I know… I know… You can yell at me via comments or email… I’ve been a bad blogger…
again.  :(

A flurry of conferences intertwined with customer emergencies have taken me ‘out of pocket’ for the past month or so.

You know it’s serious when I have to cancel my trip to INTEROP… I’m traumatized by that, btw.

What have I been doing? 

The Conferences… Well, after the ILTA Conference in Texas (the hotel was gorgeous, by the way), I returned on a Tuesday evening only to be diverted directly to a customer site for the remainder of the week. After that, a few con calls and customer meetings, followed by SCITDA in South Carolina where I delivered a ‘Network Security Trends’ talk and participated on a Security Panel (with McAfee, Juniper, Cisco and others) later in the conference.

The Other House… As soon as I returned from SCITDA, the next few days were spent over-seeing the replacement windows going into the rental property. A few windows here, some sheetrock there, more painting than I really cared to do… and we were in business.

It’s been an on-going project… Over the past year, the house has been completely repainted (inside and out), all the hardware (doorknobs, fixtures) as well as lighting and outlets/switches replaced.  The master bath was redone with new tile and a new vanity with custom bowl sink and faucet. In addition, the third-acre lot was mostly cleared- from ‘couldn’t-see-the-back-fence’ to ‘wow-there’s sun-light’.  The dark (ugly) wood floor-to-ceiling fireplace surround was removed and sheetrock put up. After a guy ran over (and crushed) the draining system, that had to be replaced also (I have a friend to thank for redoing that, I wouldn’t have known where to start). Oh and, last month the roof was redone too, making the windows the last major project for a while (I hope). The roof and windows were the only parts contracted out… if that gives you any idea as to the volume of work I’ve done on the house. Maybe I’ll share some before and after photos…

And now, I still have more customer projects to complete, more product evaluations and reviews to write and of course… more conferences coming up. Plus, I have a sink to fix and a water heater to drain… (uggg).

Next on the list is SecTor… more on that soon.

So, while I probably could have found 5-10 minutes to write something, the days have been long and tiring. The chances of an even mildly-coherent post were slim to none (at best).

# # #

jj

Author, speaker, and recognized authority on network and wireless security architectures, Jennifer (JJ) Minella helps organizations solve technical problems and align teams.

View all posts