About

In hopes to retain and entertain a few I put this press site together. The basis for the form is simplicity and logical, linear thought pressed to the web. The name shifk.com came to fruition as I was trying to shorten the name of my wifes child care business. The attempt to advertise for her venture took a diferent direction and the name shifk.com stuck with me. To repurpose the domain I thought why not throw together some of my IT stuff, partially for my own reference and notes; also to give information for others seeking the same things. I generally leant towards GNU/free software. I started out on Debian so most of the software I use is hosted on a debian based machine. FreeBSD and OpenBSD arent far behind, Windows at work and everything in between. Some people have asked me why I bother with linux, when OSx and Windows are so much easier. I explained it like this, imagine Windows and Unix in a family situation… Well Unix would be like the big brother to Windows, stronger, smarter, but more complicated. The best thing a big brother does is protect, and that is exactly what Linux is good at; protecting, securing networks so that the little brother windows can play and not be harmed by all the malware floating around in hyper space. Oddly enough I was actually telling that little metaphor to my little brother and quickly caught on, and has been dabbling with Ubuntu himself.

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I am a self reliant individual, I take pride in my logical thought process and my ability to reason. I have spent the last 6 Years in the United States Marine Corps. I have learned valuable lessons about morale and leadership while working with the Marines.  I am in the telecommunications industry with a tactical twist. We implement 1.5 Million dollar pieces of communications equipment into hostile environments and provide services to end users to any extent, from a few users on an open network, to a secure classified network with thousands of end users. The skills I have acquired from working in this type of environment are invaluable.

If you are a seasoned Unix veteran you might find my blog a little lay, as I would like to reach the masses. I will gear my posts towards a broad spectrum.  I have spent much time sorting through white pages, man pages and other various documentation. For me the best thing to use is an up to date copy and paste method via the console. f it doesn’t “just work” then its back to the drawing board. The keep it simple Philosophy should always be utilized when possible. Yes, Linux is simple, text based plain English configuration files, give you both ease of use and 100% control over how your system operates. A computer should do what you tell it to.

This blog will not be an advertisement for software, just a record of projects that I get into. My personal, not so personal notes. I may recommend certain software but that is only on the basis that I use it, nothing more nothing less. Open source software is what the user makes it, sort of like a blank canvas for an artist. Take a fresh debian squeeze install and turn it into a web server with apache 2, or compile from source implementing the bare essentials. The sky is the limit.  I will enjoy recording, building, and blogging as should you. Please enjoy.

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