How far will you search for yourself?

I stood on the deck at the back of my house next to the tree and the grass and the sky. It was night and I stared upon a full set of stars and a moon and few clouds.

I closed my eyes away from the distraction of reality and lifted myself out of my body. There I stood below, head up and arms dropped at my sides. And then the deck and the house and trees. Higher still capturing streets and highways in my mind’s eye.

Higher still.

The city. Many of them. Rivers snaking along on the edges of the continent. The familiar shape of my world; the glistening masses of the North; The seas and great oceans. And then clouds blurred my vision and dampened my skin.

Darkness and cold soon enveloped me. The rushing air slowly died away and the vacuum of nothingness surrounded me.

It was beautiful; the arc of the Earth; the Moon in front of the Sun. But I was cold and alone and I had long ago lost control of my travel, and with it any possibility of turning around and setting for home; and pain and fear and doubt and self-pity were all I could focus on.

And yet higher still I went.

The perfect orbs of distant planets rushed past me; the golden fire of the Sun in the center. And then other similar systems entered my vision. Many thousands of these lay scattered in semi-orderly fashion, quickly receding and shrinking away as I ascended further.

And eventually my ascent slowed and ended and I finally stood far enough back to observe the entire picture. This was where I sought; the end of my journey; here I finally find my answers.

For many days I stared, deeply searching the canvas before me; searching for an answer. Waiting and meditating until enlightenment.

And yet somehow, there was a distinct familiarity with what I was watching. And after a long period of silence and reflection I suddenly recalled, much to my dismay, what I stared upon.

It looked exactly like the sky I stood under on the deck at the back of my house next to the tree and the grass and the sky.

Such a long journey… Have I wasted my precious time and energy? Why couldn’t I simply have accepted the knowledge and wisdom I had before I started on this adventure? Why quest and hurt and suffer for an answer I had before I asked the question? What… have I gained?

And as I faded back into myself, and despondently rejoined my physical body, the answer came to me in my own voice:

Life is an experience, not an objective.

That the end, is not the point at which to feel the joy of success or the disappointment of failure; that the beauty and experience of the journey itself is where joy lies hidden away, in between the moments, behind the interactions, under each act and each sacrifice, begging to be observed and appreciated.

Every day. Every minute. If we could appreciate every second, then we would have truly lived full lives, irrespective of the end, whatever it may be.

May we all win.

And that’s just life isn’t it? Tricky and full of misguiding falsities. But if God were to give us a cheat code that takes us straight to the end of the game, we would have enjoyed and experienced nothing.

Ironic; The cheat-code cheats us out of experiencing life by delivering results without effort.

We find that our taste has become bland, and our ears monotone. And we search desperately to regain our love for life with anti-life escapisms.

And so, maybe if we ignore these god-mode, cheat-code impulses and reach for the “hands-dirty” approach, we might find ourselves closer to life, and thus fulfilled.

Albeit slow and painful, and often heartbreaking and disillusioning, the sad truth may be that the true enjoyment of life is found in the retrospective vision of suffering!

And so, let’s not shirk the work or avoid the commitments. That’s a perspective that we need to rid ourselves of as quickly as we can. Because it certainly is addictive; to be lazy. To be in our safe zone. To be unaccountable. And to not be aware of every moment wasted.

That’s a recipe for being ignored and inconsequential.

Let’s embrace the risk of commitment, and gamble our pride and reputation. Go out there and do something world-changing! Save a homeless person, start a business, get a dog, change jobs,  introduce people, join a club, or even randomly have a heart to heart conversation with a stranger! For each of us, it may be a different act, but the risk to each of us feels the same.

Yes, it’s a gamble. It’s a risk. But here’s what we have the most difficulty coming to terms with: Losing a life-gamble is not the end of the world. You have not lost the entire game. You’ve just sacrificed a pawn to get better positioning. In other words: You live and you learn.

The next time you engage in a battle, the experience of the last battle and the one before and the one before; those will guide your footsteps, determine your next words, and carry you a little further than before.

In the end, that’s the game: We all start off with one step forward-twenty steps back. and then we learn, and the next time we etch our way to one step forward-19 steps back… further and further until we start progressing again… two steps forward-one step back…five steps forward-two steps back. And so the dance continues.

And its a lifetime of playing, involving arrays of possibilities, many lost battles, and many sacrifices. But also many new laughs, new friends, loves, and experiences.

And the winner? The one who learns, changes, and executes again and again. The one who overcomes the obstacles of pride and fear. The one who above all, does not stop evolving. Does not stop learning. Never stops risking.

May we all win.

The Importance of the past

If someone asks you, “When was the last time you were happy?”, what would you say? Most would reach for the defensive cliché and say something like, “Well, I’m happy right now.” But that wouldn’t be true would it? It’s quite impossible to be happy right now, if you’re alive.

The very fact that you are alive suggests that you have some need to fulfill. The very fact that you have some need to fulfill contradicts the word happy, which to me is synonymous to fulfilled.

So I toy with the idea that happiness is not something of the present, for living beings. It is retrospective. We can say, when we fulfilled something in the past, it made us happy.

But to say we are happy right now, is to claim fulfillment and therefore, death. Yes death, because to want oxygen in your lungs is a state of unfulfillment isn’t it?

The very moment after any fulfilment brings about the need for some other fulfilment. The act of succeeding at one thing is enough to instil the desire to succeed at something else. By our very nature, the present is an unhappy time.

It is clear to me that the past is where we can fondly observe happiness. To remember the moments of fulfilment.

This perspective can bring about a certain level of contentment with the unhappy position of the present though, can’t it? We can say, for example, “I am not happy, but i remember happiness fondly, and that makes me contented.”

SO, (off the wagon moment!), maybe the quest is not for happiness, but for contentment! A state of mind in which we believe that we are serving the past faithfully.

It seems to me that we should carefully plan our objectives in life. This is to ensure that we have milestones to mark our happiness. Without these, we forget that we have in fact fulfilled in the past, and we lose that sense of contentment with the present.

When is the last time I was happy? less that a minute ago, after this concept entered my mind and I fulfilled the need to write this blog. And now? I’m contented with that achievement.

But already the feeling is fading, and my mind seeks the next quest.

The power of words

Well… I guess poetry has not left the minds of men. We still linger… but now we linger on the web… still in hope that some great writer will produce a small sample of his creativity, that can massage our senses. Words, and no more, that well our eyes with tears and tremble our cheeks in uncontrollable emotion.

My good friend and I innocently (and somewhat unknowingly) engaged such an event on Facebook. It essentially was a simple challenge to outwit by word the other. Comment after comment, we attacked and parried. Line after rhyme we insulted lightly. It was good fun.

Then, some others decided to engage, and in the spirit of the battle we over-killed our prey… and things turned somewhat sour from then on.

Nevertheless it ended reasonably harmlessly and life went on as per usual… well, for most of us. Me? I still have the energy of the words fresh in my mind. I admit, I go back once in a while in the hope that someone added another line or two. But I guess it’s best that it ended where it did. There was little left to say.

But imagine the mirages and misdirection in this world! We claim that glory is best sought with money and power! Yet I was thoroughly inspired by free words from free men. On a free platform no less!

(So here’s where I jump off the wagon!)

Maybe the truth is, that such things as money are simply control mechanisms, set in place by some great minds in the past. The glue, that holds society together. The seeming need to be part of the machine, lest you be left in poverty and hopelessness.

Now see? That’s a fallacy if I ever heard one. Poverty isn’t necessarily hopelessness is it? I don’t believe so. But still we tend to group those two words. That when one is without money, poor, one has no hope. A statement that eliminates the possibility of hope outside of money. And then naturally, hope becomes money.

And so we commonly say, “I hope to… when I’m rich I’ll…” Tsk… How can I convince you… the effort to do what you hope to do even before you are rich, is what will give you what you want and possibly even make you rich.

That money is part of the system, not the true coin of the system. It’s like the house and the dog. Or the prestige and the fame. Or the power and the luxuries. It’s just another one of the perks that lie between the will and the success.

None of them will give you the will. None will achieve you success. Only when you find the will, then as you journey to inevitable success, they will become part of your journey. And as you reach closer to success, their lure will diminish I believe.

Because you don’t really want money… its just metal or paper. nor house or car. Just stone rubber really. What you want is the ability to achieve, and these are all vehicles to that end.

That is possibly why, those who find such enlightenment through achievement, often live humble and charitable lives.

Anyway… ramblings of a mad man as usual.

My dad would say, “Very close son. But I believe the true meaning of life to be in each individual’s ministry… Their life principles. Their service to others and themselves. Once found and followed, there can be no regret and no boundaries.”

He’s clearly just as insane.

Register is down!

So, register.com was hit by the DDoS dragon earlier this week, as many of you know (sadly, because many of you went down with them). Don't feel too bad. Two of mine was down as well! So, what's the opinion of reggie's customers? Should we jump ship across to a different dns hosting company? Or should we follow our heart and loyalty, hoping that this is not the new standard?

Well, for me personally, I'm going to stick it out with good old reggie. And it's not because i'm particularly loyal to the company. I don't have shares. no.. no.. I don't work there... neither does any family immediate or otherwise. The decision to stay is based entirely on the type of attack that took place.

Ah... availabilty attacks. Such beautiful things. Uncaring and unsophisticated they aim only to crowd the entrance way enough so that legitimate customers can't get in. And to do that, they don't need to crack the passwords to the server, or release deadly viruses on the network, or any of that sort. Some do use these additional elements for more efficient attacks but they aren't really necessary for the basic DoS or DDoS.

Denial of Service attacks (including their distributed versions) need only sufficient resources at their disposal to attempt to over-use the legitimate service being provided to them. That is too say, if you want to DoS a DNS server, you just need to make a very high amount of standard DNS requests very quickly. And poof! you've out-resourced the server and they're down for the count. Quick literally "for the count" actually, because they're only down for as long as you can maintain the storm. Once you ease up and their resources are freed, well... they're back in game.

So, who's vulnerable? Anyone that provides a service on the Internet is vulnerable. And I mean anyone. The easiest way to envision this is, once your customers can access your service, DoS attacks can as well. WOW eh? I bet you never thought you were so vulnerable. Why hasn't it happened to you, you may ask? Well most likely either you're not popular enough or you simply haven't been noticed yet.

And here's the best part: What can you do when you get hit with a DoS? ......

.... Nothing.

That's not entirely true I suppose. I should say, nothing effective. You do have a couple of options. One is to call your ISP and ask them to ban the range of attacking IP's that are targetting your service (I hope you have a fresh pot of coffee in front of you. They tend to be "very busy" and make you wait forever). A good piece of advice is, when calling your ISP for this kind of problem, have all the facts you need right in front of you: IP address, name, attacking subnets, start time of attack, number of attackers, etc.

Another approach is to Turing test all your web servers (this of course only helps for ddos over web servers). Turings are the little cute disfugured images you get on every other website these days that basically ask you to confirm that you're human. It's an easy mock-up to do in C#. Tack this bad boy to your sites and configure to only activate when repition is detected or utilization is high.

Inner me? Maybe...

Wow! look at me! posting again in a matter of hours! Damn, this is addictive! It's like a need... a drive... i'm....i MUST spill my soul to the world! This is... my destiny...  =)

Ok ok... too dramatic I know. But seriously. There's a reason I'm back so soon (blogging addiction not withstanding). I'm beginning to accept something about myself. It's been happening over my entire life, but i've been denying it. A true me inside, fighting, struggling to get out. 

I've kept its true power hidden deep within, but hints of it always slipped out; in conversation. In dreams. The way I look at certain people. I know i've given it away already. i can see you nodding your heads in understanding.

My faithful readers, you shall be the first to know! (well, first-ish, i discussed it with my girlfriend last night [yes! nerds can have girlfriends!...don't let me....!]). I am.... I'm.... a PROGRAMMER!!

...that was quite destressing, actually (the blog-therapy-theory is holding some water). 

Now wait wait. Don't walk away shaking your heads in anticlimatic dismay. There's more to this than you think. You see, there are people who can code in this world. But there's a subset of these people. They don't just code. Their lives ARE code!

It gets worse. Everytime they look at you, they analyze you. They break you down into self-contained modules, then they figure out the scope of your retentive parts. They try to understand how your API's work in your body and mock-up a dev version of you in their mind. 

Now these folk... these are the programmers. The others just know how to code. Get it? 

See, I've always known how to code. I came out of the womb with a fair knowledge of QBasic and Pascal. My first word was GOTO! If you believe those things you're a sucker, but suffice to say, I can code.

It's not the language that truly defines the programmer though. It's the ability to manipulate the language as fluently as thought. To think in constructs and classes; services and interfaces. Not to see the application of code in the real world, but to accept that code is the real world! (too Matrix-ey? well, it's true)

I've denied this monster in me for a long time. When I think back on the way that I think, it seems that I've always over analyzed everything in my programmer's way. 

Of course, many people couldn't stand it and kept their distance. And many other's couldn't fathom it but kept their nodding. It's the other class of people (see? class!...sigh) who truly made and makes the difference. The class that may not understand the thought patterns, but understand the concept.

Now, I've been denying their opinions on my programmer spirit forever. No..no... I code for fun. I'll "never" code for a job. Too monotonous. Too boring. Too little thinking. *shakes head*... never... 

But... what the hell is wrong with me? I spend more than 12 hours of every single day on my laptop. Of those 12 hours, at least 6 of them involve a compiler (Visual Studio 2008 these days. It's very good). Now... if it's so boring... so monotonous...why then do I do it more than anything else?... 

A conundrum? yes... but clarity has washed me. I have accepted it. I am a PROGRAMMER (ok ok, I'll stop using caps).

Anyway... that's about it. Just needed to share the revelation. I can go back to Playstation Home now. Oh yea, since XI has hit the scene on Home I'm spending alot of time there!

Very mysterious-like and full of cool puzzles. Not to mention it's really the only thing to do on Home... aaannnd.... Jesse is kinda hott.  =)

If you don't know what i'm talking about and you have a PS3. gah! blasphemy! Save your soul and log on to Home. Look for the graffiti on the cream wall. Your journey starts there. =)

Awake ye! ... it's time to blog.

So, the funniest thing about what's happening here (me blogging that is), is how long i've been dying to do this! I've been through many versions of blogs, mostly self-built (yes I'm "another geeky coder".. back off!). 

But oh of course it could never quite have the same ring of satisfaction that one would get from being on something like say blogspot or facebook (or twitter, as much as those birds crawl my blood!). 

Yes well, when you think about it, it's quite obvious. One blogs to voice themselves. Like some cheap form of therapy... 

As I think about it, such effective and free means of destressing must have psychiatrists a little pissy. Here we are, sitting in the comfort of our house (or cafe, or park, or work, or wardriving outside a random person's house...hehe), writing about ourselves... like... willingly! 

No hypnosis, or tricky questions, or stupid rorchach-mask-like pictures (of course Rorchach isn't stupid.. just the pics... it was important that I clear that up right away.. I don't want to risk loosing my audience on the first go!).

Ten minutes later... deep breath..... "I feel so much lighter!" (another shrink defaults on their house). Well... thank you blogspot for saving me the $500/session psycho-bill. That money is going to be wisely invested in alcohol. =)

..........

You know, time is something that can hardly be expressed in writing (unless it's scrolling across a screen very slowly, i guess)... I think it's only fair to make this first blog as real as possible by letting you know exactly how much time passed between the writing before the dotted line and the writing after the dotted line. about 10 minutes. 

You never would have guessed it eh! I just sat here... daydreaming... thinking about all the things I would write about... about the DDoS Solution that i'm researching and implementing for my final year project (google tip: Distributed Denial of Service), about the poem i wrote and stuck to my facebook page last night... or about the new XNA framework that I downloaded and how much i wished sony would do something similar for playstation 3 (google tip: XNA game development library). 

And all the while i'm thinking all these things... at roughly the same time.... Dream Theatre's Misunderstood is playing in the background (inside my head of course...the room is actually very silent).... 

And then it hit me... why not write about what I was thinking of writing about? (granted, out of context that statement might seem a little redundant)..... and so I did! There... I'm all juiced out after that extremely theraputic mental and fingeral workout. First blog... done! (I'll explain "Under Lies" next time)

oh hey! nearly forgot... i was bored last night (before the facebook poem), so i installed Windows 7 beta onto vmware and recorded a short flythrough. It's actually the first time I used the record function and i think i set the quality too low so sorry... next time will be better..

Enjoy!

............

Crap! There was a strange error uploading the video!... meh i guess it wasn't really that great anyway. But... if i get any comments from my super-cool readers about doing over the video, well... anything for you. =)