Tuesday, December 29, 2009

December's Meeting

December 19th was another great IT Club meeting. We had a special presentation by Ron Woerner. Mr. Woerner is an IT Security Risk Manager and President of InfraGard's Omaha chapter.

We discussed many aspects of information security. One of the first and perhaps most important things Mr. Woerner mentioned was the concept of ethical hacking. There are plenty of ways to hack without damaging things or breaking the law.

Mr. Woerner then went on to discuss the five phases of attack, internet hacking, tools, resources, and recommended reading.

He also mentioned a wish to return in 2010 to discuss interviewing for an IT job. Keep watching for more ways to glean some more helpful information from a local IT professional.

Also, you may have noticed a trend of free food and prizes just for attending. This month was no exception. Another 16GB flash drive was won by Felix Becerra. So make sure you're there in January.

SIDENOTE: Don't forget about the LAN party on January 9th from 6-9:30PM in lab 3. If you had perfect attendance so far this quarter you will be eligible to win a netbook!

Election of New Officers

If you are a regular member of the club, you are aware that February 27th we are going to hold an election for new club officers.  Tony (our Secretary) and I are going to be starting our 8th quarter in March and would like to hand over the duties of the club to some fresh faces.  We will be talking about the election in the next meeting, January 23rd.  Bear will discuss his criteria for those positions.  If you are interested in becoming a club officer, please join us for the January meeting.  The positions that will be vacant are President, Secretary, and possibly Vice President.  There may be a Treasurer position at some time also.  See you there!!

Friday, December 18, 2009

EMERGENCY!!!!!!!!!!!!

You all know Bear.  His niece's apartment building burned to the ground today and she lost EVERYTHING.  She has a 22 month old son named David.  This is an especially hard time of the year for a tragedy of this magnitude.  I am hoping that we as a group can come together and help out Bear's family.  Anything will help.  If there is anything you can do to help, please contact me or Bear. 

Ken Duncan - (402)213-1590
Bear (402)301-4834

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

December Meeting Challenge

Just a reminder, we meet on the 3rd Saturday again this month, December 19th at 12:30pm.

We have a guest speaker for this meeting.  His name is Ron Woerner.  He is the Manager of Security Risk Management at TDAmeritrade and President of Nebraska InfraGard.  He spoke about a year ago at the club and is very knowledgeable in his field.  If you have missed meetings in the past, I would recommend not missing this one.  Ron will have a ton of great information to pass along.

Also for this meeting, I offer you a challenge.  As you know, the club meeting will be changing the time we meet from 1pm to 12:30pm.  Therefore, the slide that is shown on the tv's in the hall way needs to be updated.  I made that slide about a year ago and we are ready for a new one.  We are going to have a contest for those who are interested in creating a new slide.  This slide needs to be ready for presentation to the club on December 19th.  The club will decide which slide best represents our club.  The winning slide will be added to the rotation and displayed on the big screens in the hallways.  Also, the winner will win a prize to be determined by the day of the meeting.  When I made the slide last year, no other club had a slide.  Now the CJ Club and the Web Design Club have slides.  I think they are trying to show us up.  Their slides have movement and all kinds of cool stuff.  Maybe our new slide could have something like that. If this sounds like something you are interested in, please send me an email letting me know that you are making a slide and be ready to show it off at the next meeting.

Specifics for the slide:
Name:  AITP Omaha Student Chapter
Time:  4th Saturday of the month @ 12:30pm
Location:  Lab 3
Format: PowerPoint

Thank you all and I look forward to a great turnout at the next meeting.

November's Meeting Recap

If you missed November's meeting of the IT Professionals Group at ITT Tech, you missed some important security information. Mr. Johnson demonstrated a very simple bootable program called Ophcrack. Ophcrack is a free Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables. This little open source program was able to crack the complex password #Dell2009# in only 12 minutes. We had underestimated the program it seems when we decided to leave it running while we went out for pizza (provided once again by the school). We all suspected it would upwards of 30 minutes to complete and were rather nervous about the security of our passwords after that.

Continuing the tradition of fabulous door prizes, Dave Cannon won a 16GB flash drive. What might you win next time?

Pizza, prizes, and knowledge...what more could you ask for? We look forward to seeing you for the next meeting on December 19th!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

November Meeting.

Just a reminder, the November meeting is this Saturday.  Please meet in Lab 3 at 1pm.  Please dress up a bit for this meeting as we are possibly going on a field trip.  We are representing ITT Tech when we go on these trips.  See you Saturday.

November AITP meeting recap

Yesterday, Nov. 18th, we enjoyed our first AITP meeting.  We went to the Scott Conference Center where we listened to retired Nebraska State Patrol Scott Christensen.  He covered topics such as identity theft and child porn and how corporations help law enforcement when employees are doing illegal activities on their work computers.  He was very informative on his topics and injected a little humor to make the event very worthwhile.  The buffet was also quite enticing.

ITT Tech received a very warm welcome from Lloyd Hasche in his opening speech. He did a great job making us all a part of the meeting and ensuring that we enjoyed ourselves.

When the door prizes were distributed, 2 of the 4 ITT Tech students in attendance walked away with prizes.

The next meeting will be on Thursday, December 17th, at 6pm.  The location for that meeting is the Omaha Press Club.  A speaker from the AIM institute will be talking about Gadgets and Gizmos.  For this dinner meeting, you may bring your spouse or a guest.  This is a great way to show them the interesting things that you are learning and getting involved in.  More information will be available at www.aitpomaha.com.

All students at ITT Tech are welcome to attend these meetings.  You need to see Larry Johnson for AITP enrollment forms.  These meetings are yet another way to get out there and network with people who are already out in the field.  You never know who you will bump into.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Job Seekers

Here is an interesting article that anyone looking for a position in the IT field.  These are some good questions that you might want to have an answer for when you go for an interview.

Click here to read the article.

Monday, November 2, 2009

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS

Due to the holidays, the meetings for November and December will be held on the THIRD Saturday of the month.

November meeting:  November 21st at 1pm in Lab 3

December meeting: December 19th at 1pm in Lab 3

Starting January 23rd, the club meeting will move to 12:30pm in Lab 3.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at  kenduncanjr@gmail.com

Thanks and hope to see you all real soon.

Friday, October 30, 2009

October Meeting Recap

I want to let everybody know what happened at October's IT Professionals Group meeting, so you know what your missing if you don't attend.

Shortly after 1:00 PM, when people stopped trickling in, we headed off to the student lounge for FREE PIZZA! More often than not, lunch is provided by the school just for showing up.

When we returned to the lab, at about 1:20, Ken (the ITPG President) began his presentation on how to create a bootable flash drive complete with Puppy Linux. Attending members were given more than just knowledge though. They got to keep the 1GB flash drives!

During this time I (the ITPG Secretary) was busy preparing a prize drawing. Everybody who showed up got their name placed in the proverbial hat, along with an additional entry for each non-perishable good they donated to the food drive. At 1:40 the winner was decided. Angela Bennett (the ITPG Vice President) won the 16GB flash drive due in no small part to her donation of 40 cans!

As if that wasn't enough, Ken then demonstrated some of the features of DDWRT, which he had shown the group how to install on a router at a previous meeting. With that, we wrapped up the meeting, though many stayed awhile to play with and configure Puppy Linux.

All said and done about 15 members, new and old, attended. Where were you? Well, whether you attended or not, we hope to see you next time!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

October Meeting

I would like to welcome everyone to join us for this month's meeting this Saturday, October 24th at 1pm in Lab 3.  This month we are going to do a "hands on" lab.  We have shown you how to use a flash drive as a hard drive when booting from a Linux CD.  For this lab, we are going to make it possible to boot from the flash drive.  Everybody will get the opportunity to do this lab.  I will be making LiveCDs and passing out flash drives so that everyone gets do so something this month besides sit and watch me fail miserably.  Actually, I did get the router to work and will bring it in for a real quick run down of the new functions and talk about the fix.  Since I have to make sure that I have enough flash drives and CDs for the meeting, I would appreciate it if you could send me an email at kenduncanjr@gmail.com and let me know if you plan to attend.  I will still try to have extras in case you don't get a chance to email me, but it will help.

BIG NEWS!!!!!
We are still having the food drive until the end of the month and I have to embarrassingly announce that the IT barrel in the LRC is COMPLETELY EMPTY.  We have not received ANY donations and the other departments are winning the drive. So in order to fill the barrel we are going to have a give-away at this months meeting. For every piece of nonperishable food item that you bring in, you will get your name entered in a drawing. So if you bring in 2 items, you get 2 entries.  If you bring in 20 items, you get 20 entries! As for Ramen Noodles, they are acceptable, but one case will equal one ticket.  At the end of the meeting, we will draw a name from the entries and the winner will get a 16GB flash drive. So check your cupboards, ask your neighbors, do what ever it takes to fill our barrel and bring the IT department to the front of this competition for a great cause.  

Thank you for all your help with the food drive. I hope to see all of you for another fun filled meeting.

 

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Windows 7 Offer

Hi everyone, Bear found a website he would like me to share with everybody.  They are offering a deal to buy Windows 7 for $29.99 if you are a college student.  They are also offering Office Ultimate 2007 for $59.00 if you are a student.  This is definitely worth checking out!!  Find out here.

Office Ultimate 2007

Windows 7

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Food Drive

ITT Tech is having a food drive.  The holidays are around the corner and this is an excellent time to give a little back to help those in need.  The school has made this a little competition by setting up four barrels in the LRC, one for each department of the school.  We need to make sure that everyone in the group helps out if you are able.  ITT is going to donate $100 to the club of the department that generates the most donations.  I would like your help to make sure the Information Technology Department gets this donation.  If everyone can pitch in we can make this happen.  Thank you all for your support.

CompTIA Network+ Study Group

We kicked off the study group this week.    You can find the slides from the class here.  One important announcement for the study group is we will have the class from 12:30pm to 2:30pm in Theory 8.  The book, Network+ 2009, is on the virtual library linked here.  We will attempt to cover two chapters per week.  This study is anticipated to last 10 weeks.  There is still time to join the group if you like.

CompTIA Network+ Study Group

We kicked off the study group this week.  There is still time to join the group if you like.  You can find the slides from the class here.  One important announcement for the study group is we will have the class from 12:30pm to 2:30pm in Theory 8.

Monday, September 28, 2009

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS

Club hours will change to 12:30pm after Christmas.

Club meeting will no longer be canceled, they will be rescheduled. Emails will be sent to all members. It will also be posted on the blog site.

Certifications next to be studied will be Net+. The new group will start Oct 3rd and will be ran by Mr. McCoy.  We will be meeting in Theory 8.

September Meeting Recap

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone for coming.  I want to welcome all new members and tell you that most meetings don't end in failure.  The meetings are so much better when we have a group like we had this Saturday. I hope you all continue to make the club a monthly part of your ITT Tech experience.
 
Catastrophic failure averted!!!!  For those of you who were there, you know that the router flash did not go as planned.  For those of you who were not there, we flashed a Linksys router with DD-WRT firmware and learned how easily things can go bad.  The router would not finish the flash.  After I got home, I kept at it.  I figured out that it wasn't rebooting properly between each phase of the flash.  I had to unplug the router and hold the reset button for 30 seconds for each phase of the flash.  Bear had mentioned this, but apparently it didn't register in my head to try it at school.  Anyway, after about 15 minutes, I had a successful flash.  The router now has DD-WRT firmware installed.
Lesson learned: Persistence!

You can find out all things related to DD-WRT here. Make sure that you find the files for your router version and follow directions carefully.

Mr Johnson gave a presentation on troubleshooting hardware issues.  He demonstrated how to use a Hiren's Boot CD showed how you can use a jump drive as a hard drive if necessary.  Bear also discussed the vital importance of backups and the possible scenarios of not doing such practice.

We also filled out our sign up sheets to make the transition into the Omaha Chapter of AITP.

Oh yea, we had pizza.  The club almost always gets treated to food from Bear.  Thanks Bear!!

Remember, please try to bring a new member with you next meeting!!

Our next meeting will be October 24th. We meet on the 4th Saturday of the month.  This is not always the last Saturday of the month.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

September Meeting

It's time for a meeting! This month we are going to revisit a topic from a year ago. We are going to flash a Linksys router with a DD-WRT firmware upgrade. This upgrade is essentially converting a $60 router into a $600 router. The DD-WRT firmware upgrade gives you a lot of added features that the factory firmware does not do. With DD-WRT, you have the ability to create a wireless bridge to extend a wireless network, added security, added stability, the ability to increase the power on the antennas to boost signal strength, along with many other options. We will be in Lab 3 at 1pm this Saturday. Hope to see everyone there.

WARNING: If you decide to flash your router on your own with any aftermarket firmware, be sure to read the documentation very carefully. A lot of the conversions are "one-way" meaning once they are done, there is no converting back. Also, if not done correctly, you can cause permanent damage to your router.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

CompTIA Network+ 2009 Study Group Starting October 3 at ITT Omaha

The IT Professionals Group at ITT Omaha will be starting a CompTIA Network+ 2009 Study Group Starting October 3, 12:30pm - 2:30pm, ITT Omaha. The study group will meet the first 3 Saturdays of the month and continue until we complete the study course and take the Network+ Exam.
We will, again, use a text from the ITT Virtual Library, to eliminate the need to puchase a text, and it is linked below: http://library.books24x7.com.proxy.itt-tech.edu/toc.asp?bookid=30674
The Text is CompTIA Network+ Certification Support Skills (2009 Objectives): Study Notes, gtsLearning, if you would like to purchase it and do not have access to the ITT Virtual Library.
Reply to this post if you are interested in attending or obtaining the lecture slides, which will be posted at http://www.realmccoysystems.com

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Certification Group

Well the summer break from the Cert Group was much deserved, but every good thing must end. We will be starting the Study Group up again on September 12, 2009. We usually look for a certification that everyone has a good chance to pass no matter where they are in their studies. We also try to pick a certification that doesn't expire so you do not have to worry about getting recertified before you graduate. So far we have done A+ and Server 2008: Active Directory. Also, different from previous cert. classes, we will have a rotation of four different instructors to provide education from four different angles. These cert. classes are a great way to get a jump on your career and make you stand out in the hiring process. We would like some feedback as to what everyone is interested in studying. Feel free to comment to this post, talk to Mr Johnson (Bear), Mr McCoy, or me to let us know what you are wanting to study in this next cert. class. Thanks and I hope to see you all there.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

August Meeting

Thank you to everyone who made it to the meeting this month. We enjoyed a trip to the First National Bank Technology Center. We met with a gentleman named Brett Bock. He is the Vice President of Enterprise Technology Services at the bank. He and one of the Sr Engineers on site showed us their Virtual Center Console and discussed how the bank uses virtual machines and servers to run their business. They have about 700 virtual servers inside of a physical box with 10 blade servers. They gave a great presentation on their network and showed how they can track virtually any alarms and faults remotely. They showed us how they can "drill down" on a problem or a link within the network and find out virtually anything they need to know about it. They discussed how they can make changes to the bandwidth, CPU, and Ram to accommodate the workload of different monthly scenarios such as a day they know there will be an influx of deposits. We spent about two hours in a classroom type setting to learn about the Virtual Console. Then they took us over to the actual server room and showed us the hardware. Very interesting!! This was a great experience to see some cutting edge, real world applications that are being deployed today. Again, thanks to everyone who made it and hope to see everyone next month.

PS: The Certification Group is set to start again on September 12th. We will decide what we are going to study that day.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Tech Republic Network Administrator

If you are still starving for networking news, give this link a try. They have a lot of good stories and tidbits from the networking field.
Article

Mark Minasi's July Newsletter

For those of you who don't know who Mark Minasi is, he is quite possibly the best technology writer and speaker there is. He has a ton of great readings both on the net and in books. He also has lots of videos covering topics from NT enterprise networking to TCP/IP and everything in between. He has an interesting newsletter this month talking about whether to upgrade to Windows 7 or not. Newsletter. You can also visit his web site at www.minasi.com. Happy reading!!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

July Meeting Recap

I want to thank everyone who took time out on Saturday to join us for our meeting. We had a decent turnout, but we are always looking to expand our group. We discussed some flash drive utilities that will come in handy for a network administrator. The tools we spoke about can be downloaded at CodySafe. There is an Admin Swiss Knife Suite that has tons of useful features that will certainly come in handy for the network admin. There are all sorts of net tools and password recovery tools that make up part of this suite. I am sure the geek in all of us will love this little download. It runs completely from a flash drive. The best part is how small it is. I think CodySafe is around 2Mb and the Admin Suite is a mere 62Mb unpacked. That is pretty impressive since there are 62 apps in the Suite.

We also took a look at a program called SpaceSniffer. SpaceSniffer can be downloaded at PCWorld. This program doesn't really do much more than give you a graphical impression of what is on your hard drive. It can be useful to show you what is taking up all the space on your hard drive. The larger the file, the larger the box to represent it will be. So it is really easy to locate the large files.

Mr Johnson gave an interesting demonstration on how it is possible to boot up and run a laptop even if it has no hard drive. He used an IBM ThinkPad, flash drive, and a Ubuntu liveCD. He was able to boot the laptop from the cd and use the flash drive as a hard drive. Very Cool.

Finally, as with most meetings, we had pizza. We almost always have food at the meetings.

A note for August's meeting:
I am in the works with First National Bank to get a field trip to the Data Center for a tour. Hopefully it will be a done deal for that meeting but there is a lot of security concerns to overcome to make this happen.

That pretty well wraps up this meeting. Again, I would like to thank everyone who was able to attend.

Next meeting: August 22, 2009 1pm Lab 3