KSU on System Overlord

The End of a Chapter

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 04:59:59 +0000

I'm not usually one for reflective personal blog entries, but some events require a brief mention: today was my last day at KSU, and it was an incredibly surreal day. Though I've known this day was coming for over a month, it is still hard to believe that it got here. In many ways, today felt like any other day: the work was similar, things needed to get done. In other ways, there was an 800 pound gorilla in the room: everyone knew that tomorrow I wouldn't be coming to work. When I finally cleared out my office, the finality of what was going on really hit me.

My Time at KSU

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:24:58 +0000

As you might have seen, I'm leaving my position at Kennesaw State University to take a position as a Site Reliability Engineer at Google. This is something I'm very excited about, but I thought I'd take a look back at my time at KSU as I approach the end. It's worth mentioning that I'm not leaving KSU because of KSU, but because this is an opportunity I just could not turn down. For the most part, I like my position at KSU, and I really like most of the people that I work with. There's a particular group that's become three of my closest friends and one treasured acquaintance.

KSU Cyber Security Awareness Day 2011

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:25:19 +0000

Today was the KSU Cyber Security Awareness Day, presented by KSU's Information Technology Services (a sister department to the department I work in), and it was a resounding success! There were several presentations that had standing-room only attendance, and for good reason.

My personal favorites:

Mike Rothman from Securosis on finding happiness in information security. Mike's presentation was as much about being happy in your job and in your life as it was about cyber security, but he asked a number of very pointed questions. Questions about pay/salary, job satisfaction, and life priorities. I found the questions unsettling, not because of the actual question, but because I realized that I'd been subconsciously thinking those same things for quite a while now. The take away from his presentation can probably be summed up as "Is what you're doing today getting you where you want to go?"