Day 55

Posted on October 23, 2020 by Carmelo

Another busy week down. Things are hectic and the deadline is rushing towards me quickly! There is a lot to do and what was just one person’s job is taking up 12 people’s full time attention right now. How crazy is that? I think I’m steering the company in the right direction right now and I’m aiming to make organizational changes.

I feel our team is getting the customer’s account under control and meeting the requirements we need to. It’s unfortunate that we only have ad-hoc process behind a lot of initiatives but I’m spawning workstreams to get those to a managed state.

It’s weird, I am having a good week but at the same time I’m drowning in work, but it’s productive. Am I just confused?

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Day 50

Posted on October 16, 2020 by Carmelo

Another ridiculous week. We had a new CISO start and he and I are going to work together on this one client. He and I have had several long chats already.

This week had many more deliverables dumped on me… It’s shitty, but at the same time, I have been able to learn leaps on what is going on and can make decisions and explain rationale behind it. I’ve had some good audiences where I can articulate the right thing to do and get support I need.

I got a Deloitte team working for me now, in addition to the two PMs I acquired last week.

I’ve pushed myself to keep positive and that has kept stress away. It’s good. Let’s see how long I can keep this up.

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Moving Day

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Carmelo

Like I posted the other day, with Damien getting an apartment, the weekend came where he got it and started moving out. 

We are very proud of him. We are also pretty happy that he has good friends! He’s going to be doing okay!

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Day 45

Posted on October 9, 2020 by Carmelo

I’ve been putting in extra hours catching things up. It’s kind of weird but every time I get a little further ahead, I get a lot behind on other things. It feels like this photo.

On a positive note, I have two resources, one dedicated to me and another I can leverage, but he’s shared (but has nothing on his plate right now, so w00t w00t!)

Being transparent definitely has it’s privileges and throwing around the positive attitude makes things not so bad. It’s been a week for sure. I completely turned off my computer at the end of Friday. Better things to focus on, like becoming an empty nester.

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It’s CyberSecurity Awareness Month

Posted on October 3, 2020 by Carmelo

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Day 40

Posted on October 2, 2020 by Carmelo

Dennis put in his notice a week ago, I didn’t find out until Monday, I officially took over his duties Tuesday. It has been very busy. I have had to focus on getting Dennis’ tasks back on track and positively communicating with the customer. There was getting the SSP ready. Learn about the FIPS assessment. Come to completion on the NIST assessment. Control the risk assessment scope. Get reporting on corrective action plans on point.

It was not the best week. I’m not sure that it was a bad week. But it was a busy week!

 

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Game Night

Posted on September 26, 2020 by Carmelo

My friends and I hosted a virtual game night on discord. It was a lot of fun. We played https://skribbl.io/ and then some https://jackbox.tv/ and then ended with https://innersloth.itch.io/among-us which ended up being pretty cool.

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Day 35

Posted on September 25, 2020 by Carmelo

Eric and I put the majority of my spreadsheets into SQLite and we’re going to do something fancy. It’s really cool that we are maturing the GRC program together. I got a lot done this week and I had a great feeling of accomplishment. It has been driving my need to learn more and I’m really putting a lot of thought into coming up with a Governance application. Once I solve a Governance application, I can tie in a compliance/risk application to it. I know there are already applications in the market out there, but I think that this would be better because I’m not a GRC person trying to tell a programmer to interpret what I’m thinking. But I’m far from a programmer too. So there is that. It was a good week.

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Virtual Build Party

Posted on September 19, 2020 by Carmelo

Today was talk like a pirate day. It was also our virtual build party!

Over the last many weeks we have been planning a virtual con of sorts… one that focuses on the side conversations that we loved having aside from the walking around and checking out the wares of the vendors, or the panels, or the other fun stuff. The running into people that you remember from the last con.

Today we met online, on our discord server, and had some good social interactivity. We had our projects and worked away at them and had some good discussions too.

Here are some photos.

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Day 30

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Carmelo

Another week went by and this week started off… Sick off. I got sick over the weekend and had to take the time off on Monday after missing a morning meeting. I made up for it with a lot of smart work. It feels good to work on something that I’m passionate about. I busted out a lot of reviews and worked on some complex documents this week. I had a little bit of fun with a team doing a quantitative analysis.

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