Juridian’s profile on Antionline
Place and date of Birth (or age): Reno, Nevada - 27
Current place of residence: Washington State
Marital status: Married, 2 kids.
AO: How did you get into computers?
Juridian: About 7 years ago my wife (gf at the time) came into some money and I convinced her if she'd get me a computer I'd use it to get a better job. She bought me my first laptop and I used it while doing physical security work to learn to write C and Java. The building I did security at housed some .com's and a super computer company, so I used to ask a lot of their developers and QA questions about code. Eventually I started stumping them with my questions and they had me turn in a resume.
AO: What is your area of specialty?
Juridian: My main focus is on software development and security. I started out with e-commerce but that got old, now I'm working with massively multiplayer online games.
AO: What do you do for a living?
Juridian: I'm live team development lead for a multiplayer online game. I do all kinds of development mostly. On a week to week I generally work with C/C++/Lua/Perl/C#/ASP 3.0/ASP.net/SQL developing software for both windows and linux platforms. I help out with software and environment security, QA, Adminning the game environment, software configuration and build management...whatever they throw me at.
AO: How did you get into your career?
Juridian: See how I got into computers. =)
After that I busted my beehind to go from QA Intern to Test Lead. Then I harassed them into letting me rewrite the ASP side of one of our e-commerce platforms because the code was horrible. From there I volunteered to take over the live environment stuff for the game I work on now.
AO: Describe your education and/or training?
Juridian: The majority of my knowledge is self taught. I've taken a few SANS/GIAC courses, a course from Red Hat, and a SQL course. No real schooling beyond a couple of semesters in the local community college for business and a java class that I should have been teaching.
AO: Do you plan on staying where you are (career-wise) or are you still in school / working on certs to get into another area?
Juridian: When the midgets are a bit bigger I think I may go back and actually get a degree. I like doing development, I wouldn't mind however getting a spot as a Security Architect in Development. It's just finding a spot like that, that doesn't require tons of travel.
AO: What one piece of advice would you offer to others who may be interested in following a career path or educational path similar to yours?
Juridian: Bust your butt to learn as much as you can and make yourself as well rounded technologically as possible. I know devs who can't draw a use case diagram with UML to save their lives. I know others that can't even admin their own boxes effectively. Still others don't know a thing about software testing. And security....don't get me started.
AO: What skill do you think is invaluable in your area of specialty?
Juridian: Technical or soft?
Soft skill wise... being a self starter (if that is really a skill) is invaluable.
Tech skill wise... effective trouble shooting skills. Having the ability to stop and think through the most efficient plan of action for whatever you're troubleshooting can mean the difference between your live environment having issues for 5 minutes or 5 days. Code wise it could be a bug you need to find taking the same amount of time to find and fix.
AO: Describe one of your best / most effective security practices.
Juridian: Planning. Knowing what you're doing and having it documented is good.
AO: Do you have a little-known fact about yourself (personal, hobbies, tech-related) that you would be willing to share?
Juridian: While I probably come off like a jerk half the time on this site I also spend a lot of time helping noobs learn code and try to help them get into the tech industry. I don't give out jobs or anything, I just try to point them in the right direction on the skills they need. Occasionally I'll even pass on a resume. When I got started someone did this for me, I try to do it for others and have them do the same. Kind of a geeky 'pass it on' type of thing.
AO: How did you find Antionline?
Juridian: I was researching some security related topics (some rfc stuff I believe) and found this place via a search engine. I promptly signed up and got on irc...and had all my questions ignored. =p I think whatever it was may have been too obscure.
AO: Anything else you'd like to share?
Juridian: I like pie.
AO: Better stop reading books for a minute then and start working on them pie-baking skills. Thank you, Juridian!
