Alright – a little step off the beaten path today. So I have this blog and this domain called infoseczen, except now I don’t just do security day in and day out, I use bailing wire and bubblegum and lost episodes of MacGyver to make the impossible possible. At least, that’s what I tell myself – it’s better than being a janitor. So here are a few things you might find interesting.

First, over at Penelope Trunk’s blog, she talks about the triumph of just getting out of bed in the morning. We all know what it’s like to have a tough time starting your day, but I think she put a finer point on it. It’s that first step down the road toward something, overcoming that first hurdle that makes each step you take get you that much closer. When you finally complete that huge task, was it the last step you took or the first step you took that was the Triumph? Day in and day out I have tasks that I end up cruising through once I sit down and commit 10 minutes to getting started. I agree, the triumph is committing yourself to moving forward – the reward is completion. I also agree with her comment that high achievers do not have failure. There’s a big difference between making a mistake and failing – they are not the same. You make a mistake, you learn, you don’t make that mistake again. If that’s failure then Thomas Edison was one of the biggest failures of our time and we know that’s not the case.

Second, for those of you who might spend life in a Unix terminal like me…. I’ve used GNU screen for the last 10 years but have recently gone in search of something a little updated. Someone had to be working on an update right? Yes – I discovered tmux. Maybe I’ll post a bit more when I have a good handle on a solid configuration & how to get it working with all the other bits I used in screen (almost there). Anyhow, if you use screen and it’s perfect for you and you don’t like change, forget I ever said anything. If you are interested in splitting your screen windows a million ways, scripting your screen layout and being able to simultaneously attach to your session from multiple locations with a tool that’ll intelligently scale your terminal (like attaching from your Android device) then tmux might be for you.

Lastly, I think I’m coming to the conclusion that for me, being dedicated to security isn’t where it’s at. I want to educate your common techie about security and have those folks understand the important concepts and important issues so good decisions get made on the ground. I still think there’s plenty of important roles for security experts – there always will be – I just think for me it needs to be a balance between day to day implementation and troubleshooting and scalable architecture with security as a part of all of that. If we need an expert – I know where to go – but for me being that expert is not where it’s at.

I guess I don’t mind making mistakes, I like learning from them, and this is #101 because it’s my Triumph, that very basic, very first step.