This last weekend I had an epiphany in a conversation about differentiating between the two positions and rather than stepping away went on the “attack”, not against the person, but against the false perception that only had a small portion of what was really going on. It was an interesting experience for me, as more often than not I will attack the wrong thing.

I saw a statement a few years ago saying something along the lines of I am not responsible for your perception of what I’m communicating, I don’t agree. I think we as communicators are responsible for understanding our target audience and presenting to the best of our ability to that audience, do we fail? Yes! Are there times that they fail when we do our best? yes! Does it really matter going into fault which party is responsible? Not really. However, if you have it within your power, and you know it that’s on you.

Taking this and applying it to a sensitive conversation helped me realize how delicate a difference is between attacking and defending, and how important it is to pick your battle carefully. I said something to someone and unknowingly hurt their feelings because of the initial perception they had of what I said. I had no idea I would hurt them by saying anything regarding the subject, beyond that I thought I had discussed with them in the past my thought process behind the decision. The point is the conclusion they came to regarding my decision was not one I had intended and this conclusion was a false perception of reality. I wasn’t able to communicate with the person directly on this, so I’m not sure exactly how this worked out, but through a third party I did give my best shot to attack in a non-offensive way.

Attacking is dangerous and is definitely an offensive measure, duh. Attacking the person is never good, and should never be justified, definitely not what I recommend. Attacking the persons Ideas is equally dangerous as most people hold their ideas close and will perceive that you are attacking them, going back to point one. Emotions are tricky buggers aren’t they. When attacking a perception it seems right to me when someone is going to make a decision or assumption with little or the wrong information, if I can provide More or improved info then I should! Especially when it is someone close to you or something important.

I took a gamble, went through a third party… I will see how this goes. Hopefully better than I should probably start preparing for.

On that note – peace!

-Paul

Life is good. Busy, stressful, but seriously awesome.

Work is going well, got a promotion and still fighting the good fight. Been pretty stressful as I’m getting used to additional functions and different work. I don’t get to do as much fun stuff as I had hoped for, but I am getting to do more things that will absolutely benefit me in the long run. I am still doing InfoSec and hope to do it for the rest of my working days.

The boys are Awesome! I need to update the pictures in the gallery, I’ve taken TONS of pictures and found that it’s a lot of work doing the post processing and getting them ready to share. I sent off 15Gb of images to Dad to get help with, it’s fun but frustrating at times. The work is worth it though.

In short – life is good, be yourself, be awesome and LIVE!

-Paul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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