The Random Adventure That Is Life (RATIL)

adventure

Mount Evans - 14,264'

Mount Evans is Colorado's 14th highest peak and also one of the most accessible as it has a road to the top. I tried to summit this mountain a few weeks ago with my 2-year-old on my back. We ended up turning back because he was ready to

adventure

Pit Stop At Arches National Park

The drive from Las Vegas to Denver is a long one.  Somewhere in the 11-12 hour range. This length of trip necessitates at least one major pitstop (on top of regular gas and snacks). Luckily Arches National Park is almost exactly half way and made for a perfect opportunity to

adventure

Zion National Park - Partial Zion Traverse

I was in Las Vegas for work and had a long-ish weekend due to moving from day shift to night shift. I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to plan a trip to Zion National Park [https://www.nps.gov/zion/index.htm] for some wilderness backpacking. The park

adventure

10 Years, 10 Things I Have Learned

My wife and I have been married for 10 YEARS TODAY!!!!  It is insane how quickly time flies and how many life events have happened in that time. I love her more than anything in the world but as they say "marriage is work".  I think we would

adventure

Olive Ridge Campground - With A 2-Year-Old

With the weather being so outstanding, we decided to pack up the fam and head up into the mountains to get a weekend camping trip under our belts. We had previously taken the little guy camping [https://ratil.life/camping-with-a-1-year-old/] back in Texas for one night. This trip was a

adventure

Mount Falcon Park

We were looking for a hike on the west side of Denver so that we could meet up with friends in the area afterwards.Mount Falcon Park [https://www.jeffco.us/1332/Mount-Falcon-Park] was in the perfect spot for the time we had between nap time ending for the little

adventure

Saint Mary's Glacier

Being in Colorado, I felt the itch to get up into the mountains before our first month in our new home was up.  On a suggestion from my brother-in-law, we decided to head up to Saint Mary's Glacier. The glacier is just past Idaho Springs on I-70 so

computers

pfSense With CenturyLink 1GB Fiber

We just recently moved into a neighborhood that offers CenturyLink 1GB fiber into the house.  I mistakenly though the change would be as simple as plugging in my current setup to whatever modem they provided.  Turns out that is not the case and that a little more work is required.

computers

Hack The Box: Irked

Irked: Retired If you are interested in learning more about penetration testing, Hack the Box is a great way to get your feet wet in a legal and well built environment. Head over to hackthebox.eu [https://hackthebox.eu] to get started. Enumeration My initial enumeration returned a handful of

computers

pfSense Insights

This post will be updated as I find out interesting tidbits while working with my pfSense. Usually this will be getting something in the house to work as expected with out opening up the firewall to everything. Amazon Shopping App UPDATE: The solution listed below no longer works. The Amazon

adventure

Big Bend National Park: Outer Mountain Loop

I had about 3.5 days of my first quarter time off leftover after trips to Washington (working vacation) and Hawaii and I desperately wanted to do a backpacking trip in Big Bend.  Some quick Googling led me to the Outer Mountain Loop.  This trip can be anywhere from 25-45

adventure

Moanalua Valley Middle Ridge to the Forbidden Haiku Stairs

Distance: 9.6 miles Time To Top: 3 hours 8 minutes Time Down" 2 hours 25 minutes Round Trip Time: 6 hours GPS Track Of My HikeWith a new baby in the family, it was time to pack up and head back to Hawaii to see the new little

crossfit

Why Jillian Michaels Is Right and Wrong About Crossfit

The CrossFit community has had their collective wrist wraps in a twist this week due to a video and article [https://www.shape.com/fitness/trends/why-jillian-michaels-wants-you-stop-kipping-crossfit] posted on Shape.com [https://www.shape.com] by Jillian Michaels (of The Biggest Loser fame) where she apparently "slams" CrossFit.

computers

Verifying Slack Slash Commands in Google Cloud Functions

Recently Slack moved from using "Validation Tokens" to validate that Slash Command requests were actually from Slack to signing the requests with a "Client Signing Secret".  This seems like a simple change but turned out to be a huge pain in the butt to figure out.

computers

SANS Holiday Hack 2018

I have to be honest, life is just too busy this year for me to actually write a full report in the context of the story. Suffice it to say, I really enjoyed this year's challenge, much better than last year in terms of not having to actually

adventure

Flying To Dallas With A Toddler

I have been wanting to fly to Dallas for a while and 3 opportunities in a row have resulted in the weather not cooperating. Well, we finally had the weather we needed to make the trip. I generally prefer to fly the Flight School's Cessna 172, but after

diy

Sump Pump Replacement

Over the holidays I went over to my mom's house to visit and as I walk in the door, she is pulling everything out of the closet under the stairs and I could hear a high-pitched alarm going off.  Her sump alarm was going off. My mom really

commentary

On Social Issues

Over the last few months I have started a handful of blog posts about social issues of particular importance to me. These include: * On Being A Man * What Adoption Has Taught Me About Race * On White Fragility Each of these posts has remained unpublished because as I start to unpack

acura

2017 Acura RDX 'A16' Service

DIY car service can save you some serious money, especially when some of the maintenance can be done in your own garage. The A16 service for the RDX is: * Oil change (no filter, that is only with B service) * Rear differential fluid change * Tire rotation Cost Because I had already

computers

Hack The Box: Jerry

Jerry: Retired 17 November 2018 If you are interested in learning more about penetration testing, Hack the Box is a great way to get your feet wet in a legal and well built environment. Head over to hackthebox.eu [https://hackthebox.eu] to get started. This box was almost too

computers

Holiday Theming

Update: Added more to the commandline zsh config to apply specific emoji throughout the year. I have been playing around with a few theme options lately and the holidays got me in the spirit to adjust appropriately. Specifically, my command line theme and my Razer keyboard theme. Command Line After

computers

Hack The Box: DevOops

DevOops: Retired 13 October 2018 If you are interested in learning more about penetration testing, Hack the Box is a great way to get your feet wet in a legal and well built environment. Head over to hackthebox.eu [https://hackthebox.eu] to get started. Been a while since I

fun

Camping With A 1-Year-Old

The Wifey was working on a Sunday so I decided to spring into manly action and plan a camping trip for Saturday night with the kiddo. I really wanted two things out of the trip: 1) to take the little guy on his first camping trip and 2) to use

fun

Friedrich Wilderness Park

We had an uncharacteristically nice day this week after months of the Summer's oppressive heat and then a month of monsoon season.  With a little bit of cabin fever from not having been able to go hiking for months, this was a perfect day to hit the trail.

computers

Server Migration

I had a need to migrate this server to a different provider for cost reasons. This was also a good chance to document my process since I did NOT do that last time. I ended up going with Digital Ocean [https://www.digitalocean.com/].Amazon [https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/