I’m having to come to terms with my personality. I love to help others and would go out of my way to help someone, but I don’t help myself and don’t ask for help from others. I do my best to be friends with everyone I meet, but I have no way to control if someone likes me or not. I attempt to understand where everyone comes from and wrap my mind around various viewpoints, but I can’t expect everyone else to have the same open mind. I trust people when it comes to getting work done, but it’s ...

If you're familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality types, I'm an INFP-T. 16Personalities has a great write-up on the INFP, or Mediator, personality. The personality type fits me perfectly. I'm having to come to terms with some of the things there, though. Not that I'm identifying to what's written - I feel what's written - it's just that I need to be able to handle it. Desperate to Please – Conflict tends to be stressful for Mediators, who yearn for harmony and acceptance. When someone disl...

Maybe this will help someone down the line - have you ever needed to assign a particular application in Okta to a group of people, but the NameID attribute be different based on the account? Guess what, I've run into this, and now I have a solution thanks to Okta's Expression Language. If you set your NameID attribute to Custom in your Okta application, you can use the following line to set the username based on the email. String.stringContains(user.email, "domain.com") ? substringBefore(user...

Putting some thought into IT and what we do, let's consider the facts. IT is a needed entity in any functional business, with very few exceptions. The business utilizes IT to ensure day-to-day operations remain consistent and ongoing. IT is in a position to suggest changes to ensure business continuity. Ultimately, the business is in the position to complete changes to ensure business continuity. Now working in the education sector, points 3 and 4 can be bent quite a bit before attracting th...

In partnership with the Motlow Libraries, I'll be presenting Protecting Your Privacy in the Digital Age. The public will be welcome to attend this event. More information will be released as details are finalized. ...

According to my Daylio app, I've now had five consecutive good days - apparently the first time this has happened in the (at the time of writing) 68 days of using the app. Even though I've had a very good streak going, last week I came to the conclusion - I need help. There's only so much a person can do before they lose focus on themselves, and I hit that limit. There's always going to be those times where everything feels overwhelming, but it's possible to power through all of it. I reached ...

I just had this thought while working on my new landing page - self plug, it's at https://hyp5r.io if you want to see it. Social media has its purpose. From communicating with friends and family you normally wouldn't see, to keeping up with colleagues and groups you're involved in, social media is probably one of the best things to come out of the Internet. For those who know me, you will never hear me say that in person. Social media is one of the worst things to come out of the Internet as we...

Because every now and then, I need to hear it. Remind yourself that nobody has it all. Stop comparing your life with others. It is always a losing proposition. There will always appear to be people who have it better than you. But remember, we always compare the worst of what we know about ourselves to the best assumptions we make about others. From A Helpful Guide to Overcoming Envy, last updated on October 29, 2019. ...

Over the past month, I've taken mental health with a more serious tone. I've had mood swings throughout my adult life, but I've recently had days where my mood swings worse than it used to, and I wanted to get a feel for what's actually going on. I'm lucky to find an app that helps me journal and track my mood through the day, and I wanted to share results for the first 31 days. Note that nothing in here is a sponsorship or endorsement - this is strictly my own opinion. Enter Daylio Daylio (h...

Let's preface this - this comes from an almost-30-year-old male who works in information security. Communication is exceptionally important in a work life for this type of role. From relaying security risks, best practices, and even going down to help desk, I've written countless articles and thousands of replies to individuals and groups of people with the goal of solving problems. I absolutely enjoy this (for the most part), but it's odd because I'm very introverted elsewhere, and as I write t...

I've seen this happen way too many times - an email was sent to a massive group of individuals, but the sender didn't blind copy the group, and now you have everyone hitting Reply All and causing a storm. C'mon... it's not that hard to blind copy... is it? Here's the thing, though - I was raised on computers. I've grown up with the technology trend, I've tried everything from OS/2 to Windows 3.1 to Ubuntu 9 - I breathe computers. Sometimes I have to make a conscious step back and look at tech ...

Have you ever been handed a task where your first thought is, "Why are we doing this?" I'm not opposed to change - in fact, I welcome it. One of the first things I teach people who want to be involved in information technology and information security is that change happens on a daily basis. You've got to know what is happening and how to adapt to almost anything that comes your way. Look at all the ransomware articles going around as of late and you'll immediately understand how fast paced cha...

Over the past several weeks, I've been finally able to sit down and learn about Docker. It's taken me honestly several years to actually understand what Docker does, how it all works, and the advantages and disadvantages of using Docker containers versus running VMs for each individual service. I'm glad to be able to say not only have I started the process of learning advanced deployment of Docker containers for both my home servers and my work, but I've written a Dockerfile for a software used ...

I'm a fan of organization... most of the time. Using my Mac provided by work is definitely one of those times where being organized is key. Sometimes there's some applications you can't live without, but they may not be related to the overall use of the machine (personal apps on a work machine, for example), so having a quick visual way to separate the apps is very useful. Below is how you can add separator block to your dock. Open a Terminal window on your Mac. Input the following line, then ...

Earlier today, I had a request to look into Microsoft’s Delve to see what it could do for my place of work… well, kind of. Delve seems like a nice product to see what everyone may be working on, but unfortunately, it’s a little misleading and it looks like files can be accessed by anyone on there. While the above statement isn’t actually true, certain aspects when browsing Delve really make you think that some of these documents shouldn’t be listed “publicly,” even though odds are that you were ...

So my main goal for this week was to lock down my Linux servers at home. For the moment, I run two: A Raspberry Pi 3 running Raspbian, and my Synology DS418play which runs DSM. I’ll try to go over security basics that can apply to a wide range of Linux servers, but the bulk of my experience is with Debian-based distros, so if you’re not running Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, or any other Debian derivative, your mileage may vary. These can also apply to other operating systems like Windows and Mac, ...