Professor Karla's [Extremely Long] Introduction

Here is how I look if you met me in person (well, if you were wearing Instagram filter glasses...): 

Here is my answer to one of the fun topics questions:

"If you could arrange a music concert with any three musicians or groups to play on the same bill, who would you invite? Post YouTube clips of the musicians/groups if available."

First, I have to note that while I love a wide variety of music and listening to music is like time travel for me - I can seriously hyperlink back to moments in my life just by hearing music I associate with that time period - I'm not the biggest fan of live music, unless it's classical music. I really prefer music to sound pretty much the same way it does on the studio recording - this means the three times I've been to U2 concerts with my husband I have been...not happy (I know that sounds ungrateful (particularly since the last one was at the Sphere...), but why can't Bono just sing the songs like they sound on the album/CD/YouTube?). I also don't like the sounds of an audience cheering (that's actually consistent with my other sound preferences, as I cannot stand bathroom fans or above the stove fans, either 😏), so live music and I are not buddies (cheering in a classical setting happens sort of during opera, but only at the end of a symphonic performance). That said, if I were to make sure the songs were sung like they are on YouTube and there were no audience sounds, here is the current lineup:

I'm a big fan of clever mashups - and it was this NIN/Taylor Swift one that lead me to actually listen to and appreciate Ms. Swift.

I considered adding in the icebreaker question, "what is the funniest song you've misheard?" because I have several - I make a habit of mishearing lyrics: " take me down to the very nice city", " I guess it rains down in Africa", " well, if you told me you were drumming, I would not lend a hand" - or these doozies from one on my mind lately, "from the rhetorical species of the Soviets" and "we share the same biology, we gotta survive geology" (hey, these make sense), but the best is perhaps the mishearing a popular Christmas song where the correct lyric is "later we'll have some pumpkin pie".

So, anyhow....I'm Karla Carter, your professor for the class. I think it's safe to say that you've not had a professor like me before (unless you've had me as a professor before), which could be a good thing or bad thing 😁

Even though I'm purportedly a grup (I was born during the Johnson administration - Lyndon, not Andrew) I'm not stuffy.

I'm a complete geek, which you should expect from a computer class. I geek on multiple levels (well, except for the video game level - I'm hopelessly uncoordinated, do bad at anything more complex than Pong, and prefer tabletop games). One of these days I'm going to post a long exposition on the rights of anyone of any age to engage in any sort of fandom they want, but until then let it be known that I am a big fan of fandom!  My husband and I were married by Darth Vader in front of a volcano (it was a stunt volcano, but still, we had that Mustafar vibe going) - and the Imperial March was one of our wedding songs! We went to the Atomic Testing Museum during our honeymoon (growing up during the Cold War affects one... In addition to Star Wars, I also adore Star Trek (my first crush was on Mr. Spock when I was 9, almost 10) and Babylon 5. I'm also a big Harry Potter fan (after all this time...always 🙂

My computers and WiFi networks are all named for Tolkien lands. My offspring is a well-rounded geek, including playing the cello (he plays for the city's Civic Orchestra!)

Our most recent household additions are Lucy (ginger tabby) and Charlie Brown (black tabby). Previous CYBR 320 classes may have heard them referred to as "precious assets", in the sense of being over guarded from an actuarial standpoint - which is fine because they are indispensable to us 😻 We adopted them as kittens in November of 2020. Even as full-grown cats now they are adorable and sweet and remain a constant security threat (including capacitive noses and paws). I swear I could give an entire conference presentation on security just using kittens. And I don't even have hoodies for them yet. (Yet 😎)

Here is a photo of them when they were babies and constantly adorable, along with photos I took last August for the Pets channel of a Slack for a SANS Managing Human Risk Summit conference:

Charlie Brown, the black kitty, is indirectly responsible for my obsession with a Mahler piece:

...because of this video: https://youtube.com/shorts/EZXZ69uI6h4?feature=share

(by the way, it's okay if you know their names because I don't use those for security questions 😉)

The kitties are not at all responsible for another obsession: 

cybersecurity version: 

For fun I do crafting sorts of hobbies, mostly jewelry. I start hobbies by seeing something and then thinking, "hey, I could do that!"...and then after spending three times as much on supplies and materials as the original thing I saw cost I have a new hobby 😏 I started to do local craft fairs in the fall of 2022 and have decided I enjoy doing them. I set my base expectation to sell nothing and that way if I sell something it's gravy. I had to start making things for people who like things I don't like, so that's a fresh challenge! I also had to create an Instagram specifically for my craft show identity (apparently this is how folks who attend craft shows like to communicate) and it's weird having a brand, as it were.

I love to laugh and I'm not picky about the type of humor. 

One of the three words I use to describe myself is "irreverent"... (at the Bellevue Halloween party October 2022)