Sunday, July 6, 2025
Thursday, December 2, 2021
Adding to the List
Another course I should take on LinkedIn Learning is this one: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/cism-cert-prep-2-information-risk-management/disaster-recovery-planning. I copied & pasted the section of the course that attracted my attention.
Disaster recovery planning
“- [Instructor] Business continuity programs are designed to keep a business up and running in the face of a disaster. But unfortunately, they don't always work. Sometimes continuity controls fail or the sheer magnitude of a disaster overwhelms the organization's capacity to continue operations. That's where disaster recovery begins. Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity activities, designed to restore a business to normal operations as quickly as possible following a disruption. The disaster recovery plan may include immediate measures that get operations up and running again temporarily. But the disaster recovery effort is not finished until the organization is completely back to normal operations. The initial response following an emergency disruption is designed to contain the damage to the organization and recover whatever capacity may be immediately restored. The activities during this initial response will vary widely depending upon the nature of the disaster and…
Backups
“- [Instructor] Backups are perhaps the most important component of any disaster recovery plan. Most businesses today are built around data. Whether it's proprietary designs, confidential customer lists, or information databases, data drives business. For many organizations, the complete loss of their data would be a disaster of tremendous proportions. Backups provide organizations with a fail-safe way to recover their data in the event of a technology failure, human error, natural disaster, or other circumstances that result in data's accidental or intentional deletion or modification. Backups are a crucial safety net for data-driven businesses. Organizations may back up their data in many different ways. Traditionally, organizations wrote their backups to tape, and this is still a very common practice today. However, tapes are unwieldy to manage, and modern backup approaches often use alternative storage that has become much less expensive over the past few years. For example, some…
Validating backups
“- [Instructor] Backups play a crucial role in an organization's disaster recovery strategy. But it's surprising how often organizations fail to properly test those backups to verify that they were completed properly and that they're ensuring the continued availability of critical business information in the event of a disaster. One of the most important data protection actions that you can take is regularly verifying your backups to ensure that they're functioning properly. There are several different types of backup tests that you should perform. First, all modern backup software has built-in verification mechanisms. You can use these mechanisms to validate that a backup was successful immediately after creating the backup. This is just the bare bones of backup verification because you are relying upon the software that performed the backup to tell you that it worked properly. However, it's amazing how many organizations have this verification feature turned off, either because they…
Disaster recovery sites
“- [Narrator] During a disaster organizations may need to shift their computing functions from their primary data center to alternate facility design to carry the load when their primary site is unavailable or nonfunctioning. Disaster Recovery Sites, are alternate processing facilities especially design for this purpose. Most of the time they sit idol, waiting to step in when an emergency situation arises. There're three main types of alternate processing facilities: Hot Sites. Cold Sites. And Warm sites. Hot sites are the premier form of disaster recover facility. They are fully operational data centers that have all of the equipment and data required to handle operations ready to run. Technology staff can active the Hot Sites at a moment's noticed and in many cases, the Hot site will actually activate itself, if the primary site fails. This provides an unparalleled level of redundancy, but it also comes at great expense. The costs of building and maintaining a Hot Site are typically…
Testing BC/DR plans
“- [Instructor] Disaster recovery plans are critical to ensuring the continuity of business operations. As with any security control, disaster recovery plans should be tested to ensure that the plan functions properly and will be ready to restore business operations in the event of a disruption. Each test of a disaster recovery plan has two goals. First, it validates that the plan functions correctly and that disaster recovery technology will work in the event of an actual disaster. Second, the disaster recovery test provides an opportunity to identify necessary updates to the plan due to technology or business process changes. Let's talk about five types of disaster recovery testing. Read-throughs, walk-throughs, simulations, parallel tests, and full interruption tests. Read-throughs are the simplest form of disaster recovery testing. They're also known as checklist reviews. In this approach, disaster recovery staff distribute copies of the current plan to all personnel involved in…
Of Course, That's the Point
I named the file below 2021-12-02_Should-Take-This-Course-Someday.jpg Through my employer, I have access to LinkedIn Learning, but in case I need to find this course quickly, this is the Not-signed-in-to-LinkedIn-Learning URL: https://www.linkedin.com/comm/learning/the-procrastination-cure-blinkist-summary?epToken=ABkAAAAAAAKH34wAAAAAAwsR-AAAAX14IYrBASGDD9pkseh9u3-hGbuVaRe1j0pm&trk=eml-email_learning_new_content_for_you_01-learning_recommendations-321-click_entity&trkEmail=eml-email_learning_new_content_for_you_01-learning_recommendations-321-click_entity-null-%7Ey1350i%7Ekwo3vaa2%7Ef5-null-learning%7Ecourse&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Aemail_email_learning_new_content_for_you_01%3BmQvuRL00Qr%2BYKA%2BgROQz%2Bw%3D%3D
Thursday, February 6, 2020
Behind
... you have 3 invitations, 3 job changes and 93 new updates waiting for you...I guess I am behind!
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
Another Great "ATH" Column
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
LinkedIn Fail
Keep in mind that the only reason I still see jobs through that LinkedIn email and jobs through Indeed.com emails is because I don't seem to be able to unsubscribe. I call it separation anxiety. I have always had it. I remember dwelling and dwelling about the girl I dated off and on in high school after high school and during the time when Karen broke up with me on October 29, 1988 at the Freaker's Ball (a Halloween dance) at Mount Mercy College*. We reconnected on New Year's Eve when I was with some friends at Econofoods (a long gone grocery store chain in eastern Iowa) to get booze. She was a checker there and because she was also friends with the friends I was with, she was invited to come to the party we were going to... and she did. I took her to a dance up at Mount Mercy College in January 1989 and then, that night, was the last time I said any words to her. It's kind of funny how some dates are etched in stone within my brain while others are not. I don't know remember the date on which we went to that dance. I do know that it was 30+ years ago.
Anyways, back to obsessing over the past. I find it hard to let go of the patterns and routines that I find myself in. For example, yesterday, I woke up to a 4:30 AM alarm and today, I woke up, without an alarm, at 4:25 AM, which is why I'm publishing this post at 5:30 AM.
*Why do I remember the date? This is how my mind works. I remember that date because it was two days before the Van Halen concert on October 31st at the US Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids, IA.
Thursday, February 21, 2019
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Let Us Discuss About The Job - Those are Not My Words
- being a snobby technical writing professional who demands any contact from recruiters to be good writing
- being a non-snobby technical writing professional who accepts that non-writers struggle with writing, which is what created the void that I, as a technical writer, fill during my time at work.
- Starts a sentence with "am" instead of "I am" jumped out and bit me.
- No space between "set!" and "This" in the third line.
- The last line ends with two periods [..] which means the writer either wanted to use an ellipsis [...] or accidentally typed two periods to end the sentence, which is a typo.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Be Hired by Russia for a Technical Writing Internship - NOT!
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
So Disappointing
Teases like that have disappointed me in the past and today is no exception. Investigating further, I found this:
Job description
Our client is seeking an experienced Mortgage Originations - Operations Support Analyst to join their growing company. The Mortgage Originations - Operations Support Analyst will research and respond to items related to second line of defense such as quality control & compliance responses, will prepare files and responses to audit request, support the VP, Origination - Operations Support in the build out of the disclosure process and assist the Manager in implementing process changes and training.
Please note, this is an in-office position. Must be commutable to the office, remote work is not offered for this opportunity*
Seniority Level: Entry level
Industry: Banking Financial Services Real Estate
Employment Type: Full-time
Job Functions: Information Technology
Duties & Responsibilities
- Research and write clear and accurate responses during the quality control and compliance review process
- Collaborate with the Quality Control and Compliance departments to ensure the implementation of new and revised policies and guidelines are incorporated in the quality control and compliance reviews and responses address accordingly.
- Research, write and prepare materials and responses for audits as requested
- Archive all updates, revisions, and deletions for all responses for easy access
- Establish a process for timely and compliant delivery of disclosures per all federal and state regulatory requirements.
- Monitor that all regulatory deadlines for disclosures have been met
- Provide input to the technology team in system changes required to meet all disclosure regulatory requirements.
- Execute, promote and support continuous improvement of the origination platform
- Working with the origination team, integrate approved project changes into appropriate loan life cycle, systems, reporting and processes
- Perform other duties or projects as requested
Required Knowledge & Skills
- Demonstrate excellent communication skills, both written and oral
- Communicate effectively with management, process owners, stakeholders, and other audiences
- Possess excellent writing and editing skills
- Detail-oriented, enjoys working with complex projects, and has excellent multi-tasking skills
- Strong organizational skills with proven ability to independently prioritize activities
- Strong work ethic and ability to work in a fast paced environment
Required Education & Experience
APPLY TODAY FOR IMMEDIATE CONSIDERATION!!!!
- Bachelor’s Degree required
- Minimum 3 years mortgage origination experience
- Minimum 5 years policy/procedures or technical writing
- Experience working with various authoring tools such as Adobe RoboHelp
- Proven ability to develop strong working relationships and establish a high level of credibility across functional lines of business and organizational levels
- Proficient in Microsoft Office applications
Does the author of the job ad really believe that four exclamation points are going to sway me to apply for this crappy job?
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
The Power
By the way, the word "power" has a special connotation to me. Whenever I hear the phrase "power" in conversation, my mind goes to the Everybody Loves Raymond episode called "The Power of No," which is one of my all-time favorite episodes in the series. It hits all the right notes as far as the dynamics between Ray and Debra. Because it's my all-time favorite, I embedded this video:
I'm not alone in thinking the episode was stellar. Per IMDB, "For this episode, Ray Romano was nominated for the 2005 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series." It was originally aired on May 5, 2005, per Wikipedia. To arrive at May 5, 2005, you'd have to set your time machine to go back 4552 days or 12 years, 5 months, 2 weeks, 2 days.