Thursday, February 14, 2013

Random Conversations Part 1


On the way to the gym...


Daughter: “Ugh. It's way early. I'll be asleep by the time we get there.”

Me: “You could have stayed in bed.”

Daughter: “No, I want to do this. Wait....ewww. What's that smell?”

Me: “What smell? Oh, yuck. [rolling down window] It must be skunk.”

Daughter: “That's just nasty.”

A few minutes later....

Daughter: “Oh man.....gross, another skunk. Can't you smell that? [rolling down window]

Me: “Well, we're almost there.”

Daughter: “What is it with skunks and the early morning? This just stinks.”

Me: “So you're saying 5:00 AM smells like skunk butt?”

Daughter: [Giggles] “Yeah, but is it actually the skunk's butt?” I mean, they have a gland or something that makes the smell, right?”

Me: “It's a gland, but I think it's in the butt area. Skunk-butt area.”

Daughter: “I can't believe we're talking about skunk-butt at 5:00 AM.”

Monday, February 11, 2013

Warning: Way Too Much Use of Italics, Underlining, and Bold Within



Well it finally happened.

After having a year's worth of positively useful and enriching classes, I've got a complete and utter DUD this term.

Six chapters into the book and we're still discussing network architecture theory (it's a network architecture class, in case you haven't guessed....), and how bad it sucks when management isn't on board with security base-lining.

Here's an original thought! ….we can keep on whining and complaining that security is such an under appreciated field....OR we can learn some methods to help make the case to management. Or learn breathing exercises.

But the theories - oh God... all the endless theories about the best ways to ask questions about the system you're going to build. I got it, really....you need to fully understand the business' objective and know exactly what they want in order to deliver the best product.

I totally get it - this is an area of development that is so full of FAIL. I've experienced first hand how bad it is when developers and architects design something so completely different than what the client wanted.

But we have devoted six (very long) chapters thus far on how to ask questions. I fully appreciate that I have a short attention span, but really? Can we get into the meat of actually designing something? It's only a 12 week course. At this rate we might design something, oh, I don’t' know.....maybe around 2016?

So far every weekly assignment has been a five page term paper discussing some scholarly article that MAY or MAY NOT have ANYTHING to do with architecture. Esoteric topics like, “Do hackers prefer the color blue, and what does that say about the best way to prevent a breach to your system?”.

For serious.

There has yet to be any assignment on the material being covered in the book or lectures. And that makes total sense, riiiight?

The content of my papers has typically been me regurgitating things I learned either on the job, or from my other classes. While I can see the benefit of that (ten points to Gryffindor for applying existing knowledge!) it would be nice to actually learn something for the obscene amount of money being paid for this class.

I am currently preparing for my midterm and know fuckall of what to actually study.

For all I know, the exam will cover the sexual habits of lemurs and require us to design a secure VPN network around it.