Portland Desk (Book 0: Zero-to-One)

The Four Rubber Bands

Late night at the kitchen table. Sifting through 800 pages of exam trivia to extract the four machine invariants (CPU, RAM, Disk, NIC) and study triage reflexes.

The Paper Cert

Graveyard shift at the Gresham warehouse. Dead sorting terminal, hex POST codes, bent serial pins, and baud rate mismatches before the 5:00 AM dispatch.

The Live Board

First day on the live phone queue under Jules Mercer. Isolating Accounting PC freezes with Safe Mode, Clean Boot, and Windows Event Viewer crash logs.

The Default Gateway Doesn't Care

East Portland pump station switch reboot. APIPA 169.254.x.x trap, /26 subnet boundaries, ARP cache inspection, and local vs gateway frame rewriting.

The Name Is Not the Number

Early spring downpour. Remote VPN workers fail to reach internal portals while in-office staff succeed. Split-horizon DNS, resolver caches, and rogue hosts overrides.

The Wire Has Two Ends

Warehouse socket timeouts. Connection refused (RST) vs Connection timed out (Drop). TCP 3-way handshake mechanics, socket states, and ephemeral port exhaustion.

The Port That Is Open

Cleartext Telnet vs encrypted SSH, HTTP vs HTTPS, credential harvesting on unencrypted Wi-Fi, and firewall port boundary decisions.

Prove Who You Are

Authentication factors (know, have, are), TOTP vs SMS, Password+PIN confusion, and Active Directory lockout triage with Event ID 4625 & 4740 caller computer detection.

Don't Click That

Spear phishing and executive impersonation wire fraud. RFC 5322 MIME header dissection, SPF/DKIM/DMARC alignment checks, and typosquatted domains.

Something on the Box

Rogue USB drive and fan pegged at 100%. Windows host persistence (Registry Run keys, Event ID 7045 service creation, scheduled tasks) and Base64 LOLBins analysis.

The Air Is Shared

Rogue wireless router plugged into a warehouse cubicle. WPA2/WPA3-Enterprise 802.1X with RADIUS, EAP-TLS certificates vs PEAP passwords, and RSSI triangulation.

Badge, Lock, Eyes

Physical access control, mantrap tailgating, CCTV verification, and server room badge access telemetry.

Trust on Paper

Public key infrastructure, certificate authority trust chains, X.509 validity dates, and private key security.

The Order You Do It In

Step-by-step walkthrough of the NIST/SANS 6-phase incident response lifecycle from preparation to post-mortem.

Tamarack Overview & Reader Track

Comprehensive overview of the Tamarack feed-mill case study and curriculum structure.

The Count

Getting started with Excel: cell references, formatting, and the physical warehouse inventory count.

Thirty Drums

Mathematical formulas and functions: unit conversions, shipping volume, and drum density calculations.

The Short Pallet

Expanding a workbook: multiple worksheets, 3D formulas, and cross-departmental reconciliation.

Twenty Dollars a Ton

Visualizing data with charts: freight pricing trends, tonnage curves, and presentation graphics.

The Feed Room

Working with Excel tables: structured references, dynamic sorting, and multi-column filtering.

The Damage Log

Data tools: conditional formatting, data validation rules, and error-proofing user inputs.

Did the Coupon Work?

Summarizing data with PivotTables: promotion effectiveness, product category slicing, and revenue attribution.

What Davenport Has to Sell

What-if analysis: Goal Seek, Scenario Manager, and margin optimization under supply constraints.

Hank's Year-End

Financial tools and functions: amortization, depreciation, NPV, and capital expenditure planning.

Davenport's First Month

Business intelligence tools: data modeling, relationships, and multi-table business KPIs.

Eleven Packets, Then Twelve

Advanced PivotTable design: custom calculations, calculated items, and dashboard integration.

The Receiving App

Developing an operational Excel application: automated macros, form controls, and validation locks.

Fifteen-Minute Readings

Power Query and big data pipelines: ETL transformations, unpivoting columns, and automated ingestion.

The Dashboard Ruth Could Share

Introducing Power BI: interactive visual filtering, DAX measures, and mobile dashboard delivery.

The Buying Group

CRISP-DM data methodology and executive Power BI reporting for purchasing consortia.

The Goal of Vanguard Edge

Applying Eliyahu Goldratt's Theory of Constraints to information flow and factory dispatch bottlenecks.

Information Systems in Business

Foundation of enterprise information systems, organizational value creation, and IT strategy.

Computers: Hardware & Software

Enterprise computing infrastructure, server virtualization, and software licensing models.

Data and Business Intelligence

Relational database systems, SQL foundations, data warehousing, and business intelligence reporting.

Ethics, Privacy, and Legal Issues

Information governance, corporate privacy policies, regulatory compliance (GDPR/HIPAA), and intellectual property.

Protecting Information Resources

Corporate cybersecurity architecture, defense-in-depth, disaster recovery, and organizational risk management.

Global Information Systems

Transnational systems architectures, global supply chain telecommunications, and offshore data transfer.

Enterprise Systems (ERP, SCM, CRM)

Enterprise Resource Planning, supply chain management integration, and customer relationship platforms.

Decision Support Systems

Executive information dashboards, predictive modeling, and quantitative decision analysis frameworks.

Artificial Intelligence & Automation

Enterprise application of machine learning, automated process robotics, and natural language analytics.

Emerging Technologies

Cloud virtualization shifts, distributed ledgers, IoT edge computing, and infrastructure trends.