Tag: 100DaysofPhotography

Summer To Do List 2015

What are your summer must-do activities? Are you already planning for your summer fun? — Laura Lindeman

So Laura asked me what was on my summer to-do list. Ok, she didn't direct her question specifically to me but I'm taking it personally and I am answering. Here's the summer to-do list as I have it laid out in Wunderlist.

  • I had some grand plans for the summer. I had hoped to plan a big picnic in the park with friends and family. But then it started to dawn on me how much work with me. I procrastinated and now, summer is right around the corner and I fear it may be too late to book the park and arrange everything. Maybe I'll still give it a go.
  • New Jersey has some beautiful preserved areas, especially along the Sourland Mountain Range and rivers. We've lived in area with a lot of preserved space but rarely take advantage of what we have. I plan to walk some of the preserved trails in New Jersey. My wife and I already checked some off the list.
  • The cold grey days and nights of winter in New Jersey left me feeling depressed and miserable. I longed for the warmth and light of spring and summer. It was also a horrible time for me as a photographer. So I have a long list of photography projects that I want to complete.
  • Another effect of winter was that we didn't leave the house. My kids decided they wanted to visit some of the light houses in New Jersey. New Jersey has a lot of coasts so I choose only a few.

I drink beer all year round. I don't have a summer list to get through. I'll just drink them as they appear. I'm going to enjoy the warmth -- even the heat -- and the sunlight. I'm going to soak it all in. Because soon that shit time of the year, winter, will be here. I need to store up some life. Published via MarsEdit.

Try Things. Fuck Up. Fail, and Move On.

What's your motivation? (Third and Lake)

It was my hope that I could build a successful career with a nice tidy salary from making apps or writing and selling music. The motivation was always a financial one. As such, each time I tried, I failed, because my heart wasn’t really in it – I wanted an immediate financial return with the least amount of effort on my part. This sounds like a bad trait, but in hindsight I think it a great one! See, it made me realise that money is a piss-poor motivator to me. I honestly don’t care about it, once I have enough to get by. Sure it’s nice to have new gadgets or to splash out once in a while on something, but, that’s just nowhere near a big enough reason for me to be motivated, consistently.

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Ditto! Money has never motivated me. It has always been about learning and doing. Over the last few years, the pressure to succeed and provide for a family has made me focus more on the financial rewards. But I've started to realize that I am not happy about my work. I no longer look forward to the next day's challenge. Now, I can't wait for the weekend.

I realized that as a security professional, what I enjoyed the most was learning how things work, learning how to break it, and then finding ways to defend it from other breakers. I enjoyed vulnerability testing. But it's been a while since I did any of that work. I have been too focused on business skills, policies and procedures and strategic thinking. It's helped get me into the same room as the "C" suite. I get to be involved in large projects. But ... it's not enjoyable.

So ... I want to go back to school. I don't mean college. I mean taking a course on penetration testing and network reconnaissance. I mean getting back to where it all started for me in information security. I want my name to be Khürt "I break shit" Williams.

Published via MarsEdit

The Dawn Phenomenon

The Dawn Phenomenon

Some of my readers may know that I have a chronic progressive illness, Type 1 diabetes. Managing Type 1 diabetes is one of those things that is easy to learn but difficult to master. It's not as simple as what I ate. One of the reasons I am writing today is to help you, the reader, understand something about Type 1 diabetes. To educate you so that you can stop saying stupid things to your friends with diabetes. Stupid things like, "Should you eat that?", or "But you're not fat!". Today I am going to explain to you a bit about the Dawn Phenomenon.

The dawn phenomenon, also called the dawn effect, is the term used to describe an abnormal early-morning increase in blood sugar (glucose) — usually between 2 and 8 a.m. — in people with diabetes.Mayo Clinic

Yep. Isn't diabetes a hoot? It seems that even when I don't eat, when I asleep, fasting, my blood glucose (BG) will increase. Just because. Well not really.

Some researchers believe the natural overnight release of the so-called counter-regulatory hormones — including growth hormones, cortisol, glucagon and epinephrine — increases insulin resistance, causing blood sugar to rise.

Ok. So wait. Not only do I have to fight diabetes while I'm going about my day but it's battling me even in my sleep -- even when I'm not eating? Why would nature do such a thing? Why?

The body prepares for waking up by secreting several different hormones.

First, between 4:00 and 6:30 a.m. it secretes cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrin. You may recognize these as the hormones involved in the "fight or flight response." In this case, their job is more benign, to give you the energy to get up and moving.

Besides giving you a burst of energy, these hormones raise blood sugar. You aren't going to be able to make any kind of energetic response if you don't have fuel, and after a long night's sleep, the fuel your body turns to to get you going is the glucose stored in the liver.

So after these stress hormones are secreted, around 5:30 a.m., plasma glucose and, in a normal person, insulin start to rise.

Though the normal person gets a rise in insulin to help cells use the morning glucose, people with diabetes don't, so instead of giving their cells a dose of morning energy, all they get is a rise in blood sugar.Jenny Ruhl

Oh! It's not just me. It's all of us. You, the person without diabetes, it happens to you too. It's a survival tactic. When we were more primitive, before fire and housing developments, we used to have to get up in the morning and go find our food. Without the rise in BG, our bodies would not have the energy to do this. We would starve.

That still works for you. But for me, it's another thing I need to think about. It's another thing I need to adjust for. It's not as simple as thinking about what I eat.