Security Testing Journal Entry | w/e Friday October 6, 2023 - "Dank Week, pt. 1"

Highlights for the week

Short, late post. Not a lot to cover since the priority for the second week in a row was the job search. Once again, there seems to be a valley between recruiters who feel everything is fine, and candidates who know the recruitment process is broken. One can meet 100% of the basic qualifications and still never get a call. Candidates have resorted to games and "hacks" to circumvent the resume scanners and reach the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

Then there's the endless streams of conflicting recruiter advice. Some say "x", others say "y". The "x" people think the "y" people are spreading misinformation, and vice-versa. Its super-confusing. The weeks are ticking away and quickly becoming months. I have 1 month left of financial reprieve before I'm in the absolute shits again and no closer to landing anything. Not even so much as a blip on the radar.

It has been a hard week. I've been unmotivated, frustrated, and anxious. Sleep has been decent, but inconsistent in terms of waking up. Workouts have been great. I have to do better in terms of time management and quality output. I'm spending good time learning a bunch of different things, but an hour or two sprinkled to on many tasks isn't working. The bulk of my time is the job search, so everything that comes after is inconsequential. That being said, I need to just realign my time and focus on 1 thing rather than a bunch of little things spread across the week.

Which brings me to my second pen testing effort. I learned to run the scan and realized it doesn't pick up much of what was proposed should have been caught. I've spent the time researching the issues found hoping to recreate them manually to no avail. I've recorded the findings and will declare that site "tested". On the next one. I've researched new certifications but it all comes back to money I don't have and time better spent "doing" rather than "learning".

A dank week to say the least. I can't say I hit all the goals I set out to hit. But I did have some small wins as it relates to rebuilding the webdriverIO test framework.