For the past week, I’ve been in Nashville, attending a SANS information security training class. The class ran for a full seven days, from 9am until 7pm each day. We did get a lunch break and snacks in there, so it wasn’t inhumane or anything. 🙂 I don’t often travel alone, and I haven’t been away for this long before, but I think we all did pretty well with it. I sent photos to the kids of my planes, lunches, and selfies each morning. Brandon kept me up to date with the goings on at home, and we had FaceTime calls at night when we could. There was a PF Chang’s next to my hotel, and I got takeout from there almost every night. I didn’t see much of Nashville, what with the packed schedule I had, but I got to see a little bit of Vanderbilt University, which was adjacent to my hotel. In my free time, I enjoyed the NHK World channel in my room (why don’t we get that, TWC?!) and did some studying and other tech reading. I’ll have to take an exam at some point after this class, which will get me a GSEC certification. I talked with my classmates just a little bit, mostly my table-mate and one loud dude who liked to wear pastel shirts. I’m thinking security professionals are even more tight-lipped than your garden-variety techies. 😉 I only had one minor crisis, a broken strap on my shoe, which happened as I was running back to the hotel during a popup thunderstorm after lunch. There was just no fixing it, but at least I packed a second pair of shoes. 🙂 On the last day, which was Linux day, I was constantly raising my hand and correcting/updating the information presented when it was out of date or just incorrect. I’m sure I was a total pain in the ass, but I could not let the wrongness stand! 😀 At our coffee break, a lot of classmates came up to me to give me their card after that–and I discovered that a lot of them work for three-letter government agencies. Maybe that’s why they weren’t a chatty bunch this week. 😉 I learned a lot this week, and I’m glad for the experience–but I’m also glad to be back home! I think Brandon is glad to have me back, too. I’ve got two more business trips lined up this fall, so stay strong, hon! You can do it. 🙂
