Hacking
Hacking is more a hobby for me that I just happen to get paid (sometimes) to do than a job. I am a strong fan of the gamification of, well, everything and am particularly excited about many of the gamified hacking resources that are publicly available. As stated in work, my hacking spark grew from sites like picoCTF, OverTheWire, Cyberstakes, and CodeWarz. As I have matured in cyber security, my find myself fascinated more by real system exploitation (PENTESTing) and resources like VulnHub, HackTheBox, Holiday Hack, and Immersive Labs.2 I also still do CTFs from time to time and focus mainly on web, cryptography, and programming challenges although I am [very] slowly improving on my reversing skills. I hope start my PhD soon at southern California school with a particularly good CTF team so I do need to start emphasizing this area more. I also enjoy watching hacking videos with LiveOverflow and Ippsec being two of my favorite channels.
Family Time
Luckily, my family is also a bunch of nerds (but don’t tell my wife I said that). We are fans of Marvel, Harry Potter, and Jurassic Park universes and going to the Star Wars premiers is our newest family tradition.3 We also like gaming together. We absolutely love escape rooms and play board games like Catan, Drizit, Cranium, Ascension, and are slowing trying D&D primarily due to Terry Crews and Critical Role. We also enjoy cooperative video games with our favorites being Earth Defense Force, Gears of War, Minecraft, and ROBOLOX. Outside, we like biking, hiking, camping, and indoor rock climbing (really pretending to be ninja warriors) as well as visiting amusement parks (we went to six Six Flags last year!) and zoos / aquariums.
Serving God
My faith has had a significant impact in my life and my service of my country. My handle (archang31) comes from being raised in a Catholic household and symbolizes my conviction to being both a protector and leader.4 Recently, I felt challenged to invest more of my time and talent into the church so I started volunteering within the production team at The Rock of KC. It’s amazing how much technology is used in a modern church. The production team requires four people, five workstations, and several servers to run everything from the lights and soundboard during worship to the media and slides during the gospel to even the mixing of the video output that is broadcasted throughout the building. Even with this church’s robust and established technology support system, they still have problems with their wireless network security, file sharing system, and website - areas where I can help. I don’t want to write any more here, but I hope to do more (maybe create a non-profit?) to help faith-based organizations establish and maintain secure technology systems.
- I bet you thought I was going to say home brewing. I am not that stereotypical. [return]
- I also really loved the PWK Labs but did not include it since it’s not free. [return]
- Although we did not go to Solo. First, it was not Christmas time which was weird, and the kids were just not as interested in Han as they were with Rey, Finn, or even Jyn. [return]
- This handle is homage to Saint Michael the Archangel. Saint Michael is also the patron saint of the Airborne (specifically the 82nd Airborne) where I was attached for my first deployment in 2002. [return]