Rick Gouin

Category: Tech Soup

New WordPress Theme

· Rick Gouin
Logo for the Polar Wave wordpress theme

Its been almost 3 years since I updated the theme on this website.  You can see the article about that here.  At the time, I didn’t want to spend any time on it at all, so I just found the quickest and easiest theme to implement with minimal changes.  I never really liked the theme, it lacked some features I wanted, and had a lot of wasted space. Even though I am VERY MUCH a back-end sort of developer, I decided to create my own theme from scratch, which is what you are looking at now!  I call it “Polar […]

CCSP Exam Thoughts

· Rick Gouin

I took the Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) exam from ISC2 a while back and wanted to share a few thoughts.  As you may be aware, both the CISSP and CCSP exams are managed by the same organization: ISC2.  After getting my CISSP in June of 2022, I started looking for another certification to tackle over the winter.  At that time, I had some AWS certifications that were expiring, and I was annoyed that AWS didn’t provide any way to maintain them other than to just re-take the same exam again.  I can see re-taking an exam when there are […]

CISSP Exam Thoughts

· Rick Gouin

I took the CISSP exam a while back and wanted to share a few thoughts.  I’ve long been a security practitioner, going back to my teenage years attending local 2600 meetings.  I got my Security+ back in 2004.  Yikes!  With the current ransomware driven technology climate, it seemed like high time to put some effort into that part of my background.  I’d say my primary interest was to validate my credibility when speaking at events or directly helping organizations deal with present day security challenges. About The Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) is an advanced security related certification managed […]

Adding Status LEDs to Our Email Button Device

· Rick Gouin

After putting this email button device into service, I discovered that I really wanted some instant feedback to know if the email was sent successfully or not.  I decided to add some LEDs into the mix that would illuminate on success or failure. At left you can see a mock up of a version that used one LED.  You could use a single LED and have it perhaps blink of success or stay lit on failure.  You could also do a single LED build with an RGB LED.  I elected to build this with 2 separate LEDs, so that success […]

Build A Device To Send Emails At the Push of a Button

· Rick Gouin

I had a need for a device that would send an email at the push of a button.  I also needed it to send a different email when I push a different button.  My use case here is related to a Homeowners Association (HOA) that requires me to “check-in” on arrival and “check-out” on departure.  In this case, that is done via email.  So, I wanted a device with a “check-in” button and a separate “check-out” button, so I could just push those buttons to satisfy the requirements.  The the finished product is shown at left. What Does This Project […]

Website Overhaul

· Rick Gouin

I had to update my website today.  I’m definitely a function over form person, and I don’t care much for frontend development.  I thought the old design was fine, but I was running an abandoned theme that was no longer being updated.  While I was looking around to see if anyone still supported my old theme, I came across this site which showed what must be some of the few remaining sites using it.  2 of their 12 sample sites were me – not a good sign! Why did I have to upgrade? I run my own webserver in AWS […]

Self host Bitwarden in AWS

· Rick Gouin

I’ve used a number of different password managers over the years.  I was a LastPass user for a long time, but recently felt compelled to take a look at other options in this space.  After a number of evaluations, I’ve settled on a new option: Bitwarden. My two favorite parts about BitWarden: There is a self-host option, and the project is open source.  There are a number of different open source implementations of various aspects of the project, which is awesome. I decided to deploy my self-hosted Bitwarden deployment in AWS.  My first decision to make was “how should I […]

Run a Windows 10 Instance in AWS EC2

· Rick Gouin

You want a Microsoft Windows 10 instance in your EC2 environment.  Maybe its for a jump box, maybe its for direct access to some RDS instances or other services.  Whatever the case, you went to AWS figuring you’d launch a new Windows 10 instance, and then you realized: Windows 10 isn’t one of the choices. Its true, Windows 10 is not one of the pre-built AMIs offered by AWS.  So how do you get yourself a Windows 10 instance running up there?  Fear not!  Thats what this guide is for.  I’ll show you all the steps to get a Windows […]

Make Your Own METAR Weather Map

· Rick Gouin

This is kind of like COVID sourdough bread for pilots.  Seems like many of us undertook this fun project to keep us busy during COVID.  As usual, I was a little behind the trend and just finished mine.  I’m going to write up how I did mine, hopefully it will help make yours come out better!  If you are stopping by because you made a METAR map and it recently stopped working, scroll to the bottom for instructions to fix it. ** UPDATED 10/06/2025 *** What is a METAR Map?  METAR is a format for reporting weather information, and its […]

Why Upgrade?

· Rick Gouin

Lets take a look at a few real life situations that could have been avoided by staying up to date. All names, places, dates, and some details have been changed to protect the embarrassed.