bamed.org » School

Updated Resume

admin — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:18:33 +0000

In case anyone out there is interested, I’ve updated my resume to include recently obtained degrees and certifications. Specifically, a couple of months ago I managed to obtain OSCP status, and today I graduated with my Associate of Science in Information Technology.

I’m continuing on to achieve my Bachelor’s by next summer and I hope to obtain another certification or two this year.

So, if anyone is looking for either an entry-level infosec position, or an experienced sysadmin position, check out my resume and drop me an email.

Hack with Me?

admin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:48:24 +0000

As I was perusing the Net this evening I discovered SmashTheStack was hosting a team-based CTF-style WarGame. Teams are given a remote box and need to secure it, but are required to keep at least 3 services at all times. Teams are given 24 hours to secure their boxes. After the grace period each team will attack the other teams’ boxes while defending their own. The goal is to take control of the other teams’ boxes and lock them out. Last man standing wins.

Personally, this sounds like a blast but I have no team. So who wants to hack with me?

I’m looking for up to four people willing to join me in this endeavor. I’m looking for people who have some experience in similar types of events. I will admit that I still have a lot to learn, though I do have some experience. Specifically, I have obtained my OSCP (Offensive Security Certified Professional) from Offensive Security. I also went to the Louisville Metro Infosec in 2009 and got 3rd place in their CTF. I’ve been working in IT for over a decade now and currently work as a sysadmin for a small/medium size organization (~50 users). I’m also going to school and taking other steps to focus my IT career more on InfoSec.

If this sounds like fun and you want to get to know some new people comment to this post and let me know you’re interested and what kind of experience you may have. I’m looking for people with some experience and are just looking to have some fun. Details of the event can be found here. Teams will be announced a week before the event, so we would need to form our team by the end of this week and get our application in.
So, wanna hack with me?

APA Format

admin — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:15:47 +0000

I think I mentioned earlier that I’ve gone back to school at Colorado Technical University (CTU). So that means I’m going to have to write lots of papers, and at CTU those papers have to follow APA guidelines (http://www.apastyle.org/). At this point 75% of the time I’ve spent writing my first paper was trying to make sure I adhered to APA guidelines. As I was researching APA, I found a link from CTU’s Virtual Library to a tutorial on setting up Microsoft Word in APA Style (http://www.cameron.edu/library/apa_word_tutorial.html). The problem was the school sent everybody a copy of Office 2007, and the tutorial looks like it was written for Word 2000. I managed to figure it out but I thought I’d throw together my own updated version of their tutorial to help those using APA Style in Word 2007 (i.e. my classmates). Note that this is just a slightly modified version of the tutorial I found.

Layout:

Click Page Layout:

Open the Page Setup Dialog Box:

Check that margins are one inch on the top, bottom, left, and right sides. Click OK.

Go to the Layout tab and make sure the header and footer are 0.5 inches.

Click Home. Now Open the Paragraph Dialog Box:

Change your Line Spacing to Double. Click OK.

Go back to the Paragraph Dialog Box.

Click the Tabs button and set Default Tab Stops to 0.5 inches. Click OK.

Change your font to Times New Roman and your font size to 12 point.

Now you can save these setting by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S to open the Styles Dialog Box.

Click New Style. Verify your settings are they way you want them. Change the name to APA-Style. Check New Documents based on this style. Click OK.

Click Insert then click Header then Blank.

Go back to Home, then Align Right.

Type the first 2 or 3 words of your title. Insert five spaces then go to Design. Click on Page Numbers, go down to Current Position, Plain Number.

Now click on Close Header and Footer.

You will still need to add the Header for each new document, but from this point forward when you start a new document just click APA Style in the Styles section.

The rest of the tutorial I found is the same no matter which version of Office you use, so I won’t go into that, just check go read the original at http://www.cameron.edu/library/apa_word_tutorial.html.

The only thing to note is in the References section at the end. To setup a Hanging Indent highlight the entire reference section, align left, then go to the Page Layout tab, open the Paragraph Dialog Box. Under the Indentation section change Special from None to Hanging.

Warning: I’m not an expert on APA, so this isn’t a definitive guide by any means. It’s only an update to the guide I found that shows you where to find the menus and dialog boxes that aren’t in the same places in Word 2007 that they were in Word 2000.

I’m sure this is all boring and not worth reading for most of you, but I’ll probably refer back to it myself regularly.