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Timeline
Where this started and where it's going: work, builds, certifications and training, oldest first.
Right now
The Now pageCCNA in progress
Actively studying, exam booked for October. SAL1 pathway already complete.
Ironman training begins
Base building on top of the half marathon - adding the bike and open water swim. The whole journey gets documented under Endurance.
Network infrastructure migration
Leading a production network migration - switching, segmentation and zero-downtime constraints across a live estate.
The whole story
Oldest firstJoined the Maldives National Defence Force
Military IT Support Technician - the six years that built the foundation: enterprise networks, firewalls, virtualization, discipline.
Completed six years of military service
Left the MNDF as a Corporal with a technical track record across military IT infrastructure.
Network infrastructure migration
Leading a production network migration - switching, segmentation and zero-downtime constraints across a live estate.
IT Assistant at Niva Velassaru
Moved into hospitality IT - resort infrastructure, guest and staff systems.
PADI Open Water certified
7 May 2026. Long overdue living in the Maldives - the first rung of the ladder toward Rescue Diver.
First half marathon
22 May 2026. 21.1km, and the point where endurance training stopped being an idea and became a plan.
Media server became a virtualization stack
A month of rebuilds: Synology to Ubuntu to Proxmox, ZFS RAIDZ1, VLAN segmentation and live IPTV over multicast - all on decommissioned hardware. Taught me self-hosting, which led to everything after it.
Read morePortfolio rebuilt for recruiters
v2.0 - executive summary, skill matrix, certification roadmap and a single master CV.
Read moreLaunched fiventhree.com
Live on 30 July 2026. All four subdomains serving over HTTPS from a single VPS I run myself - DNS, firewall, certificates, deploy script and off-site backups end to end.
Read moreBuilt and shipped the Tracker
Next.js + FastAPI + Postgres, dockerized, self-hosted. In daily use.
Read moreIronman training begins
Base building on top of the half marathon - adding the bike and open water swim. The whole journey gets documented under Endurance.
CCNA in progress
Actively studying, exam booked for October. SAL1 pathway already complete.
Self-hosted password vault
Vaultwarden at vault.fiventhree.com, on the same Postgres as the Tracker so one nightly dump and one restore test cover both. Signups and admin panel closed, and a tighter CSP than any other origin on the domain.
Read moreMail on the domain
mohamednawilnahid@fiventhree.com now routes through Cloudflare Email Routing. The interesting part was what had to be removed: the domain published a null MX and a blanket SPF deny saying it accepted no mail, and both had to go before anything could arrive.
Read moreGuardrails moved into the deploy script
Two production 500s and a failed release traced to the same thing - a check that only existed as a habit. The deploy now refuses to ship when a response model doesn't match its query, and reloads Caddy every time rather than detecting whether the config changed.
Read moreTracker learned to read and remind
Smart-scale reports parsed by OCR instead of typed in, a Telegram bot that takes the photo from a phone and reports back what it saved, habits that tick themselves from Garmin steps and the day's nutrition, and AI nutrition estimates from a meal name and photo - with hand corrections that override the model permanently.
Read moreCCNA exam
Six years of hands-on networking, finally on paper. Study hours tracked in the Tracker.
PADI Advanced Open Water
Deep and navigation dives plus three specialties. The bridge between Open Water and Rescue.
First Olympic-distance triathlon
1.5km / 40km / 10km. First time putting all three disciplines together in one race.
Emergency First Response
Primary and Secondary Care. A prerequisite for Rescue Diver, and worth holding regardless.
MD-102: Endpoint Administrator
Formalising what I already do daily - endpoint deployment, Intune, device compliance and security policy.
PADI Rescue Diver
The step where diving stops being about yourself - self-rescue, assisting others, emergency management. Needs Advanced Open Water plus a current EFR certification.
First Ironman 70.3
Half distance as the dress rehearsal - the last real checkpoint before committing to the full in November.
AZ-104: Azure Administrator
Cloud infrastructure - identity, governance, storage, virtual networking. The natural follow-on from MD-102.
CompTIA Security+
The vendor-neutral security baseline, and the pivot point from infrastructure into the red team track.
Ironman Malaysia, Langkawi
The full distance: 3.8km swim, 180km bike, 42.2km run. Langkawi usually runs in early November - date to be confirmed when registration opens.
First offensive security certification
eJPT or PNPT as the entry point into practical red teaming - hands-on exploitation rather than multiple choice.
OSCP
The long-term target. Offensive Security Certified Professional - 24-hour practical exam, the credential the red team path builds toward.
The home lab
The real one, on my own hardware, in my own house. Blocked on having a house - not on a purchase decision.
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