This morning I read this essay (Stoking Cyber Fears) by Bruce Schneier.  His point is a familiar one – stoking Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt will gain attention but block any meaningful discussions.  Though something struck me while reading this, and by skimming it again, I can’t see that it was something he mentioned explicitly.  Institutions like the government have strong cybersecurity requirements and I assume that there is a lot of training and effort put into enforcing those requirements.  But the employees of any institution probably follow the normal distribution curve – I bet there are some old farts working for the government.

Lately (and by “lately” I mean, “since I was 10”) I’ve been struggling with “not tech people.”  I get computers – technology is just something that comes naturally to me.  This is a skill just like the guy who can fix my car or design a house that doesn’t fall over when it rains.  But I’m open to the idea that I can learn the skills to fix my car or design a house, should I decide I want to fix my own car or design my own house.  I may not win awards or star in reality TV shows about these topics but I would (could) be aware of what matters in those contexts.  And I seem to cling to the hope, a fool’s hope, that people will approach computers with the same attitude.  I’ve repeated this diatribe so often it’ll probably be on my tombstone.  You have to know the landscape of the modern world and how to move through it if you’re going to survive.  That landscape includes (brace yourself) computers and software!  Don’t think that giggling, “oh I’m not a computer person,” is a get-out-of-jail-free card, a hall pass to let you walk in ignorance.

I’ve been trying to teach project managers to use Microsoft Project.  It’s not a simple software package by any measure and so there is reason to be overwhelmed – I’m overwhelmed and that’s just the administrator perspective, I’m not even doing actual project management with it.  And change is scary, software upgrades are tough.  It’s clear that this will not be easy.  But these project managers are dinosaurs.  Rather than admitting that this is new and different and they’ve got a lot to learn, they complain about this frustrating new software and nothing is where it used to be and what do you mean I can’t do it like I’ve always done it because it used to “just work” before and why did we have to change?

To bring this rant back around, my point is that if I’m struggling to get people to use the tools they’ve been told to use in even the most basic capacity, I imagine it must be infinitely worse for those institutions dedicated to strict cybersecurity.  Anything you read will say the weakest link is always people.  I bet the weakest part of the weakest link is the “not computer person” (tee-hee).

“From the ashes” was the title of my last post, as if something was rising and coming back.  That was 10 months ago.  I keep wanting to write but I never feel I have anything to write about.

And with that, the writer’s block.  Goodnight.

It’s not that I forgot I had a website.  It’s more that I just suck.  You can see I changed the theme, which was one of the themes pre-installed when Ethan set up WordPress for me.  I downloaded some more and tested them out but this one seems cooly colorful and not too graphic-intensive.  I do want to design my own theme someday but that involves learning and I’m too antsy these days.  Also it’s just too much fun to browse through other people’s themes instead of working on my own.  (I remember back in the day that I could waste hours on winamp.com looking at new skins.)

I bought a house.  Man this is exciting.  My own digs, first time ever.  I have so much on my mind with things to do and buy.  I’m sure that if I continue to blog, you’ll see some of that discussion here.

It’s happened again.  I’ve gotten back into the downloading groove and I’m downloading more music that I can listen.  Or even want to listen to.  I see a band mentioned somewhere on the news, by a friend, etc. and I must have it!  But I don’t download the album mentioned, I download all of their albums.  Then if I find someone with good download speeds, I browse their files and look for bands that just have interesting names.  All this piles up in my download directory until I feel that things are so messy that I need to organize.  So I do my OCD overhawl of the mp3s then move them into my organized music directory.  And then I forget about them.  Oh I have the stuff, I am a collector, but I don’t know what any of it sounds like.  Then I get all whiny about this state of affairs and write self-pitying posts.

Here’s an interesting article: Two guys took it upon themselves to tour around the US national parks.  But their goal was not to take in the splendor of our country but rather to correct grammatical errors in park signs.  I find this creates a lot of conflict with me; on the one hand I enjoy proofreading and prettifying things so that the best possible presentation is made to others but on the other hand, preservation of the past combined with a loathing for graffitti makes me hate these guys.  Of course the article goes for the most sensationalist example: a 60yr old sign for a structure in the Grand Canyon.  I would agree, don’t attack the original sign because that’s a part of history.  But then again, it’s still wrong!  This is why I don’t read news sites, they make my head hurt…

Though I don’t have any readers out there that I’m aware of, I’d nonetheless like to introduce two new authors to this… thing.  Justin and Jordan, hailing from opposite ends of the Earth, will be contributing posts here.  I hope that we will build something nice, something musical and something fun.

And I guess technically I’m new here too since I decided to change the username from “dcamp” to “derek”.  Lowercase is still hip though, all you pro-capitalization zealots can just eat me, aight?  Interestingly enough, I seem to do this to myself a lot.  Here is an excerpt from a previous… thing:

World of Warcraft has consumed my spare time, as I imagined it would. I started a new character, this time with a more creative name (albiet unoriginal) and the knowledge on how to slam through the early ranks like a pro. My original character’s name was Dcamp, which made sense since my handle has always been dcampitate, so why not simplify it to something more like a name? Well, because Dcamp is a stupid name for a role-playing character, that’s why! Dcampitate isn’t all that much better either, not if you want the immersive environment of a MMORPG. My new guy is much better, but I’m not going to tell you his name because then you’ll think I’ve gotten so nerdy, I’ve actually gone insane (and you’d be right). But the interesting thing is how much more removed I feel from this character, now that no part of his name resembles mine. People used to type, “hey dcamp, you’re an idiot” and I’d know they were talking to me. I have a few other variations on nicknames that I would respond to, but those names are all taken or not allowed, so instead I’ll have to respond to this new one. That I’m still not going to tell you.

But that’s ancient history, I don’t play that new character anymore (who was named after a Babylon 5 character) nor do I play Warcraft at all (abandoning my main character who was named after someone in Star Trek, see how awesome I am with the naming of things?).

I have had a long and turbulant relationship with sunglasses.  I lose them, I break them, I can never find a pair that fits around my gigantic head.  I recall that many years ago I went shopping with my dad for sunglasses.  We were on a mission to find something that Derek would like and would fit.  All around the mall we walked until we came to Eddie Bauer.  It must have been ages that we were at their measly selection of sunglasses before finally I settled on some aviators.  My dad, always supportive, said they “fit my conservative style,” which is odd to me now because I think I’ve drifted pretty far from conservative from that time.

Anyway, armed with my new, non-cheap-o, carefully selected sunglasses, I went to the beach.  And what’s a trip to the beach without going in the water?  So, diligently observing the attention that went into these sunglasses, I took them off and put them on my beach chair and took off to go swimming.  Wouldn’t you know it, my aunt comes by to talk to my mom and chooses my chair to sit in, thereby smashing my sunglasses.  I felt terrible and my parents only heaped the guilt on more, admonishing me for carelessness with my things and lack of regard for the cost of such items.  I haven’t bought a pair of sunglasses over $5 since (in fact, the last pair I wore for any signficant length of time were actually pulled up from the bottom of a lake by my brother when he was playing around with goggles on a canoe trip).  My dad bent them back into shape but I couldn’t or wouldn’t put them back on.

So years pass and I find myself digging through old boxes.  Collections of stuff that I deemed too memorable to throw away at the time, so I piled it into various boxes and carried them around with me from place to place.  Now I’m preparing for another move but one without a time schedule, so I decide, what better time to purge some of this stuff that’s accumulated over the years?  I come across the sunglasses that were smooshed; I had saved them.  I give a little tweak and a bend and, just for kicks, go try them on in the mirror.  Hey… these are pretty snazzy!

Well here I go, trying to write something and something interesting at that.  I watched some of the Radiohead music video contest winners and despite the videos being amazing, I am still unable to get into Radiohead.  I may be the only person on the face of the earth that is in such a situation.

The NIN Hotline had a post about this band Belong with a free download of some work.  It’s a single 14-minute track.  I’m guessing that listening to it on my laptop may have been a bad choice since I wasn’t really impressed.  Good atmospheric stuff but a lot more texture than actual music, in my opinion.  There’s a place and a fanbase for that, so it’s not that the work is worthless; I’m just saying at first glance, it didn’t do much for me.

Latest and greatest: Fear Factory.  There is nothing like tuning out the drone of your workplace with some screaming, growling, double-bass action.  I find I’ve moved to the Hard Rock/Heavy Metal swing of my music tastes lately.  I seem to oscillate between electronic/techno/dance to industrial to hard rock/heavy metal and back again.  Though I guess I also find myself going in for the light background stuff lately.  The kind of chill, downtempo stuff that is relaxing.  Amy Winehouse (as fucked up as she is), Lemon Jelly, De-Phazz, lots of good choices.  Though I do find myself quickly falling into the OCD categorization mode again.  There is an overwhelming need to tag and label and genre and sub-genre all my music before I can actually listen to it.  In fact, for wanting to talk about music, I’m sitting here in silence listening to the sounds of crickets and frogs coming in from the open windows…