Formulaic

Been a few days, and I haven't written anything.  I've been busy with other things in my life so I haven't had a chance to update my blog. 

So I've always wanted to be a programmer, but I could never get anybody to hire me to program.  While I haven't been programming, I've been wishing I could get a programming job.  All the while, I've been learning things about systems administration, networking, and Verifone point of sale equipment.

Then I was in church, listening to the pastor talk about discipleship.  They showed this video, describing William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, talking about a vision he had.  And that got me to thinking about Matthew 4:18-25

Four Fishermen Called as Disciples

¹⁸ And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. ¹⁹ Then He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” ²⁰ They immediately left their nets and followed Him.

²¹ Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them, ²² and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him.

Jesus Heals a Great Multitude

²³ And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. ²⁴ Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. ²⁵ Great multitudes followed Him—from Galilee, and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.

Now what does this have to do with anything? 

After Jesus recruits Peter, Andrew, James, and John he takes them all about Galilee preaching and teaching.  If these four guys are following Jesus, I'm pretty sure they started doing something then and there.  And that is completely contrary to what I was always taught. 

Traditional management theory tells that we should come up with a long drawn out plan, and learn everything about something before a person ever starts doing anything.  The idea is to come up with every contingent and possibility before ever moving forward or doing anything.   

In English classes, I was frequently taught to create some giant outline about what I was going to talk about.  Then, I was to move from one bullet point to the next as I filled out text to match the outline I had created before.  Once again, there was no spontaneity to it all.  It was a formulaic approach created for people who were taught to be good followers but not good leaders.

But that's not what Jesus was teaching in Matthew 4:18-25.  Jesus taught that you should come up with a general idea, and then start working on that idea and putting ideas into effect.  The idea was to make Peter, Andrew, James, and John into "fishers of men".  Did Jesus come up with a long drawn out power point presentation?  No.  He charged out and started saving and healing.  His disciples learned through mentoring and practice, not through formulaic plans. 

Dreams and Discipline

Woke up this morning after a dream of Dave Ramsey screaming to some person (probably me) about getting out of debt.  I don't know what it means, but I think my brain is finally becoming convinced that I need to get out of debt.  Dave talks about a paradigm shift, and I think I'm going through one right now. 

For example.  Normally, if I sit down to play World of Warcraft and tell myself "only 30 minutes" then it usually turns into an hour or more.  Last night, I sat down and told myself "only 30 minutes" and quit after roughly 30 minutes.  I say close, because I started a timer when I started playing, and got disconnected about 15 minutes in or so.  Probably the horrible wireless firmware on an HP laptops.  After reconnecting, I played for another 12 minutes.  And then I quit. 

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.   Hebrews 12:11

And the more I think of that, the more I realize the training of discipline has been a life-long process.  I learned a lot of it in the Marines, but after that it's easy to forget.  It's the problem of learning from second hand knowledge.  If Bob goes to the class and learns something, he will know it well.  Bob teaches Jim.  Jim teaches Sue.  Sue teaches Fred.  Fred teaches the rest of the world.  Is what Bob and Fred learned the same thing?  Not really, because Bob learned from the teacher and Fred learned from what someone else decided was important.  What I think is important is not necessarily what others think is important. 

Many of the Marines I learned from were like that.  They learned to do something, but they never learned why they did it.  They performed an action out of repetition.  There was always an important theory behind the teaching, but the theory was never taught, just the action.  I guess I'm now beginning to learn the reasoning and not just the action. 

The Bible spends a lot of time talking about discipline.  Proverbs specifically spends a lot of time telling people to quit being lazy.  Proverbs 5 talks about getting wisdom at any cost.  Proverbs 6:6-8 is another one.

So pay attention, quit being lazy, and change your life.  It's not easy, but it's worth it. 

Stuff and Nonsense

Looks like the late night work vacation is over for me.  I decided after the last couple of weeks, I wasn't going to do any late night work last week.  It was pretty awesome.  But there are things that need to get done, and at the moment I'm the only one capable to do them.  So that means it's time to get back to late night work. 

The major goal in all this is minimize the number of versions running in stores in order to make everything more consistent.  Which sounds like a great idea until you realize upgrading a store generally happens between 11 PM and 12 PM and runs until 2 or 3 in the AM.  And then people still call you at 8 in the morning, expecting you to show up and go fix their problems.  Mostly because there is a lack of communication about what is going on. 

Now this is all annoying in the interim, but there is a goal in mind.  The goal is to standardize things.  Standardization creates less work in the long run.  It's the short run that sucks.  The other problem is I'm the only one capable of doing this right now.  So I end up doing a lot of work.

This would be great if more responsibility ended up with more money, but that isn't always the case.  For the most part, more responsibility just means more responsibility and less free time.  That's neither here nor there, and is just something I have to work on. 

Of note, I'm still waking up at 5:45 in the morning.  And I made it to donate plasma this weekend.  So it looks like my body is getting to the point of saying "we've got to do this".  I finished reading ICND 1, and now I'm working on converting everything into MP3 and listening to it constantly.  I'm pretty good before chapter 10 or so, but there are 24 chapters in the book and there's a lot of info to pick up and learn in the next month.  I'm aiming for taking the CCENT test around February 15th.  

So what am I doing in the morning to get ready for it?  As I kick back and convert files, I'm listening to my recordings over and over again.  I'm also using an iPhone app called SubnetQuiz (free, FYI).   Once all the files are converted, I'm going to start working on vocabulary by typing out all the vocabulary words in each chapter.  The last ten days or so, I'm going to take the practice tests over and over again, hitting specific areas to refine.  All the while, I'm going to be spending time on SubnetQuiz practicing subnetting and making sure I get the right answers. 

So that's what the plan is for the next month.  Maybe by the end of February, it will be time to start working on the CCNA level material.  Yay!

iPhone 5

Ok...  so I no longer have a Droid.  I've now joined the Apple contingent with my iPhone 5.  I think that's what it is.  It's shiny.  It's fancy.  It was in an Otterbox before I had a chance to touch it.  I'm not sure what to think about it.  Let me be clear: I didn't buy the thing.  Every two years or so, my company changes phones.  I started out with a Blackberry, then I moved to a Droid.  Now I have an iPhone 5. 

I'm not sure what I think about it.  App wise, the iPhone has a better assortment and better integration with Microsoft Exchange Server than the Droid had.  I wrote something about task orientation versus time orientation.  During that post, I extolled the Droid for being a collection of applications that didn't fit very well together.  Microsoft Outlook 2010 has a lot more to do than just send and receive mail.  It has a calendar and task features.  I used to use the calendar extensively to plan my day, but that didn't work very well because my job is interrupt driven, not time driven.  I can try and plan things to happen at a certain time.  But rarely does it work that way. 

So I wanted to migrate to task driven days as opposed to time driven days.  That works better for me because if something breaks, my task list is still there to tell me what to do.  With time driven, if the even gets more than a couple of hours behind schedule it was a pain to find what I was supposed to do.  With the task list, I just map everything out and check them off as I finish them.  And if I get interrupted, I go about my day and eventually finish what was broken and get back to my list.

Now, I do have to say that most of the stuff you need for the iPhone is built directly into the iPhone.  With the Android platform, there wasn't much built in so you had to go hunting apps down the instant you get the phone.  The iPhone is a standalone platform without anything being added.  That's good in some aspects, and sucks in others.

I still don't like the way iTunes works, though.  Getting music on the iPhone is quite possibly the biggest headache I have to deal with.  And I listen to music a lot.  The other big complaint is the battery life generally sucks.  If I'm listening to music through my bluetooth headset, a Plantronics M50,    Plantronics 85550-01 M50-85550-01 Bluetooth Headset (Google Affiliate Ad)then I generally have to charge the iPhone at lunch if I expect it to make it through the day.  Which is kind of annoying.  But so far, everything else works pretty well. 

Security from salesmen

 Why do security break-ins occur?  From my experience, it's because someone didn't do their due diligence.  My company hasn't had a security breach.  But we've had plenty of knuckleheads that want us to open up a port on our corporate firewall so their widget can offer some amazing service.  As sales people, they are trained to say whatever it takes to make a sale.  Sometimes, the argument gets a little contentious.  

The problem is, I was trained by people who understood security as a life or death matter.  They took it all very seriously and fought to the ends to prevent anything whatsoever from happening.  The effects of a security breach are always dead friends.  Those people did their due diligence because they instinctively knew that seconds after the breach, someone would be trying to put a bullet in their brain.  In everything they do, they were absolute professionals. 

Transitioning to the civilian world, it's no different.  In a corporate environment, a breach can mean the death of your company.  Encrypted data, unencrypted data... it doesn't matter.  Perception is the truth, no matter how wrong the perception is.  If nothing else, my study of media has taught me that you don't have to be right, you just have to scream the loudest for the longest and put together the right graphics. 

With that in mind, I know that a breach would destroy the company I work for.  It wouldn't matter what really happened.  The entire town would know we were broken in to and no one would ever shop there again.  And I'd be out of a job.  And I'm especially not giving up my livelihood because some knucklehead salesman that doesn't even know what parts of IIS need configured on Windows Server 2008 to make their product work hasn't got the ability to think around corners. 

Luckily, I can think around corners.  And in the end, no ports have to be opened.  If it's an email campaign, then realize HTML email is just a series of links and formatting sent in plain text.  The interpretation layer of your web browser does all the real heavy lifting.  So why not store all those images that "required" me to open port 80 on my corporate firewall with our offsite, 3rd party webhosting service?

Open port 80?  Are you out of your mind?

Learn your job and learn how your equipment works before coming to me with a ridiculous request.