Interview #5 - Thom the hacker

 New interview today! My good friend Thom Hastings agreed to be interviewed! A little background on Thom from my own experiences. Thom is an extremely talented computer programmer and in my mind deserves the label "hacker" for both the original meaning and the modern meaning. If you don't know the difference you may go search Google now, we can wait for you to educate yourself :).

Allllllll right! Let's get started!

Introduce yourself!

Good day everyone, my name is Thom Hastings, and I try to be an open book.

Where were you born and where did you grow up? What was it like growing up there?

I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. It was a wonderful place to grow up, lots of good friends, kids in the neighborhood my age, role models, older brother figures, and low crime in the suburbs far away from downtown. I was very fortunate to have a nice childhood.

Are you a full time student or an Exchange student?

I am an exchange student.

                                                                                  Why did you decide to come to APU?

My girlfriend got a job teaching English in Japan, and I didn’t want to let her get away. I was planning only to visit her, but I saw a flyer for a study abroad program in Japan at my school. I did everything to sign up, and now I’m here! Though she’s in a different city, I’ve gotten to spend three full weeks with her so far over my stay here and a weekend trip as well. We have another weekend trip planned, as well as another full week, and I simply must say it’s been worth every instant. But luckily enough, I’d already studied Japanese for six years, and APU has an excellent Information Security Systems Management class at APM that’s perfectly suited for my ideal career path.

What are your plans after this semester ends? Short term, then long term plans.

I will return to St. Louis University in St. Louis where in one year I will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science. I will then be applying to jobs, though these are back-up plans. My primary goal is to attend graduate school at New York University Polytechnic Institute (NYU:Poly) where I will get a Master of Science in Cyber Security. After working for a high-level computer security consulting firm, I hope to eventually start my own small consulting agency.

What is the most valuable thing you have learned while at APU?

The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of a company is responsible for writing, maintaining, and implementing a Security Policy. This is a role I could find myself in in the future.
 

What is your favorite Japanese word/phrase, and why?

“shikata ga nai”—a Japanese phrase, but also the name of a polymorphic encoding algorithm used to avoid antivirus detection on payloads and shellcode in malicious viruses and exploits.

What is your FAVORITE Japanese food?

Okonomiyaki: Hiroshima-style

How did you meet me?

We met at Fukuoka Airport, at the start of the GlobalLinks program.

What was your first impression?
I was impressed when you said you’d heard of BackTrack Linux.


Describe your favorite experience with me thus far here in Japan.

Sloppy-ass drunk karaoke--and the obvious shoe-in-the-middle-of-the-road-bowing-to-a-car-‘sumimasen’-story.

Am I absolutely awful at Karaoke?
You can scream “NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA” from that Blink 182 song really well after about 9 whiskey and coke’s.


After knowing me for as long as you have, would you ever visit Texas to see what it was like? Why or why not.

Hell yes. Midwestern humor for life!

Want to give attack vector a shoutout?

Yes. <attack vector shoutout>

Final thoughts, comments?

Garrett, you’ve been a great friend to me here in Japan, and I respect you a lot. I wish you all the best in life, and should our paths cross in the business world as well, I look forward to it.


Thanks for the interview Thom! Can't wait to do business together. Attack vector is going to be amazing!

All right, thanks for reading guys. Check back tomorrow for either another interview, or a post about my Japanese girl band dance 0.o

No song of the day today because I don't feel like it! :D