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Executive Summary of John Goekler’s “The Most Dangerous Person in the World?”

“The things we fear most may be least likely to occur, which means the time, trauma and treasure we invest in them is a complete waste.

Security itself is an illusion. It is a perception that exists only between our ears. No army, insurance policy, hazmat team, video surveillance or explosive sniffer can protect us from our own immune system, a well-intentioned but clumsy surgeon, failing to look before crossing the street, an asteroid randomly hurtling through space or someone willing to die in order to do others harm.

In this sense, the only things that can truly make us more “secure” are not things. They are the courage to face whatever comes with dignity and intention, and the strong relationships that assure we will face the future together, and find comfort and meaning in doing so.

Imagine, then, what might happen if we simply quit listening to the scaremongers and those who profit from our paranoia. Imagine what the world could look like if we made a conscious choice to live out whatever time we have with courage, compassion, service and joy.

Terrorism is an act of the weak. But so is walking through the airport in our socks.

We can make better choices.”

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If you were to e-mail me over the holidays, you’d get a response like this. Unfortunately, I had to “tone it down” a bit (couldn’t make it as funny as I would have liked). =)

---------- Original message ----------
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:35:03 -0500
From: Jeremy L. Gaddis
Subject: Out of Office AutoReply:

[This message was generated by an automated system.]

Greetings and salutations!

I am out of the office and my current whereabouts are unknown.  Even I do not know
where I am.  I am not *really* on vacation (as in, I'm not really going anywhere far away),
but as far as responding to email is concerned, I appear to be well outside the solar system.

Other than December 29-30, I will not be around until January 5th.

Boiler plate:  If you have any special needs, please contact the Help Desk.  They will have
the tools and skills needed to get you back on track.

If you are the Help Desk, then please contact Kevin or Ben.

If you *ARE* Kevin or Ben:  stop, take a deep breath, and reassess things.  If you are still
hyperventilating, then go ahead and break the glass (a.k.a. call my Blackberry)!

Happy holidays!

So this evening I’m minding my own business with a friend at a downtown location when a woman I met one night recently saw me and launched into a pitch that began with the most unusual opening line:

HER:  "JEREMY!  Hi, it's Gwen!  Remember?  I called you last week on your cell
phone and you said 'How did you get this number?' and hung up on me?"

ME:  "Um, oh, yeah.  I do remember."

HER:  "Yeah.  Well, anyway, I wanted to know..."

P.S. It didn’t go so well for her this time either.

• “Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning.” –Unknown

I have no idea where this quote originated; if you do, let me know so that I can give proper credit.

i bought a new watch today, since lindsey broke my last one (intentionally). after i made her feel like shit, she did give me $80 the next day, but that wasn’t even one-third of what it cost.

so today while we were killing time at the mall, i made her go with me to buy a new one. it’s the “centurion” from esq swiss. i likes.

a couple of months ago i decided to break down and take the cisco ccna certification exams, which i had no problems with. i passed the icnd1 exam and then passed the icnd2 exam a week later.

just prior to the end of our fiscal year (june 30th), we have our annual performance evaluations, which precede any raises we might receive on july 1st. a few days ago, i got my “letter” letting me know what my raise would be (we generally get 3%) and i was happy to see a nice bonus on there on top of that for completing the ccna. if i had known that i would be getting that, i’d have taken the tests a long time ago!

i have to say that the ccna was well worth the (time) investment i put into it, since it didn’t cost me anything financially ($work reimburses me for certification exams). by the way, i never got a bonus for the microsoft certs.

shortly after 11am today i took off from indianapolis international airport and around 12.30pm landed at ronald reagan national airport in washington, dc. a short train ride and a three-block walk later, i arrived at the donovan house hotel. having not seen it before today, i was actually impressed. it’s quite nice.

just after getting checked in i took off on a walking journey to see what was in the neighborhood. i ended up near the department of the treasury at which point i realized i was really close to the white house. then i had to go check out all the tourist sites all over again — the white house, the washington monument, the national mall, the capitol building, the j. edgar hoover fbi building, etc.

on my way walking back to the hotel i realized i could go ahead to the dc convention center and “pre-check-in” for the cfunited conference, so i hailed a cab and got over there. whenever i left i realized that i street i was on took me directly back to the hotel, which is pretty nice. it’s about a five block walk from the hotel to the convention center which shouldn’t be too bad.

i got quite a bit of walking in and my feet are pretty sore right now. i scored a drink or two and am now back at the hotel, about to turn in for the night. tomorrow is day 1 of cfunited 2008, which should be interesting considering i’ve never written a line of coldfusion code in my life!

just a quick note to warn everyone… if you are thinking of going to see the strangers, don’t bother wasting your time or money.

if you want to see it, wait until it comes out on dvd and then go rent it for a buck or two. it’s way too drawn out, and the ending is completely retarded — there should have been more.

totally not worth the $31 or so i spent for us to go see it ($20 for the tickets, plus cokes and popcorn).

on season one, episode 9 of “house“, the was a conversation between john henry giles and dr. gregory house that went like this:

“i know that limp. i know the empty ring finger. and that obsessive nature of yours, that’s a big secret. you don’t risk jail and your career to save somebody that doesn’t want to be saved unless you got something, anything, one thing. the reason normal people got wives and kids and hobbies, whatever, that’s because they ain’t got that one thing that hits them that hard and that true. i got music. you got this. the thing you think about all the time. thing that keeps you south of normal. yeah, makes us great. makes us the best. all we miss out on is everything else. no woman waiting at home after work with a drink and a kiss; that ain’t gonna happen for us.”

wow… that really struck a cord with me.

see, i got that one thing. for me, it’s computers. as i write this, my girlfriend is at work and has been for about the last 10 hours. i came home when she went to work and i’ve pretty much been sitting here in front of a computer since then.

i’ve caught up on some work e-mail, read up on some bgp stuff, creating and set up some mpls vpn labs in dynamips, checked myspace and facebook, etc.

it was a beautiful day outside, if the weather widget on my dashboard and the kids playing up and down the street are any indication. i wouldn’t really know though, i haven’t stepped outside since i got home about 10:30am this morning.

when the girlfriend gets here after while, she’ll have my full attention and i won’t even touch a computer until after she leaves tomorrow, but, for me, computers — networking, to be more specific — is “the one thing”.

kinda makes me wonder if i shouldn’t re-evaluate things…

it’s 3:30am and i’m surfing aimlessly. i’ve been reading a bit on “ccie candidate”. at the bottom of the “still slogging away” post, ethan writes:

“if ccie is important to you and you still have a choice, don’t get married, have kids, or buy a house until after you have your digits. the rest of you feel my pain, i have no doubt.”

the girlfriend and i have been talking a little about the future and marriage lately (nothing serious, trust me) so those words really hit me. i’m not working on the ccie just yet — eventually; have to knock out the ccnp first — but it’s definitely something i’ll keep in mind!

thanks, ethan!