ryanreed.NET

Been kind of busy lately working on packing things up. I'm moving to a much nice area. I'm moving from East Providence to North Providence. I think I've earned a nicer area. :-D

More updates to follow.

Today was an interesting day. The MSS portion of VeriSign (which I am a part of) was recently acquired by SecureWorks. My Team Lead recently, without my knowledge, nominated me to become the Employee of the Month for SecureWorks. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I had won the honor.

I would definitely consider this an honor as it's not like a fast food style "Employee of the Month" deal (which, coincidentally, I have won before). I was recognized for the work I was doing company wide. It wasn't for just showing up on time, flipping burgers, and such, it was recognizing my performance and skills which I believe to be something I should definitely proud of.

If you are interested, you can check out the "censored" letter that was written by my Team Lead that lead to the award. Check it out

I'd like to welcome George Simons of geosimons.NET to the modern web development world. George currently works with me at SecureWorks and has finally got past the initial "under construction" page. I never thought the day would come. I'm so proud.

I've always preferred living in the south rather then New England for various reasons but in the last year, the urge to move has been pretty large. I've never been a cold weather kind of guy, snow gets boring after 10 minutes.

So you might ask yourself "Ryan, why not just move then?' Ah, there are numerous reasons but a few really stand out.

• The job - this is the biggest reason. I enjoy my job a great deal. I'm a big fan of the firewall management part of our business. It's extremely interesting and the troubleshooting, normally, doesn't drive me insane. I actually feel like I've come into my own in this respect, being able to troubleshoot firewall issues, setup VPNs, etc.
• The people I work with - I have an excellent team behind me. The shift is really rough, but I get to work with some smart and fun guys/gals. Our shift is pretty close and we have a lot of fun while getting a huge amount of work done. It's really the reason I haven't changed shifts
• The job - I know I said it earlier but it really is the job. Good money, good people, and good fun.
• The economy - It's a bit harder to find a job now adays. Finding a job without 10 years of experience maybe a bit tough. Leaving my current job without a job offer would be a huge problem.

Besides those points, I really don't have much holding me in New England. My family moved out of New England when I went to college and I don't have a significant other at the moment. I'd really like to move someplace South/Southwest. Texas seems really nice but I'd be open to almost anything south of Jersey. I guess I'll just keep a lookout and work on getting a good chunk of certs for a little while.

So a quick update regarding the "story" I posted a couple days ago. I received a letter from the Beaumont Legal Department informing me that they cannot be held legally liable for the damages to my camera. This is in contradiction to the officer who admitted to damaging the camera on voicemail.

Needless to say, I will be sending a reply back to Mr. Martin as I'm not sure what constitutes liability now adays but an officer dropping an $850 camera during a traffic stop and an admittance to dropping the camera on voicemail seems to me like it would make Beaumont liable in this case. We'll see how things turn out, I suppose.

Note: I really appreciate that the letter came from the directory G:\RMW\DENIAL\. Just makes it that much better.

I thought I would go and tell a true story about a run in with some police officers in Texas a couple weeks ago.

THE "STORY"

About a month ago, myself and 2 of my buddies, Randy McCaig and Brian Roy took a road trip from Providence, RI to Houston, TX to visit a good friend of ours, Matt Garza. We managed to make our way all the way to the Texas border without incident.