It was a Facebook post extolling the virtues of “breaking your limits,” “abandoning your limitations,” “refusing to follow other people’s rules.” It had been shared dozens of times and had hundreds of likes. Many of the comments were,
So true!
I couldn’t agree more.
Don’t limit yourself.
I just shook my head and laughed. Rules are not there to restrict your actions. Rules are there to help you do more, faster and easier. Consider traffic laws. They are designed to keep us from speeding to get where we are going faster. They require us to stop at cross streets even when no other cars are around. They insist we stop at a red light rather than proceed through the intersection as we choose.
I read a story one time about a guy whose daily commute required him to pass through a particular intersection. He never caught the light on this one. Every morning he dreaded getting to that cross street. He just knew he would be stuck there for 45 seconds to 2 minutes waiting on the light. More than once he reigned curses on that particular traffic signal. And then one day, it worked. His curses, that is. Someone had hit a power pole somewhere and the traffic signal was out. Instead of a 2 minute wait, he spent 10 minutes in a long line of cars as everyone had to “treat it as a 4 way stop.” In an instant, he realized that rather than prolonging his commute, that traffic signal was actually helping him get where he wanted to go quicker.
On Saturday I will go to the airport and pick up two of my teenage daughters. They have been in Washington for the week visiting their grandmother. I have every confidence that their trip from Seattle to Salt Lake City will be uneventful. I don’t worry about the safety of the plane. I’m pretty sure the guys who did the safety check of the plane followed the rules. I hope they did.
I’ve been married to a wonderful woman for nearly 30 years. It was the best decision I ever made, although I’m not sure I can say the same for her. I work very hard to be a good husband and father. It is reassuring to me that marriage comes with expectations and “rules.” I’m grateful that I can rely on my lovely wife as we continue building a life together and raising our children. The vows we made don’t restrict me, they actually grant me the freedom to grow in a relationship based on mutual trust and love.
That’s all well and good for marriage, or airline safety and maybe the traffic signals do provide some help, but when it comes to personal expression, rules don’t apply, right? I mean, anyone is free to express themselves and society likes the free thinkers.
Not so much.
I have a good friend who is a professional writer. In addition to writing his own books, he also teaches writing. He has made a career out of understanding the craft of writing and publishing. He also teaches classes on publishing. I attended a seminar he lead. He was one of Stephanie Meyer’s writing instructors. (She wrote the Twilight series.) He also advised the publisher of the Harry Potter books on their potential in the marketplace. Dave then did something remarkable. In our seminar he explained the “rules” that J.K Rowling, Stephanie Meyer’s and other followed that destined their books for greatness. He explained the formula. He explained the market segmentation. He explained the role that gender played in both the protagonists and the authors. (There’s a reason J.K Rowling used her initials and not her given name of Joanne.)
What my friends pointed out is that you do not have to follow the rules if you want to write. However, you do need to follow the rules if you want to write and sell your work. Understanding and following the rules will not restrict your writing. Instead those rules will empower you to write and ultimately publish to a much wider audience.
I have another friend who runs a major TV studio. He is the guy who approved the pilot for Mad Men. He’s grown his studio from essentially nothing to a billion dollar a year company with dozens of hit series in development. My friend understands there are rules to a successful TV series. You don’t have to follow those rules if you want to make a TV series. You need to follow those rules if you want to make a TV series that is a hit.
I am a member of a fairly conservative church. There are many rules that govern how the members behave. Some people think the rules are restrictive. That they are designed to limit my freedoms. And yet, those rules are what give me the freedom to do much of what I want to do. There is a restriction on tobacco. By following that rule, I’m free from the ills associated with smoking. There’s a rule against alcohol. That rule has kept me out of numerous potentially dangerous situations.
In business there are rules. There are accepted ways of doing things. Do I have to follow those rules? No. However, if I choose to not follow the rules my company has, I will have to go find another job. If I refuse to follow the rules of doing business with others, I may find myself not able to get work. I may find that people don’t trust me, or don’t want to work with me.
Rules are how civilized people manage to coexist. They are a blessing to us. Be glad that you have them, and if someone suggests that you don’t need them, realize that they don’t really understand the purpose of rules.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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It’s only 66 words. Any of the 12 year olds in the Sunday School class could read it in less than a minute. But, they weren’t trying to read it, they were trying to say it from memory, and it wasn’t going well..
Have you ever sung Karaoke? Serveral years ago I was in China adopting my son. I had to spend 10 days in the country. The guide from the adoption agency was a native named Richard. (I’m pretty sure that wasn’t his birth name.) Because my son was born in Shenzhen, I spent the entire 10 days in Guangzhou. It’s a city very close to Hong Kong in Southern China. Richard and I spent a lot of time together. At one point he asked me,
Would you like to go to sing karaoke tonight?
Sure, I love to sing.
Do you mind if I invite my friend? We rarely get to sing with an American.
Karaoke bars are a big deal in China. At least they were when I was there 12 years ago. We had dinner brought in and sang for hours in a private sound proof booth.
At my work they have started a monthly karaoke night. They have a sound system, I play MC and my “co-host” plays guitar and sings. At times, as the MC, my role is to keep the event moving. I love to sing. I have an eclectic collection of music. I assumed I’d do great stepping in to sing if we lacked for any singers.
I’m very comfortable behind a microphone. And yet, when I stood up to sing, even with the words, I struggled.
Really? THAT is what they are saying in that lyric? I totally am singing that wrong. . .oh wait, I missed that entrance. Maybe I can catch it on the chorus. .
Yes, it’s harder than it looks. And that’s because we don’t know the songs as well as we think we do. Listen to yourself the next time you are singing along to the radio in the car. Do you nail the entrances? Really? Or, are you like me and you are awesome at starting on the third word.
That was the problem we had with the boys in my Sunday School class. They were supposed to repeat a verse out of the LDS scriptures. (In addition to the Bible, Mormons also have scriptures called The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine And Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price.) The boys were supposed to repeat D&C 13.
If there was a strong leader, they did great. Just like singing along with the car radio, the boys would jump in on the second or third word and finish out the phrase. And honestly, I was doing the same thing. Sure, I sort of had it memorized. Until the day the boy who lead the rest moved into the next older class.
Sixty-six words never took so long. We all, boys and leaders mumbled our way through 45 seconds of awkwardness and then we gratefully sat down.
How do you get a group of 12 year olds to memorize something? How do you get them to want to memorize it? I had an idea. And within a month all 12 boys knew it word for word perfect.
Leadership starts with the leader. The first thing I did was memorize it myself. I repeated it on my way to work. I repeated it while walking the stairs at work. I repeated it before I went to bed. For my plan to work, I had to know it perfectly. Not a word out of place. The following week I explained my plan to the boys.
With Charles gone, it’s obvious the rest of us need some work memorizing D&C 13. Here’s my idea. We will leave a little time at the end of the lesson for any of you who want to try to pass off. You have to get it absolutely perfect.
What do we get when we do?
This.
And I pulled out a box of 12 of the biggest chocolate bars that WalMart sells. I set them on the table where the hungry boys could see them.
Remember the rules, though. You can try to pass off once each week. If you don’t want to participate in trying to get a chocolate bar, you don’t have to. If you miss even one word, you need to wait and try again the next week. And here’s the key. I will go first. And I want all of you to get out your scriptures and let me know if I miss a word. Remember, I have to get it 100% correct to get a chocolate bar.
The last part was the key. If I had told the boys that I was going to be the one to decide if they met the standard, they would have still worked on it, but they would have been tempted to figure out how lenient I was willing to be. Can they drop a “the”? Can’t they leave out an “of”? But, by making them the judges I ensured that the standard was going to be absolute perfection. They were just looking for a chance to ding me on my recitation. And once they had set the standard, they would have to follow it themselves.
The second key to the success was the fact it was 100% voluntary. No one should feel anxious about going to church. No one should feel like they have to take a test to visit a house of worship. The first week, no one got a candy bar. .. .until the very last boy tried. We all agreed that Gary nailed it. I was relieved. I worried I’d set the standard too high. Gary proved it was attainable. Over the next three weeks every one of the boys and most of the leaders stood up in front of their peers and flawlessly recited a text that just a few weeks earlier they had awkwardly stumbled through. It’s been six months since we handed out the last candy bar. Every Sunday I’m reminded of the power of the right motivation. The candy bars are long gone, but the lesson they taught is repeated every week.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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He was a veteran and he’s been gone for several years, so a Memorial Day post about my Dad seems fitting. He was a reluctant soldier. One of those called on to do his duty to country during a time that wasn’t exactly war, but wasn’t exactly peace, either. He served during the Cold War. When he took his Army entrance exam, he scored low on two sections: reading schematics and memorizing codes. The Army made him a telegraph operator in the tiny town of Barrow Alaska. He was the only link the tiny town had to the rest of the world. A good telegraph operator could send at 60 words per minute. My dad, when he started could send at 5.
He left the service when a sergeant ordered him to climb a radio transmitter pole and replace a light bulb on the top. My dad was afraid of heights and refused. Giving him an honorable discharge was easier than court martialing him for disobeying a direct order.
His death a few years ago was neither sudden nor unexpected. As the end drew near, my mother asked if I wanted to come and say goodbye. I’d helped them fly home out of Denver just a few weeks earlier.
No, Mom. We’re good. I got a chance to say goodbye. I have no regrets.
It is true that I had no regrets at the time of his death, but there was one big regret I had experienced when I was a teenager. One that to this day still bothers me.
My friend Carson is finishing the basement on the house he built a year ago. In the basement is a “man cave.” In the man cave, in addition to the TV, and the cool pictures on the walls and a shuffleboard table (Yeah, I don’t get it, he’s younger than me!) right in the middle of the room is a pool table. The table is about 7′ long and the room is designed such that you can use full sized cues. The pictures look awesome.
I love pool. I know that it’s associated with seedy bars, and that whole “Music Man” issue.
You got trouble. Right here in River City. With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for ‘pool.’
But, the sound of the cue ball during the break. The smell of the chaulk. The green felt table. The excitement of setting up a combination shot and seeing it go in with the cue ball ending up just where you needed it. All of these give me enjoyment. I think my love of pool goes back to a time when I was a kid living in Minnasota. My grandparents had a pool table in their basement. We lived with them for a while. We got to play as often as we wanted. Well, it was a farm, so maybe not as often as we wanted, but certainly as often as free time would allow. I was ten. I wasn’t very good. But, I sure enjoyed it.
I’ve watched Carson post pictures on Facebook as the room and then the table are literally being assembled before our eyes. My house is too small for a pool table. Well, too small and too full of kids. Even now, I would love to have a pool table. And that brings me back to my regret from all those years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. We, my mom, my dad and I, we’re in the kitchen. I was about 16 at the time. To my dad I said,
I wish we’d had a pool table.
What was that?
I said, I wish we’d had a pool table.
Why didn’t you say something before now?
Well, because there is no room in this house for a pool table, for one thing.
Sure there is. We could have set it up in the garage. We weren’t storing cars in there anyway. There’s plenty of room.
Yeah, but it’s kind of a big expense just so that I could play pool, no matter how much I enjoy it.
What makes you think you are the only one that enjoys it?
What was that?
Rodney, I love to play pool. Have all my life. I would have enjoyed having a pool table.
I just stared at my dad. I had no idea, no clue that a pool table was something that he would have been interested in getting.
Well, we still could maybe?
No. My eyes are too bad at this point.
And there it was. The unasked question. I thought I knew the answer. My parents were not going to spent thousands of dollars on a pool table and stick it in our garage. Of course, they wouldn’t. Would they?
We lived in that house from the time I was eleven to the time I moved out at 19. My dad bought a boat but didn’t enjoy being on the water. He paid for music lessons, summer camps, a nice 35mm camera. I did not lack for stuff as a kid.
And he would have sprung for a pool table too. Watching Carson’s man cave come to together, I’m reminded that we do not get things for which we do not ask.
On this Memorial Day, I salute my dad for his service, reluctant though it might have been, along with the other service men and women who died defending our country. I have no regrets concerning my dad’s passing, but there’s a question I’d really like my eleven year-old self to ask him.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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I need Jack and I need Frank. You boys are our first two contestants.
<Ring, Ring>
Are you going to answer that Rodney.
Nope.
<Ring, RING>
Remember this game goes pretty fast, so pay attention.
Are you sure you’re not going to get that?
Here’s your first question. Let’s play!
I have a demanding job. It requires that I carry a phone literally 24×7. I’ve taken Support Calls at 8,000 Feet hiking up a mountain. I’ve taken phone calls in the middle of the desert in a tent. I’ve taken phone calls in church. That doesn’t even count the calls in the middle of the night. Sure, I grumble a little, but if you’ve ever had an extended period where you were out of work and money was beyond tight, I don’t think you get to complain too much about a job that pays you. If it bothered me too much, I’d go get a different job.
Often I’m on these calls because something broke. I’m typically on two or three different phone lines at the same time. I can sometimes convince people I’m in two places at once. And through it all, I absolutely have to be accessible.
This week, I found a time that I could not be in two places at once. My phone showed me the number calling. It was our Incident Management team. I ignored it. Next, our site manager called. I ignored it. Throughout the hour, I got calls from a half dozen people, including our client. I ignored them all. Something was seriously broken and I wasn’t going to do anything about it. Well, not for an hour at least.
I thought a lot about what I was willing to interrupt for my job. If I leave dinner to take a work call, am I saying my family is less important than my job? If I take a call while on a scout outing, am I saying my job is more important than our scout troop? If I walk out of church to take a call, am I saying my job is more important than God?
It’s something I struggle with. I’m going to take the call regardless, but am I sending the wrong message? Obviously, I do. don’t I?
I think the answer has to do with my motivation. Sure, I’ve appreciated a phone call that got me out of a boring meeting. Who hasn’t? But, I hope the message I send is, I made a commitment, and even if it is inconvenient, I’m going to honor that commitment. To my family, I hope it says, “These are the requirements of the job. The job pays for our house and clothes and food. I value those things so much for you that I’m willing to leave in the middle of a family event to make sure I don’t put them at risk.”
So, why was Wednesday night different? I wondered that myself. Why was I willing to let systems fail, employees be frustrated, customers not get service? How did THAT action reconcile with my previous statements?
And then I thought about being in two places at once. While hiking up the mountain, I could both hike and handle the call. At dinner, I wasn’t forcing the meal to come to a halt. Dinner could happen while my phone call was also happening. In church, if I’m not teaching a class, the meeting can carry on without me. I can be in two places at once.
That wasn’t the case Wednesday night. Wednesday night we played a trivia game with 8 Boy Scouts (How To Teach By deception.) I wrote the questions. I wrote the rules. I’m the only one who knew the answers. If I took that phone call, the game would come to a screeching halt. Literally those boys would have nothing to do. I realized that when it came right down to it, taking calls for my job during other activities did NOT signify that my job was more important. It simply meant that I was willing to be in two places at once. When the hard choice had to be made and I was forced to reveal my true priorities, I picked the boys.
I learned something about myself Wednesday night, and it was comforting to feel like I measured up.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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How do you teach people who don’t want to learn? Better yet, can you take someone who is opposed to learning, hostile even, and convince them to learn and like it? In fact, like it so much that they don’t want you to stop?
Sometimes.
I’m an assistant scoutmaster in troop 832. Brad is the scoutmaster. I don’t want his job. I like being an assistant. Brad has to do all the planning. He has to arrange for transportation to the campouts. He has to buy the food and get reimbursed. He has to handle all the paper work.
My job? I get to play scout stuff with the kids. I got the WAY better end of that walking stick. The issue, is that the scouts are 12-13 year old boys. And they hate scouting. At least they do if you ask them.
So, Tyler, are you coming to scouts on Wednesday?
What are we doing?
Scout skills.
Ugh, I guess so, if I don’t have to mow the lawn.
Tyler, you live in an apartment.
But, the boys enjoy getting together with their friends, and do you know what they enjoy even more? Competition. So, last night I disguised my scouting lesson as a game.
So, Ryan, are you coming to scouts on Wednesday?
What are we doing?
A trivia contest. . .with prizes.
Cool!
The trivia contest was a lot of work. I first went through and identified the requirements that some of our boys are missing for their next rank advancement. For those of you who are scouter-types, most of the boys are 1st Class rank, meaning all they need for their Star rank are merit badges. But, a few of our boys are still at the Tenderfoot and 2nd Class level. How do you remedially teach those boys without boring the older boys? You get the older boys to help teach. (Just dont’ tell them that’s what you are doing.)
Once I got the requirements gathered, I put them into questions. But, they make pretty boring trivia questions. And how are you going to hold a contest with a question like this?
1st Class Requirement 9.b.
Investigate an environmental issue affecting your community. Share what you learned about that issue with your patrol or troop. Tell what, if anything, could be done by you or your community to address the concern.
But, I had three boys who needed to complete 1st Class requirement 9.b. I also had 5 boys who didn’t need to complete 1st Class requirement 9.b. But, they were very excited to answer a question about environmental issues. Here’s why.
I divided the eight boys into two teams. Each team sent one person to the middle table for each round. I wrote some true trivia questions like “Who was Baden Powell?” The two contestants competed to see who could answer first. Once the boy answered, his team got 1 point. And they also got a question like 1st Class requirement 9.b. They took the question back to their team and came up with an answer as a team. Their answer was eligable for 1, 2 or 3 points depending on how well they answered.
The boys were working very hard to be allowed to take the requirement questions and provide well rounded answers. Over the course of the hour, I managed to get them to complete 15 requirements. And at the end, they were begging for
Just one more question! Please! We still have a few minutes.
I have to admit, the contest went better than I expected. Sure, there were the two boys who kept kicking each other. (They were on the same team.) And there was the boy who kept getting excited and yelling over the entire room, (When he wasn’t a contestant.) But, when we got done, they all agreed they would like to do another one of these.
Just don’t call it “Scout Skills.”
(In the interest of full disclosure, the bag of Almond Joy candy bars they were competing for was probably a big incentive as well.)
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Do you like apples?
Yeah.
Well, I got her number. How do you like them apples?
– Good Will Hunting
Actually, I do like apples. I have one of those mini-fridges under my desk at work. I keep it stocked with milk, apples and baby carrots. (Don’t judge. It’s my fridge, not yours!) Fortunately, for me, I really like Red Delicious apples. I say fortunately, because they happen to be the cheapest apples. But, truth be told, I like most kinds of apples.
Do you know who doesn’t like apples? Apparently grade school kids. But, what if you could make one small change and suddenly the kids would start eating them? This study found that just slicing the apples increased consumption by 70%. We could say that the kids are too lazy to cut their own apples, but that’s not the reason. Apparently the kids were put off by the aspect of taking the first bite.
Researchers found if you could just get the kids to start eating them, then they would continue. This study made me think of my days as a corporate trainer. No, I didn’t share apples with the class. We handed out peanut M&Ms. But, during the labs, when people were supposed to be putting their skills into practice, it would get very, very quite. Like a tomb or the awkward time in church when the organ has quit playing, but before the bishop starts speaking.
Simon and Garfunkle explained,
Fools said I you do not know, silence like a cancer grows.
(Okay, Distrubed did a version that is even cooler. But, the point is that silence breeds silence. But, I found if I disrupted that silence, even just a little bit, it would shatter like a light bulb on a tile floor.
I found that I could put music on in the background and it would be enough to shatter the silence. Students didn’t even know that they were keeping quiet so as not to disturb the silence. But, the difference between doing a lab exercise with music vs one without was profound.
At one point I was the manager of a team of engineers who maintained our email system. The email system was brand new and really expensive. (Yes, it was Microsoft Exchange, as many of my techy friends would have guessed based on the cost comment.) I started sending out status updates on the system as it came online. At first these reports were sent twice per day. We wanted to make sure our 30,000 system didn’t unexpectedly topple over because we missed a step. Later, I cut the reports back to once per day. And eventually back to once a week.
As the reporting period got spread out, I added content. I started reporting on all aspects of our team’s work. I highlighted engineers. I included historical graphs of our system performance. Before long, the report was many pages long.
Rodney, why don’t you just throw that report up on a SharePoint site and send out a link?”
It wouldn’t work.
What do you mean?
I mean that everyone reads this report. If I put it behind a link. Even asking people to click a single time means I would lose much of my audience.
And that’s what the kids and the apples teach us. We aren’t lazy, but we do tend to follow Newton’s laws of motion.
A body in motion tends to stay in motion
A body at rest tends to stay at rest.
It’s that first step that causes us the most effort. If we can get people moving, either by cutting apples, or playing music, or NOT hiding behind a link, they will keep going. It’s getting them started that is the key.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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In hindsight, it’s easy to see where I went wrong. But, I was young and dumb. Years and years later, I still cringe at my fashion choice for my first Microsoft business trip.
I have a friend, Eric Aroca, who is a motivational speaker and fashion guru. He has a page called The Walking Fashion Show. His philosophy is that as a businessman you are always being judged by what you wear. He gives great advice on not only general fashion trends, but also coaches men directly. It’s an odd choice of professions to me. Eric is great at it. But, if I think about it, it’s certainly a valuable service. I’m much better now than than I was early in my career. I could have used his help.
I recently took a trip to an important client. I was the lowest ranking person from my company on this trip. This was a “getting to know” visit. We’d recently signed the contracts and we were working on building the personal relationships that all business depends on.
I wore slacks, a dress shirt, coat and tie. Okay, I was probably slightly overdressed. Most of the executives were wearing business casual. they had slacks and dress shirts, or blouses for the women. Everyone except one vice president. He wore slacks and a polo shirt. It wasn’t the polo shirt that I found odd. It’s that the shirt had a corporate logo on it. Not our corporation, and not the client’s company. It was a computer company.
Maybe it was a former employer. Maybe, he bought it. Maybe it was a giveaway at a tradeshow. Regardless, it had nothing to do with either one of our companies. It’s not like the company on the shirt was a competitor to either of our companies, but it was odd to see this VP essentially advertising for a third party company.
I rarely wear logo shirts. I’ve actually thrown lots of them away over the years. Microsoft was famous for giving their employees clothing. I got t-shirts, of course. But, also polo shirts, dress shirts, aprons, jackets, hats and even hockey sweaters. Friends have given me shirts from their companies at times. And it’s impossible to come home from a trade show without at least a couple of free t-shirts.
I almost never wear them to work. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I just don’t want to be a walking billboard for some company that isn’t paying me. I’ll wear logo’d shirts from my own company. In fact, on our business trip, one of the shirts I took with me was a dress shirt with our company logo on it. I typically wear it with a tie and jacket during our product launches when I’m on site. Our client asked me about it one time.
Rodney, do you always wear a tie?
Nope. Only when I’m visiting with y’all.
I learned that it’s possible to decide to dress down, say by taking off the jacket, or losing the tie. But, it’s very hard to dress up if you havnen’t brought the right clothes. that was my experience on my first Microsoft trip. We were flying from Redmond to Los Colinas, TX to meet with our support teams. Since Microsoft dress code was shorts and t-shirts, I figured I’d upscale that slightly by wearing jeans and a t-shirt. My manager looked at me as we met for breakfast. I don’t even remember what he said. But, the man who wore t-shirts in Redmond was wearing slacks and a dress shirt.
It’s the reason why I was wearing a jacket and tie on my recent trip with the VP in his computer shirt. It would not have gone over well for me to correct the VP. He didn’t need me to tell him what to wear. Although, he could have used the services of my friend Eric.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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What would YOU do in that situation, Carson?
The teacher repeated the question, not for emphasis, but to try to get Carson to quit looking at his phone and pay attention to the lesson. It worked long enough for Carson to stammer,
Uh. . .I don’t know.
Teaching 12 year old boys can be challenging. I know. I’ve taught this same group, and will again next month. Many of the 11 boys in the room were paying attention. A few of them weren’t. Suppose the information was really important to them? Do they care they missed it?
I recently read an article that decried the goal of a Zero Inbox. The author’s point was that anything that is truly important, the sender will follow up again. Is that who we have become? Have we become so distracted that we assume that anything worth knowing, people will hit us up a second time? Or a third? Or forth?
My family has a planning meeting every Sunday. We have eight teenagers at home, and with my lovely wife’s and my schedules, if we want to get to the important events of the week, we bring them up in this planning meeting. The kids are less interested. And yet, I wonder how much they are missing by not paying attention. Several of them have jobs this summer. We have a couple of family vacations planned. (One for my family reunion, one for my lovely wife’s.) Plus, the boys have scout camps, and two of the girls and one of the boys are going on a handcart trek: Three days of pulling handcarts across the Wyoming prairie to appreciate the early Mormon pioneers who used handcarts to travel to Utah.
There are a lot of dates to keep track of. I’ve tried to explain to my kids that having a job means they will need to ask their manager for the time off. And if they wait too long, they may not get it off. And yet, they still don’t pay attention as we literally give them the days they need to request off. Maybe they figure, if it’s important we’ll follow up with them again. . .and again.
We’ve become a nation of people staring down at our devices. It would be easy to talk about “the good ol’ days” before cell phones and iPads. But, personally, I don’t think they exist. By that, I mean that what we have is much better than what we had, just as cars were an improvement over horses, and electric lights were an improvement over candles.
But, we still have to make sure that we are managing our devices and not the other way around. As someone with ADHD, I understand the attraction, and in fact, the value of distractions. Being bored, we can miss just as many messages as being distracted. I heard an interesting talk in church on Sunday about the need to stop and smell the roses. With modern devices, I think we need to also add the importance of looking up and noticing the roses as well.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I may have been slightly, okay more than slightly, I just might have, okay, I was wrong about who was at fault.
Yesterday, I wrote a post about security called “Hey Apple, That’s Not Security – That’s Insanity.” I complained loudly about how Apple forced me to change the passcode on my iPad and it actually harmed my security rather than helped it. The post got shared a couple of times and sparked some interesting discussions.
One of the great things about writing this blog is that I get to share some of my 30 years of IT experience with some people who maybe are not as familiar with the industry. The other great thing, is that my friends, who are smarter than me, read and comment. That’s what happened yesterday.
My friend David Madison pointed out that he has had an iPad for years and Apple has never forced him to reset his passcode. He suggested that the real culprit might lie elsewhere. And the real culprit was particularly ironic given mine and Dave’s history.
About 25 years ago, I left WordPerfect Corporation to go to work for Microsoft. Dave was one of the first people I met in my new role as a Gateways specialist in the Microsoft Mail Support team. Dave and I both left Microsoft in the ensuing two and a half decades, but thanks to Facebook, we still keep in touch. Dave suggested that if my iPad had my corporate email on it, it was probably governed by a Mobile Device Management process. MDM allows a corporation to ensure compliance with corporate security policy when employees can “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD.)
The iPad is my personal device, but I do get my corporate email on it. And we do have an MDM process. And it required me to put a passcode. The email system that we use is Exchange. I have Outlook on my laptop, but I added my Exchange mailbox to the Mail app on the iPad.
The MDM policy is based on the email security policy. So, the real culprit in yesterday’s rant was not Apple, but the maker of our email system. The same company that Dave and I worked for all those years ago.
So, my corporate security team and Microsoft Exchange required me to reset my passcode. It’s still not a way of improving security, but neither is it Apple’s problem.
Sorry, Apple. My bad. Or rather, Microsoft’s.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I’m an IT professional. That means, I don’t ever backup my own data files, but I keep my systems secure. I know not to click on links in unsolicited emails. I know that there’s no way to find out who has been viewing my Facebook profile. I realize that I’m not the 1,000,000th visitor today and I did not win an XBox.
I do many practical things to safeguard my online security. I have strong passwords that are more than six characters long and include a mix of upper and lowercase letters with numbers and special characters. I have two step authentication enabled for my social media and email accounts, meaning that even if you knew the password for my Facebook account, when you tried to hack into it, you would also have to gain access to my phone so that you could read the one-time security code that Microsoft texts me each time I log in.
I protect my hardware as well. If you were to steal my phone, you would need a passcode to turn it on. Try guessing too many times and the phone will wipe it’s memory. (Something, I’m very aware of after the second fat-fingered mistyping of my passcode.) My laptop has the harddrive encrypted with BitLocker. When, I boot it up, I have to type in a code.
I’m also aware of how much I just compromised my security by telling you all the ways I stay secure. My point is that, I get it. I understand why security is important, and I understand how to keep my systems and devices secure. That’s why the message I got on my iPad this morning was so annoying.
THE PASSCODE ON YOUR iPAD HAS EXPIRED. PLEASE RESET YOUR PASSCODE
This is one of the worst abuses in the name of “security,” I’ve seen in a long, long time. Apple is not making me more secure. They are making me less secure. The fact that they are telling me it’s for my own good is maddening.
Resetting your password is a good idea. My work account resets on a pretty short schedule. (No, I’m not going to tell you what the schedule is. Because, you know. . .security!) I have a plan in place for how to ensure my work password is secure and also so that I can remember it as I change it on a regular basis.
My bank makes me change my passcode on a regular basis. Most of my social media accounts and email accounts do too. And I’m fine with that. It’s a security best practice. I might grumble at the extra 2 minutes it takes me to update my devices with a new email password, but I understand it’s value. Changing the passwords on a regular basis makes the system more secure.
Changing my passcode is different.
Changing my passcode doesn’t make me more secure. It makes me less secure. Let’s talk about how it weakens security. I have committed my passcode to memory, of course. When I open my iPad, I enter it almost without consciously thinking about it. Changing it means that I now have to think I about it. I have to try to remember it. I might even be tempted to write it down. Logging in goes from being a natural act to an unnatural one. It breaks the routine.
Think about when you were in Junior High School. The first week of class, everyone carried around little slips of paper with their locker combination on it. You had to pull that out of your pocket every time you stopped between classes and carefully go through the sequence. . .twice, because you forgot that you have to go all the way around on the second number. But, eventually you memorized it. You could get your locker opened, switch books and still have enough time to run to the hall where the cute girl would be walking by.
You were never asked half way through the school year to change your locker combination. Should you have been? Wouldn’t it make it more secure if we changed up everyone’s combination on a regular basis? Of course not. In fact, it would weaken security. You’d have everyone walking around with those little slips of paper again.
The passcode on the iPad is like that. Passwords need to be changed on a regular basis because they are vulnerable to hacking. If someone can compromise a system that you have an account on, they can get access to your password, and therefore to your account. And since hackers do not always announce when they have compromised a system, it’s a good idea to regularly force users to change their passwords.
However, your Junior High locker combination wasn’t stored in a vulnerable location. You had a copy and somewhere the office had some master list with serial numbers matched to combinations. But, unless you shared it with someone, it was secure. Now think about your iPad. That passcode is stored locally. It’s not sent to Apple. It’s not in some master database somewhere online that is succeptible to hacking.
No one can hack their way into finding out your passcode. It’s like your locker combination. It exists in one place. It’s not a password. Changing it no more secures your iPad than switching combination locks would make your locker more secure. I wish the Apple engineers would figure that out.
Of course, being a professional IT person, I realized that I can change my passcode back. Not immediately. Apple keeps track of your last passcode and won’t let you reset the passcode to the one you used previously. However, if you change it enough times, you can eventually get back to the point you can reset your locker to the original combination. How many previous passcodes does it save? I’m not going to say. Because, you know. . .security.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
