Bob Plankers

Bob Plankers is a man who wears many hats. In his professional career he has spent three decades leading teams that design, build, operate, and talk about reliable, secure, and compliant IT infrastructures, both in the public sector and in the high tech industry. He currently focuses on applied security, compliance, and operational resilience for virtualization and cloud platforms.

TMNT Rises Again

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Oh, hell yeah. I hope they do the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles justice. The trailer looks amazing, insofar as the graphics look wonderful. The end of the trailer has “Only in Theaters.” Have they heard of the Internet? For those of you reading that may have listened to my rant a couple weeks ago about the guy in the bar that wouldn’t shut up about the Transformers… um, this is different. That guy was speculating what kind of people Optimus Prime and Starscream would be if they kicked up their heels and smoked a big fatty. Like, WTF, I’m cool with the abstract thinking but not when you never shut up about it. And that’s all I’m gonna say …

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I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better.

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Just saw “A Scanner Darkly.” I’ve seen bad reviews. I’ve seen good reviews. It is good. Linklater didn’t make it funny as some have criticized, though parts of it are. Humor happens sometimes even amidst bad situations. “What does a scanner see?” he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me – into us – clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone’s sake, the …

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How To Create A Self-Signed OpenSSL Certificate

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I can’t remember OpenSSL options. Having grown tired of looking up how to create a self-signed certificate and finding lengthy tutorials I have opted to write my own. Three easy steps to having your own completely kinda-trustworthy certificate for testing and whatnot: openssl genrsa -out bogus.key 1024 openssl req -new -key bogus.key -out bogus.csr openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in bogus.csr -signkey bogus.key -out bogus.crt There, that was easy, wasn’t it? Update: NickyP commented with a one-liner for this. That’s why I love blogs. Thank you!

Why "openssl -des3" Sucks

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“Bob, why do you always complain when people encrypt their web server’s SSL keys with DES3?” Well, since you ask, it’s because the web server needs human interaction to start. You need to supply the password. To remember the password you need to write it down somewhere. Or store it online so you can retrieve it. These are potentially insecure, they are avenues of compromise, and at the very least they create more work for already busy administration teams. You could set the password to be the same on all the servers, and tell everybody what it is. That might solve the administration problem but negate any value from encryption. Having a password means you cannot background the web server …

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"Subject" Is Not "Body"

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Friends, Romans, Countrymen, The subject line is not for the whole email message. Personally, I’d rather the subject be blank and the message be a one-liner than the one-liner be in the subject. Abide my wishes, or die. Sincerely yours, …Bob

Do Or Do Not, There Is No "What If"

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What’s the difference between a one-off solution and the beginning of a trend? What’s the difference between a kludge and a brilliant fix? What’s the difference between the bleeding edge and the cutting edge? Vision. How do you get a vision? Be out there doing things. Find out what works and what doesn’t. What if I don’t have time to be out there doing things? Then you will always be at the mercy of others. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, …

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links for 2006-08-09

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Jaredigital Articles: Carte Blanche. A Web 2.0 designr card. I think I’ll make a sysadmin card. (tags: design funny humor web)

Wow. One Year.

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On August 8th, 2005, at 3:43 AM CDT (-0600) I posted the first blog entry of my life and found something to do with my insomnia. It is now one year later. 155 written posts, 75 auto-posts from del.icio.us. That puts me writing three times a week, on average, which is way more than I ever dreamed I would. I love it. Thank you to everybody who reads what I write. Thank you to everybody who links to my site, commented, thought I am nuts, or added me to their feed reader. Every time I look at my stats I am flattered. Thanks all.

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