My Self-Education

Having recently graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy and Government (dual majors) from The University of Texas at Austin, and having decided to enter the IT industry with little formal technical education under my belt, I've been thinking a lot about how to learn all the technical material necessary for me to succeed. I've thought about getting a B.S. in Computer Science, but have decided that if I were to get another formal degree, it would be an M.S. or a 2-year degree from a good technical college. So far I've attended a SANS SEC-401 bootcamp and attained two certifications (A+, Network+). I'm currently working on two more (CCNA, GSEC) as well as a self-education curriculum involving a variety of both print and online resources.

For now, I've decided to create a Reading page on JoshuaRieken.com. This page houses my reading lists and will help to track my progress. I'm sure I'll come up with further ways to track and showcase my self-education process.

Here We Are, My Friends

So this is it--the long-awaited blog. Long-awaited by me, anyway.

Basically, this will be a place for me to spill out my various techie ruminations. I'll be following the advice of security professional Antonin Chuvakin and will do my blogging for me. Of course, that's not to say that I don't want community interaction, which is in fact the whole point of making a blog rather than, say, a personal wiki. So please, feel free to comment, constructively criticize, destructively criticize, and compliment-- you're always welcome here (unless you're a hacker looking to take over and deface my blog, in which case I politely ask you not to do so).

More to come--and soon!