network Administration), so I skipped them.

The writing style was enjoyable to read, and the scattered User Friendly comic strips helped break up the text.

Overall, I would give it a 4 out of 5 stars, as I would highly recommend it to all system/network administrators (even if you think you have great time management principles), bu I do feel that there was overlap in some of the chapters.

-Josh Brower

I have no idea who Greg, developer of the Penny Stock Secret is, or whether or not he really is a millionaire, but I do know one thing for sure:  They really need to obfuscate their javascript better.

So the idea of PennyStockSecret.com is that after ‘Greg”, “studied all the investment theories, consulted financial advisors and spent extraordinary amounts of time at his computer,” he found the “keys that bring stock market success.”

And for only a one time fee of $97, you can be in on his success!  How?

Well, “More than just identifying the best stocks to buy, we tell you exactly when to sell them too.” They do this through subscribing you to a newsletter that will alert you when you should buy and sell.

But wait, there is a catch!  There are only Insert Random Number Here spots on the newsletter list available!

Wait, what?

Yes, if you view the source, you can see that all the Javascript does is generate a random number for how many spots are available.

What is sad is that I’m sure they are bilking quite a few people out of their cash.  Why?

Wizard’s First Rule.

-Josh