Where Have I Been?

Last time I posted I still had a semester of college left to complete at Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins. I of course have now completed my degree and entered the real world.

Shortly after graduation as I was settling in to what I thought was going to be my job for several more years at CSU, I got a call from an old friend that had moved down to Colorado Springs where I grew up. He of course was just catching up and seeing how things were going, but mentioned briefly that I should send him my resume. Not thinking of it, and thinking it never hurt to see what other options were out there, I sent it to him. I got a call a couple of days later, asking to setup a phone interview.

Fast forward to the phone interview, I got on the call with the Vice President of Security Solutions and the Chief Information Officer where the first question was "Is your mom Kelly Thomas?". That was in fact my mom. The interview proceeded to ask about my course work, my GPA, my desire to learn more. Nothing too technical was asked. After the interview I called my mom to ask if she knew the guys interviewing me. She assured me that they were great guys to work with, but ended the conversation with "People either love me or hate me, so if you don't get the job, I'm sorry". That had me a little concerned, but life went on as normal.

A few weeks after the interview I got a call while I was on the way home to Colorado Springs for Memorial Day weekend. It was the CIO saying that they were in the process of drafing an offer letter, but only wanted to send it to corporate if I was serious about the position, which I ensured them I was. Within a few hours, I had a nice shiny offer letter in my inbox. I have always liked change, so the thought of moving and starting something new did intrigue me a bit.

Over the weekend I went through a few apartments that met my criteria of having a two bedrooms (one for my office and the other to sleep in) and a garage. I finally settled at a nice complex close to work and close to where I went to high school. I took several hours to think about what I wanted; what was best for my career, what was best for social aspects, what would I be doing, where did I want to be in 10 years. I decided that if I wanted to grow and learn something new, work with new people and maybe find something I would like aside from web application development that I should take the leap. I signed the offer and faxed it to the corporate office and it away I went to sign a lease.

The weekend went from a relaxing weekend with family to a stressful weekend full of moving. My current lease in Fort Collins was up a few days after the weekend, and my new lease started on Memorial Day itself. I caught a ride up to Fort Collins, picked up a U-Haul and spent all night packing my condo into the U-Haul. Not an easy task by any means, let alone by yourself. My dad came up the next day to load the fragile stuff and electronics into his car, and that was that, I was off to my new place in Colorado Springs.

I had a week off before starting my new job as a Security Engineer. It was a nice break. I had been working full time and doing school full time for the past several years, so a few days off where I did not have to worry about anything but unpacking was nice. During that week though my new company contacted me and told me to book an itenerary to a customer site the week after I started. I had no idea when I accepted the job that there was travel involved. Luckily I have always wanted to travel, but didn't think anybody in IT could travel much for business other than conferences.

Skipping forward to now. I have been in this job for 9 months and for the most part I still enjoy it. Like most in my field, I end up working a ton of hours and weekends occasionally. I travel about every other week, with the potential to travel more in the upcoming weeks and months. Last month alone I visited New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. I had not given a lot of consideration to the security field and what it entails before I started working in the field.

After working in the field and realizing that a lot of organizations don't have a strong security posture and that customer data including my own can be compromised, I have a strong interest in the field. I never thought I would use anything I learned in my CS356 - Computer Security class, but I have from day one. The field is huge

Alright, moving away from work.... in the copious amounts of free time I have had (sarcasm) I have had a few vacations (Las Vegas both times, within 3 weeks of each other), built a new desktop computer, went on one awesome Jeep trip, worked on a few projects I have had in my queue and bought a second vehicle.

Las Vegas

I decided the week before Christmas would be a good week to get away from it all and go somewhere. I picked Las Vegas. I had never been to Las Vegas before, and at 23 years old I figured it was time to visit (and I wanted to re-connect with an old college friend (Miranda) that now lives there). I landed from a Business trip late on a Thursday night, drove home, packed and drove right back to the airport with about 2 hours of sleep. I was excited. I had a spreadsheet of everything I wanted to do, when it was happening and how much it cost. It turns out I did not use that spreadsheet very much. I visited every major casino, did a lot of drinking and had a lot of fun. I hung out with Miranda. I saw Vegas outside The Strip, hung out with some awesome people and saw some awesome things. The flight home was the final segment I needed to be United Premier, and was subsequently upgraded to First Class on the way home. I ended up being grounded in Phoenix 3 weeks later, and decided to delay my flight home and take a short road trip over to the city that never sleeps. I did not even visit The Strip the second time, but did enjoy several hours laying out in the sun and enjoying the pool. It was exactly what was needed after a stressful week.

New Desktop Computer

A few weeks after starting my new job, with some graudation money burning a hole in my pocket, I decided I wanted to build a new computer. My computer at the time was a bit out of date and I wanted something beefy that would last me a few more years. While I was building my wish list, I decided instead of just building a normal computer I was going to do something new and go with water cooling.

Water cooling has a bit of a learning curve. There are a lot of components needed (pump, reservoir, tubing, special water, etc). I essentially built my base system and then ordered the components I thought would fit for water cooling. Luckily everything fit the first time without any modification. I have enough horsepower now to run a couple of VM's and do image/video processing, and of course gaming.

Jeep Trip

Labor day weekend, after a night of partying at my parents house, I embarked on a Jeep trip that was the most memorable thus far. I met up with my Jeep buddy just outside of Bailey Colorado and we proceded to run the trail to the top of Red Cone Pass. Parts of the trail had sheer cliffs that dropped down a thousand feet, with vertical decents that were incredibly steep. If you slipped sideways you could have a difficult time recovering, and if you slip completely off the trail you would undoubtedly die.

We spent a majority of the day above 11,000 feet (and maxed at 12,745 feet) and could see for what felt like 100's of miles. After the thrilling descent from Red Cone we decided we had enough time to run the next trail, Radical Hill. Radical Hill was less technically challenging, but can still be scary in spots. The final ascent is the width of a Jeep with no room for passing or any wrong moves. The ascent ends with a rock face full of loose rock that I started slipping on and compenstated with a lot of gas.

After stopping for photo opportunities we descended into Breckenridge Colorado. I only sustained minor damage on the trail that resulted in my front anti-sway bar connects being damaged, but that was an easy fix with some zip ties. I plan on running this trail again next summer.

Projects

I have several projects which I still plan on doing, but my primary focus over the past several months has been the redesign of this site. I decided I wanted to learn something new so I decided to use ASP.NET MVC2. I love this design pattern, and plan on using it on my larger projects and websites in the future. I have been using the 960 grid system for years, and doubt I will ever go away from it unless absolutely required. I also decided I wanted to use a good amount of jQuery and AJAX. This is all topped off with a good amount of CSS3. Needless to say I know this site looks pretty good (at least for what I am capable of) in all/most modern browsers.

I was also tired of having a bad data layer and writing endless SQL queries. I went with the Entities Framework. I love it! It makes the interaction in my business layer much easier, and consequently the UI is easy to markup as well.

In the past I have implemented my own user store for not only my admin account but also the accounts that people had for commenting. I decided to go away from that and move towards more of a single sign-on/federated identity solution. I decided to go with OpenID. This allows me to login and do what I need with my OpenID provider (Google), and allow anybody else that wishes to comment to use their ID as well. I hope more sites move towards this model in the future.

I took down the old site, and transitioned the new site to my .NET 4 host a few weeks ago, and am just now ready to make my first post (this). The site is still definitely in beta, but I will slowly update as I have time.

New Car

With as many trips to DIA as I was making and all the exploring I like to do in Colorado, the gas milage on my Jeep was constantly shrinking my wallet. I decided it was time to pick up a second vehicle. I had a price range in mind and that helped me narrow down what kind of vehicle I wanted. After I determined that a Jetta would be a good fit for me, I immediately knew that I wanted a 1.8 Liter Turbo with a 5 speed manual transmission.

I searched for weeks on craigslist and finally found one that was a good fit. I took it for a test drive and signed a bill of sale minutes after returning. The car is an absolute blast and gets great gas milage too!