Ha sorry I forgot I brought this back from the dead.  Can't say much though.  Fun job it seems. Reading over some things again and trying to read between the lines.  It's mostly a Pen Testing job.  Cool beans!

It's been a while, about a year since I started this thread.  Some things are changing now though.  Although working for the DOJ has been fun and I've learned a lot I'm moving onto a different agency.  This new job will make me a more complete Security/Forensics/Pen Testing professional.

One of the issues that we have here is that people are not scared of the Gov/Military and want to discredit them as soon as they get a chance. Whereas in China the Gov/ Military are held in high esteem so they have the complete public backing and you have students that want have passion about their countries progression.

They recruit their kids out of HS to begin hacking targets against the US.  Whereas here in the US the kids in HS are hacking their schools printers or networks or going after larger targets.  Kids these days think that Anon and lulzsec are fighting for them when in fact they fight for their own ideology where they see fit.  We need to start when kids are younger and get them in the correct thought process or at least that hacking the gov isn't helping anything.  Uncovering state secrets is hurting us economically....this is the hard part though.  Getting young people to think like an adult and rethink their actions. 

If the US was attacked by a Cyber Attack I think that it would be like WW2 where the Japanese Admiral stated : "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant. Yamamoto.. The admiral was later discovered to be flying from one island to another and we shot all of his escort planes and also his plane down.  In this same aspect I think if China launched an attack that disabled us for a while they would have more that they can handle. 

Got the free practice today....Thanks.

Reading books above your level of understanding will make you familiar with the terminology and possibly what it's used for but if the topic is just way above your head then reading many books won't help.  What will help is doing different things, then go back and read the parts that you don't understand again.

You may be out of luck all together and the HDD is just bad and nothing can read it or even see it.  I had this 2 wks ago with a case I am working on.

It was a USB external drive.  I tried it with Encase, FTK, a Knoppix boot CD, a Tableau TD1 and even a Tableau USB Bridge.  Nothing worked.  The computer wouldn't even see it so we had to write a NO Findings report on it.

Alternate data streams.  We learned how to do them in a gov class I took.  You can use a .txt file let's say and save it and alter it somehow...by adding more text to it.. and the file size nor the file itself shows up.  It's pretty tricky.

PM sent.

I wouldn't mind getting a free shot at it to see where I stand and what I need to polish up on.

This is good.  I will try this.  Going to do some organizing soon.

Techno all the way. I only listen to Trance and I have a playlist with high tempo songs that also gets me in the zone. I will be typing, then stop think and then FIST PUMP for a few minutes.

Another thing I do is tune into iTunes radio ah.fm again techno. Good stuff. Leads to more fist pumping and clicking repeat.

I agree with you. Sorry if it was assumed the notes would get me by the entire test. I was just wondering how you guys were structuring your notes. I will take all of your input and see what works for me and then go from there.

When prepping for an upcoming GIAC test and since the tests are open book with the course materials that they gave you in class.  How are you organizing the notes from the books?

Are you tabbing all the pages? 
Are you writing completely different notes all together?
Is it a mix and match of the above two?
Are you using outside resources that were not in the book?

I am going to go through my GCFE books and redo them and then retake the test soon and I could use some suggestions to do this the best way.

Update......

Got Network+ knocked out this past Saturday.

Once you get the root password for both machines the practical side of the cert is done and there is nothing else that you really have to do.  Turn your report in and be happy that you got the cert.  Just make sure everything is documented.

I just passed this in December and thought I failed but a few days later got word that I passed.