Category — A Bit of Me

After a long (but much needed) break from everything Internet, I’m excited to be back at the keyboard. OK, maybe not everything Internet…despite my conscious effort to stay off the grid these past few weeks, I still maintained near-daily twittering thanks to my blackberry. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ve watched me make some major life changes over the last three or four weeks, including a rockin’ upgrade to a new position at Callaway Golf.  Needless to say, I’m honored (and lucky) to have been offered such a great opportunity and I’m completely stoked to have made the jump. Although I will miss working with close friends at KPMG, I’m really looking forward to settling in to my new environment as a member of the IT Compliance and Master data team. The new position comes not only with a whole set of exciting new challenges and learning opportunities, but also with the chance to make some positive lifestyle changes as well (a theme I will reflect on in a second).

The week I took off during the transition was particularly rewarding. Aside from getting some much deserved rest, it got me away from some of my (sub optimal) habits, and gave me a chance to regroup, reset and get back on track. I was reminded that a good forced period of being unplugged (especially if you live a crackberry type of lifestyle, which I was) is necessary and healthy because it gets you out of your regular patterns and forces you to take a good look at what’s working for you and what’s not, and gives you a fresh perspective to help you re-evaluate your happiness as well as your goals and approaches to achieving them. And in the spirit of making changes that positively affect my life and happiness, the following are a few zen-ish themes I’ve been giving a lot of thought to in my time off (feel free to comment and contribute your own):

You Only Have So Much Energy In Your Tank

Managing and monitoring your own energy levels well is a core-skill that everyone should spend time mastering. Our energy tanks are not infinite (mine definitely isn’t) and energy levels are always in flux - we’re always in motion, either filling up our tank or burning through it. Keeping your tank full is largely about how you allocate attention and choose activities.

Different Activities Affect Each Of Us Differently

You don’t have to sit on your butt to recharge.  Finding and engaging in activities that energize you and filling those energy reserves (whether it’s reading about something you’re interested in, pushing yourself to get a runners high, learning a new skill or engaging yourself creatively) is key to being happy(er) and effective when you have to do something that depletes your tank. The trick is learning which activities energize you. (Reading cool photoshop how-tos and books about the web, for example, is something odd that really gets my brain going and brings me to life…weird, maybe, but it’s an energy ++ when I’m feeling tired. On the other end of the spectrum, watching mindless TV actually drains me (think The Hills or The Real World, rather than the discovery channel). Everyone’s got their own energy boosters. What’s yours?)

Set Time Aside For Activities That Energize You

Obvious. Use energy boosters to manage your energy levels when you’re burn rate is highest. If you’ve reached the bottom of your tank, your productivity, efficiency and creativity will likely be equally low and it might be time to take a break and do something else. If you’re approaching empty, head it off by quitting a little early before you burn out. The most effective people strike a perfect balance so that they maximize the time that they are efficient, productive and energetic.

Manage Your Fill/Burn Rate

The same activity will never give you (or take) the same amount of energy every time you do it. Your fill and burn rates change depending on how much energy you have at any given time, especially when you’re running low. As you approach empty, your burn rate for activities that drain you goes up. Said another way, activities that drain you will drain you more quickly when you’re burnt out. We’ve all experienced this. Know when you’re approching burn out levels and focus on energy rich activites to keep you in a productive energy zone.

Make Time To Connect With Non-Work Friends During The Week

People often don’t realize how energy-rich the activity of connecting with friends can be.  Feeling isolated can up your burn rate no matter where your energy and activity level is, and even limit your ability to recharge. It often becomes apparent after you’ve gone past the point of no return and loneliness sets in. Some people are natural loners, but even they can experience depression if a feeling of not being connected takes hold. Connecting periodically is a must for everyone.

Plan For Randomness

Doing the same activities over and over, no matter how energy rich they are, is futile. Repetitive experiences are always subject to diminishing returns. Keep things new to max out your fill rate.

This week I really got to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Five long days sitting in a lab in Orlando with 20 professional hackers has opened my eyes to just how insecure the systems and connections we trust every day really are. The experience was nothing short of mind-bending. Passwords were pulled from the air at the touch of a button, CNN’s home page was defaced in front of my eyes, and tens of thousands of dollars could have easily gone “missing” from e-commerce websites at checkout - and these guys were loving every minute of it. The bigger and more complex the hack, the greater the bragging rights, and the capture-the-flag competitions in our little “closed loop” lab got pretty intense. I say this with a smile - I’m just as paranoid now as I am stricken with awe and admiration of people who have mastered this particular brand of technical hocus pocus.

Before last week, I was pretty green when it comes to black hat hacking - I’m grateful for having the opportunity to learn so much and meet the great group of guys that took part in the pilot training program. It’s funny, I hear horror stories from my clients all the time, but I’ve never really seen the true extent of what is possible by looking over the shoulder of someone waving the magic wand. This week was awesome because I actually got to get my hands dirty and try things in a closed network that I couldn’t even attempt in my own time without breaking the law. For that reason alone, this week was invaluable - it gave us all a chance to trade our white hats for black ones, if only for a few afternoons, and get to “know our enemy” on a much more intimate level. For those of you wondering, here’s a high level overview of what 50 hours of “Ethical Hacking” training covers:

• Abusing DNS
• Abusing SNMP
• Passive intelligence gathering (techniques for gathering info remotely, what types of info bad guys go after and how multi-pronged attacks are planned)
• Hacking TCP-IP
• Stealthy Network Recon Techniques
• Breaking Windows and Unix Passwords (terrifyingly easy, btw)
• Learning exploitation (using zero days, reverse engineering and gathering info on known exploits from the net)
• Exploiting Windows OS, Apps and Linux (ever seen someone hack into a machine by writing and executing code directly into windows media player? Jaw dropping stuff)
• Deep Target Penetration (how to go after info on the CEO’s laptop from outside the firewall, for example)
• Offensive Sniffing (you’d be shocked at how many passwords you can get with free tools just sitting in a hotel lobby)
• Covert Channels (think a firewall can stop everything? Wrong.)
• Covering Your Tracks (manipulating logs, using stenography to hide information in plain sight, matching traffic types and patterns, exploiting how intrusion detection systems work)
• Wireless insecurity (this module made me never want to connect to the net in public places again, but also taught me how to get free wireless at just about any Starbucks or public hotspot - very cool)
• Attacking Routers
• Hacking Web Apps (defacing web pages, e-shoplifting and SQL injection to exploit interfaces with web databases etc. - coolest thing was that we saw the instructor change the price and quantity of an expensive set of items in his shopping cart on a real e-commerce website using just a free firefox extension.)

All of this is pretty scary stuff, really.

Overall, my memories of this week will be bitter sweet. The good is that the experiences I had will significantly change the way I approach my work from now on, and will definitely improve the way I engage my clients. The bad is that….I can’t go back to not knowing what’s out there. I worry that the geek in me won’t get the same kind of “job-well-done” rush that I used to get when I’d finish a security assessment or an IT audit. A week ago, I thought we were really designing good full-body armor, but now it feels like I’m handing my clients some cheap fencing gear, patting them on the back and reassuring them that they should feel confident about going into battle. My heart sinks a little, you know? I know now that we just don’t have the budgets, the equipment or permission to be able to do what’s truly necessary to protect a company’s systems from the really dangerous attackers. That all may change as our industry evolves, but for now, the cold hard truth is that even an IT security expert with an unlimited budget, no restrictions and infinite time couldn’t get your risk to zero. It’s a scary world out there and my eyes are wide open. The only question now is, if Google can be your worst enemy, and novice hackers can download powerful tools for free, and attack an organization from virtual, anonymous “clouds” from anywhere in the world without much fear of getting caught, how do you really circle the wagons effectively? Or more importantly, how do you stop paranoia getting the best of you?

We all eat, but some of us enjoy it more than others. Sometimes a lot more. Eating with someone who truly appreciates not only food, but everything that goes into the experience of eating, can be a total joy.

Last night I went out to dinner with a “foodie” friend of mine, Kevin, a staff writer for LAist.com whose up and coming blog 50meals.com is a must read for food-lovers living in, or around, Los Angeles. I admit that I go out to eat sushi a lot when I’m on projects in L.A., but I had never been to Little Tokyo, so when Kevin, a seasoned pro, excitedly suggested Sushi Gen I was in. From beginning to end, the night was full of lively conversation about food, life and all the small things that make the whole experience of meals so great. What I love about Kevin is that his energy and appreciation of all the meal’s details is infectious. He doesn’t just talk about food being “good” - Textures, aromas, colors and flavors all get an uncommon level of attention in the across-the-table banter. And, of course, sometimes no words are necessary - you can see it written all over his face when he takes a bite of something he’s really satisfied with. He totally lights up. (Kevin - how good was that melt-in-your mouth toro, or that black cod!?). All in all, the night reminded me of just how important it is to be around people who appreciate the small, simple things that make an experience joyful. Thanks to Kevin for such a memorable night in L.A.!

I just spent a fantastic 4 days at ETech08 in San Diego. A special and heart-felt thank you goes out to Fraser and Alex at AdaptiveBlue, not only for their generosity and kindness for their help getting me in to the conference, but for the stellar sushi and conversation on Monday night. What an absolutely brilliant time.

The conference closed with a mind-bending keynote address from Tim Ferris, author of the 4 Hour Work Week - a totally appropriate choice by the OReilly staff, I thought. It’s a tough order to be tasked with wrapping up a 4 day event with speeches given by over 100 thought leaders like ETech, but I thought he did a bang-up job. Truth told, just listening to him speak was humbling…I don’t think there’s a more perfect way to describe it. At most of the keynotes this week, you’d see a virtual sea of laptops open, attendees blogging and chatting away. People sitting all around me were really paying attention to this guy. He just exuded genius (perhaps with a slight tendency towards OCD, which was self-admitted in his keynote). I was even inspired to re-visit his book now that I’ve seen him speak in person and I’m sure it’s going to add a lot of color to the way I experience it for the second time.

On the whole, five sessions really had a profound impact on me. Here are the links to the sessions on the OReilly site in order of “wow”factor. The actual videos should be posted with the presentations in the coming days - definitely worth checking out.

Futuretainment: The Asian Media Revolution  - I had the pleasure of having lunch with Michael Walsh, who’s book (same name as the title of the session) is coming out in the coming months. The presentation was chalk full of mind grenade-type insights about how asian tech culture is shaping the future of device design and how online behaviors are closely linked to the values and rules of ingrained cultures and societies.

Designing Magnets: Connecting with Audiences in the Wired Age  - Elan Lee (Fourth Wall Studios) shared a lot of personal experiences about what it was like bringing online fantasy to life for off-line communities, and how real-world interactivity can be built into online content.

The Case for Africa as a Mobile Development Hothouse - Made me want to pick up every single book I could about mobile web development. It’ll knock your socks off to actually see the statistics of the populations worldwide that are accessing the internet via mobile devices as their primary connection because of the digital divide.

Halo vs. Facebook: Emotion and the Fun of Games - Nicole Lazzaro, founder and president of XEODesign, Inc., is an award-winning interface designer and an authority on emotion and the player experience. Her passion for this stuff is infectious. I encourage anyone who designs interfaces to head over to the ETech site and download her presentation, which has got tons of intuitive grids and charts explaining the principals she uses when designing for the greats.

Computing for Socio-economic Development - It’s not often you get to hear one of the heads of the Microsoft Research  Team (Kentaro Toyama) wax intellectual about their personal experiences developing rural areas of India. Good stuff.

So all that said…Now I’ve got to figure out what to do with all the tech fodder I collected - like the seizure-inducing light up Google Pins and Yoyos sitting on the desk in my living room. What a week. Thanks Alex and Fraser!

It’s been a few weeks since this poor little blog has had any attention. Don’t worry, I’m still very much alive and, as of today, I’m back at the keyboard with a smile. For those of you that know me and my work schedule, you wont be surprised to hear that these last few weeks has been a total blur. Between traveling back and forth to L.A., wrapping up year end projects and getting married, I haven’t had much time to tinker on my own projects and blogging for enjoyment quickly took a back seat to higher-priority activities. My apologies. The good news is that I got some great relax time this weekend to decompress and I’m back in action with a new game plan for 2008 that I hope will help make my free time spent at the keyboard more focused and enjoyable. Here’s what’s on the horizon…

New Year, New Strategy

After a lot of consideration and thought, I’ve decided to change the theme and purpose of steffanantonas.com and transfer my personal blogging to a different domain name. Buying my own domain name and getting into the nuts and bolts of Wordpress this year has been a great learning experience. Not only has it given me the opportunity to connect with some great people I would have never met otherwise, I’ve also  learned a lot about being an active member of the blogosphere and what it means to maintain and manage a public site with my name attached to it. I had originally decided to go with “my name dot com” as the title of my blog because I wanted to own and control that top spot for my name at the search engines. I think that owning your own domain name is an important step towards managing your online identity if you plan on establishing and building a creative presence online, and it’s a step I’m glad I took. However, as I’ve grown, I’ve discovered other interests - Wordpress Theme Design, for example is something I’ve already started dabbling in, and I’d eventually like a place to display my future work in a professional manner as a budding designer. So, although I will still own and maintain steffanantonas.com, I’ve decided I don’t want it to be just a personal blog anymore. Rather, I’m going to use it to showcase all of my future work online. It’s an exciting decision, one that I am confident will pay dividends in the long run. So something with a more professional look and feel is going to take the place of this blog and become a place where people can find out how to contact me, get news updates on what I’ve been up to and find links to my online projects and wordpress themes. To that end, I recently purchased a copy of Brian Gardner’s Revolution theme which will become the new face of this site. Thanks goes out to Brian for his help with the customizations that you’ll see soon. Both this site and my new blog are currently in the works and will be up in the coming days. Stay tuned for the official launch of my new sites. Until then, happy surfing.

I’m a Starbucks fan, but I’m not a die hard. And that’s a subtle, but critical distinction. I realized this morning that I’ll never reach die hard status. Not many people do. It’s reserved for the truly elite - The ones that require a completely different level of all-hands-on-deck customer service that is a joy to watch from the sidelines.

Every Starbucks regular, at one point or another in their quest for 15 minutes of caffeinated heaven, has had the pleasure of witnessing a die-hard order their favorite, ultra-customized coffee cocktail and perhaps broken out in laughter. This morning’s die-hard prize for most obnoxiously detailed order goes to the “Venti Half-Caf Non-Fat Vanilla Latte Extra Hot With Two Pumps of Caramel…no water.”  The entire line heard it and tuned into what was going on because the woman holding the pocket poodle had to repeat it 3 times. The poor girl taking the order had a mini meltdown, and then tried to recover by staring blankly at the cash register buttons in an attempt to try and parse all the information. It was total system overload. I had the biggest smile on my face - it was one of those moments that Julie and I would have appreciated together in gleeful silence. Until you get to the point where you’re ordering drinks that require 2 or 3 Starbucks employees to stop what they’re doing and make an assembly line, sorry, you’re just a regular.

Last night Julie and I took a gander outside our apartment to try to find out who could possibly be holding the BBQ in our neighborhood that was sprinkling ash all over our kitchen. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a black sky. We’ve been tuned into the news and the radio ever since. Fires, fed by roaring Santa Ana winds are tearing through San Diego county. Check out the NASA picture to the right - even from space, the fires look biblical.

I woke up this morning to a declared state of emergency just north in Del Mar, Carmel Valley and Rancho Bernardo. More than 8 Fires have covered immense ground and the buzz is that the winds are so strong that they may make it all the way to the ocean 15-20 minutes drive north of our house. Thousands of people are being evacuated all over San Diego just north and just south of us. Qualcomm Stadium has been opened for evacuees (sorry, no horses - I never knew that that would be a problem, but there are frequent no animals warnings from every news source). No one is equipped for this. [Read more →]

I went surfing with the guys this morning before work for the first time this summer and it was perfection. 4 ft, perfect, consistent A-frame waves - 71 degree bathwater - cloudless sky. Being out in the water at La Jolla shores and looking back on the green hills and the beach and being in the water with people laughing and hanging out before work reminded me of exactly why we moved out here — this is what southern California is all about. What a great way to start the day. I’m loving summer in San Diego.