Fall 2019: Graduation & Job Search

Fall 2019 Update:

I have some great news to write about today. First,  I graduated from UMUC August 25th.. Second, after months of job searching I have been offered a position for a full time programming job.

In terms of the first bit of good news, I suppose the question should be: was it worth it? For me, the answer is yes. In terms of cost, it was about 11,000 dollars for 13 courses. ($927 a course).  Keep in mind, I only had to take my major's courses because I changed careers; I already had a bachelor's degree that they accepted for non-degree courses. UMUC would be more expensive if you had to take all the 'core classes' that have nothing to do with coding. 

Should you go to college? It depends. If you're in my situation (late 20's, a career changer with a bachelor's degree already), perhaps it is best you do that so you have direction. The college courses motivated me to get over the 'hump'; I hate getting anything less than an A or B, so I strove to learn. However, if I were to redo it all at age 15-25, I would go to something like Lambda School and take Udemy courses. These are significantly more cost-effective, and with drive get you to the same place in terms of coding skill. Demonstrating skills on your portfolio and in the interview can get you the job. An exception may be a USAJOBS job with the government that has strict requirements.


Now on to the next bit of good news. After job searching for about 4 months, I've acquired a stable programming job! I actually acquired a remote part-time php developer position about 2 months ago, however, that job was, and is , more of a stepping stone. I appreciate the company (G-NET) and its owners; they are professional and pay-on-time. Keep in mind, I've probably applied to about 150-200 places; I've had 4 face-to-face interviews and 10-20 phone screenings. I've been rejected several times, but I've persevered and I've finally landed a good coding job in DC. At this moment, I don't want to say the name of the company because it starts in several weeks (I want to find more about their online presence policies). It pays between 60-70k, which is exactly the number I'd been hoping for because I was making about 52k teaching. I'm striving to make 6 figures within 5 years *crosses fingers*. Check out my video on youtube about the interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4jEh_sjvoM


I'm excited to see what the future brings; I'll continue learning to code and growing my skillset. What this whole experience has shown me is that if you work hard, you're competent, and you have the right mindset, you can change your life and do better. :D :D

Summer 2019 Update 1: Computer Build

Summer 2019 Update 1: Computer Build


I built my computer in January, but here's the update anyway! Here are the computer specs:

-MSI MPG Edge AC LGA1151ATX Z390 Gaming Motherboard Z390EDGEAC

-i7-8700K Intel CPU

-Noctua NH-D15, Premium CPU Cooler with 2x NF-A15 PWM 140mm Fans (Brown) 

-Samsung 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E1T0B/AM) 

-Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 DRAM 2666MHz (PC4-21300) C16 Memory Kit - Black

-EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING, ACX 2.0 (Single Fan), 6GB GDDR5, DX12 OSD Support (PXOC), 06G-P4-6163-KR

-EVGA 650 BQ, 80+ Bronze 650W, Semi Modular

-CORSAIR CARBIDE 275R Mid-Tower Gaming Case, Tempered Glass- Black



This was really fun to build. The case was very easy to open and work with. The CPU installation was quick and painless as were most of the components. The only two issues I encountered were: The Noctua fan was tricky to install on the CPU(you have to balance it on top of the cpu juuuust right).

The noctua also made the motherboard very heavy to maneuver in the case. This made things difficult when I realized I had to take the motherboard out b/c I forgot the face-plate to the many ports protruding from the back of the case/motherboard. XD

It's been 5 months since I turned the rig on and I haven't had any issues so far. It runs like a charm. I am not on team red(amd) or blue(intel), but I am very attracted to the Zen 3rd Generation 12-core $500 AMD cpu that's coming out next month. If I build another PC anytime soon it will be after Intel has responded with something that competes with AMD's recent announcements. Thanks, JG.

50% Finished

As of today, I have officially  finished  50% of the UMUC cybersecurity software development program. I'm looking back at spring posts and laughing at some of the bumps I had in UMUC's pre-programming course. SQL, basic programming concepts, and OOP have engrained themselves more fully in my mind since I've taken Java II, SDEV350/300 (basically oracle/aws, php/mysql). I hope this blog will remind me later that I worked hard to accomplish my goals and that it wasn't always sunshine and rainbows.

Here's a recap of the classes. Keep in mind that the first 4 classes at UMUC were not  focused on security. Intro to Algorithims focused on the utmost basics of programming. CMIS 320 was a class strictly on understanding the basics of sql and databases. Java I & II focused on oop and more advanced programming topics, but did not investigate any secure coding practices. Finally though this fall I got into the SDEV courses (security development); CMIS 300 investigated OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities, the ZAP Scanner program, mysql, php, and CWE codes. SDEV 350 was focused on using secure AWS RDS practices, Oracle architecture programming, and auditing practices.

Here's a breakdown of the coursework:

SDEV 300

Pros:

-Learned how to use the ZAP scanner program and automatic bug scanners in general

-Coded in php and learned about sql injections

-Learned about php form validation, sanitation, and prepared statements

Cons: 

-Relating to UMUC in general, I truly feel this school is about independent learning...the teacher was there to simply clarify certain learning objectives or obscure instructions. The teachers do not teach at UMUC. I plan on creating a youtube video actually about UMUC in general; I hope it will help me vent some of my frustrations and adda-boys with the school.

-The coursework was overall straightforward, thank god. The only lab that was truly confusing was the last week's lab. The lab was confusing because the application did not work correctly. This was not required to complete the lab, however, it was questionable to what degree I was expected to 'find and fix' bugs in an application that isn't functional in the first place. In any case, I got an A in the course so I wasn't terribly worried.

SDEV 350

Pros: 

-I got to work in-depth with oracle architecture, keywords, profiles, roles, user creation, permissions, etc. This went far more in-depth than the CMIS 320 course.

-I got to start and manage an AWS RDS instance. I hear AWS might be important to at least navigate (Eli the Computer Guy talked about AWS outposts). I feel if I ever need to know EC2,S3 storage etc it shouldn't be terribly difficult to learn it.

-I got to practice Auditing. I learned how to create audit roles, and utilized the unified audit trail in Oracle. I might one day get my CISA so this course helped prepare me for that. 

Cons:

-AWS and oracle documentation did not always match up. For several projects including the auditing and creation of DBA permissions the Oracle documentation would not always work with the AWS system. The teacher did not forewarn us about this issue, and I would have liked to have a heads up about it. 

-Some of the presentations were old; I wonder if the teachers create their own presentations or simply graft it from the last teacher who taught the course. It seemed some slides hadn't been updated.

Overall, I'm happy with my performance this fall. Here are some personal projects I'm starting on during the x-mas break: 

1. Building my mid-tier computer this christmas (i7 8700k, 32gb ram, 1tb ssd, etc.).

2. Building my home-lab.

3. Reading the three books: Sql Injections Attacks and Defense by Justin Clarke, Building Virtual Machine Labs: A Hands-On Guide by Tony V Robinson, and Nmap 6 Cookbook by Nicholas Marsh.
4. Learning powershell and data-loss recovery via udemy

UMUC: Classes Review

I want to give a run-down on each of the classes I've taken at UMUC. My degree is in cybersecurity and software development, and I've taken three classes total. Keep in mind the classes are 8-weeks long, and usually consists of 4 projects, 4 discussion posts, and any number of quizzes/tests. 

*********************************************************************************

I took my first class in Spring; it was a prerequisite coding course titled CMIS 102. It went over coding basics using C.

Class: CMIS 102, Professor Goode

Pros:The class teaches important coding fundamentals. 

Cons: I felt this particular teacher had confusing notes for his lessons. Each week he would post a much more 'helpful' lesson himself. Having taken 2 more classes, his notes were definitely confusing, but I was also a noob at programming. Like all the teachers, he would meet on Skype if you asked him to. 

Most Difficult and/or Important Concept Learned: I learned the very important basics of coding. Almost every concept in this class was fairly easy to learn up until arrays and for loops. 1D, 2D, and 3D arrays and for loops were the most difficult concept for me.

*********************************************************************************

Class: CMIS 141, Professor Pitocco- JAVA

Pros: I really appreciate the teacher's involvement, and I appreciate timeliness with which he grades your assignments. Definitely an example of good teaching on an online platform.

Cons: His first two tests are difficult and not the kind of knowledge you could study for as the notes were ginormous. I'd suggest taking the test once at the beginning of the week, doing the week's work and take notes, and then taking the test again at the end of the week (you are allow two attempts). 

Most Difficult and/or Important Concept Learned: I learned a lot of JAVA fundamentals in this course. I'd say some concepts that were *cough* fun to wrap my head around:

-creating an instance of an object using a constructor in another java file.

-creating and calling on methods

-nesting code...IE:  toString(myNumber(input.keyboard)));

*********************************************************************************

Class: CMIS 320, Professor - SQL, ORACLE, SQLITE

Pros: Like CMIS 141, I really struck gold again within another great professor. He grades quick, is always willing to answer questions, and his notes weren't terribly difficult to follow. 

Cons: The fact that I used a Macbook Pro made this class a little more difficult. We had to connect to UMUC's servers and the instructions for Macs were less clear. It seems Windows is preferred at UMUC. 

Most Difficult and/or Important Concept Learned: 

SQL itself is easy to learn and implement. I had a lot of fun on the terminal with Sqlite on my mac. I'd say a difficult aspect of this class was learning the normalization forms. 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF can be a tricky concept to wrap your head around at first. The final project is centered on the concept.

*********************************************************************************

This Fall I'm taking CMIS 242 (Intermediate Java), and cmis 350 (Database Security). I'm very excited to continue this coding journey!!!

MY CODING JOURNEY

This is my first blog post!!! As the blog title suggests, I'm currently a 30-year old 11th grade English teacher in Maryland. I've recently decided to migrate from the education career to a career in IT. Why would an English teacher, who teaches the nuances of shakespearian inspiration, want to move into the passionless(at first glance) field of 1's and 0's? I'm glad you asked. :)

I started my journey by acquiring a BA and MA in English Literature. Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Levinas, Marx, Derrida, Jameson, Habermas and a host of other literary theorists and philosophers captured my attention for many, many years. I eventually graduated, moved to MD, and took a stab at becoming a college professor for about three years (I failed miserably...although adjuncting was a fun if unprofitable endeavor). At the age of 26 I decided I needed to make some real doe-rae-me. (as well as a girlfriend and dodge challenger). I took part in a teacher certification program, and within the year I found myself teaching a classroom full of young minds in Prince George's County MD.

Three years have passed since I first entered the classroom. Not enough time to say I'm a veteran, but long enough to know how the education system works. Why leave? It's quite straight-forward. 1) The salary/salary-potential isn't high enough. 2) Discipline is not taken very seriously. The former case is self-explanatory; I want a family and it's hard to make a living in one of the most expensive housing states in the US. The latter involves many experiences in the last three years that have shown me that education administrators are more interested in passing students than passing educated students. Enough said.

I became interested in coding last summer. I was good at the English language, so how hard could a computer language be? I poured through youtube videos and Team Treehouse archives for about 6 months. Then this last spring I began a cybersecurity and software development degree from UMUC. I've been learning code ever since.

I hope this blog may be used to express my opinions, track my learning, and help others on their learning path. I'm glad I've set foot on this journey, and I hope others might be inspired to see someone change career tracks and know it's never too late to begin coding.

-JG