Same with the “don’t plug your phone into USB cables or ports you don’t own!” I’ve read that outside the pentesting tools sold for that purpose, no one has ever seen an attack in the wild through that.

I kind of love their cardboard packaging. Looks decent without being cheap. Gets the job done and is easily recycled.

- 2024 was the year I mostly kicked imposter syndrome to the curb. Don’t ask me how. Sure, I’ll always meet people who are incredibly talented, driven, and intelligent, but that just means I get the chance to learn from their experience. At least in Info Sec, those people are kind & quick to share.

- Cyber threat intelligence is an awesome field. I’m lucky to get to wake up and read stuff I want to before researching things I’m already curious about and then writing products that actually get read in my org. Leading a team is a new challenge, but I feel great about our direction and buy-in.

- Wedding seasons are slowing to a drip. At this age I have 1/yr. Of course it slows down now that I have all the right clothes, shoes, etc. I look forward to the ones I do attend, but it’s nice to have those weekends back. Last year was a fun weekend with the boys. This year is European beach trip!

- Taking charge of my health. I’ve lost weight since becoming a dad. Now I go on walks, cook at home more, and drink less thanks to the changes kids bring. I get to fit in old clothes, thrift fun vintage stuff, and feel less guilty splurging on a new coat. I hope to take up lifting again this year!

- The end of our infertility journey. Last month, I realized that it had been five years since our first MC. Something that seemingly defined large swaths of that time finally feels resolved now that we have 2 under 2 and a game plan for more if we feel like taking that path. So tough, but worth it.

A couple of beta releases ago, I was getting legitimate emails in junk constantly. The worst one? VPN instructions for the new company I was starting at 😣

Everything going for you and still 5 months. If it had been the other direction, it would’ve been done over a weekend. Nothing against the green badgers! I eventually joined them myself before getting out. It worked out better. My MFA bumping me from 7 to 9 was still a tough squeeze on the budget.

I was hired in a big hiring fair where a bunch of GS-15s who retired by the time I onboarded gave out offers that day. I thought it was amazing. Then dealing with the background and clearance process (and the contractors running it) hit.

That was my good experience! The other DoD organ took 2yrs!

It sucks, I feel silly whenever I have to put three names in parentheses in my first sentence. At the same time, I don’t trust four teams looking at different data to group several different events together and come up with the same actor on the other end. They might have overlap, but that’s it.

I got caught in the first “hiring freeze” in January 2017 because of this rhetoric. I roll my eyes whenever I see “federal agencies can’t meet hiring goals”. Who wants to make $68k a year, live in one of the most expensive areas of the country, and look over your shoulder worrying about shutdowns?

I’ve done an entire work week on nothing but two packing cubes and a corporate Ogio backpack. At this point, I travel more for 2-3 nights than whole weeks and it’s a no brainer to carry on everything.

My controversial stance is that if I’m just bringing a backpack, it’s going above me.

Yeah, my first was Tiger and while Leopard and Snow Leopard were huge, Lion had a lot of great features once you got over the UI performance impact.