Personal Brand | On Message

19. October 2011 · 4 comments · Categories: frustration, internet, irritants, rants, struggles, technology, twitter

So many people who I follow on twitter seem to be constantly on message.  What I mean by that is that they constantly post about a singular subject.  It may be IP Networking.  It may be cycling.  It may be the environment.  They are on message.  They have a lot of followers. 

If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time (which only a very few have) you’ll know that I kind of wander from topic to topic.  I’m almost never on message.  I don’t have a lot to say about the industry that I work in.  I don’t have a lot to say about the apocalyptic nature of our relationship to the climate.  I don’t have a lot to say about cycling.

I’ve got a little to say about each of these topics, and many more.

Recently, I noticed a number of my “followers” on twitter abandoned me.  I’m sure it’s because I wasn’t tweeting enough about what they originally followed me for.  Perhaps I pissed someone off with a few to many tweets about politics, the climate, or occupy wall street.

I don’t know.

But I do know this, I’m way more than one-dimensional.  And so are most of the people out there in the Internets.  I wish more people would take the risk of being “off message” once in a while.  They’d been more interesting.

Come on Springtime

26. December 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: cycling, daily life, exercise, irritants, mr. grey, mrs. tkd, snow, spring, struggles, weather, winter, winter blues

The hacking started sometime around the 22nd of November.  Coughs and phlegm punctuate our conversations. One of the three of us has been sick for the entire month of December.  The days are short, the weather is cold, and I’ve not been on my bike since November 7th.  This is becoming a drag.

That ride on November 7th was a great solo ride.  I’d received word of my new job offer on that ride.  It was a glorious day with temps climbing into the mid 60s by the end of the ride.  I expected that I’d be riding the rest of the month and then throughout December.  I’d not counted on sickness and cold weather getting in the way.

The truth is, I probably could have ridden more despite the cold, if it weren’t for the sickness.  For three weeks, breathing was labored just sitting around.  The idea of actually getting the lungs pumping was well, out of the question.  But the real stumbler has been the new job.

I’ve admitted it before: I am a consummate perfectionist. When I started my last job, I stressed so hard over doing a good job that I developed migraines among other aliments that lasted for months. I hoped not to repeat that performance when I started this job, and I’ve been relatively successful, but I’ve put forth a full court press for sure.  There has not been a lot of down time.

So, I find myself here, the day after Christmas, looking out the window of my office at snow starting to softly fall in the cold winter air, and I’m looking forward to April. I’m hoping that I will be back out on the bike, and that I’ll be able to find some coverage of the Tour de Flanders.  That will indicate the kickoff of another great season of cycling.

Up Too Early

20. August 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: daily life, disgust, fear, frustration, irritants, lunacy, self, sleep, struggles, thoughts, work

Early Morning Charleston Marsh Insomnia.

Once again, I find myself up too early on a day when I do not need to get up early.  There is an unquietness about my mind.  I woke first around 2:30 and really never got back to sleep, at least not to a deep sleep.

Machine-gun thoughts firing off in my head, seemingly at random.

…MPLS….Broken Lens…QoS…P100…Dad…Walking on the beach…G1…Singapore…Garden…Hiking…Mud…D90…Might as well get up.

And so I did, I got up around 5:00 when I don’t need to be up before 6:30.  It’s gonna be a long day, I have a feeling.

Narrow Thinking – Poisonous Thinking

16. July 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: cultural failure, daily life, disgust, fear, frowns, frustration, irritants, listening, rants, struggles, stupidity, thoughts

Live and let live. So many problems in our world stem out of mindsets that bread breed hostility. Mindsets that require all others to conform to our way of thinking or system of beliefs. Narrow thinking.

Narrow thinking does not allow for the possibility of different explanations. Narrow thinking requires that there is only one answer and only one way that is right. Narrow thinking dominates our political, social and economic worlds.

It is the poison that is slowly killing us all.

Time of Reckoning?

07. May 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: computing, daily life, frowns, frustration, geek, incongruities, information, internet, irritants, rants, struggles, technology

I’ve been a long time subscriber to SANS news letters.  Most days I have too much to do to really read them, but today as I was wrapping up the day I came across this nugget:

—–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–

Hash: SHA1

A fascinating battle is taking place today in the struggle between those

who recognize the need to move quickly to continuous security monitoring

(of critical controls) and those who are clinging to the now discredited

practice of preparing out-of-date, paper-based reports about security.

A US Office-of-Management-and-Budget-led initiative to improve the

metrics by which agencies assessed cyber threats was 50% successful and

50% hijacked by the report writers. All the federal CISOs were asked

this morning to help shape the metrics.  We’ll let you know week by week

how the battle goes.  It matters because billions of dollars were thrown

away (according to sworn Congressional testimony) on the discredited

reports. Once the federal government makes the transition to automation,

the defense industrial base, and then the rest of the US critical

infrastructure will shift quickly. And that will radically improve the

job prospects for people who can reduce risk vs. those who just write

about risk.

<snip>

TOP OF THE NEWS

–FISMA 2.0 Advances in the US House of Representatives

A bill that transforms FISMA from encouraging paper-pushing to automated

monitoring of security advanced in the House. The bill also calls for

the jobs of the White House Cyber Czar and Chief Technology Officer to

be permanent and subject to Senate Confirmation.

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20100505_8690.php?oref=topnews

Oh, how I would love to see the day come when Information Security wasn’t dominated by people who can’t do a damn thing to mitigate risk but do a great job talking the talk and writing the copy about it.  I cannot count how many times I’ve run into a supposed “expert” who couldn’t even begin to pull apart a packet capture or tell me the difference between a Layer2 address and a Layer3 address.  It is, as they say, Frustrating.

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