The Sound of Music
and really loud cars
“Friends, Car enthusiast, Music lovers; lend me your ear plugs” - William Shakespeare if he lived in Austin, TX.
Thank for tuning in for another exciting edition of AAA. I’d like to start off this newsletter by saying thank you to everyone for your love and support as this is my 25th newsletter over the last 7 months! When I started this writing thing back in March I randomly posted the link to some group chats and 53 of you signed up and now I have officially eclipsed 65 subscribers. That’s the type of growth that only bad puns and word of mouth can get you.
For those of you who are good at paying attention, you will notice this post is about a week late. For those of you who are not good at a paying attention. I briefly thought about coming up with some elaborate excuse about why I couldn’t get this newsletter out in time, but I have a feeling none of your are that upset. On the off chance you are, I encourage you to take it up with my agent.
Now that that is out of the way, I am excited to share some exciting work news, as well as, an update on all the fun and whacky things I am doing to fill my free time. Lets get to today’s piece :).
Work
During the last two weeks I officially launched an update for the Emerson Basic Cybersecurity Assessment (BCA). This is the first major milestone in my project and is significant because it drastically reduces the time it takes to generate and process reports - my team generated about 600 reports last fiscal year and we plan to double that this year. Now that the updated BCA is rolled out, I can begin phase 2 of this project which is integrating the results of the BCAs into our CRM system to automatically create leads for our sales team. Unfortunately, this second phase is a bit more tricky than the first but I am off to a great start.
In other exciting work news, the Solutions Architect on our team is looking to transition into a new role within the Cyber group. This is exciting news because my boss has asked me if I would like to back fill this position when I leave the program. I still have roughly 8.5 months left in my current role so let’s not jump to any conclusions here, but the role seems like a great career opportunity and would open the door for me to stay in Austin for the near future.
What exactly is a solutions architect? Good question - the answer varies a bit job to job. Essentially, the position involves looking at a customer’s system architecture ( the hardware and software that they use to run their plant) and proposing a solution that allows the customer to maximize cyber defense while minimizing cost and complexity.
What does that really mean though? Every customer sets up their IT infrastructure in a slightly different way. Thus, the integration of industrial control systems with these IT infrastructures can vary widely. The job of the solutions architect is to find a way to best integrate the control system into the customers existing infrastructure form a cyber perspective.
This involves a lot of rules based problem solving, as well as, creativity. As an engineer with a fun travel blog I like to think that I tick both of these boxes. My boss seems to think so as well and is having me learn the role and I will begin shadowing the position to decide if I like it. That is about all I can share at this moment but it seems like this could be a great opportunity for my career.
Enough about work.
Fun
The last 2 weeks I attended the Austin City Limits Music Fest (Oct 13-15) and the Austin Formula 1 Grand Prix (Oct 20-22). Both of these events featured friends, loud noises, and a lot of outside time.
Starting off with ACL - I got to see so many great music acts including but not limited to: The Lumineers, The 1975, Mumford and Sons, Mt Joy, Declan McKenna, Maggie Rogers, Noah Kahan, 30 Seconds to Mars, Portugal the Man, Tove Lo, Lil’ Yachty, the Teskey Bros, Rattlesnake Milk, Del Water Gap and M83. Have no fear, I am not going to post pictures or videos of each of these acts but I am going to post a bunch of photos of the venue and the friends I saw these shows with.
Starting from the top, is my friend Ellen from Purdue who lives in Seattle now but is from Austin and we happened to bump into each other at Del Water Gap. Ellen and I were TAs for the same ENGR 103 class and also know each other from the engineering student council. The group photo is with my friend Alex and a number of his friends who were gracious enough to let me absorb into their group.
ACL was a lot of fun but I was not prepared for the dust generated by 300,000 people walking on dead grass and I developed an awful cough from breathing in what I can only imagine is the equivalent of a lot of cigarettes… RIP my lungs.
Kathryn was at ACL and we saw some shows together but we forgot to get a photo.
3 days of music festival weren’t enough to satisfy my need for live music and on Tuesday Oct 17th Kathryn and I went to go see Ava Maybee play a small local venue. Ava was actually the first opener for Not a Toy and Beauty School Dropout. I really only wanted to see Ava but I stuck around for Not a Toy before calling it a night because I was tired.
On Thursday night (Oct 19th) there was a happy hour for the Local YJP and I was finally able to convince my roommate Hunter to join and meet the other Austin Jews.
Also pictured is my friend Taylor from Chicago who I met at Purdue and was in town for the upcoming F1 race and wanted to check out the East 6th bar scene since this was her first time in Austin.
Friday morning my friend Lisa from Purdue (also an engineering student council friend and pictured below) drove up from Houston and together Lisa, Taylor, and I drove to COTA for Day 1 of F1 festivities.
For the first day we got to the track around 2pm and after wandering around for an hour and a half settled on the hill into turn 1. COTA has a ~3.4 mile long track and we had 3-day GA tickets which means that we could basically sit anywhere so it took us a little bit to get our bearings and find a spot. Turn 1 was for sure the right spot.
For those who don’t know much about F1, the weekend consisted of the following:
Friday - Practice and qualifying for the race on Sunday and the Killers played a concert at night (not pictured).
Saturday - Sprint race qualifying, sprint race (19 laps) and a Queen + Adam Lambert concert at night (pictured)
Sunday - Race Day (56 laps)! + a Tiesto concert but we didn’t stay for that
In addition to the F1 race, there are a number of other racing events that go on during the day including:
Masters Historic - this is a short, 10 lap race where rich people who own 1960s and 1970s F1 Cars get to race their cars on the track
F1 Academy: This is a newer F1 development series for young women drivers who are looking to progress into F3, F2, and eventually F1.
Porsche Cup NA - There is a North America drivers league for rich people who own Porsche 911 Carreras and want to race against their rich friends.
For Day 2 we went back to our spot on turn 1 which was really cool because we got to watch the start of the sprint race where all the cars go into the Turn 1 hair pin at once.
For Day 3 we posted up at the S-curve/Chicane that was turns, 4, 5, and 6. This spot wasn’t as good for watching the race action as Turn 1 was but it was much less crowded and directly across from a TV which was a nice compromise. The race was really cool but Max won, Danny Ric had a bad drive, and it was not a good day for Aston Martin. That said, still super fun and already planning to go back next year - assuming I still live here. Shoutout to Taylor and Lisa who are much better F1 fans than me and took the time to explain a lot of stuff I didn’t know or thought I knew.
All in all it was a Jam packed 2 weekends of great music and cool cars going really fast.
In other news - I am also back on my reading kick and over the last 2 weeks I read The Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and Good Power by Gini Rometti. I highly recommend The Fourth Wing and I am eagerly awaiting the release of the next book which comes out Nov 7th.
Please comment book recs : ).
Thanks for tuning in, apologies for the 1 week delay and we’ll see you again in a week with some exciting halloween shenanigan photos.