The Daily James

Progress in any of life’s pursuits - personal, professional, and spiritual - is a daily discipline.  Learn to ask yourself when you wake up each day, “Where do I want to make progress, and what can I do today to improve?”  Then one day when you find ten years has got behind you, you won’t have to say that no one told you when to run; you won’t have missed the starting gun.

Signs of the Times

I want to relay a book-buying adventure I had recently.  So there I was in the Rivertown Barnes & Noble, sitting around the table with the lads discussing important things, and having accumulated a stack of material that looked interesting. Five books, on the following essential topics: Information Security, Napoleon, the Beatles, and Origami.  Total price tag for the whole mess: over $115.

As is customary for our secret meetings, the conversation can cover just about any topic and it didn’t take long to travel around to the obscene cost of the books sitting on the table.  ”You know, I bet you could get most of these books for five bucks on Amazon” I said haphazardly to myself.  Inspired, I consulted my hand-held mobile device, through which I was able to communicate with Amazon directly.  Turns out one of the books was $13, and the rest were all under $3.  In fact, one of them was selling used for exactly one cent.  I rounded up all five titles as quickly as possible, but was too late: the one-cent copy of The Beatles: The Unseen Years was gone.  I ended up paying sixty-seven cents instead and had the strange feeling of being ripped off.

After my e-commerce triumph (costing me a total of just under $40 after the shipping) I was wandering through the store and bumped into a friend. I eagerly described my recent little adventure and wrapped up with, “I don’t know how these guys stay in business”.  Just then, a squirrelly-looking gentleman working the music register across a shoulder-height bookshelf from us, raised his hand and said, “I’m these guys… I’m right over here…” and then launched into a sad and lamentable tale of woe about how they can’t possibly compete with that kind of thing, and we need to pay to take out trash and keep lights on and pay employees and silly things like that.

After issuing a few soothing statements to prevent him from cutting his wrists with a CD jewel case, we agreed that times are just changing and if Barnes hadn’t gotten into the e-reader business with the Nook they’d have already gone under just like Borders.  Back at the table and on our way out the door, I was about to go re-shelve my stack of books (which I now already owned) when one of the lads reminded me that “they pay people to put those books back, so just leave them here… it’s much more efficient.” Point well taken.

Or Is It?

Walking down the hallway today I was behind a fine young lad wearing a black t-shirt with words on the back.  The shirt was advertising the heavy-metal band Slipknot’s 2009 World Tour, which apparently was charmingly billed “All Hope Is Gone”. After the wave of sheer class emanating from this t-shirt washed over me, I had to laugh at the paradox of Slipknot attempting to communicate to people that all their hope is gone, while at the same time trying to drum up excitement for their tour. Hopelessness as a motivator - there’s a new idea.

Hopeless

I have an intensely adversarial relationship with plastic wrap.  Not sure how or why it chose me as an enemy, but it’s been clear from day one that plastic wrap and I were meant to be locked in an eternal struggle.  I wouldn’t mind it so much if it weren’t so passive aggressive.  I take it out of the roll, nice and slow, but the corner still folds over and sticks to itself; now I can’t get it over my bowl of ravioli.  Don’t try peeling it back, either.  There’s a formula thats for every one corner of a piece of plastic wrap peeled back, two corners fold over to take its place.  If I somehow do manage to cleanly cover my container of choice, I’m faced with the real challenge: cutting.

Cutting the plastic wrap never works.  Never.  My original strategy always used to be cutting an appropriately-sized piece then placing it over the container.  That always descended into a maddening game of peel-back-the-corner, most often resulting in a angrily rolled-up ball of plastic wrap and a renewed attempt at the whole endeavor.  Now I try to hold the stuff over the target, and then cut it.  Nine times out of ten, it doesn’t cut.  It just stretches, and I pull harder until it’s almost a piece of string, but I keep pulling until it tears.  Doesn’t it realize that I’m a human?  Top of the food chain, a little lower than the angels, the boss?  I will win, you pathetic piece of synthetic material.  

And eventually I always do, no thanks to the completely worthless piece of serrated metal that’s supposed to assist me.  It can’t seem to figure out how to do its own job.  I close the box and pull quickly.  Doesn’t cut.  I pinch down on the forward edge and pull back quickly - it still won’t cut, and the tension has now bent the corner of the metal back, rendering it even more useless.  I don’t see any humor in the situation; I’d prefer to just live without plastic wrap entirely.  But I’m out of tupperware and this ravioli needs preservation.  Oh well; as much as I prefer skill and finesse in my life, I suppose some brute force once in a while never hurt anybody.

The Most Difficult Interview I Ever Watched

The biggest story in IT Security today (or even the last three months) is Anonymous.  I’ve enjoyed Anonymous immensely, I think especially since they put up their “Message to Scientology” video.  Now they’ve really entered the public eye with their take-down of HBGary CEO Aaron Barr (I always get his name mixed up in my head with Aaron Burr).  I find the whole saga very inspiring, and will no doubt reference it in all my books twenty years from now when I’m an internationally-renowned InfoSec expert.

Today I watched a video of a live radio interview between a representative of the much-hated Westboro Baptist Church and an individual representing Anonymous, during which Anonymous apparently hacks WBC’s website during the interview. While this interview is a very interesting merger of two very hot-button items right now, it was still immensely difficult to make it to the part where the hack takes place (about 8:26) due to the amazing irritating nature of the foul-mouthed woman involved.  Can you imagine anybody having any discussion about anything with such an individual?  Forget about waterboarding: put the terrorists in a room with her and make them talk about politics or something.

The only other mildly irritating thing was the Anonymous rep’s obviously fake accent.  I have spent plenty of idle time on voice-communication servers playing this game or that game, and that majority of the teen/20-something nerds who populate such games sound exactly like that guy (sans the faux accent).  More thoughts on the Aaron Barr thing later.

You Get Five Dollars

If you can tell me what these four concepts have in common:

Relevancy.

Research.

Remembering.

Communication.

I found them as an old draft post, and completely forget what was going on in my mind when I wrote them down.  Which is kind of creepy, almost like the section of my brain that thought they were important has been blocked off from the rest of my brain.  Perhaps that section of my brain has been partitioned and sealed by a secret government program which recognizes the danger of the knowledge I possess.

Well, looks like I was one step ahead of you guys.