Archive for the ‘ Life ’ Category

Finally, back home

Yeah, I know I haven’t been updating my blog lately, but I’ve been mostly away (travelling) for the past couple of months. Here’s what’s been keeping me busy:

  • a 3-week trip to the US, visiting Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond (MVP Summit), New Jersey/New York (SolarVPS HQ), Miami (Parallels Summit) and Las Vegas (Channel Partners Conference); had a great time with Ross (@solarvps), Jason (@dedicatednow) and Bogdan (@bogdanfetita)
  • a 4-week national launch tour for System Center Essentials 2010, along with Adrian Stoian (System Center MVP), covering 9 events in 5 cities around Romania (Bucharest, Cluj, Timișoara, Iași and Brașov); we’ve had somewhere around 500 people attending the events
  • 15 airplane flights (that’s an average of one every four days) on 6 different airlines
  • 8 train rides (each with an average timespan of 7-8 hours)
  • 30.000+ km in total (flights, trains, etc)

All in all, even though it’s been very tiresome, I had a lot of fun! :)

Now that I’m back, besides the fact that I’m (hopefully) done travelling for a while, I’ll be spending some time catching up with some of the pending stuff, and I’ll also go back to work on a little project that I’ll be announcing soon.

On a side note, Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4 and Silverlight 4 are out, and Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 RTM-ed and will be coming out soon. :D

2010
04/19
CATEGORY
Life
MVP
Microsoft
Travelling
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The 2010 MVP Summit experience

I’ve just returned from this year’s MVP Summit, and it’s been quite an experience! Got the chance to talk with a few fellow MVPs, and most of all, got to spend a couple of amazing days with Ben, Mike and the rest of the Virtualization team in the Microsoft Campus over in Redmond (or the “NDA Campus”, as people ended up calling it on twitter, due to obvious reasons). We were among the few “privileged” MVPs that got a good load of “super duper secret special NDA” material. But all I can say right now (while still under NDA) is that really cool things are coming, and they’re well worth the wait! :)

The Sheraton in Bellevue was also a very nice location to stay in, and Bellevue in itself is quite a treat. The flight to New Jersey wasn’t as pleasant as I would have expected though, but hey – you win some, you lose some, I guess.

I’ll be staying in the US for another 2 weeks or so, getting to go to New York, Miami and Las Vegas. Should be fun!

2010
02/21
CATEGORY
Events
Life
MVP
Microsoft
Travelling
Virtualization
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White Hat Hacking course round-up

Okay, now that the WHH course is over, here’s a quick link to all the presentations [in Romanian]:

Also, for all those who attended the course, I have some extra content available for download on whh.tudy.ro. For the ones that weren’t present at the last meeting: you may contact me directly for access. ;)

A big thanks to MAP UBB for their help in organizing this, and of course to all the attendees, along with a note that I’m still available for any questions/discussions you might want to raise on the subject. :)

2009
12/06
CATEGORY
Events
Life
Security
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White Hat Hacking course #3

This Saturday I’m holding the third and last part of my White Hat Hacking course.

This one is going to address information security (malware, botnets, phishing, crimeware, scareware, ddos attacks, etc), web threats (SQLi, XSS, CSRF, RFI) and some general network/security best practices.

The time and place are the same as previously announced.

2009
12/01
CATEGORY
Events
Life
Security
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White Hat Hacking course #2

After last week’s meeting, where we talked about hacking ethics and social engineering, tomorrow it’s time for the second part of my WHH course – this time about privacy, social media security and wireless networks.

The time and location are the same. :)

2009
11/27
CATEGORY
Events
Life
Security
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White Hat Hacking course

Just got back from Sinergija ’09 in Belgrade, thus the delay in announcing this: after last year’s course‘s positive feedback, I’ll be holding the White Hat Hacking course again this year, starting tomorrow.

Even if it’s roughly the same outline as last year, there’s going to be some extra/updated content. To sum things up, I’ll be addressing topics such as social engineering, hacking ethics, systems security attacks, penetration testing, web and wireless security.

You can find more details on the time and place of the event on the event page.

2009
11/20
CATEGORY
Events
Life
Security
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So, what’s the deal with tudy.ro?

Since there’ve been some recent (heated, but rather missing the point) discussions about this, I’d like to set some things straight about the very purpose of this site:

tudy.ro is, and has always been, a personal blog. It’s not (I say again, NOT) a technical blog, nor does it want to be, and it’s not a method of promoting myself or my technical skills through articles of any kind. It’s just a place where I keep the texts I’ve written over the years, and where I write about (or point to) whatever else I read or find of interest. A place where I write about my life, in general. I also use it as sort of a coding playground, from time to time.

Given all the above, I don’t believe this site has *any* relevance as far as my technical skills and knowledge are concerned. It may however be relevant as far as my literary talents (if any) go. People believing otherwise are entitled to do so by their own free will…

Hopefully, this sheds some light on the matter! :)

2009
10/20
CATEGORY
Life
Rant
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