While all things are truly interconnected. I currently dissect my mastery of the web into two nodes. The first being The Web of Life, which is really a catch-all for everything that doesn’t fit into the second node: The Inter-Web.
The Web of Life
“When we try to pick out anything by itself,
we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
- John Muir
Yeah... so I'm a Treehugger (Elephant-Foot Cedar in Olympic National Park)
I study many art forms – both East and West – when I have the time to be aware. Often I romanticize the many movies I’ve seen where a student finds a teacher and the teacher refuses to teach the student. All these stories end with the teacher finally deciding to teach the student after the student passes some “test” of their determination. Often the teacher is portrayed to have always known and the test was planned from step one.
The search for this in a world of 6+ billion humans is – to say the least – not likely. Furthermore, I’m afraid my longing is much like that of a dog chasing a car, or an elementary boy chasing a high-school girl… what the hell would I do with it when I found it?! With the full-time job and the many volunteer commitments I’ve made, there isn’t much time anymore for the type of dedication to an art form that becoming a master requires. I’ve been studying Tai Chi for a few years and various alternative healing methods. I’m supposedly a Reiki Master Healer but I don’t much feel like one – supposing I would know what it feels like. I’m always in the middle of at least ten books, and I understand every word when I’m reading them (the subjects of which I intend to populate the walls of this blog with). I know I’m a good person and I know I’m damn good at what I do because I feel good about my skills. However, my search for something to master is a bit cliche I’m afraid.
I realized one day – very recently – that I am a Web master. The one thing I had never considered because it was right under my nose (which is where the cliche bit comes in). I’ve always had an ability to sense and understand the connectedness in any given situation that grabs my awareness. The Web which I speak of is the interconnected canvas of manifestation we all paint upon throughout the course of our existence. As it turns out, I have been mastering this ability for many years without focusing on it specifically. If I had, I would have applied the same self-limiting perfectionism to it that restricts me in the aforementioned areas of life.
My understanding of this reality is ever changing so don’t hold me to this, but I’m rather sure at this moment that my career mirrors these revelations more than any other area of my life. Working with computer networks and Internet programming has been a passion for many years (more about this here). My skills as an analyst are something I’m only recently coming to realize. Being able to see all of the connections with a given issue or situation – and bring them into the room – can feel a bit like trying to plug all the holes in a leaky barrel or holding many leashes of excited dogs. Somehow though, I’m often able to bring them together and walk the threads that connect them.
I will attempt to chronicle these experiences – along with frustrated editorials and miscellaneous “did you know’s.” If you have happened upon these pages and find something worth commenting about, be sure to leave a comment or contact me directly. Above all else, I seek others who see the world the way I understand it. This brings focus to my understanding and reassurance that I’m not alone.
The Inter-Web
“I have an almost religious zeal – not for technology per se,
but for the Internet which is for me, the nervous system of mother Earth,
which I see as a living creature, linking up.”
- Dan Millman
Map of the Internet
My dialogue with machines began with an Apple IIe in the basement of my Grandfather’s house circa 1990. I was ten years old at the time and I remember pounding away on that machine. It was a relic from the office that Gramps had decided should come home for whatever reason. There weren’t any games for it, but it had a 300 baud cradle modem and two 5.25″ floppy drives. I used to spend hours writing short programs that did absolutely nothing useful and looking for bulletin board sites that didn’t have a minimum bps connect rate. However, I remember it came very easy and the raw application of logic was very addictive to me.
My freshman year of high school I was forced to take a typing class (it was called “keyboarding” as if that’s a verb!). It was very challenging to stay focused. I slipped out of class one day to catch the teacher from a senior-level Pascal programming class. I pleaded with him to allow me to take his class. I wanted to learn a real programming language. He told me that the subject matter was too advanced for a freshman and I’d have to wait. So I did wait – until his lunch period – at which time I slipped into his classroom and borrowed a text book. I mastered the language in about a week of nonstop “keyboarding.” Even though I have no use for the Pascal language I still keep that book on my shelf as a reminder of my ability to learn new languages and how it all began.
It’s a lot of fun to learn a new language for the sake of expanding my toolkit. However, I can rarely do this without a problem to solve or a spec to fulfill. Learning without application is outside of my abilities, but when it’s time to learn, the Internet has made it so easy that I can’t understand how the technical book publishers are staying in business and universities are keeping IT students enrolled. The marketing effort required to keep these aging relics afloat is staggering. I’ve had the luxury of a very lucrative career for nearly ten years now and I haven’t had to use that money to pay-off student loans. I am completely self-taught and seasoned through real world problem solving and analysis. The online community has provided so much to me along the way and it’s time I spend some time giving back.
This blog will serve as a chronicle of my adventures in the Inter-web. This will serve as a growing, searchable resource for myself and others. I’ve often thought about doing this but I always stop when I think about the amazing number of others who already provide these resources. Then I remember how each and every one of them is a little different. And each time I’m looking for a solution to a problem, I tend to read through many different versions of an answer until I find the one that fits my scenario exactly. I hope to be the end of someone else’s path of frustrated searching and I’m exctied to meet those who surf by.