After Friday night’s movie, I pretty much expected the rest of the weekend to be restful and relaxing. Life, however, decided to surprise me in the form of my new housemates taking me out to Gold Reef City for the day on Saturday.

Now bear in mind, I haven’t seen Gold Reef City in probably 21 years… I was still in primary school when I went there with my Mom and her family. And my recollection of the place is dim, except for some events… like me trying to walk out of the mint with a gold bar.

It certainly appears to have changed a lot since then.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Andrew, Gwen and I went on some of the rides (Gwen’s face after the Tower of Terror was both amusing and concerning… the poor girl was quite shaken by the experience) and wandered around the park, experienced the 4D theatre, saw the Gumboot Dancers, tried our hands at winning some prizes at some of the stalls, etc.

We got home around 5pm or so and I had to get ready to go out to Catz Pyjamas in Melville for the joint birthday bash organised by Rozz for herself, Nick and I.

Craig was kind enough to pick me up as my little old VW Beetle was not up to the task, suffering a little with battery issues at present so driving at night becomes quite hair-raising unless you keep your foot on the gas to keep the lights on.

By the time we got there, most of the folks were already there, except for Rozz, Nick, JJ and Vanessa who were stuck in traffic due to some accidents on the way from Pretoria.

From there, the evening just kept on getting better and better. Good food, good company, good times!

And I got spoilt rotten… to the point that I was almost in tears, very much overwhelmed by the generosity and thoughtfulness of my friends.

Gift #1 – From Matthew, Marti and many many others who I still need to thank.

They surprised me with a TomTom ONE XL GPS… Now you have to understand a few things here… I am notoriously bad when it comes to directions. I get lost in my own backyard… And I’m forever getting lost whenever I go to a new place. Sure, I have software on my laptop to try and work out routes, etc but as my friend John recently discovered, the software does not necessarily choose the best or safest route.

However, with this gift comes a new joke… TimTim (thank you, Pieter… you’ve scarred me for life!) has a TomTom…

Gift #2 – From JJ and Vanessa

I’ve always loved swords. From the day my father showed me his grandfather’s cavalry saber (which we sacrilegiously used in the garden to chop up small branches and other such vegetation) to the day when Maarten offered me the chance to learn kenjutsu in exchange for some website work to promote his academy. There is just something awe-inspiring about holding a sword in your hands, feeling it cut through the air. And this applies even moreso to the Japanese katana.

When JJ and Vanessa gave me this long, wrapped box, I wasn’t too sure what was in it, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to open it up to find a beautifully crafted sword. Especially not a recreation of the sword from “Last Samurai”.

It is a truly stunning looking piece.

Back to the party… dinner was great but all in all, I think the best part of the evening was the company. And if the time we left Catz is anything to go by, I’d say everyone got on pretty well. We eventually stumbled out around 12:30am after which Craig and I sat talking at my place until around 4:30am, catching up a little on what has been happening in his life.

Sunday, after trying to catch up on some sleep, was spent relaxing at home, watching the Code Geass anime series I’d gotten from John, reading and listening to music or playing a little Warcraft III now and again to take a break from what I was doing.

It was a good weekend. No, it was a great weekend. But now it’s time to get back to work.

I’m on training tomorrow and Wednesday so I best get some work done today so that I don’t sit with a small mountain of it on Thursday.

Ciao for now.

Considering that my last post was in February sometime, and we’re almost done with April, I feel I’ve neglected this site for some time. Time, specifically spare time, has become somewhat of a rare commodity for me lately…

Ok, some updates (for those that care and even for those that don’t):

I’m moving… where to, I’m not too sure yet, but I’m hoping it will be a little closer to work to cut down on traffic, etc. I should be seeing a place tomorrow night that sounds perfect…

Work has been going well, just busy. At present I’m on-site at BCX (Business Connexion) in Midrand, standing in for a work colleague who has decided to get married… poor sod… another one bites the dust. I’m studying as well, brushing up on my Checkpoint Security Administration knowledge so I can write my CCSA (Checkpoint Certified Security Administrator) and CCSE (Checkpoint Certified Security Engineer) exams when I get back to the Randburg office.

What else? Oh, I’ve been raiding a little again in World of Warcraft with my US Stormrage guild, Awakened Guardians. My rogue is somewhat under-geared and underpowered in comparison to some of the uber-backstabbers out there, but some recent gear upgrades has made her a far more formidable than she was.

Sadly, with this move, I’ll be offline again for some time unless Telkom miraculously pulls it’s collective finger out of deep, dark, unmentionable body cavities and does something quicky for a change…

Not that I’m a pessimist… not at all… I’m just a strong believer in Finagle’s Law, which states:

“Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment.”

OR

O’Toole’s Corollary of Finagle’s Law, “The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.”

In other words… Murphy was an optimist.

I haven’t had much time lately to discuss or even explore the various metaverse cultures out there or my more recent research into trans-humanism, but catching up this morning on one of the more interesting blogs out there on these topics, I found that Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks want to make a 3D CGI movie of one of my favourite anime films of all time… Ghost in the Shell. As a self-confessed fan-boy of the Ghost in the Shell franchise and Masamune Shirow’s work, I sincerely hope and pray that they don’t screw it up…

Reading further (my GoogleReader has too many feeds for me to catch up on all of them in one day!), I see that there is talk of a live-action version of Akira. While I was never that fond of the Akira story, it was and is still a well-known landmark within the anime/manga culture and I hope they do it justice.

Other than that, not much else to report. Eskom is keeping us on our toes with load-shedding (thank Heavens for laptops with batteries and podcasts/movies to watch while waiting for the lights to come back on), traffic is a pain in the butt (especially on Allandale and Malibongwe)… and I think I need a refill on this coffee… or maybe some hot chocolate.

The last few days/weeks have been busy for most people. For me, they’ve been filled with work, social events, issues at home and a general need for downtime in which it’s either just me, my PC and some uplifting music or my bed and a good book.

Let’s see, where to begin…

May as well begin with work as it is where I seem to spend most of my time these days!

I love my job. People think I’m odd, but I look forward to going to work, to see what new challenges await me. And they often do!

You see, I’m a relative newcomer to the security industry… having been primarily involved with systems administration, web development and design, ANSI development and some minor DBA work before this… And when I joined, I was initially there to look after one of our anti-virus products more than anything else. Except, me being me, I had to go and stick my nose into other things and jump feet first into the firewall tickets and try my hand at log analysis…

Now, I spend most of my time abusing my workstation’s processor and memory, building pivot tables, running SQL queries and pulling reports from client log files, trying to make head or tale of what I see before me… is this a botnet I see before me? A portscan perhaps?

Management have also gotten me involved in some of the research and development projects, which makes for some interesting times as I sit and research topics that I may have glossed over before or never even thought of.

I work with a good bunch of people as well. On the AV side of things, I have Reshan to lean on when my own knowledge of F-Secure fails me. On the Checkpoint side of things there are many talented and knowledgeable people, like Matt, our technical manager and primary Checkpoint trainer, Gary, Clive, Marcel and Teper. All of these guys have helped me when I’ve gotten stuck with an issue and have been patient enough to explain it to me without treating me like an idiot.

We all work hard. And we play hard as well; Matt provides music during the day and we often take breaks for coffee or cooldrinks, go stand in the bar area and play a round or two of pool, throw some darts or discuss World of Warcraft, something many of us play, though Marcel and Reshan are supposedly rehabilitated… We’re trying to rope them back in though. Those breaks afford us a well-deserved mental break from the stresses of concentrating on some rather intricate configurations and mystifying security incidents.

Between work and play though, we end up working long hours, seeing to the demands of clients… I think most nights the tech team leave work well after 6:30pm, if not later.

For folks like Matt, Gary and myself, it’s then time to drive home and log into World of Warcraft, to our guild, “Thunderwalkers” on Dath’Remar, US Oceanic. That keeps up busy until the next morning when our work cycle begins anew.

Beside “Thunderwalkers” though, I still belong to “Awakened Guardians” on US Stormrage, where I have most of my characters and play a role in guild management by running their website and forum which I host under this domain.

We’ve gotten together a few times offline, as the photo to the right shows. Interesting to put faces to names and voices…

Aside from my usual routine of work and play though, I also have the dubious honour of living with 4 women who keep me on my toes. Sharlene and Cari have stayed with me before, as two of the original tenants that moved into the commune shortly after I did. The two newcomers, Renee and Tarryn, have brought their own chaos to the party.

Some folks joke with me that I must be a very lucky man to live with 4 women… My response usually surprises them… It’s certainly not the ideal many would think, as there have been some spectacular blowups and unspoken issues… but for the most part it’s peaceful and it’s company… Something I’d gotten used to since I moved out of my bachelor flat and moved in with other people in a sharing arrangement. It’s taken some getting used to, but for those that cannot afford to get their own house just yet or cannot stand the idea of being alone 24/7, it’s not that bad.

It’s actually quite nice to come home, sit with someone and have a cup of tea or coffee, hear about their day, relate your own experiences, etc. This is great most of the time, but I’ll admit there are some days when I am feeling less than sociable and all I want to do is make myself some supper and go lock myself in my room, put on my headphones and forget about the world outside.

Something I need to do again is get back into my photography. I’m still working through a backlog of photos for Sheelagh’s wedding, my company’s last year-end function and several other spools I’ve had lying around and finally had developed.

And I’ve found some new subjects to photograph as well… just need to make the time to go and take some proper shots that aren’t shot with my little HTC P4350 smartphone…

The shots below were taken one evening when Rob was up from Cape Town and we’d gone to see Alien vs Predator 2… we stood outside the movie theatre area in Brightwater Commons and were treated to this colourful little display, though the accompanying music was badly distorted through very tinny and bass-intolerant speakers.

Makes me realise that I really need to get back into things again… I haven’t managed to beat shots like these and some of them are well over 3-4 years old now.

Time to get back into the habit, I think…

Grey…

The weather is grey.

Johannesburg CBD seems predominantly grey.

ABSA’s buildings are grey.

My mood is grey.

To be honest, the only highlight of this month is the drive to and from work, being able to spend some time with Rozz, something that I haven’t been able to do all that often in the time we’ve known eachother.

The end of this week can’t come quick enough. I want to curl up in bed this weekend, watch some anime, read some e-books and play a little online. And sleep…

For anyone that works in the IT industry, the old saying, “no rest for the wicked” could not be truer… You work your allotted time at work and perhaps a little more than necessary (I know I do, as does Rob and Rozz) and then go home and generally do one of two things… either sit down in front of a PC again to play games or surf the ‘net or try and switch off in front of the TV or some other distraction.

Usually I watch some anime or whatever is playing on the TV for a bit, research a little and maybe update this blog a bit, browse deviantART for new wallpapers or inspiration, then try get an early (or earlier than usual) night, knowing the next morning I need to be up before most people, a) to avoid traffic and b) to get a head start on the day’s tasks.

Lately though, I’ve been doing upgrades on my forums, from phpBB version 2.0.22 to 3.01, fighting with South African latency while uploading a million and one small files to my internationally hosted server, creating backups (just in case, you know!) and trying to puzzle through the documentation to see where I am going wrong…

Or building an old server up into a general workstation for the girls at home to use, as Tarryn is starting her new job soon and will lose her old laptop, and frankly, I’m a little wary of letting anyone other than a work colleague, that I trust, use mine. Last night I managed to get a majority of the work done on the server, but it was painstakingly slow-going as it’s an old Pentium III, with 512MB RAM and two SCSi 20GB drives… Windows XP runs on it… or should I say, it ‘jogs’.

I’ve loaded all the chat programs they could want on there… MSN, GoogleTalk, Yahoo… and most importantly, antivirus. AVG is perhaps not the best, but hell, it works… And I made each of them their own limited privilege profile so they don’t have to stress about anyone else reading their mail from the dating sites they’re so fond of frequenting.

Need to sit down with Tarryn as well, sometime, and teach her Adobe Photoshop. Think the poor girl has jumped into her new job without really knowing what is expected of her… if she’s going to be doing design work, I think she may be in over her head…

Other than that, now that my one set of forums are upgraded, I need to tackle the other one. And then figure out how to integrate all the other php packages  such as phpRaid, etc back into the new boards…

When I will get a chance to play again, I don’t know… we’ll see what happens end of the month. By then things should have settled a bit more. Right now, all I seem to be able to manage is getting home, feeding myself, showering then collapsing onto my bed, watching a few episodes of anime (recently finished “Eureka Seven” and “Fate / Stay Night” and about half way through “Ergo Proxy“) then drifting off into an uneasy sleep, only to wake up a few hours later, feeling like a truck has hit me…

I’ve been stationed at ABSA for the last few days, standing in for one of my colleagues while he is off on paternity (and annual) leave. I’ve also flown down briefly to Cape Town to attend and photograph Sheelagh and Andrew’s wedding.

Flying to Cape Town was a bit weird for me. For the last 9 or so years, I’d been used to travelling up from Cape Town to Johannesburg or Durban on vacation or to visit friends and family or for work. Now, I’ve reversed the destinations… and I must admit, Cape Town no longer feels like home to me. I felt very much like a tourist in a place I used to call home… me, the person who swore he’d never live anywhere but at the coast.

I landed Friday morning, was picked up by Louise who took me to go get my supplies I needed for the wedding (18 rolls of 36 exposure 35mm film and spare batteries for my Canon EOS 500n), then spent some time with her and her family until meeting up with Rob for lunch after which I spent the rest of the afternoon with him and some of our mutual friends, Andrew and Mervin, that work with him at Tellumat. That evening, after picking up Lou again, we met up with some guild mates from Awakened Guardians at Century City for some drinks, etc and finally wandered over to Cattle Baron to meet up with some of Lou’s friends.

Saturday morning, bright and early, I was in Cavendish Square, photographing Sheelagh and her Mum- and Sister-in-Law-to-be during the various stages of their hair-styling. Then we bundled into Lisa’s (Sheelagh’s best friend) car, went to go fetch dresses and bags and headed off to Monkey Valley in Noordhoek to get  started with their makeup. After a while I decided it was prudent to make myself scarce so the girls could change and get dressed and went to go check my surroundings for the shoot, judging light levels and backdrop inclusion from various angles.

The ceremony was very nice, the bride looked stunning, the groom looked nervous (though that may also have been due to some stiff breezes swaying his kilt) and everyone was very happy for the newly-wed couple. We took some group photos on the lawn and then the bride, groom, best man and bridesmaids wandered down to the beach with me for some shots their.

In retrospect, the path we took was not the best one (coming down was ok, climbing back up was not as easy) as the loose beach sand made climbing some of those dunes rather… well… interesting at times.

We finished up at 11pm that night after the traditional cake-cutting and first-dance photos and I left for home, wishing the newly-weds all the best, promising to visit in Australia sometime in the future.

The next day, aside from sore muscles, I spent relaxing, chatting to Rob, listening to music (I introduced Rob to the group ‘E Nomine’) and catching up a little, talking about his planned move to Australia to be nearer to his daughter, my goddaughter, Timeah.

Before long, though, it was time to pack up and head to the airport. We stopped briefly along the way to get something to eat and unfortunately, cut it a little too fine as with some unaccounted for traffic, I ended up getting to the check-in counter 2 minutes too late to check in… I begged, pleaded… everything short of threatening, but they were stubborn and would not let me check-in.

So I got put on standby for the morning flight. Fortunately Rob had not yet driven too far so he was able to pick me up again and I spent the night there.

I called several people to tell them what had happened, including Matt, my technical manager, as I was supposed to be back at ABSA in the morning.

Bright and early, I was back at the airport and then my ordeal really began. For unbeknownst to me, all the Johannesburg and Pretoria people that had been on vacation were there trying to get back home as well… Suffice to say, I did not get onto the 6:30am flight. Or the 9:15 one. Or 10:20 one. Matt arranged for Reshan, one of my other colleagues, to stand-in for me at ABSA, so at least that was taken care of.

Eventually, they squeezed me onto the 1:00pm flight and I arrived home, very agitated, annoyed and heartily sick of airports just before 3pm. Matt, was kind enough to pick me up and drop me off at home where I promptly collapsed and swore not to get onto a plane for another few months, at the very least.

Yesterday was back to ABSA… back to a semblance of normality. Here until the 18th, after which it’s back to the office and my new favourite pastime… log analysis.

2007 was a tough year for many. Actually, in hindsight, it seems for many of us, each preceding year seems to feel that way until we’re done with the next year and looking back, wonder to ourselves how we managed to live through yet another year of utter chaos.

I won’t harp on about the aspects of 2007 that upset me. What’s done is done, and I’m done with living with regrets and what-if’s. Tempus fugit… time flies… time moves forward inexorably.

A lot of good came from that time of turmoil though. A new job. New friends. New opportunities and knowledge gained.

This year, I intend to expand on that. To grow, both socially and mentally. To accelerate and move forward once more and leave behind the stagnation of the past.

Looking at my journal today, the quote at the bottom of the page reads “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person; he believed in me.” – Jim Valvano.

My father has always hoped and prayed that I would excel and do well in my chosen field of work. From my college days and beyond, he’s always encouraged me to do better, to push myself, work hard… “Someday, Tim, someone will take notice of you and you will be rewarded for your efforts…”

Sadly, some of my past employers have not lived up to that expectation. And perhaps I hoped for too much from them.

For now, I am content. For the first time in 7 years, I feel like I have a career again, instead of just a job. I have a support base, people of knowledge and experience I can turn to when I get stuck, people willing to teach instead of criticising me regarding the gaps in my knowledge.

I hope your dreams and hopes for 2008 are fulfilled. I know I will certainly be working to fulfill mine. Perhaps we’ll meet somewhere along the way and work together.

She’s always talking about her 18 month old daughter, Taneka, and I noticed that the only photos she has of her are taken either with her cellphone camera or with a small digital camera.

So, I offered to take some photos of them together, down at a local park in Fourways, around the corner from where we both stay, well, close being a relative term in Johannesburg

I went through 3 spools of film… going to hand them in on Monday and get them scanned to CD.

I must admit that the afternoon reminded me of times with my friend Rob, his daughter, Timeah, who is also my goddaughter. Bouncing around a park or playground, taking photos, laughing with the kids, being a kid at heart myself again.

In some ways, I think I’m living out my Mother’s wishes for a grandchild through these sessions. With my godchildren (I have 3) and the children of those I call friends, I get to capture photos of them the way I would one day hope to do with my own child.

Anyway… on to less somber thoughts…

That afternoon also set the mood for the weekend… I’m house-sitting for another colleague, Matthew, who is away at Kruger Park for his birthday weekend away with family.

It’s been a relaxing time. No noisy housemates. No fights at home. Not having to lock my groceries away because certain people cannot keep their hands to themselves.

So I’ve spent the time watching the Animax channel on DSTv, enjoying some of Matt’s wife’s homemade coffee icecream (to die for, I might add), playing a bit online and trying to understand the though processes of their cats, Storm and Jewel, with no real luck…

Hope everyone had a good weekend as well. Back to work tomorrow.

You get up in the mornings, get ready for the day, get started along what you think will be a series of events for the day, then get sideswiped by real life.

I was supposed to go on MailMarshall training today in Sandton… got up early to try and miss the traffic on the freeway, though it took me about 30 minutes to get onto it in any case… busy listening to my music on my headset… then I get an SMS alert. Look around for Metro Police goonsquad… no-one nearby, so let’s check the phone…

The SMS is from my technical director. A change in plans. My colleague that was supposed to stand in for another colleague at one of our onsite posts in the CBD, has called in, with what we eventually found out was kidney stones… poor bugger. I know how he feels, as I was in the same position this time last year.

So I now need to go through to town… if anyone knows Johannesburg well, you know that trying to get anywhere in traffic after 7:30am is a nightmare… William Nicol is a gauntlet, Jan Smuts is worse…

At least I remembered the route. The last time I had to do this, it’d had been my first time venturing into the CBD and if I hadn’t had Rozz (who works in the CBD) to follow, I would have gotten hopelessly lost.

The day itself has been pretty quiet. Ran into some old colleagues and friends from my time as a contractor at SecureData so I had someone to chat to. Other than that, just been answering the phone and checking mail for tasks. And remoting into the main office and updating my tickets.

Now to try get home in one piece. Already dreading the return traffic.

From The RIPE 55 Secret Working Group Session
Featuring “The Day the Routers Died…”

Words and performance by Gary Feldman

a long long time ago
i can still remember
when my laptop could connect elsewhere

and i tell you all there was a day
the network card i threw away
had a purpose – and worked for you and me….

But 18 years completely wasted
with each address we’ve aggregated
the tables overflowing
the traffic just stopped flowing….

And now we’re bearing all the scars
and all my traceroutes showing stars…
the packets would travel faster in cars…
the day….the routers died

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

Now did you write an RFC
That dictated how we all should be
Did we listen like we should that day

Now were you back at RIPE fifty-four
Where we heard the same things months before
And the people knew they’d have to change their ways….

And we – knew that all the ISPs
Could be – future proof for centuries

But that was then not now
Spent too much time playing WoW

ooh there was time we sat on IRC
Making jokes on how this day would be
Now there’s no more use for TCP
The day the routers died…

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

I remember those old days I mourn
Sitting in my room, downloading porn
Yeah that’s how it used to be….

When the packets flowed from A to B
via routers that could talk IP
There was data..that could be exchanged between you and me….

Oh but – I could see you all ignore
The fact – we’d fill up IPv4

But we all lost the nerve
And we got what we deserved!

And while…we threw our network kit away
And wished we’d heard the things they say
Put all our lives in disarray

The day…the routers died…

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

Saw a man with whom I used to peer
Asked him to rescue my career
He just sighed and turned away..

I went down to the net cafe
that I used to visit everyday
But the man there said I might as well just leave…

And now we’ve all lost our purpose..
my cisco shares completely worthless…

No future meetings for me
At the Hotel Krasnapolsky

and the men that make us push and push
Like Geoff Huston and Randy Bush
Should’ve listened to what they told us….
The day…the routers….died

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

It’s one thing to sit in the office and do changes where you can (hopefully) reverse them or ask for some advice from a colleague before committing the changes to the firewall. It’s an entirely different story to be at a client with them looking over your shoulder while you ‘tinker’ with their firewall.

What makes this particular change even more nerve-wracking is that the client cannot really explain the changes that I need to make to me upfront… we’re sort of winging it, trying to get something to work.

Hopefully it’s not too big a job. I need to route traffic from one network to another over two Microsoft ISA servers… how hard can it be?

My head is filling up with terminology and jargon, from both the Checkpoint Firewall-1 side of things and our own internally developed monitoring systems that we deploy at client sites.

This morning, I woke up, with the word “CACT’s” on my mind… Complex ACTions. Packets being dropped by the firewall. My staple diet of support tickets, these days. And something that is often difficult to interpret. I sometimes spend an hour or two to retrieve the logs, format them in Excel and Access, then do SQL queries to filter out the “trash” data to determine the culprits. And even then, I cannot always be sure of my analysis until I verify some facts with the network diagram or ask a colleague to double check my findings.

Thus far, I’ve found some DDOS attacks, some portscans, a virus infection, peer to peer software abuse and some really dodgy DNS systems.

Anyway… this weekend is rAge. First one that I will be attending. Looking forward to see what we here in South Africa call a gaming expo, seeing as we always see coverage of the overseas expo’s but never our own.

Hope you all have a good weekend. See you on the other side.

Initially I was just supposed to get up to speed with F-Secure, their AV product range, and refresh my knowledge of Trend Micro as well, but seeing as we haven’t received many tickets for either set of products, I’ve kept myself occupied by jumping in the deep end with Checkpoint firewall support.

Well, not so much the support side of things just yet. Changes, I leave to those a little more qualified than I am, for the moment. No, my major task these past two weeks has been firewall log forensics. Breaking down thousands upon thousands of lines of logged events to spot trends, looking for attacks, potential network issues, etc.

I found it funny that I ended up using some of my old development tools in order to do so. SQL queries are amazing at breaking things down into manageable chunks of data…

I must admit, though, that I feel really stupid sometimes, having to ask my colleagues for advice all the time, but considering I haven’t yet gone on training for the product, I think I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances.

My other project has been building a MS ISA server for testing purposes, collecting browsing data for our Dev Team. And learning Websense again.

All in all, feeling a little overloaded, information-wise, but still enjoying it. The people at work are great, the environment is pleasant and I hardly notice the time there, in fact, I leave most evenings well after my finishing times. Mostly to miss traffic, but it’s also great to sit and chat with fellow geeks, play some pool, etc until such time as we all head our different ways.

For the first time in a long time, I feel at home in the IT industry again.

Granted, I haven’t started any of the real hard work yet, rather, I’ve been studying their products, getting to know the staff, building my PC and subsequently my virtual PC’s to run and test the products.

I’ve been made to feel very welcome by all involved and have met some very interesting people. Amogst them, I’ve found some kindred spirits that share my passion for certain things in life: photography, esoteric studies, music, even gaming. It was very amusing to find that at least two of my colleagues are playing or have played World of Warcraft.

Next week the pace will increase somewhat… but I’m ready and looking forward to it. For all the obstacles that I felt were in front of me on leaving the old company, I feel the path ahead is now the right one.

Or at least it should be, to avoid being left behind, stagnating and losing touch with the ever-evolving, ever changing universe around us.

This month for me, brings change. A necessary one, but not one without it’s repercussions.

At the end of this month, I leave my position as a system administrator for a junior position at an information security architect, to begin studying towards being a senior security engineer, or some such mouthful.

7 years ago, I was a system administrator. Then the company I was with retrenched a good many of us. It was a big setback for my career. From then till now, I’ve stagnated, barely creeping forward, trying to regain that original status and now that I have it again, I find myself unhappy, needing change.

Change found me, this time around, in the form of one of the vendors at the company I was contracted to. He then suggested I meet with the security firm in question and did some ‘selling’ on my behalf, to ease my way in.

I just wish I had more time to exit gracefully from where I am now. My timing is not the best for those involved and I’m afraid I may have lost more than just an employer in the process, but also one of my oldest colleagues.

Nothing to do now but finish what I started and move on. I cannot afford regrets anymore.

What does this mean? It means that no matter where you are, what connection you are using, etc on your company laptop, this service will poll the Websense policy server to see what you are and what you are not allowed to browse.

So the guys using company laptops, their 3G cards or phones, etc to bypass the proxy restrictions at work, have suddenly found themselves back where they began. Filtered and blocked.

I’ve been called everything from the Grim Reaper, to the Bastard Operator from Hell, to a Harbinger of Doom… Guess one has to just shrug it off as having to follow orders from above.

Well, work has been, well, interesting at times. The joys of corporates : politics, backstabbing, favouritism, brain-trusts, ducking and diving…

I’ve met an old IRC acquaintance at work though, so all is not lost. Makes things a bit easier when you have someone to chat to during the day.

Other than that, life at the Big Brother house, as we’ve come to call our little commune, has hopefully settled down finally. We’ve had an interesting past few weeks, having to ask one of the girls to leave due to her abusive nature towards the other housemates, her alcohol problem and her cat. On top of that, one of the other girls’ ex-boyfriends has made an appearance and threatened us all with violence, phoning us on the house phone, stalking her, forcing his way onto the property, etc.

Let’s see, what else. Ah, yes, I’m back online playing World of Warcraft, now in The Burning Crusade, with my little slicer and dicer rogue. Been listening to a lot of game related podcasts from the folks over at WC Radio. Ah yes, that was other thing. The iPod. I love my little iPod. It’s my precious!

Hmm. Ok. Think that’s about it. Ah yes…

It’s Easter Weekend this weekend so hooray for public holidays and long weekends. Time to relax, play some games with friends, watch a movie (I think 300 is on the menu), drink some Amaretto, lime and lemonade, turn up the volume and unwind.

Catch you on the flip side!

Well, not quite dead, but close enough to it.

A day and a bit till weekend. Then New Years Eve. New Year’s Day. Then back into the fray.

Hopefully we get our new equipment at the office, come middle of January. Then the Big Rebuild happens. Exchange servers. Active Directory servers. Domain Controllers. File servers. New switchboards. New cabling. KVM switches. UPS’s.

I can see myself not sleeping for a few days…

It’s good to be doing real techie work again. Not “home IT” as a colleague once put it.

Done your shopping yet? I haven’t. But then again I haven’t had much of a chance to do much other than work lately. It’s good to be busy again. Busy enough to get home at night and feel exhausted. Busy enough not to feel bored. Busy enough to keep my mind occupied so that it doesn’t dwell on other things.

Anyway… we had our company function this last Friday so things are quiet at work as many people have gone on leave. I’m busy doing website tenders for my company and listening to music (E Nomine) recently acquired from a gaming buddy of mine.

Some sites of interest:

Adobe’s Colour Scheme Planning Online – http://kuler.adobe.com/

Promisance – online, turn based empire management – http://www.wgamezone.com/

Adobe’s JamJar, online collaboration tool – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/jamjar/

While you’re there, if you’re a shutterbug, take a look at Adobe’s Lightroom - http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

More to come later…

Ciao ciao

I don’t know how often I’ll be able to update here. Will try to get online ASAP again on the other side.

I wish you all the best for the upcoming festive season, both for you, your families and loved ones, and in business.

Regards,
Tim