I’ve been having some sort of oscillating epiphany experience while I’m at this “computer security training:http://www.sans.org/cdieast04/ this week.

On the first day, I was sitting there thinking ‘is this really worthwhile stuff?’ Not just meaning computer and network security, but spending so much of my time on a careering in the IT field at all. Shouldn’t I be doing something more meaningful, something that really helps people?

The, on the second day, I am thinking, ‘okay, a lot of people are dependent on this industry, doing my part to help protect my employer’s network as well as the Internet is helping them.’

The third and fourth days were more exciting, or at least renewed my excitement in what I do for a living – particulary the fourth day, were we got into secure communications, cryptography and steganography.

Days 5 and 6 were Windows and Unix/Linux security respectively – they were interesting, but in the first case I’m not a windows admin (except at home, and a good bit of the stuff we went over was really only practical for large installations), and in the second case, a lot of it was review. Plus, by the 6th day we were all pretty fried.

We got out of Day 6 about 2 hours early. So, I got my butt to the airport in time to catch a 2+ hour earlier flight home, for only $25 extra. $25 for shortening my slouching around the airport time by two hours seemed like a no brainer to me!

So, I dunno. I know I don’t want to do this forever, and starting on another path is a bit daunting. I suppose it will happen when it happens…