Interesting place. The Musical Instruments Museum in Vermillion, SD is a must-see. The gun range was great too - accidentally asked for a 9mm instead of a .22. The bullets for the former are rather more expensive, but I'm getting better at not flinching from the noise and the recoil.
This post is really about noting that while I've been focusing on networking the last few months my pentest skills have really withered. The last full pentest, from start to finish, was in September, and I'd forgotten what it really meant to use ingenuity, a bit of scripting, and a lot of research to exploit vulnerabilities in which I don't fully grok what is going on (thanks btw to Robert Heinlein for the word). It's not just Nmap - Nessus - Exploitation, there's a lot more to do. I also realized that the lack of tools for parsing Nessus files are really hurting me. Once nmap has run, I need to be able to see what's on the network as fast as possible. Parsing out all the ports open by IP/port is not cutting it; things need to be much more visual.
Above all however, it's time to really sit down and perform the exercises in self-flagellation and frustration that are pentest VMs, for only by doing those can I become better, faster, and ultimately happier at my job. The issues with the Thinkpad laptop have been resolved, so it's time to install VMWare workstation on it and get to hacking. But first I gotta do some reports.
