The Death of America

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As most people know, I loaded up a car that has almost no dealership support, leaks water in heavy rain, has seats with virtually no padding, a radio that produces barely perceptible music through blown speakers which can just faintly be heard over the persistent and headache inducing exhaust noise and drove to Vegas and back; 4,740.2 miles round trip. In all similarities it is a go-kart for adults. A few strangers I’ve talked to, business contacts and the like, have asked the obligatory “how was the vacation?” and “where did you go?”. My response is always the same, a curt “I drove to Vegas”. I have grown accustomed to the “Wow, that’s a long drive” comment and even the “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas… except herpes. That shit comes back with you” quote… Yes, I’ve seen the movie, its a little passé now don’t you think? I don’t want to think about herpes. Especially Las Vegas Herpes, that’s like finding some form of bubonic plague in the 17th century (for the non-history buff’s among us, bubonic plague wiped out most of the known world FYI). Imagine that, catching the Bubonic Plague starting with my junk … no thanks.

So if the trip wasn’t about the destination, then what exactly was it about? Well, to understand that you have to understand my mindset about a year ago. Here’s a guy with a dream of one day owning a particular car, not even an expensive car mind you, and a relationship that was like a tree wilting on the eve of winter solstice. After the relationship ended, our guy finds himself suddenly thrust into the presence of another woman. However, this woman doesn’t love him, because he knows no adventure, and turns his heart to ashes (or so he thinks, he never got a real clear answer from her on exactly why). So the main character of our plot, this totally mostly normal guy, on one rainy lonely night, picks up a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and resumes reading from page 64 where he stopped years ago. And as he reads, he yearns within himself to see these great vistas of the West, a feeling that he hasn’t indulged on since his last Alaska trip in 2003. The plains of Oklahoma, the desert mountains of Nevada and Arizona, the flat never-ending plains of Texas. These things that he’s flown over so many times call to him.

And so one day, shortly thereafter, our protagonist stumbles across a forum thread discussing a road trip to the annual Lotus Owners Gathering, aka LOG. But the trip is more than that, its a Great Westward Journey, one that our protagonist grips within his heart with a sense of amazement, glee, and a shade of trepidation. And after the preliminary planning, packing, saving, and preparation sets out upon what is to him an adventure in his soul.

At first I thought, myself being the protagonist in this story of course, that I would write a day-by-day journey of my adventures West and that it of itself would in some way convey the excitment of the journey and carry with it the wonderment of discovering forgotten places which few have seen. But that has already been done, in a more concise manner than I could ever have done, and I encourage you to take a few minutes and read through it for it is indeed a heady wine filled with the sights of America.

But after 2 months, recounting those things would do nothing but provide more details to what I have already told many about. Instead, I’m filled with something different. For I have seen the dead and decaying carcass of America and I know what encompasses our future as a nation, and perhaps as a footnote in the history of civilazation.

When you fly across the country your focus is on the person next to you and your single serving chicken cordon-bleu hobby kit as Palahniuk would term it, not that they serve food on airlines anymore. You’re whisked from place to place with the recycled oxygen enriched air around you, your face planted into your laptop or iPad, reading email, catching up on work, or straining your eyes to watch a movie on a shitty 12″ screen 8 rows in front of you. In essence… you’re transported from place to place by an annoying process of luggage screenings, lines, and processed food that only barely resembles what it was advertised as.

But driving… now there is an experience. Most people think of driving as something that’s done to get from point A to point B. A method of conveyance for which they are grateful, yet never exuberant. But what this overwhelming sea of humantiy misses … is that is America. I may be biased; I grew up in the Motor City. Now a smoldering pile of rubble, and it tears the chords of anguish in my heart to see a city which was America reduced to an impoverished nation. Imported from Detroit indeed; Chrysler’s benevolence in that statement confounds me, yet brings me a swell of pride to say “I am from Detroit.”

As our troop of M&M’s journeyed through these forgotten midwest towns, I was struck with the scenes around me. Here are people, gathered around us, asking questions about the cars, where we are from, where we’re going… I doubt aliens landing in town square would have received as much attention. And the thing is, all these people were genuinely interesting in the stories we could tell. But the best part, was that I was genuinely interested in the stories that they told me, and in absence of their stories I read the land around me.

And it breaks my heart to say it, but Middle America is dead. I will never forget passing through McLean, Texas. Just off I-40 we made a quick loop through McLean in search of gas for the Lotus’ have a very limited range, roughly 240 miles. As we pulled through I was startled by the town. Imagine a pristine 1950′s town, movie theater, gas station, small town America in a box… empty. I don’t mean run down or abandoned or littered with graffiti… I mean… empty. We zipped through, for we were on an itinerary (just ask Randy), and as we drove through part of me wanted to stop and just take a picture. Just one. Like a rose being dropped onto a lowered casket, a final goodbye.

And to be clear, I’m not just talking about McLean. I’m talking about Galena too, where the Four Women on the Route still remains, despite the local economy being … dead. So what killed these great towns in Middle America? Quite simply … we did. Not today, or yesterday, but when we determined getting from A to B was more important than the journey of getting from point A to B, we killed a piece of ourselves. We are America – we revel in the ability to create, build, our uniqueness, and our ingenuity. But in our desperate rush to grasp that next idea, to take the next leap, to go faster, we’ve abandoned that which makes us American.

And the question I ask is why? Maybe if we weren’t so goddamn worried about our next 3% raise, or wearing a pair of Gucci-fucking-loafers, we’d pick up our heads, look around, and go “holy shit(!) there is a world around me to which I know nothing!”. And maybe, just maybe, we’d get in our cars and instead of spending $1500 on some plane tickets we’d  take our kids, and say “HERE, THIS IS AMERICA!”. But we don’t. We’ve got soccer practice, after school care to pay for, deadlines from our boss… and absolutely no balls to draw a line in the sand and take ownership for how we choose to live our lives. No ownership of what it means to taste, and feel, and see America. To “look upon our mighty works and despair”, for despair we would, our works grow to dust behind us. And that is the great fallacy of America, and the American Dream, we keep breathing the air in front of us only to leave dust in our wake… like a parasite.

So you wonder, what’s the point. My message is this: Put it on your list of life’s journeys to go find America, to truly find it, to pull into a forgotten town, talk to the residents, eat their food, drink their beer, give them a smile and a wave, and make friends with someone you will never see again. It will open your eyes in a way I cannot describe and the exuberance of it will embrace you in a way you will never forget. And when you pass a convoy of Lotus’ heading in the opposite direction give us a wave and wish us well on the road to tasting the forgotten past of the greatest land on earth.

Yet Another “Good Password” Article

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There are a myriad of articles on the web about picking good passwords; just go to Google and type in ‘how to choose a good password’ and you’ll get 127 million hits (seriously). Yet despite that, it amazes me that people still make poor choices when it comes to password strength or choose to use the same password at multiple websites. Is it that they don’t care about security, don’t understand how to be secure, or is their lack of security born of an ignorance that bad things can happen to them?

For those who aren’t familiar with the Gawker Media hack back in December of 2010 I’ll give you a quick recap; big media company gets hacked into, hackers steal the usernames and passwords for Gawker’s users, those users had used those same usernames / passwords other places, the users could get their other accounts broken into. That’s a pretty broad summary, but for our purposes it’s an apt description. My point is simple – hackers are all over the place and the things they do might not target you specifically but they can affect you. Some hackers are good, some evil, and most subsist somewhere in the middle of the ether as a grey-hat wearing mob. I’m not saying Gawker isn’t blameless, but to be fair, the users who used the same password all over the internet aren’t blameless either. So using the Gawker gaffe as an example…

Rule #1: Use a different password for every website, service, computer, network, etc

Common objection: that sounds really … difficult. I made a quick list off the top of my head and came back with 28 different websites I have passwords to which I use on a somewhat frequent basis. This includes work passwords, banking, personal email, regular websites I visit which require a username / password, and other local passwords, such as my encrypted hard drives. Remembering 28 passwords would be a challenge for most people (or almost all) and there are times where I forget passwords quite frequently. So how do I track all this stuff? Simple, I use a password manager which keeps all my passwords organized and encrypted. Note I underlined, bolded, and italicized encrypted. We’re not talking a spreadsheet, text file, or word doc here folks. Alternatively, there are other options which are supported on mobile platforms as well. And those are just two I know of – Google has a lot of other options.

Rule #2: There is no excuse for not having a way to manage your passwords

Since we know we need to keep our passwords different for each website and we have a way to store them encrypted, the next logical problem is a password like ‘quDj3aK!a9_1gf2’ is impossible to remember. Yep, I agree, it’s completely impossible to remember and as a password it completely sucks – I would never use a password like that. Instead, I find something that is easy to remember yet would (most likely) never be found in an English dictionary (we also call these passphrases).

[Editorial side note: security professionals have been talking about passwords versus passphrases and how much more secure they are for over a decade… yet we continue to use the word ‘password’ on website login forms and in our own security documents. Maybe we’re not so good at this “leading by example” thing anyway].

So as for an example to what a good password looks like, my banking password for a long time was ‘I need $$ to buy bling’. Seriously, just like that (yeah, it’s been changed now so don’t bother trying to brute force it). As a password it’s about perfect – it doesn’t exist in the English dictionary as a whole word, has some special characters randomly in it, and best of all is easily remembered. What’s even better is you can come up with these little phrases all day long. Amazon: ‘I like to buy b00ks’. iTunes: ‘No Beatles here!’. And so on and so on, it’s really quite easy.

Rule #3: Good passwords are easy, if they’re not, you’re making it too hard.

Password changing has always been a good topic of debate between users and security professionals. We set policies to force people to change their passwords every 30 / 60 / 90 days and most of the time the users complain. The reason for this is simple – once I figure out what your password is, and you never change it, I have access to your account forever. Using the Gawker hack as an example, the list of passwords the attackers have in their possession never gets stale – they will continue to work because people have website accounts somewhere on some forgotten service and they will never, ever, remember to go change them because they never use the service anymore. And that particular service might have your credit card information stored in it. Good example is Ticketmaster, your local pizza chain, or iTunes – they all save your credit card info to make it easier to purchase items.

Rule #4: Change your password. It doesn’t have to be every X days, but realistically, at least do it every few months.

One trend that I find incredibly convenient is the use of your email address as your login name for different websites. As most of us know, the login name needs to be unique and as we all know, email addresses are as unique as your finger print (no two are the same, really). But here’s the problem – let’s say your email address is bobsmith@gmail.com and someone steals the iTunes user database from Apple. It takes an attacker about a fraction of a second to go login to Gmail with your iTunes username (bobsmith@gmail.com) on the Gmail website and see if your iTunes password and Gmail password are the same. If it is, guess what… they’re in your email. And since you’re lazy and don’t change your password regularly they are in your email forever. And since you didn’t change your password whenever someone else gets that same stolen iTunes data then you’ve got two people in your email now (or more).

Rule #5: Don’t ever use your email password anywhere else.

As is constant in life, the next “big thing” is always right around the corner and for passwords that is the use of ‘two factor authentication’ (2FA) whereby you use something you know (like a password) in combination with something you have (like a USB token). More and more services are starting to deploy 2FA in their offerings – give it a few years and we’ll see much more wide spread adoption, but for now it’s only relegated to the very techno-savy or techno-brave. In the meantime, mind your five rules above and you’ll probably be fairly safe for the time being.

Daniel

F*ck Cancer

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One of the simple joys of having your own website, and your own blog, is you can pretty much publish whatever you want; four letter words included. While I debated for a bit if the title of this post would offend anyone’s sensibilities, in the end I decided to keep this original title as it accurately reflects my state of mind after completing the Atlanta 3-Day this past weekend. Most of my regular readership (and then some judging by the number of hits I got on the site after I posted A Love Story) has read about how I came to be involved in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk here in Atlanta so I’ll skip that portion of my account, but as we’ll see that’s pivotal to understanding what the 3-Day is all about. If you haven’t read it, go back and do so before proceeding further.

So a little back story… on Wednesday night, October 19th, two days before the 3-Day was scheduled to start I arrived home from what I will always consider one of the most epic journeys of my life. I’ll work on documenting that adventure later, as my emotional fortitude is preoccupied with this feeling of … well, of compassion, that is essential to get into words before its feeling fades. When I arrived home, being the astute social media tycoon I am (I use that term entirely satirically and with a predisposition of gross negligence), I checked Facebook. One of the first posts that crossed my eye was a post from Dana, my only fellow 3-Day walker, that she had a friend who was $415 short of making her donation minimum and that she would not be able to walk. In my post entitled Of Loss I made mention of a higher power that sometimes guides my life; once again it reared its majestic head. When I wrote A Love Story, I pledged and committed to donating $500 to the Susan G. Komen Foundation as part of my generosity and goodwill towards breasts, of which my love is well known. I had already donated $100, which was essentially seed money to spark donations from others into my account; nothing motivates like peer pressure. So with that in mind, I was still ‘on the books’ for another $400. While I was on The Great Journey West, through some act of this higher power, the 350Z I had been trying to get rid of sold and I was suddenly ‘rich’. When I committed to the $500 I figured I’d be donating it to myself, little did I know I would raise all the money I needed within 4 hours of posting A Love Story, so it seemed too convenient that Christen needed just $415 to walk with us. Alas, ‘Est Sularus Oth Mithas‘, and I donated $415 to Christen’s account the day before the 3-Day started (I spotted God the $15, I figure he’s good for it). So with that donation in place, our merry band of breast massaging marauders increased to three.

Another consideration to point out, which is essential for the story – for about 3 months prior to starting the walk I had been going to physical therapy once or twice a week to try and fix something in my hamstring. Nobody really knows exactly what it is; I’ve been to two doctors, two different physical therapists, a chiropractor, a massage therapist, and a psychic, yet no improvement (I’m joking about the psychic). So what does it feel like… well, it feels like you have a permanent charlie horse in your hamstring and after about 200 feet you begin to lose feeling in your foot, then your knee, then your calf, then your thigh, then your hip, until eventually it feels like your entire leg is asleep because you sat in the same position for too long. If you stop and stretch, you get that warm tingly feeling back in your leg and everything is good to go for about 200 more feet. Then you stop, stretch, then walk 200 more feet. Then you stop, stretch, then walk 200 more feet. Rinse and repeat. In any given mile you should plan on stopping about 15-20 times to stretch your hamstring so your 15 minute mile quickly becomes a 35 or 40 minute mile. You can see how this would affect the pace needed to complete an 18 mile day.

On Friday morning, Day 1, I awoke at 5am, showered, packed a camelbak with water, spare socks, foot powder, a big tube of BenGay, an Ace bandage, a bottle of Advil, a bottle of my prescribed anti-inflammatory med’s, my wallet, and cell phone and set off for the opening ceremonies at Stone Mountain.

Upon arriving it was like entering a Disney Land where Snow White and Little Miss Muffet had vomited pink on everything. I mean everything. As a man, its kind of disconcerting, but in the same way wearing camouflage fatigues becomes the norm for an infantryman, so did the pink decorations become the norm for me. In fact, by Sunday I was sporting a pink breast cancer ribbon tattoo under my left eye like a single tear shed by a stoic warrior, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So once we were checked in, we listened to the opening ceremonies and after much fanfare and a few tears, we set out upon mile 1 and the journey was upon us. The day started well…

Mile 1: Day going well. Leg in good shape.
Mile 2: Day going well. Leg in good shape.
Mile 3: Day going well. Leg… slightly sore.
Mile 4: Day going to hell. Leg… more than slightly sore.
Mile 5: Fuck my leg hurts.
Mile 6: Holy fuck… I can’t feel my left foot.
Mile 7: We have just lost cabin pressure…
Mile 8: Disaster.

When we set out, I was determined to walk every mile of every day come hell or high water. I defied (and lied to) my physician because I didn’t want him to tell me I couldn’t walk. It was more important to me to be with Dana than it was to suffer physical pain, even if that meant the possibility of really doing some permanent damage. Big tough man and all that combined with a stubbornness borne through years of practice; yeah, you get it. So around mile 8, visibly limping, I passed one of the crossing guards / safety monitors. He inquired as to my limp, I explained I was fine, just a tinge sore, no worries. About 40 yards down the street I stopped to stretch, and as Dana and Christen can vouch for, I stopped to stretch quite frequently… it was the only way to get the pain to stop so I could continue on for another 40 yards. So along comes what’s called a ‘Sag Wagon’, basically a 10 person van that picks up the wounded and takes them to the next scheduled pit stop and drops them off at medical. The lady of the van, a really kind lady, asked if I was ok, I said sure, I’m fine, no worries, just stretching, and then she proceeded to pull over and jump out of her van and approach me. After some general dialog, to which I don’t remember the exact details, I said to her “I don’t want to get in the van. Are you going to make me get in?”. And she said to me “I can’t make you get in the van. I understand how you feel, but you’ve got three days of walking. Whatever or whoever you’re walking for would want you to get a ride with us up to the next pit stop and go to medical to get your leg looked at.” And inside, despite my best attempts to deny it, I knew she was right. So I acquiesced to her request and got a ride for 2 miles up to the next pit stop. At the time, I was emotionally crushed. I felt like I had failed, that despite my best efforts and most determined mind set… I failed. I was near tears… this was so important to me that I would have climbed the deepest seas and swam the tallest mountains to make it reality. I felt like I had let everyone down who donated to me.

As I reached camp, I shot a quick text to my girlfriend and mom and let them know I failed. And their responses shocked me – they both said I was an idiot. They both said: This wasn’t about me taking a nature hike through Atlanta, this was about the people who donated to me supporting a belief in a cause that was greater than themselves. It took me several minutes to wrap my brain around it, and I hope that I’ve articulated that clearly enough. Me walking these miles and me gathering donations was never about me… it was about them. I had already achieved success by gathering the donations; the 3-Day walk was almost a reward for that undertaking. So after being dropped off, resting my leg for a bit, pounding down a double dose of anti-inflammatory med’s and some Advil, I filled my camelbak and rejoined the walk. As a side note, you’re not supposed to mix prescription anti-inflammatory med’s and Advil, it causes your stomach to bleed. Don’t ask how I know this.

So with that mindset in place I rejoined Dana and Christen, had lunch, and finished out the day. We had essentially hiked from Stone Mountain, through Decatur, to the Georgia World Congress Center in one day. Of the 18 miles on the route card, I think I completed about 13 of them. On a bum leg, I’ll take that as an adequate attempt.

Day 2 began much like Day 1. Up early, pack my kit, and get to the start point at the Georgia World Congress Center and wait in line with 4,499 other people. On Day 2 we hiked through downtown, through midtown, up through Buckhead, down Peachtree street to Lindbergh station… and then called it a day. All three of us, Dana, Christen, and I, were about at our limit after doing 12 of the 18 miles. My leg hurt something fierce, Christen had blisters the size of jelly beans on her toes, and Dana was completely done in. At the cheering station at Lindbergh, we said our goodbyes and planned to get a few extra hours of rest to gear up for Day 3.

But during Day 2, there were a couple of things that happened to me which really shaped this feeling of compassion which two days later I just can’t seem to shake. The first thing, was the sense of community exhibited not by the walkers but by the people on the side or the road, driving by in cars, and the people running the event. For those that have never done a 3-Day, the echoes of “thanks for walking” and “looking good” become so passe that its hard to describe this little smile you get deep inside when so many people are cheering you on your way. It’s a feeling of righteousness, one that many people will never feel in their journey of life; and that is the real tragedy of this disease – that it robs people of their life. While cliche, the slogan “Everyone deserves a life” is so apt that I over look the cliche and accept it as a simple truth. My advice is this – if you ever get the opportunity to support the walk, go setup a table with about 10 boxes of Kleenex and some candy, you’ll be a hero. Speaking of hero’s, I have to mention the 3-Day Coffee Kids – you guys were awesome!

The second thing I have to mention is the spirit of the people doing the walk. T-Shirts with pictures of women who have died adorn many of the T-shirts, or T-Shirts “In Memory Of” along with a list of names of people who have died … it’s a powerful wine. I remember one lady I talked to – her younger sister became sick, was diagnosed with breast cancer, so the doctor recommend her other sisters get tested. The middle sister, the one I was walking with, tested negative. The older sister… tested positive. Within a year this lady had lost both of her sisters to breast cancer. To hear it 3rd hand from me does it no justice; to see the tears in her eyes, to see the pictures of these women on her shirt… it hurts and its real and I am thankful for being alive. The walk is a celebration in life if above all over things.

Another interesting thing that happened to me on that Saturday – while walking up Peachtree Street towards Lindbergh, I noticed this lady limping along as I was. One of the other walkers, who was in good health, approached her and asked if she was alright. The limping lady responded with saying she was trying to make her way up to the top of the hill because her family, and most importantly her daughters, were waiting for her at the cheering station not far ahead. With an exasperated sigh, she commented on how important it was to show her daughters how to be strong, how to over come challenges… how to live. And so the lady who was in good health grabbed the limping lady’s arm, draped it across her shoulders, and said to her “Girl, how about we get up this hill together?”. The smile and gratitude in the limping ladies face was like a ray of sunshine on a desolate plain of grey. That in a single instance, is what the 3-Day is all about. It’s about coming together as one to help women in pain overcome something so threatening to them.

Ohh yeah, and my button… Thanks Dana! So ended Day 2.

Day 3 was the longest day so far, about 15 miles of walking. At one point I had to hop on a bus and head to lunch since I couldn’t keep up with the minimum pace, but towards the end with a fresh set of anti-inflammatory drugs coursing through me and a good tape job from the folks at medical on my leg I was motoring. The highlight of Day 3 was the end to me, to walk into Turner Field with a smile on my face, hundreds of people lining the road cheering us on, to feel the exultation of making it so far… was awesome. To see the survivors cheering during the closing ceremony… I felt proud to be part of something so great, and that feeling I had, I hope, is the same feeling that I hope everyone who donated to me felt when they clicked the submit button. I fervently hope that one day, sometime in their lives, those who donated to me will walk in their own 3-Day. And when you need donations, I’m here and I’m good for it. Nor can I say thank you enough to the people who donated to enable me to walk those 60 miles… but I’ll try…

Thank You.

I can’t describe to you how it feels to be involved with the 3-Day and have it mean anything. I really wish I could, I wish I could let you feel the little smile creep out as thousands of people, one after another fro miles and miles, tell you “thank you for walking”, or a little kid hands you a piece of candy for you to munch on as you walk, or to listen to a mother’s story of how she battled cancer after giving birth to her firstborn daughter while you walk beside her. These are things I can never share with you and have them mean the same thing as they did to me. I hope that I was able to give those that donated to me or another Walker a feeling of satisfaction, a feeling that they were doing something bigger than themselves, something that made a difference. After doing the walk, and not only hearing these stories but experiencing them first hand, I know that I’ll be in the same place next year doing the same thing alongside 4,500 women, 10 guys, and Dana. And at the end I’ll tell you the same thing … fuck cancer.

Daniel

Of Loss

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Today has been a crappy day. Not end-of-the-world crappy, I’ve had much, much worse, but one of those days that just seems to grate at a man’s soul like a splinter that won’t shake itself loose from the palm of your hand. Or that shaving cut right on the edge of your lip that stings every time you smile or laugh. And ironically, its on a day like this that I find myself tackling a topic that bears a similar feeling of methodical anguish… that of loss. Two things prompted this subject, and as the cosmos is neigh to incline, both entirely random within quick succession – a suggestion from someone I’m growing fond of and the ending of a video game. Different aspects, but both along similar lines.

In our lives, we will lose many things. We will lose pets, loved ones… we will outgrow our favorite T-shirt, we will outgrow relationships with those we truly cherish… our favorite car will become rusted and dented, the factories that once fueled a thriving city will grow silent and crumble. For we as a people are Ozymandias, king of kings, look upon our works, ye mighty, and despair.

So what makes up ‘loss’ as we perceive it? In general terms, its the removal of attachment; life’s way of ripping off our band-aid unexpectedly. Sometimes we expect it – we watch the health of our family pet deteriorate over the course of months and then feel something … gone. Other times its just taken from us – suddenly, without warning, without any trepidation on the part of anything or anyone.

Last year when I was in Las Vegas, the city of glitz and glamour, in my room at the Mirage getting ready to head out to breakfast, my mom and step dad called to tell me that their dog, well, our dog, Zorlene, named after the dog of our guide on our first Alaska trip, had passed away. At first nothing registered… I felt like I had just been told the weather report. Then it hit. That feeling of the band-aid being forcibly removed from me. I cried. Deeply, passionately, and in such force that I felt like less of a man inside. We’re sold on the fact that men can’t cry, they can’t show emotion, they can’t be anything less than the stoic warrior, jaw jutted out into the reaches of the world ready for the next challenge, the next battle, the next war. ‘Be brave!’ they call to us, be resolute, stand fast upon your perch!

But the truth of the matter is that we are not always resolute; we will not always stand fast in the face of agony. While I understood conceptually that Zorlene was gone, that I was 1500 miles away, and that I would never, ever, get to lay on the couch with her one more time, the anguish of that feeling drove me to tears. But what really hurt me, more than the loss itself, was that I had a feeling I didn’t act on. See, the weekend before I left for Vegas I had gone down to my parents house to spend a night in the country and see them before I headed out on my first great DefCon journey. And as I was leaving that Sunday morning, I was struck with an inclination that as I walked out the door I would never see Zorlene again. I honestly can’t tell you why, or how, or what even brought that feeling on. It was just … there. Inexplicable, unexplainable, but omnipresent. And for a second, I stood on the threshold of the door, looked back at Zorlene with a grin on her face, tongue dropping out of her mouth, and I could see love in her eyes. For the briefest of moments I felt her looking at me; no, not at me, but into me. Right then I thought to myself “I need to walk back in there and give her a big hug and just tell her I love her and what a great dog she is”. But I shook it off, what kind of man would feel such nonsense, and dismissed it. And for that… I wept.

I won’t, or can’t, say that was God sending a message to me or that fate wanted me to have that moment. I believe in certain things, perhaps one day I’ll tackle my spirituality in a post, but today I choose to abstain until such time as I feel its within my understanding to comment. But that defining moment I will never forget, nor will I forget the tears that flowed as a result.

Anyone reading this will be familiar with loss. Even as a young child we grow aware of it; our blankee that we clung to as a toddler gets left behind in Gettysburg, our favorite GI Joe vehicle gets broken, the plastic rear wheels on our first Big Wheels trike begin to crack from miles upon miles of 180 degree spins in the driveway under the watchful eyes of our parents; “look mom, look dad, look at what I can do!”. Loss is a constant in our lives – you’d think you’d get better at it when you’re 32 years old.

But the truth of the matter is we will never get better at it. I could quote you the Kubler-Ross grief model and its 5 stages, I can tell you what to expect, hell, anyone can. We’ve all experienced it. Friends, family, counselors, et all, can help guide you through the process. But within ourselves healing comes down to one simple thing – the acceptance that without loss we cannot continue to provide love to that which happens next.

As everyone fundamentally knows the world changes. We along with it. The man I am today is not the man I was yesterday, or the year before that. In essence, each loss we feel impacts us and churns us to find new connections, to spread love to new places, like a bee pollinating flowers in the spring; its quite an apt metaphor. But to make room for those things, we have to let go of what was before.

In my life now I know of several people who are working their way through divorce, an illness with someone they love, or on the flip side, people who have already worked their way through those things. And as they emerge on the other side of pain, of remorse, of anguish, and the blurry light filtered through their tears begins to clear they find other things in their life to which they apply their love. It may be a day, a month, a year later. Everyone has their coping strategies to get through loss; booze, drugs, cigarettes, self destructive behavior, throwing yourself into your job, cleaning your house… they are all distractions to forget the loss, but not really heal it. Time heals all wounds, a popular quote I’ve heard, and said, many times this year and sometimes find myself iterating in my own mind as I ponder events in my distant past.

But perhaps there is another way; maybe, just maybe, the answer to loss is to love those around us more dearly? To scoop up your children in your arms and tell them you love them. To go play ball with your dog for that extra hour. To plan a trip to see your family in another city. To take a close friend to dinner one night just because and ask nothing in return.

In my life I have known many people afraid to love. And I’m not talking just in a romantic man-loves-a-woman sense; I mean to love the things around them – to have a favorite T-shirt, to have a favorite car, to have a pet. Many people, more than you would think, fear the emotions of loss so much that it leads them to never fully engage with an open heart the things or people in their lives. I could comment on how fruitless a life that must be, but I’m not really sure I need to. I think you can feel it for yourself if you merely close your eyes, and soul, to the world around you. It’s an ugly, disgusting feeling entirely devoid of that which makes days like today melancholy; for without great days, and great highs, you cannot begin to understand lows. Many people mistake the goal of life as finding the serene waters of contentment, and as a shortcut, that if they truly do not love, they truly cannot hurt. But isn’t the lack of love still losing? Instead of avoiding loss, you willingly suscept to its embrace… but without the interleaving joy?

When I was young, maybe 9 or 10, I had this favorite T-shirt, a wonderful 80′s number in turquoise blue-green. But I loved that shirt fiercely, it just fit perfectly and I really loved the soccer ball logo on it. But because I loved it so much, I was scared to wear it. So after a year or so, and only having worn it a couple times, I finally worked up the courage to wear it out regularly… only I found that it didn’t fit. And as a 10 year old, I learned that you must embrace the things in your life you enjoy, care about, or maybe even love. Don’t leave them on the shelf as I did… when you finally work up the courage to experience it, it may be gone. Ironically, that same philosophy has brought me no end of frustration in dating but as with spirituality, that’s a topic I’ll abstain from for the time being.

So, in way of conclusion, I pose this to carry with you as you experience joy and loss:

It is not about remaining happy, it is about pollinating flowers, about the evolutionary creation of new bonds, new love, and new life, and to do such things we must make room in the finite space of our lives for those new things to occur, and those who sacrifice love to avoid loss do nothing more than burn a picture to prevent themselves from obtaining the ashes.

Daniel

Something profound (for lack of anything else)

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I’ve been sitting here for a bit, listening to some music with this feeling I need to write… something. No idea what, I just want to write. Something profound, meaningful, I don’t know… something. So as I was sitting here I saw a picture of a bunny rabbit (yes, I got sidetracked on the writing thing and hit the lolcats site) and was reminded of the Fibonacci sequence. And when I think of Fibonacci, I think of my first programming class in Pascal.

So with that intro… I present Programming in Pascal 101.

In high school, I took a class in Pascal, the only computer class offered other than Introduction to Keyboarding. Blah. If you can’t figure out how to use a keyboard in sixteen weeks, you frankly have no right existing on this earth. End of story. When school started up in the fall of my senior year, those of us who looked, noticed a class labeled “Programming” on the last line, of the last page, of our school computer class list. All of the geeks quickly signed up (I was obviously one such individual). This class became the focal point in my high school day. To sit down at a computer and create something that I had complete and total control to do was awe inspiring at the age of 17. The only limit of my ability to create was my own imagination.

I remember the very first program we had to write. It was a simple “Hello World” program that asked for our name, age, and weight then printed all the information back to the screen. Except I had this idea. I don’t know where it even came from, I just all of a sudden knew. If I added a boundary for the name, then did an “If…then” statement I could customize the output screen. Revolutionary. I was proud of myself and after making the necessary changes to my program I copied the source code over to the floppy disk and scooted my chair over to my friend Brent’s desk.

“Take a peak at this”, I said to him.
“Why?”
“Just do it. It’s cool.”
“Ok, fine.”

So he put this disk in, brought up the source code, compiled it, and then hit the Run command. It popped up the name, age, and weight prompts. He put in all his information like normal and after he hit the return key to get the print out, he got the message “I’m sorry you’re a dork” plus the normal name, age, and weight that he had entered. I just smiled; that cocky half grin I sport occasionally.

“Ok, that was stupid.”
“Yeah, but it was funny.”
“No, it was stupid.”
“Ok, fine, just do it again. And don’t enter in Brent.”
“I’m gonna enter in Stupid, just for you”.
“Fine”.

My smile steadily grew as he worked his way through the prompts. When the print out came back, he saw a new message, “Stupid is the best person in the world”. His puzzled look as he worked his way back through the prompts again was priceless. Again he put in Stupid for the name, and again he was told “Stupid is the best person in the world”. As we started getting more creative improving the logic, we attracted the attention of our side of the room. They crowded around his screen watching him put in the prompts and trying different names, ages, and weights – all with different logic. Everyone was in awe. Finally, after several requests to do so, we showed them what we had done and the syntax for an “If…then” statement in Pascal. Immediately, everyone jumped back to their desks, in an effort to expand on what we had done. It was the biggest sense of pride I had ever felt in high school. Mrs. Brown, our teacher, talked to me sometime later that week, asking how I knew about the “If…then” statements since we hadn’t covered those yet. I told her I didn’t read ahead in the book and wasn’t sure where I had picked it up from. I just knew there was this thing called an “If…then” statement that could do some cool things. I guess she understood, as she left it at that. Thinking back, I’m pretty sure I picked it up from my IBM Basic 3.0 programming manual, circa 1982, that ironically is behind me on my office bookshelf as I’m writing this, I still have it after all these years (by the way, mom, in the event I get hit by a bus or something there is a micro-SD card in there with my will and stuff on it).

As the school semester began to draw to a close several weeks later, Mrs. Brown pulled me aside from everyone else. I had been done with all the required programs for a week and spent all my class time using the compiler to build some program that did whatever I could think of or helping her grade the other students programs. I, of course, was feeling pretty cocky. I was done for the most part, in fact, I was pretty much just hanging out for the rest of the semester. I had already done all the assigned programs as well as the final program which was designed to be a crucible of sorts. At the end of the quarter, rather than do a final, we had a massive programming assignment, one that would take several weeks to finish and was designed to be as complex as possible. Regardless, we all had pretty much gotten an A in the course. It wasn’t like the class was hard or anything. We did the programs as needed and turned them in. If someone was having problems understanding a concept, it was drilled into them by the rest of us, and with most of the (ok, all of the) high school level computer intellect in one room there wasn’t much we couldn’t cooperatively solve. All for one, and one for all. Pretty simple concept.

“Daniel, I have a different program for you.”
“Uh. Ok, I guess.”
“Good, it’s on this disk. Just open the files on there and read through it. If you have any questions, come find me and I’ll help you out.”
“Ok.”

So I walked back to my desk, put in the disk, and opened up the file she had typed all the instructions in. I was enthralled. I had to write a program to print the Fibonacci numbers. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc, up to anything greater then 100.

A little background on Fibonacci. He developed this theory of numbers to count the reproduction cycle of a family of rabbits. You start with one rabbit, then he reproduces to get another rabbit so now you have two rabbits. I was always unclear on this. It seems to me it’s hard to reproduce with only one rabbit, but I’m not a rabbit so I wouldn’t know (Editorial note: So I looked up Fibonacci when I was gathering links for this article and it was a pair of rabbits, not just a rabbit. It makes sense now… I’m still not a rabbit).

Well, the two rabbits reproduce to get three rabbits. You probably see the pattern now. The first slot gets added to the second slot to get the third number. The second slot gets added to the third slot to get the fourth number. Three plus four gets you the fifth slot. And on down the line, until you hit one hundred. Well, I got the pattern, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how the hell to get the computer to take the damn numbers and then reuse them in the next calculation. I tried every kind of loop out there. If, for, “do … while”, “repeat…until”. Nothing worked. I was stumped. I went and asked Mrs. Brown about it. She told me, yes I was on the right track, but no, she wasn’t going to help me. The “see me for help” speech was only applicable for the correct pattern in the numbers. The coding part was up to me. So for weeks I tried to figure out the right loop. I built the menu system and the screen formats and all the other input / output procedures. But I could never ever get the numbers to add right. I could do the first numbers or the last numbers but could not get the whole thing to run.

Finally school ended for the semester and the class was over. My program still didn’t work. I still got my ‘A’ in the class and I mentioned to Mrs. Brown that I was disappointed in not being able to figure it out.

She said to me, “Daniel, you weren’t supposed to figure it out.”

My glazed blank expression stared back at her.

“You’ll understand someday and it will all make sense. But if you really want to figure out the program, try using a nested loop. And you did well, you didn’t give up.”

Two years later, when I was taking CS1502 “Application Programming in Pascal” during my freshman year at Georgia Tech, I got assigned the same problem. Word for word. She must have got her problem from the same text book they used at Tech for second semester CS majors. Needless to say, that was the easiest program I ever did there. But more importantly I learned two very valuable lessons from the Fibonacci numbers.

One: Don’t think you know it all because when it comes down to it, you don’t.
Two: Don’t ever give up.

So that’s my message for the day. It isn’t as profound as some of my other posts, but sometimes we just need to hear the basics one more time.

Daniel

Social Media #FAIL

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While most companies are moving, or have already moved, into the social media space it is a new venture for most companies as well as their employees. The benefits of social media have been well publicized so I won’t go into them here, but what have not been well publicized are the risks of using social media for individuals. And to be clear, I’m not talking about the risks of your personal information being stolen or the Evil H4ck3rZ getting into your Facebook account. What I’m talking about are the sometimes stupid and ill-formed decisions we make about exactly what we are posting.

In June I spoke at the Gartner Risk & Compliance Summit in Washington DC, and while there I saw a presentation by Marne Gordon from IBM on Social Media policies that I thought was an excellent overview of exactly why having a social media policy is important. Not having the 30 page editorial space to recap the entire presentation, I’ve pulled out a few examples that I think best demonstrate exactly how we can sometimes really make a mess of things when we don’t consider what our actions will lead to.

Slandering your Boss

For the first example, let’s take a girl who I’ll call Brittany and her boss Steve. As shown in the screen shot below, at some point she makes a Facebook post saying some pretty crass things about her boss. Her boss, a friend of hers on Facebook, then sees the post then makes his own rebuttal on her page. See below:

There are a couple interesting things here that are worth commenting on. First of all, the fact that Brittany posted the comments she did while knowing (or forgetting) that her boss had access to read them was just plain dumb. However, the really interesting thing is not what she said, but what her boss Steve said. In most countries, and I’m assuming the country they are in is England based on the comment of sending the P45 form (which is an employee termination form in the UK and Ireland), you can’t disclose why you are terminating an employee. What Steve did was essentially fire her over Facebook which isn’t the most professional avenue nor is it an appropriate legal forum for such an action. There is a ton of employment law in the UK, and in essence, Brittany may have some legal recourse for Steve’s actions. Lesson to learn: Don’t forget who can read your posts and never post a retaliatory comment. Keep it private!

You didn’t want that job anyway

Another good example is the case of Connor Riley who was offered a job at Cisco then tweeted about her lack of enthusiasm for it.

In this instance she was confronted by another Cisco employee who passed her comments on to her hiring manager. The job offer was rescinded as a result of her tweet. Lesson to learn: The things you say online can return to haunt you in the real world!

It’s the Future I tell you!

A third example is the story of an HP VP, Scott McClellan who accidentally divulged a secret project HP was working on in the cloud computing space by posting an updated resume on his LinkedIn profile. While seemingly innocuous, by doing so he divulged details that HP was striving to keep secret to protect its market position in the cloud computing space.

In this instance, it’s safe to say Scott’s post caused a major embarrassment for himself as well as possibly derailing his career with HP, and quite possibly, future employers. Lesson to learn: Be careful what you are posting as it can lead to other unintended consequences. Never post anything that isn’t considered to be public knowledge!

Now that we’ve seen three examples of things not to do, how do we avoid a similar fate? The answer is to ask yourself the following questions prior to making any post in a public forum.

Things to ask yourself and/or do when using social media:

    1. Am I a corporate spokesperson and am I allowed to post this company information?
    2. Is the information confidential or could it be considered so?
    3. Never make personal posts from corporate account (and vice versa)
    4. Have I identified supervisors or co-workers by name?
    5. Are my remarks slanderous or libelous?
    6. If someone reads this what is the worst thing that can happen? What if it’s read in 5 years by a new boyfriend, girlfriend, employer, or prospective customer?
    7. Am I portraying myself as I want others to view me?
    8. Am I speaking for myself or my employer? Along the same lines, have I identified myself as an employee of the company? Have I clearly identified that these are my personal opinions?
    9. It is highly recommended to maintain separate business and personal accounts. Identify your personal accounts as such like the example below.

Living and working in the world today means we will almost always be exposed to different forms of social media. While social media does have good uses, how we use that technology is up to us. And the more we use it the more of “us” is being put out on the internet for others to read. The internet has a very good memory and inevitably the things we write online can come back to bite us in the future. As social media evolves and we use more of it, there is one thing we all need to keep in mind – just because you can post, does not mean you should post!

Daniel

A Love Story

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I’ve rewritten this blog post in my head several times over the last couple weeks; I’ve played with the theme, the tone, and in general trying to find the right way to express the point I’m trying to convey, but finding the words for such a complex concept has not come easy. Ultimately I’ve settled on a different approach; we’re going to experience a story together.

The story starts like any other…

Boy meets girl.
Boy falls in love with girl.
Boy asks girl to marry him.
Girl accepts.
I meet boy in college in January 1997, he introduces me to girl on Halloween, 1997.
I’m a groomsman in their wedding, December 1999.
Boy, girl, and I remain close friends for 12 years.
Girl decides she’s ready to be a mother, January 2010.
Girl feels a lump in her breast during a routine self exam, October 2010.
My world flips upside down, November 2010.

That wasn’t the story you suspected, nor was it for any of us who are friends with Dana and Jeremiah. I’ve gone through a few emotional times when my parents have had health issues, but I mean, they’re my parents, they’re older than my generation, and to an extent you expect that someday its just reality that they will get old. But when people your age, the same people you interact with month in and month out, get hit indiscriminately with something so devastating… you change. In my previous post entitled First I wrote about all the things I had done in my life over this past year, a bucket list of sorts, but I never revealed the reason I have taken strides in my life to find passion and truly live life. And now you know; when confronted with the reality that one day I will die, I am making a choice to truly live while I can.

At Thanksgiving dinner last year, with 12 people around me, I broke down in tears while giving the blessing at the table. In midsentence it suddenly occurred to me that while I was here with friends and family, on the other side of town two of my closest friends were suffering their way through one of the most trying times of their life. And the injustice of it broke my heart – they are two of the nicest, most thoughtful people you will ever meet. I have 96 people on my Facebook friends list – over half have met Jeremiah and Dana or attended a party that Dana made special in a way that only Dana can.

As Dana’s condition got worse and she began to get treatment I offered to do anything I could to help her and Jeremiah. Bring food, get groceries, cook dinner, take her places, financial help, whatever. But there wasn’t really anything I could do to show my support on a regular basis – she had quite an extensive support network already and I would be remiss not to give a very big acknowledgement to Jeremiah; he is indeed a great man and has been a rock throughout. Despite not having day-to-day involvement,  I still felt the need to do something symbolic to show Dana my support. And that’s when it occurred to me to signed up for the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk alongside Dana. However… there is a catch – for me to walk alongside her I have to raise $2,300 for the foundation.  And this is where I need your help, in the same way Dana needs mine.

To the Women…

As a woman, you are faced with two things men will never be able to comprehend – childbirth and the fear of breast cancer. Every woman I’ve talked to over the last few months has listed getting breast cancer as one of, if not the, top fear in their life. But like anything in life we are not powerless to fight it. Of the women I asked about breast cancer, only a couple had ever done anything to support those with it, or donate time or money towards the cause of fighting breast cancer. I was kind of surprised; if something was so scary why not try to fight it?

For those that have never taken an active role to support those that have been affected, and for those that have given before and want to do more, this is your chance to support someone real and close to you suffering through a breast cancer battle. When you go to bed tonight think about what Dana is going through. Then close your eyes… and imagine it is you instead. As a woman, you will be able to commiserate with her situation better than any man ever will be. There is a battle to fight, and unfortunately as a woman, you are best equipped to understand the stakes of why this cause is so important. If by now you’re shaking your head saying “wow, that’s too bad” but still don’t want to take an active role in making a stand to help someone, then do me a favor instead – say a prayer for not only Dana, but for yourself as well, that you may never have to go through what she is dealing with at the age of 34. I don’t care who you pray to or which religion you choose; just pray. Maybe God will answer your prayers, not for you, but for me – I don’t ever want to have to write another of these for another friend affected with something so scary.

To the Men…

Most men are not emotionally aware, or they are but in a very crude fashion, so I’ll skip the emotional sentiment. Rather, I’ll talk directly to why this matters. Frankly… this is about boobs. There is no man on this planet that doesn’t like boobs. Period. Even gay men will comment on a woman who has a nice set of breasts. Trust me, I have heard it with my own ears.

So why should you donate? Think through what you’d rather have:

  • The chance to see a nice pair of breasts or a $10 fast food meal at McDonalds.
  • The chance to see a nice pair of breasts or $40 of beer at the bar.
  • The chance to see a nice pair of breasts or another shitty Hollywood movie for $20 and a $10 popcorn.
  • The chance to see a nice pair of breasts or a $100 dinner for two at some over-priced sub-par restaurant.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. It doesn’t take a lot to shift priorities and donate a few bucks. Honestly, will you remember one night at the bar, at dinner, or at the movies in the great expanse of life? On the contrary, a great pair of breasts you’ll remember forever. And if we don’t save the ta-ta’s who will?

So here’s how the story ends…

A 7 cm tumor is discovered in her left breast; for comparison’s sake that’s almost a quarter of the way across your chest, November 2010.
Girl is diagnosed with stage IIb intermediate breast cancer, November 2010.
Girl undergoes 5 treatments of chemotherapy to shrink the tumor, December 2010.
Girl goes wig shopping; she’s lost all her hair, January 2011.
The 6th treatment of chemotherapy is cancelled due to a developing infection where the chemotherapy port is embedded in her chest, March 2011.
Girl is hospitalized for 6 days due to complications with the infection.
Girl undergoes a double mastectomy.
Girl undergoes 35 applications of radiation, August 2011.
Girl undergoes reconstructive plastic surgery.
Despite all of the above, girl and I walk 60 miles in 3 days, October 2011.

But this will only be possible with your help. Over the next few months I will spend close to 100 hours training for the 3-Day walk, I will wear through the soles of 2 pairs of walking shoes,  I will donate $500 to the foundation on top of my registration fees, and I will be by Dana’s side when we cross that finish line on the evening of October 23rd, 2011.

So what I’m asking you to do is this:

  1. Click this link and donate $25, $50, $100, whatever you feel comfortable with.
  2. Pick up the phone and call a woman you love; tell her you love her.
  3. Pass a link to this website on to your friends, family, or co-workers and help me meet the goal of $2,300.

Update 8/9/2011: There are absolutely no words that can describe how amazing this has been. When I posted this article last Thursday, August 4th around 7pm ET I sent it to roughly 90 people on my Facebook page asking for donations. I expected a few donations in the $20-30 range to trickle in over the course of the next week or two… but within 4 hours a total of over $1,700 had been donated and as of today I’ve met the $2,300 goal to do the 3-Day walk. I am flattered and grateful beyond words at the generosity I have seen as a result of this post. So to those that donated… thank you. To those that sent me emails and private messages cheering Dana and I on… thank you. 

As a result of all the donations, I’ve updated the donation links to reflect our team donation website, rather than my personal one. There are several teammates who are still working on donations. Instead of donating to me, I’m asking any future donations to go to one of my teammates instead. Just pick a name at random and donate; its that simple.

Again, a most heartfelt thank you to those that have donated or are planning to donate in the next few weeks before the event. I’ll be reaching out to each of you over the next few days to thank you in person for contributing.

Daniel

On Being Nineteen

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A few years ago I read Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series and in the books there exists an introduction by Stephen King entitled On Being Nineteen summarizing his view on life at the time and what drove him to start writing the Dark Tower Series. I’ve held to that title, On Being Nineteen, as that was a pretty pivotal year for me in a lot of respects as well. It was the year I failed out of college and the first time I had my heart broken; most decidedly a trying time for a teenager coping with finding his own sense of manhood and his place in the world.

Growing up I had never failed at anything. In middle school I was a straight A student – literally. I never got a B once, not on a single report card, and in fact won several awards each year for having the highest grade point average of the few hundred students that were there. I still have them in fact, tucked away in the box marked “keep sakes” right alongside my Garbage Pail Kids, 1986 Lego Ideas book, and GI Joe Comics. High school wasn’t quite the same, I was an average 3.00 student, but in no respects had ever truly failed at anything.

As for a broken heart, everyone needs their first love to end. It sets the stage for the rest of your life; its called growing up. I’m sure anyone reading this can think back to their first breakup. Statistically speaking, most of us have had many. Some easy, some hard, but I think almost everyone would universally agree that our first was the most challenging because we didn’t know how to cope with the feelings of romantic loss. And so alongside learning to accept failure in one segment of my life, I was forced to learn a second measure of it, but in a much different capacity.

When I was 19, and I guess for a few years subsequent to that, I was filled with the idea that one day I would be a great man. That I would change the world, that I would invent something great, that I was going to blaze a frontier to greatness. Dealing with heartache and failure at the time didn’t really phase that ideal notion – I knew there was greatness in me.

So now, a decade and a half later, I’m … weary. I feel it in my mind, I feel it in my actions, and I feel it in my soul. I haven’t achieved greatness, I haven’t changed the world. Maybe I’ve changed my own little corner of it, and perhaps that’s the best we can ever strive for in our lives, but what has really got me to thinking is not so much will I ever get there, that’s a crystal ball question that can only be answered with time, but do I have the qualities to get there?

So here I’m sitting, at 11:03 on a Friday night, listening to Danny Elfman’s Finale on repeat, making a list in Notepad of the qualities that I would consider necessary for one to make themselves a great man, weighing myself against them, and it hit me that I had seen the list I made before.

Many years ago I read Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead, part of the Ender Saga. To this day Ender’s Game is still one of my favorite books and I re-read it at least once a year. My grandmother, who worked at the Rochester Hills Library outside Detroit, used to box up the books the Library was getting ready to discard and pass them along to me. In fact, a little known tidbit for which I’m eternally grateful – my love of science fiction books was a direct result of her being kind enough to take the time to do that. I didn’t realize it at the time, but in those boxes was a cornucopia of Who’s Who science fiction authors - Heinlein, Asimov, Card, Lewitt, and a host of other smaller known names. I don’t know if I ever thanked her or if she ever knew how much she has touched my life with that simple gesture… so thank you, grandma.

As a child, we absorb the things around us and mold them into our own fabric of beliefs. In the same way a child absorbs religion and it’s teachings at a young age, so we also absorb ethical lessons in the literature, games, and media around us. And as a child, reading these books, I unknowingly absorbed the ethical and moral implications found in science fiction. Speaker for the Dead was somewhat of a black sheep in Card’s history of books; while Ender’s Game focused on space warfare, your typical sci-fi fare, Speaker for the Dead was almost entirely philosophical in nature. There are many plots and subplots within its pages, but the thing that I absorbed most was this – when the Speakers, think of them as priests, deliver their eulogy they “deliver the speech not in a way to persuade the audience to condemn or forgive the deceased, but rather a way to understand the person as a whole, including any flaws or misdeeds”. In a nutshell, they speak to honesty.

I’ve had many people tell me I am the most honest person they know. Not because I am flawless, but in the fact that I speak to my shortcomings in the same manner as my advantages. And that honesty starts within oneself. If you can’t be honest with yourself, how do you expect others to be honest with you? It’s a notable concept, and unfortunately, incredibly rare as it takes a person of great resilience to be honest about themselves without destroying their own self esteem. But it takes a person of even greater character to realize their weaknesses, fix them, and thereby improve their self esteem; side stepping the issue is a work around, it doesn’t really fix the root issue, and in essence, leaves you unable to be the great man or woman you desire to be. One of my biggest fears is meeting the woman of my dreams and being found to not be a good man; not because I’m afraid of rejection, but because the woman of my dreams deserves the best man I can be.

Alongside science fiction, there is a second source of this purported moral definition of a great man that I would be remiss not to mention – computer games. In the summer of 1989 I was 11 years old and got my first computer – an IBM 80286 clone with dual 5 1/4″ floppy drives and a 4-color CGA monitor. Alongside the computer came a floppy disk pre-loaded with a half dozen games like Sleuth and Asteroids and in short, I was hooked. One quick year later, Ultima VI was released and with it, unbeknownst at the time, I would absorb the ethical template I am ingrained with today.

Ultima VI, a fantasy dungeon and dragons type game set in the mythical world of Britannia, brought with it the first concept of forcing players to accept ethical choices for their actions. The virtues as they were designed into the game were based on the beliefs of Richard Garriot, the lead game designer, which were taken in part from Hinduism. As the player explores the game world they were forced to make choices to either adhere or not to the 8 virtues:

  • Honesty
  • Compassion
  • Valor
  • Justice
  • Sacrifice
  • Honor
  • Spirituality
  • Humility

The catch with the virtues, was if you did not meet them you failed to advance in the game. Very similar to life. To a 13 year old the message was simplistic; to succeed you must embody the virtues you’ve been taught throughout your life.

So as I sit here, the cursor blinking in front of me, looking at my list of what makes a great man, I’m filled with a sense of peace. I see the framework before me, and while I stumble, I know what to strive for. A couple weeks ago I asked a good friend of mine, quite out of nowhere, if I was a good man. Her response was “of course you are”. At the time, I accepted her words, but couldn’t prove them to myself. But after writing this, and finding a sense of criteria to which I can weigh myself, I feel as though I’m a good man. I haven’t become a great man, but maybe trying to just be a good man is enough to propel us to greatness.

Daniel

First

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As I was driving in the car yesterday, the deep sax of Morphine filling my ears, watching the waxing orange and purple of the sun set in front of me, I was startled by how alive I felt; how vivid I saw the world around me. I was weary to the bone, both mentally and physically after a long day being under the hot sun, yet I was energized in a way that I just can’t put into words. Believe me, I’ve been trying to all day and still come up short of finding the right phrase. With the scent of half burned gasoline and engine exhaust emanating from my clothes I started thinking about all the things that have changed in just a few short months. And as I listed them out in my head I kind of amazed myself…

I got promoted to Vice President. January 1st of this year I started my new role, and while it’s the next rung in the corporate ladder, I’m really proud of what I’ve accomplished. Not bad for a middle class kid from Detroit who took 9 years to get through college.

I bought a Lotus. A 5 year dream, 2 years of which was spent working more than one job so I could have the money for a down payment on it. And the enjoyment it’s brought me these past few months is indescribable. Being able to toss on some music and just go for a drive is one of the most simple pleasures I have. A drive in the Lotus for me is nothing but a gateway to the happiness in my soul, even when it’s just going to the gas station. On my worst day this year, rather than sit and brood on my unhappiness, I grabbed the keys and went for a drive. And when I got home life wasn’t so bad – sometimes you need your past accomplishments to remind you that you can be successful in reaching your goals despite some stumbles along the way.

I learned how to scuba dive. For years I’ve always said “one day I’d like to go scuba diving, it looks fun”. And then one day this spring I got invited to go on a scuba diving trip and while I was initially hesitant just said “why not?” and signed up to get certified. Sometimes you just have to leap.

I took my first international trip. Yep, hard to believe, but before this year I’d never been out of the country. Sure, I’d been to Canada as a little kid and done the Tijuana thing in my early 20′s but to really go outside the borders of the US and need a passport to get back in was something I’d never done. And the Turks & Caicos did not disappoint… it was truly out of the US. I mean… they have no stop lights and use traffic circles, not to mention you drive on the wrong side of the road.

I spoke on my first security webinar. This will always be remembered as one of the funnest things I’ve done. Talking with a group of guys who’s knowledge far exceed mine and having a good time doing it… yeah, definitely in the win column.

I went to my first out of state concert. Completely spur of the moment I dropped a few hundred bucks on 3rd row seats to Social Distortion in Nashville, called my brother, and told him we’re going to a concert together. I hadn’t gone to a concert with him since we were teenagers and it was an awesome night seeing an awesome band at an awesome venue.

I did my first charity event. And it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I’ve never been one to really give time and energy to others as surprising as it may seem. Sure I give a few bucks here and there to the Salvation Army at Christmas, and I donate a Lego set every year to the Toys for Tots program, but never searched out a way to actually give something other than a faceless donation. And seeing the smiles on the faces of those kids… holy shit was that amazing. I realized that day I had completely missed the boat on something really important in life.

I spoke at my first security conference at the request of someone else. Before this year I’d spoken at the Atlanta B-Sides conference, but that was of my own volition. But in May, out of nowhere, I was approached and asked to speak at a conference based on my sheer speaking ability and the ideas I had conveyed to a group of folks. At the end of that speaking engagement I had a group of CIO’s passing me their business cards because they wanted to stay in contact and hear more of what my thoughts were. And yeah… that pretty much kicked ass.

I did my first podcast interview. I was in DC, standing in the hallway with a group of people speaking my mind (as I’m well known to do), I caught the ear of Ira Victor who hosts the Cyber Jungle podcast. After a 10 minute diatribe he looked at me and said “I want to interview you, that was awesome”. And so off we went, just like that, and I did my first interview.

I posted my first blog post. Obviously here and it will be the first of many I’m sure. This is another of those “I should write more, I have good ideas occasionally”. But these blog posts don’t write themselves either. I think the word I’m looking for is “lazy” – don’t be.

I learned to indoor rock climb. I’m still not super at it, but give me a few more months and I’ll be doing lead rope 5.11′s. Not a doubt in my mind.

I joined my first gym. I’ve worked out before (that should be a given), but never taken the step to actually join a gym where you go and actually work out amongst others. I’m sure there is some kind of latent self-esteem thing hidden in there, but whatever, I’ve hit the age where I really just don’t care what other people think. And surprisingly, I’ve actually enjoyed the time getting out of the house and being able to do things that you just can’t do in your own basement.

I had my first pool party. Granted it was 6 people and planned at the last minute, but the fact that I’ve lived in this house for 5 years with a pool and never had one… kind of a “what the hell am I waiting for” moment.

I learned to ride a motorcycle. I’ve always been scared of motorcycles and while I’ve always secretly wanted to try it, my fear of it always prevented me from giving it a try. As I’ve gotten older I keep asking myself, “if not now… when?”. And so a couple weeks ago said “what the hell…” and signed up for a class. And of course, as should be no great surprise, I loved it.

So by now you’re probably thinking what a pompous ass filled with self pride listing all the things he’s done. Yeah, I’m proud of my personal accomplishments, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The point is this – what are you doing in your life today and tomorrow to accomplish the things you want to? Up until this year I had half halfheartedly followed the passion in my heart. I felt drawn to all these great adventures but never took the time to chase them. Some dreams take a long time in coming, and take a lot of work, but don’t you owe it to yourself to chase them? If you don’t give chase wholeheartedly… then who is?

And now you’re saying “I can’t because ______”. So what’s preventing you? Is it fear, priority, life circumstances, financial challenges? It’s not all fun and games, believe me. Earlier this year I had my heart broken; not once but twice. Its been an emotionally challenging few months for sure, ask some of my friends, but as I look around me, I realize I’m still on top of life, and while I haven’t found that special someone to share my life with I’m not beat yet… not by a long shot. So my advice is this, regardless of what you’re next adventure is, or the circumstances of your life, or how many times you’ve cried yourself to sleep with tears of heartache or frustration…  you have the power to change it. Take control, take steps, take one day at a time and work towards your goal. But whatever you do, just do… you’ll get there eventually. And you’ll be a better person for it – that which we get for free has no value. All of a sudden you’ll realize your life has become about passion, happiness, and you’ll bring that to those around you and most importantly … to yourself.

Case in point: In the next few months I’ll buy my first motorcycle, I’ll make my first cross country road trip, I’ll walk 60 miles with a friend battling cancer, I’ll see my first football game at USC, I’ll learn how to be a photographer, and who knows what else… it’s only July. Maybe I’ll meet the girl of my dreams… wouldn’t that be a kicker.

Daniel

A Different Take on Risk Assessment

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First off, this is long winded, bear with me while we cover some foundational concepts first…

A few weeks ago I was asked to present alongside Splunk at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit in Washington DC as one of their customers and offer a view into how we’re using Splunk. Just having purchased Splunk and starting our implementation a few months ago, I wasn’t quite sure exactly how we would present a true “success story” as we’re still very much in the deployment phases of the product. After a couple days of thought, I settled on presenting Splunk as a strategic direction for our Risk Assessment methodology rather than on the technical aspects of our solution. With hindsight being 20/20 that was probably the right move; the audience at the Gartner Summit was much more on the management side than the technical side.

Now fast forward a few weeks to the Summit itself and a presentation by Dr. Eric Cole of Secure Anchor and Core Security. In Dr. Cole’s presentation (he’s a fantastic speaker by the way) one point he brought up that really hit a cord with me was this: organizations who are being breached are buying, and using, the same products as those who were not being breached. His argument was organizations properly leveraging the products tools they’ve purchased to decrease evaluated risk within the context of their business were the ones who were successful in defending their networks. Read that last sentence again to make it sink in.

This is an important point because it brings up the philosophy of Risk Assessment – you must truly understand and put context into your risk assessments to make them actually usable. So what do we mean by context? Well, let’s say you have a large consultant driven organization where most corporate users are mobile road warriors and a smaller back office staff at the corporate headquarters. Implementing an expensive Web Proxy solution does very little for your total risk of data loss as most users aren’t in the office. Conversely, focusing your limited budget on mobile solutions such as whole disk encryption or sensitive data scanning tools to make sure PID/CC#’s aren’t making it onto those mobile devices in the first place is a much better spend of the money; you’re stretching your dollars further to reduce more risk. Compared to a traditional brick and mortar office environment the exact opposite is true; the web proxy solution is a much better investment since it’s fairly uncommon for offices to be burglarized (note, I said uncommon, not impossible). The root risk is the same, i.e. data loss, but the technical evaluation of how to mitigate the risk is much different. As information security leaders we have to be able to place ourselves within the context of our own organizations to develop the correct tasking orders.

Now with those two understandings in place we can get to the root of this article. As information security leaders, even if it’s not in our official job description, we should always be evaluating where risks are within our enterprise and our business processes. But our risk assessment process, if we have one, is usually a paper-trail-mess of half completed frameworks. While the intent of the frameworks is noble, and they encompass a lot of areas we need to look at, it’s just takes too many resources to really do it the way the framework lays out. ALE, SLE? Forget it. They both rely on probability – a probability we cannot predict adequately; we are not insurance companies with actuary tables to refer to, and we won’t ever get there. Some things just cannot be predicted – human nature + business processes + computer vulnerabilities? Not even one of those things is predictable so why would we expect to believe we can predict monetary losses from them?

Automating Operational Risk

So if our paperwork methods of risk assessment are too cumbersome, what do we do? The answer is ingrain risk assessment into our daily operational processes. Take a look at the Visio below.

Conceptually the process, and I’m open to comments obviously, attempts to take the tools we use on a daily basis now and put them into a manageable, yet automated, framework. The process looks something like this:

  1. Nmap scans the network for active hosts and ports (Network Asset Inventory) then…
  2. … passes the network ranges with the active hosts flagged to our Nesses scanner (Software Versioning and Patch Status) which runs a vulnerability check and pulls the patch status on the box…
  3. … then does another Nessus check to validate the server is configured according to our hardening standards (Hardening & Configuration Data).

What that process essentially does is create an automated model for evaluating the traditional Risk equation we all know and love.

THREAT x VULNERABILTY = RISK

The first box, providing our IPS, HIDS, and AV data is where we evaluate THREAT in the equation above for our environment. I’m not saying that since we have Apache webservers and we’re seeing IIS attacks that we’re not at risk, not at all. What I’m saying is that we can evaluate risks such as “we can be attacked via the internet on port 80/443 (and are) so we need to look at what additional processes need to be put into place to protect us in the future”. It also makes a good argument for the operations teams to keep their servers patched. Show them the attacks for the last day, month, or year and demonstrate the why. Don’t rely on “well, you can be attacked”. Show them. You’ll win more battles there, trust me.

The other three boxes outlined above demonstrate how we evaluate our level of VULNERABLITY. If the boxes are patched, appropriately hardened, and up then we’re good to go. We’ve proactively done everything within our power to reduce risk as much as we can since we have almost no control over the specific types of threats we encounter.

You’ll notice I didn’t use too many specific tools examples above – I’ll explore that in further blog posts; right now I’m just trying to portray the vision of what we’re doing.

So that’s the intro to Operational Risk… next post will be on how we boil that into Total Enterprise Risk. And yeah, some radical stuff there too. Probably.

Daniel