Ok, first I wanna say that I didn't mean that you guys didn't have hand-eye coordination. I used to be able to hold my own in CounterStrike and FPS simply because I was a LAN Party addict, as well as a at-home-LPB gamer thanks to my Cable Internet. If I get warmed up enough, I can still do some damage - depending on who I'm up against. My brother creams me in FPS and RPGs AND he knows more about computers than me so I'm not on an ego trip. I can admit when someone knows more than me. I don't want to be a hacker for the status symbol, though I wouldn't be ashamed of it either. Basically, I'm a Telecom major, which at my school is just networking. It's sort of like a glorified MCSE/CNA/Cisco guy who also knows phone systems like a PBX, key systems and whatnot. That would be just fine for me, except I've had one teacher who knows his stuff that teaches a PC Hardware class tell me that there's not much of a future in networking right now. I've had a couple of other people tell me that too, though I can't remember which ones they were. I've read in online news that Network security is a prospering business (so far at least). I've quit reading eWeek in favor of textbooks and safaribooksonline.com. Anyhow, I want a stable and secure job in the future that is challenging and fun. I figure there are enough black hats out there that wanna screw up the world and I'd like to stop that. I see them as an extension of the criminals on the street I've had problems with in the past. (Try living in California for 15 years - and Utah is getting bad too - maybe it's my big mouth that attracts them). Thanks to the guys that stick up for me. I'm part of a LUG for Linux, but we only meet once a month and a lot of those guys are busy or inactive but I'm trying to help them get up and going. They talked about wargames one time, to each about network security. I'd also like to be prepared for that.

I used to be more into computers than I am now. (other things take my attention right now - I've got more responsibilities). I dabbled in OS/2 and Linux since Mandarke 6.1 I think. I also bought a Mac at one time. I still love computers, and besides security I someday want to build a radio telescope that runs off Linux. I've heard of guys doing that and my other interest is astronomy. If you're ever in Utah check out www.clarkplanetarium.org. That place kicks ass. But I digress... Thanks to the people who responded and stuck up for me. If he was mainly joking that is cool. I suppose some people have pet peeves and I can't blame them for that. I remember I got RedHat 8 working with my horrible Nforce motherboard (horrible for Linux) and I installed Xchat. Well, it had a 2600 server already on it. I got curious, and went into a 2600 chat room and said hi and stuff. Some guy asked me if I wanted to join his clan. I asked him if he was talking about Quake 2, and he just went quiet. He was quiet for some time and I got this feeling something wasn't right. I logged off, ran a rootkit checker (www.chkrootkit.org) and it turned it I got a kernel module rootkit or something like that. I had all the latest updates and even set up Redhat to automatically notify me when there were new ones. I also didn't like running snort only to find about 50-100 hack attempts against my home network. It got to the point I was tired of reporting them cuz I never got a response back from the ISP and I kept getting attacked from the same IP addresses.

Anyhow - I just want to hang out with people I have a common interest with, but if there are no white hats in Utah, I'll just have to pester my LUG members. Oh, and my BSD LUG associates too. That's the best way to learn - immerse yourself in it. Good luck to all the others looking for people to chum around with! And thanks for the idea on those hats from Thinkgeek! I'll have to wear one of those when pruning some branches and mowing the lawn.

linuxalien