Child Abuse Survivor

Technology to help with Social Skills

As I mentioned earlier, I was out of town for a good part of last week at a conference. Normally, my time at a conference is taken up with attending educational sessions, and then being a wallflower at the networking parts of the conference, if not skipping them altogether to see the city or watch TV in my room. Not this time.

One, I had made up my mind that I wasn't going to do that, I was going to, at least try to hang around and talk to people as much as I could manage. Secondly, the fact that I was blogging and using Twitter to talk about the conference meant that there was a small, but significant, number of people who were reading what I was writing as the show was going on, and actually wanted to find me and chat with me.

To me, the shy introvert that I am (though it has been an area of some improvement over the last few years, I no longer sweat and feel nervous when someone I don't know talks to me.), this is really the promise of the Internet, and social networking tools. Suddenly, rather than me having to try and talk about myself, I can spend time writing and connecting with people with things like this blog, and when I do get the opportunity to meet someone in real life, we already have this in common. Many of the first few folks I chatted with at Techshow had been reading my stuff about the show, and those conversations gave me the confidence to chat with other folks at various sessions and lunches, even when they weren't reading the blogs or following the conference Twitter back channel. At the end of the three days, I had made some good connections who I have much to learn from, and talked to many other people, sharing ideas, war stories, etc.

Overall, that made what was already a good educational conference that much more of a good experience, and one of the best times I've had working. :)

It's also what keeps me going, writing for a few different sites, keeping a profile in a number of places, and sharing my experiences here, the connections it makes possible, even if we never get to meet in person!

Carnival Against Child Abuse March 2008

I've been in Chicago at ABA Techshow, so I didn't get a chance to submit anything beforehand, and haven't been over to read any of the submissions this month, but, as always, it looks like there's some great stuff over at the carnival.

Snow Bound for the Weekend

It finally stopped snowing this evening, after about 20 inches fell. I have a feeling Sunday will be a day of digging out...

My car sat behind our house all night and day while the snow fell, and fell. Tomorrow I get to figure out how to get it out from there, and through the snow drift that currently doubles as the alley to the front of our house. :)

Guest Post - Insights

This post was contributed by my good friend, and fellow Friends in Tech member, Kevin Devin.

This past Tuesday morning my colleagues and I were summoned to a 15 minute all-hands meeting within the hour.  Of course, impromptu all-hands meetings never end up with "we think you all deserve a raise!" or anything else of any good, so folks were naturally nervous.  The last meeting of this nature was an announcement of layoffs and restructuring and prior to that was the sale of the company -- so folks were naturally imagining the worst.

Unfortunately, the news we received couldn't have been any worse.  A co-worker, who occupied the cube next to mine, could no longer cope with the demons inside him and took his own life on Sunday.  It hit us all like a massive punch in the gut.  Our friend and colleague, an extremely gregarious soul who was always full of laughter and always the life of the party, had committed suicide.

He was also a person who liked to push limits.  He is one of the few individuals in my IT career that I've specifically taken away local administrative rights to their PC.

This afternoon, while sitting through the memorial service, I began thinking about the last four years he and I had worked together, and specifically the removal of those admin rights. After a few months of running without these rights, and much begging and pleading, I finally restored his admin rights and from that point on it was a running joke between us, "HEY Kevin...  I haven't messed up my computer yet!"  It was always good for a little chuckle.  But it got me to thinking about it all...  I had taken away those admin rights to protect this person from himself.  To limit the access he had over his PC so that he could remain productive.  That's when a bit of parallelism struck me...  it's too bad that there isn't a better way for someone to remove the administrative rights to the master computer -- the brain.  Had those admin rights been removed from my colleague's "personal" computer, he might still be around today as it would have protected him from doing harm to himself.

Rightfully so, the ability to grant or revoke that ultimate set of privileges are left to the supreme SysAdmin, nonetheless, the parallelism amused me.

So I guess my point is...  I don't really know.  What I do know though is that 5 kids are now without a father because of a self-destructive behavior.  For those of you with kids, take some additional time this weekend, and every day onward, to spend time with your kids and other loved ones.  If you know of someone dealing with depression who also happens to have a self-destructive behavior, keep an eye on them and intervene if you can.

If I could add anything to Kevin's story, it'd be this. If you are coping with depression and self-destructive behaviors of your own, get help. Talk to someone, now, before those are your kids without a parent, or your coworkers and friends who are left to wonder what might have been....

Fear of the Unknown

I've been thinking quite a bit lately about this idea lately. Seems there are people in my life, who I've always known were fearful of changes or unknown situations, recently I've found myself watching them be presented with interesting opportunities, and talking themselves out of even attempting them.

Now, don't get me wrong, I spent plenty of time in my life doing the same exact thing, so I've not much room to talk on the subject, but as I look back on those experiences, I'm fairly sure that many times I got over that fear because there was someone there pushing me, while also reassuring me that I would be alright if things didn't turn out well.

I'm not sure how to help others over this fear, but it saddens me. It's easy to convince ourselves that something new is scary, and dangerous. Sometimes it is, and sometimes there are legitimate reasons to be nervous about doing it. Often times, though, the worse thing that could happen, really isn't that bad, yet we convince ourselves that it is. sometimes, the biggest price you pay is some time wasted trying something new that doesn't turn out that great, when we have plenty of free time that we fritter away on other activities that aren't really making us that happy, but are comfortable and routine, so we keep right on doing them.

I like my routine, and I cherish my down time, my time to decompress especially. On the other hand, I want to be able to do new things, and have new experiences that help make life more interesting. It's those experiences that teach me about life, and being a better person. They give me things to write about, things I want to either share with my wife, or run home and tell her about., and things I can tell stories about to our friends. Sometimes those stories cause my friends to laugh at me, but if that's the worst thing that happens, so be it. I've lived through a hell of a lot more difficult things than that! I'm betting most of you have too.