Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Playing Catch-Up

Having to play catch-up on things is not fun. I do not care who you are, nobody likes falling behind the curve.

I have struggled with sticking to things a couple of times in my life. My senior year in college for instance, now granted it was as Covid was starting to really skyrocket and we went into a global pandemic, but any excuse is just that, an excuse. I had too much on my plate, I thought I was doing well trying to manage it all, working 4 jobs, being a full time student, trying to have a social life, planning for a career after graduation; it eventually caught up with me. My schedule started interfering with others and causing a disgruntled group that just fought against every choice I made. They started to dread being home in my apartment. I started to have sleepless nights. I started to slack off on assignments and get extensions because my professors knew I was good at my work. But it just kept slipping me up, I started to struggle more and more and withdraw within myself as my world crumbled around me. And then having to go home and be isolated with my family and try to keep up with everything because the World got shut down but mine did not, it just was overall not a fun time.

I think that is probably the worst time I slipped up and fell behind and had to play catch-up. I did it though. I caught up, I graduated, I held my jobs for a while until I decided to find my career.

Now, I am here. At my career. In my apartment. Still slipping up occasionally. It happens. You have a bad day, you have a bad week, maybe you even have a bad month. But you need to think of every new day as an opportunity to do better. You need to find a way to learn from your mistakes. Maybe you need to not play catch up and just pick up as if no time had passed. It would probably be less stressful that way.

Friday, July 19, 2024

Global IT Problems - Crowdstrike

Yet another moment in history that you will eventually be able to say "I remember when..."

Updates are usually something that goes unnoticed by the common population, your computer even makes sure to schedule it during your usual downtime. Technology is constantly evolving and therefore there are commonly updates that need to roll out for just about everything. Your PC is constantly updating all your applications. Windows is constantly adding new features. Games are usually switching out their maps or their player skins. Now there may be some downtime depending on what and how much is being updated, this is the give and take of advancements. Updates are usually something that goes unnoticed by the common population, on most days anyway.

In the wee hours for those of us in the Americas, an update was rolled out by a cyber security company, one that up until my most recent job, I had never heard of before. The issue is, something in between all the lines of coding, got missed and is causing havoc on a lot of very important computer systems across the globe. Within the syntax of the most recent CrowdStrike software update, something is not sitting well with the users who have Microsoft applications on their systems. Because of this, we are having issues at a lot of major banks, airports, hospitals, city departments like court systems or police and fire, grocery stores, retail stores, and even some personal computers. Those who are on systems such as Mac and iOS are still operational but could you imagine if those systems had been impacted as well? 

Thankfully, this seems to sincerely be an issue of just somebody missing a line in coding and not a ransomware that somebody put out into the world. Regardless, it is going to take a little while to push out the new update and manually go through all the computers that are stuck on the blue screen of death.

Therefore this is going to end up being our second moment in time this month that people will never live down.

Sunday, July 14, 2024

Moments in Time

There are a lot of moments in time that people are never going to forget on a Global scale. 

1835 - US President Jackson Attempted Assassination

1864 - US President Lincoln Attempted Assassination

1865 - US President Lincoln's Assassination

1865 - last of the American Slaves Freed

1881 - US President Garfield Shot

1901 - US President McKinley Shot

1912 - US President Roosevelt Attempted Assassination

1914-1918 - World War I

1930 - Great Depression 

1936 - First Public TV station

1939-1945 - World War II

1945 - Atomic Bombs hit Hiroshima

1945 - Jewish Holocaust

1948 - Assassination of Gandhi

1948 - Human Rights Standardized

1955 - US Civil Rights Movement

1957 - First Satellite Launch

1960 - Martin Luther Assassination

1961 - First Person Launched into Space

1963 - US President Kennedy Assassination

1969 - First Moon Landing

1972 - Watergate

1980 - HIV/AIDs Emergence

1981 - US President Reagan Attempted Assassination

1989 - Fall of the Berlin Wall

1996 - First Successful Cloning of a Mammal

1997 - Princess Diana Dies

1998 - Google Launches

1999/2000 - Y2K Panic

2001 - World Trade Center Attack

2004 - Facebook Launches and Social Media Skyrockets in Popularity

2005 - Hurricane Katrina

2011 - Prince William and Kate Middleton Marriage

2011 - Osama bin Laden Killed

2012 - Hurricane Sandy

2013 - Nelson Mandela Dies

2014 - Malaysia Airline Flight Goes Missing

2014 - Robin Williams Death

2015 - Same-Sex Marriage

2018 - Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Marriage

2019 - First Photo of Black Hole

2020 - Global Covid Pandemic

2022 - Queen Elizabeth Dies

and now...

2024 - attempted assassination of former US President Trump