Ahh, my first post… First of all, welcome! My name is Sam (“ofdarkhope”) and I’ve started this blog as a place to document many things, including:
- Tech tips, cheat sheets
- Guides, how-to’s, various notes
- Software, coding, scripting, programming
- Virtualization
- IT security, cybersecurity
- My journeys to and through the world of IT, IT auditing (my day job), and IT-related certifications
- Hopefully more attractive photos than this one…
Ok, don’t click away just yet. I know what you’re thinking, “Oh jeez, ‘an auditor….'” Give me a chance here. I believe I’ve built a pretty decent reputation over the last 8 years of being a reasonable, fair, and technically savvy IT auditor. True story time though: I once was having a friendly (truly!) conversation (non-work related) with a guy and when he asked what I did, and I told him, he promptly stopped mid-sentence and walked away from me. We get a bad rap much of the time because our primary job is to tell you when things are (perceptibly) wrong, configured incorrectly, or are against policy or best practices. I get it; criticisms aren’t fun, especially when there’s a report involved that’s going to get a bunch of scrutiny from the “suits”.
But enough of that for now. If you’re still reading, thank you! As I mentioned, I have plans to talk about how I came into the IT/IT audit world and some nuances of the field, etc., in later post segments. As with all of us, we all have a story to tell. I’ll hope that when I tell mine, it will inspire some of you who feel like it’s an impossible journey to go from a completely unrelated field to something/somewhere in IT. For a quick teaser, I was in food service and restaurant management for seventeen years, though mostly as a back-of-the-house delinquent who could push food out the door at breakneck paces and keep the motley crews singing along with me in the trenches. Some of the most fun I’ve ever had in my life and certainly an industry and class of worker that rarely gets the respect they deserve. You won’t find that on my resume.
Back to task — my ultimate goal here is to capture the knowledge I’ve gained over the years, and am continuing to pursue, so that maybe it will help others who find themselves down a tech rabbit hole. Of course, nearly everything I’ve learned from a technical standpoint comes from my own tinkering within virtual machines, the almighty “google,” work colleagues, various other blogs, tech sites, vendor documentation, and YouTube. And of course, I’d like to use this blogging opportunity to learn from all of you who are willing to share your knowledge and experience. I’m a fairly introverted person (stereotypical) and I don’t do a great job with keeping up with and/or expanding my network, so this is also my attempt to rectify that.
To dive a little deeper, I’m intrigued with all facets of tech, including but not limited to: virtualization, containerization (Docker anyone?), operating systems (Windows, Linux – all flavors, Mac), software engineering and programming/scripting languages, networking, cryptocurrencies, vulnerability assessments and pentesting, etc. The list goes on an on. If it goes “beep-boop-beep,” I’m probably curious about it. I plan on doing some tech reviews on hardware/software as we go along, how-to’s and basic guides for various technologies, and guides/walkthroughs to document my journey through capture-the-flag machines (CTFs), such as those on HackTheBox (hackthebox.eu) and TryHackMe (tryhackme.com).
So that’s it for now. I hope I’ve captured your attention at least enough to save my site for a later review once I put up some more content. It’ll be a continual development, including the site itself (I’m sure multiple reworks will be coming as I figure this stuff out).