Posted via email from danielmiessler.com | posterous

I don’t actually disagree with what these people are almost saying. The problem is that the word snob already has a meaning, and I prefer that words be used precisely. As such, I think elitist is actually a better way to describe my worldview. It’s still not accurate because I don’t believe in the super-elite building and controlling society over the educated and intelligent, but I do believe in the educated and intelligent controlling society over the uneducated and stupid.

This distinction is important, but I lack the time or perceived need to go into it here, so I’ll continue.

What I really mean to accomplish in this piece is to give a number of examples of why I prefer nice things. These aren’t philosophical “why it’s better to be better” arguments, they’re real-world facts about the state of the world that affect my (and others’) mood.

Nice Neighborhoods

1. I’m not likely to be in physical danger.
2. There’s less trash.
3. There are fewer potholes.
4. Fast food restaurants have napkins and condiments out in the common area, as opposed to under security supervision.
5. There are no bars and no bulletproof glass between me and gas station attendants, and gas station bathrooms might actually be a) unlocked, and b) not gross.
6. The people in the service industry are likely to be smiling and pleasant, and less likely to treat you as if you’re about to scam/rob/cheat them out of something.

BMW

1. Any BMW dealership I go to in the country I am going to be greeted by people who are happy and pleasant.
2. I will be treated respectfully, and by the third time I come in they’ll probably have learned my name.
3. The common area will have free food, drinks, coffee, etc., and the bathroom will be pristine.

Tumi

1. I have a Tumi person I buy from. She knows what I own and knows what pieces I might be interested in picking up later. She knows my preferences and will likely tell me if a new line is coming out soon that I want to check out.

The basic idea here is that if you associate yourself with high quality things, the ecosystem that surrounds those things is likely to be highly positive. And I mean that from a mood/mental health standpoint.

I don’t want to be surrounded by poverty, ignorance, and failure. I am too sensitive to it. I pains me to see it–especially when I think I know what causes it, and how to fix it.

I wish to spend my time surrounded by positivity and to have pleasant experiences when I’m doing essential things like traveling, eating, or filling up on gas.

That is why I like nice things. ::

My work is going well, I now live around 30 miles from two of my sisters and just around an hour and a half from my parents, I’ve finally cleaned the house, I have my home network up (with a real firewall and my home domain), I have an entertainment system (with a TV), and I’ve read a good number of books this year–which I have enjoyed discussing with friends.

Add local talks to this (Sam Harris), the local meetups (Ruby, Overcoming Bias, Reddit, etc.) and you have a fairly solid list of things to be happy about.

On top of this win pile is the fact that Susan–after six months of struggling–is starting to really like it here. She’s getting used to the rude people, the bad drivers, and the highs are starting to pop against that background.

Then there is the food, our new friends, and the food. Susan prefers that we mention food twice if I mention it at all.

Soon I’ll be starting to cook for myself instead of eating every meal out (a first in my life), I may get into Jujitsu again with a new friend who’s joining the team from San Francisco, and I’m about to dive into photography. I think my table tennis rating has risen since arriving, and I intend to enter 1-5 tournaments this year–hopefully breaking the 1500 mark for the first time and perhaps making it to 1700 or so.

To sum, I’m happy.

It feels distinctly as if the last 18 years of my life have been preparing for a life that was supposed to come. And now it has. This is the life I wanted, and with the generous help of chance, I built it. I’m home in San Francisco with a great job and great friends (Georgia, California, Scattered Everywhere), and life has presented itself as an opportunity–just as I imagined it would.

I omitted astronomy in my list of pursuits, but that was only so that I could mention it now. Astronomy makes me feel even more thankful. When I look at a distant star or a distant planet, I don’t think of it as far away. Everything is far away until you get there. People don’t really believe Jupiter is 45 light minutes away–just as they are surprised to see their old home town bustling along after an extended absence.

It’s the same with happiness and suffering for me. They are not far away. When you use a telescope and contemplate time and distance, you realize this. The phenomenal Thai restaurant in SF is the same distance from me as Congo. My luck comes in the form of my brain convincing me otherwise.

Either way, I am happy, and I’m thankful for that. But there is work to be done. For I know the real distance between myself and Congo–even when others do not. ::

Posted via email from danielmiessler.com | posterous

Posted via email from danielmiessler.com | posterous

You make me want to be a better man.

1. Salman Khan
   Salman Khan is the creator of the Khan Academy, a free, open education project of epic proportions. It a man giving his time to truly educate people on a myriad of topics, all for free. He’s been offered millions to go big with the project and he refuses. He says his modest house and two Hondas are enough. He’s the man.

2. Sam Harris
   Sam Harris is about to get his Ph.D in neuroscience, and he spends his life touring the country debating people on the topic of opposing superstition, advocating reason, and pursuing a collaborative, objective moral framework. Basically, he’s performing perhaps the single most important function for all of humanity–no exaggeration.

Me? I have a blog and a cool tech job. Lame.

These people are living. They are providing the ultimate service to humanity and I am doing nothing but watching. I am partially alive; I have the promise of life within me. Nothing more.

I do not live a real life because I’m bound by material wants. I like living in SF, driving a BMW, eating out all the time. Fuck that. Real life is teaching. Real life is learning. Real life is moving us off this path of stupidity.

Take action or you’re a pussy. Let this be a reminder. ::

via thewildernessdowntown.com

You absolutely must stop what you’re doing and go watch this. Be sure to do it in Chrome.

Posted via email from danielmiessler.com | posterous

1. Wake up and exercise for one hour. P90X, biking, treadmill, whatever. And some light weights. But every day–Monday through Friday.
2. Cook breakfast. Real food. Natural food. With fire and steel.
3. Spend four hours doing Open Coursework from a major university, like Harvard, Stanford, or CMU/MIT if I’m feeling technical. Every Monday through Friday. Basically, it’d be a regular class. Turn off everything, bust out the laptop (which is really just TextMate pointing to this site), and take extensive notes.
4. One hour of reading every night. This reading will take place on a porch, near nature. Alone. No technology involved (unless it’s a Kindle). The content will be Classics. New stuff is allowed on one day per week until the entire pre-defined list of classics has been consumed.

…to be continued…

[ Dining, Travel, Table Tennis competition, Philanthropy, Physical feats, Speaking about secular humanism/religion, Writing, cont. ]

What’s your ideal life look like?

It’s horribly unfair that we usually cannot live near our friends. When we are children we are stripped from close relationships because our parents had to move, or because their parents had to move. And these decisions in turn hinge on mundane things like company x needing someone in Wichita, or, as it often turns out, not needing someone in Wichita anymore.

So, as if it were a minor thing, worlds are ripped from each other. Two friends that used to live near each other suddenly don’t, and in the past this basically meant that person would cease being your friend. Even today, with all the technology we have, there is no substitute for being able to see someone physically, on a regular basis, for nurturing a close relationship.

I’ve been stung by this many times in my life. A couple years ago it was a friend that I used to work with in Florida. We were security consultants together living in a city away from home, and we were stressing about how cheaply we could live since we also had a place where our women were back home.

We soon realized that our senses of humor were a brilliant match, and we had many similar political views and musical tastes (metal). We had lots in common, actually, but it was really the sense of humor that made it unique. So within like a couple days I said, “Dude, we seem to get along; let’s just share a place.” He agreed instantly.

We had this arrangement for around three years–us doing va/pentest work together all the while finding humor in nearly everything. It was the kind of humor where once it got going, we had to exert ever effort not to make a scene. It was awesome. Breaking into stuff, getting paid, and laughing like kids at most everything.

But he had a wife and a couple of kids a few hours away, and I had my girl out of state as well. After a while it was getting really hard to be gone from them all the time. Finally, one day, he said he was taking a job back home, that he had to get back to the family.

It was completely understood; we’d talked about it for at least a year, and I was already thinking about doing the same myself. But there was a catch.

Neither of us really like talking on the phone much. He is particularly against it, though. And neither of us are really into writing emails or anything. The relationship was simple: it was really cool hanging out all the time when we lived and worked together, but once it came to an end, that was going to be the end of it.

So I helped him finish packing up that last time and we looked at each other as we prepared the mandatory handshake. He spoke first, while holding out his hand:

Well, that was something.

There was only one response really.

Yes. Yes it was.

What we were really saying, of course, was that it was finished. The sense of humor and jokes and laughing…it was all over. Not diminished. Not reduced. Not minimized. Over.

It wasn’t really that sad then because we were moving on to new things and life was good, but I new it would be later. And it is now.

It’s sad that physical distance can rob people of relationships. I want to be able to laugh with my buddies when I want to. When I see something cool I want to show all my friends. But I can’t.

And for me, an atheist who doesn’t want kids, my life is the sharing of things with friends. It’s not raising children or spending time at Church for God. No, it’s laughing and enjoying music, or debate, or whatever…with those I share interests with.

This is the saddest reality. Not death, but the limits placed on living life. You can’t be with your friends because they can’t afford to live in this neighborhood anymore. Or they need to take a job in Wyoming. Or they get married and have to live where their wife’s family lives. Or, as adults, they’re just too poor to come visit you or even leave their city limits very often. So any time you see them will be you going there, for a short time of course, since you’re similarly bound by your own work/life limitations.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever had one of those talks in high school–a life talk–from some experienced person who’s “been there” and “seen things”. They pile everyone into the gym and give the guy a microphone, and he says things like, “You’ll be missing this time before long.”, or, “You just completed the easy part of your life. It gets harder from here.”

Well, what I’d say to a group of kids if I ever have such a microphone would be different. I’d tell them to live their lives so that they have maximum freedom. So that they could choose to go and live in Seattle with their friends if they so desired. I’d tell them to not blindly accept a life path set by tradition, which states that you forfeit being without your friends so that you can live near your spouse’s parents (which you dislike).

Don’t settle. Don’t lock in to pre-forged life molds. Recognize that your friendships are what matters, and that unless you actively do something to counter the effect, life will snatch them from you at random.

I miss my friends. I want to share more with them. It angers me that my great friends from the various times in my life will never meet each other. Why? Because they don’t have the time to get away. And plane tickets are so expensive.

Bullshit. These are obstacles that should not stand in the way of life experience. Of sharing time with those who find the same things interesting and humorous.

Sure, death can have me when I pass, but in the mean time I will fight to be able to spend time with those I wish to. I will not settle for the life given to me by the corporate machine, or by the invisible bonds that accompany the traditional view of marriage.

I will remain free to travel, and to experience, and to laugh. And most importantly, to bring those things back to my friends, wherever they are, so that they can enjoy them as well. ::

[ 2009-07-05 : Ok, figured it out. I started this capture in portrait mode and then rotated the camera, so it was stuck on its side for the rest of the filming. Oh well, still decent. ]

A friend of mine is getting ready to participate in a bicycle event that involves a race/ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

AIDS/LifeCycle is a fully supported, 7-day bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles, May 31 – June 6, 2009.

He’s going to race no matter what, from what I understand, but he’s trying to reach his goal of $3,000 so that he can contribute to the cause. If you have a few bucks lying around ($5, $10, $100…whatever) please consider helping him out before the deadline of May 31st.

I’m giving $100, and I’m actually donating more because I admire the fact that someone I know is riding a bike hundreds of miles in 7 days for a charity…but that’s just me. Whatever your reason, you can donate via his page on the Lifecycle site.

Thanks. ::

[ Donate to Enrique Rivas' Lifecycle Bike Ride | lifecycle.com ]

I sometimes realize that I’m hesitant to talk about my love here, and tonight is one of those nights. It’s another night when I’m reminded that my love for her is all that matters to me. She is my meaning, and without her there is none.

And yet I hesitated to write this, as I always have. It’s a trite thing to declare ones love in such a public way, and I feel it impossible to do properly. But tonight, thankfully, I don’t care. I need a mountain to yell from, and this website is all I have for one.

Yesterday marked fifteen years that we’ve been together. That was when we agreed to see nobody else but each other, and this morning as she was pulling out to work in her rental car she’s never driven I came out in my pajamas in the freezing cold to pour warm water on her frozen windshield.

The smile she gave me, when she realized that she wouldn’t have to sit in the cold and wait for the ice to melt–that smile is the meaning in my life. A simple sweetness between two people who met so randomly and have been through so much. All that we have in this world are a series of these moments.

So I had to share. I have to tell the world. It sounds dumb, it looks stupid, and I don’t care. I give thanks for what I have, and I understand that time is uncertain.

The worst thing that can possibly happen to a person is to have his lover leave without knowing the depth of the feelings they had. And despite how silly it makes me look or feel, I shall leave no such doubt when I go.

Her name is Susan, and I love her more than anything. ::

I’m moving to a new apartment soon–one that’s never been lived in before. And in April my division at work is moving to a brand-new IT building built out in a developing office park. It was designed by a famous, high-end architect and makes you feel proud knowing you work in the place.

Between the two changes I’ll be getting new carpet, new IP phones, new Herman Miller chairs, and countless other things that haven’t been defiled by others. This makes me happy.

Too happy.

I’ve come to believe that people who are unhappy with themselves are those most drawn to “new”. New things symbolize better versions of ourselves. We subconsciously hope that when we leave the old behind and embrace the new, we’ll also be leaving behind the parts of ourselves that we dislike–like a snake discarding an old skin.

That’s why truly happy people don’t need “new.” One’s enthusiasm for new things is directly proportional to his internal desire to shed themselves, and if you have nothing to shed you have little passion for them. That’s one metric for inner harmony.

Anyway, I can’t wait to move. I’m really looking forward to the new stuff. ::

I just stumbled onto this image of me back when I was in the Army. Evidently I do in fact have a jaw under here somewhere…

I have a problem. I am having serious trouble when faced with large, never-ending paperwork-based projects that require little to no thought.

This should not be a problem. Example: Take this form, call this person, file that form, send an email. Receive an email, print the email, file the printout, make a call. File that form in that shared directory, update the spreadsheet…etc. This work should not be difficult for me but it’s killing me.

Kill like death.

I can fly through other projects that are infinitely more difficult: conceptualizing an approach to a problem, optimizing problem-solving processes, creatively building support for infosec, managing vendor engagements, assessing the risk of a project or initiative. And of course the technical stuff. And I don’t have problems with writing or presentations either–in fact I love that stuff.

But ask me to manage a set of folders with constant, multiple inputs and outputs (especially if they involve starts and stops with roadblocks) and I completely shut down. I stress out to the point of seeking distraction–any distraction–in order to maintain sanity.

Then bad things happen to the project in question.

So how do I deal with this? How do you deal with it? I see two obvious options:

1. Learn to get past my issues with this type of work, or
2. Accept this as a weakness and focus on things I do well

The problem with #1 is I don’t know how to do this yet. The problem with #2 is that it’s hard to find managers who understand and/or accept that I could be so good at other things and yet bad at something “simple”. Also, I don’t really want to run from a weakness; I’d rather eliminate it if it’s at all an option.

I need to solve this. Any input would be highly appreciated. ::

Ah, the days of Converse Allstars…

How much of the way you live your life is because of the environment you live in as opposed to being true manifestations of your identity? How many of your beliefs and personality characteristics are simply necessary due to the world we live in? It’s a weird question, so let me try and help using myself as an example.

I enjoy nice things. I drive a 335i. I carry a William Henry knife. I wear a Submariner. I’m also proud of my career in information security, and of the skills I’ve attained in that field. And I love mixed martial arts.

Is this me, or is this me as I think I need to be given a crude, primal world?

How would your personality be different if you were not competing for a mate? What if you didn’t have to work, and were free to do whatever you wanted with your time? How about if there were no violence in the world? Or if we as humans weren’t such emotional animals.

If the answer is that you would be different, and perhaps to a large extent, then are we not living a false identity? Are we not 95% external-interface and 5% real? Think of the waste this causes in terms of creativity and exploration.

Who are you, really?

I think I’d be far more intellectual, and far less aggressive. And it bothers me that my identity is based on my surroundings. I mean, sure, that’s just reality. We are forged by our surroundings, but I don’t like when it serves as overhead to true progress.

Ok, final thought: make a list of attributes that describe you (or you wish described you). Here’s mine:

• intelligent
• male / masculine
• funny
• athletic
• physical
• sexual
• aggressive / strong
• educated
• active
• cool
• intellectual
• fun-loving
• curious
• daring

So the game is to start taking things away from this list, least-important to most-important, until only the most core things to your identity remain. The things you decide to keep say a lot about who you are, or at least who you want to be.

The question then for yourself is, “is that the person I should be trying to be?”.

Thoughts? ::