Professional or Expert/Guru/Genius?

"All I know, is that I learned more on my own than I have in college classes - and experience always says more than education - otherwise, the newest college graduates would have better jobs and better pay than the seasoned workers, simply because their degree is newer, and theoretically more current." - [[Neo]]

I had been needing some blog fodder for a while - something that wasn't tired, old rhetoric based on political news.

And then I saw @Xemion post this message:

Retweeting @brandoncorbin: Why not replace Genius, Expert or Guru with Professional? this way you won't sound like an egotistical a** head.
about 6 hours ago from twhirl

to which I replied:

@xemion what if the people that use Genius, Expert, or Guru don't like the culture that "Professional" implies, but know just as much?
about 6 hours ago from web in reply to xemion

Then I read a non-reply reply from him:

I'm not sure what sort of culture "professional" implies, but it's got to be better than the one "guru" implies (IMO)
about 6 hours ago from twhirl

and I explained what I meant:

@xemion it's all opinion. IMO, "Professional" says "commercial corporate monkey"; Guru/Expert/Genius say "ultimate, life-dedicated hobbyist"
about 6 hours ago from web in reply to xemion

Which is pretty much how I view it. Let me explain...

I got my first corporate job doing accounting, but had always had an interest in IT stuff since college - it was the reason I went to college, after all, to extend my hobby into a degree.

I was a "power user" at work, and went through 3 computers during the first couple months because the crappy old Windows NT 4.0 machine couldn't handle the kind of work I wanted to do with it. Neither could the low-grade Optiplex GX-1.

When asking the IT people questions, I was always viewed as some dumb user who didn't know what I was talking about (and granted, I was in a lot of areas - but that's why I was asking the questions).

Everyone that I knew that was in the IT field, whether it was my parents, the company's IT people, or professors - they were all doing it to get paid, and had no interest in doing it because it was what they liked to do. It was a job choice...like my doing accounting work. They were (quote, unquote) "Professionals."

Now, I am the guy in that field, doing the things that they were doing. My predecessor at my current company is someone that I would consider a "professional" but then again, I don't know what his does in his spare time - though I'm sure it's nothing like what I do.

I wouldn't call myself an "Expert," "Guru," or "Genius" in any particular definition of the words. However, I would say that I am an extreme hobbyist that is not doing this just as a job, but because it's what I have essentially devoted my life to learning and doing. I take great pleasure/pride in the fact that I do not operate under any pretenses of coming in to any past or present job wearing the standard white shirt, black suit, and tie. Even when I was required to wear a suit to work, I never wore (never even owned) a white dress shirt.

I guess it's part of my "corporate identity" and my idea of the Corporate Environment 2.0. What one wears to work doesn't have anything to do with what one knows or is able to do. However, it does say something about how they view or conduct themselves. (And how they view themselves is portrayed in how they dress.)

So, would I prefer to tell people that I'm a professional or a guru/expert/genius when it comes to teck? Well, it would depend on the context - but frankly, if I were hiring an employee to help move an IT department forward, I would prefer the latter. If I wanted a warm body to just do tasks without new ideas, I'd probably hire a "professional."

All I know, is that I learned more on my own than I have in college classes - and experience always says more than education - otherwise, the newest college graduates would have better jobs and better pay than the seasoned workers, simply because their degree is newer, and theoretically more current.

This is [[Neo]] Live from The Pizzy...

I just spent most of yesterday evening, and most of this evening writing two different blog posts on thepizzy.net/blog. I found out that I am #1 on a google search for "openvpn connection to active directory" so I decided it was time to actually write a real article since the one people keep finding is only a Proof of Concept article.

I also gained 3 followers to my blog sometime today because of the stuff I've been writing, so there's a little incentive to produce some worth-while content more frequently.

After writing part 1 of this OpenVPN blog post though, I realized that I could get used to this kind of thing, and wouldn't mind doing a lot more instructional articles like it.

I'm probably going to be writing one for how to set up a couple more game servers, and will also start writing more of them for the various ideas that I come up with as "Proof of Concepts" and then go back and actually do it as a How-To when I figure it out.

Heh, it feels like the person at thepizzy.net is nothing like the person that runs the-spot.net - it's a whole other technical side of me over there. (and of course, there is a more blatant side of me over here at The Black Journal too).

This new tech writing thing may even give me some material to start doing podcasts like I had set up the site for. I think I will give that some more consideration now that I have a content direction for the blog.

That's all for tonight, and that's all for the weekend.

Guns don't kill people, bullets do...

Well, tonight, I was prompted by @winkydo's tweet about all the store's he's visited that are now out of ammo.

I asked if he knew why, and got a response from @txsarge and from @winkydo talking about how Obama plans to ban guns and ammo, and how Clinton did, respectively.

So, before putting my foot in my mouth, I asked for proof, and then did a Google Search for "obama proposed tax on ammo" and the first link was for a Washington Post article: "NRA Ads are off target about Obama and Guns"

While it is true that Obama favors tighter gun laws, it is a huge stretch to argue that he wants to take away the guns and ammunition most commonly used by hunters. The claim that he favors "a huge new tax on guns and ammo" rests on a confusingly worded nine-year-old newspaper article that has little relevance for Obama's platform as a presidential candidate.

Without enumerating the list of all the things the WP cited as being inaccurate about the NRA's Ad, essentially the article is saying the NRA is claiming Obama wants to do away with all handguns - when their research shows that in 1999...

...Obama, then an Illinois state senator, supported a "500 percent" increase in the federal tax on the sale of "weapons he says are most commonly used in firearm deaths."

Personally, I have no problem with that; why not discourage people from buying the guns that are the cause of unnecessary deaths? That doesn't infringe on hunters and their rifles. I then went and found an article by the New York Times: "Clinton proposes ban on armor-piercing ammunition"

"If a bullet can rip through a bulletproof vest like a knife through hot butter, then it ought to be history," Mr. Clinton said in accepting an award from the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence at a police station house accompanied by Chicago's mayor, Richard M. Daley.

Again, I have no problem with that. Why would we want to allow irresponsible people to have the ability (legally) to shoot through armor? Shouldn't the police have the ability to be protected from incursions, and have superior firepower than who they are going up against? (Granted, there is another side of the conversation - the sale of full-body armor to criminals.)

I passed those two links on, and clicked on another link from FOX News, criticizing the Washington Post article for being incomplete, saying:

The Washington Post analysis only discusses two issues: the Kennedy ammunition ban and the 500 percent ammunition tax. On the Kennedy bill, the Post makes the same mistake as FactCheck.org. Regarding the tax, the Post doesn’t deny that Obama held that position, but points out that the legislation Obama supported was in 1999 and that it is not clear what guns would have their ammunition taxed. CNN’s discussion appears unwilling to admit that Obama has supported large-scale bans on gun ownership.

and enumerates all the points it makes from FactCheck.org. It is at this point that it is, once again clear, depending on who your sources are, the perspective of the article will be skewed to the agenda.

Having settled on that, I decided the only place to get valid, legitimate information is from the actual source, and I went to the WhiteHouse.gov site, did a search for "gun ban", which returned one result: an article to Obama's Agenda on Urban Policy. A CTRL + F find for "gun" takes you to this bullet point:

Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

Again, I have no problem releasing the information on who registered a gun so they can be held responsible for its misuse; and I have no problem banning assault weapons for the greater good of the rest of the people.

Meanwhile, I got 4 responses from @winkydo:

• ABC News: "Obama to seek new assault weapons ban"
• The Volokh Conspiracy Weblog: "FactCheck flubs Obama gun fact check"
• The Sean Hannity Forums: a post from alias die hard republican "Obama supports a 500% tax increase on firearms and ammo"
• The Connecticut Tristates News Channel website: "IL gun insurance proposal"

Now, having gone through the stuff I've just read, and deciding to focus on actual fact listing or as close to 1st-person sources as possible, it's hard to lend any kind of credibility to anyone in the media but the source these days. Every news channel has a political leaning, and every reporter has a personal leaning. My preference is a bullet list of the actions as they happened from ontheissues.org. So I went and got a list of Obama's stance on Gun Control. I did the same thing before the election to see what McCain's real stance was on issues as compared to Obama's.

It's been my view that the major difference between the two parties, Republican and Democratic, is boiled down to two perspectives:

• Republican: personal rights, guided by conservative morals imposed on others.
  
• Democratic: civil rights, guided by the populous imposed on everyone.

Over the years, my opinions have shifted, and I can see how I believed things in the past that were not held because they were for the good of other people, but because it was what I thought was best for everyone else - with utter apathy for anyone experiencing adverse affects from such beliefs.

That's not to say I don't still have apathy for a lot of things, but it is to say that I can now see it from the other perspective. Maybe I'll write more on what my perspective is and why it's changed, and hit the main talking points that both political parties touch on.

That's all for now.