7 Stages of Security Man - Part 1 - Emerging

I've been suffering from 2 complaints which I have since found out are called 'up to my eyeballs in alligators' and 'Blogger's block' - thanks to Brian Honan for that one. shrdlu has suggested I get around it with Primal Scream Podcast therapy, but I'm not sure anyone's going to download that. Brian came back with the suggestion that I write about how I got to be where I am today, and I wondered if it might be kind of therapeutic, cathartic if not chaotic. I've had quite a few jobs, so I'm going to serialise them and pull out a few of the security and life lessons I've learnt along the way. Enjoy.

I've been in security for about 7 years now, and in networking before that, so 'IT' for nearly 10 years, since I left University with a quite useless degree in Physics which I vowed never to use. That's not to say Physics in useless, quite the opposite, that is to say that I had given all I had to spare to Physics by the time I left, and the loss to both parties was not great. Einstein I am not, but you probably realised that by now.

In the early days of my career I worked for an investment management bank in London, with a million legacy systems and every new piece of equipment you could possible sell to an idiot in a suit. Investment bankers are a vendor's dream, rich and stupid, unbelievably arrogantly stupid beyond belief in the main. They are the helpdesk monkey's nightmare for the exact same reasons however. I was shouted out day and night-shift for various reasons such as WHY ISN'T MY PRINTER ON? Er, try the plug mate. CHANGE MY PASSWORD, NOW! I just did fella, you just locked yourself out again because your cAPS lOCK's stuck on. Et cetera.

I rapidly got bored of the arrogance, I can't abide being pushed around, especially when it is by people more stupid even than I. Banking was not for me, much like it isn't for the vast majority of people who have any self respect. Clever people, great: push me around mentally and I'll bow to your superior brain, but idiots beware. And so on to my second job.