Use Your Words

People who call me pessimistic are just not being realistic.

If the past several election cycles and the attendant advertising and attempts to sway voters have shown anything, I think, it's that having an extra healthy level of skepticism is just a good defense mechanism. For years, I've questioned all the quotes that are attributed to famous people, especially famous politicians. I really don't think Abe Lincoln told people to "vote early and often", though it's possible that one or more Chicago mayors may have. A more direct example is this quote "Most of the Evil in This World Is Done by People with Good Intentions" which is often attributed to T. S. Elliot, but, is really a partial quote attributed to an anonymous contributor to a trade journal called “The Creamery and Milk Plant Monthly”, though Elliot said things that were quite similar. And, now, thanks to Quote Investigator you can do your own fact-checking when someone insists that George Washington said Firearms Stand Next in Importance to the Constitution Itself. They Are the American People’s Liberty Teeth and Keystone under Independence. (Spoiler alert! He most likely didn't say that at all.)
And, while you're being more actively skeptical, you may want to grab this Chrome extension that Lifehacker mentions, titled NoDiguisedAdsAnymore which does just what the title suggests; it reveals advertising disguised as news by marking it with an "Ad" icon. It may not catch all the sneaky political ads, but it's not a bad place to start!

And, if you haven't yet voted, make sure to do that this year. It's never been more important in living memory to make your wishes known and vote your conscience.

My favorite daydream is more than a vacation.

I've mentioned this before on my blog, but when things get really bad, I've had the same recurring fantasy; sell everything, buy a tricked out motorhome-tiny-house and run away. Now, I know I would have a hard time actually doing that because not only do I love stuff that takes up a lot of room, like books, but we'd have a hard time fitting our two sixty-five-plus pound dogs into anything mobile on a permanent basis. But, that doesn't stop me from dreaming about it. Some people fantasize about running away on a sailboat, but my jam is more of a land yacht. Now, as in intellectual exercise, I've considered the various options and their attendant advantages and disadvantages. For instance, if one were to get a towable tiny house, getting a truck large enough to tow it becomes a necessity. On the other hand, that towed tiny house can be parked while the truck is used to run errands without bringing the entire house along. With a full motorhome, everything comes with, which actually could be fine for a lot of things, but, also, one person could theoretically be sleeping in bed while the other drives to another destination. Well, it turns out I'm not the only one who's been thinking about this lately. I've looked into it for quite some time and have some hands-on experience from when I was a kid, but there are apparently a lot of first-time buyers. If you've been thinking about jumping on this trend, Lifehacker has an article titled "The Beginner's Guide to Buying The Right RV". It doesn't include the tiny house options, but it does run you through all the other options for running away from your life without jumping on a sailboat. You can also scan through Tumblr's "van life" or "vanlife" to see some of the nicer, cooler setups that people have. (You can also look at their "tiny house" selection to see some other options, though these aren't all mobile houses.)
Anyway, it's been that kind of week and that's where my head has been at lately. So, show up again next week because you never know what I'll share next!

Or, things I'd want to know before I seriously applied for, or took a new job.

The other day, a recruiter emailed me a super vague job description and we had a brief exchange about it. It was a little interesting, but, mostly, it was a mystery, because they just didn't have a lot of details. Frankly, it sounded like the client wasn't quite sure what they really wanted, except that they wanted to move all their IT support in-house instead of continuing to pay a managed service provider to maintain their systems. I made a post on r/ITCareerQuestions asking the question "What do you want to know before considering a job?". I shared in that post these questions that I'd want answers to before being submitted for an open opportunity:

• How many users? And how are they distributed at multiple locations? (IE. How many end users in what city and state?)
• How many people are going to be hired, ultimately, to be in the IT Department? (I generally think one support person per seventy-five or fifty end users is a good ratio, if I can swing it. I always seem to support more than that, but it's a goal!)
• What servers are they running? What do they all do?
• Where do those servers reside? (ie. On-prem or offsite data center or cloud)
• Are they ALL virtual? On what? If VMware, what version? What OS are the virtual machines running?
• What kind of physical host or hosts are the virtual machines on? Is it a cluster? Is there shared storage (ie a SAN)?
• If there is more than one site, how are the sites connected?
• How is email being handled now? On-prem Exchange? Hosted? Office 365?
• What is the IT budget currently? How do they expect to see that expand?
• Where is the main business headquarters? What’s the commute if I’m coming from [part of town where I live]?
• How have they handled COVID-19?
• What problem am I being hired to fix? Why are they looking for someone?
• What does the compensation look like? What are the benefits? Is there a 401k and how much matching is there? What does the health insurance look like? Is there a bonus structure and how is that determined?

Hopefully, I wouldn't have to ask them all of the recruiter, since the job description would normally include some of this information. Also, these questions assume that I wouldn't be relocating across the country. So far, one Redditor came up with just one additional question that I'd want to know the answer to; How often are performance reviews done and what does that process look like?

So, dear readers, what about you? Anything you typically want to know about a job before applying?

This post first appeared on Diary of a Network Geek, my mostly more professional blog.

Not quite DIY DevOps for Office 365, but a good start.

So, it's been a while since I posted professional geek content on any of my blogs, so I figure I'm overdue. I've had a lot of titles over the years, but, at heart, I'll always be a system administrator. Back in the olden days before any marketing genius came up with the idea of calling hosted services "the cloud" or calling system administration automated with scripts "DevOps", guys like me were automating routine tasks. I've used everything from batch files to bash scripts to Perl, but, on Windows servers, I've learned to use PowerShell. It's powerful and there are a lot of resources for the neophyte to learn, so I've applied myself to it to make my life easier.
For instance, I wrote a script that removes users that are disabled and haven't logged on in more than 90 days, which I shared in a comment on r/PowerShell. Naturally, I started with someone else's script and modified it for my own purposes, and added in the email feature from another script. Then, I added that to the scheduled processes to run once a month, just to keep Active Directory cleaner. The other day, I was on r/sysadmin and read about someone having a problem on Office 365 with stolen credentials. I hate to say it, but it's becoming a more and more frequent issue with everyone working from home. The only way to fix it, really, is to get some kind of multi-factor authentication. But, in that thread, someone referenced a script from Microsoft's GitHub repository for Office 365 scripts meant to quickly help remediate the breach and close the hole left by the compromised credentials. It's pretty slick, though I think I'd modify it to accept a command-line variable with the username instead of coding that in, but it's a pretty slick script that can mean the difference between a few spam emails and hundreds. Also, it automates a lot of the standard stuff we do by hand when a breach occurs.
If you're a sysadmin, it's definitely worth a look and the rest of that GitHub repository has scripts to do all kinds of things with Office 365 by way of PowerShell. It's a great place to start building your own scripts and automating your workflow.

So, that's my geeky PSA for the professional geeks among us.
Enjoy!

This post originally appeared on my first blog, Diary of a Network Geek.

Just a quick share this week.

I know I keep hinting that I'll review that hot shoe splitting flash cable I got the other day, but I've been so busy, I have hardly had the chance to use it. So, I do still intend to review it, eventually.
Until then, though, I thought I'd share a fun link. This comes via Boing Boing and is just under ten minutes long. It's a short video of Ten Kinetic Sculptures by Anne Lilly. It's not very long and the sculptures are fascinating to watch. If you're like me, you'll watch the video several times just to see the beauty of their movement. The artist is quite talented.
(And, yes, there are reasons I've been so busy, but I'm not quite ready to share them yet.)

Anyway, have a great week and hopefully, I'll have more to share next week!

For the next two months, "Don't feed the troll" should be our mantra.

According to the Urban Dictionary, a "troll" is "...[s]omeone who deliberately pisses people off online to get a reaction." And, while that's true, I feel like it's not a complete description anymore. Since I've been on the internet, back in the "Before Time" of the early 90's, trolls have been around, in one form or another, purposely irritating people for laughs. But, sometime in the last ten years or so, professional trolls with a political agenda, and often backed by a nation-state, have sprung up in attempts to sway elections and disrupt the democratic process. A lot of those trolls aren't even people at all but are robots. They're automated scripts that just constantly harass actual people who happen to trigger certain keywords. Being able to spot the trolls is a lot harder than most people realize.
So, in preparation for the upcoming election, I'm sharing a website called "Spot The Troll". It's s short quiz that shows you social media profiles and asks the simple question "Troll or Legit"? All you have to do is pick. And, then afterward, either way, there are a series of screens showing the "red flags" that should have tipped you off to the troll. Or, things that might have tricked you into thinking a legit human was actually a troll. I scored 7 out of 8. Not bad, I think, considering how sophisticated the trolls and their programmers have gotten.
Take the quiz and see how you do!

Explore the relationship between focal length, aperture, and depth of field.

Along with some other settings and factors.
As I've mentioned, I've been getting back into photography a little bit. That means, for me, relearning a whole bunch of stuff, like how aperture and depth of field are related and how to control that. Well, thanks to a free "lens simulator" by Korean lens maker, Samyang, you can play with those settings, and more, to see how they'll affect your photo. It's pretty simple and straight forward for even a returning rookie photographer like me to make adjustments and see the changes. The one drawback, if you can call it that, is that the simulator uses Samyang lenses as the default settings. You can adjust it and simulate virtually any settings, but the pre-set ones are all based on their lenses. Which, really, shouldn't be a surprise. Anyway, it's fun and easy and, best of all, free.

I'd hoped to have a review of a hot-shoe-splitting flash cable I got this week, but, well, I haven't had the time to actually use it yet, so it's hard to give an actual review. Maybe for next week.

And, that's all I've got this week, really. I'm feeling a little worn down and depressed, which I think is just the COVID-19 lockdown finally catching up to me. Well, and the mostly submerged grief over losing my father. For various reasons I don't want to go into right now, I found myself really missing him last week. I had news that I'd have normally shared with him and asked his advice, but, well, he wasn't there to ask. Of course, as my mother and another friend said, at this point, I can pretty well tell you what he'd have told me. Though, right up until the end, Dad could sometimes surprise me with something new.
Anyway, y'all have a good week and stay safe.

There’s something broken in our culture when we try to make a virtue out of a lack of financial resources. We glamorize it by calling it “hustle”. We talk about everyone needing a “side hustle” that they might one day grow into a full business. In reality, though, that almost never happens. That so-called side hustle is just a second job. Maybe, if we’re lucky, it’s a second job that we can do at night or on the weekends on our own schedule. But, more often than not, it involves buying into someone else’s program, or training or pyramid scheme, to shill cheaply made drop-shipped junk we don’t want to people who don’t need it either. There are classes on selling, on drop-shipping, on building a website to attract the marks, and every other related activity. But, what’s worse is the guilt on social media. The “influencers” who try to tell you that if you don’t have a side hustle, you’re a loser. The Instagram gurus who make a lack of sleep sound like a virtue and workaholism sound like something to be admired. “Rise and grind”, they call it. Get up early, while your competition is still sleeping, and develop that product and make that sale. They tell you to take your hobby and make money from it. “Knit your way to second income!” “How to pay your second mortgage selling stock photography!” But, it’s all a hustle, all a scam. It’s a scam we do to ourselves. I’m guilty of it. I’ve got FindMyPhotographer.com, but I’ve never been able to build it to what I’d like. There’s too much competition already. And, who’s hiring photographers in the middle of a pandemic right now anyway?

I’m guilty, too, of buying into the idea that I need to make money from my hobbies. I used to like to write and take pictures. Now, all I think about is how can I self-publish a novel I haven’t written. Or, what kind of processing do I need to do to my digital photography to get it accepted to one of the microstock agencies. Maybe, that’s why I haven’t written fiction in years. I’m always feeling the pressure of market forces. I did pick up my camera recently, but when I pulled photos off it, the last time I’d taken any pictures was when the dogs had gotten their Christmas-themed rawhide bones. In other words, it’s been almost ten months since I used my camera. Ten months since I engaged with a hobby I loved.

But, what if we didn’t feel like we needed that other income? I’m not advocating any radical wage changes or universal basic income or anything like that. The answer, for most of us targeted by the marketing machine of the side-hustle social media gurus, is simpler than that. What if we just wanted less? What if I didn't need the designer labels? Or the big screen TV and cable with all the channels and a new car every five years? What if I didn’t need to buy things that I think will make me happy? Because, in my own experience, any joy I get from buying things is usually very short-lived. And, man, I’d pay anything to talk to my Dad again. No side hustle can buy me that time back. So, why do we do it?
Maybe it would be better to just have a hobby. I don’t need much to write. I do it on-line or on my computer, but, really, all I need is a cheap pen or pencil and a notebook, or even some loose paper. When I first started out writing, and we used typewriters to do all this, stories of writers using cheap paper to do their first draft are legendary. And, as for needing a better camera or more lenses or more flashes, well, I know that’s not true. As I said in a photography class once, much to the excitement of the teacher, “The artist paints the painting, not the brush.” If I’m really a photographer, I can make good images, interesting images, with a cheap, disposable camera. Sometimes, with art, the challenge of producing art with limited resources is what produces the best art. The restrictions somehow enhance creativity, instead of squelch it.

So, hey, I’m not going to try to make money off my photographs. I’ve got some ideas, but, instead of trying to make something I can sell, I’m just going to make some photographs that I enjoy. I’m going to play and experiment, not because it will generate income, but because it’s fun. It’s okay to just have fun. That’s the point of hobbies, I think; to have fun and relax, so that I can be more than a job, or a paycheck or the sum of my investments.

How about you? How about your plans for the weekend? Do you have a hobby that you’ve been neglecting? Or maybe something you’d like to start? Now is the time. Do it now, before you don’t have any time left. And, then, spend some time with friends and family talking about that, instead of how stressful work is or how bad our finances are. We know. But do something you enjoy and then share it with people you love. Let that be your side hustle.

After three weeks of pretty heavy contemplation, I thought I'd share something a bit lighter.

In France, there's a famous 16th-century castle that is also an island named Mont Saint-Michel. I find it fascinating because the tides only allow access to this historic location twice a day. As a defensive strategy, it's pretty brilliant and I can only imagine the difficulty involved in actually building this structure more than four centuries ago. Honestly, I find it incredible that it's even still standing. Of course, it's become a bit of a tourist trap now, as often happens to enduring pieces of physical history. Still, it's pretty amazing. One day, I hope that I might visit for myself, but, until that day, I'll have to content myself with virtual visits.
Here are two flybys of the Mont Saint-Michel for your Friday enjoyment.
First, there's FPV drone pilot Benoit Finck's flyby filmed with a GoPro HERO8, which won him a GoPro Awards prize for the two-minute, high-speed tour of the castle.
Secondly, there's another video filmed with a RED EPIC camera, via a DJI Inspire 2 by Wanaii films, which also shows some of the surrounding countryside.
Both films are quite epically beautiful and certainly a bit more interesting than reading me go on about grief and missing my father. Though, I do have to admit, my blog readership was at its highest point when I went into gruesome detail about my divorce and my attempts to date afterward. I suspect, if I'd had the brainpower to manage it, details about my cancer treatment might have inspired similar morbid curiosity.

Anyway, that's all I've got this week. Maybe I'll have something more or more interesting next week. I do have a few creative projects that are percolating in the background, so there's no telling when I'll create something more compelling to share.

This year has been pretty rough for everyone.

I don't know who I'm writing this for, but I'm sure there's someone out there that's got the same pain going on as I do.
We started the year with whatever personal and financial challenges we have every year. There are always more bills than there is money to pay them. We all would like to get paid more and have more leisure time to enjoy our families. That's a constant struggle under the best of circumstances. Then, we had a pandemic. COVID-19 swept the world, bringing with it fear, stress and, ultimately, grief. Here in the USA, we didn't get a lot of leadership on how to handle the raging infection rates, so things got worse. Then, we had conflicting information thrown at us until no one knew what to do or not do to best stay safe. That's still the case. On top of that, many of us lost jobs or had businesses that were in financial difficulty. In some cases, entire industries had economic problems, like the oil and gas industry. That alone would be enough to cause pretty severe emotional distress.

Then, a month ago, my father died. Now, I know not everyone has a great relationship with their parents, but my Dad and I had a great relationship. I talked to him every week on the phone for twenty-two years. Basically, every week since I moved to Texas in June of 1998, I talked to my parents on the phone. I would regularly call Dad for advice, simply because I could. I mean, I mostly knew what he was going to tell me, but, sometimes it was nice to hear him say it. Since he died, I haven't slept well. Not that I was sleeping great to begin with, but it was definitely worse after he passed. I have strange body aches. Yes, those might be the result of being almost fifty-two and never considering the punishment my body was taking when I did stupid things, like drop out of second-story windows and other assorted bad ideas. But, my wife tells me that those are almost certainly symptoms of grief. She's lost several people close to her, so she's in a position to know. I feel strange. It's almost a kind of mild body dysmorphia or depersonalization, which I tend to read as having eaten something bad or not hydrated well enough during the day. I just don't feel like my physical body is quite right sometimes. Again, she assures me that it's the physical symptoms of grief.
And, there's the anger. I have such a limited capacity for other people being slow in any way right now. If I find myself at a loss for a particular word, I want to just push past it and move on with the conversation, but if anyone else delays or gets "stuck" on something, I get very quickly frustrated. I'm aware of it, so I think I'm keeping it mostly in check, but I am so very aware that it's there, just beneath the surface.

I've read books on grief, but, as I told my Dad in our last conversation, we're at the point of seeing just how applicable all that theoretical knowledge really is. Because let me tell you, there's a huge difference between having read about death and grief and actually experiencing it. It does help, though, to know that I am, in fact, going through the grief process and that it is a lot more unclear and a lot less simple than any book explains it. It's not a straight line through the five stages, that's for sure. But, I'm learning to have some compassion for myself, which is its own challenge, and I'm learning to apply some of the practices I say I believe in. The struggle to apply the theory is there, but at least I'm aware and able to see what's happening in my own interior life. One step at a time, one day at a time. That's what I tell myself and how I try to take it. The next time I know someone who loses a loved one, I think I'll be better equipped to help them based on what I'm learning here, about both the world and myself.