Howdy internet friend and welcome back to the first weekly update post since last year! Click here to skip to the picture of the dogs. On whateversauce.com I managed to make weekly update posts for like a year and a half without missing and then I missed. That doesn't mean I cannot get them started again, and that is the point of this post! I used to have four sections where I would write about personal and professional stuff, politics, black lives matter, and then list a bunch of Twitter accounts that I think are great and suggest people follow. I don't want to get in such a rigid pattern this time, because doing things like that made it feel too formulaic and not as much fun. This time around, I am going to keep it less organized and just share cool stuff that happened over the week. I will also try to mention every week that black lives matter because they do and I want to use my platform (however small) to continue to make that point!
Last week, I committed to the 100 Days Of Code challenge and wrote a blog post about it. In fact, I spent a bunch of time last week writing blog posts. I wrote a really long philosophical essay yesterday that was seeking to answer the question, "what is philosophy?" I also finally got to a point where I was happy enough with how this website looks to share it. Then on Sunday I decided I wanted to re-organize the page a little bit, so that things didn't get unruly. I realized quickly if I put all my posts on one page without seperating them, things would get messy in a hurry. So I took executive action and cleaned up the organization of the website so in the future it should be easy to manage.
Professionally, I finished a web app pentest last week. This is not the area of security I am the most confident, but this particular project had an extensive checklist to complete the test. While I hated it at first, I think that there is real value in doing checklist-based testing for the same reason that surgeons use them. You are less likely to miss something if you go through, step by step, and check everything off the list. Just like how the checklist helps the doctor to not forget to leave in a sponge, going through and testing everything in a way that is precise can also help ensure you don't miss anything. Does it feel as fun as some other tests? No, but the goal isn't to have a fun experience, it is to make sure that the application is tested thoroughly. Plus there is still some room for creativity even within a list!
This week my wife and I are celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe that time is moving so fast, it feels like just yesterday when we were getting engaged. I still contend that the longest month of my life was the one between when I proposed and when we got married. There is no way I could have anticipated how much my life would change, and how quickly. Yet here we are. I'm sitting in my office in our second house - we had to sell our first one because of complications from the pandemic. I never thought I would get to be a homeowner, much less one who bought a home in California! Never expect to come to Palm Springs on vacation and decide to move to the area. Didn't think I could ever have a career as a professional hacker, I figured I was going to end up an angry academic. I never planned on having dogs, yet I am sitting next to two of them wrestling and singing at each other. I had no idea when we got married that less than a month later we would start the consultancy that would launch my career.
Yep, I can trace a direct line from where I am today to the moment we got married. It was still the best decision of my life, and even though there have absolutely been hard times, the sweet times have been so sweet. To be clear, the pandemic has been really challenging and I really wish that it was over. Having a wife and a son during this time has made it bearable but I wish that it would be over. Even though things seem to be moving in the right direction, it is hard to be optimistic when the few precautions that were put in place to keep us safe are being lifted. Only 20% of children aged 5-11 have been vaccinated in our town, yet the schools do not require masks. Then I see that the White House press secretary has contracted COVID-19 twice in six month, I wonder how we are supposed to take the suggestions of the President seriously? If they cannot even keep their own people from getting sick, why should we trust them? It makes it seem like the crybaby trucker convoy was an effective form of organizing, and that feels like the wrong lesson to have learned from that fiasco. Unless the lesson is that rich people can buy outcomes (since it appears that the trucker convoy was mostly funded by shady right-wing groups. A parallel that immediately comes to mind is the Tea Party, which ended up being funded by the Koch Brothers. But enough about politics, let us try to end on a strong and positive note!
This week, I have some exciting opportunities coming up, and I am going to do my best to stay positive. Since there was a bit of back and forth at the end, it seems appropriate to share a picture of the dogs wrestling. Thanks for taking the time to read this blog post, I hope you dug it. Further, I hope you have a very nice day and a great week. Cheers, internet friend!