13 Mar 10
A couple of weeks ago, I had an email conversation with a friend (::waves::) about the differences between in-real-life friends and on-line friends. I guess I never really thought about it before, but in talking with her, I realized something.
To me, there is no difference.
I first went online sometime back around 1984 or 85, sitting behind my Coleco ADAM computer, using its 300 bps modem to visit bulletin boards (remember those?!) and to “work” on one of the first online gaming systems in the country — a multi-user text-based adventure that made my barely-teen geek heart sing every time I played it.
As hours turned into days, days into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years, the friends I made on that game — almost all of whom I had never seen before — were some of the closest I would ever have. Hell, one of them even ended-up giving me my first job in the tech sector, knowing I could do it because of our online time together and for no other reason. I’ve never forgotten that.
So, flash forward to today, and it seems like EVERYONE is making friends online, but it also seems most everyone has a distinction between “online friends” and “in real life friends,” somehow always inferring that the latter is better.
I submit that this is not the case.
Some of the people I have “met” online are also some of those people I would consider among my dearest friends. I share my stories with them, seek their counsel, offer them comfort, and get more excited for their accomplishments than I do my own.
“How do you know people are telling the truth about who they are,” you ask? Again, I submit that it doesn’t matter, or at least, not much. Sometimes, online, we’re funnier, more handsome, or a better dancer than we are in our daily existence, but maybe…just maybe…that’s the person who we really are inside, but for whatever reason, we don’t let him or her out. Our internal filters stop us from talking about sex, poop, or vomit issues in a board meeting or around the water cooler (usually), but on Twitter or Tumblr, we open-up and reveal that part of ourselves to the world that we NEVER would to an intimate group.
So, if I get to know that person online, I truly believe that I’m getting to know the REAL person on the inside, not the person that they’re forced to be on the outside.
I had the pleasure of meeting three on-line friends in real life recently, and let me tell you, they didn’t disappoint. After about three seconds of an uncomfortable silence, one of us broke the ice (not I, sadly) and we then didn’t shut-up for hours. At that moment, I knew that each one of those people I had been talking to in short 140 character bursts were exactly the people I had come to know.
Of course, many of you might find this strange. Heck, there are a couple of you whom I’ve asked for advice and I trust implicitly, and I don’t even know your real names. I may not know you if I passed you in a hallway, but I know if I sent you an email with a subject of, “I really need your help,” you’d be there. Some of you have talked me down from proverbial ledges and haven’t even known it. Maybe you don’t even really talk to me much, but I see something in you that I find fascinating, special, or just kind. Maybe you don’t even see it in yourself.
I guess part of this comes from who I am. I’m married, have three great kids, a good job, and I’m a fiercely loyal person. I’m not on the Internet looking to cheat on my wife or scam people for sport; I’m looking to find the good people of the world with whom I click, regardless of their age, race, sex, or shoe size. Really, I don’t even care if we ever meet face-to-face. I don’t need to meet you to prove to myself that I like you. I can (and will) care as much about you though our short, haiku-like communications as I would if you were standing right beside me.
Because in my mind, you already are.
0 notes
youguys
8 Mar 10
So, he WILL wear something other than a black mock turtleneck and jeans now and again, it seems. Good on Steve for branching out. :-)
zadi:
Steve Jobs at the 2010 Oscars. He’s looking straight at the camera. I’m kinda geeking out right now. I had no idea I had gotten this photo. #kodakredcarpet
75 notes
6 Mar 10
25 Feb 10
Rachelfabulous’s post about her mini-meltdown reminded me of an episode two nights ago with my nine year old daughter.
I was checking her homework for her, and it was late, and I had just done another twelve hours at the office. You can imagine my mood.
She wasn’t listening at all, being disrespectful, and pushing my buttons left and right. I was getting angrier and angrier, and it just seemed to be fueling her.
At one point, I finally exploded and yelled, “DO YOU EVEN HAVE ANY CLUE WHATSOEVER WHY I’M SO MAD AT YOU RIGHT NOW?!”
She looked down at the floor, peeked up, and said, “Because I’m awesome and you’re jealous?”
Could. Not. Stop. Laughing.
2 notes
kids
21 Feb 10
This? Couldn’t have come for me at a better time.
Sometimes you need to just realize the problem isn’t you. And then you need to bow out gracefully, as quietly as you can. You need to realize your own insecurities and worries actually have little or nothing to do with anyone else or how they perceive certain situations.
Sometimes you make a…
21 notes
29 Jan 10
Today is my middle daughter’s 7th birthday party at one of those bouncy places. I had planned to come home early from work to help my wife corral the 32 kids at the party, but baby girl’s miserable case of Roseola had me staying home with her.
I haven’t heard from the wife yet, and the party should have ended a half-hour ago.
I hope my not being at 7’s birthday party isn’t what puts her on the stripper pole 11 years from now. That should be her choice free and clear of mental anguish caused by her parents.
0 notes
kids
father of the year
20 Jan 10
Wow. I’m a little surprised that the Wiggles make only about $45 million per year.
Having three girls, I think I’ve already covered at LEAST that much in tickets and merchandising myself.
0 notes
Twitter has a fail whale showing at 07:25 AM EST? Already?
Wow, if that isn’t an omen for the rest of my day, I don’t know what is.
ETA: Still a solid fail whale at 7:43 AM EST. Either Twitter is getting a massive upgrade, California is having an earthquake, or Twitter is under attack again by Russian/Muslim/Chinese dissidents/extremists/hackers.
0 notes
17 Jan 10
*** WARNING: This post is not for the faint of heart. I’m not kidding. Please stop reading now if you have a sensitive nature. ***
“Why I am who I am,” or “Computer Forensics and You.”
For the better part of the past thirteen (thirteen?!) years, I have been a computer forensic examiner. Sure, the title varies by job and location — digital forensic analyst, media exploiter, computer forensic investigator — but the job is always the same. Computer forensic examiners delve deeply into computers that have either been the victim, instrumentality, or witness to a crime. (Thank you, Mark P., for that definition. I’ve never left it behind.)
It’s not at all like what you see on “CSI.” Computer forensics can be tiresome, dreary, boring, and downright drudgery. Performing a competent analysis can take days, weeks, or even months depending upon the subject, the condition and state of the hard drive, or the importance of the case. For that time period, the examiner is literally trying on the subject’s life, wearing it like a costume for eight or more hours a day. Everything someone likes, hates, is interested in, fantasizes about, or fetishes goes through his or her keyboard at one point or another. Think about every email message you’ve ever written…every chat you’ve ever typed…every website you’ve ever visited…every phrase you’ve ever searched for online.
Seriously…think about it. I’ll give you a moment.
Now think about me reading and seeing it all. That should scare you a little bit, and if it didn’t, you’re probably lying to yourself. It’s okay. Most people do.
Doing computer forensics for any amount of time in your life changes you. It damages you. It makes you unfit to be around others in decent company, because you have to mentally screen absolutely everything you say in fear of drawing looks of horror or disgust from the good people around you. For forty hours a week, a computer forensic examiner is exposed to the worst that the world has to offer — child pornography, beheadings, torture, rape — all in high resolution photo or video formats. In fact, people in the business have found that for general criminal computer forensic examiners (and we’re not talking about intrusion analysts, as exposure to the badness I’ve mentioned is usually infrequent and incidental), there is a two-year time limit before your soul dies. Around that time, every examiner either has built-up enough of a callus that he/she can continue forever, or that examiner pushes the chair away from the desk, stands up, and says, “I can’t do this anymore.”
Two years. As I said, I’ve been doing it for almost thirteen.
What does the general criminal examiner work with? Almost 80-90% of the cases criminal computer forensic examiners work on are related to child pornography. This ranges from simple digital images to full-length movies recorded by the dregs of humanity. The worst kind, in my opinion, are those we’ve dubbed the “No, Daddy, no” videos, in which a usually heavy-set man rapes his extremely young children. Their faces tell the real story — this isn’t the first time, and they have endured their father’s actions numerous times before. People who make and/or collect these kinds of things usually don’t just have one or two…they have one or two dozen, hundred, or thousand.
How about the counterterrorism examiner? Beheading videos, torture videos, and endless rants about exterminating Americans are the feature of the day. Over and over, you watch videos of jump-suit clad Americans, British, Australians, or others on their knees, begging for their lives, as a troupe of Muslim-extremists stand behind them with knives in hand. Then, after the speeches are done, one of the masked men will all-too-slowly remove the head from the body, then place it triumphantly on the back of his victim. Fade to black. At first, you don’t know how to feel…it sickens you. Then, you feel outrage, and you want to seek retribution. Then, you feel…nothing. You comment on the technical quality of the video and remark about the quality of the jihadist’s upgraded A/V equipment. You comment about the sounds that people make when their heads are removed — it sounds something like a pig drowning. You comment, and you go onto the next one. Like their pedophile brothers, jihadists don’t just have one or two, they have hundreds, and the examiner has to watch every one. After seeing a few dozen of these beheadings and torture videos, the political correctness one may have started with goes right out the window. Gitmo is no longer a bad idea, but a necessity, and suddenly you start getting right with waterboarding. Just sayin’.
Being exposed to this kind of daily horror changes you. I’m not asking for sympathy; I think paramedics or police officers have it worse. (One of my good friends is both a computer forensic examiner AND a paramedic — I’m just WAITING for him to snap.) I’m just offering an explanation for why people like me might not say the most appropriate thing, or why our humor tends to run a little darker than that of others, or why our Twitter posts might occasionally make you blush.
As you can imagine, our meetings are rarely dull.
People who only have known me for a short time might find me to be paranoid, disturbed, or even a little deviant. People who have known me for a long time, especially those in the profession, understand completely.
What’s the upside? Why do computer forensic examiners do what we do? Well, it pays really, really well, and we get to put the occasional criminal behind bars or terrorist behind a scope. That makes it worth it all, even if we do tend to have basements full of MREs, anti-radiation pills, water filters, gas masks, and shotgun shells.
One thing’s for sure…terrorist attack, zombie apocalypse, or cyborg uprising, I’m ready — and it won’t even be much of a surprise.
2 notes
forensics
insanity
work
12 Jan 10
Super-sized ditto.
rachelfabulous:
I hate the phone. There, I said it.
I hate landlines, I hate cell phones, I hate the sound of a ringtone. I hate to hear you eating in the background and typing on your keyboard. I hate to hear the wind blowing while you walk and talk. I hate to hear crackle crackle static and they you cracking up at some joke you made that I didn’t catch.
I hate when people talk on the phone while they drive, shop, eat, poop, and and work out.
In this day and age, I am never away from communication. Send me a Text, an email, an IM. Twitter me, FB me, Favstar me, Tumblr me. I’ll answer you. I love you. I’ll laugh with you and cry with you and give you my full undivided attention (as much as my ADD allows). But if you want to speak to me, Don’t fucking call me.
There are a limited exceptions to this rule: 1) You are my mother. 2) You are never at your computer and the only way we get to speak is by you calling me in between carpools 3) You crapped your pants and thought it would be hilarious to tell me right at the moment (and yes, it would be) and 4) I’m at work.
Other than that, don’t expect to reach my by phone. If I don’t pick up my phone it’s because I have no idea where it is. I am busy. The battery died. I’m naked.
The phone rings and I cringe. The voicemail blinks and I cry. Really, truly, I hate the phone. And it’s probably a good thing - that you all do too.
2 notes
