Diary of a Network Geek

Yes, today is Friday the Thirteenth.

Most people in the Western World think of this day as unlucky, though I never really have.  For years I wondered why people were so funny and superstitious about Friday the Thirteenth.  I always thought it was because Judas was the Thirteenth Apostle or something like that. No, according to this article on GlobalPsychics.com, it has to do with the plot to suppress the Knights Templar. Hey, stop laughing! That’s what it says!! And, I quote:

The modern basis for the Friday the 13th superstition stems from Friday October the 13th, 1307. On this date, the Pope of the church in Rome in Conjunction with the King of France, carried out a secret death warrant against “the Knights Templar”. The Templars were terminated as heretics, never again to hold the power that they had held for so long. There Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, was arrested and before he was killed, was tortured and crucified. A Black Friday indeed!

So, there you have it, Friday the Thirteenth is a global conspiracy, though, for a nice twist, it’s not the Knights Templar or Freemasons who are behind it!  Though, I do suppose they are indirectly involved.  Personally, I usually have better luck on Friday the Thirteenth, but, then, I always have been a little out of step with the world. Oh, and here’s a link to some alternate ideas why everyone else is afraid of Friday the Thirteenth.

Enjoy it.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"There's more than one way to do it"
   --Unofficial PERL Coder's Motto

“The only sea without a shore…”

I feel stuck. And, honestly, even as I write that, it feels ungrateful.
It’s not as if I’m in a bad place or anything, but I feel a little stuck. Unable to move forward and equally unable to move back. I suppose part of it is just the time of year. The new year has just rolled by and I feel like I’m in the same place I was last year. That’s not true, of course, but it feels that way. I mean, I’ve got the same job and I’m still not in a long-term, intimate relationship and I’m still not being more productive, really. But, it’s not a bad place to be stuck, either. I have lots of close friends and I got a raise when a lot of people are losing their jobs. And, when I was married, it really wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Still, I feel like life is a little, well, empty. I just haven’t added much to my life this past year. Sure, I’ve been exercising more and feel better than I have in a long time, physically. And, I have been trying to be more creative via photography, but, well, I guess it really bothers me that I’ve been a whole year and don’t see much, if any, progress in my life. I’m just sort of treading water. Stuck.

Maybe I just need a couple of projects to work on. Something to work toward that will stretch me and my technical skills at work. Something that will push my creative skills in my private life. And, I keep trying to not think about relationships, since, well, everyone keeps telling me that when I stop looking that’s when I’ll find one. Not that that has ever made any sense to me, frankly, but, well, the way I’ve been doing it hasn’t worked too well, so, certainly I’ve got nothing to lose by not trying at all! Surely, it couldn’t go any worse!

Well, anyway, the past couple weeks, I’ve just been unmotivated to do anything much or write a lot for the blog and, hopefully, this post explains a little about why.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers."

Because I know you all can’t decide which book to read until I write one.

No, seriously, I know my faithful readers would be all over any book I actually slid past an editor to get published, because you’re great people. But, since I spend most of my time toiling away in a hellish server room, that’s not going to happen any time soon. So, until it does, here’s another website to help you pick what book to read.

This one is called Whichbook. And, unlike last week’s book picker, it doesn’t rely on you entering a book which you’ve already read. No, with this site, you can choose moods and content and all that sort of thing on a series of sliders. When you’re done, you’ll have a suggestion of which book to read. Hopefully, it’ll be something new.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong."
   --Warren Buffet

It turns out, yes.

So, apparently, being a professional network geek is one of the sexy jobs to train for in 2009, according to an article on MSN Encarta. Which means that, as frustrating as my job can be some days, it’s apparently a good gig to have. Hunh, who knew?

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Nobody has ever expected me to be President."
   --Abraham Lincoln

I cannot make this stuff up.

So, the military is concerned about their image. I get that. Blogs and other on-line media are incredibly popular and a source of information and opinion that may influence readers. I get that, too. But, the Air Force is so worried about this they apparently have a flowchart to help counter-bloggers do their work. At least, if Wired is to be believed, they do.

Actually? It’s not a bad suggestion for how anyone might respond to a blog post or a comment on a blog post that they don’t like or with which they disagree. Seriously. Check it out.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
They say integrity is what we do when no one is watching. What are you doing now?

No, I don’t have a dog that needs to be rescued.

In fact, my precious Hilda is rescue dog. Though, all I think I really rescued her from was being spoiled by someone else. She’s so sweet that I’m sure someone would have snatched her up if we hadn’t. But, there are lots of dogs who need to be adopted. Some are, however, more problematic than others. At H.O.P.E., the rescue where I’m a member, we have lots of foster dogs of all kinds. But, even we have special needs dogs, in particular breeds that have been systematically mistreated or that have particularly rough backgrounds and need extra care and attention. Still, the dedicated volunteers do find homes for them, even if they have to go to very special owners.

Some dogs, though, have even more special needs than that. Do you remember Michael Vick? He was that first-round draft pick from the NFL that started an illegal dog breeding and fighting camp. I hesitate to call it that, but I’m not sure what else to call a rough collection of shacks out in the woods where he abused dogs for his own amusement and the entertainment of his friends. He was, thankfully, convicted and sent to jail. He was also forced to pay restitution which went toward the care and rehabilitation of the dogs. Did you ever wonder what happened to those dogs? Well, Sports Illustrated has the story of what happened to Michael Vick’s dogs.

It’s a pretty powerful story, but it ends pretty well, I think.
Oh, and if you read this all the way through and aren’t moved in some way, aren’t touched by the results? Then, I think you have no soul and I cannot possibly love you or even fully trust you. I’m sure that won’t be a problem for the vast majority of my readers, but, well, I’m just saying.

One last thing. Be safe tonight, ringing in the new year. Be careful and watch out for all those people who won’t be. If you haven’t come up with a New Year’s Resolution yet, there’s still time to hit my New Year’s Resolution Generator and let it do the picking for you.
Hope your new year starts off safe and wonderful!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you are overdressed."
   --Kate Halverson

That’s it.

Yeah, so no real post today, or tomorrow probably, but something fun on Friday. Be good. Have a merry Christmas and remember why we celebrate.

Tonight, hope will be born again into the world. On this day, I’m more like a Pagan than a Christian, in that I celebrate the rebirth of light into the world.
My your light be rekindled tonight, too.
Amen

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes."
   --Abigail Van Buren

I almost didn’t make it to celebrate this year.

In the past, my birthday hasn’t been a very big deal. I mean, as an adult, celebrating birthdays just never seemed like the thing to do in our family. In fact, I recall hearing about how one of my sisters threatened to walk out of a restaurant when her co-workers were going to bring out a cake and sing Happy Birthday to her. And, I, myself, once threatened a Joe’s Crab Shack waiter with a broken arm if he tried to get me to stand up and sing on my birthday. It’s just how I roll.

But, I’m forty.
Four decades of life. Forty laps around the Sun.
And, this year, I’m going to do things differently. I’ve take the day off, for instance. If, as an adult, I ever managed to not be working on my actual birthday, it was pure chance. But, today, I’ve deliberately taken the day off. Last night two friends, who happen to be married to each other, took me out to dinner. They took me a day early because, as with most people, they have other obligations tonight. In fact, I think that may be one of the reasons I just found it easier to not celebrate my birthday. Often, coming as it does in the middle of the holiday season, there are just too many things going on to be bothered to remember. Hell, last year, I forgot that it was my birthday at all!

But, this year is different.
This year that I never thought I’d live to see. This year, I’m choosing to celebrate life, because that almost wasn’t an option. I have a lot of ideas about who I’m supposed to be and how I supposed to live. And, I have a lot of ideas what people think about that. The thing is, I tend to live in such a way as to be unobtrusive. I guess I was in the way a lot as a kid or something. And, I have some issues about my own worth, my intrinsic value, as a person and a friend. When I really get going on myself, I’m sure that no one would really miss me for very long if I were to just disappear.
But, I know that’s not really true.

After last year, it’d be hard for me to deny that my life has had an effect on a lot of people. People who would miss me if the cancer had taken me. And, not just because of what I can do for them, which is the other lie I tend to tell myself. That I only have value for what I can do for other people. But, really, I’m not quite that useful that the people who surround me and care about me are only in it for the free computer advice and network support. Granted, that’s a nice perk for them, I’m sure, but, honestly, there are other people who do that just as well or better than I.
So, today, I’ll do something different. Today, I’m meeting some friends for lunch. Later, after running a few errands, I’ll be meeting some other friends for dinner and a movie. No idea what movie and I’m not sure where we’ll end up eating, but that’s not the point. And, really, these folks may not even all know that it’s my birthday and that I’m quietly celebrating in my own way. None of that is why I want to go do these things. No, the point is just to not be alone, closed up, closed off, and hidden on my birthday. For a change, I’m going to do something different on my birthday and celebrate.

I’ll also be starting Flickr365 later today. For those of you not familiar with it, the idea behind Flickr365 is to take a creative self-portrait every day for a year and post it to Flickr, the photo sharing website. My intention is to use that to both get myself taking pictures regularly and to get past hating to have my picture taken. Also, it might be interesting to look back and see what a year of changes look like, a year of different shades of me.
In any case, toward that end, I’ll be buying a wireless remote for my camera today, sometime, too. To make it easier to take those self portraits.

And, of course, my birthday wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention all the other famous people who had the good luck to be born on this particular day. Famous people like Frank “Chairman of the Board” Sinatra, Bob Barker, Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, Edvard Munch, and Wells Fargo founder, Henry Wells. Not to mention, Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues, Tim Hauser of Manhattan Transfer, Dickey Betts of the Allman Bros, jazz musician Grover Washington Jr, and former mayor of New York City, Ed Koch.
All heady company to be sure, but for whatever reason, it tickles me the most that I share a birthday with Frank Sinatra. I guess it’s because he was such a unique and original character who really fought against and beat some long odds to become an amazingly famous, generally well thought of character. I can only hope to do the same, one day.

So, here we go. I’ve survived one more lap around the sun, one more year, and I’ve beaten some long odds to do so. But, that year is done, now it’s time to start the next one and make it better than the last.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Aw, damnit, I left my spontaneous quips in my other pants."

Lately, I’ve been very concerned with my own discipline and how that relates to creative output.

It seems to me that I have increasingly lost the ability to focus on creative tasks for long periods of time, which, of course, is somewhat detrimental to actually producing a finished product. In short, my skills of concentration have gotten soft. It may be due, in part, to the nature of my work, which often draws me in several directions at once. Or, it may simply be a part of my nature that I used to have under better control. Regardless, concentration is, I think, the key.

So, with that in mind, I invite you to read “How To Concentrate“, originally published in 1930, but still relevant today.  Certainly, it is for me, especially this week, or month, or, hell, this year.  Now, all I need to do is clear a little space on my calendar…

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone."
   --Frederic Bastiat

I love stories and today is the National Day of Listening.

One of the hardest things to explain to geeks on a helpdesk is that the everything they do is about people. It’s not about systems or networks or computers, but, rather, the people who use them. It’s amazing to me how many people don’t seem to get that. And, for me, people are about stories. The story of someone’s life can be a fascinating thing, if we just take the time to listen.

In my family, I’ve become my generation’s historian. I’ve collected the stories of all those relatives marching back into time and memory. I got them from both my parents and my paternal grandmother, who lived with us from the time I was born until she passed away when I was in college. All that time, I collected stories. I can tell you the story of my great-great-great grandfather who fought in the civil war after getting drunk and signed up by a recruiting agent. (But, since I’m in the South, I won’t tell you what side he fought for!) I can tell you about my great-grandfather who rode the rails with Hinky-Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Kenzie, two of Chicago’s most notorious Aldermen. I can even tell you about how that same great-grandfather took my father to that Bathhouse John’s house of ill-repute and the “nice ladies” who doted on him while he was there on the porch.
But, many families have lost their stories. They don’t know their history. The National Day of Listening is meant to help keep that from happening to another generation. I saw this on LifeHacker first, but I’ve heard about the group running it, StoryCorps, on NPR. The idea is simple. Go find one of your older relatives and ask questions about their life. Interview them, if you will. And then, listen, and pass the story on. Go to the link and download the guide and then, do it. When you start collecting the stories of your family’s life, I think you’ll be glad you did. I hope so.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"When you handle yourself, use your head; when you handle other, use your heart."
   --Donna Reed