I previously posted a screenshot of a 2 * 10^6 points monthly score in Memrise.
This time (March 2020), I was able to surpass myself… 2’240’000 points. But it wasn’t all fun, it’s turning into hard work to score that many points. Getting up 5 o’clock every morning, three sessions a day… hmpf. I know, there are other people getting even higher scores, but I also have other interests.
March 2020 was fortunate circumstances, which helped a lot…. one week alone, 31 calendar days… it all helped.
Yes, I did it again. New year, new test, same result (apart from the unfortunate CKAD exam but it’s not quite over there yet because I have a free re-take)
Apparently I will receive an email confirmation with the definite result in about 10 days but I don’t think they will change the result *fingerscrossedthough*
The hurdle work experience in order to get actually certified is a different story though….
Anyway, next up are take 2 on the CKAD exam followed by CISA….
Update:
In case you are wondering: I used to CISM All-in-one guide by Peter H. Gregory and an app called ISACA CISM by pocket prep to crunch practice questions.
Soon after getting certified as CISSP, I started stuying for the CISM exam. I’m done with the textbook (All-In-One CISM by Peter H. Gregory, 2018 – which I can recommend) and I am making good progress on the pracice questions on Kaplan (former Transcender),
The original plan was to take the exam around February but maybe I can speed things up and take the exam in January already.
Still on my list…. CKAD (needs review) and CISA (book ordered).
In case you don’t know, this is the app called Block Puzzle (on Android). After 7 years of puzzling, I managed to finally solve the last remaining puzzle (#491) on 24. 10. 2019 at around 14:49 – in an airplane flying from Dublin to Paris. Perhaps as decadent as it gets.
I already asked the person who introduced me to Block Puzzles not to show me any more puzzles, thank you very much.
Anyway, done and happy with it.
I started work extra early, left early and gave it all.
It was worth it: I passed the CompTIA CASP+ (003) exam today. First try, like all the other IT exams so far.
Again, CompTIA exam. Vague on purpose so I felt terrible during the exam. Out of 80 questions I had almost half marked for review but after two out of three hours and two review rounds I handed the exam in… et foilà.
This particular exam does not give you a score, just a pass / fail result.
The beloved (dreaded) Red Hat 5 server simulation was there as well as the download simulation.
The range of difficulty of the questions is so wide…. some questions are really simple (or at least seem to be as I don’t know if I got them right or not), other questions… no clue at all about the correct answer.
Tonight it’s time to celebrate… next week Thursday I’ll take on the CKAD exam, the last one for this year. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
minikube is an awesome tool to play around with Kubernetes and it’s easy to install on macOS if you already have brew installed (not much harder if you just follow the instructions on kubernetes.io though)
But sometimes, just sometimes…. spinning up a Kubernetes cluster with minikube does not work… it gets stuck somewhere. You can crank up the debug level which will fill your screen your message and you can searchengine whatever error message it spits out and try to fix it. I’ve tried it but it takes and usually does not bear frut. In the end doing the following always fixed the issues:
shutdown any minikube clusters that are running (on purpose or not)
make sure virtualbox is turned off (when in doubt, check with ps aux | grep -i virtualb )
rm -rf .minikube
rm -rf .kube
brew cask reinstall virtualbox
if you’re feeling adventerous, you can upgrade minikube and kubectl at the same time.
then spin up minikube again: minikube start -p <yourclusternamehere> (I like not using the default cluster)
On 20190912, I took and passed the CISSP exam after several months of preparation. Yay for me!
What about that series I mentioned? It’s becoming scary but I haven’t failed any IT exam / certification so far… MCP, LPIC, federal tests, CompTIA and now the CISSP exam. Of course I’m glad about this, but it’s getting spooky.
What was the test experience like? The checks until the actual exam starts is the most annoying part… identification, NDA, vene scan, everything twice. To some degree I can understand that, but the vene scan in top of passport checks? Hm…
One thing on the actual exam I was quite worried about is that you cannot go back to previous questions… click Next, no way to go back. So many times I did not feel particularly confident about the selected reply… but you can’t go back, so worrying about it is useless.
The other thing I was not prepared for was the questions that asked for best something / most appropriate something… practice questions were more fact-based and if anything they asked “what is the first thing to do when…” or “the last thing to do when…” – which is a different dimension from “what is the best thing to do when…” as that implies the listed possibilites could all be correct but one is ‘more’ correct and the deciding factor is not necessarily a technical factor.
Anyway, I felt quite burned out after 80 questions and was hoping that I would not have go higher than a 100 questions. Which is exactly what happened… the result is not even shown on the screen, only on the printout. I did not feel confident regarding the result so imagine my surprise.
Here’s what I used for preparation:
Linux Academy CISSP preparation course
Official CISSP Guide 3rd edition 2016
Some lectures on pluralsight.com and many practice questions on kaplan.com (linked to pluralsight)
Some lectures provided by thorteaches.com
An app called CISSP Professional with practice questions
In the latest version of Ubuntu (19.04), ifconfig is not installed by default anymore.
If you need to find your wifi mac address while you have no network connection, you cannot install ifconfig so you need a different way to find your wifi mac address:
Do `cat /sys/class/net/<network_connection_name>/address` to display the wifi’s mac address.
On a default installation, <network_connection_name> is most likely wlo1. If it’s not, use tab completion, in all likeliness there are only three files in the net folder: the wired network adapter, the wifi adapter and the loopback address.
My personal suggestion is ninite, to be found at https://ninite.com/
Select the applications you want to use, download the installer and run it only a daily basis – it will keep you up to date and safe(r)
Love it or hate it, but minor applications can easily be installed via the AppStore e.g. Line or Slack
Advantage: You will get an update notification from the AppStore if an update is available
Follow the instructions on the brew HP: https://brew.sh/
Once this is done, you can install, update or uninstall applications from the command line
brew install wget
brew cask install macvim
brew cask install gimp
brew cask install libreoffice
brew cask install quodlibet
brew cask install virtualbox
brew cask install chromium
brew cask install projectlibre
brew cask install vlc
brew cask install skype
brew cask install minikube
brew cask install firefox
brew cask install keepassx
brew cask install box-sync
brew cask uninstall <cask_name>
brew update && brew outdated && brew upgrade && brew cleanup
The mainstream operation systems (including mobile OSes) have an upgrade function (in case of a mobile OS, whether your carrier releases updates is a different story….)
Use that function and install those updates!
macOS: Go to the Apple icon, select “About This Mac” and click on “Software Update…” Most of the updates require a reboot, even on MacOS.
Windows: From the “Windows Settings”, go to “Update & Security”. Check for updates, install what’s available and reboot.
Ubuntu: Run ‘sudo apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade’
(if you feel like protesting because <your valid reason here>, then you already know what you’re doing and you shouldn’t be reading this anyway (unless you want to fact-check my ramblings))
Other Linux versions use different commands, if you’re unsure, google for the appropriate command on your platform.