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It’s been a very productive few days. I’ve been applying for various jobs across the country! Super happy to finally be out of the studying-only phase and onto the application / building phase of this career pivot!

Between applications, I’ve been working on my own home labs and playing with different operating systems.

One of the most important skills as a network / systems administrator and “IT Guy” in general is to be able to wield the power of Active Directory! I’ve set up a home lab, and I’ve been having fun with it!

More time with VirtualBox √
Hands-on with Active Directory √
Hands-on with Group Policy √

Getting the pieces all put together is quite fun, and after a couple of stumbling blocks and a few minutes, it’s all coming together!

Active Directory comes into play with Network+ and Security+ and some of the courses that I took, but I can’t believe I slept so long on VMs and home labs. I’m working on Windows Server, Ubuntu server, and Windows 10 all at the same time.

Virtualization RULES! Can’t wait to try it out on VMWare or on a cloud platform! I’ve found VirtualBox to be quite buggy.

Despite my annoyance with VirtualBox, it’s amazing the power of GPOs and AD. It’s one thing to learn about it in a book, and quite another to see it in action. With one click, I can disable an account, reset a password, set conditions, and all kinds of stuff…just like that!

Magic hahaha

It’s a local domain, but the principles are all the same, and as long as things are being learned and mastered, that’s what matters!

I’m starting to think that maybe it’s the system administration stuff that I’m drawn to, rather than cybersecurity? Or maybe both — it’s still early days! I really love this building and organizing side of the job. It’s quite cool being able to analyze logs and sort through data on Splunk, but the building of systems is a whole new kind of creativity.

Maybe a systems engineer or architect in the future? I have such a problem…I’m just too interested in too many things…

Truth? I’m having trouble managing my time. On one hand, I want to apply for jobs all day every day, but on the other hand, I do want to keep practicing and building. That’s how we learn, right?

I want to do my CTF class, a HackTheBox learning path, a Udemy course on AWS, a CCNA course, and a million other things…dang!

I suppose that’s tomorrow’s objective: set my daily schedule and better budget my time! There are only so many hours in the day…ugh, there’s never enough time 😦

Anyway – onwards and upwards!