Weekly Update, November 16, 2020
Greetz internet friend and welcome back to my blog! I’ve only got about a half hour today, so there is no time for anything but a short one. So, buckle up and let’s get started!
Politics
As much as I hate to even give it any oxygen, it’s worth mentioning that Joe Biden won the election by the same number of electoral votes that Donald Trump’s people were calling a landslide in 2016, which is pretty delightful. Donald Trump both lost and is a loser!
What is less delightful is seeing the rioting happening in DC last weekend and (shock) the cops were nowhere to be found. I’m sure it had nothing to do with them being embedded within the rioters…. Nah, they just ran out of pepper spray and rubber bullets. I read an article in the Washington Post that I won’t link to, but it does indicate the cops stopped some of the violence but I also read that twenty people were hospitalized so, you know, there’s that.
At any rate, I spent more time than I planned over the weekend calling out bullcrap on Twitter. It’s cost me some followers, but that’s fine! I regularly write controversial things so it’s no great shock that people who came for infosec content don’t dig the feed and check out.
It’s also not going to stop me from speaking out, it’s more one of those, “we are aware of the problem, we’re just not doing anything to solve it” kind of situations. I worked really hard over the last few years to build a platform and I’m going to use it to call out injustice!
Black Lives Matter
Like previous weeks, I don’t really have any grand agenda here outside writing that Black Lives Matter! I found this interesting article I’ve not had time to read but I might write about it next week, you can check it out here
Additionally, if you are wondering what else you can do, I’d suggest reading a book on anti-racism and find some people to follow on Twitter who look different from you!
Professional
Last week was more web application penetration testing and trying to pitch big ideas to a giant company.
Over the weekend, I invested time in teaching myself about marketing and learning what causes startups to succeed or fail. I’ve been trying to learn more about sales, but to complete the trifecta I need to also learn about marketing and one other thing that Donald Rumsfeld would call a “known unknown”, which is something that I know I don’t know. Don’t worry if that doesn’t make sense – it didn’t make sense back then either! All I know is that I’ve tried to start a few companies in the past and failed spectacularly. If I ever try to do it again, I would like to know what other people have found successful or not and try to avoid those mistakes!
Personal
I am very proud that Saturday night I finally published my short story I’ve been working on it for the last few months that served as the inspiration for my novel. I had so much fun writing it that I decided to try my hand at NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month and has been on my bucket list for the last ten years. My goal is not to complete the 60,000 word goal I set for my novel in a month, but to complete half the words so I can finish it next month when I have more time off. As of this morning, I’ve got 16,602 words, which puts me over my halfway point goal.
I want to also add that I love writing fiction! I have spent so much of my life writing nonfiction that I had no idea how much fun I was missing out on! I’ve learned neat tricks like adding descriptions to people not only gives you more words (bonus) but also creates a better idea in the mind of the reader of what your characters are like, and it also paints that picture in my mind as well.
It’s really fun because it isn’t entirely fiction either. My novel is set eighty or so years in the future and imagines what society would be like if a group of people used my short story and built a society from those principals. So far I am working on essays on the first five years of the Cascadian experiment, k-12 education, and higher education. There will also be essays on the political organization of Cascadia as well as an essay on how the businesses in Cascadia will be operated. Perhaps there will be more, but for now that’s the outline. There’s also a fictional sci-fi short story thrown in as well.
Anyway, I’m looking at the clock and I’m running late so it’s time to wrap this up!
People to follow
As I do every week, here are some tech and non-tech people you might consider following on Twitter.
Martin Luther King III - The son of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bernice King - The daughter of Dr. King
@cetolyne - great friend, awesome programmer, super helpful!
@blenster - cool maker, very positive, well worth a follow!
@GWeessies - very smart person doing interesting research!
Marley - first place champ! Marley is one of the best on Twitter!
Null Coder - another awesome person to keep an eye on!
@EvilMog - creator of the DC MUD and an interesting person to follow.
TrakoZG – an internet friend who tweets excellent things
Sofia Rune – brilliant scholar who shares things that are both insightful and valuable
That’s it for this week, internet friend! Click here for the short story I wrote, and click here for the next post. Finally, I hope you have a very nice day and a most excellent week!