sylver_dragon

Expect a lot of boredom.
While my experience is from different states, I’m pretty sure that part is universal. Bring a book. Listen to instructions and just go with the flow. But mostly, expect to be bored.

I was lucky that, despite being somewhat religious, my parents were fine with me being an atheist. We would even debate the merits of religion and they did not have any issues with my questioning of their beliefs. Both were Lutheran and they had raised me in that tradition. I went to Sunday school, attended the Lutheran Catechism and reached the point of Confirmation. And that was right about the time I realized that the whole thing seemed to be based on a bunch of old stories with no more evidence than elves or faeries. And that was always the crux of my issue with their religion, and one they could never argue past.

When it came to my kids, they have been raised with my complete lack of belief and my wife being agnostic. We spend our Sunday mornings sleeping in and not going to any sort of church/temple/forest altar. Though, that last might happen, if it’s ruins at the end of a nice hike. My parents never expressed any disapproval and the lack of religion was never an issue. Technically, my mother is still kicking about and could suddenly go off the deep end, though I strongly doubt that’s in the cards.

At the same time, my wife and I had discussed religion before we had kids and what we might do in the event it became an issue. The simple answer was, “fuck 'em”. I love my parents, but my kids come first. If my parents had decided to get stupid over us not indoctrinating our kids in their fairy tales, then I would have just removed them from my life a few years before death did it anyway. Sure, it would have meant the kids never knowing their grandparents. But, there are lots of assholes in this world, I don’t see the need to personally inflict them all upon my children.

The best thing you can do is talk to your partner and have a plan. I would say that, if you expect it to be a point of contention with your parents, you might want to talk with them about your views on religion before it gets to that point. It doesn’t need to be anything confrontational, just be up front and say, “I don’t believe what you do”. You don’t need to go on a Dawkins style, “your religion sucks and you are morons for believing it.” Just make it clear that you don’t believe. It’s still entirely possible to have a warm, loving relationship with folks who don’t believe as you do. It just requires that each side treats the other with basic human decency and respect.

I generally use the OS which fits what I am trying to do. For my desktop PC, I run Arch Linux as it lets me game, run VMs and have a high level of control over what the system is doing. The VMs are mostly Windows for testing stuff and one running Ubuntu as a host for PolarProxy. My server runs Ubuntu, though really just as a platform to host docker containers. That was a decision I made years ago when I knew a lot less about Linux and was looking for something which was more turnkey. My work laptop is Windows, because my work is mostly a Microsoft shop. But, I have WSL running both Ubuntu (for the SANS Sift framework) and Kali.

An Operating System is a tool. Don’t get wedded to any one OS.

Popular beliefs influences people’s beliefs, which reinforces popular beliefs. Step back even farther from the question for a moment and ask, “why do you think of ghosts as dead human spirits at all?” That a “ghost” is some sort of dead human spirit is a concept that has been built into Western society for a long time. It is something we just accept in story telling and mythological belief systems because it’s been in them so long and is told to us via authoritative figures in our lives from an early age. To tell a story where a ghost is anything other than a dead human spirit or the echo of a dead human, makes people call bullshit on the story, because the story has broken a long standing societal expectation. Sure, some stories can get away with it, and more so in the modern age where we are starting to appreciate stories which subvert long standing expectations. But, we still tend to fall back on old tropes and devices which we can expect readers to understand, without having to spend too much time on building a world. It’s far easier to save the term “ghost” for something much like a dead human spirit and just create a new term when trying to describe something else.

It was the Limon 7 ones. I would have never remembered that. But seeing them now, yup that’s them.

I don’t think so. I recall Fundip being in large pouches with the pressed sugar sticks for dipping. These packets were a lot smaller and didn’t come with the stick.

Yes, Ubuntu version 16.04 was called Xenial Xerus.

Similar age and ya, I remember sour packets being popular in middle school. Can’t recall the name, but it was similar to the artificial sugar packets used for coffee, except it had a mixture of sugar and citric acid (the “sour” flavoring) in them.

He chased a ball into the street.

It may be a case of laziness which has started creating a local dialect. This is one of the ways living languages change over time, people start sluring words and sounds together until there is almost nothing left of the original words and there is a new word in their place.

For a similar story, which isn’t a urban legend. My mother used to be the main resource for an archeological information center in the US Southwest. When work crews dug up a body, she’d get a call from the coroner to ask, “is it yours or mine?” While both are going to want to know the cause of death, the coroner isn’t going to open a criminal case for a Native America burial.

That sounds more like a feature than a bug. I remember when Twitter was actually useful. You could sort by “new” as the default and your feed only included stuff from people you followed. And then it went to complete shit with the sort defaulting to “fuck your preferences”, sponsored content and your feed being littered with click bait, paid content and all the other bits of enshitification. And that is all built on the algorithmic selection of content.

Step one, take a deep breath and realize that, unless you own the company, killing yourself to save it is dumb.
That said, there are some things you can do to try and improve thing:

Learn to “talk business”. Yup, this one sucks, but it’s also the only way you are ever going to get traction. Take that Windows 7 system, why do you want to upgrade it? “Because security”, right? Well, how does that translate into costs to the business? Because, businesses don’t care about security. I work in cybersecurity for a large (Fortune 500) company and upper management has given exactly zero fucks about security for a very long time. They only started coming around when that lack of security starting costing them real money. They still give zero fucks about security, but they do care about risks to the business and what that might cost them. Having security and money linked in their heads means we can actually implement better security. You need to put the lack of security of that Windows 7 system in terms of dollars potentially lost. Something like the Annualized Loss Expectancy. If that box gets popped, how much would it reasonably cost the business to recover from? Is that something which you expect to happen once a year, once every five years? These numbers will be mostly made up and wildly inaccurate. But, the goal is to just get in the right ballpark. How does that cost compare with the cost to upgrade? What about other possible mitigating controls you could use to protect it? Does it need to have internet access? Could you VLAN it off into it’s own little world and keep it running with reduced risk? Give management the expected costs of that system becoming patient zero in a ransomware outbreak and then give them several options and the associated costs (upfront and ongoing) to secure it. Have multiple options. A high cost one (e.g. replace the box), a low cost one (FW and VLAN controls) and the one you actually want right in between (OS Upgrade). Managers are like children, they need to feel like they made a choice, even if you steered them into it.

Next, don’t try to boil the ocean. You’re not going to fix everything, everywhere, all at once. Get some small wins under your belt and prove to management that you aren’t going to break the business. Show that you aren’t just some greenhorn cowboy who is going to break the business because you think you are so smart. If you can make a plan for that Windows 7 system, show the costs involved and actually get the job done smoothly, then you might be able to move on to other things. Sure, you might actually be right; but, you could also end up breaking a lot of stuff in your quest to have perfect security (which you’ll never actually achieve). Take one one or maybe two things at a time. It’s a slow process and it leaves things broke far longer than you will like, but it builds trust and gets more action than just screaming about everything at everyone. Slow is steady, steady is fast.

Moving on, be aware that you probably don’t know everything about the business, and the business functioning is paramount. Why does everyone have local admin? Because that’s the way it’s always been and it has always worked. If you start pulling those permissions back, what processes get broken? This is a tough one, because it means documenting other people’s processes, many of which probably only exist in the heads of those people. How often are people moving around critical files using CIFS and the C$ share. It’s fucking stupid, but there’s a good chance that the number is greater than zero. You pull local admin from people, and now work doesn’t get done. If work doesn’t get done, the business loses money. You need to have a plan which shows that you have considered these things. Design a slow rollout which phases local admin rights out for the users who are least likely to affect the business. Again, slow is steady, steady is fast.

And thins brings us to another point, auditors are your friends. No really, those folks who come in and ask you where all your documentation is and point out every single flaw in your network, ya, they deserve hugs not hate. You’re in healthcare, where does your business fall on regulations like HIPAA (US-centric but similar regulations may apply in other countries)? 'Cause nothing says, “fuck your wallet” to a business quite like failing an audit. If you can link the security failures of the business to required audit controls, that’s going to give you tons of ammunition to get stuff done. I’ve watched businesses move mountains to comply with audit controls. Granted, it all becomes “checkbox security” at some point; but, that is vastly better than nothing.

All that said, company loyalty is a sucker’s game. I’m guessing you’re early in your career and an early IT career likely means job hopping every 3 years or so. Unless you get a major promotion and associated pay bump in that time, it’s probably time to move on. Later in your career, this can slow down as you top out in whatever specialization you choose (or you get lured in by the siren song of management). So, there is that to consider. It might just be time to go find greener pastures and discover that pastures are green because the cows shit all over them. But, it can feel better for a while. Having your resume up to date and flying it out there usually doesn’t hurt. Don’t job hop too fast or you start to look like a risk (I stick to a 1 year minimum). But, don’t stick around trying to save a sinking company.

Along with that, remember that you don’t own the company; so, don’t let it own you. When you get to the end of your day, go the fuck home. Don’t let the business consume your personal time in actions or thoughts. If they place burns, that’s the owner’s problem, not yours. Do your best while on the clock, do try to make positive changes. But, killing yourself to make the owner just a bit richer makes no sense. The only person who is ever going to truly have your best interests in minds is you, don’t lose sight of them. Say it with me, “Fuck you, pay me”

So, where to go from here? Well, you sound like you have a good plan at the moment:

I am also looking into getting my Linux+ (currently only have my A+)

Sounds solid. If you care about security, let me recommend poking your head into the cybersecurity field. I’m am absolutely biased, but I feel it’s a fantastic field to be in right now. Following up the Linux+ with the Sec+ can be a great start and maybe the Net+. The A+, Net+, Sec+ trifecta can open a lot of doors. And you now have some IT/systems background, which I always suggest for folks (I look for 3-5 years in IT on resumes). As a lead, I get to be in on interviews and always ask questions about networking, Active Directory, email security and Linux. I don’t expect entry level analysts to know everything about all of them; but, I do expect them to be able to hold a conversation about them.

Good luck, whatever path you choose.

War rarely decides who’s right, just who’s left.

there wouldn’t be any reason to tweak and replace it all constantly.

There really wasn’t.

There is the legal concept of Mens Rea which has to do with the mental state of the person committing the act. And I think that applies in this case. Archeology has generally been about learning and providing knowledge of previous cultures. While the methods, mindset and actions of 18th and early 19th century treasure hunters left a lot to be desired, some of them did make some reasonable attempt at documenting their finds and preserving the context to provide that knowledge. Modern archeologists go to painstaking lengths to properly document finds and preserve as much knowledge as possible from finds. Grave robbers do none of this. Their motivations generally revolve around personal gain and they will destroy any context and knowledge in their attempt to make money.

Consider your own reading on the Valley of the Kings. Where did all of the information we have on the Pharaohs in those tombs come from? It’s from the work of the archeologists documenting everything found in those tombs. While there is certainly an argument for leaving things in the same state they were found in, that also means that the artifacts will continue to deteriorate and any further knowledge which might be gleaned from them will be lost. Sending artifacts to a museum isn’t all about putting them in cases for people to gawk at. It also means that actions are taken to preserve those artifacts and maintain them for observation and study in the future. Sometimes this does cause damage. Again, 18th and early 19th century preservation was often just as, if not more damaging than leaving those artifacts in-sutu. But again, the intention was to preserve, not enrich.

So, that’s how I would draw the line, based on the reason and methods used for the removal of grave goods. Is it done with the intention for the furtherance of knoweldge of previous cultures? Or, is it just done to enrich someone? And is the work being done using the current understanding and methods to best capture and preserve that knowledge for future generations?

While I would never support it, the main way to improve online discussion is by removing anonymity. Allow me to go back a couple decades and point to John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. People with a reasonable expectation of anonymity turn into complete assholes. The common solution to this is by linking accounts to a real identity in some way, such that online actions have negative consequences to the person taking them. Google famously tried this by forcing people to use their real name on accounts. And it was a privacy nightmare. Ultimately though, it’s the only functional solution. If anti-social actions do not have negative social consequences, then there is no disincentive for people to not take those actions and people can just keep spinning up new accounts and taking those same anti-social actions. This can also be automated, resulting in the bot farms which troll and brigade online forums. On the privacy nightmare side of the coin, it means it’s much easier to target people for legitimate, though unpopular, opinions. There are some “in the middle” options, which can make the cost to creating accounts somewhat higher and slower; but, which don’t expose peoples’ real identities in quite the same way. But, every system has it’s pros and cons. And the linking of identities to accounts

Voting systems and the like will always be a kludge, which is easy to work around. Any attempt to predicate the voting on trusting users to “do the right thing” is doomed to fail. People suck, they will do what they want and ignore the rules when they feel they are justified in doing so. Or, some people will do it just to be dicks. At the same time, it also promotes herding and bubbles. If everyone in a community chooses to downvote puppies and upvote cats, eventually the puppy people will be drown out and forced to go off and found their own community which does the opposite. And those communities, both now stuck in a bias reinforcing echo chamber, will continue to drift further apart and possibly radicalize against each other. This isn’t even limited to online discussions. People often choose their meat-space friends based on similar beliefs, which leads to people living in bubbles which may not be representative to a wider world.

Despite the limitations of the kludge, I do think voting systems are the best we’re going to get. I’d agree with @grue that the Slashdot system had a lot of merit. Allowing the community to both vote on articles/comments and then later have those votes voted on by a random selection of users, seems like a reasonable way to try to enforce some of the “good faith” voting you’re looking for. Though, even that will likely get gamed and lead to herding. It’s also a lot more cumbersome and relies on the user community taking on a greater role in maintaining the community. But, as I have implied, I don’t think there is a “good” solution, only a lot of “less bad” ones.

Like many of the differences, I suspect that one came out of the attempts as English Spelling Reform, which took greater hold in the US. Ultimately, the process hasn’t succeeded, but it has excised some of inconsistencies from the English. Though, it has also led to some confusion, as in the tire/tyre case.

You have to get out away from cities. We get them in our yard every summer and our kids run about catching them.

I’ll throw Grand Cayman on the list. Specifically, I’d recommend visiting Stingray City. Just a really neat experience to feed/pet stingrays while wading around on a sandbar.