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Expectations – “My” Realization

I’ve had many realizations in the past few months, some good, some different, and some I need to analyze more thoroughly. One has been pointed out to me repeatedly in various aspects of life (home, family, and work) that I am a perfectionist. A perfectionist that deals with passivity, paralysis of analysis and a few other catch phrases come to mind. Regardless of terms/phrases to use to describe it, it’s something that I am now devoted to figuring out and hopefully calming down or at least channeling in different ways.

Do I think of myself as a perfectionist with ultra-high nigh impossible expectations? No, actually I don’t. I do like things done properly or at least completed and I hold myself to sometimes ridiculous expectations, but that is me. I think one of the most difficult points that I struggle with the most is communicating my expectations or wants with others. Communication is a paradoxical challenge in many ways, and I both succeed and struggle with it at the same time, struggling seems more common than success (or so it seems). In my struggles I know I come off as arrogant and impatient with the people I’m attempting to communicate with, as I become more aware of this I am working to identify ways of conveying it’s frustration with myself that I am exuding rather than frustration with them, however actions speak louder than words.

So, my expectations, they are high and recent events may have raised the bar in some occasions. Do I really want them to be as high as they are? Possibly in some occasions. In most occasions I think the most favorable/favored outcome is more that a learning/growing process occurs and someone (myself) rises to the situation in a way that I improve myself. I know I can’t ask you or anyone else to change to my will (only in extremely special occasions can one try to directly influence direct change in another person, there is great love, sacrifice, and selflessness involved). (Read ‘The Road Less Travelled’ by M. Scott Peck to learn more).

To cut to the chase, I’m working to understand my expectations of myself and others, and see why the boundaries have been blurred between myself and others. This is a challenging exercise as trying to find a safe, loving, fair and equitable balance (ah, balance) for myself and then to learn how to become even more patient and loving with others. I do find it intriguing that interaction with self and others boils down to balance and even more basic love, it truly seems to define and shape the universe due to it’s awesome power.

To this end I will cease my verbalized ponderings and ramblings.

~Paul

February is almost over… whoa

So life is good, it’s been up and down with twists and turns, but it is good… mostly because I choose how to take what comes and make what I want out of what I can.

Next weekend marks a pivotal time in 4 lives, we’ll see what happens.

Photography, it’s suffered a little from a new distraction however I am getting back behind the camera and shooting some pictures. I’m going to work at opportunities on the weekends to improve my skills.

Work, it’s rockin! I passed my Security + cert in January and am now scheduled in March for my Network +, working on my SANS GCIA in June, which I need to start rocking on getting ready for that. Two basics I need to know is Hex and Binary, much studying will occur.

The boys are awesome and doing very well, we are potty training and they are picking it up. It’s fun to see how responsive they are to praise and candy.

Oh yeah, I survived Vegas… and that’s all there is to say about that.

-Paul

Update – December

I’m alive and doing well, the boys are rocking and rolling and doing amazing too!

What’s changed, I was given a new camera and have moved all of the pictures from demonwerx.com to the gallery here. I once again am thinking about actually putting a nice looking splash page in front of both sites, and I think I mentioned that I will be putting some “security” minded information up on demonwerx. This is not going to be a professional site, it will be more of a site that family and friends can use to bolster or have some sense of personal computing security. It will be good for me too, as I can use it to improve my standing on personal computing security and learn to identify some of the more acceptable remediation techniques that may be employed by normal people. Fact of the matter is the crap rarely gets cleaned off unless it’s been nuked and paved. Hard fact, and I think Microsoft has changed their license scheme to make that more difficult, we’ll see how it goes.

Movies/Culture – we went and watched Tron – Legacy. What an awesome movie! I’ve heard that it is not getting good reviews and think that’s lame, the movie isn’t perfect, none are, however it’s got some great action amazing effects and a phenomenal soundtrack (listening to it right now). One of the points that I think is lost on a large portion of the general public is the sound effects they added, like the programs processing and just overall little technical points that are mixed in throughout the whole movie.

Overall December has been a good month, the Roo (2.5RS) is being put up for Sale. It is not my car, even though I have put tons of time, energy, and money into it over the years. It’s in the shop currently, once we get the latest blow out fixed it will be “garaged” until sold. Which reminds me, I should put those pictures up on Craigslist to help is sell. As it’s out of commission I get to enjoy driving the Forester, right now my current goal is to find out how to milk the best gas mileage out of it. So far I’ve worked to sustain an almost constant rate of 24 Mpg. Not bad for a turbo and a lead foot, the trick has been using Cruise Control to maintain speed that keeps the turbo in check and means less fuel dumped into the engine. Also means I can focus on driving and thinking rather that just trying to maintain speed. I’ll see how it goes, I think I can get that number higher which means MUCH more distance out of a tank.

The boys and I went to Grandma S’s house for Christmas, Utah is freaking cold! We had a great time, it was a lot of work for me chasing the two dudes where ever we went. The family helped and did and awesome job, I go into sentinel mode and get very protective which lead to an exhausting trip, but it was well worth it. Those special little guys light up every room they walk into and I don’t know of anyone who has withstood their amazing powers of happiness. They are extremely special. Liam decided to be the first one with a major injury, after tripping over a foot and catching a heavy sharp object to the forehead he is now sporting a 3/4 inch cut and 5 stitches on his forehead. After we got him all stitched up he was back up to speed and cruising around as if nothing had happened. Amazingly resilient which is very good all things considered.

The new year is just a few days away, it will be exciting to see the possibilities and all the awesome things that await us.

-Paul

Computing

OpenBSD is fun!
I’ve been taking on a new OS for a matter of months and have been enjoying it quite a bit, I still have much MUCH to learn (like OpenVPN). So I’ve harnessed one of my little Dell GX50 boxes as my current jumphost, it’s doing pretty well. Next step is converting the old gaming rig (AMD3500) into a Snort/Samba box, we’ll see how that goes as I have all sorts of stuff I keep putting on my plate.

It is cool to be able to go to a hotspot and make an SSH tunnel home and route all my web traffic through there, like I said I am working on setting up OpenVPN that will be the next step/phase as I want to be almost footprintless, they may see the connection between my internal IP and my house as my VPN connection kicks in after that ;) it’s all encrypted baby! We’ll see, I have a fair amount of reading and that kind of fun to get through first, and then cert/key gen and configs.

I’m down to one Windows box at home (not counting the Xbox) and I am ok with this, though I need to re-architect that windows box (my desktop) and who knows what else.

It is time to sleep.

Demon

December (almost)

Wow, has time flown by… it’s been busy, challenging, difficult, rewarding and worth it.

Life has changed drastically in many ways since September, I have spent a lot of time learning about myself, and almost an equal amount of time realizing that I knew most of what I am learning. November held some unique heartbreak I didn’t expect, only to be reinforced by a surety of the path that I walk. It was impressive to see a glimpse of a person I’ve known was there for a very long time, however that was just a glimpse and as awesome as it was more is a long ways away. I hope that day comes but it will be after a series of realizations that will be an exquisite suffering that most all of us avoid.

Where am I now? Starting, pretty much. I have a leg up on where I was before (yay me!) however I have the same issues I need to deal with and a lot of suffering I need to learn how to experience. One of the trials of being an experienced suppressor is the first urge to take pain, discomfort, and most emotion and driving it deep and away (but not really getting rid of it).

I have a new camera, I’m on a mission to learn Photography (Gallery). I will be posting my stuff there, and maybe other places. All depends on the content.

Life is good, challenging and painful. I have a rough road ahead of me, it’s one I will learn to walk independently but I can’t do it alone, there is too much at stake to do that.

Here is to becoming a “technician” of life and working to be an “Engineer”!

(A technician takes the solutions of problems they have faced in the past to fix problems they have already seen. An Engineer takes the problems they’ve faced in the past uses them to solve the problems today and problems they’ve never seen yet.) (Gotta get the precise definition from Dad).

-Paul

New Toys

I decided to get some toys for the boys today, sounded fun to get them some Iron Man action figures. So we went to Walmart and picked two Iron Man action figures up, not bad for 11 bucks.
On the way home, Conner broke into the package and unpacked his Iron Man. So naturally I had to get Liams out so he could play with his too. About 3 seconds after I handed Liam the toy I turned around in time (in the car) to see him sticking a detached Iron Man leg into his mouth. I am going to say it was bad manufacturing but there is a chance that he really did pull the leg off of the toy, I highly doubt it though.

So now they have even more Iron Man toys and I think they are going to continue to have a fair amount.

Halloween is tomorrow, it would have been cool to get them set up as Iron Man. Next year when there is a large expendable budget. Katrina already got them Fireman costumes which is just fine, cheap and effective is all we need for this Halloween.

Life is a good, challenging, unpredictable, dynamic, and always surprising.

Now to find people to do things with on the weekends.

-Paul

Limit, Volume, Capacity

In talking about limits in life Amok confronted me about the reasoning I was using about “Limits” there are two different types of limits – imposed limits (not real) and hard limits. He then introduced two new facets, it was a good reminder, of Volume and Capacity.

Imposed Limits – can be stretched, broken, surpassed, ignored, etc.
Hard limits – is a true barrier that cannot be stretched, broken or surpassed* (as we know it)
Volume – the variable that exists within the hard limits of capacity, can be increased/decreased
Capacity – The maximum measurement of volume within the hard limit

In this line of thinking one can surpass their self-imposed limits increasing their volume within their capacity. Some may say one can only achieve maximum capacity and it is impossible to expand past hard limits, I think that with careful observation it is possible that via a paradox of the universe there are special occasions when Capacity can be increased.

Deep thoughts today, along with a crap ton of Music… today has been awesome.

I will be writing something about “Systems” soon, I find it fascinating the sheer volume of systems of thought, belief, culture, and other systems that we are in, impose on ourselves, and are thrust into, and last but not that we love. (Systems aren’t always bad, and are incredibly important).

-Paul

Blogging

I am in a pickle. I like writing on this site, it’s mine. But I put things on here that are ok to be on the internet but most likely aren’t read by anyone but myself. I want to share these things, that’s why I put them on here. It’s saddening, but not a reflection on me that the people I’d like to share these things with the most [at times] will most likely never visit. Why not? I will ask one of these days.

I will have to think about this, I don’t think it could hurt to share it would be stepping out of my comfort zone and provide insight for those who venture. Like I said before, I’m saddened but it has always been my choice to only share with a handful of people.

I think I’m going to share this site… we’ll see how that goes.

-Paul

Love

What a powerful thing Love is, truly the underlying force that moves the universe. Actually I think it’s deeper than that it’s the foundation of the universe.

I’m young to the study of love, it’s a beautiful thing. Want to experience a truly beautiful moment? Watch someone do something out of love for their self, it’s miraculous to behold.

Something I had seen years and years go finally makes sense to me now: “If you love something, let it go and see if it will come back to you”. Why would you ever let something go that you loved? I puzzled over this off and on for years thinking it was a silly statement. At the time I had only loved little things, not really anyone other than family, and this doesn’t apply to siblings or parents (or it shouldn’t).

Something interesting about the statement isn’t that we let it go, it’s that we realize that we never “had” the person in the first place. If you are like me it is challenging enough to maintain and control yourself, whether it’s letting myself out at the right time or holding myself back. Why would anyone want to try and “control” someone else? The effort would be herculean and the returns wouldn’t be healthy for either individual. This is the gift of love, sharing yourself with the person you love in a way that you join but are separate, together but apart, united but individuals. Each their own person choosing to be with the other.

I am learning this now, it’s not my choice what happens, I’ve already made my choice now it turns into a waiting game. I need to play these cards smart, from the heart, myself, and with understanding for the people involved. This is truly at test of patience, this I need to remind myself every day.

-Paul

A Relaxing Day

Today is the first of many days that I will focus on relaxing, why today? Well it’s my day.

What have I done today? I learned about NTP, SSH, Networking, Linux, OpenBSD, myself, a little about love, and a good bit about Life.

It’s interesting that out of chaos beautiful things can happen, it’s sad that sometimes chaos has to spawn said things, but that’s ending up to be a part of life too. Yesterday I took the opportunity to watch the Movie Driven, excellent movie. I had watched it years before with my Girlfriend at the time but wasn’t in a mature state to understand much beyond the driving and fast cars. No worries, now I am in the position to remember those lessons, I support the idea that truth is contained within us and at times we can unlock it as well as it unlocks to help us. Yesterday was one of those times. I realized that no matter what, being myself is my greatest strength and should have always been my focus. I say this carefully, as there are lines around being myself that I’m still learning. The paradox (the challenge fluctuates) is how to be oneself without doing it at the expense of oneself and others? It’s a deep question, I’m still working on it but I’m not letting it hold me back.

So today, watching The Expendables I relearned the lesson of self value – I’m not perfect, but I’m worth it. The quote was derived from the scene where Christmas tells Lace “I’m not perfect, but I was worth it. You should have waited.” Not jumping to any conclusions in the current situation of life, but just asserting I am Worth It! Bet your ass! ;)

Ok, so Driven yesterday – there is a lot of things going on and I have been worried about a number of them one is about Love. Sometimes I struggle with certain parts of the concept, but I know that the day will come that I will have the opportunity to work on Love, real love, with a special person. I savor that day already, but there are important things that must come to fruition between now and then.

Faith – I’ve been told recently by a number of people that I need to focus on my Faith, they mean “Go To Church!” There is nothing wrong with Church or Religion, they are important establishments and facets of Life. I am at the point right now I don’t feel that excersizing my faith in worship of an Established Religion will increase the faith I need/have in myself. Go and do that which you love, I am focusing on myself so that I can improve the love I have for myself, the faith I have in myself, and by so doing will be best equipped to love those around me, to love those I will be put in the position to help in the future, and to have enough love to continue to love. I’m a lover people ;)

This is an interesting post for sure, it’s not “normal” for me but it’s an expression of myself.

Watching the Expendables there is another scene where Mickey Rourke is talking to Sly about a fictitious experience in Bosnia where there was death and destruction but he was presented the opportunity to try and save a womans life before she jumped off the bridge. I don’t remember the complete quote but in the process he says he was actually given an opportunity to save what was left of his Soul, not save himself but the small bit of what was left living in him. I find it interesting that Sly would write something like this in the movie as it was an extremely vulnerable part in a very hardcore movie, but he does do it well. While getting some food today I realized this [below] after watching that:

At the end of life, when brought before the judgment bar I wonder and doubt that we will be asked if we have regrets. Doesn’t seem very merciful to ask a pointed question like that from a loving God at first glance, but now as I think about it it may very well be a merciful question. My hope today is that I will not have the regret of not being myself in this life. I believe at some point on the other side we will come to know ourselves truly as we were and are, what happens after that is pure speculation and I don’t need to get into that. When it comes to gaining an understand of who we are I think this is where the regret question, if asked, could be one of mercy. When it is asked is the key, if asked before we come to know who we are and were one may say they do regret who they were, the consience at the time may come down hard on the person for all of their mistakes and shortcomings, there will be pain and agony as this rushes piercing the soul. But, as the realization dawns that this experience is not meant to be a damning one [hopefully] a merciful God can enlighten the soul with the understanding of who they really are. Seeing that in all of their shortcomings, in all of their faults, they were simply an eternal being having a mortal experience and regardless if they tripped or fell or made mistakes that they learned. That as their awareness of reality matured that they didn’t run and try and escape it, that they stood their ground and they fought for what they knew, they fought for what they loved, and they took the lessons learned from these fights and they internalized them to continue to stand their ground, to expand and to love. That is why I think we may very well be asked that question.

Ok, random ‘religious’ dive into some deep stuff. Stick around it’s good stuff to me and I hope to have more.

Twitter – Something I realized today is that guy who built Metasploit is actually following me on Twitter, that’s wicked cool. I generally attract spam bots that I block, but people like Amok and Cronoo are following me, and eSecurityPlanet which has cool Security articles and info. Who knows how long he will follow me for (looks like he is following a ton of people). I like Twitter, it has some great people on it and though I’m still learning how to sift through a bunch of things people tweet about that have no meaning to me I feel there is value to be had.

On that note I will share this – There is a lesson to be learned in Everything, whether it is one of “Never do this again” or we take the time for the Universe to talk to us, value/love/miracles are out there. More often than not we miss them but hopefully very rarely do they miss us.

~Paul