Speaker 0 | 00:06.900
Welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Coming to you, probably not live because this is going to be pre-recorded. I’m in Morocco and today we have Chris Roberts. Not very well known, kind of a secret person in the industry. Probably been looking to do this for three years now and on and off between secret missions and everything. We finally… We’ve finally gotten on this, I don’t know, somehow fairly good latency connection between here and Morocco at the moment like that.
Speaker 1 | 00:39.045
Yeah, you got a decent connection out there. It’s doing a lot. It’s better than this neck of the woods, probably.
Speaker 0 | 00:45.009
Yeah. And surprisingly, I’ve caught off guard with no agenda. And I’m sure no one ever calls you with an agenda. I mean, certainly doesn’t happen.
Speaker 1 | 00:53.355
Oh, my God.
Speaker 0 | 00:55.036
You know, it’s like messaging you on LinkedIn. And it’s like, can I get through? And then I did find a way to hack. I did find a way to hack you. I can’t tell you how it is.
Speaker 1 | 01:07.042
I can’t tell you. Yeah, don’t don’t say that. I like as in every man, woman, beast and bloody child. And by the same thing, I swear.
Speaker 0 | 01:13.107
I’ll tell you after. I’ll tell you after we do this. And again, really no agenda other than I like your cryptic posts from time to time. I like when you did a a. toilet paper post during COVID. And I said, what do you need toilet paper for? Just use water. And then people came out of the woodworks. Like, what do you mean no toilet paper? You got to have toilet paper, guy. And people got out there. And then you were really kind, actually. You were actually really kind to all the people that are beating me up for saying that there’s no need for toilet paper. It’s called a bidet, like the rest of the world uses.
Speaker 1 | 01:52.076
um again interesting only enough because i’m in morocco and people kind of laugh in morocco so i mean the b days i mean so i was over in saudi november and i’m back over there again in march and it’s the same thing i like what’s the sink sprayer for oh my god i mean i i remember as a kid growing up because we spent a bunch of time in like sardinia and various other places and i remember looking at this thing going this is freaking weird and then he told me what i did with it and i’m like no i’m not and you know the classic collection like i say it will stabilize one does not talk about the toilet you know what happens behind the door stays behind the door and um i i still i mean having still traveled so much and you know so many times walked into the bathroom and found those uh actually the cabin the cabin up in netherland um the the person i’m looking after it for put in one of those blasted spray bday things gotta have it i still haven’t tried it i still haven’t it’s got a heated seat oh once you use that thing
Speaker 0 | 02:49.240
Well, no, once you use the like kind of, I don’t want to say ghetto, I guess in Saudi, what would they say in Saudi? They would say, they would say, uh, Adi, Adi. They would say like, this is normal. Like Adi, this is normal. Every toilet has it. And, um, for, for all those listening out there, if you really want a visual, uh, next to the toilet is the same sprayer, like you used to have on the old sink that you would tape when you wanted to like, you know, spray one of your brothers or family members, you would tape it with some scotch tape. So when I turn the water on, it sprays you. They have that next to the toilet. And there’s no toilet paper. So if you can’t live without toilet paper, like my wife and a few other people in my family would lose their mind when you stop at a gas station in the Middle East somewhere. There’s just a sprayer there or a bucket of water.
Speaker 1 | 03:34.135
Yep, and off you go. And you’re like,
Speaker 0 | 03:35.816
no, no, no. Once you get used to the sprayer, once you get used to the sprayer, it’s a very refreshing, less stained look and feel. You’re like, what are you looking at?
Speaker 1 | 03:52.137
No, it’s true. You’re totally right on this one. Because it’s, again, but if you take a different step back and you look at it from an Islamic standpoint, there’s an entire, you know, the whole cleansing standpoint is an entire, I mean, not the regimen. I mean, it’s a nice way of doing it. That shall keep themselves clean at all times. No wonder there’s a sodding sprayer there. Because, I mean, yeah, toilet paper is nice, but it…
Speaker 0 | 04:17.472
it gets rid of most of it but the rest of it gets spread around and kind of hidden whereas your ass is literally cleaned up it’s like a car wash and mini car wash every time so so i i’ve embraced the culture i i’m letting everyone know i have embraced the culture they’re like i’m not eating at your house phil anymore uh
Speaker 1 | 04:35.900
here’s the thing though it’s it’s been around probably longer than flipping toilet papers being around let’s just face it so at some point yeah y’all gotta get used to it
Speaker 0 | 04:45.268
No riots during COVID over here for over toilet paper. Remember the, remember the lines and people fight. I think people, I think a few, I think numerous people got shot over toilet paper. And that shows the ridiculous.
Speaker 1 | 04:57.134
You had those getting shot for toilet paper and you had the hoarders. I mean that, that to me. Again, human nature. Back to freaking human nature. I just, I don’t mind if you have to go there to go get your dozen rolls or whatever, but you don’t need to go buy six dozen and hold them and save five other people from actually being able to get stuff. It just blows my mind.
Speaker 0 | 05:16.178
Who’s that phony dude on YouTube that does all those like really corny, cheesy, like feel good videos? Well, I can’t remember his name. He did a video on like hoarding like syringes or something. Hey guys, this is Phil Howard, founder of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I just want to take a few minutes to address something. It has become fairly apparent, I’m sure all of you will agree, over the years, that slow vendor response, vendor response times, vendors in general, the average is mediocre. Support is mediocre. Mediocrity is the name of the game. Not only is this a risk. to your network security because I’ve seen vendors on numerous occasions share sensitive information, but there’s also a direct correlation to your budget and your company’s bottom line. Not to mention the sales reps that are trying to sell you and your CEO and your CFO on a daily basis. That causes a whole nother realm of problems that we don’t have time to address. Our back office program at Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, we’ve put together specifically for IT leadership. And it’s on a mission to eliminate this mediocrity. And the best part is that we’re doing this in a way that will not cost your IT department a dime. So if you’d like us to help you out, get better pricing, better support, and jump on pressing issues in minutes, not days, then contact us now so we can get on a call with you and conduct a value discovery session where we find out what you have. why you have it and where you want to go and how we can improve your life, your IT department and your company’s bottom line. What you’re going to end up with is number one, just faster support from partners who care about your organization’s uptime and bottom line. And because you’re going to be able to access our 1.2 billion in combined buying power, you’ll be able to benefit significantly from historical data. And on top of that, you’ll also benefit from the skills of hundreds of on-demand experts that we have working. behind the scenes that are all attached to our back office support program. So if you’d like, again, none of this is ever going to cost you a dime. At the very least, it’s going to open your eyes to what’s possible. Let our back office team provide you the high-touch solutions and support that your IT team deserves so that you can stop calling 1-800-GO-POUND-STAND for support. Now, if you’re wondering, what does this apply to? This applies to… your ISPs, your telecom providers, all your application providers, whether you’re a Microsoft shop or a Google shop, what you might be paying for AWS, even Azure, co-location space, any of those vendors that you’re paying a monthly bill to, we can help you with. Hey, it’s Greg, the Frenchman secretly managing the podcast behind the curtain. To request your one-on-one call, contact us at internet at popularit.net. And remember, it will never cost you a dime. what are we talking about we’re definitely not talking about security there’s some layer uh we’ll we’ll somehow get to this layer of security but i think the point was is like who is who is chris roberts and i get i wanted to ask you why are you still doing this because you seem like the type of person that gets is um kind of a big deal and a lot of people say that and there’s there’s like everyone and um a lot of the the youth the youth nowadays want to get into security. I hear a lot. I want to be an ethical hacker. I hear it a lot over here, believe it or not. And so you’re a role model. You’re a role model from that sense. That’s how I see you. I see you as like a role model to the industry, but then I see you as someone that gets kind of beat up by corporate America and gets like kind of thrown around from here to there and come speak at our conference. And how do you still do this? And.
Speaker 1 | 09:16.012
Yeah, that’s a tough one. I still have money.
Speaker 0 | 09:17.273
You could say money. Money is okay. I mean, we all need that. No,
Speaker 1 | 09:19.895
I mean, I’ve got to put food on the table. I mean, let’s just face it. I made enough mistakes that I still have to put food on the table. I can’t take a step back and go, don’t need to do this anymore.
Speaker 0 | 09:30.864
What’s the mistake? So to save people, what would you say some of those mistakes are to save some of these other career security people or someone that might actually become successful? I’m assuming one of those mistakes might have happened when you became…
Speaker 1 | 09:45.436
somewhat successful and well known i’m just just an assumption i have no clue honestly the biggest mistakes um probably two of the biggest ones one of them was signing a document i should never have signed so i should have had somebody look at that document and that signing that document to this point has cost me the best part of half a million.
Speaker 0 | 10:04.388
Deal with the devil? It was kind of like a deal with the devil?
Speaker 1 | 10:06.809
No, we’re- We can’t say that. Yeah, probably an X. That probably counts as the devil to some degree, but it is what it is. And I still have a fight on my hands for a large chunk of change still to go. That fight’s probably going to happen this year. And that’s a frustrating thing. I signed something I should have had my own lawyer look at it rather than a corporate lawyer. That’s-
Speaker 0 | 10:26.599
that’s one mistake and then the other one orbit lawyer on the same side of the business yeah okay so it’s kind of like it’s it’s just for everyone out there listening when you do grow up in your field and you decide that you don’t have no longer have a job you actually have a career and then someone shows up on your doorstep with a telephone book of legal documents and you get served and you come home to that and your wife signed for it i’m not talking about anything that’s ever happened to me um And then there’s a number attached to it that you could never, ever pay, even if you sold your house and all these other things. It’s a little stressful.
Speaker 1 | 11:04.706
Yeah. And that’s, I’ve made a couple of those mistakes. You know, I’ve been fortunate. You know, over the years, I’ve done okay on a couple of companies. But unfortunately, you know, you plow it all back in again, and then you make a mistake, and off you go back to scratch. I, you know, it’s tough. So from that standpoint, you know, I still put food on the table. The flip side is I still enjoy it. I enjoy the work I do when I can see change, when I can affect change. When I, yeah, when you know this, I mean, you walk into a burning building and you get it all sorted out, you get everybody’s hair settled down, you get everything cleaned up and you hand the keys back and basically say, for crying out loud, don’t go do that again. That to me, I have a level of comfort being able to do that. I’m very much a protector. So for me, being able to go in there and fight the good fight, should we say, is good. Now. The flip side is obviously so much of our industry is, shall we say, challenged and is out for only one thing only, and that’s either themselves or the money in it. And that tends to, how should we say, not exactly align with our simple remit, which is protect others.
Speaker 0 | 12:12.671
I think for the security guys, and I’m not a security guy, I’m really more of like a network IT director, leader, you know, I’m really an ex-washed up. Someone said washed up telecom guy. No, I still love telecom. I am not washed up. But I think for the security guys, I’m seeing a lot of opportunity internationally because I think there’s international governments and stuff that really appreciate security and really want it versus America where it’s kind of like, wow, we’re still doing a lot of business and making money. And what’s the worst case scenario if we get hacked? Whereas I think other countries internationally are taking it very seriously. Do you find that to be true or no?
Speaker 1 | 12:50.539
Well, yeah. I mean, as you said, you’re in Morocco. So you look at that whole Middle Eastern neck of the woods, and I’ve had some absolutely fantastic conversations with folks over in Kuwait, folks over in Qatar, folks over in Turkey, folks over in Greece. I was actually on the phone, had an amazing conversation with a good friend over in Greece a couple of days ago.
Speaker 0 | 13:06.813
And they take you seriously. They take you like you’re a smart person. You know what you’re doing. Whereas in America, it’s kind of like, well, if you don’t know how to make money and you’re not rich, then you’re not really a big deal. Even if you have a PhD, we don’t care about you.
Speaker 1 | 13:18.591
Well, I think it’s also, to the US, they hedge their bets. And unfortunately, a lot of times, back to the human nature conversation, you know, in the US, it’s very much a case of, look, I’m going to explain to you what is going to happen. I’m going to sit down, I’m going to tell you, your ass is in a sling, it’s going to get burned, you’re not going to, you know, all these things. And they’re like, okay, yeah, go be the CISO, sit in the corner and just sign the documentation for us. And then when shit actually happens, they’re surprised. They get confused. Your ass typically gets fired, or if it doesn’t get fired, it’s on the hook for a year or two. And then they’re like, oh, okay, we’re fine again. And then it just dips down. There’s no consistency or air of protecting the very people who hand us their data.
Speaker 0 | 14:03.488
So I’ve said this a lot. I’ve said that, and I don’t think it’s anything new. It’s very cliche or it’s known or it’s been said a bunch of times. the jobs are, your job’s very unforgiving, right? Because if you don’t, if nothing happens, it’s not like people are going around raining a parade for you saying congratulations. And then if something does happen to get fired.
Speaker 1 | 14:19.253
Yeah. And it’s, I mean,
Speaker 0 | 14:20.733
how do you, how do you stay happy? How can somebody be happy in your industry?
Speaker 1 | 14:25.735
I think it’s because there are ways of doing it. And I’ve got to give where I’m at some credit, which is I collaborated. So when I came in, I had a fantastic CTO. So Charles and I knew what we needed to get done. Absolutely amazing guy. And so we collaborated beautifully. And then the nice thing about it is when I was interviewing the head of engineering who deals all with the software. So, I mean, we literally had the trifecta of DevSecOps that did so many good things. Now. You know, things have changed a little bit. Situations change. Financials have changed a little bit. So that’s been definitely constrained, but we’re still able to affect some level of change. And I think that’s it. If you’re in that position where leadership listens because you’re talking their language and they know they’re in an environment where they’re willing to listen, then you can do things. But unfortunately, so many of my peers are in positions where they’re sitting there going, hey, how do we deal with this? And nobody’s listening. And that’s, I don’t have much tolerance for that.
Speaker 0 | 15:24.542
Is it their fault or is it a mix of their fault? Is it an inability to connect, discover, and respond with people? Because what you just said is collaboration and talking with people. And I don’t know what to say there. I mean, because typically the old days of IT and the IT world before security was a thing, right? Because back in the internet wasn’t built thinking really about security. Yeah. It was, you know, the IT guy was… again the guy that hid in the server room and we slipped pieces under the door to you know clean a rollerball you know that was um that was uh that was it right so they were never expected to actually talk with people and now there’s this thing called like you know digital transformation and you know how can we do more and make more money with you know with technology which is a big deal and then security is like a whole nother like it’s this whole other thing yeah and um i’m Most of the space that I work with and a lot of the people that are on the show are in the mid-market space. They’ve got 200 to 2,000 end users, and you’re probably typically called in much bigger enterprises. They’re expected to not only run the entire network, but they’re also expected to be the CISO at the same time because there’s no way that the CEO is going to pay for a CISO in an organization like that when they’ve got three or four guys. So they’ve got an even different, I don’t know, what’s your advice to them? What’s your advice to that?
Speaker 1 | 16:56.066
That one’s a biggie because I mean, you’ve seen the virtual CISO thing and I’m two steps away from doing something very similar. I do a couple of those behind the scenes on the advisory side, but there’s plans afoot, shall we say, where things are going to change. And I’ll probably end up doing more of that virtual CISO, the fractional CISO where you’re right, the 200 to 2000, they’re like, hey. We kind of get this. We kind of do get it. We know what we’ve got to do, but we don’t know how, where to start. We don’t know the balance. We don’t know how to have the conversations about risk or probability. And so I get to come in for a heck of a lot less than I would do as a permanent employee for a portion of my time. And I get to help. I get to guide back to that collaboration, cooperation thing. It doesn’t work if I just come in and go, thou shalt do this, this, and this and bugger off again. It works if you walk in and go, hey, how do… we affect change you know and that’s again you’re right but i mean good grief of life for anybody who’s listening to this if you have any questions about how our industry used to be go read the origins bofh bastard operator from hell just read that from like episode one onwards and you will understand the mindset and the mentality of who we used to be the problem that one more time yeah and then i need you to
Speaker 0 | 18:14.430
Just say that one more time and just for fun, email that to me so I get the spelling right. Because I have a Frenchman, by the way. So Greg, the Frenchman, who’s just my, he’s like, just, he’s my indentured servant because he’s French and he’s, can I say that? That’s probably,
Speaker 1 | 18:31.199
yeah,
Speaker 0 | 18:31.779
or something. No,
Speaker 1 | 18:32.579
no, no, no.
Speaker 0 | 18:33.380
I hate the French, but that’s why, that’s why Greg, you’re working like a slave for me. I know. I’m just kidding. I love my Frenchman. I do hate the French. Can I say that again? I don’t think I can. um the so anyways yeah text that to me uh and greg let’s let’s we got to throw that in the show notes with a link some kind of hyperlink because that sounds like fun oh it’s an amazing it is absolutely an amazing fun thing to do yeah um i have french friends over here i’ve learned more french being in morocco for a month i haven’t moved over here yet but i have been here and they speak a ton of french so i’m like oh i remember how much i hated french class in fourth grade oh my god I’m like, I’m learning all these things. I do a lot of jujitsu, so I’m going to a jujitsu class, and they’re teaching jujitsu in French, and I’m learning all the parts of the body. I’m learning strangulation in French. Okay, so virtual CISO, it’s a nice term. It’s a nice term because MSP has a negative connotation to it. You know what I mean? And MSP is going to try to do this virtual CISO thing, you know, but that’s not going to fly. It’s not, it’s just not going to, what would you do? What would your first thing be like? Do you have a security policy? What would be the first thing that you do? Like, what’s your security policy?
Speaker 1 | 19:53.515
Security policy can happen eventually. The first thing, any CISO, there are two things I always, I joke, but I’m not joking. The first thing I typically do with the company is literally, how can I kill you? How would I kill you inside 24 hours? And that goes across a two-person company or a 200-person company, because you’ll typically get different bits of the conversation. The finance person in that company will be like, well, if the market’s changed, great. So I understand that one. Whoever’s running manufacturing is going to be like, well, a handful of sand in there is going to cause problems. IT is going to have its own way of putting it. And all the different bits of the business, from logistics, from supply chain. So it’s like, all right, now I have three or four ways that I could kill your company. What are you doing about it?” And then you start to walk backwards from that one. Then you start looking at the awareness. So now you’ve understood that. Now it’s like, all right, so the next question is, okay, so you’ve got all these assets. Who’s managing them? How many? And IT will say, well, we’ve got 20,000. And network team will say, well, we’ve got 21,000. Security says, well, we only see 18,000. The business goes, well, we’ve issued 22,000. Then you’re like, all right. How do you know what to protect when you don’t even know what you have? So take a step back. Now let’s get some visibility. Now let’s get some understanding. Now let’s get some awareness. And at that point in time, now you can start making some inroads into that whole wonderful world of maturity.
Speaker 0 | 21:14.261
Love it. Yeah. How can I kill you?
Speaker 1 | 21:17.002
So simple.
Speaker 0 | 21:18.823
Are you a What About Bob fan? I’ve probably watched. It’s like the family.
Speaker 1 | 21:22.605
Ironically, I… Just about to put a LinkedIn post out in about half an hour, an hour’s time. And one of the awards is a What About Bob award.
Speaker 0 | 21:33.348
I mean, it’s just like, it was my mother’s favorite movie. There’s just something about it. You know, God, so simple, you know? That’s great.
Speaker 1 | 21:43.491
So I think that’s the other part that frustrates me about our industry, which is why I want to see change, which is why I’m still doing this is because we. So many of the solutions, we have enough tech to solve everything. At this exact moment in time, we have enough tech to solve everything. What we don’t have is the human aspect of it. What we don’t have is the ability to communicate to the right people effectively. We sure as heck don’t have the collaboration. I can’t count the amount, I don’t want to count the amount of companies I’ve walked into where security don’t get on with the network team because the network team wants to do their one thing and security wants to do the other thing. And then you go to the telecom side, and then everybody’s confused about that one. Then you start looking at the DBAs, and they’re all weird. And you end up with this, I’m like, you’re all getting the same paycheck from the same company. You all really have one job to do, yet none of you can actually communicate and collaborate effectively. What the heck is that thumbs up thing? Whatever.
Speaker 0 | 22:36.984
There’s something about my beard. When it goes in a certain direction, it creates a thumbs up on the screen. i you know fantastic by the way mine was all big and bush you better shave the sides down and so i’m kind of in that do i grow them back again or not this mine just again falls out from jujitsu a handfuls left on the mat every night um okay so i mean collaboration i don’t you know uh the phoenix project didn’t help you guys out that much because they made the they made the cso look like the dumb idiot and that that just causes problems in that book you know what i mean so um yeah that didn’t that’s that’s a
Speaker 1 | 23:11.626
pure example of no collaboration and it’s in a famous best-selling book yeah and that’s problem is is unfortunately a lot of times that is how it is they’re they’re isolated they don’t necessarily they’re not as effective as they should be or unfortunately they’re in the wrong part of the organization i mean it’s you know everybody knows the standard structure ceo cfo reports to the ceo and a couple of others and i mean your average I mean, I’ve literally had three bosses in the last four months, four or five months where I’ve been. And I went into the CTO, then I went into the CFO when the CTO left. Then when the CFO was removed, I ended up going in. I now report into chief legal counsel. And all three of them, I have to learn the way they work. They have to understand the role of security, both physical and digital. And they have to understand what cover fire I need and what challenges I’m going to cause. And also when I need help and all those things, it’s, you know,
Speaker 0 | 24:11.750
my mind with that would just see how I can kill you because you just opened up an entire different world of what this, of how security can make themselves more valuable. You know, we’ve got to prevent sand from getting thrown in. What does that have to do with hacking? Really not much. I can tell you that I’m a pretty good hacker and I’m. idiot. I’m just a lay man. I’m not even smart, but I have hacked plenty of the companies that I’ve helped in the past. Some of them being very, very big companies, just because a buddy of mine that worked inside that company needed help really fast. So I just called up and gave my name to the vendor and the vendor gave me all the information and did exactly what I said, just because I said I was who he was, which doesn’t make any sense. I’ve had vendors, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, because I think vendors are a weak link. I do want to ask you what your favorite vendors are,
Speaker 1 | 25:03.558
but I do think vendors and supply chain depends on how you look at that, but they definitely are.
Speaker 0 | 25:12.005
Let me put it this way. There was a big, I don’t know, request RFP bid that came out, and there was a bunch of people bidding on it. And one thing got through the grapevine, through another thing to the grapevine. And I… I went to a vendor and I said, hey, this guy needs some help with this. I think you guys would be a good fit. And he was like, okay. And then I went to another one and then I got an email with the client that I was trying to help, their entire network map, all their IP addressing schemes, their entire Vizio, all Vizio diagrams, multiple tabs, sent to me. from a complete stranger who didn’t know me and I didn’t know him. And it was via the MSP. And it was because the MSP was getting a handout from the vendor. So I basically called the CTO and I said, hey, look what I got. Where’d you get that? That’s a good point. I don’t really know where I got it. I just know that some guy from some other guy sent it to me. So obviously it’s out there. So. I mean, have you seen that a lot? It must happen all the time. Oh,
Speaker 1 | 26:30.656
it happens. Yeah, too often. And so now, back to that step back. As a company, if I don’t educate the team that’s working inside of me that, hey, our network map with all the IPs and crap on it is considered confidential or even potentially restricted confidential, one, they’re not educated so they know how to send it, handle it, and deal with it. And secondly, they don’t know how to read the riot act to a vendor and supplier to say, hey. If I’m sending this to you or I’m giving this access to you, if I see this anywhere else, I will come after you with a freaking taser. And I think that’s the big thing is we haven’t, and it’s probably not labeled. It probably doesn’t have confidential, restricted confidential on it. So we’re not even doing ourselves a service by going to the business and say, hey, if this is found on the internet, it ain’t pretty. Therefore, this is what we need to do with it.
Speaker 0 | 27:19.607
It just reminded me of a very past life story with a friend that had a friend that used to walk around with a…
Speaker 1 | 27:26.212
with a low level taser and just tase people for fun at large events i mean there’s the two different types that is the one nice thing about this country is you can’t get away with those stupid things i mean you’ve got the ones where you have to have them close but i mean you’re going to be close for that one and if you run into somebody that knows how to turn you into a pretzel it gets harder i like the ones the prongs because you can take like two or three extra steps backwards and you can go to center mass or you can go gangster style and you put one in the head and one in the groin and then you
Speaker 0 | 27:55.628
I think this guy was just using it on like a annoying, I can’t even tell the story. It’s too inappropriate. It’s too inappropriate. It wasn’t really even for anyone that probably deserved it.
Speaker 1 | 28:08.931
They’re the same as well. At least the cattle broad, you got an arm’s reach on that when you just get somebody on the side.
Speaker 0 | 28:13.893
I’m assuming we’re probably close enough to have been alive. You were alive in the 70s. Were you alive in the 70s?
Speaker 1 | 28:21.435
I was alive. I was born in 70s. So yeah, definitely.
Speaker 0 | 28:24.848
Okay. So you remember a time where if we did things like we probably did when we were younger, we’d be like arrested and on the news.
Speaker 1 | 28:33.833
Yes.
Speaker 0 | 28:35.434
I talk with my friend and my kids tell me, tell me another Jason story. Because my best friend was this guy, Jason Gilpatrick, growing up. And every now and then we get together and we’re like, yeah, you know what? If we did that, you know, with those paintball guns or we got onto a boat and we drove out late at night and we drove to the shore where people couldn’t see us and we were shooting. Yeah. I mean, it was just like. Remember the Roman candles out the roof of the car at people?
Speaker 1 | 28:57.207
I used to surf on the roof of the car for crying out loud, going down the bloody motorway. Steve and I used to surf on the roof.
Speaker 0 | 29:03.131
Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 1 | 29:04.612
Yeah. I mean, well, okay. I mean, that’s how I got yelled at one of the first times I got yelled at was my father had me arrested. Thanks,
Speaker 0 | 29:13.699
Dad.
Speaker 1 | 29:14.780
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 29:16.462
I’ll teach you a lesson. Yeah. Thank me. You know, love me now. Thank me later. Whatever that whatever that line is. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 29:23.688
Didn’t really work. Let’s face it.
Speaker 0 | 29:26.650
OK, top vendors. You said we have all the tech in the world. Is there I don’t think there’s a one size fits all for anybody. But is there any vendors that you absolutely love?
Speaker 1 | 29:36.539
Yeah, there’s a couple. And I mean, there’s so
Speaker 0 | 29:39.621
I’m trying to get what. And the reason why I’m doing this is I want to somehow pinch money off of them to sponsor the show. And I don’t know. Because I’ve been doing this show now for almost 300 episodes. And you would think I would start asking people for money to advertise on the show. But I haven’t done it yet. So why not get Chris Roberts, the guy. the guy to tell me what the top vendors are. And then I’ll go down and be like, hey, just wanted to let you know, I’m going to mute your name out if you don’t give me some money. I don’t know, five bucks is fine. Just give me five bucks just so I can say I made something.
Speaker 1 | 30:06.434
I want to know,
Speaker 0 | 30:08.796
because if it comes from you, it’s true. If it comes from someone else, it’s highly skeptical, right? If it comes from a direct sales rep that knocks on your door, it’s skeptical. If it comes from you right now, completely unbiased, that’s important information. That’s why I’m asking.
Speaker 1 | 30:19.785
Yeah, no, there’s probably a couple.
Speaker 0 | 30:21.246
And I don’t want to say unbiased. I want your biased. I want your very biased opinions on what the best vendors are.
Speaker 1 | 30:30.347
Oh yeah. I mean, so I’m lucky because to me, it’s all about the people. I mean, we talk about this, it’s all about the people. So for me, the simple one is, the easiest one is Newspire. So Maria over at Newspire is absolutely freaking amazing because they run our MSSP for us. Again, another one of the scenes came in and said, hey, what are we doing? And they’re like, I’m like, all right, I’m not going to build up a knock on the sock. We’re going to go find somebody useful for doing it. So that to me is probably one of the biggest ones.
Speaker 0 | 30:58.591
Anyone that you want to tag to we’ll tag in the episode. Let’s do it. Maria is going to be real happy now. I was like, what the heck? That’s what happens when you’re a good person. That’s what happens when you’re a good person.
Speaker 1 | 31:08.617
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 0 | 31:09.317
People do things for you. Anyways.
Speaker 1 | 31:12.279
No, you’re good. Maria is good on that one. So I’m helping Sivan over at Onyxia. So that’s another one I absolutely love because that’s all about the visibility stuff again. So, you know, again, walking.
Speaker 0 | 31:27.062
How do you spell that? How do you spell that? What do they do? I don’t know why I’m ignorant when the security. Oh, no,
Speaker 1 | 31:31.684
you’re good.
Speaker 0 | 31:32.204
I’m a layman.
Speaker 1 | 31:33.465
Oh, no, you’re fine. I love the Onyxia is O-N-Y-X-I-A.
Speaker 0 | 31:39.727
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 31:40.648
Yeah. And Siobhan is over there. She’s freaking amazing. Ton of love for what they’re doing on like awareness and visibility. Oh, yeah. Awareness. That’s easy. Gabrielle over at Wiser. Wiser training. You want to talk about somebody who is mission? before money. You just gotta go talk to Gabrielle for like 10 minutes and all of a sudden you’re like, holy shit, he cares. He wants to see change. He gives half of his stuff away for free. Freaking love him.
Speaker 0 | 32:05.738
Wiser.
Speaker 1 | 32:06.979
Yeah, wiser training. I’ll go to the other people that are out there that have a number four somewhere in that thing, but yeah, Gabrielle is, love what he’s doing over at Wiser. Absolutely love what he’s doing over there.
Speaker 0 | 32:19.664
Okay. We need two more. I mean, what about the general stuff? Like, are you, I mean, like, are you a fan of, I don’t know, Microsoft or something? I mean, or what about network? What about network security, like a SD-WAN player or something like that? So the network stuff?
Speaker 1 | 32:37.979
You know, that’s an interesting one.
Speaker 0 | 32:40.742
I like Kato. First of all, I’m wearing the Kato shirt right now. They sent it to me for free. Nice.
Speaker 1 | 32:44.865
Yeah, I haven’t messed with it in that one. I know. Okay, so back on the DevSecOps stuff for a second. J-Frog. Got a lot of love for the folks over at JFrog, like a serious amount of love for what they’re doing. And again, because they’ve got so much stuff on the community side, I think again, SPAC is one of those. They care about the problem. They care about what’s going on, still realize they’re going to put food on the table. So you spin up JFrog and do some other stuff and then you just get the balance. Kind of like Red Hat was donkeys years ago. I mean, you want to go back to how they were. It’s like, hey, we want to do this. We want to do an amazing Linux kernel and core and everything else, but we’ve got to put money on it. We’ve got to put food on the table. So I loved what they were doing on that one. Okay. Yeah, I think on the network stuff, actually, you know what, because I mean, there’s like a network devices and network device to me, it’s the people behind it. So we do a lot of stuff with cross connect. They are all about the human side of it. They’re Denver-ish and a few other places, Colorado Springs, primarily cross connect engineering. They kind of do the whole gamut of Microsoft, Palo Alto, Cisco, and a whole bunch of other things. And like Jeff over there is freaking great they’re one of those people where you get to it you know what this is like with telecom you’re like i don’t know i’ve run out of what i know who the heck do i call because i already know they’re the ones i’ve put a call into and they’re like and they’re like i love it’s like uh i have my best boss right the best boss that i ever had i was in an interview i’ve told this story a ton of times anyone that’s listening to the show yep you’re gonna hear it again uh
Speaker 0 | 34:10.264
donna wank i went in for the interview And she was like, so many people have called me and told me to hire you. This was past corporate life. I don’t do corporate anymore. She’s like, so many people have called me and told me to hire you. I feel like you should be interviewing me. She’s like, so what questions do you have for me? And I said, yeah, why? It was a telecom company, by the way. Yeah. Well hated. And I said, no, but I said, why should I come work for you? And she said, Phil. because we suck less. And I was like, I can run with that. I now know that you are a trustworthy person. And it’s all about building special teams. Like you say, it’s all about the people, it’s about building special teams inside people. Like everyone’s going to have a reason to hate AT&T. Everyone’s going to have a reason to hate. When you’re in Denver, come on cast. Everyone’s going to remember quest Joe Nacho, get Joe Nacho on the phone. I want to talk with him. He’s in jail. Sorry. I can’t talk with him. He’s in jail. That’s, that’s, that’s, uh, you know, how trustworthy. So it’s all about a special team of people that, you know, inside a company. And if you can build those special teams and collaborate, which has kind of been the theme of this show, the people in collaboration, then you can get something done faster, better, hopefully more secure. And yeah. So, okay.
Speaker 1 | 35:33.236
At that point, it’s also people that challenge you. You know, what I love again, whether it’s Newspire, whether it’s any of the other teams, I’m going to come in and go, hey, I’ve got ideas, I’ve got thoughts. I don’t want somebody to agree with me all the time. I want somebody to go, okay, not a bad idea. However, have you thought of A, B, and C? And I’ll be like, thought of A, didn’t know about B, and holy C, she looks really, really good. Now, I’ve got to have the humbleness to be able to actually accept that input. But if I’ve got that… And I can listen to a company that’s willing to actually challenge what I’m thinking. That to me is the perfect match because now you’re going to get the best of all worlds.
Speaker 0 | 36:08.738
I like that you said be humble because I’ve run into a bunch of engineering minded people or they’re like, you will never get the key to my kingdom because then I’ll be jobless. I remember a 600 location, massive, massive hospital network, all running on like a 10 gig, you know, beautiful network. Like. Perfect, right? Like beautiful network. And so you had that, the network guy that had the key to that castle. And then there was like this poor lady managing this old MPLS network with a spreadsheet, with an Excel spreadsheet of daily outages on about like, I don’t know, another 600 weird antiquated PBXs between all these medical facilities that they had. patched together and i was like you know there’s a simple solution to this it’s like you know you know pair off some of this 10 gig network i don’t know run some sip trunking rubs his sip trunking do uh you know i don’t do a direct routing bring this direct route you know i don’t know i was like you’ll solve all your problems day one you won’t throw that spreadsheet away that’s the dumbest thing i’ve ever seen nope no one’s getting my key no one’s touching this network piece you know this is literally a guy that literally hid in the server closet and did nothing all day No one’s ever going to talk to him because the CTO is completely lost in some bureaucratic political battle inside a massive hospital system where there’s a crazy pecking order of no one knows what the heck’s going on in healthcare nowadays. That’s just antiquated. I don’t know if you do anything in healthcare, but I don’t even go near.
Speaker 1 | 37:48.074
Yeah, I help out when I need to, but that’s about as far as it goes. Back to that whole burning building, running into the burning building. Yeah, that would be healthy every now and again.
Speaker 0 | 37:57.364
Well, this has been a lot of fun. I don’t know what to ask you now. I’m usually ever, I’m really not the guy without words I would ask you. I don’t know what’s your, the majority of the people that listen to the show and a lot of people are gonna listen to the show now just because of you. But the majority of the people that follow this show are mid-market IT directors that do not have a virtual CSO. Maybe they should hire a virtual CSO. And I think you gave some really good advice, which is how can I kill you?
Speaker 1 | 38:25.992
um what do you have and if they don’t know you know you know actually lost the screen let me come back i’m gonna actually i pull up because i did a linkedin post ironically we can actually help those folks i did a linkedin post um not that long ago um and it was all about it was all about the cso it was actually you know things to art do i do i need a cso and all that kind of stuff it was all about that one actually they need one but they’re not getting one because it’s not on the budget yeah that’s yeah tell me about it isn’t that the fucking way sometimes but i think it’s one of those things where even if you can’t get one befriend one i mean there’s you know the security conferences or even that educate yourself and you don’t have to go to rsa you sure as heck don’t have to go to black hat although you’re in morocco you uh get out to i’m out in leap out in saudi and riyadh in march get out to leap if you can or Black Hat, Black Hat, Middle East, Africa is September, October timeframe, November, some point.
Speaker 0 | 39:28.683
You don’t have to twist my arm to get on a plane to fly anywhere, to be honest with you.
Speaker 1 | 39:34.646
Yeah, and that’s going to be massive, apparently. And it’s what I love about it. This is, you know, this is when you think about it, this is a call out to all of those, the folks that the IT managers or whoever. go out to a local conference even if you just go to like one of the black hat conferences uh one of the b-sides conferences or you know up in grand rapids go con or you got last con you got all these other ones go out and just listen say hi hang out ask questions
Speaker 0 | 40:01.536
Will you do me a favor for all of our listeners out there? Will you just email me a list of, I don’t know, conferences or something that’s from your world that they know? Because everyone’s in there. They have their conferences from their world. They might not even think or even know about it. It might not even really. And what we’ll do is we’ll put those links in the show notes of some suggestions of where people, good suggestions for further learning and conferences and go befriend somebody.
Speaker 1 | 40:32.216
um yeah i’ll no issues on that at all i’ll put a bunch out for you i put a i put a started an email with you on it so i’ll do that that’ll be fun that’s easy enough to do okay um beautiful i’ll do stuff not just in the us but a lot of us europe and then some middle east stuff yeah there’s plenty of places and way to look there’s a couple of good websites to look for like all the infosec conferences i’m
Speaker 0 | 40:52.725
going to end with one crazy question you answer this however you want uh yeah your ex-military wondering how much you well i know i shouldn’t get political do you ascribe to believe in any possible conspiracy theories that’s one question yeah what did you do prior to the internet being invented or anything that you’d like to share about past i don’t know anything all right so i should should people join this is a very touchy question that i never i never asked because i have a lot of people that are in the military i have a lot of friends that are in military just because of the nature of jiu-jitsu When you’re in jujitsu, the class is made up of basically three people. Middle-aged men like myself going through a midlife crisis that want to be strong and wrestle people. There’s that guy.
Speaker 1 | 41:40.247
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 41:41.167
Pops and ex-military guys and people that just got out of jail. So it’s very interesting. So you’ve got cops in there. They’re like, hey, I arrested you for dealing drugs. Hey, that’s great. Let’s try and choke each other out. Love you now. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 41:55.331
it’ll be a fight. Yeah, exactly. So.
Speaker 0 | 41:57.732
I don’t know what’s more fun for you. So you pick one. What’d you do prior to the internet being invented or how you got started? What was your first computer? How you got started in this craziness? Or do you ascribe to any conspiracy theories or anything that you’d like to share? I’ll hit both of those. The insane world that we’ve been seeing.
Speaker 1 | 42:11.957
Oh, it is, isn’t it? I’ll hit both of those to some degree. So I grew up, to your point, I grew up in the seventies and eighties. Early seventies, I was at boarding school and my first computer was a Sinclair ZX80 and a ZX81 with 4K of memory. I was actually We had the extended module that gave you 4K of memory. And we were building joystick controllers and early worms on that one.
Speaker 0 | 42:36.735
4K?
Speaker 1 | 42:37.776
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 42:39.297
4K with a lowercase k.
Speaker 1 | 42:43.781
The first time my equipment got confiscated, I was 15 years old. And my modem coupler, my Atari 6800, and a Commodore 64 got confiscated.
Speaker 0 | 42:54.109
Why?
Speaker 1 | 42:55.811
I broke into a bank. um war dialing um yep shifted some money around uh back to my father thing my father had me arrested and the bank was like make it go away we don’t know what to do with it so you got your first job yeah not quite but not far off of it yeah um i went in the military when i was 18 uh i did a training corps and everything else beforehand so i mean i was i was learning to fly i was doing all sorts of other stuff and i went in when i was 18 and i got thrown out of airplanes and kicked out of submarines for the best part of 10 years um in various and submarines oh yeah and a few other things what’s it like being in a sub way down deep uh confined especially i’m not small i’m like three and you know six three with a couple hundred pound pack and and all of a sudden those things get really really tight um but it worked i mean it was it was actually warmer than where we were going and it was warmer where than where we were going to be dropped off so we took advantage of it the the teams that looked after us while we were on the subs the sub drivers were freaking amazing absolutely loved them
Speaker 0 | 43:55.764
um just an amazing bunch of folks very special um but definitely pretty amazing so that was well you gotta be to be locked down underwater for months at a time or however yeah talk with some guys that were down underwater for like eight months or something and nukes up sitting on the bottom and my my cousin’s a merchant marine and yeah he you know he i don’t think a marriage ever worked out for him because he was gone for eight months at a time and you know and that’s it you’re gone i mean yes you can do some signaling and some other stuff but you’re gone
Speaker 1 | 44:24.732
and you can’t and it’s it’s a very interesting world some of the stuff i’ve done has come out a lot of the stuff hasn’t probably will never really will ever come out which i’m perfectly happy with so you’re connected with like your comrades and stuff like that do you believe in the method
Speaker 0 | 44:39.804
behind it or the mission behind it because a lot of us you know the mission the vision the so i’m told a bunch of lies or i’m just curious um some of that i did yeah i mean our we were we were fairly specialized in where we got sent and everything else so
Speaker 1 | 44:53.900
we typically got sent in to deal with situations where human life was was at stake and so being able to resolve that was definitely a nice thing um i hear a lot about child trafficking and a lot of under a lot of stuff not being told about child trafficking right now Done a bunch of that.
Speaker 0 | 45:08.533
Secret forces going in under, you know, tunnels underground and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 | 45:13.338
All sorts of stuff, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 45:14.760
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 45:15.881
So that was good. Now, the conspiracy theory stuff is fun because, I mean, Denver. I mean, Denver Airport, apparently, apart from the fact it’s got the evil horse, the blue evil horse that’s there.
Speaker 0 | 45:26.412
I thought that was just a Broncos thing. I was like, yeah.
Speaker 1 | 45:30.004
That horse is freaking, I mean, it’s hilarious. But I mean, you know, the underground conspiracy theory of there has everything from the tunnels going from there, obviously, to the mountain up to Shia all over the place.
Speaker 0 | 45:40.466
It extends because of the missile silos and stuff. But supposedly we can’t have nukes on U.S. soil. But that’s a joke. We all know there’s nukes on U.S. soil.
Speaker 1 | 45:49.169
It’s like a bloody mushroom farm with the stupid things up and down the front range. I mean, I always joked if ever somebody does push the big red button, this whole front range will be a. glass structure of nothingness for the next million years i mean i i remember because i got briefed on it when i came out here because i still have connections inside that side of the world but i remember they’re like so you’re going to move to the place where literally the most or one of the most concentrated drops of new weapons is likely to be i’m like you know might as well if i’m gonna go i’ll go out literally in flames within
Speaker 0 | 46:28.520
milliseconds oh yeah okay so every now and then joe rogan joe rogan clip pops up on like the atomic bomb testing and how that was all fake and like that whole video of like the buildings blowing up was fake because they’re like how could them how could the camera even stay intact when they videoed that uh
Speaker 1 | 46:45.705
because the camera is inside a freaking bunker with 12 inches of freaking glass and i thought
Speaker 0 | 46:51.968
Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 46:52.128
yeah. Oh, no, there is no, I know that because I, yeah, those, those bunkers which they put those cameras in are, let’s just call them sturdy, shall we?
Speaker 0 | 47:00.715
At Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, we expect to win and we expect our IT directors to win. And one of those areas where we know that we can help you win is internet service providers. As an IT director tasked with managing internet connectivity, few vendor relationships can prove more painfully frustrating than the one with your internet service provider. The array of challenges seems never ending from unreliable uptime and insufficient bandwidth to poor customer service and hidden fees. It’s like getting stuck in rush hour traffic. Dealing with ISPs can try once patients even on the best of days. So whether you are managing one location or a hundred locations, our back office support team and vendor partners are the best in the industry. And the best part about this is none of this will ever cost you a dime. due to the partnership and the sponsors that we have behind the scenes of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Let us show you how we can manage away the mediocrity and hit it out of the park. We start by mapping all of the available fiber routes, and we use our $1.2 billion in combined customer buying power and massive economy of scale to map all of your locations, to overcome construction fees, to use industry historical data. to encourage providers to compete for the lowest possible pricing, to negotiate the lowest rates guaranteed, and to provide fast response times in hours, not days. And we leverage aggregators and wholesale relationship to ensure you get the best possible pricing available in the marketplace. And on top of all of this, you get proactive network monitoring and proactive alerts so that you’re not left calling 1-800-GO-POUND-SAN to enter in a ticket number and wonder, why is my internet connection down? In short, We are the partner that you have always wanted, who understands your needs, your frustrations, and knows what you need without you having to ask. So, we’re still human, but we are some of the best, and we aim to win. This all starts with a value discovery call where we find out what you have, why you have it, and what’s on your roadmap. All you need to do is email internet at popularit.net and say, I want help managing all of my internet garbage. Please make my life easier. and we’ll get right on it for you. Have a wonderful day. Knowing what you know now about computers, and you said a Zed something, because in English we say Z, but I have a lot of English friends that say Zed, and they say take out the garbage, and they’re like, amen, and you know. I got the rubbish.
Speaker 1 | 49:34.096
You got the rubbish.
Speaker 0 | 49:34.836
Rubbish, yeah, the rubbish. We don’t say trash. That’s for like losers.
Speaker 1 | 49:38.677
The garage as well. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 49:40.998
This is another reason why I think, this is a reason why I think people with any type of English accent or something, are you should be more skeptical of them for some reason we trust people in america that have an english you ever notice that no seriously i’m like i’m like if i need a sales guy i’m hiring an english guy because oh no reason i’m gonna trust him because he talks like this and he’s just trustworthy because he’s from england and he’s got a big job so why would he
Speaker 1 | 50:05.312
I say, I do apologize. I wasn’t meant to be doing that speed. Oh, I’m ever so sorry. I do apologize. I just flew in. What should one do? Oh, yes. Ever so. Well done there, chap. Thank you very much. Good for keeping everybody.
Speaker 0 | 50:17.935
I’ll buy it. Where do I sign? Yeah, I mean, it’s just, it makes no sense, but that’s how idiotic we are. So knowing what you know, having had a Z something model computer, I definitely understand Commodore. I understand that it was way above my mind, but, um, you got locked up for um moving well you got your hand slap because you’re a youth and they’re probably such a smart kid now you should like yeah it’s like yeah um knowing what you know now about the ability to compute yeah and and again the frenchman greg yep greg the frenchman is going to do what he’s already done he’s already doing this whole collaboration on please will someone please psychologically help phil um he has like a whole collaboration of me asking this question to all kinds of people on the show and he’s making fun of it but um did we land on the moon yes you really believe that oh i more than believe it the more i read about it the more i read about the lift and the physics behind it not just the general picture of everything that they told everyone but when i looked like the the rocket engines had to list 10 million pounds and like the ability to you know they looked out the window and they used the stars to to navigate and all the problems that could go wrong and how many times we tested boeing 7047 before we even allowed to get off the ground and we didn’t test hardly anything before we sent men to the moon i just don’t believe it because it was a race i mean we didn’t want the russians getting there first it had nothing to do with i mean it had to do with engineering that was already this was you know i mean they already beat us into space let’s face it and now i mean the amount of aggro and hassle and anger and
Speaker 1 | 51:55.340
chest beating that that caused. I mean, that was egg on the face moment for as far as this country was concerned, we’d been beaten by the commune. I mean, good grief. Oh, yeah, no collaboration then we need to be the best.
Speaker 0 | 52:07.386
At this point, I’ve read so many books on the subject that I have more evidence that we didn’t land on the moon than we did.
Speaker 1 | 52:13.689
So, let me caveat that. I’m very fortunate. A very good friend of mine and former significant is her father is Emirates Chairman of the smithsonian air and space institute a very very good friend of theirs was a one single mr armstrong along with his life now they were very very good friends and uh david is still a member of a society shall we say that uh that neil and others were a member of and so yes uh knowing i did not get to know neil person i knew his wife But Neil, unfortunately, passed away before I got to know him. But David and a few others. David actually has one of the postcards that went there. So knowing that connection and also hearing all the stories from Neil and everything else on that one, I have that firsthand experience. So I would absolutely say yes. And there’s no, I mean, yes, we’ll go with that one. Okay.
Speaker 0 | 53:08.244
Yeah. Really hoping for more, but you know, whatever. You got it. No, no. What are you going to do?
Speaker 1 | 53:13.908
Uh, now some of the other crazy, I think here’s where it gets interesting because some of the other crazy,
Speaker 0 | 53:18.011
why have we not gone back? Why have we not gone back? Why, why, why? We have an iPhone.
Speaker 1 | 53:23.895
We did it. No, we did it.
Speaker 0 | 53:27.798
First of all, I don’t believe we did it. I really don’t.
Speaker 1 | 53:31.760
Here’s the thing. We did it, which was an up yours to the right. Seriously.
Speaker 0 | 53:37.364
No one else has landed on the moon. We should have a colony on there. We should have all kinds of stuff on there. I don’t know. We should have something going on on the moon. Nowhere in…
Speaker 1 | 53:48.300
nowhere have we ever gone backwards in history we’ve never gone backwards in technology uh so this is the one thing a boom we did we had the concorde we used to be able to fly passengers at the speed of sound and then we got rid of it okay and now that’s why booms we’re building another one because we’re like i don’t i don’t want to sit on a tin can for 14 or 16 hours get my ass there as fast as you know but we have planes that go faster than the concord did that’s just a choice that’s just like a like
Speaker 0 | 54:11.450
can we sh is there any that’s like a
Speaker 1 | 54:13.828
again back to a choice but it’s the same thing with the moon we have that same thing with the moon we have a choice but we decided we’ve done it we put the biggest middle finger known to mankind by putting a flag on that place let’s face it and if you get a powerful enough telescope you can see that flag on there i don’t think you can prove it i
Speaker 0 | 54:30.938
don’t think there’s a powerful enough telescope that’s seen it i’ve already googled that i’ve already googled that ever i’ve googled every objection that everyone’s come up with you I know you probably don’t have time. I don’t know if you read books in the bathroom, but I read all these moon books in the bathroom because I figured why I’m going to waste time on something that’s just a conspiracy theory. Well, I’m in the bathroom, so I might as well read these books while I’m in the bathroom. I’d be happy to send you the three that I sent. And after it, I was, I mean, really, I’m like a little blown away. I can’t speak. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 54:56.674
talk them over. That would be fun. I don’t mind reading. I haven’t, I mean, it’s like anything. I love. I actually love reading about this stuff because I’m always intrigued by it. I was up in upstate New York and we were talking about tunnels, the tunnels going into and from DC and everywhere else. And somebody said, there’s a tunnel upstate New York going in. I’m like, I find it hard to think that we would do that because of the engineering involved, but knowing we’ve done stuff everywhere else, okay, let’s go dig for it. Let’s go find, see what we can find. And spent a bunch of time trying to figure that one out. It was actually kind of cool.
Speaker 0 | 55:25.149
Was there a tunnel?
Speaker 1 | 55:27.050
uh we didn’t find one but i kept hearing all these i kept hearing all these like well maybe it’s there and this and then no like an old abandoned tunnel or one that’s being used like secretly by the government or something potentially one that’s being used secretly by the government but this is coming from somebody who was a kid i found a map of where all the world war two tunnels were in the uk and there were a bunch of us when i was in the extrinsical we have sailed into a bunch of that and we were walking around all these old mines all these old tunnels yeah there is So stuff like that was around. So what’s to say we haven’t kept doing some of that and we’ve managed to keep things a little more secret. Now, flip side is, is keeping things secret is hard. Tell me. And that’s, that’s, I think where I also, I also have a problem with the whole thing.
Speaker 0 | 56:11.981
Oh, well, there’s a, yeah, there’s can’t go down that rabbit hole right now, but there’s a plenty of evidence of, of how, when you run an organization and you have, and we just talked about it on this entire call about how. a lack of collaboration and how easy it is to divide an organization up into a bunch of different parts that don’t communicate with each other and just send orders down and say hey go make this part we need this for the rocket yes yeah no they’re working on it together but there’s no communication all the way up to the top i mean um well
Speaker 1 | 56:43.636
that’s i mean you get a lot of that stuff the compartmentalization i remember do you remember the global explorer that whole shenanigans about us uh acquiring the russian submarine using an oil drink that was uh back in the howard hughes days no i don’t know that read that one that you want to talk about a conspiracy not even a cons i mean it was a conspiracy theory but there’s actually a lot of truth to it you want to talk about so that was freaking
Speaker 0 | 57:06.388
amazing the global explore thing that is one of those things where global explorer global explorer yeah i mean i can explain all these things because it’s just a new world order that we’re trying to build and really no one’s really in charge of anything you know right
Speaker 1 | 57:19.298
I do. I do. Okay. I wish somebody, I wish we could actually figure out who to blame for some of this crazy shit. I want, I want a door. I want a number and I want that computer. Cause, cause we’re going to make some changes. I tell you. Uh,
Speaker 0 | 57:33.125
black rock. Let’s see. It’s probably a bunch of other people. What else can we say? Can I say that? I’ll probably get shot now. If I, well, you’re going to have to come find me. You know, what’s really interesting about Morocco is it’s very secure police everywhere.
Speaker 1 | 57:47.354
people respect the police everyone talk with the police it’s very awesome not glory safe glomar glomar explorer i’m actually saying low mom yeah glomar i’m sending you i’m sending you the wikipedia yeah glomar explorer um there we go i’m sending it to you there we go it’s
Speaker 0 | 58:05.289
on uh i kicked it over to you on linkedin so you pretty much you pretty much play in the business world but so i mean i mean oh i play is government secure No. If I had to guess, I would say highly insecure.
Speaker 1 | 58:18.668
Oh, it’s absolutely not secure at all. I mean, you’re talking about… Joke. Years and years ago, I helped build certain tools and certain sets for certain sets of people. And then several years ago, like three, four, five years ago, some Muppet managed to lose half of those tools. I mean, you’re going to be freaking kidding me. So, no, unfortunately, I mean, we know that OPM breaches. There’s continual breaches on this one. They’re one of the biggest targets. You want to talk about nukes. This is the interesting one in nukes. And we were talking about this. There were a number of us who were running through some scenarios because I still play on that side of the world. I still have a foot on that side of the world. And somebody was like, oh, my gosh, you know, the nuclear weapons are still using, you know, fucking floppy disks. And I’m like, yeah. I said, you really want to connect those things up to the computers? No. You want to put them on the Internet? No. But then we got talking about the signaling and who owns. You want to talk about telecom in the middle of Nebraska, in the middle of. wyoming and all those ones who owns the telecom that runs the signals to and from those places and it isn’t american company so yeah there’s some fun conversations to be had across that entire part of the world oh yeah i love this stuff it’s i
Speaker 0 | 59:30.077
i have a i have like a an old it director that worked you know he was like the guy just the kind of like the local guy that was drove around in a an old white pickup truck with the shocks all busted out but like 15 antennas on it you know like the antenna guy you see the antenna guy driving around he’s the antenna guy but he’s also the it guy so he was still communicating via what’s that wireless network that’s like opens open you know to the public it’s like you operates on like you know oh the new bod to bod or something like that you know what i mean there’s no way so he can like you know he’s just always excited you know when all hell breaks loose you know i’ll still be communicating globally it won’t be fast but i still can send a message you know via this old you know like antenna network you know somehow or radio radio frequency network i gotta look it up
Speaker 1 | 60:25.450
I don’t know if that’ll work. If we do high-altitude EMPs, I don’t know if that will work or if it’ll fry. That would be an interesting one because you have a long antenna. That means you have something really big and long that frequencies can really get nasty on.
Speaker 0 | 60:39.639
It’s like a whole group of convoy guys. Hey, we’re communicating. Oh, yeah. That type of thing for fun. This has been fun. Final message to send to anyone out there listening.
Speaker 1 | 60:56.058
I think it’s that one thing I want to run the gravestone. I just want people to ask one more question. To your point, you know, the conspiracy theory, whether you believe them or don’t, investigate them, make your own mind up, but ask the damn questions. Same thing with security, same thing with IT and technology. Stop accepting what’s given to you and get out there and ask another question.
Speaker 0 | 61:18.124
I love it. Chris Roberts, kind of a big deal. Thank you so much for being on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds.
Speaker 1 | 61:24.266
Thank you. Hugely appreciate it.
