Friday, December 31, 2021
Same Auld, same Auld Lang Syne
This New Year’s Eve instead of singing Auld Lang Syne, I’m going to sing same old anxiety.
Not only does it NOT feel like 2021 has come to end, but it feels like 2020 and to some extent 2019 hasn’t ended either. And with yet another new variant of the Coronavirus spreading throughout the world, it’s beginning to look like things will be very much the same in 2022.
I’m usually an unabashed optimist and always try to look on the bright side of life. (Go ahead and sing it. I know you want to.) But the events of the last few years have left me so very tired that even I am having trouble giving people the benefit of the doubt. I’m beginning to think that Eric Idle was right and not only is life “quite absurd, and death's the final word” but that people are treating life like a piece of $h!t and are making death a joke by listening to pundits and politicians instead of scientist and doctors, who actually know what they’re talking about.
I’m also exhausted by all excuses people give like “the government can’t tell me what to do” or wearing a mask or vaccine mandates “violate my rights.” I’m tired of trying to explain to people that even in a democratic society, government DOES in fact have the right to tell you what you can and can’t do. If it didn’t, we’d be living in anarchy not a democracy! Furthermore, with the rights we have as Americans, comes responsibility to others, yet no one is talking about that!
Contrary to what some pundits would have you believe, the government isn’t saying you must wear a mask at all times and get a vaccine shot or you will be arrested and sent to a gulag somewhere.
No. The choice on whether you want to do that still resides with you. All it’s saying is that if you want to go into public places, you will need to abide by certain rules designed to help protect others. It’s your choice. Don’t want to mask up or get the jab? Fine. The government doesn’t care. You can stay home and do what you want. But if you want to venture out into public, where you can potentially spread the virus to your fellow citizens – or worse yet catch it yourself – then you have mask up or get vaccinated. The choice is entirely yours.
I don’t understand why people can’t seem to grasp this concept. Growing up, I never heard one complaint about the “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” signs on restaurant doors. If you wanted to eat out, everyone knew you had to put on a shirt and at least wear some sandals before entering an establishment. Same thing about the 25 MPH speed limit through residential neighborhoods. No one ever screamed that the government was violating their rights by making them drive their car slowly through streets kids play on instead of driving it however fast they want.
These are THE SAME TYPES OF RESTRICTIONS as the mandates that people are now screaming about! And despite a year’s worth of proof that masks and vaccines drastically slow the pandemic’s progress, there’s still a large minority of the population who doesn’t believe this.
That’s why I’m no longer optimistic that 2022 will be any different than 2020 or 2021. If this keeps up, the pandemic will drag on and on and drawing ever closer to my friends and family until it finally claims someone close to me.
So that why at midnight (with apologies to Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns ) I’ll be singing:
For old anxieties, my dear
For old anxieties!
We'll need a jab o' vaccine yet
To put to rest old anxieties!
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Starting a new chapter, literally
You’d think that after spending over a decade trying to finish one novel, I’d be anxious to get it edited and published.
And you wouldn’t be wrong.
I am.
It’s just that now that’s its done, I’ve become more intrigued with the idea of finding out what happed to my characters after the story ended then revisiting events I’ve already written about.
When I grew up, most sequels to stories I loved always seemed to begin with the characters “reset” back to a state near to where we first met them. What they’d been through didn’t seem to change them much at all, so they were ready and willing to take on the next great threat or go out on a new set of adventures.
This was especially true of genre TV shows of the time -- “Star Trek,” the original “Battlestar Galactica” and classic “Doctor Who” as well as films featuring characters like Indiana Jones, James Bond or any comic book character.
Sure, sometimes the writers would pay lip service to the things characters went through in previous stories, but more often than not, it was only used as a plot device to propel the characters into the new story, then all but forgotten.
The problem is things don’t work that way in real life. People just don’t “move on” or reset themselves after experiencing life-threatening events. Just ask any military veteran or first-responder who’ve been through a harrowing event.
It changes them, whether they’ll admit it or not, and while my characters may not be real people to you, they are to me. I figured they’d be suffering some sort of PTSD, and what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t help them through it? So, for the last three months, I’ve been taking them to therapy, helping them explore what they must be feeling and trying to help them figure out how to live with what they’ve gone through.
I have no idea where this is going. I just have a couple of vague ideas banging around in my head, and a handful of characters I really enjoy spending time with. Like my first story, I’m just feeling my way through this, with no set plot in mind. I figure I’ll just keep writing and rewriting scenes until hopefully a coherent story emerges.
And if I get stuck -- which I know I inevitably will -- I can always go back to edit the first story until new inspiration hits.
Sunday, October 31, 2021
Sneak Peak at my new book, Tears of Phoenix
Welcome to the world of Phoenix, a desert planet in orbit of a red dwarf star, it's it's inhabitants call Fornax
Over the last two months, I’ve told you a bit about the novel I it has taken me half my life to finish, Tears of the Phoenix, and while it still needs to be thoroughly edited, I’m anxious to share it with the world.
That’s why I decided to publish the prologue from it, which takes place in the distant past, but whose events sets the whole story in motion.
So, without any future ado, here it is. Let me know what you think of it in the comments below:
PREFACE: Betrayal
The woman on the left, the eldest of the three, looked up, hatred turning her eyes a deep red. “The Tears of The Phoenix are too powerful for any one man to possess,” she spat.
The king back-handed her across the face, hard. “I will have none of that witch!” he said. “Do you take me for a fool? Do you think I would not have taken precautions against your powers?” he asked nodding to two women standing behind him, their eyes glowing red from beneath their hooded white robes. “For far too long we have been ruled by you Tyrs and your constant rivalries! All you have brought us is war after bloody war. I am so near to ending at that…”
A white mist began to swirl around the men, who suddenly seemed to be receding, though they were not moving. Soon they were completely obscured. Then through the fog emerged two balls of flame. They burned through the mist, finally transforming into a set of glowing red eyes.
Thursday, September 30, 2021
Presenting my novel: Tears of the Phoenix
That was on purpose. You see I wanted to whet your appetite and build suspense this month’s big reveal.
Okay. Not really.
I just wanted to give myself a topic for this month’s post.
So now that I’ve done that, I’m finally ready to tell you what my epic-in-the-making is about.
As you can see from the preliminary cover pictured above, it’s called “Tears of the Phoenix” and it’s what I’d like to think of as space opera grounded in reality. I call it this because I tried to make the characters, settings and situations feel so familiar and plausible that all the space opera tropes just fade into the background.
I was inspired to do this by stories like George RR Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series which read like a history text on medieval Europe if medieval Europe just happened to feature dragons and magic, or some of the Marvel movies such as “Captain America: The First Avenger,” which was really ’40s-era World War II flick that just happened to be about a superhero or “Ant-Man” which was really a heist film in the vein of the “Ocean's 11” or “The Italian Job” rather than another superhero origin story.
Whether I succeeded in doing this will be up to you, but here’s the back-of-the book synopsis:
After a chance meeting with a shy, young graduate student at a prestigious Upstate New York university, medical student Dawn Amanda finds herself drawn into a galactic civil war between two alien factions racing to find and control eight crystals which hold the power of creation itself.But she soon finds that she is no innocent bystander to events she thought beyond her control and soon realizes that she is an integral player in a crusade whose outcome will determine the fate of both their races.
Let me know in the comments below if this blub would make you want to pick up the book or if you like the cover.
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Never Can Say Goodbye
While the start of a novel of a thousand pages begins with the typing of a single word, it often ends with both a bang and a whimper.
The bang, of course, comes from both the climax of a hopefully exciting plot/character arch and the elation of finally finishing a long-awaited masterpiece, while the whimper comes from having to let go of a work you’ve poured so much time and effort into.
I discovered this odd dichotomy earlier this month when I finally finished writing a story I’ve been working on for almost 40 years. It’s taken many forms over the past four decades and while the plot and setting have changed many times, the main characters have mostly remained the same.
They’ve been with me for so long that they feel like real, flesh-and-blood people who have seen me though all the major changes in my life. They were my constant companions, with me day and night, whispering their secrets into my ears and keeping mine. And now that their story has concluded – at least for now – I feel like I’m leaving them behind.
Only I don’t want them to go.
I know. There is still the long and arduous editing process where I’ll need to do some rewrites to trim the bloat, streamline the plot and fix any continuity errors caused by writing the story out of sequence over such a long period of time. And then there are the enviable sequels that are already swirling around in my head. But it’s still kind of strange and sad knowing I’ve finished with them and their main story for now.
At the moment, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to spend my future summer vacations. I used to spend them in the pool, in my floaty-chair, pad of paper and pencil in hand scribbling away to finish this story. It was my way of removing myself from any distractions or temptation to do something else and let me concentrate on just writing. Every year, I’d tell myself, “This is the summer I’m going to finish it!” and inevitably I’d struggle to overcome writer’s block or my imaginary friends would stop whispering in my ears and my progress would slow to a crawl.
That seemed to change last year with the pandemic. Suddenly, they couldn’t shut up and I spent both this and last summer just trying to keep up with them. Not everything they told me turned out to be true, because I needed to rewrite some sections two or three times before they told me I’d gotten it write… er… I mean right. But at least they were filling in the remaining holes in their story. I guess they’d gotten tired of being locked down too.
So again, I spent every hour I could this summer either in my pool or on a hammock swing in my backyard away from all distractions, dutifully recording what my imaginary friends were telling me before they stopped talking again. Then, before I knew, it I was done.
At first, I couldn’t believe it. Part me of never thought I’d actually finish. I was ecstatic!
Then came the letdown, depression and listlessness. For a week or two after that, I didn’t have the motivation to type those last hand-written sections into the computer to complete the initial draft or do anything even remotely creative.
Fortunately, the feeling has faded and last weekend I began typing in those final sections, so that by the end of Labor Day weekend, I’m pretty sure I’ll have that initial draft assembled and truly know if that single word did indeed begin a journey of a thousand pages.
Saturday, July 31, 2021
Cybersecurity wrap up
For the last six months, I've been writing about how to keep yourself safe online. I concluded the series -- for now -- last month, and for your convenience, I'm creating a index of all those articles here so you have one-handy place to reference all of them.
When it comes to Cybersecurity, humans are the weakest linkJust trying to using technology to protect data won't keep people safe from cyber criminals. In fact, it may actually make matters worse. Adding complexity to existing security systems will only make it harder for regular folks to use and understand it. The key to keeping people safe is to change their behavior.
Cybersecurity speak: Is it all geek to you?
When IT folks start talking about cybersecurity we often use many terms people don't understand. So in this article, I explain what much of that jargon means.
Is there something phishy going on in your inbox?
In this article, I show you how you can identify scam e-mails that enter your inbox. And the key to protecting yourself is deceptively easy – trust nobody. Assume every message you get is fake until you can confirm it’s not.
Pass the word about good passwords
You hear IT folks saying it all the time. You need to create complex passwords and should have a different one for every account you have. The problem is remembering them all. This article will give tips on how to do that.
2FA or not 2FA? That’s the question…
No matter how unguessable you think your password is or how careful you are about avoiding online scams, your credentials could still be stolen by hackers who target the companies who store those passwords. That’s why you need to further secure your important accounts by using something called Two Factor Authentication (2FA) or Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).
Focus on the people, not the technology
IT folks need to get users to think about cybersecurity in same way they think about their safety and security in the real world. Because when it comes down to it, keeping safe online is nothing more than following the same common-sense safety procedures we were all taught as kids and no longer even have to think about.
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Cybersecurity: Focus on the people, not the technology
Over the last few months, I’ve written a lot about cybersecurity, yet many of you may have noticed that I didn’t talk a lot about technological defenses such as software that you can install on your devices to detect and block viruses and malware, or things like VPNs, which can help anonymize you so hackers – or even the companies you do regular business with – can’t track you across the web.
Neither did I talk about rules you could set up to prevent spam and fraudulent e-mails from reaching your inbox or browser add-ins you could install to block you from going to malicious websites which try to trick you into revealing your personal information or downloading spyware.
It’s not that these things aren’t important – because they are – but I’ve noticed that when you start taking about stuff like that, a lot of people’s eyes start to glaze over. It all sounds very complicated, and many people don’t understand it or lack the confidence or competence to set it up themselves.
Another reason I avoided talking about these things is because having all the best security technology in the world doesn’t guarantee you won’t become a victim of cybercrime.
Just ask the folks who run the Colonial Pipeline and JBS Foods. Both these big companies have a
department full of IT folks equipped with some pretty sophisticated equipment, yet both got hit with ransomware attacks in May and both had to pay a huge amount of money to get their data back.
Look, I’m not laying the blame solely on intentionally careless users. Most folks I know try to be careful, but either don’t understand why they need to follow the guideless their IT folks say they should or find all the procedures and checklists too complicated or hard to remember. And frankly this is the fault of us IT folks for making things way more complicated than they need to be.
Instead of concentrating on the technical aspects of keeping people safe, we IT folks need to take a more people-centric approach to cybersecurity. We need to make its concepts more tangible to what people do in the real word without really thinking about it.
For example, if you asked most folks if they would leave the key to their house under the door mat where every burglar in the world knows to look for it, or ask them if they’d leave their wallet or purse unattended in a public place or if they’d give a complete stranger their credit card, social security number or bank account number, I’m sure 99.999999 percent of them would say no.
It’s just common-sense safety procedures we were all taught as kids and don’t think twice about. We just do it without thinking because it’s so ingrained in us.
And that should be the goal of every IT professional. Get users to think about cybersecurity in same way they think about their safety and security in the real world.
For example, no one would secure their valuables with a padlock which only had a one-digit combination. Anyone could open that lock in seconds by just trying every number from 0 to 9 until they got the right one. Furthermore, they wouldn’t use that same one-digit combination on every lockbox they owned. That would be crazy, right?
Yet in 2020, over 2 million people used “123456” as their password!
But having so many passwords is hard to remember, they’ll say. To which I’d answer: So, it is remembering what all the different keys on your keyring are for, but you don’t have a single key that opens all the doors in your house, car, office, or deposit box do you? It would be too dangerous if you lost it.
The key (if you’ll excuse the analogy) is to get people to see that cybersecurity isn’t some new nebulous thing they need to master but just an extension of their everyday, real-word safety habits that they’ve been practicing all their lives. There’s no need to master any new skills. They just need to apply the skills they already have to the virtual world as well as the physical.
I really believe that this people-centric approach to online security is vastly superior to any technological solution we could come up with. If we can get people to view that fake e-mail from a bank with the same suspicion they’d give to a stranger who just knocked on their door and claimed to be representative from their bank, then there would be little need for all that super-complicated technology.
I hope that this series has helped you to better understand this and see that keeping yourself safe out there in cyberspace isn’t as complicated as you might have thought.