Words of wisdom can be heard pretty much anywhere. This morning an email list of coders and security persons (daily dave) saw a post with a few excellent words.

Never consider yourself bigger or better or greater than others. In my dealings with people who considered themselves great or small, I always treat them as real people equally valuable to God.

Judge people by their attitude and effort and not by their output.

Pray for everyone in sight.. Forgive those who hurt you unreasonably .. understand that healed people heal people and hurt people hurt people.

Reading these, particularly that last one, brought another bit of wisdom to my own mind. Too often we live our lives and then die, defined by our enemies when in fact we should be defining ourselves by the friends we keep. We pick fights, criticize, and otherwise get bent out of shape about so many other people and things that we'll end up getting old and wondering on the purpose of it all and wishing we had cultivated the friendships instead of the hurt.

I thought this article on jargon and passion was an interesting read. I looked at it as a concept more than I did something specific to Web 2.0, which is the subject of the article.

A few points to take away from the article:

Where buzzwords are used to impress or mislead, jargon is used to communicate more efficiently and interestingly with others who share a similar level of knowledge and skills in a specific area.

Part of the benefit of being "into" something is having an insider lexicon.

One of the biggest mistakes I see community builders make (however well-intentioned) is fretting over inclusivity and newbie-friendliness. They want the beginners to feel welcome... But in our quest to cut the jargon and perceived (or even real) elitism, we risk ruining one of the biggest benefits of sticking with it. Not only should we allow domain-specific jargon or expert-speak, we should be driving it! We should help invent short-cuts and specialized words and phrases to make communication among our most passionate--our experts--even more stimulating and useful.

There is something stimulating and amazing when you can talk to someone on a different level, especially when it is interesting and involves a lot of passion. Get me together with some hardcore gamers (or old school FPS gamers) and we can drop off into our own little worlds where our language becomes nearly foreign to anyone else. Likewise, if I get near another security/insecurity expert that I can interface with. It is a whole new and exciting level of interaction and learning.

So, next time you hear a couple people slip into a jargon-riddled and passionate and leave you to wonder what the hell they are talking about, sit back and enjoy seeing two people passionate about their interests utilizing jargon to more efficiently communicate with each other.

Some phrases and words just make my skin crawl because they either get to me or I hate their application. Here are a few that I just horribly dislike and hope that I never use.

"I could care less." I love people who get in a tizzy and try to make a point but end up saying the opposite thing. By saying you can care less, that means you care to some degree. What most people mean to say should be worded, "I couldn't care less." Few people use this correctly.

"Please join me in welcoming/congratulating..." Ugh, I really hate this one. This, for some reason, makes my skin crawl. No, I will not join you in welcoming someone to the company, but I will welcome them to the company. Just ask me to welcome them, don't ask me to join you. I don't want to join you. Besides sounded retarded and making me annoyed, this sort of tone is something I only ever will tolerate hearing during a formal banquet or speech or presentation by someone in suit or tux introducing someone else in a suit or tux.

An excellent TED Talk from Dan Gilbert about happiness. I suggest watching it twice.

And how is this for an appropriate workplace? Is this not a commentary on the stifling reality of a "regular" workplace? I think so. Here's some pictures.

Lastly, here are some myths about stress in the workplace. Stress is about how happy you are, whether you work 30 hours or 100 hours a week, do lots of work, or none, are behind or caught up. It's about how you feel during those hours of work.

Many people make new year's resolutions. But since graduating from the cyclical nature of our education systems, the new calendar year has really been little different than any other day. In fact, I think it is more poignant to make resolutions on one's birthday; that day when we tick upward into another numbered age. *sigh* So here's some resolutions I'd like to make. These are all very accomplishable, so hopefully I can get them all at least addressed.

1) Smile more of the time. In the past few years I've been, to echo one of my favorite quotes from Clerks, "A morose m****f****." I've not been a smiler lately. That might stem a bit from back in middle school I used to have a natural smile most of the time, which led kids bigger than me to rag on that feature on a regular basis. Couple that with my desire not to lay out a welcome mat for everyone to chit chat with me (I hate small talk) has led me down the slow path of just having this natural frown. I'd like to change that, so I hope to smile more. Not necessarily to people, but just in the mirror or when I'm doing something or reading or watching something. Just smile, and get used to the position of the face and muscles. Only good things can come of it.

2) Say Hello in passing more. And not just when passing someone in the office where a quick, unfeeling hello is volleyed out, but instead to someone completely random, or to a check-out person, or perhaps couple that with a comment or question that isn't just a yes/no answer. Something completely innocent and without strings. It's amazing how cool you can make someone feel for a day (or beyond) with just a smile that notices they're there, and maybe a kind word or comment. Nothing cheesy, just...something.

3) I've been impotently talking about it for a couple years, but I need to put down some firm lines on getting the certifications I already qualify for and can pass. Security+ and Network+ should be no-brainers at this point. The CISSP is also one I've been cognizant of for a couple years now, and I fully qualify as well. I also need to get my CCNA so that I have a foot firmly into the door of networking. The CCNA will take a bit more work, but I'm fully capable of it. When people who are morons compared to me (not to sound like I have an ego, but honestly I am intelligent...) have these certs... Yeah. I need to get these asap and be done with it.

4) This year will mark the first year I truly have a vision of getting out of my credit card debt. I need to make this a milestone event because having some leisure money portents a very big change in my life. Once I do that, perhaps then I will move and go back into debt. :)

5) I'm almost there, but I need to continue my charge into using Linux on a daily basis as my primary system. I am about 50% there, and really habit is holding me back more than anything else. This weekend I should knock away another 30%. By the time I can afford a new Mac laptop, I want to be firmly comfortable in Linux for pretty much anything.

6) I want to jump into things more, even if it means being in over my head. Life is short, and I've been operating my career in "careful" mode for a while now. I need to just dive into things at work and in my career and just do them. I need to tell myself I will make big mistakes this year, dramatic mistakes. I need to screw some stuff up, and get over my timidity when it comes to work. Maybe freeing myself of debt will help here, but honestly, I just need to *do* things. Not only that, but I am not married nor have kids; this is still the time in my life when I can work overtime and on weekends and late into the night without impacting anyone else's life. I need to capitalize on that. (update: While some aspects of my childhood and own personality contribute to my thinking everyone else is awesome [instead of me lacking confidence in myself, per se] and my fear of making a mistake, really my last job pounded into me a fear of making ANY mistake at all, to the point where I would rather do nothing. This attitude is what I need to adjust and reverse...)

7) I'm still in, admittedly, the worst shape of my life. I need to get back to working out, starting with some cardio for a few months along with better eating habits to lose some weight, and get back onto the weights which I've not seriously done since college. It's weighing on me, in more ways than one. I have no real weight goals or size goals, but just to be able to effectively work out on a nearly nightly basis will be my goal.

So, for better or worse, those are my major resolutions for this year.

I can't remember how I got to thinking about this, but while driving somewhere I thought about what job I would do if I had the choice, and money was not an object, and so on. Right now, these are the five answers I have (in no particular order, and these are only best-scenario jobs, I'd be happy with other stuff too):

1) Junior/low level network engineer/admin for a company that has at least one more senior member than me. I am still studying up for to take my CCNA class, and I'd love to get into a networking job and learn from someone else for a bit. Mostly, I just don't feel fully ready to be the sole networker, although I wouldn't turn that down if it came up.

2) A similar job entrenched fully into security where I can learn from someone else. As long as it is not a management level job. I'd rather be responding to incidents, evaluating, assessing, and configuring than managing right now.

3) Be a member on a pen-testing team, or do my own vulnerability assessments. I think being a member of a pen-testing team where I can learn a ton and develop my skills would be the top job I would take right now. But I'd also be happy doing vuln assessments either on my own or as part of a team that does that.

4) Honestly, I would be happy doing what I do now (a mix of all of the above, networking, systems, security...i.e. your typical sysadmin at a small-medium company), only at a company that I felt better about working for, and comfortable with.

5) A forest park ranger or wildlife researcher/caretaker/conservative. It is not widely known, but my first love as a kid is of nature and wildlife and that continued up through half of my college studies. During college I switched over, but this still very much remains my second love and something I cherish in my leisure time. I'm sure someday, given the right friends, I'd happily volunteer in roles like this.

In 20 years, I see myself ready for management. :) Honestly, I will get there some day, just right now I hope it is later than sooner. I'd love to manage an IT team, networking team, security team, or better yet, my own pen-testing team. Also, I'd love to move over to working and researching and teaching at a major university and retire in that setting. I think I always will have a small bit of me missing the college atmosphere, and I think I'd love to get back to some of that closer to retirement, while doing another thing I really kinda like doing: teaching.

As much a note to myself as anyone else, Joel has released the Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing 3.0. Good stuff!

Sometimes inspiration can come from unlikely places. The other week I was reading an article on ESPN.com describing Minnesota's recently added running back Chester Taylor. This quote struck me:

"They [Minnesota] told me when I came here that I was going to be the guy," said Taylor, who spent the first four years of his career with the Baltimore Ravens, mostly as the caddie for Jamal Lewis. "They've kept up their end of the bargain. I'm just doing the best I can to keep up my end."

I sat back a moment and realized what he was saying. He was putting himself up there saying I can do this, I'm your man. Now, does he really know he is the man? Probably not. He could be injured or just plain disappoint by not rushing for very many yards, become plagued by fumbles, or otherwise just be a regular old running back and nothing special.

And what if that happened? Who would really care? The Vikings might care a bit and possibly cut him loose or penalize him with a lesser contract later, but really, who cares or will ever notice or remember him as the man who let everyone down? Not many outside of a small managerial circle at Minnesota.

Turns out, he's been doing excellently, in fact. Hence a story about him.

This reminded me of the workplace and my current attitude on some things. I tend to manage expectations down to my current levels, so that I don't disappoint anyone where I work. With work, I tend to be cautiously realistic as opposed to enthusiastically optimistic like Taylor. This is something I need to work on and realize when I move on to my next job. I need to talk myself up, be the key person they need. (And yes, I can trace this issue back to my previous job and also some childhood issues that shaped my personality...identifying them so I can deal with them; and also how my attitude reflects the environment I am in and the manager/teammates that I have...)

Because, let's face it. If I happen to fail or am wrong, it won't be the end of my life. Hell, it won't be the end of my career or likely even effect my next job. The only dig would be at my personal integrity, which, honestly, can deal with being wrong now and then, a disappointment now and then, a mistake now and then. But even if I don't meet such lofty expectations about being the man, I am very confident I can at the very least be a solid team member and contributor, even if I'm not a franchise level player.