Early last week, I presented at cPanel’s Automation Bootcamp 2011. The title of my talk was ‘PCI Compliance: It’s about to get real.” Since neither cPanel nor I recorded the presentation (and the EiC over at  the Whir mentioned having a hard time trying to keep up), I figured I’d recap it here. If you just want the slides from the presentation, you can get those here.

PCI (DSS) Compliance for e-Commerce Sites

As much as people love to hate PCI Compliance (or more specifically, the scanners), it is a necessary evil. In an industry-wide race to the bottom, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI-SSC) had to implement a standard to which they could hold everyone accountable, and by which they would judge the security of consumer data, in all payment card transactions.

In 2006, the PCI-SSC got together and composed a standard that everyone in the Payment Card Industry (everyone who accepts payment cards, from brick and mortar stores to e-commerce), which they called the Data Security Standard. They wanted to help streamline an increasingly complex process (getting approved to process credit cards through your own in-house-developed payment application), but without compromising the security of consumer data. While the importance and relevance of PCI DSS can be overinflated, it is just as necessary as any other standard. Treat it like a list of regulations to follow, use common sense, and you should be fine.

To help you along, I have outlined much of what’s included in the PCI-DSS, and what you can do to help secure your server, and help your server pass its scan.

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I found out on Wednesday that the position I’m in at LW (Quality Control) is being dissolved, so I was given a few choices: Support Supervisor, Monitoring Tech, and Support Tech. After lots of debate and hemming and hawing, it looks like I’m gonna do some support for a while. I’m actually kind of excited, which will probably make many of you think I’m crazy. A month or so ago I came in on a Saturday night, and spent a good 6 hours just doing tickets. It was the most fun I’d had at my job in quite a while. I miss the daily challenge and the weird stuff. I still have a lot of technical knowledge, but it’s slipped quite a bit from where I was when I stopped doing Monitoring full time (you know, three years ago).

I’ll have another week to tie up my loose ends in this spot, and then it’s back to the phones and helpdesk. I’m sure I’ll tire of it shortly, but I welcome the challenges.

Ani suggested we set up a cage match for the department heads, and let them fight over who gets me. Think we could make some money on that one?

So, what started as a post about how companies encourage and welcome women into their company has become a pretty good discussion about the actual barriers that women face entering any kind of strongly tech field.

Double the women = way cooler.

Comments are wide open on this one. What do you guys think?

Today one of my very favorite people is leaving the company that we have worked for, fought for, sweat for, cried and sacrificed for together. I’ve been here 4.5 years. He’s been here about a year longer than me.

Most techs don’t deal well with emotions. The longer I’m in this industry, the more I’m convinced that a lot of us are boarder-line alcoholics because we both don’t know how to deal with our stress levels, and don’t know how to deal with our emotions. (That’s probably true for a lot of professions, but this one I know for sure.) And my eyes are wet. So I’m gonna write it out.

Jay was an amazing mentor when I first hired in. I knew almost nothing about Linux (which is crazy to think about). All I had was customer service, and even that waned when I got so frustrated at not knowing what I needed to know. Jay took very good care of me in those first few months. He talked me through fixing so much, and fed me information as quickly as I could gobble it up. … and he wasn’t even in training yet.

As he and I both worked up through the ranks, and worked together to make this company better than it thought it could be, we started taking trips to get coffee. It was a small thing, but it ended up being one of the defining moments of our weeks: coffee together. We bitched, we problem solved, we discussed, we congratulated.

More than that, though, we supported. If there was a question to which I didn’t have an answer, Jay was my man.

I have been touched by Jay’s kindness, his genuine-ness, and his enthusiasm. Even though he and I do not interact as much as we did when we were in the same building, I am scared that without him in my day-to-day life I will fall short of what I can achieve. Now that he’s moving on to bigger and better things, I’m wondering how many people will fall short because he’s not around as much.

To avoid it negatively affecting people, I am going to hold myself to a higher standard: I will be as kind, genuine, and enthusiastic as Jay has always been to me, to everyone I encounter every day.

<3 you Jay. Let’s coffee soon.

Sometime in late March and early April of last year I started a new position at work. I acted as the voice of Liquid Web and Storm On Demand, managing the public images for both brands on Twitter, Facebook, and any forums on which we were active. I spent most of my days scouring the rest of the internet for people talking about us, helping and thanking wherever appropriate. The title became “Webhosting Evangelist” as the position was fleshed out, with many people that I encountered on the forums calling me a ‘Customer Activist’. My guidelines were simple: talk to people. Engage them, respond to them, help them, and give Liquid Web the friendly ‘face’ that it deserved.

I'm helping!

I had a great time in that position, got to meet some amazing people, got to speak at a conference about Monitoring, and just generally did what I do best: talked to people and responded to any problems they had as best I could. As the year went on it became more and more apparent to me that, though I enjoyed a large portion of the job and was genuinely interested in the subject, I wasn’t really cut out to be in Marketing at Liquid Web.

Twitter Fail Whale

Last week (in what now feels like a bit of a whirlwind of action and emails) the Bobs and I sat down and had a chat about where I wanted to go in the company. There were a couple options, but we all ultimately decided that I would begin to fill a role that had been needed for a long period of time: Quality Control. In general, the idea is that we have too many techs to know for sure that they are all delivering the same tone of helpfulness and customer appreciation, and we want to make sure that every customer is left with an overwhelming sense of “Liquid Web is AWESOME.” The job description, such as it exists right now:

The goal of the Quality Control Supervisor is:

To ensure each customer, potential customer, and any other external interaction is executed by our employees with the correct attitude and goal, and that everyone is given the tools and coaching they need to provide the best possible customer support experience.

Responsibilities:
* Build a Quality Control program for the Support Department that includes Quality Control Reviews and a retraining path for techs that are struggling.
* Identify problems during QC’s or lack of improvement and provide that information to the respective department head or operations manager.
* Help to improve internal communications.
* Continue to track, attempt to resolve and provide internal follow-up on all public complaints including, but not limited, to those mentioned on Twitter, Facebook, WHT.
* Monitor all ticket feedback (good and bad) and follow up appropriately.

Many, many, MANY things have been left intentionally vague to give me the necessary freedom to figure out exactly how to do everything there. It will probably morph a whole lot over the next year, and I look forward to the challenge.

Quality Control

I could allow myself to feel like the last year spent in Marketing was a failure, but I’ve decided instead to take it as a learning experience. I learned (more than I ever expected to, but I could probably sum it up in 500-1000 words) about myself, about the industry, and about the people I work with. Generally, I’m excited for the opportunity to dive headlong after a clear goal, and to be able to define processes again. I produce amazing results when given a goal, and told to just go for it. I sincerely doubt this will be anything but another way for me to shine.

Both this month and last have been a whirlwind of commitments and filler. I don’t get as much time with the boy as I’d like, and I don’t get to see my family or his as much as I’d like, and I don’t get hardly any *me* time anymore. But I’m happy. Not just content. Not luke warm. Happy. I try, as much as humanly possible to pass that happy on to other people.

Finally I have found a spot to be exactly what I want to be with , and a person, who is completely content to let me be me. The fact that today I got an oil change, did laundry and some cleaning, had coffee with my bff, did some letter writing and some stitching, and some coding, does not seem strange to him. He has no mold that I need to conform myself to. It feels absolutely amazing to be accepted so completely. I hope he knows I feel the same about him.

Last night I made spaghetti, with perfectly cooked pasta and italian bread with garlic butter, and it was absolutely delicious. Last week I did shrimp and pasta that turned out nothing like I’d planned, with significantly overcooked pasta, but it was alright. It’s still a novelty to make something. It’s freaking awesome if it’s good. I’m starting to play with textures of foods and trying to pick out the different spices and foods that are put in the foods I eat, at least in my head. My refried beans have gotten pretty damn good. This batch of burritos wasn’t as good as the first, but they’re still pretty good.

I’m stitching again. Relearning all of the silly things I’d forgotten (pay attention to which way you’re stitching, silly woman, and for pete’s sake, mark your center so you don’t forget where it is and have to take out 60 very pretty stitches). I’m hoping to get back into it for longer than just christmas. I’m starting to be bothered by how much time I spend in front of the TV, not doing anything productive.

Too, and probably not a surprise to those of you that know me best, I’ve been having this intense battle with myself. I am missing something pretty huge in my daily interactions. I’m not really feeling like I’m doing anything that betters the human race, or betters a life, in a way that I’m not also padding someone else’s pockets. To that end I’ve been working on the website for my Church (which has been its own adventure), and I’ve applied to volunteer for Haven House.

Other than that… holiday cards are built and ready to go out, but I just realized they’re all square envelopes, so I’ll have to stop by the post office Monday morning and add the extra postage. Here’s hoping I get up early enough to make it to work on time.

I spent the better part of yesterday contemplating different php modules, in between mucking with my mom’s laptop (which will get its own post). I’ve decided to go with fCGI, but I really just wanted to share this chart. It’s terribly helpful.

PHP Handlers Summarized By Miraenda from errorcodex.com

I am going to try to post at least once every day during the month of November. Ideally, I’ll achieve a 500 – 1,000 word post each day during the month of November. I know I don’t have the stamina to do an entire novel (a-la Nanowrimo), but at least a few words of babbling about what is going on inside my head is something I think I can do.

Today’s moment of truth came while I was eating my (homemade) breakfast burritos, and sorting through my email: The things I do at work could qualify me for 1) Social Media Expert (bleh) 2) Event Planner 3) Site Designer 4) Technical Support 5) Office Manager 6) Site Manager, plus more. I wonder if other people are so versatile, or if there’s some crazy unique combination of skills/experiences that allow me to do all of these things.

Jlott: You gonna come drink martinis with me tonight?

me: Me?

Jlott: Yeah.

me: *questioning eyes*

Jlott: Benny’s like “Me? I don’t drink!”

Me: Exactly. [Mhill walks by] I never drink.

mhill: *grin* mmmmhummmmm.

Me: Well, except that one time.

jlott: yeah, that one time. When you were 19.

me: yeah. That was a crazy night.

mhill and jlott: *walk away in opposite directions shaking their heads*

Ask anyone who works with me, or is friends with me, and they’ll tell you:I struggle to find a balance between my work life, and my outside-of-work life. I am, by genetics and life-long-training, a workaholic. My bosses have always been able to count on me to get the job done, no matter what, and my family and friends have heard “I can’t tonight, I have to work,” more times than I feel comfortable admitting.

For the last year or so, I’ve been trying to spent more of my time doing things that I love that *aren’t* work, and I’ve been doing pretty well with it. The weekends are spent doing things I enjoy, and only sunday nights have been work time, really. I’ve taken more road trips, spent more time with my Mom, and The Kings, and I really truly feel more complete for it.

There are some pretty big things that upset this balance:

1) I overcommit. It’s not so bad anymore, since I’ve figured out that saying no isn’t bad, but I still do it. I automatically plan for 50 hours a week to be work, and sometimes promise 70 hours of work. Whoops.

2) People quit. It happens, people move on, but the people that have been in the company long enough to have a relatively complete picture are fewer and far between. Too, when they leave, the workload has to be shuffled around until it settles again. I’m called on to fill a lot of different roles, and I love that I get to do so many different things, but it’s definitely a challenge.

3) I like my social life. A lot. I hang out with some of the single most awesome people on the planet.

4) I make no effort to separate the two. If someone from work calls with a question or an emergency, I will generally drop what I’m doing and help them. Likewise in my friends and family. Too, I hang out with people I work with all the time, and like to include my other friends in the same circle.

This comes up now because I am experiencing some discomfort these days, and I can’t seem to identify it. I’ve eliminated physical problems as much as possible (bloodwork!), and have (both) spent weeks drinking, and weeks not drinking. I’m even (slowly) allowing myself to develop some feelings someone I’m sleeping with for the first time in 2+ years.

The discomfort manifests in odd ways. A strong defiance to clocking more than 10 hours of overtime, even if I do other work from home. An urge to travel more. Less explosive reactions to the things that upset me at work, and increased compassion for almost everyone on the planet.

All the while, though, there’s something fussing me, and it’s growing stronger. It’s quickly becoming an urge to hide. Or to run. I can’t tell which. But if I don’t figure it out this year there may be an explosion.

Anyway, this is pretty raw brain dump and rambling. And, now that I think of it, completely out of place for this blog. It’s been a long time since I put this much of my brain’s ramblings on the internet.