Ok, Ive finally fixed my hosting issues so my website is back up. Ive probably got a heck of a lot to write about thats been going on, and I will… but I have a more immediate pressing concern. Sunday night my car was broken into, and they stole my MP3 player. I dont care about the player itself, but Ive also lost my last years worth of music collection which really sucks. So this is my plea:
Please each send me a list of 10 artists that you either know I like and would have had in my collection, or artists that you think I probably would like so I can add them to my collection. What would be even better is if (and I owned the album before) you could put 10 albums onto a disk and giving it to me?
Thankyou.
a) i bought a bike
b) Scrubs series 7 starts tonight
its funny, but something Ive realised just recently is that post 9/11 there has been a lot of negative focus, especially in the media, on the middle east and people who decend from there. What Ive realised though is that because of this, there is also a lot of education to be gained about these countries, their religions and their people. Personally Ive learnt a lot, and the general raise in awareness has to be a good thing, right?
Wow its been a long time since Ive updated, I had kinda forgotten all about writing on here until some of your prompted…
First things first. England v Australia. This is a GOOD time to be an Englishman in Aus. Seriously, the feeling of pure pride to wear the red and white jersey in the face of the Australians after England beat Australia, having coped with 7 days of abuse on how we were gonna get pummeled.. Yeah its good. Especially as we deserved the win.
So a summary of whats been going on:
Trip to england, and back again for a month…
New Job…
New apartment…
The trip to England was fantastic, but way too short. Sorry to anyone I didnt get to see while I was back, but I really was short on time to see everyone I wanted. But also a thankyou to everyone I did get to see - it really was fantastic to see you all. I got to spend a week with James and Esther in Bristol, and also go to Emma’s wedding while I was there - it really was a special week, followed by 5 days with my family staying at a chalet in Wales. Finally I got to spend 7 days just back in Surrey seeing friends I had grown up with. I could write a whole lot of details about what I did, but the short is that it was jsut a great time for me with my friends. Ive put photos on facebook and will eventually put them on jibos.co.uk
So just before I left for England aswell, I applied a promotion here at Citrix, which I got. So my role is now as a Global Escalation Engineer for network products. Its a lot more responsibility, and Ive also committed to studying for my Cisco certifications over the next 15 months (up to CCNP level). Its been good so far, but thrown in at the deep end, tryign to learn the existing products to a new level, and learning new products to a high level aswell. Its pretty rewarding! I also took a certification beta exam for one of these new products the week before I went back to the UK, and found out I passed that.
Lastly, this weekend I moved house. Kinda weird and sad leaving the house that ive lived in since Ive been in Australia. A lot of fond memories and relationships in that place but it was time to move on. So this weekend I moved into an appartment on my own (well the move was with the help of Chris, Liz and Lisa - mnany thanks). Ill take photos soon when I’m set up, but basically its a nice 2 bed place, new kitchen, new bathroom, new carpets and paint etc - generally a good place, and heaps closer to work.
If you wanna contact me there, my new details are:
4/36 Cambridge Street
Epping
NSW 2121
Australia
thats right folks, in just 2 more sleeps I will be on a plane back to England! Have to admit I am heaps excited about it, but it is gonna be busy…
Its been a really really busy week for me this week actually - just had heaps on. Sunday night my homegroup had “Christmas in July” which is a strange Aussie tradition where you do christmas in July because its winter. Even though we did it late and in August, but thats not the point… Has to be said, had a lot of fun.. Heaps of food, and people, and mulled wine etc… Was so so tired by the end of it though. Tuesday I was sitting a Citrix Beta exam… its like a normal citrix exam, but for a new product, and is about 3 times as long as a normal exam. So I did a fair bit of revision for that, but I dont think I did very well. But the other guy who sat it too didnt think he had either, and the questions were pretty lame. The reason I sat the exam though was because it was free, and so I can get a good idea of the questions and then when I take the exam for real I should be able to pass (since Citrix only pay for the exams you pass).
Anyway - that took a fair bit of time (studying for a 4 hour exam). I dont get the results for another 4 weeks though.
Now I just need to get ready for England, pack my bags with as little stuff as possible, and head on home.
Ive also realised I need to update my musical recommendaitions. I need to give credit to James for the first…
See you all soon. x
i totally forgot this site existed. whoops… apologies!
Im gonna be back in England pretty damn soon now, I fly out next saturday (11th July) and will land Sunday morning in London. I will be in Surrey until Tuesday/Wednesday when I head to Bristol until the weekend, but then I will be going to Wales to spend time with the Family, and will be back in Surerey on the Friday, which gives me 7 days back in Surrey…
I have a few people booked in that I have to see, but the rest of the time I want to be seeing as many of you as possible - let me know when your all around.
Also, let me know if there is anything (small) that you want brought back from this side of the world.
Peace.
This is my first really technical posting on here… but I got round to wondering about Microsoft and CA’s…
Most of you wont realise this, but Microsoft ships a list of trusted root certificates in its products. What do these CA’s have to pay to MS to be included? And more importantly, what do these CA’s have to prove to MS that they are trusted, that they have acceptable policies in place to verify the identity of certificate requesters, adequate protection surrounding private keys, certificate revocation policies etc.
This then got me round to thinking about the massive amount of control that MS has set up with this because realistically, if a company does not have its Root cert in a MS keystore, then who is going to buy their certificates? Whats more, MS could be setting themselves up to be a CA at some point - they could just not include anyone elses root cert in their product. Its not difficult to add any root cert into a keystore - but how many ‘joe bloggs’ really understand certificates and their use - especially the trust system surrounding them? This is true not only for corporates who can get around the problem by integrating the Root certificate into their SOE, but its more a problem for public companies who dont know who their user base will be…
Lets take Amazon as an example… And say that 50% of their customers use Mac’s, and 50% of their customers use Windows (unlikely but I want to be fair). Now, if all the Windows users only had a Microsoft CA root cert installed by default, and Apple users had a whide plethora of certs installed that includes the Microsoft Root cert, who are Amazon going to buy a certificate from… Verisign or GeoTrust? Where 50% of their client base they will get trust warnings that the site might be pretending to be someone they arent and most likely lose a significant number of sales, or would they suck it up and pay that bit more for a certificate from Microsoft that 100% of their client base will trust.
Obviously this is unlikely to happen because of the Anti-Trust lawsuit that Microsoft went through, but it does make you wonder just how much Verisign et al pay MS to be included since without it they have no business.
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