And another hot week has come and gone. I didn't get the worst of it by any stretch of imagination, but I I did have an opportunity to find myself cleaning PCs and Laptops in a room of a school where the air conditioning wasn't on, it was the second floor, and there were natural skylights shining down in. So, it's no brag, but besides driving all around without A/C, I feel the heat.
But for real, I had one awesome moment this week. At work, we monitor our clients' networks a few different ways- one of which is monitoring their external IP address (so if their whole network goes offline, we know) and another being that we monitor their individual servers. Well, there I was Saturday, binge watching the second half of Stranger Things season 4 with my brother-in-law, when I got a text that one of our schools was reporting issues- issues that sounded eerily like their whole network was having problems. Sure enough I took a quick glance at everything, and it looked like everything was offline. I began to fear we would have to cut our Stranger Things marathon in half, and resume it a different day, since I was on call this week.
But then, I began to think it through, and thought it odd that while everything appeared down, the public IP appeared to still be up... and what's even stranger, I was able to remote in through their VPN. I then spent about 10 minutes doing some super awesome troubleshooting- and solved the problem remotely! Looking back at it now, it doesn't seem like all that much interesting, but in that moment, it felt like one of the most satisfying victories ever! And for those who know their tech jargon, you might also well know that DNS seems to be the problem in some way or another over 70 percent of the time. In fact, I want to share my favorite haiku of all time below:
It's not DNS
There's no way it's DNS
It was DNS
And oddly that note leads me into my thought this week, which is questions and growth. This is a topic that would deserve it's own compendium of books and discourses, and honestly, my thoughts are just a splash in the pond; but I feel it good to share them, all the same. A lot of times in my life, I will admit I have been able to accept a lot of things as good, because at the time, they do no harm, and the intent behind the way things are done seems good. And for some years growing up, as our good friend Bruce Hornsby would say, "That's just the way it is".
Like everyone, though, I've had occasion to stop in the road and question those things. My vagueness is by design, here, as my words can apply to a variety of faculties in life- education, family relationships and problems, religion & beliefs, and much, much more. But my thoughts today basically narrow down to two main concepts, that are actually two sides of the same coin.
On the one hand, there are those who question everything in their life. They are curious, want to challenge the way they know and understand things, and are often very smart and ambitious. On the other hand, there are those who prefer their lives to incur as little change as possible- whether the reasons be that their life has been very hard up to this point, or maybe just out of a fear to learn what they don't want to know. Now, I've made an assumption in my wording already that is actually incorrect; these aren't always two extremes of people that exist one way or the other- in my case, I tend to be both kinds of these people.
Sometimes, I find my mind asking so many questions it feels the need to find answered, while other times, I find myself content where I am, and, so to speak, make camp in that place and take up residence. To be frankly honest, while I don't think I am all that well balanced between these two mindsets, I believe a balance between the two is indeed important. Those who grow up and just do things because it's just what their parents said they should do tend to experience much less growth and development; they often miss out on so many opportunities to become the person they ought to become! On the other hand, those who question and question and never stop in their quest to find more questions and loose ends inevitably never find happiness or a place to stop; in this, they fail to learn the importance of patience, faith, and finding the things in life that lead to eternal happiness.
This was a tangent from a conversation I had with a family member this week, but I thought it was good to share it, because sometimes some of us get so caught up in wanting to know more and come up with the most logical conclusion, that we fail to make room for other possibilities and we miss out on the happier things in life because of it. And perhaps worse, yet, if we just go with the flow all the time, and never stop to question what we do and why we do it, we give up a great opportunity to learn more about ourselves, the world around us, and even others.
So, if you lean one way or the other, I challenge you to find something in your life this week and ask yourself why you do it. You may not find any easy answers, and maybe that's okay. But question your decisions and reasons, and ask yourself what is most important.
Until next week, have a good one!