Well still dealing with the pandemic, and hanging around the house.
Not much has changed for me, still working form home, and having virtual meetings. At least many people I work with have decided to stop using their web cams for every meeting. Well, except the people in my company, they seem to still want you to see them all the time.
Going to the grocery store wearing a mask, and following the directional signage like I was asked to do. Surprising to see how many people cannot follow simple instructions, or are just being asses. It is not that it is that hard to follow simple things, as going one way on isles, and trying to stay a certain distance from people.
Now we are having protests, riots and looting in a lot of cities, due to a police officer(s) that killed a black/African American gentleman named George Floyd. It is interesting the way this has taken off and the amount of people that are involved in some of the protests, and discussions surrounding the police and brutality against people. However, I think some are just trying to get a few minutes of attention and are not entirely involved with the intent of the protests. There also seem to be some that are using it for other purposes, and to try to cause havoc, those are the ones who are looting stores and damaging property. It is bad when I hear more on the riots and looting in the news, and less about the actual protests and information on the case against the police officer(s).
Now there seems to be more cases of RONA happening lately, most seem to be from the memorial day holiday weekend and people wanting to get out of the house for some fun and enjoyment. Now we might see a larger increase from the protests, and I hope we don’t go backwards on the stay at home orders. Things were just starting to open back up and people were starting to be allowed to get haircuts, eat at an actual restaurant, and get out to the parks and other places.
The Stock markets cannot decide what it wants to do and the US feds are not helping much. People are demanding a second stimulus check, some people don’t want to go back to work as they are making more on unemployment then what they were getting paid. Stocks rose when they announced that unemployment was lower then expected for May. Then it started crashing again after a non-informative a briefing from the US Feds.
All I can say is stay safe, stay healthy, and look out for yourself and family. Do what feels right for you and your family, if you can stay home, then do that. If you have to go to an office to work, stay away from the crazies who think nothing is going on, and it is all a hoax.
Well, had a trip that I had to cancel due to COVID-19. Was planning to go on vacation and on our way back stop in Charlotte to watch a NBA Game with the Horents and La Lakers. The tickets were fairly pricey ($789 for 3 tickets) so I decided to get the Ticket Insurance from Allianz for $53. Thinking that if something happened on our trip and we had to miss the game we would be alright.
Charlotte Hornets
Well I purchased the tickets in December 2019, way before anyone had really heard of the corona-virus issues. Then in early March the NBA decided to postpone the season after several players tested positive to the virus.
Then our vacation was canceled due to other places we were to visit had decided to close as well. So we had no reason to go anywhere for vacation as we could not due anything we had planned. I canceled all the hotels (5 places) I had booked for the trip, with no issues and since I used point to book they were just put back for later use. Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt did not even ask why I was canceling and just said we look forward to you staying at a later date.
Live Nation Owns Ticketmaster
Tried to call Ticketmaster to check on the tickets, their phones were dialing busy for many days. I decided to wait until closer to the game date to check on a refund. Finally got to someone who basically told me sorry, no refund on postponed events. Also Ticketmaster tried to update their policy to address the pandemic, which was caught and they were called out in the news for shady business practices.
Allianz (Will screw you over in a heart beat)
With TicketMaster looking to screw everyone out of money, It came to me that I had purchased the ticket insurance on the website along with the tickets. Looked up my policy on the Allianz website to see what I needed to do, of course they had a banner mentioning they were busy and stuff about the COVID-19 pandemic. I looked to see that for a postponed event I was covered and could get a refund. However, in their policy they also mention an epidemic and that noting was covered due to that. Well I figured I would give it a try, since I was driving and not flying. Read some twitter posts were they specifically said Allianz was denying anything where the Government canceled travel. Submitted all the information they asked for, and waited the 7-10 business days. on the 10th day, and since I had not heard anything I decided to check on the status. Noticed that it had a simple statement saying they had declined my request. Not stating any specifics to why, but did mention they would send a letter or email me on the reason why.
Decided to send them another request to tell me why they had decided to decline my refund request for a postponed event. Will wait to see if I actually get a real reason, or if they just lump it in to the epidemic clause in the policy, so they can keep my money and not have to pay out anything.
American Express
I did decided to call American Express to see if the purchase protection would help me, as it was still withing the 120 day window. But, after speaking to the nice gentleman on the line, their policy specifically identifies that any tickets of any kind are not covered. He basically said it covers physical items and not events, unless you purchase their trip insurance. it was a long shot but figured I would check, but no such luck.
Lessons learned from this event. Never purchases tickets through Ticketmaster or go to events that only sell thorough Ticketmaster (this will be hard as there is a Monopoly in ticket sales). Never get the Allianz insurance and always look for alternatives that will be way better if I am worried about an issue with the event.
Only thing I can do now is to see if and when the event will be rescheduled, and hope we can attend the event. If possible may try to resell the tickets once the event is schedule.
So, we are still hanging out at home due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Things have changed only a little for me during this time, I am still working jsut now at home more often. I was used to traveling to clients sites almost every other week, and now I am doing everything remotely for the most part.
Having meetings via Teams, Webex, and even Zoom has been interesting, especially with all the people who are not used to working remotely. With people demanding everyone use their webcams in meetings we get to see some interesting things, like people’s homes, their family members, and even their pets. This was not a normal thing that would happen several weeks ago on a virtual meeting. Several of the platforms are now allowing for virtual backgrounds, which gives people something to show other than their homes (messy or not).
Been reading some articles from several people (not sure what makes them an expert on this subject) twitter and news articles who want to tell me how to work from home and how I should act in my virtual meetings. I think that giving people a list of things that work well for you in your remote job is stupid, as not everyone is the same or wants to do the same things as you. I have no problems with listing out things to try, and let the person decided what works best for them, but stop telling people how to work remotely. Also, telling people to not mute their microphones during meetings so they can have better interactions with their team is ridiculous as no one would ever get anything accomplished. All you would probably hear is people breathing, eating, typing and other background noises. Making the meeting useless and take for ever to get to what the meeting was intended to cover. People will figure out the flow, just let them work on it, as every meeting has a different focus and drive based on the purpose. Plus half of the people are chatting with each other in the background about most of the topics being discussed.
That cozy work environment we all love
Not everyone is geared to do remote work, and many people like to have that little interaction with an actual person in their work day. Some may even take a little more time to find their groove in this process and it will be a trial for several weeks to get it to their grove. Some people need a routine to get through their day, while others will just wing it everyday. Which scenario works for you just keep dealing with it and keep at it. For the people who are like “see now they (their employer) have no reason to not let us work remote going forward”, you may have to keep dreaming, as it is not that easy for every company to make that an easy decision. Be happy you have an option to work remote, not everyone has that as an option.
We have the people who were terminated or furloughed as the business could not continue making payroll. Then there are the people who are currently identified as essential (Medical staff, grocery store staff and food service staff) and then there is everyone else either working remote or sitting idle collecting some paycheck (either a full or partial payment) waiting for things to start moving again.
What is normal?
Will everything go back to normal? Well you need to define what normal is to start that discussion. I do not believe everything will go back to the way it was before the pandemic, I do see some changes that will last for several years if not permanent. People may get to work remote for some time before getting asked to come back into the office. I do not see that everyone will be required to come back all at once, it will be the people who want to or are able to come into the office to work. Some may not want to come back at first but want the comfort of working at the office with their colleagues. Others will stay remote for as long as they are allowed to, some may be told to come back to the office, while others may be allowed to make that a choice to stay a remote worker. Some peoples positions will be eliminated as there will not be a need for them due to less work overall, less money coming in to support the staff, and possibly the business not getting back to pre-pandemic operations.
Wishing to be heading somewhere nice
Traveling will take a while to get back to any type of normalcy and some airlines may not continue with or may limit some flights to certain cities (less profitable locations). Business travel will change for many, as it will not be justified to fly out to do those meetings onsite. Sales people may not be able to get into meet the people they are trying to sell products to. For many if it can be done remote, then that would be the preferred option, instead of the expense of traveling and the possibility of someone getting sick.
Vacation travel may take a big hit, some will be due to fear of traveling again, and some will be due to financial limitations from layoffs and people having less money. People may just do more driving to nearby areas that are less crowded, and less people flying on crowded planes to large populated areas. Cruising may have some less crowded ships, but not sure if that will be just older people and some families with kids, or if it will be across the board for people. Have read that cruise lines have seen an uptick in people booking trips for 2021, but I think it is people playing the game, and are hoping for a cancellation to get an extra credit fees to book a future trip or are taking the current credits they got for canceled trips to hold their place on the next ship.
Who know what the future will bring, I guess we will find out in the next coming months. One thing I can say is I hope people stop being stupid about this whole situation. Yes it sucks, and maybe could have been handled a lot better by the people in government. But if we all work together we will get through this sooner than later.
Well we have a full blown pandemic across the world due to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), which the first cases of this virus started in December of 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei, China. The World Health Organization declared it a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
People are being forced to self quarantine as employers are going to a work from home model due to pressures to distance people from each other. Many people are happy that they actually get to work from home, while others are not overly ready or prepared to do work from home. It is funny to see all the twitter posts on how to work from home, and what you need to do. Some make sense and other s are just someones personal preferences. Figure out what works best for you, and try different things at first until it works best for you.
My Work From home:
Set a schedule (Wake up the same time every day)
Get ready for the day (Get out of your PJ’s and take a shower)
Have a separate place to work (My Desk is in my bedroom at the current time)
Dedicated work area (My standup desk in a corner of my bedroom)
Quite area for conference calls (No pets, kids, or TV’s)
Take breaks (Get away from things – walk outside, step away for 10 to 15 minutes)
Plan lunch breaks (Meet people, just get out of the house, actually take a break)
Have an end of the day (when does the work day end for you?)
Working from home is not for everyone, no matter what I hear on Twitter. Yes it sounds great for many people to be allowed to work from their house and not to have to drive into an office. While it sounds great to just roll out of bed and be at work, that is not always the case. For those that have kids at home and no real office to separate your self away from everyone else, it is hard to not get distracted. if you do not have a headset with noise canceling microphone, the background noise will be heard by everyone and very distracting. Telling yourself you can multi-task, just stop lying to your self. You are just doing more than one thing half paying attention to one or both of them most of the time.
If it was not for me traveling frequently, working form home would get really boring and monotonous. I like to interact with people, not that I do not like to talk to my wife and kids, but they do not know anything about what I do for work or any of my hobbies. For some people who like to be alone and only want to see their family, that is good if you can work from home, but this is not for everyone.
So, if your getting to work from home or looking to get a job that allows you to work from home. Make sure it will work for you, it is not for everyone all the time.
Some see perceived benefits:
No longer have a commute
Save on gas not commuting (maybe)
Save time not commuting (maybe)
Get to stay home with spouse/pets/kids
More quality time with family
Kids will not have to go to daycare/babysitter
Have more time (not sure on this one)
Able to take care of person things
Dr appointments when I want to go
Go to the store when I want
If you get the opportunity to work from home get a plan to continue to show your value to your manager, otherwise you may have to go back to the office. This is the reason why many people do not get the opportunity to get to work from home is due to some slacker who could not handle it. Yes, your manager will believe you are not doing anything as they never see you. This could also impact promotions, as your not seen you tend to become invisible to people. Keep in contact with co-workers, your manager and show you can be productive no matter where you are.
I started to remove all most Google products from my day to day life.
Why you may ask, first off they have way to much information about me and my daily routines. Second they have not always been good stewards of personal information they collect.
To start off I removed Google Chrome browser from my devices, and switched over to DuckDuckGo search engine and on occasion will use Microsoft Bing Search engine. This did take sometime to get used to using something other then Google, as their search functions work differently.
I have migrated my email from a Gmail account to a personal hosted email account. This took a lot longer then I originally expected, as some businesses rely solely on email as a primary ID, and their systems do not have the functionality to change this. Some required an email, to get this changed through a manual process, while others just said sorry no can do. The ones who could not change my account I just dropped them and will use something else as they were not really important to me.
I had an Android phone a long time ago (2008), I stopped using it as it was more of a hassle to work with then other phones I had used in the past. I know many people will say Android is the best phone OS and there is no comparison. My issue was there was no standards across the environment, and there were so many malicious apps in the stores then I wanted to deal with.
I actually found out that I had not been using many of Google Services as they came after something else I had been using and it was not any better then what I used.
Primarily I used Gmail, Calendar, Blogger, Domains, Drive, Voice and Maps.
Google Service
NOTES / ISSUES
WHAT I USE
Gmail
Took a while to move accounts over for different services.
BlueHost Hosted Service
Google Contacts
Have not really relied on this in sometime as my Phone always was current with contacts
Apple / iPhone
Google Calendar
Automatic add of items to calendar is fully working in others
Apple / iPhone
Google Search
Have to learn how to do searches again
DuckDuckGo Bing
Google Maps
Google MyMaps – Not found a suitable option OpenStreetMaps – is basic
Bing Maps Apple Maps Still doing a search for alternatives
Google Analytics
Stopped using this a while back after one of their changes made it a pain
Not using anything currently
Google Drive
Moved to OneDrive as I get 1TB of storage already with my Office suite
OneDrive for documents and photos iCloud for other Apple items
Google Photos
Moved to OneDrive
OneDrive
Google Docs
Moved to OneDrive
OneDrive
Google Play Music
Have been using Spotify for some time
Spotify
Google Play Movies/TV
Think I had like one movie I purchased on Google
MoviesAnywhere Disney+ Amazon Prime Netflix Hulu
Google YouTube
Did not save anything to YouTube, only used it for researching
Yeah not sure what to use for this one
Google Play Audiobooks/Books
Do not really use Audiobooks , but already had a bunch of books in Kindle and Nook
Amazon Kindle Nook Apple Books
Google Play Store (apps)
I use Apple products
Apple Store
Google Android
I use Apple products
Apple IOS
Google’s Android Apps
I use Apple products
Apple Store
Google Chrome
Moved to Firefox as it was a resource hog, worse then other browsers
Firefox
Google Domains
Used it when I was moving away from 1 and 1 hosting as the price was cheap.
Blue Host
Google Hangouts
Limited use to friends who had Gmail accounts
Slack WhatsApp
Google Allo
Did not have any friends using this
WhatsApp Signal Telegram
Google Podcasts
I use Apple already
Apple
Google Newsstand
Never liked Newsstand
The Old Reader
Google Wallet
Only used it a couple of times, due to not as many places taking it
ScannerTranslate App on phone Will figure this out next time I need it
Google Duo
Tried to use this, but did not know anyone using it
WebEx – For Work iPhone FaceTime
Google Earth
Was cool at first, but never really had that much of a need for it.
Not Using Anything as a replacement
Blogger
Platform was not that great, moved to it from an older hosted WordPress, then moved it back to another Hosted WordPress
Hosted WordPress
Waze
Loved this service until Google purchased it, after they acquired it I started having a bunch of issues of it not working or just giving error servers unavailable error. So stopped using it about a year ago.
Apple Maps Not The Best Maps
I started using Google Gmail sometime back in early 2005, when I got an invite from a friend. Had moved away from Hotmail after using it for many years.
I am sure some will mention that I am moving away from Google to another company that may not manage my data all that well. Yes, I have Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple as vendors for my data, but I am not utilizing just one company anymore which was one of my concerns. Albeit that many companies rely on Google for their back-end and have Google Analytics so I will still see some tracking of my searching. I do use Firefox on my devices usually in “Private Window” mode to limit some data collection.
Time will tell if I move back to some of the Google applications, as I am still looking for alternatives. The biggest I seem to have an issue with is the “My Maps” which I like to design travel maps for vacations. I have not found an alternative that does anywhere close to what the Google app does. it relies on Drive and Maps to function so I will need to keep my Google account for the short term. I also do not know what to do with my Google Voice number as I have had it since it was Grand Central and have used it for years as an alternate number to some contacts. Plus I still have five other Gmail accounts I used for various things over the years that I need to keep for the short term until I get them cleared out and all access I used them for moved to my primary or an alternate email account under my control.
Have been traveling to Mooresville, NC for work for about eleven months now (started in Feb 2019), it is getting a little tiring to visit the same place every week. I fly out on Monday and home on Friday almost every week. To me it is just far enough I do not want to drive the four+ hours one way, especially when I have meetings to go to as soon as I get in on Monday.
I have visited a large majority of restaurants in Mooresville, Davidson and surrounding areas, since I have been visiting the area. I was surprised to not be able to find a place to get fried chicken though, well except for the chain places.
Places in Mooresville NC:
I have tried several barbecue joints, and have been pleasantly surprised at the food. There is a place called Big Tiny’s that is a Texas style barbecue with some great banana pudding and Shiner Bock in bottles. Another place is called Lancaster’s which is an East North Carolina barbecue with plenty of NASCAR memorabilia all over the place, wings are good as well as the BBQ pork and a decent banana pudding as well.
Have tried Epic Chophouse, which I have visited several times and the food is always excellent. They have several menu items I have loved, one being the Smokin’ Hot Couple and the other is the Mixed Grill. Of course the steaks are great and they have a very good bar with many options on wines and beers. They are known for their deserts as well, which having tried a couple I can say they are great, have heard they are from a local bakery in town. This is my usual go to place when some one I know is coming onsite to visit and say lets do dinner.They require everyone to dress reasonably and men’s shirts must have sleeves. Almost every time I have been there it is packed but have not had an issue getting a table of finding a place in the bar area.
Places in Cornelius NC: 131 Main, which I guess technically is a chain, but they only have four locations three in the Charlotte area and one in Asheville NC. Have only been once, but the food looks great, I tried the Southern Shrimp and Grits and had appetizers of Deviled Eggs and Cast Iron Cornbread. Everything was excellent and I was so stuffed I could not try dessert.
Places in Davidson NC: Kindred is a great place to eat and is usually packed. Have been several time and have never had anything that was not excellent. The menu is seasonally driven and and is different everyday. Flatiron Kitchen + Taproom, have been about six time here, and the food is always excellent, and the beer and wine selection is great. Mesitzo is a Contemporary Mexican restaurant, it is fairly small but has a nice outdoor patio with a view of the downtown area.
I keep seeing people post things like: “Top 10 Cruise Mistakes Only New Cruisers Do”, “Top 10 Worst Mistakes A First-Time Cruiser Makes” while some of these makes sense others are just a vague opinion of the person writing the post.
Opinion Based Items:
What to do on the first day on Board:
This one kind of seem stupid to tell me what you think is best to do on the ship. If people plan ahead they have some idea what is available on the ship and what they might want to do until their room is ready. I usually know what I want to do when boarding the ship, swimming is never one of those things. I do like to walk around checking out the ship, seeing all that is around and orientating myself to where things are. I will window shop at the stores, stop by to where the theaters and restaurants are located.
Bring your swim suite in your carry on to get to the pool early.
This one I am like no! No one can go to their rooms, so this is the first thing kids will want to do. I always see a packed pool or slide within one hour of people getting on the ship. If that is your thing then do that, I for one will be skipping this.
Eating at the Buffet on the first day is the worst thing to do for some reason or another.
If you want to eat at the buffet then eat the buffet, if you prefer to do a sit down at the one restaurant that is open then go there. Pick the pool side food if that is your thing as well, especially if your at the pool this one is easiest. Everything is packed on the first day as everyone is getting onboard and has nowhere to go. Do what makes the most sense to you and your family for when and where to eat, there is no one thing that works best for everyone.
Things that should be common sense:
Not bringing ID/Passport ETC….
Ok, if your that stupid to not know what is required to have for each person in your party when traveling anywhere then that is your fault. If your leaving the country then you need to verify what will work for each person as a form of ID to get into the country visiting. This is usually validated when arriving to the ship to get checked in for the cruise, but you should have planned by checking on the Ships website to required documentation. Ask if you are not sure, don’t just assume everything will work out.
Plan for the worst when traveling to and from the cruise:
I do agree that you should never plan to travel to port on the same day your leaving on your cruise. If you do anything, plan to travel a day or more before your cruise is scheduled to leave. This will save you a lot bigger headache of missing the cruise if you have travel delays. Have been on several flights with people who are freaking out because the plane is delayed, and they either are not getting to their destination today or will miss their connection all together. Screaming at the flight attendant or customer attendant will not get you much.
Plan to either get a late return flight or stay an extra day, as there is no guarantee the ship will dock at the scheduled time for you to get off the ship and to your flight. Have seen people trying to push their way off the ship to get to the airport to catch a flight. many of the other shipmates have plans just like you but scheduled accordingly to make sure to be able to get home.
Final notes:
Plan ahead, don’t think everything will work out all the time. I have seen even seasoned cruisers make this mistake. No one can make your time terrible except you! Things don’t always work the way it is planned. Take a deep breath and see what will work instead. Having had a shore excursion canceled the exact time we were supposed to leave, there were several people screaming a the ship crew and complaining how terrible they have maid their day, etc… You know these people have nothing to do with the cancellation. Take a minute, regroup and then plan to do something else, like jsut waling around to the shops or taking local transportation to some place.
I travel a lot for work, and have been reading several travel site blogs as of lately.
Some are down right stupid and a waste of time, while a few are useful with relevant inforamtion. None of them are 100% accurate, and all have some biased toward one thing or another.
I know there are more, but these are the ones I read the most. Most of them have the same content onbonus points/miles and card to use.
My preferences for travel: Flight: Delta (Platinum) (I travel out of a regional airport and the other carriers have screwed me a time or two) Hotel: Hilton (Diamond), Marriott (Gold), Hyatt (Discoverist) (Some have asked my why I have 3 hotel preferences, and I have always told them none of these brands are perfect in all cities or have a good hotel in all cities I have visited.) Car: Hertz (President Circle), National (have switched back and forth between these two over the years) Packing: It does crack me up on some of the posts on sites telling people what to pack, how to pack and what to bring. There is no one way to travel, one way to pack, and it will depend on the person what they need to bring along with them.
Having traveled extensively for the past 10 years for work and military, I can say I have defined my own plans for packing and what to bring. It does not align to most of the blogs sites, and works well for me, but may not work well for others. I pack in cubes and fold my clothes, many sites recommend rolling your clothes to make more space. I have never been able to make add any extra space, and it makes my clothes more wrinkled then me just folding it neatly.
I have a separate toiletry bag that I keep all my items in, it is just easier to have duplicates, and just fill up the items as I need to after my return home. I do have the same mouthwash bottle that is exactly 3oz in size and I just refill it as needed. I also have a decent supply of small toothpaste tubes, as everyone in the family gets one from the dentist after their teeth cleaning, and never uses them.
I generally take a small 21″ Wegner SwissGear suitcase, that I have had for a many years, it was not expensive (maybe $80 max) and I am in need of a replacement soon. I do not carry on my suitcase, and generally check it (I get checked 3 bags free). Which I have been ridiculed for many times by so called expert travelers. However, having been screwed many times (Primarily by United and AA) on waiting for plane side checked bags (Smaller regional planes), and missing a connection due to them taking forever getting the bags back to me, I have always checked my bag since.
Flights: I prefer Delta as my main carrier for flights, I like that my miles never expire, and I have had little issues with them compared to AA and United out of TYS. I travel out of a regional airport, so am limited to AA, United, Delta, Frontier, and Allegiant and will usually connect into another airport to get almost anywhere. A majority of the flights I am on are CRJ700/900 and maybe a MD88, which is why I check a bag as I do not like to plane side check a bag, and then wait to get it back at the next airport, and hope to make my next flight.
Hotel: I prefer Hilton brand hotels, I have a few I like best out of all of them. I would book Embassy Suites hands down if they were available in the area I am needing to be in.They provide a two room suite, and an evening managers reception, as well as a cook to order breakfast. I have usually found them to be better priced (not always) then say a Hampton Inns which is a lower value Hilton Brand for some reason. I do stay at some Marriott properties when I need to, some times it is just to keep my status with them, other times it is there is not much else available at a reasonable price or in the location I need to be. When I am able to I will stay at Hyatt, I do like their hotels but they tend to not be in many locations I need to be in. I used to stay at Holiday Inn hotels, but they have not kept up their hotels and seem to be lacking these days.
Rental Car: Have been using Hertz as it is just easy to book from the Delta web site after booking my flight. Their website and mobile app suck, but I like getting the Delta Points for booking as I never get a rental car when I go on vacation so would not use the points. I used to always book National as I liked the walk up and drive off method. I just pick the car that works for me on the trip and drive to the exit and am on my way. I get the same service with Hertz now that I am President Circle, as long as the location has that option.
So, pick what works best for you and stop listening to all those blogs telling you what you must do when traveling. We all have different styles and opinions so no one thing works for everyone.
Took the Payment Application (PA) Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) exam back in March, just a couple of weeks after taking the Point to Point Encryption (P2PE) QSA exam. Surprisingly they both seemed fairly easy tests, the P2PE was a little harder since I had to study up on some crypto information.
Had been trying for a few months to assist with some P2PE assessment work, but it seems that is not as easy as I had hoped. Had asked to shadow some people or assist on small projects, but got nothing. I then asked to work on PA assessment, was invited out to the Colorado office to learn the internal processes, and go over some documents. Was asked if I was interested in joining the PA team by hte managing principal.
Finally decided to stop trying to get into the P2PE team, and took an opportunity on the PA team. Applied for a Senior Consultant position, but was only transferred over as a IT security Consultant. Not exactly sure what the deal is with promoting me to Senior, especially since I have more experience then most Senior Consultants that I have worked with so far. But that battle is for another day.
Will see how things go with doing the PA assessments, they do not seem to be very difficult, most of the testing is easy. The pentesting portion is kind of a joke, as they do only minor tests against SQLi, XSS, CSRF and buffer overflows. Almost makes me miss doing the pentesting stuff, and the exploiting software vulnerabilities.
So my move over to the PCI-QSA world has been extremely slow, primarily due to upper management. I have been currently splitting my time between doing penetration testing and QSA work. It has not been an easy process working for two bosses who have different scheduling styles. One gives me my schedule months out, and the other will send me an email days before he expects me to start working on a project. This does not always work well since the one boss does not usually look at my calendar to see if I will be available. So I get scheduled to do a penetration test when I will be onsite at a customers doing PCI work. Usually never works out in my favor, and makes for working long hours, with no compensation for it.
My bosses boss (our COO) said that on Jan 1 2016 I will move over to the PCI group but will still need to assist the penetration testing group with some projects. Not sure that is actually going to happen. The one thing that makes this a pain is they already hired a person to fill me on the team, but another person left in November leaving another shortage. The interesting thing is this same issue I am having with moving groups is the same reason I left the company the first time I worked there.
Only time will tell if I actually get to do my new job or if I am stuck being split between bosses.
