Serpentine

My son took me out for a round of golf yesterday, for System Administrator’s Day, which is tomorrow.  Well, I like to think it was for SysAdmin Day.  We got shoehorned into an afternoon tee time between a threesome that was walking the course, and shooting poorly enough that it was likely we would be waiting for them often.  Behind us was a tournament, champing at the bit to get started.  It looked like it would be a slow afternoon of golf with a constant pressure from behind.  Not my favorite kind of golf.

We finished the first hole, and turned onto the next tee.  The slow threesome was nowhere in sight, but since it was a short par three I thought nothing of it, except that maybe they were better than I thought.  We never saw them again. 

Soon we were on the fourth hole, but the terrain and layout was nothing like the picture on the scorecard.  We played on, and as we drove away from the green, there was a sign that said “Thanks for playing Sawmill Golf Club, please come again.”  I flipped the scorecard over and looked at the pictures again.  We had just finished 18!

Basically, what we thought was the second tee was actually the 16th, and now we were just done with 18.  What to do?  We couldn’t go back to 2 without getting in the middle of the tournament.

Well, what we did was go to 10 and play the course through to 15.  We already had 16, 17, and 18.  We looked around until we found the second tee, and finished our round at hole 9.  We managed to play all 18 holes, just slightly out of order.

The good part was that we took ourselves out of the middle of the traffic jam, and had a nice leisurely round of golf.  No one was in front of us most of the way, and no one was behind us until the last 3 holes.

My bride had a good laugh about it, because it was further evidence of how I seem to have become directionally challenged recently.  For most of my life I have had a great sense of direction, but lately I have been getting turned around, confused, or just plain lost.  This is what she calls “serpentine,” after the hilarious movie “The In-Laws” with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin.  (Or maybe the more recent remake, with Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks.)  What she means is that I get us there eventually, but with a lot of driving around back and forth in a serpentine pattern, instead of the straightest and most direct route.  Seems like I am having “serpentine” trouble on the golf course now, too.

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About the Author:

I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com

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