ISO 20001:2005 Training!

Some of my readers might be thinking why I've been only posting pics for the past week.  Well, there's an important reason for this: I've been sent by my company to a week-long certification training on ISO 20001:2005 Lead Auditors Training.

ISO 20001 is basically BS7799 which, in a nutshell, deals mostly with Information Security audit -- an integral part of my career as an Information Security Specialist.  I will not pretend to know all the aspects of information security and this training has equipped me with the working knowledge of the standards I need to reference from time to time in order to do Information Security Assessment.  A big addition to my arsenal of knowledge because before the training, I am capable of doing the legwork in Information Security Assessment (Vulnerability Testing and Penetration Testing) but I hardly know anything about the pre-assesment part of my job (doing preliminary security audit).

Although I didn't ask for the training, I'm thankful that the company I work with has sent me to this one (it is an expensive and tiring week for me though).  Now I'm well on my way to being a well-rounded information security specialist. :)

Blogged with Flock

Best-est Father's Day Gift Ever!

Did I get a 72" LCD TV with home theater, PS3, Xbox 360 and a Wii?

Did Mobile sent me a pre-production Eee PC for review?

Did someone dropped a winning Lotto ticket on my lap?

NONE OF THE ABOVE!



The best Father's day gift I received was when I was hunched in front of my MacBook, surfing the 'net when suddenly my kid (shown above) stood behind me and tapped me on my shoulder. When I turned around, he gave me a big hug. When I asked him "what's that for?" he simply said "Happy Fathers Day!" and ran back to his room to watch his cartoons.

Happy Father's day to all fathers out there!

June 15 2007 - The Day My Gadgets Went Bonkers

It started out as a normal day. I woke up and checked my Nokia E61i and as expected, it has downloaded a couple of emails from my office MS Exchange Server. I disconnected my Apple Airport Express from my home DSL modem, had coffee and headed on over to the office. Since its a Friday, I parked at the mall and stopped over at a Starbucks between the mall and my office. I ordered my second cup of coffee and attempted to connect to a local wifi access point at Starbucks and that's when it started...

When I opened up my Macbook, it took a long time before it detected the wifi access point I wanted to use. Once I got the logon screen of the wifi access provider (Globe WIZ), the page took a long time to load. After a few minutes I was up and surfing the web. A mug of coffee and stick of cigarette later, I decided it was time to head on over to my office. I fired up my Bluetooth wireless headset and connected it to my Nokia E61i so I can wirelessly listen to TWiT's 100th podcast episode. But when I played the podcast, no sound on the headset! So I did some troubleshooting. I re-paired my wireless headset and my phone and tested it again -- still not working. I restarted my phone and after a couple of minutes of waiting, I got to listen to the podcast.

When I arrived at the office, I connected my Apple Airport Express at my office DSL connection. When I opened up my MacBook, it can't detect my Airport Express! After fiddling with my MacBook for a couple of minutes, I decided to reset my Airport Express to factory default configuration. That did the trick -- my MacBook has resumed communicating with the Airport Express but there's a problem: our DSL modem has a "custom" IP configuration and I wasn't able to take note of that configuration!

Good thing everything got fixed later in the day but the successive failure of my gear made me think: was there some sort of a solar storm that may have caused this?

I've Moved On...

This year (2007), I entered yet another phase in my professional life. I left 15++ years of tech support work and transferred to our company's Strategic Initiatives group. Although I'm officially an "Information Security Specialist", I mostly do strategic initiatives-related work. This new job is taking a lot of my time and I'm afraid I'll be neglecting this blog for a bit.

If you crave reading posts similar to what you see on this blog, head on over to PWiT -- the Philippines Week in Tech (see my blogroll for the link), a brainchild of a colleague. I'm first to admit that the content of PWiT is miles away from the trashy posts that I do but then again, the writers on that blog ARE much better writers than me.

So this is the tech talker signing out.... for now.

I'm Being Plagiarized!!!

Thanks to my eagle-eyed officemate (let's hide him behind the codename "Jun") I discovered that I am being plagiarized!

This person has copied two of my posts and copied it word-for-word! I'm not sure whether to be flattered or flabbergasted but the fact remains that someone's hijacking my posts!

Want proof?
Here's my original post and compare it with the copycat post.

Want another one?
Here's the real deal and compare it with this cheap imitation.

If there are legal eagles reading this, how do I make the guy take down his post?

Its Official! I Am Now a Pene King!

Just a few minutes ago, a messenger from ITX has handed me my Certified Penetration Testing Professional certificate. Now its official! w00t!

Gadgetry Amidst A Natural Calamity

The typhoon locally named "Milenyo" just passed by my place of work and my home yesterday. I prudently didn't go to the office because I was anticipating floods. Early in the morning as heavy rains started to pour, I remembered to charge all my gadgets (two cellphones, NDS Lite, iPod and laptop) and around an hour after I started "panic charging" my gadgets, a Geek's nightmare came -- the power company has cut the electricity!

Oh well, that means I have to live without TV throughout that stormy day. With my laptop charged, I decided to try to dial-in to my ISP, check my emails and send a leave notification to the office since I didn't go to work. Lo and behold, my landline (Digitel) has no dial-tone! Plan B -- I checked if SMART has a signal and when it still had, I connected my Treo 650's Versamail to my GMail account and sent an emergency leave notification email to my boss.

Later in the day, and bored out of my wits, I played games on my NDS Lite (which was fully charged, again thanks to my panic charging earlier in the day). A night fell, it was really dark. But thanks to the bright LCD of my Treo 650, I was able to find my way around when I needed to and I was able to catch up on my reading through my stored eBooks. I also played my NDS Lite and it also served as a TV-replacement for my kid who sorely misses his Cartoon Network fix.

I heard on the radio that electricity will be back to normal on Sunday(!) I just hope I have enough juice on my gadgets to last through that time.

Purely Personal

Happy birthday to the 2nd most important person in my life (the first is my "labs")



HAPPY BIRTHDAY Jean Luc! You've come a long way from that picture in my avatar!