HooliBlog

It is hot! We are expecting to be in 90+ degree temps for the next few weeks. Oh joy! Probably won't be golfing much if it is that hot. Definitely won't be golfing next week. I will be in a training class for CISSP certification. I am looking forward to it. This is the big cert for cybersecurity professionals and would be a big resume booster for me if I can pass the exam. And it gets me out of work for the week. I get to go to Philadelphia (well the outskirts of it anyway) and work is paying for it! A big win win! I did some more Python programming yesterday and today. It's really getting fun. The practice problems are starting to get a little more challenging and are taking me a little longer to figure out but so far I am getting them all to work correctly. Lately I've been working on creating functions and passing lists to them. Today's practice took a little while but I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. And when I got the program to run correctly it wa...

  I didn't realize it had been a full week since my last post. Ugh! Time flies when you are having fun.  Last week was quiet. Wife and I played in a gold event at our home course on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. The weather was perfect. Today has been quiet for work. I am back on call this week so that's not fun. But overall the on call alerts this summer have been very limited so hopefully that trend continues. It's been enjoyable the past few days. Not a lot going on. I've been able to watch TV, read a lot, just veg and relax. It's been very nice. Today I've been working a lot on Python programming learning. I've gotten a lot done and it's been a lot of fun doing it. I'm in office tomorrow so hopefully it's quiet again and I can work on more HTML and CSS learning. I haven't done that in a few weeks. Next week I am in a training class so not sure how much programming practice I will be able to get in. Until next time...

I didn't realize I hadn't posted anything for a while. My weekend was nice and relaxing and fun. Played a little golf. Yesterday played 9 holes and shot 9 straight pars. I've been playing golf for about 30 years (give or take) and I've never scored that well. I really only had 1 bad hit and I got a lucky bounce of that one so it didn't hurt me too much. Today I am off call for the week. I don't mind on call weeks too much since I know they will always be a part of the job. Fortunately last week was nice and quiet so I didn't have too many alerts to respond to. Not much going on for me this week. Working from home today so I will be able to relax a bit while working. I'll probably continue with Python learning this afternoon since I have nothing on my calendar. I always enjoy being able to put on a movie or episodes of a TV show as background noise and work on my programming skills. It's always fun getting my "geek" on. Hopefully this week i...

Technically today IS my Friday since we don't have work on Fridays during our summer schedule. And it has been very nice and quiet at work today. A few quick alerts to investigate but that is it. I've got 1 quick call coming up that I don't have to do anything in but listen. I've taken advantage of the quiet and gotten a lot of HTML learning done. On my work in the office days I am teaching myself HTML and CSS. I'm hoping to get proficient enough to build some real web pages we can use as our phishing exercise emails. I'm building a small practice page as I go through the book to get the hands on feeling of it.  The only problem is I am the complete opposite of an artistic person. I have absolutely no artistic ability whatsoever. I can see something in my mind but have less than 0 skills to bring that image to life. If someone told me what to do I could do it very easily. But in terms of coming up with my own ideas, inventions, etc I am way worse than useless. O...

 I really enjoy working from home. It's nice to be able to relax a bit during the day. I got a few chores done and took a little nap. I got all my work tasks done too so I wasn't completely lazy. I also finished reading one of my game programmer books I got yesterday. This one was on the guy who created the video game Q*bert. I really enjoyed playing that game as a kid so it was interesting reading about how it came to be. I'm reading the other book now about one of the early programmers at Atari. I had an Atari 2600 console and played it all the time. This should be a fun read. Looking at my calendar for tomorrow I only have 1 meeting at 1:30p and I don't have to do anything in it except listen. That is great! I don't mind busy days but crazy hectic days are a no no for me. If everything stays quiet I can get some reading done, maybe work on my HTML learning some more. I'm starting to get into the CSS portion so it will be fun to start getting my basic learning...

4th of July has come and gone and I am back at work after a longer than normal long weekend. It been quiet thankfully. Sometimes after a long weekend there's a lot of little things to do but today has been nice (fingers crossed it stays that way). I've worked on a few tasks so I haven't been entirely unproductive. I worked on learning HTML and CSS for about an hour or so. I've got a few quick calls coming up and then my day is done. I work from home tomorrow which I enjoy. My 80s video game programmer books arrived today so I will start reading one tonight. I am looking forward to seeing which one I will choose to read first. My 4th was nice and relaxing. I did end up going golfing yesterday afternoon and very glad I did. I shot a personal best 77, 5 over par. I'm still struggling off the tee with my driver and fairway woods but managed to keep the ball in play enough to scramble and not post a high score on any hole. The wife is home today and is hopefully smoking ...

 It's July 4th and I am off from work. Unfortunately I am back on call starting today so that's not fun. Thankfully the alerts have been much fewer than normal lately so hopefully that continues. I have 0 plans today. Right now I am working on doing some more Python programming learning. It's a lot of fun. So far all of my practice programs have worked with very little tweaking. These are simple basic beginner programs sur but it's nice knowing I am not messing this up royally bad. I'll probably read some today too. I am re-starting a good book about the Stuxnet malware. I am very interested in the "dark side" of cyber operations. I love reading true accounts of viruses, worms, malware, etc. I also have an addition to real-life programming books. I read a great book recently about the team that created mega-hit games Doom and Quake. Tomorrow I should be getting books about programmers who wrote some of the top games from the 80s. I can't wait to read t...

 I really enjoy lazy Sundays. I've spent about 90% of my day so far reading. I just finished the new Net Force novel. It's part of a trilogy and it feels like the next book will continue where this one left off. It's not bad. I wish there was more tech/geek stuff in it. Lots of gunfire and explosions and political drama. Might go golfing in a bit. I have been inside all day and need some fresh air. If not I will take the dog for a walk. I need some sunshine. Not much else going on today. And I am loving it.

 Well it is July already. July 2nd to be precise. I am enjoying the longer than usual weekend I am getting. Today we ran some errands and then took a nap after lunch. Rough life, right? 😁 I just finished troubleshooting some computer problems I have been having. Whenever I was plugged directly into my network card I wasn't getting internet access. I was connected to my router but wasn't getting through it to the outside world. I was using a very nice wireless USB device to connect to my WiFi but that would freeze up from time to time and require a full reboot of my system. After 5-6 times a day it got to be too much.  I tried a new switch in my office; no luck. I tried replacing the network cable I was using to connect to my router and switch; nothing. Then I went into the properties page of my card and noticed my DNS was set to 10.8.8.8. Not sure how or when that happened. I changed it to 8.8.8.8 and VOILA! I have internet again and it is screaming! I'll reboot in a bit a...