stripethree

The Wings are up 2-0 in the series clinching game so my attention is there.

- Maryland trip was great, got to see lots of family and friends and of course, more crazy stories courtesy of CPD
- I passed the CISSP! Such a relief, and I’m going to take a break from the studying thing for a while. Between the CEH and the CISSP, I’m a bit burned out in that department
- The cats and Peanut continue to get along well and we’re working on making Peanut more comfortable by addressing his anxiety
- Everything with the house is awesome. We’re definitely settled and living the good life. It’s getting hot and the A/C is crankin’. Summer’s
- Work, well, is work. We’ll see if the budget gets cut, and by how much, and if I have to find something else, again. Yes, I’m a bit frustrated.

Despite everything going on I feel bored, if that’s the right word. Things have become routine and it probably didn’t help that I have spent so much time on the certification stuff at home, which was basically an extension of work. Again, bored might not be the right word, but I do want to mix things up – get cracking on the car projects that have sat for a while, get back into the groove of learning something new on the programming front since I’m not doing that everyday anymore, get back into taking pics on a regular basis… something. Maybe all three.

I passed the exam for the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certification today with some relief. The course last week was invaluable, but I was still not overly confident since the majority of the material was new to me. I guess I studied enough though since I passed by a comfortable margin.

Now, I will move on to some self study in preparation for another certification, the Certified Information Systems Security Profession (CISSP). I have about 6 weeks between now and the exam and plenty of material to go through. I’m more familiar with a good portion of what the CISSP covers, so I’m going to skip taking a class. While the CEH class did help, it is hard to sit through a marathon week of class trying to absorb over a thousand pages of technical material. I do not really want to do that again.

April has been hectic. It did not start well, as I came down with the flu on the 1st of the month and missed three days of work and could barely get out of bed without pain on coughing. Yipiee. I’m mostly over it, but still coughing. All the doc gave me was some codeine laced cough syrup which works, but is kind of hard to take when you actually have to do things. Like drive to work. Last week I took a class for geared towards the Certified Ethical Hacker exam and certification. I couldn’t take the shuttle since the hours of the class differed from the van schedule, so I drove it, which was great because it was a long day and I would much rather have been napping on the drive home. On the upside, I drove the GTI for most of the week and it performed wonderfully. More on that in a moment. The class was okay, it reminded me of many of the things I do NOT miss about the school type setting and by Thursday and Friday I had a hard time maintaining focus and attention. The instructor was good, but there’s only so long I can sit and listen to someone talk in that setting and go through 2300 pages of text books. I pulled a lot from the class, but I don’t know if I am fully prepared for the exam, I need to study more before Tuesday. I am going to try and crack the books open this weekend, but that is going to be tough. This morning Summer and I went and picked up a UHaul and moved all her furniture to the house. We also picked up the matching couch to go with the loveseat a friend of hers gave us since they are getting new furniture. So the house is a little messy, but it will get sorted out soon enough. Luckily the majority of the move did not take that long and she still has her apartment until the end of the month to move odds and ends and clean it up before she has to be out. Tomorrow there’s a Tucson autocross with a course I co-designed with one of the other guys that has been doing most of the courses of late. Sometime this weekend I was hoping to get a few odds and ends done on the GTI since I had about a dozen and a half small parts arrive from various sources this week, but I’m sure if I will get the time. As I previously mentioned, I should probably hold off on that and devote time towards studying for Tuesday’s exam. It’s 150 questions and answering 70% correct denotes success and a Certified Ethical Hacker certification. It’s a computer based test, so as soon as you are done you find out if you passed or if you failed (and if you failed, but how much). I’m nervous about it, but I think I am still close enough to my ‘school days’ that I still have enough of the studying mentality and will be able to pass. Monday night will probably be a late night, but that’s the way it goes. Hopefully I can pass and be done with this certification so I can move on to the next one that I am scheduled to take next month. This time it will be the Certified Information Systems Security Professional, and I’m not taking a class. The exams covers a lot of areas, but only to a certain ‘depth’ so to speak, and since I am familiar with many of the areas, I’m going to take a shot at this one studying on my own. It’s going to take some work, but I’ll have a month to prepare. I think I work better doing a little bit every night rather than cramming everything in a week long barrage of instruction. We’ll see.

As I said before, I drove the GTI roundtrip to Sierra Vista for the majority of the week, and all went well. I’ve found various odds and ends to fix or remove, artifacts if you will from the previous owners, but nothing major. She’s running well and that’s all I need her to do.