Logfile_dump Week 5/22

This was the final week before taking my A+ 1002 exam, so that guided the majority of my time.

Sunday 01/30

• I finally took the time to get my website started! Big thanks to Graham Helton for the inspiration. I still have no idea what I’m doing but at least I got it started.

Monday 01/31

• Studied for my A+ exam. I’m watching Professor Messer videos since I already finished those from Mik Meyers and ITPro.TV.
• Worked on the layout of my website more.
• Listened to Phillip Wylie’s Hacker Factory episode with Michael Padrick. As someone who also worked in the pool industry for many years I found it very relatabel. Even though I did retail not cleaning, the whole industry is horrible and I never want to smell chlorine again.
• Listened to the Hacked episode “RIP REvil”.
• Listened to the Privacy, Security, and OSINT Show Episode 247. This covered in part something that I experienced doing my taxes where the IRS website is now witching over to requiring an ID.me verification. I set up my IRS profile as a part of “planting my flag” and use it to get a tax PIN for security. Now it seems like I’ll either have to find a way around this, or stop using the PIN.
  • He mentions that he discusses ID.me in a previous episode, which I remember listening to but wanted a refresher (episode 227). He started the episode talking about giving things like copies of IDs to third party companies and how it might at least give more information in the result of a breach if the copy you give is watermarked.
  • The way that MB was able to get around the ID.me requirement is time-stamped from 20:30-23:03. Essentially, make a true medical condition (glasses, contacts, etc is the example he used) sound scary, mention you don’t have a smartphone that you can use to for their ID.me services, so what are you supposed to do? No lies are told. I’ll have to try this at some point so I’ll let you know how it goes..
  • In short, I may just have to just learn to do all my taxes by hand, which admittedly I should probably have done a log time ago!

Tuesday 02/01

• Started going over the Jason Dion PBQs on Udemy

Wednesday 02/02

• Took a practice test. Made a 70%. Sad day. Definitely didn’t feel great about it and it did strike a blow against my confidence that I’d pass the exam.

Thursday 02/03

• Work closed due to Snowpocalypse so I just watched more Professor Messer videos focused on the domains that I did the worst on in the previous practice tests I’ve done.
• I installed a Windows 11 VM to play along with. I have no intention of switching to any version of Windows ever, at any point in time, until the day I die. That being said, W11 does at least look better than W10.
• I uploaded my Pop!_os app upgrade script to github. Very basic, very simple, just works.

Friday 02/04

• Work was still closed so I got to study even more!
• Found a funny O’Reilly book cover generator so I added one to my upgrade.sh(it) repo.

Saturday 02/05

• Last day of studying. Beyond ready to just get this test over with. I will post an update separate from my weekly Logfile_dump posts.

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