Wow - what a messed up week this has been. A little background on what a CSA is: Client Support Administrator - which means I get to take first shot at troubleshooting and repairing issues that pop-up on the computers in the office.

Last weekend, the Regional SysAdmins pushed some patches that jacked up our smart card reader software, so I arrived back to work after a week of being TDY to all of our machines being down. Monday was a complete bust because the local SysAdmins really didn't know what was wrong or how to fix it. A friend of mine tried some stuff that made his machine even worse, but later found out what the fix was. He shared it with me, and we were able to get things squared away in the shop before lunch on Tuesday.

Of course, there were all sorts of other ankle-biter issues with the machines the rest of the week, in addition to the rest of the tasks I'm supposed to be doing. Needless to say, I'm a little behind on some things. Hopefully, things will behave a bit next week - I'm hoping to get in some study time so I can knock out my Security+ certification before I head to San Antonio in January for CISSP training (and hopefully a successful test).

The bright, shining part to this day was our office Christmas Party at lunchtime. Some of our old friends from the office that have moved on came by and enjoyed lunch and some fellowship with the rest of us - had a gift exchange, played some Christmas-time Bingo, and caught up with everybody. All-in-all, a nice time, as always.