Hey internet friend. As always I want to start by writing that Black Lives Matter! As usual if you want to skip to the dog picture, click here. I was going to write another tech post this weekend, but I did not. Instead, there is going to be some discussion of tech stuff towards the bottom of the post, as well as my usual discussion about RuneScape 3 (RS3). But enough hooey, let's dive in!
Very astute readers will notice this went up on Sunday. That's because I didn't feel like writing the update on Monday morning. Partially it is because I've got a bunch of stuff going on this (coming) week. However, it also dawned on me that I am the one making the rules, so if I want to post a weekly update on Sunday, that is absolutely something that I can do!
Shifting gears, I want to mention that it is very windy out in the desert. This is unfortunate because I am planning on going out and pulling weeds from the front of our place. It's not going to stop me from doing it, but it will make an already unpleasant job even more crummy. Oh well, that's alright. My goal is to make an effort to spend time at least once a week on home improvement stuff because I think it will make my wife happy. That's not the only reason to do it, but it is the biggest motivator. I was thinking that if I did it once a week, after a year that's like fifty improvements and things should be looking much better.
Last week I started the weeding and made some progress. Before I start, I am going to start a load of laundry as well and make sure it gets put away. It isn't enough to do laundry if you do not also put it away. It is kinda like creating a clean mess. It feels easier to do if you just put it away as it finishing drying. Instead of trying to put away five or six baskets full of clothes, immediately putting them away as they finish might make it easier? I don't know. I remember that I used to not mind doing laundry so much, now it is one of my least favorite chores.
I was glad to see that the company that runs RS3 announced the next double xp (DXP) weekend, and it is coming up in just under two weeks. I've been saving material and getting ready, but I think I should also invest some gold in buying the herblore materials before they start flying up in price. As of now I have about 50 million gold that I can spend, and over the weekend I got my prayer to 95 so I don't need to take it any higher.
My goal is to also try to get some crafting levels during DXP too, so I do not want to just spend all my cash on herblore materials. But I have been saving proteans for the event and I have a whole bunch of each type to use. I have to mine more for the skill, but I have the rest of the components to make 2500 elder rune bars, which should raise my smithing level (between that and proteans) to get to 99.
Speaking of 99, my goal is to get the following skills to 99 during double XP: agility, herblore, mining, smithing, defense and magic. This may not be possible because my magic is only 80 right now but we will see! Hopefully I can get it into at least the 90s since I have a few hundred combat dummies. It is possible this might get shifted around a bit next week too, but I think of the first things I am going to do is go to the highest level agility course I can with silverhawk boots on and stay until I hit 99.
This weekend I was thinking about it, and the reason why I want agility to be my first 99 is that I can remember doing one of the quests ahead of Plague's End and seeing a shortcut that required only like 30 something agility but not having high enough skill to do it. That wouldn't be the first or the last time that I would be flummoxed by not having a high enough agility score. It's for that reason (and others) that I hope to make it my first 99.
There are other things I am going to do during DXP as well. That includes making an effort to put in time on skills that I hate doing. Those include fishing, runecrafting, woodcutting, and dungeoneering. Every time I try to go through a level of a dungeon it feels so tedious that I wonder why I am not just waiting to do it for double XP. I also want to make sure to get my melee attack into probably at least the 80s and get my ranged combat into the low to mid 90s. As mentioned above there are a few hundred combat dummies in my bank that I have been saving for DXP.
Anyway, that's enough writing about RS3. I want to shift gears and talk about something else. There is an old proverb or saying that goes something like, "the cobblers children have no shoes." If you are reading this and don't know what a cobbler did, that was a person who would repair shoes. I feel like this is an appropriate analogy because sometimes people can have unreasonable expectations. Or I think that some people can be unrealistic about how to manage burnout. Let me give you an example.
If you spend most of your work week doing offensive security engagements, when the weekend comes and you have time to relax, you may not want to spend more time doing CTFs, or running a fuzzer, or writing code to maintain a github/gitlab/open source project. I know people who don't even have home lab setups because they don't have the time/energy/desire to do it. This is understandable, because if you spend weeks or months at a time doing pentests, you may not want to hack on stuff during your free time.
Sometimes in information security there is a competitive attitude where people are always trying to one up one another to try and be the best hacker. That's fine for some people. While I want to get better, it is important for me to be a well-rounded person. I don't want to stress myself out on the weekend about how good I am versus everyone else. Or try to worry about spending that time sharpening my skills even further. Instead, I want to try and counteract burnout by relaxing with family and playing RS3. This blog is a nice way to share stuff, practice writing, and work on HTML (this is all hand-written HTML). There is an old joke (maybe it was Groucho Marx) who said they didnt want to belong to any club that would have them as a member. Regardless of who said it, I think it's exhausting trying to "prove" how much you love to hack. If it isn't enough to have a DefCON or tux tattoo, then nothing will be. But I digress.
One last thing, I want to casually point out that as long as I have been working in offensive computer security - and it will be six years in May - there has always been a talent shortage. It has been news that there are not enough professionals to fill all the vacant positions. I've got some theories about why this is, but I think part of the reason is that hiring teams sometimes focus on the wrong skills. I think you can teach anyone how to hack, but it is much harder to teach a hacker how to communicate. But again, I digress and that isn't the point of this post. I think I have made all the points that I want to make, in fact! I should write a whole post about this, but I won't. Instead, I will just wrap it up.
That's all I have to share this week, internet friend. I am going to go load up the washing machine, grab some gardening gloves, and attack these weeds that make my desert yard look so crummy. Thanks for reading this far, internet friend. I appreciate it, and I hope you have a nice day and if your weekend hasn't been relaxing so far, I hope you can find a way to chill tonight. Cheers!