.: CCSA to the rescue... 07/11/2003 :.

I am personally not convinced that industry exams are worth their salt, but my bosses seem to like them. While I not one to bow or bend to the corporate will, I am dependent (for now) on my job. After much thought and deliberation, and more or less as a direct result of the interesting changes of our employee benefits package of late, I have decided to load up on certifications. I already earned one last year. Now, I have two. Soon I plan to pass the CCSE and the CCSE+. Then for my my yearly training I will attempt to get more SANS training and work toward some of the certifications listed here. Perhaps the GCFW or the GCIA are up my alley. After looking at the descriptions, I think that I would likely be more comfortable with the GCIA.

Plans for the night: relax, read, enjoy a nice up of Starbuck's Coffee, think about next weeks goals.

Next weeks goals:

Implement PGA on MPI cluster

Implement Asynch PGA on MPI cluster

Experiment with the two

Start report of findings - to be finished by December 5th

Work on the Grid Security Paper

Study for the CCSE

Reinstall SuSE on my desktop machine ( I hoarked it backing up my Mac's files... Note: never just delete the "Desktop" folder on a KDE system, bad things happen after that.

Read - as much as possible

Sometimes it is beneficial to reflect on the goals accomplished during the week. Here is what I got done this week... as usual the list is smaller than the planned goals:

Finished DS2 Programming Assignment #2

Upgraded my Macintosh to Panther (OSX 10.3)

Studied for my CCSA

Passed my CCSA

Turned 26 - yes this takes effort

Read Plato's Apology and Crito

Purchased a stash of books for my reading self

Played around with Blojsom for blogging - didn't really get anywhere it yet

Brained stormed ideas for Dr. Paprzycki's Graduate Students

Fought threw the crowds to watched the Matrix Revolutions in a sold out theatre (capacity 443)