Week Wrap-up: 02 April 2018 – 08 April 2018

Posted on April 8, 2018 by Ian
An image of a brown Children's Python sitting loosely-coiled on a piece of bark, head visibile, seemingly looking a the camera.

Melville, a very good and sweet boy.

A quick wrapup of what happened this week! I know you’re all very excited. Quivering with anticipation.

In no particular order:

  • Did a couple of interviews!
    • One was an initial discussion with Google. I’m now at the point where I need to schedule the more in-depth technical interview. I’m really nervous/intimidated, but I’m going to try my best! (And study. Because getting my coding skills dusted off will be important.)
    • Another was an interview at a local bookstore. I’ll find out how that went next week. I was sick during the interview, which I’m sure colored my perception of it, but I get the impression it went okay-but-not-great. So I didn’t embarrass myself, but one of the other candidates will probably get the gig? We’ll find out! (FWIW I would like to work there, I think it would be a v. good experience.)
  • Had a cold! This is a big part of why I was out of blogging for the back half of this last week. I’m finally on the mend, but I’m still shaking the tiredness that comes along with it.
  • Saw some friends.
  • Hung out with one of our snakes (Melville, pictured above) and he was very good. And the non-Jerry leopard gecko, Cardamom, who is a brave climber and very cute.
  • Picked up coding in Java again. Wrote some v. basic programs myself to help remind myself of the syntax, and solved an interview-style problem from an online site. Continue reading →
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New Podcast!

Posted on April 4, 2018 by Ian

Hey all! A quick plug for one of my other projects. My friend Katy and I started a new podcast called “Failed Taxonomy,” where we talk about media, our lives, and answer listener questions. Our first episode just went up yesterday, and you can check it out here: https://www.failedtaxonomy.com/2018/04/02/episode-1-artisanal-gender-feels/

Please give it a listen and subscribe if you like!

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Three Podcasts That Make Me Happy

Posted on April 2, 2018 by Ian

Podcasts are great for a lot of things. For learning, for hearing news, for keeping up with your friends. These podcasts, though, are what I listen to when I need something to cheer me up. Learning optional.

My Brother, My Brother, and Me

The three McElroy brothers. Travis and Justin are standing on either side of Griffin and messing with his hair.

Source

I imagine just about everyone has heard about this by now, but if you haven’t: on this show brothers Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy give hilarious and dubiously-useful life advice to listeners that write into the show. The brothers have great chemistry, and are amazing at bouncing off each other and keeping the laughs going. I also greatly appreciate the level of meta humor. This show is mostly just silly fun, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Continue reading →

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Week Wrap-up: 26 March 2018 – 01 April 2018

Posted on April 1, 2018 by Ian

A view over the city of SeaTac at night, the darkness interspersed with the lights pouring from buildings.

Ah, my friends, I do not have an April Fool’s post for you. Instead, a small wrapup of the last week:

  • I started in on learning the Network+ certificate stuff. So far it’s all review, but that’s okay! It’s good to be reminded “ah, yes, that’s exactly what that means.” I’m hoping to buckle down on it more this week, now that:
  • I turned in the last paper for one of my Spring classes, a seminar, meaning that for the next week and change I’m only taking one (1) class. The luxury of freedom! Sort of!
  • I’ve seen a bunch of cool people lately! I saw a bunch of internet-buddies at NorWesCon, as well as local friends who live just far enough away I haven’t run into them for a while. I will continue to see cool people today! It’s neat!
  • I got really confused about what the ideal setup for an infosec lab would be for my needs, and people came crawling out of the woodwork on Mastodon to help. There’s a lot of good eggs over there. I need to make an account on infosec.exchange, I think, so I can listen and learn more.
  • The first episode of Failed Taxonomy has been recorded and is almost done. I’ve done all of the editing except for removing my goblin-breathing and trimming the silences down. My little laptop isn’t powerful enough to do changes to an entire hour of audio at once, so I need to find some time to do it on my desktop. I’m hoping to post it tomorrow, though.
  • A bunch of people I care about are in junky situations! Please send general good vibes out into the universe so they can get some more of that in their lives.
  • I’m deleting my Facebook as soon as I download my data, hopefully later today. It’s going to be such a THING. I’m nervous, but I bet it’ll be good.

That’s it for now! I hope the last week has treated you well, and that this next week is looking up.

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Coming Soon

Posted on March 27, 2018 by Ian

I gotta admit, I’m pretty excited these days. Well, as excited as I get. Which is usually about as much as molasses is fast. Still! A nice change from being frozen…molasses?

That broke down quickly.

Anyway! Some fun stuff coming soon:

Podcast!

I’ve started doing a podcast with my buddy Katy! It’s going to be about, well, sort of whatever. Usually a bit about what we’ve been up to lately, with a focus on reading, our writing, and exercising. Plus we’re answering questions every week, because why not?

You can find out more at the website, www.failedtaxonomy.com. There’s a contact form there, too, if you want to submit a question. I’m almost done editing the first episode, but my little laptop couldn’t handle the processing needed to remove my goblin breathing from the silent bits. So that’ll need to get done at a different computer when I get a chance, but it should be soon! I’ll be sure to post here when it goes up.

Network+

As part of learning infosec, I’ve started going through the material for the Network+ CompTIA certification. Not out of any great love for the certification itself, but because I could use a refresher on the nuts and bolts of networking before I start digging in to how to break its security. Plus, getting the certification would a) look nice on a resume, and b) make it more likely I can get jobs in the interim that’ll still take me down that path.

I picked up Meyers’s All-in-One study book, which led me to undertake an oddyssey as I tried to break the DRM so I could read it in emacs. It’s my preferred word processor of choice for anything where layout isn’t super-important (like notes!), and I find I concentrate better when I’m using it, so making this happen was really important. In the end, it took many hours of struggling on linux and then about twenty minutes on a Windows PC (which the utilities in question were better designed for) to get it done. So now I have my book, I have a notes outline based off the official test objectives, and I have it all in my program of choice. I’m set, and I’m looking forward to properly diving in tomorrow.

Posted in Art, Infosec, Learning, Personal | Comments Off on Coming Soon

Refocusing

Posted on March 25, 2018 by Ian

I’ve been unexpectedly away for a couple days. Had a bit of blog-writer’s block, but I think I was also quite stressed. I did something I didn’t really expect to do on Friday:

I turned down a job.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this job wasn’t a perfect proposition. The pay wasn’t enough for me to meet my obligations at home, so I would have slowly bled cash, and the commute was wonky. But it would have been customer service and customer tech support experience, both of which I’m a little starved for at the moment. Plus, the company was wonderful. Enough that I want to look at working for them again once I have the skills for another position, especially if I move a little closer to their offices. Continue reading →

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Leaving Facebook

Posted on March 20, 2018 by Ian

So, uh, this Cambridge Analytica thing, right?

I mean, I think we all knew Facebook was being pretty shitty with our data. That data collection in general is used for a lot more than just selling us vacuums and whatnot. It’s almost nice, in a way, to have such a big incident I can point to to justify my decision. But the truth is I’ve been thinking about deleting my Facebook for a while. I don’t like how much data is harvested about us for the sole purpose of selling it to advertisers, and Facebook is one of the worst offenders.

Now, this totally screws me over in a couple ways. A few of my friends plan events almost exclusively through Facebook. There’s some people who I don’t have contact info for besides through Facebook. And some content requires a Facebook account to view. Continue reading →

Posted in Accountability, Personal, Technology | 1 Comment

The Stories I Tell About Myself

Posted on March 18, 2018 by Ian

A picture of a sunset, just before dark, as the sun descends below the horizon. The colors reflect off a lake that takes up most of the foreground, though you can see the shore as well.

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” — Patrick Rothfuss in The Name of the Wind

I’ve been struggling lately with the story I tell myself about myself.

I’ve had a narrative going in my head for a long time that I’m not very smart. I’m pretty sure this started as a self-deprecating joke that helped me cope with the fact that I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by some absolutely brilliant people my entire life. Even when the social groups changed, that still held true. Of course it’s true that there’s always someone better, no matter how good you are. But it’s been very intimate for me. It’s not like “oh no I’ll never be as good as Gary Kasparov.” It’s “oh hey, this assignment that took me three days and still doesn’t work right was done by my buddy in one night when they took the course.” The comparisons become very direct.

To be clear, I did these comparisons by myself! And the few times they were done for me, I tried to (hopefully gently) remind people that just because something is way X for them doesn’t mean it was way X for me. I tried to remember that myself. The very smart people in my life have also on the whole been quite kind, and never ground my nose in it. I did a very good job of making my face meet rock all by myself, thank you very much.

Still, the comparisons eroded my self-confidence. I doubt wrangling with a cockatrice of anxiety and depression helped much, either. Nor my recent job search. These are all catalysts for me to get where I am right now faster, but it feels like I was always going to get here.

Frankly put, I feel like I’m a dunce. The story has changed from “in comparison to these other people, I am not as good at them in their field” to “I’m not good at any field.” Continue reading →

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Silly Jabberwocky Photopalooza

Posted on March 15, 2018 by Ian

Hello, all you lovely people.

While I am trying to blog daily, it is also hella late and I haven’t done any fiction writing either today. So, instead of a bunch of my words I will instead present you with a bunch of my photos of my iguana Jabberwocky being her silly, silly self. Enjoy!

Jabberwocky leaned up against the wall of her enclosure, front claws holding onto an eyelet hook coming out from the wall. She's staring at the camera, eyes large and dark in the dim morning light.

Just woken up, staring out into the peaceful morning at the barbarian mammal who dare interrupt her reverie.

Jabberwocky lunging to eat a mouthful of collard greens.

Nom nom collard greens nom.

Continue reading →

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A Roller Coaster, Not a Luge

Posted on March 14, 2018 by Ian

The last few days have been a roller coaster, but at least they haven’t been a luge.

Monday was, I think, a post-travel crash. The Rainforest Writer’s Retreat was great, and I’m excited to hopefully do it again next year. I didn’t sleep a lot on Sunday, as I tried to get stuff ready for the rest of the week: buying groceries, prepping breakfasts and lunches in an attempt to eat better, that sort of thing. So Monday was an unfocused malaise, where I was barely able to do anything but some light reading for my Content Management Systems class. Which sucked, given how productive the retreat felt. I did still get my words of new fiction in, which was good.

But that was not nearly as good as Tuesday, where I apparently found all of my brain and some mysterious extra that I just sort of squished onto the side. I plowed through my homework, researched about reprinting old pulp titles, wrote new stuff, proofread/formatted-as-needed two pieces, uploaded one and sent off the other to Peter to beta read, and even managed a blog post in there. Ideally, most of my days would be like this, but given I ended up staying up late finishing a last few things, perhaps it’s best if I don’t do quite as many things every day.

Trying to have days like this all the time is actually part of why I stopped keeping a bullet journal this year and instead switched to a (Passion Planner)[http://www.passionplanner.com “Passion Planner Website”]. It lets me be looser about whether or not I have a to-do list every day while still being organized, which prevents me from trying to do thirty things every day. This is probably a good thing. Probably. Continue reading →

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