Anthony Lewis

One of my favorite scenes from Office Space is when Peter is explaining to the consultants what he does in a typical day.  My day isn’t quite as funny, but I thought some people might find it interesting.  So, here is a day in the life of a security analyst.

I arrived at work around 7:00 AM this morning and looked over the e-mail in our project mailbox to see if there was anything urgent.  There was not much going on, so I finished my coffee while looking over headlines in Google Reader.  Moments of peace are pretty rare.

A little before 8:00 AM, one of the developers stopped by to talk about a scheduled task that was set to run on one of the servers.  This task failed after the last upgrade and he was confirming that it was fixed.  We also spent some time looking at the differences between the test server and production server.

Around 9:30 AM, I had a meeting with two auditors.  They are working on an audit of user accounts on a few servers.  We went over a few spreadsheets that I had provided them earlier and discussed all of the accounts.   Thankfully, this only took about 45 minutes.

Next, I helped troubleshoot a problem on one of the servers that was running slow.  One of the volumes was filling up so three hard drives were added to the RAID array last weekend.  Unfortunately, someone added Ultra3 SCSI drives instead of Ultra-320 SCSI drives.  Ultra3 drives run half as fast as Ultra-320.

I also completed an access request and replied to a question about remote access before lunch.  I usually go for a walk during my lunch hour, at least around the building.   Today I just walked down to the cafeteria and grabbed a Snapple to go with my microwave meal before getting back to work.

Last week we received the results from a penetration test that was performed on our network.  I’ve been working in my spare time to come up with a solution to an SQL Injection vulnerability that was discovered in one of our old web applications.

This isn’t really part of my job, but I volunteered to take a look at it since the application isn’t being actively maintained right now.  I finished up my solution, tested it, and e-mailed a developer to see about getting it implemented around 12:30 PM.

From 1:30 PM until 2:30 PM I attended a staff meeting downstairs.  There are 10 people in my group and we get together once a week to talk about what we’re working on.  The meetings are always informal.  Today’s meeting was a little dry since we talked about the budget, but it wasn’t bad.

As the day winds down, I look over my Inbox to make sure I’m not falling behind on any projects.  There are only 4 messages in my box right now, so this doesn’t take long.  Two of these are about training that I need to look at and the other two are concerning ongoing projects.

This was actually a really slow day for e-mail.  I only received 10 and sent 5.  Yesterday I sent 50 messages.  We all take turns covering our project mailbox one day a week.  Yesterday was my day.

Now it’s 4:00 PM, which means quitting time for me…

Looking back at my last few posts, I’m afraid someone might get the wrong idea about my job at the school district.  I just want to make it clear that I had a great job.  I had the nicest coworkers anyone could ask for.  The work environment was wonderful.

I know what you’re thinking.  I said before that I was “miserable.”  That’s true.  I was.  But not because the job was bad.  It was just not the right job for me.

You see, I’m a geek.  I’m not afraid to admit it.  Look under my name at the top of the screen.  I’m good at figuring things out and solving problems.  If it has a processor, I can probably make it work. I’m also rather social.  I enjoy talking to other geeks and sharing what I know.

When I started at the school district, this was exactly what I was doing.  I was constantly learning about new technology and sharing this knowledge with the people around me.  I think I even had a hand in turning some non-geeks into geeks.  You’re welcome.

But by the time I left my job, that had all changed.  I felt like I was buried under a mountain of e-mail, voice mail, and paperwork.  I was spending too much time at my desk and not enough time out in the trenches doing the work.  I was responding to complaints and putting out fires instead of figuring out ways to make things better.

And this leads me to the title of this post.   Be Yourself.  This is probably the best advice I could give anyone.  It applies universally – in your job, in relationships, everywhere.  Just be yourself. If you have to force yourself to be something that you’re not, you won’t be happy in the long run.

For some reason, this was a hard lesson for me to learn.

I think I probably knew from day one that the job was not right for me, but I kept thinking that if I stuck it out for a while I could make it work.  The pay was nice, and that made it easier to convince myself to stay.

I also think everyone else could see that I wasn’t happy.  I remember one day someone walked by the door of my office and said “Tony, why don’t you smile anymore?”  I didn’t know what to say.  I’m sure I said something like “Too much work to do.”

When I told my boss that I was leaving, I said “You know I’m not the right person for this job.” and I think he understood what I meant.  He certainly didn’t argue with me.  I feel like I did a good job while I was there.  I know I did my best.  But no amount of work was ever going to turn me into something that I’m not.

After we closed on our house, we couldn’t wait to go see it.  Our apartment was small and noisy, and we wanted to move as soon as possible.  As soon as we walked in, we found out that the dining room was flooded.

The house had been “winterized” while it was vacant.  Basically, someone turned off the utilities and drained the hot water heater.  We had to pay to have it dewinterized before it could be inspected.  A few days later it was winterized again.

The bank insisted that the house be winterized to avoid damage in case any pipes froze.   They also insisted the utilities be transferred into our name before closing.  Unfortunately, the people who winterized the house the second time didn’t close the valve on the hot water heater after they drained it.

So, when  the water was turned on earlier that day, it went straight through the hot water heater and out onto the floor.  Luckily the guy from the city noticed that the meter was spinning and turned the water off after a few minutes, but the damage was already done.

We spent the first evening in our new house soaking up water with every towel we owned.  The next day, Paige called a company that pulled up the carpet, treated the walls, and setup fans.  A few days later they replaced the carpet pad and put the carpet back down.

The bill for their services was about $800.  We talked to our agent and he talked to the bank’s agent.  The bank did nothing.  Our agent talked to a lawyer.  The lawyer said we should sue the bank, the company that winterized the house, and even the city.

Guess what we did?

Nothing.  That’s right, nothing.  We paid the bill and went on with our lives.  To me enjoying our new house was a lot more important than $800.  Suing everyone involved would only make the lawyers rich, and it would take months to resolve.  It just wasn’t worth it.

I had honestly forgotten all about this until I wrote the post about us moving the other day.  I think too many people spend so much time focusing on the bad things that they miss the great things that are happening all around them.

I believe that you can choose your attitude, and I choose to be happy every chance I get.

Some people probably think I’m crazy.  I’m always reading at least two books.  I research new things on the web daily.  I love to challenge myself both mentally and physically.  I have an endless thirst for knowledge.

I still remember answering a series of questions offered by the professor in my Object Oriented Programming class while the rest of my peers sat with blank looks on their faces.  One of the other students asked me “So, do you go home and read C++ headers every night?”  I replied with a grin “Not every night.”

I was hired by the school district in the spring of 1999 as a PC Tech.  I went around fixing people’s problems and installing upgrades.  The summer after I was hired, the district starting wiring all of the classrooms and installing servers on each campus.  It seemed natural for me to move up and take over the network.

There was only one problem, I knew little about networking and nothing about servers.  So, I bought a stack of books about Windows NT and started reading.  I would work all morning, go home and read for an hour on my lunch break, then go back and work all afternoon.  I read every evening from the time I got home until I fell asleep.

I tried to stay a few steps ahead of what I was working on.  I still remember trying to set up DHCP for the first time.  I had to bring one of my books to work and follow the steps as I set it up.  This made me a little uncomfortable because I wanted everyone to think I knew everything.  I made sure no one else saw me looking at the book while I worked.

By the end of the summer I knew enough about networking to pass all six tests required to become a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.  That really made me happy because my boss had recently tried one of the tests and failed it.  There was also a pretty significant pay raise to go along with my new title.

I was happy being the network manager for several years after that.  It seemed like there was always something new to learn about networking.  Once I felt like I had mastered Windows, I moved on to Linux.  I read everything I could get my hands on and even ran Linux on my home computer for over a year.

I was also looking forward to the day my boss would retire and I would be promoted again.  He was already grooming me to take his place.  I was learning about the budget and E-Rate applications, and felt like I had a part in many of the “big” decisions.  It wasn’t as interesting as networking, but it was something new to learn.

Finally, my boss retired and I was promoted to Director of Technology.  The day I had been looking forward to for years had finally arrived… and I was miserable.

Instead of constantly learning new things, I felt like I was in an infinite loop of meetings and paperwork.  I spent most days staring at the dull walls of my office, talking on the phone, and responding to e-mail.

I realized something else after my promotion — this was as far as I could go at the school district.  I would never be promoted above Director.  I didn’t have the qualifications for anything higher.   The thought of staying in the same place for the rest of my life scared me.

So, after working for almost 10 years to finally reach my “dream” position, I started casually looking for a new job.

On September 1, 2008 I took a trip to Austin to interview for a job.  This was not an unusual occurence.  I had applied for other jobs prior to this one, and even been out of town for a few interviews.  But, I did seem to have an unusually optimistic feeling about this one.

Even though it was a four and a half hour drive home, I was back at work the next morning.  Most people didn’t even realize I had been gone.   I was grinding my way through e-mail and voice mail after the three day weekend when my phone rang.  Less than 24 hours after the interview, I was offered the job.  And, they wanted me to start October 6.

This meant we had one month to pack up everything we owned, sell our house, and find a place to live 300 miles away.  I hadn’t even told my boss that I interviewed for the job yet, and now I had to tell him that I was leaving.  That made for an interesting conversation later that afternoon.

My wife and I spent the rest of the week cleaning up the house and working on the yard.  We also starting packing in preparation for the move and gathering up things to sell in a garage sale.

On September 10, the realtor put the “For Sale” sign up in our front yard.  The next day, we received an offer on the house for our full asking price.  (Housing bubble?  What housing bubble?)  The buyer wanted us out as soon as possible.  We agreed to be out by the end of the month.

That weekend we had our big moving sale.  We were hoping to attract potential buyers to the house by having a moving sale with the for sale sign out front, but I didn’t mind that it had already sold.

I spent my days furiously documenting and organizing things at work.  I developed a Google site to document everything I knew about the network.  I backed up everything on my computer and reloaded the OS.  I filed what seemed like years worth of paper work and filled a bookshelf with binders.

One of the last things I did was take down the degrees and photos that I had on the walls of my office.  I still remember one of my coworkers had to leave the room while I did that.  I have a lot of good friends back in Paris and I still miss them and think about them every day.

On September 20, we took another trip to Austin to look at apartments.  We had spent the last week researching online.  We narrowed our search down to two different apartment complexes.  We picked the one we liked and put down the deposit the same day.

The next weekend we loaded up the biggest moving truck you can rent and with the help of my mom and step-dad moved to Austin.  We spent the next 7 days learning our way around Austin and the following Monday I started my new job with the Texas Education Agency.

I’ve finally broken my addiction to World of Warcraft (again, but that’s a post for another day). Although it was mostly a giant $15/month waste of time, I do feel like I learned a few things from it.

In the few months that I played, I went from being an unknown, to an officer in my guild and a friend to all. I helped people every day with quests. And if I ever needed help, I could always find someone to stop what they were doing and lend a hand.

The list below is my attempt to take my experiences in World of Warcraft and turn them into lessons about networking with other people:

Be Helpful – Find out what you can do to make someone’s life easier and do it. 90% of people will respond with a simple “ty”. Some won’t even bother with a response. But a few people will remember you and look for your help again. These are the people that will help you someday in return.

Be Giving – Everyone likes to receive gifts. If you’re a programmer, contribute to an open source project. If you’re an artist, give away some of your work for free. If you have a web hosting account, host someone’s domain for free. Again, if you give things away, someone will return the favor one day.

Be Humble – This is a fine line to walk. You want everyone in the world to know what you’re capable of doing, but no one likes a braggart. Don’t promise anything you can’t deliver. It’s always better to under-promise and over-deliver than to do the opposite.

Be Grateful – Let someone else be the hero. Ask for help when you need it, and then praise those who help you. If someone does a nice thing for you, remember them and pay them back when you can. Follow up with a thank you note, an e-mail, or a mention on your blog.

Be Consistent – It’s important that you’re almost always available if you want to build relationships with people. It’s hard to become friends with someone who’s always asleep when you’re online. Let others know when you’re available and how to get in touch with you.

Be Selective – Ignore the idiots in the world. There are always going to be people who’s goal in life is to make others feel bad. Some people think the only way to lift themselves up is by putting other people down. Ignore these people and they will die alone.

I’m going to continue trying to translate these ideas in real world practices and see how far it takes me. If you have any ideas about networking with people online, I’d love to hear them.

This may be surprising for those of you that know me, but I can sometimes be a shy person.

For some reason I’ve never been very good at interacting with people online. I have profiles on MySpace, FaceBook, and LinkedIn, but I’ve never used those to meet new people. The only people I’m connected to are people that I already knew, or met some other way.

I read lots of blogs and other web sites, but I wouldn’t think of contacting the author of any of those sites directly. I rarely even leave comments on other blogs. I follow several online forums and mailing lists without ever posting.

The strange thing is, I’m not shy in real life. I have no problem walking into a room full of strangers, introducing myself, and interacting as a member of the group. My brain just doesn’t work the same way when it comes to online interactions.

I’m starting to think that this is holding me back. How can I expect to be successful online if I can’t carry on a conversation with other people? I have the skills to accomplish whatever I want, but no one ever got famous in isolation.

Aaron Swartz wrote an interesting article a while back called How to Get a Job Like Mine. In it, he says you should “gab”. I totally agree with him.

I think I’ll make this my next goal for 2008 – improve my online networking skills.

Now, who wants to be my friend?