I got the computer security engineer job. :) I will be working for Northrop in the MILSATCOM Program Office at LA AFB. I am really excited, and this is a great opportunity for me to start working in the information security field which I am going to school for. Tentatively I would start on Dec 12, so that date is rapidly coming up.
My manager already knows, but I spent yesterday and today talking to my various leads and customers informing them of my new Job. I am also working on listing out all my duties so they can form a good transition plan...so far I'm at 3 1/2 pages of tasks with still more to come, and that doesn't include documenting each task.
We also had a planned power outage over Thanksgiving weekend. I hate those. This time it meant that all our systems had to be powered down. I thankfully wasn't there for the powerdown as I was on my way back from Florida, but my systems did not power up gracefully when I turned them on Monday morning. One Sun system had a bad power supply. Another Sun system had a bad I/O Board. A disk array had some sort of problem causing it to report 16 drive failures. There weren't any drive failures, there was just another problem causing it to report the drive failures. When I recovered from the drive failures, I find the data is corrupted or not there, so now I have to recover from tape. 2 days later, and I'm still recovering these systems. I hate this. I enjoy doing system implementation and system integration work, but I hate doing routing system administration and especially recovery after failures. I guess in simplistic terms, I like building complex systems, but not maintaining them. Thankfully my new job will put me out of this maintenance and recovery business.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Monday, November 21, 2005
Greetings From Florida
Well, I'm back in Melbourne, FL for a while. I've been here for a week now arriving last Sunday and will be here for a total of 10 days leaving this Wed the day before thanksgiving. Leave it to me to have to travel on the busiest travel day of the year. This trip was totally unexpected, as my manager called me up Thursday morning on the 10th and said "So...you want to go to Melbourne? You leave this Sunday." I guess they were very shorthanded out here and needed an extra person to work on some projects. There was one project that had a deadline to get some servers online by last Fri that I needed to work. The one part that actually sucks is the holiday this week makes it hard to collect any overtime pay. In order to get overtime pay, I have to first work 80 hours of regular time not counting holidays. So at the most, I can postpone the holiday taking an extra holiday later instead of taking it now.
I ended up going to the Florida Disney parks this weekend. I went to Animal Kingdom and Epcot on Sat and MGM on Sun. It was rainy Sunday afternoon though, so that kinda cut things short there. The Florida parks are nice, but nothing beats the Disneyland Christmas celebration. They don't have anything comparable out here.
Still haven't heard anything about the job yet. The HR rep who was working it was out of the office all last week. The hiring manager is getting anxious as he needs someone, and he sent an email last week saying he'd touch base with me today. Right now, the next pay period ends on Dec 9. My current manager does know about the possibility of my changing jobs as I wanted to warn him before he sent me to Florida. Since nothing is official though, we left it at that, and he asked if I wanted to go to FL anyway.
I ended up going to the Florida Disney parks this weekend. I went to Animal Kingdom and Epcot on Sat and MGM on Sun. It was rainy Sunday afternoon though, so that kinda cut things short there. The Florida parks are nice, but nothing beats the Disneyland Christmas celebration. They don't have anything comparable out here.
Still haven't heard anything about the job yet. The HR rep who was working it was out of the office all last week. The hiring manager is getting anxious as he needs someone, and he sent an email last week saying he'd touch base with me today. Right now, the next pay period ends on Dec 9. My current manager does know about the possibility of my changing jobs as I wanted to warn him before he sent me to Florida. Since nothing is official though, we left it at that, and he asked if I wanted to go to FL anyway.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Job News!
So I interviewed for a System Security Engineer position yesterday with Northrop. In this position, I would be working with the system designers and developers for military satellite programs. This is very exciting and would be down the information security career path were I am headed with my education. My office would basically move across the street from where it is now onto LA AFB.
The interview went very well, and I received a call from the HR dept from that business unit just a few minutes ago to start all the paperwork for the internal transfer process. So it really sounds like they want to hire me and would extend me an offer. If all goes well, I could start there as early as the 28th of November or the 5th of December. This is very exciting!
The interview went very well, and I received a call from the HR dept from that business unit just a few minutes ago to start all the paperwork for the internal transfer process. So it really sounds like they want to hire me and would extend me an offer. If all goes well, I could start there as early as the 28th of November or the 5th of December. This is very exciting!
Election Blues
What's the point of having a special epection if every single ballot measure is going to fail. These were extremely important reforms, however they failed because of a high budget slime campaign brought on by labor unions. The California Teachers union spent $120 million to defeat these ballot measures with untrue slime commercials. The union spent so much money that it went broke, took out a loan to cover the campaign expenses, and then slapped every teacher in California with an extra $60 a month mandatory union due increase to pay off the loan for the campaign expenses. That right there is why we needed Prop 75 to pass. To prevent the union from doing something like that to all teachers. Let's let only those who support the union's politics give their money.
Californians want change. They've said so. Weeks before the election each of the important ballot measures had overwhelming support and were expected to pass by huge margins. Then comes the slime campaign and what happens. We loose by landslide margins because the stupid liberal left wing unions don't want change. They are so out of touch with what their membership wanted. Over 50% of union members were even expected to vote against their union initially until the scare tatics started. When the unions spend over $200 million combined, it is impossible for anyone to compete fairly. The worst part is that much of that $200 million came from mandatory contributions from people who didn't support the cause. The pro side only spent about $34 million so it's no wonder they were completely overwhelmed by the slime campaign.
Californians want change. They've said so. Weeks before the election each of the important ballot measures had overwhelming support and were expected to pass by huge margins. Then comes the slime campaign and what happens. We loose by landslide margins because the stupid liberal left wing unions don't want change. They are so out of touch with what their membership wanted. Over 50% of union members were even expected to vote against their union initially until the scare tatics started. When the unions spend over $200 million combined, it is impossible for anyone to compete fairly. The worst part is that much of that $200 million came from mandatory contributions from people who didn't support the cause. The pro side only spent about $34 million so it's no wonder they were completely overwhelmed by the slime campaign.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Long time no post
I'm still here. It's been a long month, but things are going well. Our kitchen remodeling project is nearing completion. It's very trying to have your house torn apart for 6 weeks while you work on something as important as a kitchen. You can't shut the door on in when you're not working, instead you have to live in it, step over boxes containing the contents of your cubbords and drawers, dig through them when you want a cup or a spoon, or decide to cook, and you have to use the half completed kitchen everyday to survive. In the end it will be worth it. Hopefully this this the last week of it. This weekend we just have some moulding to put up and some polishing to do! When the end is near, I'll post before and after pictures so you can see, you could also come to our christmas party and see for yourself. It already is looking amazing in it's almost completed state.
The job front is looking quite interesting indeed. In the re-organization they did, I was offered a job at the same level, same pay rate in the new organization as I already had which is good. From what I hear many people were very unhappy with the transition and some had very significant pay cuts. A pay cut could have been disasterous for us in the middle of a remodeling project and all. I accepted that offer and will start in the new org Nov 14. (same job, same coworkers, different management is all) Since Jeff moved out of the office, I sure hope that they decide to move someone else in there since the office is awfully lonely without a coworker to share it with.
In other job news, I applied for a few other positions in Information Security during the re-organization as I wanted backup in case something went wrong during that transition. For those that don't know I am currently working as a System Admin, but am working on a Masters in Information Security and want to head down that path career wise. I applied for a position I wasn't necessarily qualified for, but was one in the Information Security field where I was headed. The hiring manager called be back and said that since I am new to the field I would have a very hard time being successful in that particular position. However, he still wanted to get together with me to see if I might fit into some other opportunities in the InfoSec field. I met with him last thursday, and afterwards he passed my information and resume along with a recommendation to another manager who I am meeting with tomorrow. This is very exciting, and I would to get one of these jobs as a computer security or information assurance engineer. If nothing works out, I still enjoy my old job, but I have my hopes up for the future.
All -- make sure everyone gets out and votes tomorrow. This is one of the most important elections that we've had in California, and there are some extremely important ballot measures. Arnold promised he'd change California, and here is our chance to make that change. These will bring change for years to come.
Ben's Voter Guide:
Prop 73 - Yes - Require parental notification for abortions
Prop 74 - Yes - Extend Teacher Tenure to 5 years, and allow firing after 2 consecutive negative performance reviews
Prop 75 - Yes - Union Dues cannot be used for political purposes without prior authorization
Prop 76 - Yes - Slows down the rate at which the budget can increase each year. Governor has authority to strike spending from budget if there is an inbalace that the legislature can't resolve.
Prop 77 - Yes - Retired judges draw legislative districts instead of legislature. districts approved by voters
Prop 78 - No - Discount perscription drugs to low income families
Prop 79 - No - Discount perscription drugs to low income families
Prop 80 - No - Electricity regulation
The job front is looking quite interesting indeed. In the re-organization they did, I was offered a job at the same level, same pay rate in the new organization as I already had which is good. From what I hear many people were very unhappy with the transition and some had very significant pay cuts. A pay cut could have been disasterous for us in the middle of a remodeling project and all. I accepted that offer and will start in the new org Nov 14. (same job, same coworkers, different management is all) Since Jeff moved out of the office, I sure hope that they decide to move someone else in there since the office is awfully lonely without a coworker to share it with.
In other job news, I applied for a few other positions in Information Security during the re-organization as I wanted backup in case something went wrong during that transition. For those that don't know I am currently working as a System Admin, but am working on a Masters in Information Security and want to head down that path career wise. I applied for a position I wasn't necessarily qualified for, but was one in the Information Security field where I was headed. The hiring manager called be back and said that since I am new to the field I would have a very hard time being successful in that particular position. However, he still wanted to get together with me to see if I might fit into some other opportunities in the InfoSec field. I met with him last thursday, and afterwards he passed my information and resume along with a recommendation to another manager who I am meeting with tomorrow. This is very exciting, and I would to get one of these jobs as a computer security or information assurance engineer. If nothing works out, I still enjoy my old job, but I have my hopes up for the future.
All -- make sure everyone gets out and votes tomorrow. This is one of the most important elections that we've had in California, and there are some extremely important ballot measures. Arnold promised he'd change California, and here is our chance to make that change. These will bring change for years to come.
Ben's Voter Guide:
Prop 73 - Yes - Require parental notification for abortions
Prop 74 - Yes - Extend Teacher Tenure to 5 years, and allow firing after 2 consecutive negative performance reviews
Prop 75 - Yes - Union Dues cannot be used for political purposes without prior authorization
Prop 76 - Yes - Slows down the rate at which the budget can increase each year. Governor has authority to strike spending from budget if there is an inbalace that the legislature can't resolve.
Prop 77 - Yes - Retired judges draw legislative districts instead of legislature. districts approved by voters
Prop 78 - No - Discount perscription drugs to low income families
Prop 79 - No - Discount perscription drugs to low income families
Prop 80 - No - Electricity regulation
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