To The Last Tribe Consulting

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

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am currently working on some original research dealing with Social Engineering.  For background, I have been reading some of the few books on social engineering.  One of them, Hacking the Human, by Ian Mann, has been fantastic.  One of the areas of research he goes into is some basic principles on using Neuro-Lingustic Programming to profile a target.

Neuro-Lingustic Programming (NLP) was first developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, as a form of psychological therapy.  They felt there was a  ”…theoretical connection between neurological processes (‘neuro’), language (‘linguistic’), and behavioral patterns that have been learned through experience (‘programming’), and that can be organised to achieve specific goals in life.” (Wikipedia)

One aspect of NLP that Mann brought out was the idea of observing eye movements to indicate current thought processes.  For example, the idea that as one talks to themselves, their eyes drift bottom-right.

The following is a diagram of the different possible locations:

I found a great video that showcases this.

(Used with Permission)

I found this to be a very interesting concept–So I decided to test it out for myself.  I asked the same questions as the above video to a friend, while videoing him answering.  Interestingly, I got the same results, though not quite as pronounced as the above video.

To bring this back to Social Engineering: Mann saw this as a powerful tool to add to his repertoire for face to face social engineering attacks–being able to get clues to the current thought process of the target–even being able to tell, with a high percentage of accuracy, if the target is lying! (Mann, Hacking the Human)

Just another exploitable vulnerability in the being that is the called the Human.

-Josh