A handful of people know that I have had a lot on my plate lately, and it must seem crazy that I'm not totally focused on that ONE problem (depending what day of the week it is and what was communicated) for a singular time frame, and instead, go off and seemingly distract myself with hardware and software projects and talks about joining a Dojo for Aikido lessons, and wanting to rework my Life Plans. I believe everything to correlate to each other. A big jigsaw puzzle of energy that draws itself together by scientific design, like magnets do.
Well...it was these 'Life Plans' that actually got me "troubleshooting" tonight. I got anxiety there for a while over what it is I could possibly have to stop trying to achieve, instead of looking at the error corrections I could make instead.
When I arrived back at home, I was excited to find no one home and about some 'play time' with a new graphics card I WAS going to install that they let me take home today. The graphics card didn't fit. It's PCIe, and I currently only have PCI slots on the motherboard. I couldn't have fit that card if I had taped it to the slot!
But...I swiped the DVI connector and hooked it up and get way better monitor graphics now, and I was actually able to watch an entire episode of Numb3rs without it skipping or freezing ONCE! So, it got me thinking in a "Troubleshooting Tree" sense about hardware, software, networks, and hacking, and how all that relates to how we live our lives.If there is a problem or when you want to upgrade a system or an infrastructure of systems, you usually start with the users of those systems. Many times the problem lies between the chair and the keyboard. If all "rules" (set by who made them) are being followed, then you move on to check the hardware. If no errors are found with the hardware, you move out to the software. If no errors there, then you move out to the network. If no problems there, then you move out to "outside of your domain" and start over from the beginning....user, hardware, software, network, next. It ALWAYS follows the same pattern of resolving an issue.
In people, you can consider the same.
The user is you...and YOU determine whether you are between the chair (procrastination or other excuses) and the keyboard (what you're putting out).
The hardware is your body. Does it need upgraded? Are you willing to take on a few gigs of speed and better performance? Or is it working at the speed you need it to. If it's not broke, don't fix it, right? Wrongo! The body needs constant upgrading. We do this naturally when we're young but neglect it when we get older. My own correlation to this thought was my recent statement of wanting to join a Dojo for Aikido, participate in Zen meditation sessions, and push forward with the Yoga practices I have chosen. All hardware upgrades!
Hardware alone lets the system turn on, but you don't get much else out of it if you don't put software into it. An Operating system. Your head and your heart are your operating system. How is that current install of yours? Do you know deep down you need an upgrade and are just too scared of the "security alerts" and patches to errors that OTHER people get? What's wrong with programming your own Operating System? Nothing! YOU operate on it! You at most INFLUENCE others with it, but YOU operate it. So what are you going to put into this OS so it runs smoothly and reliably?
Ok...so now you have an OS...now you need some applications to work with...like Microsoft Office. I would call these your actions...your passions...you keep coming back to them to use them over and over...you need them to collaborate with others and share like information and values.
After that, you need a network to share all this stuff on. These are the people around you connected to you by a common resource somehow. You can have a very secure network, or you can have a weak one. Either way, you can be and will be hacked. If you're hacked successfully by Mr. Robin Hood himself, he will tell you what corrections need to be made in order for you to be successful.
Networks can be hacked...we all know this. But WHY are they hacked? Yes...for fun and sometimes out of boredom, but mostly because someone wants a piece of KNOWLEDGE from ONE single source, or a set of specific sources, off the network. Think about WHO you are friends with. Are your valuable friends and your own knowledge valuable enough for a hacker to steal and share? Why WOULDN'T they want to share that? Why do you want to protect your friends and your knowledge from outside sources? Not likely that someone wants to tap into you or your friends because if the credit cards owned...it's your ideas, your PERSON...your PERSONALITY that they want. Something you have inside of you that someone else thinks they can benefit from.
Some people like to turn on their computers and just cruise, surf, see how much mileage they can get out of their hardware before considering an upgrade or even a new system. Some people live by the sense of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Some people like constant improvement because they like change and trying new and better and more demanding things all the time. I'm not pigeon-holing anyone, but there does seem to be a pattern of personality types: constant change, middle of the road where security is found in known everyday functionality and new and exciting things add spice to the monotony, and then the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" regardless if the outside world is changing constantly.
Where are you?