July 4th, 2017 was the last day of my practicum. A few days longer than it was supposed to be, but that worked out better for me.
The whole experience of school and my practicum feels surreal. In fact, most of this year feels surreal. I did well at school. Though in some of the courses I should have done better. Even still, I had top marks in all the classes except one. Overall, I’m happy enough with how I did.
The practicum was a different story. I loved it. Even if my anxiety got to me a couple days. I was able to work on several different projects, and work in an environment that I was unfamiliar with and become comfortable in.
In technical terms these are some of the things I was able to work on:
- Remote storage software
- Building virtual machine from those storage backups
- File Sync from a Mac to a Linux virtual machine over the internet
- Deploy a Domain Nameserver (DNS) on a Mac Server (yes, I worked with Apple products!)
- Buy a domain name and configure it on the DNS I set up
- Change the primary domain nameserver to be hidden
- Work with Docker (a container system)
- Work with Meteor-Up (Deploys Meteor Apps to a docker server)
- configure NAT on a Cisco 5506 ASA router
- configure hairpinning on the same router
- configure NAT for the Mac server for both DNS and remote desktop
- find a solution to remote desktop to the Mac from a PC
For a practicum, a lot of the things I got to work on were pretty involved. One of my back up restored VMs actually came in useful when a system failed shortly after I got it working. I was able to get a client up and running with Meteor_up. And my work with the DNS is possibly helpful with another client.
Within all of that I managed to mess up a couple things. My first error was disabling internet connectivity for the backup server. Which was quickly repaired by a coworker. In my defense, I did get internet connectivity for nested virtual machines in Hyper-V after this blunder. The second thing I messed up was disabling VPN functionality at the office because of how I had first configured NAT on the router. It was a pretty simple fix, and I learned a lot about network and service objects within the ASA.
From a trans perspective, not really much to report. In school, I got misgendered rarely and apologized to every time. In my work environment, it’s more frequent, and strangely, it’s not bothering me as much. I’d rate it around 50% at work in the office. I need to be a bit more vocal about correcting people. In most cases it seems to just be a default in the environment.
School asked me to do a promotional video for them. Still waiting to see how horrible that turned out. 🙂
Work gave me a job proposal. After lunch with the owner, we came to an agreement that was mutually beneficial. I will be working part time for now, with a 24 hour work week. This should give me enough money to meet my monetary requirements – or close to. I’m taking July off to deal with moving house, and some other stuff and should be starting in August. It will be a long commute but I don’t need to go in every day. I’m quite happy with the arrangement.
Some of my time away from work will be used to write my certifications. Which will eventually net me more salary, and hopefully bring in more business for my employer. Other time away is for electrolysis. And yet even more time away will be for visiting Melissa in October. 🙂
There are a few opportunities at work, but the biggest thing for me is the flexibility. They know I’ll be going for surgery (hopefully this November), they know I need time to work on things. They know I’m capable of this work, and helping them.
Everything in my life right now seems really positive. In the past, I’d be expecting the other shoe to drop – but now? I am actually completely content. I have the job I need. I have the girlfriend I need. I have the life I need. … And I’m actually fucking happy!