Ten Questions

There is a website that sends out a link to a question each day (except I don't get them - not even in my junk/SPAM folder, so have to remember to look) during the High Holy Days.  Ten questions, for you to think about how the past year affected you, and what is to come next year.  Reflections.

If you want to try it:  https://www.doyou10q.com/question/2025/1

You can opt to share your answers or keep them private.

I had a busy week and next one will be also.  The first three days I am in a CISSP exam writing workshop for ISC2, and then it is Yom Kippur.  Luckily my junior attorney returns on Monday and hopefully it will not take her too long to catch up so I can start giving projects to her.  At some point, my mother and I are going to the early voting; my father votes absentee and we'll deliver his ballot.

I'm back to making hats for the various collections:

It looks like I will get a fourth, if small (child, not teen/adult, sized), hat out of the ball of Bernat Forever Fleece.  Each one is a different pattern, including the Flight Formation Beanie that still has sticks in the top.  The ones unfinished will be worked on during tonight's fiber group meeting.  Four of these were knitted in the last week, the three with sticks in the top (and there is probably enough of the pink/grey boucle for another hat) and the striped one at the bottom.

I want to make other things, especially from yarn I purchased last weekend, but I am dutifully working on hats.

A pizza for my parents.

After seeing the pizza I made for myself, my parents strongly hinted that they wanted to try one.  My mother had some pizza dough from the local CSA languishing in her freezer, and a bountiful basil plant.  I still had half a log or so of fresh mozzarella.  So:

My brother gave us a lot of tomatoes.

Work has been busy, and on the side I did a presentation for one of my professional organizations, as well as preparing several resource documents for them, and drafting most of an article on the presentation topic.  I expect to finish that this week.

I finished the commissioned blanket and have started fingerless mitts out of the leftover yarn; I'll also make a hat.  Since the recipient is a runner, probably not a scarf, but maybe a cowl.  I have a whole skein of the green left, and one of cream, although the latter is one of the extras I bought as insurance.  The blanket took most of four skeins of cream and one of green.  A full post about it will happen someday.

I need to finish the test-knit mitt that goes with the sock.  I decided to use a different yarn in case I don't have enough of the cake I was given to make both socks and a pair of mitts.

I've been involved in an exam-question-writing project for another professional organization, which is fun but I apparently completely forgot how to format new references.  However, I think I am back in my stride and hopefully out of the red zone this week.

My crepe myrtle suddenly bloomed like crazy earlier this week, and I thought I got a good photo of it, but couldn't find it when I went to upload.  So I took a replacement but this is after a storm so it's not quite as bouffant as it was:

The branches are so heavy with flowers over the walkway
that I have to duck, which is very unusual.

I've been able to get out most mornings for walks, except one day when it started raining before I got too far, so I turned back to home.  Today I walked over 20,000 steps, which is not a record but very unusual unless I am on vacation someplace and doing lots of exploring.  That was due to a combination of lots of morning walking (two, if you want to be particular, because I had to go out a second time) and doing things to pull out items for the upcoming community tag sale and organize other things and so on around the house.

Turnaround.

In the Before Times, it was never unusual for me to have a day, or a bit more, at home between trips.  Sometimes I would have multiple suitcases and carry-on bags partly packed, and move the Dopp kit and a few other essentials among them.  I'd also taken a few end-on-end trips where I went from one set of meetings to another, and debated doing the same this time, staying a couple extra days with friends instead of coming home between.

I decided to come home.  Do a bit of laundry, not haul quite so much luggage around.  Give myself a bit of a mental break being home.  It has helped.

The first trip began visiting my parents for a few days.  We attended a local event together for the NC Opera, at which I won a T-shirt for knowing the answer "Treemonisha" to one of the trivia questions.  Coincidentally, it opened on this day in 1975 for the first full performances since it was written in around 1911.

Then to Irving, Texas, for a legal department all-hands meeting.  It was good to see people in person, there are some interactions that happen spontaneously that don't happen online.  I was scheduled to give a presentation on Wednesday, and revised it on the fly on Tuesday after some of the discussions we had.  It was very well received by my colleagues, and the General Counsel said it exceeded his expectations, which is some of the best feedback to receive.  Like many people, I have some degree of Imposter Syndrome, compounded by spending several years at my previous employer which kept promising I would be able to use all my training and never met those promises.  I am still not used to being treated as the skilled and knowledgeable person that my alphabet soup says I am.

Speaking of that alphabet soup, I have been participating in a question-writing program for the Certification as Information Systems Security Professional that I hold.  In the first phase we write questions, focusing on certain knowledge areas, and have to meet a certain number.  (I submitted eleven of the required ten.)  This is more difficult than you might think.  In the second phase, we peer-review questions submitted by others.  Some are similar to the ones I wrote, some are very different areas.  It is not easy, but I am very much enjoying the process, at all phases.

This morning I leave for a day and a half in Dallas, where I will see three plays and visit friends.  It is something like the quick trips I did in the Before Times, except that I will be masked and very cautious.  Some of the people I know sneer at masks, but they don't criticize me for wearing them, at least not to my face.  Yes, I am going to be one of these people for a long time to come.

Sunday I head to Las Vegas for the Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting.  It's hybrid, part in person, a virtual option for those who for whatever reason (cost, timing, family) cannot attend in person.  As somebody in leadership I felt obligated to go - and have made it clear that I will be wearing masks, in part so others will feel comfortable about doing so if they wish.  We all had to submit our vaccination status, and I have a copy of my card just in case.  More of the New Normal.

Instead of the stolid business meetings we used to hold the staff asked us to come up with fun activities.  I created a quiz using dice to figure out which question to answer, with questions ranging from pure intellectual property to Las Vegas to film and magicians and back again.  Hopefully people will like it.  I found a cool design and ordered prizes; token things, but something for the winners.

This is one of the items people can win.

I also ordered a T-shirt for me with the design on it, because I could.  I'll wear it on Monday when Team Turtle heads out on its daily walk.  I formed Team Turtle a few years ago because the runners always got together and did a group run in the morning, and I wanted something for those who cannot run.  There are more of us than people think!

We have a mascot:

What it was in March to mid-April

Doing a bit of catch-up on the blog.  When I last wrote, the North Texas Irish Festival was just beginning, a weekend later than usual due to international cheerleader competitions that overtook the hotels and Fair Park on our usual (first) weekend in March.  This turned out to be a good thing as the previous weekend's weather was wet and cold and miserable, but the weather on the second weekend, especially Saturday, was spectacular - sunny, warm, and people came out by the thousands.

I didn't get back for the Volunteers Picnic but did get the jacket, which has the 35th year's "Texas Grown Irish Roots" design, and LOTS of pockets.

March was the end of my company's fiscal year, so LONG.  Skidded up to the end of it trying to get deals closed, while also balancing everything else, including my role starting a chapter of (ISC)² which is for cybersecurity professionals.  We're slow starting but determined!

Because I was out of town I missed all the St. Patrick's Day parades and such, but I did a bit of cooking.  Unlike make of my friends who did the Irish-American corned beef and cabbage, I did some traditional Irish dishes:

From the top, soda bread (whole wheat and barley) and butter, braised spinach, roasted onion, poached fish with brown butter and caper sauce, and roasted beetroot with a squeeze of lemon.

Below, my dessert - bread-and-butter pudding with dried fruit.

At the end of March, SWAN Day CT's annual event, featuring women artists of all kinds:  musicians, painters, crafters, performers, and women-led bands.  I love to attend it, and this year assisted BiCi Co.'s "Beyond Gender" group to staff an information table.  This group focuses on women, trans, and non-binary persons in the bicycling community to give them a supportive place to meet, learn how to DIY repairs and upgrades to their bikes, and participate in activities with a community.  Of course, I was able to do a little shopping and listen to a lot of music.

Then in early April was DFW Fiber Fest.  Fourteenth year, and they added a day of classes, and had 95(!!!) vendors.  I took classes and did a volunteer shift, and had fun seeing friends and learning things and tried to keep my shopping somewhat moderate.  Among my classes was a new way to do crocheted cables, how to design my own pi shawl, and how to design a top-down sweater to fit me, which makes me happy because I don't like sewing (I still have trouble getting sleeve caps to lie evenly) AND I am a nonstandard shape so most patterns don't fit me well.  Just learning how to deal with horizontal planes in a vertical fabric was worth the time and class fee.

One of my test things in the crochet cables class.

Yes, there can be a LOT of maths in knitting!  But I can make it shaped like ME.

Start of a pi shawl, pre-pattern.  Lace came next.

While there I went to Rover Dramawerks' 365 Women a Year Festival, which features short plays about women who may not have gotten their full due from history.

The schedule was in two parts, and luckily I could go on two nights (DFW Fiber Fest has a great event on Friday night, so I wasn't going to anything else that night!) and see all the plays.  Definitely interesting, although some of the performances were a bit less interesting than others, all the women featured gave you something to think about and maybe research to learn more about them.  My one complaint was that it wasn't always clear from the title and characters who the woman was, so I've suggested they add her name and birth/death dates at the least to next year's programs.

Cybersecurity and Innovation Panels

I've fallen into one of my crazy-busy periods.  In addition to work's various deadlines I've attended three conferences on cybersecurity and privacy; spoken at a local event about one of my first experiences catching a cybercriminal; and I'm preparing to speak on a panel about creativity, invention, and innovation next week at the Connecticut Historical Society and Library:

My specific topic is how makerspaces, such as MakeHartford, contribute.  Since I'm also part of the Nation of Makers overview group, I said I could talk more broadly about the maker movement in Connecticut.

Moving back in time, at The MOuTH's event on "First Things First" I told about the time I caught a cybercriminal - in part because he sent me contact information because he wanted to fly his plane up and take me out on a date!  Sound improbable?  Can't make up facts like that, nobody will believe them.  The stories that have been collected from The MOuTH's events over the years are being turned into a podcast, so you may get to hear it someday.

Then there was the annual Symposium hosted by the University of Connecticut Law Review.  They had done one in 2014 for the 50th anniversary of the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, and this year's was called "Privacy, Security & Power: The State of Digital Surveillance".  Very interesting, the discussion and perspectives, especially given the changes in Washington right now.

Saturday I helped the Cetacean Society International with a display (and the only sale of the day) at the Amherst Railway Society's annual hobby show.  Sunday I caught up on things before leaving Monday for Washington so that I could attend the ACC Foundation's first Cybersecurity Summit.  A solid and long day of talking to colleagues, attending panel presentations, capped with a lively table exercise.  A couple hundred of the best and liveliest minds storming at once!

That evening I flew to Chicago so that I could speak on a panel the next day in the daylong "Cybersecurity: Protecting Your Clients and Your Firm" continuing legal education program.  In addition to preparing the obligatory materials, I spoke on a panel about what to do if you find there is a breach.

 

In the middle of the day I noticed the New York Times posted an article about securing  home devices which I mentioned during a speaker change because the information can be helpful to small law firms and solo practitioners.  Serendipity!