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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 24, 2019 25:05

The dreaded office holiday party: For many of us, for MANY reasons, this is a situation fraught with difficulties. To go or not to go. To eat or not to eat. To discuss or not to discuss our religious/holiday/personal lives and plans. As IT folks with a strong religious/moral/ethical POV, navigating this ONE (supposedly optional) yearly occurrence can be the cause of more stress than any other event. In this episode we’ll unpack the what and why, and - like the IT pros we are, offer advice on how to navigate through this seasonal obstacle course. Listen or read the transcript below. Kate: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experience we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion (or lack thereof). We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:24 This is a continuation of the discussion we started last week. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation. Josh: 00:31 So up until a few years ago, I was one of those people where if you said "happy holidays" to me, I would say "Merry Christmas" back because you know, it's Christmas time and you got to put the Christ in Christmas, right? Leon: 00:45 Sure. Josh: 00:46 And my wife and I were talking about this just the other day yesterday, I think. And we have decided that regardless of what holiday someone wishes us, our response is going to be, "Thank you. You too." I mean, Holy crap, right? It's like mind blowing. Yechiel: 01:08 Radical. Leon: 01:10 What a crazy idea. Just saying thank you. Josh: 01:15 Ah, and she, she said, "Oh, I posted this to Facebook that I'm going to do this." And she's like, "I wonder how many people are going to be offended?" And I thought, Who in the world's going to be offended by saying thank you?You too. Leon: 01:27 Okay. And, and the answer is? Yechiel: 01:29 Well, it's is Facebook, so... Josh: 01:30 Right. Everybody. Leon: 01:34 I was going to say, how many hundreds of, of responses about "this is part of the war on Christmas!!" Have you gotten so far? New Speaker: 01:40 Um, I don't know. I don't go on Facebook, so I have no idea. Uh, I don't, I don't have an account anymore. Um, so I don't know. I get it right. I, I'm with Doug. Um, if, if you, if for you, Christmas is about the birth of the savior. Um, I mean, pro-tip: Jesus was born where there were shepherds who had their flock in the fields. It was not December, just saying. Um, anyway, so if, if that's the time of year in which you get aligned to your faith in Christ, go for it. But don't rob other people of the reason that they like to celebrate. For me and for people that I like to associate with Christmas is a time where we get together with friends and family, where we bring, you know, we, we bring in this idea of being, uh, increasingly generous with, um, those around us where we're reminded that we need to be generous. So it's, for me, it's not really this dueling religion thing at Christmas or, you know, whatever holidays happen to fall around this time of year. It's, Hey, you know, there's this spirit of generosity and camraderie. Let's just get together and hang out. Um, and we don't have to call it a Christmas party. Uh, yeah. All Christmas party planners, you know, corporate offices need to probably hear that message. It doesn't need to be a Christmas party. It can just be a party, Leon: 03:10 ...a party, right a part... End of year party and stuff like that. But w'ell, again, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna offer some, some insights based on this. Um, so as a non Christian, I think one of the challenges about this time of year also again - that comparative, uh, religion conversation in the worst possible setting ever - is the, the need of some folks to say, "But, but your holiday is just the same as ours!" Like to find equivalence where there isn't necessarily equivalence. Um, you know, Hanukkah isn't, you know, the Jewish Christmas, there's no such thing as a Hanukkah Bush. There is no such thing as a Hanukkah Charlie. That... And it doesn't need to exist. You know, it, it goes into, um, this homogenization of, "Well, everyone can celebrate Christmas in their heart." There's... No, no, there doesn't, no, we don't need to do that. I don't need to be included because that becomes a, unfortunately for me... And I apologize, I'm gonna get a little bit prickly here. It becomes a little threatening for me because that leads, you know, that dovetails into being proselytized to or at, in a very uncomfortable situation. Again, we're talking about an office party and to have a coworker or a boss suddenly raising this, you know, "But, but everyone believes in Jesus." No, everyone doesn't. And, and insisting that I do puts me in a very difficult position where, you know, my desire to be authentic as a Jew and my desire to be employed as a human are suddenly possibly in conflict. Josh: 05:05 I mean, I, I, uh, I don't know, maybe I'm a bit of a crap disturber but I would definitely recommend brushing up on, um, what historians are now calling the authentic Jesus. Um, and he was a real crap disturber so I mean, you could be like, "Oh yeah, let's talk about Jesus. Let's talk about how he did this and this and..." You know, you know, kicked over these tables and you know, made a mockery of, Oh wait, no, let's not talk about that because that's not really, yeah, Yechiel: 05:34 Something tells me that wouldn't go towards making the party more of a festive occasion. Josh: 05:40 I think it would make it very festive, actually. Leon: 05:42 I was going to say... "festive" in a very completely different way. Yeah. Josh: 05:47 Josh is never being invited to a party ever again. Right. Leon: 05:52 There's also an, and unfortunately this has happened to me, this desire again, this does that, you know, "everyone, everyone likes Christmas. Even in their heart, even if they don't know it" there's this insistence of, you know, you just, you just haven't tried it. You haven't tried the right one yet or whatever. And you know, "come take a look at this beautiful Christmas tree. Wouldn't you love to have a Christmas tree? Like this isn't this great?" You know, and right behind it is this wall full of crucifixes and then they take a picture and all of a sudden it becomes a picture of the Orthodox Jew. You looking up at an admiring, you know, a Christmas tree and a wall of crucifixes and it becomes this, you know, 'caption this photo contest'. You know, I'm not interested in being in your picture like that. Josh: 06:34 "Leon wonders why people put pine trees in their houses." That's, that would be my caption. Leon: 06:40 You know, it can get really prickly. It can, it can, you know, people, again, people get caught up in the holiday and in their love of the holiday, their enjoyment of holiday. When you discover spin class, which Joshua and I have said, you know, CrossFit is a cult, Josh: 06:54 It is. Leon: 06:54 ...you know, and but the desire to have everyone else involved in CrossFit or you know, veganism or whatever it is, like you love it so much, you need other people to love it. Just as much. Josh: 07:09 I will have, I will say, and maybe this is completely counter to what we've been talking about, but I have received a Christmas card from a Muslim friend this year already. Very first one I received. Um, and I have neighbors that are Muslim and they will without fail bring us a Christmas gift. We even have, we have a, uh, some Muslim friends, um, who were neighbors that are now friends cause they've moved a few blocks away, but they will make the Trek over to our house every year to bring us. Um, uh, and I authentic. Um, I, I believe they're from uh, Iran. So they will bring us an authentic Iranian festive dish to share at Christmas because they know that it's important to us. I, I don't know how to take that whole corporate thing though and make it like human beings act so good to one. Another one on one is when we get into these large groups that suddenly things get real awkward. Right? Yechiel: 08:14 Actually that's, that's an interesting point that I think like that people don't understand that the so called war on Christmas, um, like Jews, Muslims, we don't care that Christians celebrate Christmas, you know, good for you. Uh, it's fun. It looks nice and everything. Just don't make it the default and assume that everyone celebrates Christmas. Don't tell. Like when you tell me Merry Christmas, I'm not going to get offended. Of course, I know you mean well, but that's not my holiday. That's not what I celebrate. But on the other hand, I don't mind wishing you a Merry Christmas if I know you celebrate it and I don't mind sending you a Christmas card. Leon: 08:49 The example that's used a lot and I like it is, is the concept of happy birthday. That if you know, if it's birthday, we all show up. We tell Josh happy birthday, but we don't feel the need for everybody to say happy birthday to everybody else. It's not everyone else's birthday. So you know, it's your holiday. So Merry Christmas. Absolutely. You have a great time on your birthday, on your holiday. Um, but don'tto Yechiel's point. Don't insist that everybody celebrate, you know, their birthday on your birthday because that's not how things work. Josh: 09:23 I think after this episode we're going to have to start a business where we hire ourselves out as event planners for corporations that want to be both unoffensive or I mean reasonably unoff.... Nevermind. It would never work. Yechiel: 09:40 It's still 2019, you know. Leon: 09:43 Okay. So something that we hit on earlier that I just... Is interesting to me is again, trying to be unoffensive. One technique that especially HR departments try to do is again, to create this false reciprocality of things. So, you know, "We're going to put up, you know, trees, they're holiday trees, they're holiday wreaths, they're holiday baubles, you know, hanging from the ceiling and everything. But in order to be inclusive, we're also going to put a menorah next to the tree. I am here to tell you that at no time is a menorah next to a Christmas tree, an image that makes any sense to anybody except perhaps the people working in HR. It's not a thing. It does not make me feel more included. You know, again, Hanukkah was three weeks ago. Chad don't need to have them menorah there. You're not, you know, it's, it's your holiday. And, and I've actually gotten into conversations with HR, not in my current job. It was a while ago when I was a little bit more loud mouth about things and perhaps had less impulse control. You know, they... right! Less than I have now. I know it's a shock. And I actually got into it with the folks in HR and they said, but they're not Christmas decorations, they're holiday decorations. This is, there is no holiday that I celebrated anytime of the year that has decorations like this. Please, you know, let's be intellectually honest about this. Josh: 11:09 Even an authentic question. What would be your preference? So my heritage or my beliefs trend toward Christianity. Um, would you prefer for Christmas to just be, "Hey, like this work going to have Christmas stuff?" Um, but then how do, how do we handle it on the other side? Like, do we need to have a celebration for every holiday? Because I have noticed some companies doing that, right? They will, um, celebrate, you know, Diwali, they will celebrate, um, you know, Hanukkah, they will celebrate, uh, Kwanzaa. They will, they will have every single holiday represented. Is that the right route to go Leon: 11:57 To have an ofrenda for Dia de Los Muertos? Like yeah, I mean, so again, we're going to have, you know, we're going to have a section where we try to solve this, but I think that that what you're getting at is there seems to be, I'm not saying there is, but there seems to be two options. Do nothing or do everything. And I think there's some other options there. But my preference, and this is my personal preference, this is independent of a religious outlook or whatever, is that if the company feels it's important to make a display around the December time frame, great. You're talking about Christmas, go do it, Josh: 12:38 I like that. Leon: 12:38 Don't, don't pretend. That that would be my thing. And I am very much from a Jewish standpoint, I am very much a please include me out. Like I am actually more comfortable, personally, not having a company that isn't intrinsically a, a Jewish knowledgeable, uh, group of folks try to put something together, which is always back to the food conversation. You're going to work really, really hard trying to buy kosher food and you're not going to do it. And I'm going to tell you you missed and you're going to be offended because you tried so hard and I'm just ungrateful. So in the same way, like you're going to try really, really hard to decorate for my holiday and something is going to not match up somewhere you're going to. "But, but they were Hanukkah tree decorations. Doesn't that work?" You know, like no, that the tree was the problem, you know, and someone's going to feel frustrated that they had put this effort and I'm still being ungrateful. Josh: 13:36 I think if we were to look at this from the reciprocal, right. And so last week, Leon, we talked about your trip to Israel. Um, if, if we weren't in North America, if we were in Israel, would I, should I make the choice, um, to be offended by Jewish celebrations or celebrations of my Muslim coworkers because Christianity is not the predominant religion, right? Like, I, I, I think I, I think we need to think about things in that way, stops, you know, I need to stop saying, well, you know, because Christianity is the predominant religion in North America, blah, blah, blah, and say, well, what if it wasn't, how would I want to be treated? And then just act like that. I mean, there I go, trying to solve a thing. I know. Leon: 14:30 Okay. And it sounds like we're in the problem solving section, which is, which is great. And I think it's, it's about time, but actually I haven't lived in Israel enough during the holidays to even know what offices look like during any of the normative Jewish holidays Yechiel, I don't know if you have any experience with that. Yechiel: 14:48 Following Ben Greenberg's Twitter account. Um, it seems companies will have a Hanukkah party. Um, I don't think they have Christmas parties. They probably have a new year's party cause that's just universal. I mean, obviously everyone celebrates Hanukkah in Israel or at least the 80% of the country that's Jewish. So yeah, I would say Hanukkah and Israel is sort of like Christmas in America where it's just everywhere. Leon: 15:08 It's just a different times, different times of the calendar. Yechiel: 15:12 in terms of how pervasive it is. Leon: 15:14 All right. So Josh, I want to circle back to the question you asked before. You know what, now we're speaking directly to the company, what, you know, what are the correct options, what can we do to fix this? And again, we said there's the do nothing, which I think is an option. Right? You know, we're talking about the dreaded office holiday party, so we can say don't have them. Yechiel: 15:33 I'm definitely on that team. I mean, but that's due to not just a religious reason. Just you know, all the reasons you mentioned like also at the beginning of this stage, like I don't know, I feel like they're more trouble than they're worth. I mean before I got into programming, I worked at a Jewish company in Williamsburg and they didn't have a holiday party. Instead they gave a present around the, they would give everyone a pretty nice, decent, decently priced present around the holiday time. In addition, they also give like a holiday bonus around Passover and Sukkot, which was totally not tied to your performance bonus, which was a completely different thing. Like everyone would get, it was small. I think it was like $250 maybe, but it was just a nice extra, something special. I just think employees would be happier if instead of spending all that money on a party that no one wants to go to anyway, it would find some more creative way to use that money. But yeah, we're not talking about our work. Let's talk to companies who are having a party. Leon: 16:28 Well. Okay, but again, not doing it and you've just offered some alternatives of, okay, so if we're not doing that, like what, what are we doing? Do we just say it's a regular set of work days and you know, tough luck because that feels, to use a Christian concept, it feels free. Scrooge ish. 'Bah humbug.' You know, so, but you just said you recognize... Yechiel: 16:48 Well, correct me if I'm wrong, most holiday parties aren't on Christmas, are they? I mean, at least not on the companies. I've been to. Leon: 16:54 Correct. No, no, no. They're there. Usually the lead up to... Yechiel: 16:57 I mean, Christmas is a day off and new year's is they off. And sometimes the week in between is also off. So it's not like a regular work to, anyway. Josh: 17:03 So I'm completely on board with you heal on this one. I think that companies should really ask themselves, "Do we need to hold a a holiday party or Christmas party?" So I, you know, I work for new Relic. New Relic is a global company. I have colleagues that are in Europe and you know, me and Canada. Colleagues stretched across the United States. How do you get people together when a significant portion of your workforce works remote from their home offices? I mean, I can have a party, but it's going to be a party of one. Leon: 17:41 Oh, right. which may be the best party of all. New Speaker: 17:44 Right? So instead, um, I like the of saying to, um, to your employees, like "look in lieu of a party because it just doesn't work logistically, here's what we're going to do. We're going to give you some money you can do with it. What, what ever you want. If you want to use it to, you know, um, augment your, your own earnings, great. If you want to go out and donate it to charity, great. If you want to shred it, you, you do whatever you want with it." I mean, that allows people who want to amplify their, you know, their Christmas celebrations to do that or if they time it, right, their Hanukkah celebrations or their no celebrations at all. Leon: 18:33 Right. Okay. I'm just going to go in and I'm going to, I'm going to strongly correct you in this one. If you as a company decide, you know, if you as an individual who's received cash, your immediate urge is to shred that money. Please consider sponsoring an episode of Technically Religious. We will... Just send it to us. We will dispose of that money for you appropriately. Yechiel: 18:57 Alternatively, you can just sign it to me. I have a professional shredding service on the side. It'll be shredded completely. Nothing will be left within a few minutes. Leon: 19:05 How many kids do you have? Yechiel: 19:07 Five. Leon: 19:08 Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that is, that is effectively shredding your money. Yeah. Right. It's, you know, diapers and tuition. Yeah. The whole thing. It's, it's gone. It doesn't, don't worry about how it got gone. Okay. Sorry, I just need to jump in. Like shredding money. No. Sponsoring Technically Religious. Absolutely. Or sent it to Yechiel and you know, you can find his information in the show notes. Josh: 19:28 Did you just equate giving, uh, giving us money to sponsor an episode with shredding your money? New Speaker: 19:34 No, I'm saying it's a BETTER option. New Speaker: 19:36 Oh, okay. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't insinuating the sponsoring an episode of Technically Religious was as worthless as, shredding your money. Leon: 19:44 No, not, I would never say something like that! Um, also as we were preparing for the episode, um, we also talked about again, part of the challenge with the holiday party is all the emotions and all the um, sort of expectations that come with it. And those are layered on top of the emotions and expectations that we have at this holiday time of year overall. And I think that someone brought up the idea of not having... Having a party just don't have it now have it, you know, at another time of year you can have a, you know, I'm not a big fan of Christmas in July, but having a summer kickoff holiday party, a pre-vacation pre, you know, to use the European term pre-holiday holiday party might be an interesting idea. Or you could do it at the company's fiscal end of year. If it doesn't match up with the calendar end of year. You could do that. So I think it would make the accounting department even more excited that their, that the, the rhythm that they hold to is something the company now acknowledging in a meaningful way. Josh: 20:49 I had friends that would celebrate the summer solstice and the winter solstice. Now granted the winter solstice happens to fall very close to, you know, the Christian Christmas. Uh, but you know, Hey, celebrate with them both. That's two parties, right? Leon: 21:09 Right at the, at both of them. And you can do the standing the egg up and you can do all those different things. Um, right. That would be, yeah, that's it. It's as meaningful or as exciting as some of the holiday traditions that we've developed over the last 50 years in America as well. So any other solutions that we have to offer organizations or HR departments that are trying to figure out this problem called the office holiday party. Yechiel: 21:34 So I would say assuming the holiday party is not going away, I think the one single thing that can go the furthest towards making parties feel more inclusive to everyone is cutting out the alcohol and not just for Muslims or people or Mormons or people who won't drink alcohol for religious reasons. I think just like so many of the problems that can come up at parties are either caused or exasperated by the presence of alcohol and people having a little bit too much. I think just that one little step can just go to a huge way towards making so many people feel much more comfortable. Leon: 22:12 Right. About attending at all. But yeah, absolutely. Josh: 22:15 Yeah. That, uh, T to that point, we're not just, it's not just a religious thing. You've got recovering alcoholics who maybe don't want to out themselves as recovering alcoholics at this holiday party, to all of their coworkers who maybe aren't friends, they're just coworkers. Um, you've got people who maybe have lost someone to drunk driving or have a spouse who's an alcholic. It's just the, the things that you on, um, that you uncap by having a, and again, this is a mandatory attendance right? There's, you must attend this holiday party cause you're part of the team, right? Josh, you like you're, you're going to show up and then we're also going to make this a alcohol-laden event. It just really problematic. Uh, you know, back when I didn't drink, I would attend events and then would always leave early. Always leave early because I was just like, okay, everyone's had enough alcohol that they're not going to remember that we left. And then you just leave and then just, it becomes a, an abbreviated evening for you. You know, you don't get to enjoy. I'm one of those people who I will go to a party. Yes, they are. I am an introvert. Mostly. They are rather exhausting for me. But I will go because I do enjoy getting out of the house every so often. Um, and just, yeah, I, I'm, I'm with you Yechiel. I, let's, let's either really curtail the alcohol or just not serve it at all. Leon: 23:50 Yeah. I'm, I'm a big fan of don't serve it at all. Just don't, okay. Any final words before we wrap up? Josh: 23:57 Um, did Adam Sandler's a song, um, about the Hanukkah song, uh, offensive, offensive or not? Leon: 24:06 I, it is not part of my, uh, Hanukkah playlist. It's, it's probably right up there with, uh, what is it? Uh, the, the Christmas donkey... Josh: 24:15 Dominic the Italian Christmas donkey. Yeah. Leon: 24:18 Yeah. No. Yeah. It's still also a no. Josh: 24:20 Okay. Yeah. I, I just, I was asking, I was curious. Yechiel, do you listen to it? Is Leon the only curmudgeon here? Yechiel: 24:28 Um, I would say it was entertaining, but yeah, I wouldn't say it's part of my Hanukkah celebrations. Josh: 24:37 Perfect. Leon: 24:40 Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of technically religious visit our website, http://Technically Religious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect to us on social media. Leon: 24:52 Hey, Josh, how was the last Christmas party you attended? Josh: 24:55 I passed through the seven levels of the candy cane forest, through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops, and then I walked through the Lincoln tunnel. Yechiel: 25:03 Wait, is there sugar in gumdrops?

S1E36: The Dreaded Office Holiday Party

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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 17, 2019 23:28

The dreaded office holiday party: For many of us, for MANY reasons, this is a situation fraught with difficulties. To go or not to go. To eat or not to eat. To discuss or not to discuss our religious/holiday/personal lives and plans. As IT folks with a strong religious/moral/ethical POV, navigating this ONE (supposedly optional) yearly occurrence can be the cause of more stress than any other event. In this episode we’ll unpack the what and why, and - like the IT pros we are, offer advice on how to navigate through this seasonal obstacle course. Listen or read the transcript below. Dez: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:24 The dreaded office holiday party. For many of us, For many reasons. This situation is fraught with difficulties. To go or not to go? To eat or not to eat? To discuss or not to discuss our religious, holiday, or personal lives and plans? As IT folks with a strong religious, moral and ethical point of view, navigating this one (supposedly optional) yearly occurrence can be the cause of more stress than any other event. In this episode, we'll unpack the what and the why, and - like the IT pros we are - offer advice on how to navigate through this seasonal obstacle course. I'm Leon Adato, and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are my partners in podcasting crime. Josh Biggley. Josh: 01:05 Hello, hello. Leon: 01:06 And perennial guest voice. Yechiel Kalmenson. Yechiel: 01:09 Always a pleasure. Leon: 01:10 All right. As has become our habit, let's go ahead and do some shameless self promotion. Um, Yechiel as, as still the nominal guest, you know, you've been on this, I think this is your fourth episode, but we'll still call you a guest. We'll treat you with respect like a guest. Go ahead and start off and tell us about yourself. Yechiel: 01:28 All right. Uh, so I'm Yechiel Kalmenson. I'm a software engineer at Pivotal though by the time this episode drops, we'll probably be VMWare already, um, you can find me on Twitter @YechielK, my blog is RabbiOnRails.IO and I identify as an Orthodox Jew. Josh: 01:43 Great. Josh, how about you? All right. I'm Josh Biggley. I'm a tech op strategy consultant with New Relic. You can find me on the Twitters at, @Jbiggley. I have no blog or really no presence on, on any sort of a non social media platform. I am also not on Facebook, so I'll look for me. I'm, you can find me. I'm hanging out with the post-Mormons and with the ex-Mormons nowadays and that's my religious identification. Leon: 02:09 All right. And I'll finish off this section. I'm Leon Adato. I'm a Head Geek for SolarWinds. You can find me on the Twitters @LeonAdato. I pontificate about things technical and religious at http://wwwadatosystems.com. And I also identify as an Orthodox Jew. So before we dig into, uh, the things that we are talking about, I wanna clarify what we're not talking about because there are things that everyone kind of dreads about the office holiday party, um, that are not gonna be part of this conversation. And you know what I mean is, for example, this mentality of 'what happens at the office party stays at the office party', you know, you know, party it up. We're just gonna forget about it tomorrow. We're not going to talk about it. Like, I think a lot of us dread that, but that's not specific to us. What are some other things that are just sort of common to any office party or anybody's dread of that? Yechiel: 02:59 Well, for me, as an introvert, parties in general are a drag. Um, I can't stand them. If I can spend the night at home, why would I spend it with a bunch of people I don't want to spend time with anyway? So, but that's all introverts are like me, so.... Leon: 03:14 Right. Okay. So yeah, definitely if you are of the quiet, quieter type ramping up for this is um, a challenge. Okay. What else? Josh: 03:22 I mean, I really struggle with the, 'you have to show up' mentality for really for any corporate event. If I don't want to be there or I choose not to be there because I have other priorities, don't make me attend. So Christmas parties, holiday parties, you know, new year's parties, just if I want to be there, I'll be there. If not, don't take offense that I don't, that I don't want to be there. I mean, I didn't marry you. I'm married, my wife. Leon: 03:50 And, and I think closely related to that is that that this time of year, you know, the holidays, Christmas, whatever, you know, new year's is a challenge for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. It stirs up a lot of emotions and not all of them are positive. And I think that an office holiday party where you feel like there's an expectation to put on a particular kind of attitude or face is also challenging for a lot of folks. Um, and also I think that, uh, having to constantly explain yourself about why not drinking or not eating or not whatever, again, this time of year is challenging for a lot of folks on, on that physical level of how they interact with, you know, food and drink and things like that. And that can also create a lot of stress. But that's not what we're focusing on here. We're looking at the things that are specific to having a strong religious, ethical or moral point of view. Um, so I wanna I wanna dovetail into that and I want to say that those strong emotions that I just mentioned. You know, that this time of year can have very strong positive emotions for people about family, about memories, about their religion, and you layer onto that the expectations of a party because it's being hosted, it's being organized, it's being, it's meant to be "bigger and better than last years or ever before!" And all that stuff that creates a scenario where people can take offense to things in a lot of different ways. And those of us who have religious boundaries can unexpectedly encounter those, you know, those offense triggers in ways that don't happen on a normal day. So again, let's, let's talk about what are those things, what are things that we've either tripped over, we know exist about the holiday party for us. Yechiel: 05:44 So food is obviously a big one. Um, and you know, there's a different kosher, halal, whether you are a vegetarian, whatever you are. Um, and I think it's even worse when, when someone will, will go through the effort to try to make you feel comfortable and they'll order or something which they think is acceptable to you. So they'll Google and find the nearest kosher restaurant. But just because the restaurant identifies as kosher online doesn't mean it's actually kosher. And then it's not just, you know, if they didn't order anything and I didn't eat nobody would notice. But here "I ordered this, especially for you here, you know, have some, it's just for you." And then I have to explain that kosher is not always kosher. Leon: 06:25 Right? The one I hear a lot is, but "it said it was a kosher deli." I know kosher was in the name. Kosher style is a thing. Yechiel: 06:33 It's bagels and lox. How much more kosher can you get than that? Josh: 06:36 Right? Well, yeah, I was going to say that, um, you know, growing up Mormon, the awkward part was, were really, it was the alcohol thing. Festivities and alcohol go hand in hand together. Um, so I remember, especially as a teenager going to parties and people being like, Oh look, I bought you a near beer. Or there's this great debate in the Mormon community, Leon: 07:03 What are they think... Do they hate you? Josh: 07:08 Uh, may, maybe. Uh, but then there's this whole, this whole debate going on in the Mormon community around a sparkling Apple cider, uh, for your new year's Eve celebrations. Like, do you want to have champagne or do you just want to look like you're having champagne? And then if you're looking like you're having a champagne, are you giving the very appearance of evil? And I'm like, Oh my goodness, it's just so complex. Uh, and, and then you have, that's within your own family. You take those same conversations and have them at an office party, aaarrrrggghhhh. So much harder. Leon: 07:46 The other thing that, that we're hitting on is also there's a level of trust or mistrust and there's sort of, you know, as a religious person, there's a healthy level of skepticism I have to have about the food around me and about the people presenting it. Not because I think that they are inherently untrustworthy, but they are inherently not, not necessarily knowledgeable. So for example, a few episodes ago we talked about at conventions and, um, Al Rasheed talked about how, you know, people will say, "Oh yeah, there's, there's nothing in here. There's no, you know, there's no wine." And then you find out that it was sauteed in wine. But because the wine was burned off, that person felt that there was no alcohol in it. And so it was fine. And so there's no way to ask in a way that isn't either an FBI interrogation or really offensively skeptical to find out about, uh, even the vegetables. Like, okay, so did you cut these with a completely new knife or were you cutting bacon right before you cut, you know, the celery, because that would be a prob.... Like I can't, I can't trust that and nor can I ask enough questions to get to the heart of it kind of thing. Josh: 08:57 Who does that? That's just unsanitary. Yechiel: 08:59 But the vegetables are always on a cheese platter, so that pretty much cuts it. Leon: 09:04 Right. That's a, that's a, yeah, there's a problem right there. Um, I was at a, uh, office...] At an office party at a manager's house and they were doing some sort of game, icebreaker, whatever. And the prize that they would hand out is this, you know, little holiday chocolates and, they handed it, to me, and you know, I was just being a good sport and I, you know, took, and I said, "Oh wow." You know, I'm looking for the hechsher. I'm looking for the symbol that would tell me if it was kosher. And I actually said, "...which would be ironic since it's, you know, in the shape of a Santa Claus." If it was. There are, by the way, chocolate that is in the shape of a Santa Claus that is completely kosher. It's fine. So I was just sort of amused by it, but immediately the wife of the manager was so earnest, she says, "Oh, well take this one isn't the shape of a snowman. That must be kosher!" Like that. That's not how that works. But now I'm in a position where I have to, you can't laugh at the boss's wife. I know that. But she said something that was kind of ignorant and now I either have to laugh along with it, just go along with it. Or you know, there's, there's almost no winning in that one. Josh: 10:10 I mean, from on the other side of that, as, as someone who for many years has hosted a Christmas party in my home. Um, last year we didn't host one. And this year there's, we've had people ask, "Hey, are you having, you know, your Christmas get together?" Cause that's a, that's a big deal, right? It's an open house. We invite all our friends and uh, you know, people from our, our former congregation, uh, and our neighbors. And so this year we're, we're not, uh, we've decided we're not, we're going to have a few select people over small gathering. But as someone who hosts, you also have to realize that you're going to do things that are awkward at whatever gathering you have. Um, and you just have to learn to not take offense. I don't know. Ah, th and this is why office parties are so different than parties in someone's home with people you don't work with because your friends, You can, you can say things like, "Hey, Josh, um, no, a snowman isn't kosher. And let me explain why..." And I'm going to be, I'm going to be paying rapt attention. "Oh really? Oh, I get it. Oh, that's cool." Whereas your boss's wife may not be so interested in getting the, you know, the religious lecture or lesson or however they interpret it. Leon: 11:32 There's other things that I think aren't necessarily on people's radar. Like, you know, music is another one. You know the number of times where people like, Oh, I just love this. Don't you just love this song? It's like, "Swear to God, I've never heard this song. Never. You know, and no, I don't want to sing along to it." And you know, even trying to, so in Judaism there's a thing about men not supposed to listen to the live voices of a woman singing in the same room kind of thing. Like there's just, you know, it's one of those things that's considered, you know, for modesty and for, you know, just keeping things a little bit separate. But how are you gonna explain that again to the boss's wife? Like, please don't sing the song that you love that I've never heard. Yechiel: 12:16 Any event that includes karaoke is an automatic "Nope." for me. Leon: 12:21 There we go. Okay. Josh: 12:22 Stay out of the Philippines, Yechiel. Stay out of the Philippines. Yeah, they love karaoke. Uh, so I guess that means that, uh, me singing "Dominic, the Italian Christmas Donkey" is completely out. Leon: 12:35 Okay. That song is horrible on so many levels that, uh, I just, yeah, don't ever that, that one's not okay. Um, for reasons that are not religious or it's just, it's just bad. It's just offensive. So last... One of our previous episodes recently, um, Cory Adler was talking about, uh, a coworker who started at the company and they were sort of delighted... He was... the coworker was Muslim. Corey is also Orthodox Jewish and they were so delighted to find all the similarities. And one of the similarities they hit upon was at the Christmas party. This coworker brought his wife who was wearing a hijab and you know, the full Pakistani clothing and everything and everybody wanted to say hi and shake her hand and give her a hug and all these things. And she was just sort of shrinking through the evening. And Cory just came up and said hi to his coworker and just said hi to his wife. And afterward, his coworker said, "It was so nice to have you there. You were the only one who got it. You're the only one who knew." And, but you know, that story aside again, you know, these office parties where you're meeting people's significant others and there's an expectation, and people are feeling festive and feeling friendly and perhaps feeling drunk and whatever. And you're trying to manage boundaries. You know, for a whole lot of reasons. It makes the party a challenge. Josh: 14:03 Can we talk about the, the, the Mormon, um, idea. And this is not just a holiday thing, but it's, you know, so praying over meals is a thing. Uh, in, I think, most religions, um, but pre Mormons have this, this, uh, funny thing of, um, praying that food will, um, give us strength and nourishment regardless if you're praying over, um, you know, a, a nice, uh, meal of, you know, quinoa and vegetables or if it happens to be, you know, jelly donuts and root beer, it's always, you know, praying for, uh, strength and nourishment from this food. So for some people, whether you're not religious out and just like prayers or you know, don't like, uh, any sort of grace being said or if you are like me and you know, your, your ex-Mormon and it, it just makes you laugh when people are praying for this food to somehow be magically transformed to be nourishing for your body. It's donuts. The only thing it's good for is eating and enjoying. Leon: 15:19 (laughing hysterically) I'm, I'm laughing because my, my daughter who runs a bakery out of my house is preparing to make something on the order of like 800 donuts in the next couple of weeks. And so the idea that my house will be filled with basically non, Yechiel: 15:34 it'll definitely nourish your gut, that's for sure. Leon: 15:36 It's gonna. It's, yeah. Josh: 15:38 You just tell her to just pray over them that they will be for strength and nourishment and then they, there'll be no calories left in them. Leon: 15:46 Yeah. Yeah. The, the mythical and the mystical, uh, no calorie donut. Yeah, I don't think so. Josh: 15:54 Prayers are just weird. Just awkward. I mean, and then the reciprocal is also true. If you go to a meal and you have a religious belief where you want to pray over your food, but nobody else is what do you do? Leon: 16:08 And there's a piece of that which is, and I think we'll get into it more, but Christmas is a time when a lot of Christians feel like this is when their Christianity should be the most on display. Like this is the time when they can really turn it, you know, turn it up to 11. And so getting everyone involved in a, in a prayer, a prayer which invokes imagery or names or concepts which are not only foreign to other religious cultures, but in some cases antithetical to other cultures. You know, so now do, do I stand quietly in the corner? Do I leave the room? Do I... No matter what I do, anything short of participating could be seen as offensive because this person has so much invested in this moment. Josh: 16:57 Not that history has, uh, will support me on this. But I feel like the easiest way to do this is don't be so invested in your religious beliefs that you, that you're going to take offense when no offense is intended. Um, and I, that goes both ways. I grew up, my, my very best friend when I was a young, quite young, up until about fifth grade, and when I moved away, uh, he was, um, uh, Jehovah's witness and you know, and I, this was back at least in Canada where you sang the national anthem and you said the Lord's prayer every Sunday morning in school, right? Uh, so they, they look, we're all adults here. If you need, if you want to step out because something is happening that you don't want to partake in, step out. Just like if I show up at a holiday party and someone starts doing something that I find offensive, whether it's you've, you've, uh, you know, you've drunk too much and now you are a drunk, um, or you know, uh, someone is doing something that I find inappropriate, I am going to leave. That's I, and if I can come back, I will. But if not, I'm not going to come back and you're just going to have to deal with that because you made your choices. I make mine. I mean, we're all adults like that. Leon: 18:18 Yeah. And, and the, the point I think of, of this particular conversation is navigating the heightened expectations and emotions around the holidays and around, you know, the, the party. I think that these moments, these particular moments become imbued with a heightened sense that, you know, isn't there for a lot of other things or can be imbued with a heightened sense. And I think that's the challenge. Yechiel: 18:45 And then you have the corollary to that where, um, where people will try to be inclusive and they'll be like, "Oh, okay. So, um, Yechiel, why didn't you lead us with a Jewish prayer?" And I'm like, "no, I, that's not what I want to do right now. I do not want to lead this room full of people on a Jewish prayer. I'll say, my Jewish prayer myself, thank you very much." Leon: 19:08 Right? Right. Or, or my personal favorite. "Hey, can you bring them, can you bring, you know, that candelabra thing, can you bring a menorah? And, and light it at our party. And that way you'll have something here too." It's like, um, "Hanukkah was three weeks ago. Chad," You know, uh, no, we're not doing it. But again, there's, I'm not saying you can't say no. Josh, to your point no is a perfectly fine answer. You know, Hanukkah was three weeks ago is also perfectly fine answer. The challenge is navigating other people's expectations and again, I think, uh, the holidays just sort of amp things up. Josh: 19:49 I, I definitely agree. I th I hope that... No, before we end this, we definitely have to come, we have to come up with that list of things that we need to do, like the ground rules we need to set. Right. And one of them definitely needs to be, "I am not going to take a fence unless you intend to offend me." Leon: 20:07 Right? If you say, "Yeah, I meant for you to be offended, then then all bets are off, right? Josh: 20:12 Yeah. All bets are off. Yechiel: 20:12 And when in doubt, just ask, you know, "Did you mean to offend me? New Speaker: 20:15 Yeah. That's, you know, I'm having a hard time with it, right? Oh, there's all sorts of mature, you know, careful communication that we could do every day in the office, in fact, that would be very helpful. Um, and this is just another opportunity to practice that, but, well, okay, we'll get to that because as good IT professionals, we are into solving things. We'll do it. The last piece, and I'm just gonna echo something. So Doug Johnson - who's another frequent voice that we hear on Technically Religious - and I have known each other for probably close to 30 years now. And Doug has been on this program saying as an evangelical Christian how much he hates Christmas. He is, he is like the worst representative of Christmas. And he, and a lot of it boils down to everything we've been talking about, but the flip side of it. Christmas isn't Christmasy enough for him. Meaning what the holiday party, what the office holiday party is, this watered down, commercialized hallmark version. And he wants nothing to do with it. He really, you know, his point, and he said this before, is, is "You want to have Christmas? Let's talk Jesus. Like let's just do that!" That's, you know, let's get rid of the guy in the red suit. Let's forget about all that stuff. He really wants to have the, the adult version of the holiday, which also makes people very uncomfortable. And so he finds himself not invited to Christmas parties frequently as well. Josh: 21:38 I think that this ties very nicely into, um, an idea that we wanted to talk around that this, uh, my religion, uh, on your holiday or you know, your holiday on my religion. Leon: 21:49 Yeah. Josh: 21:50 So up until a few years ago, I was one of those people where if you said "Happy holidays" to me, I would say "Merry Christmas" back because you know, it's Christmas time and you got to put the Christ in Christmas. Right? And my wife and I were talking about this just the other day. Yesterday, I think. And we have decided that regardless of what holiday, someone wishes us, our response is going to be, "Thank you. You too." I mean, Holy crap, right? It's like mind blowing! Yechiel: 22:27 Radical. Leon: 22:29 What a crazy idea. Just saying thank you. Speaker 4: 22:33 It. Ah, and she, she said, "I posted this to Facebook, that I'm going to do this." And she's like, "I wonder how many people are going to be offended." And I thought, "Who in the world's going to be offended by saying thank you. You too."? Leon: 22:46 Okay. And, and the answer is?? Yechiel: 22:49 Well, it's this Facebook, so... : 22:50 (conversation fades out) Leon: 22:52 We know you can't listen to our podcast all day. So out of respect for your time, we've broken this particular conversation up. Come back next week and we'll continue our conversation. Roddie: 23:02 Thank you for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious visit our website at http://TechnicallyReligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions or connect with us on social media. Leon: 23:15 Hey, Josh, how was the last Christmas party you attended? Josh: 23:17 I passed through the seven levels of the candy cane forest, through the sea of swirly twirly gumdrops, and then I walked through the Lincoln tunnel! Yechiel: 23:26 Wait, is there sugar in gumdrops?

Pulmoner Hipertansiyon Acil Yönetimi – I

Acilci.Net Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2019 11:03

OlguYabancı uyruklu 34 yaşında kadın hasta, acil servise dispne ile başvuruyor. Türkçe bilmeyen hastanın anamnezinden öğrenilebildiği kadarıyla primer AC hastalığı kaynaklı pulmoner hipertansiyon (PHT) öyküsü olduğu, evde 2 l/dk O2 desteği ile yaşadığı belirtiliyor. Yakın zamanda ise yurt dışına AC transplantasyonu amacıyla çıkacağı ifade ediliyor. O zamana kadar yanında getirmediği oral bir preparata kullandığı belirtiliyor. Hasta ilk bakıda 10 lt/dk O2 ile hipoksik ve takipneik olarak görülüyor. Fizik muayenede alt extremite ödemi ve asit varlığı tespit ediliyor. Sizce ileri evre PHT olan bir hastanın tedavi yönetimi nasıl olmalıdır? Tanım PHT, dinlenme halinde sağ kalp kateterizasyonu ile ölçülen ortalama pulmoner arter basıncının >25 mmHg olması olarak tanımlanır. EKO'da ölçülen sağ ventrikül (RV) sistolik basıncı (>35 mmHg), PHT için oldukça yönlendirici fakat tanısal değildir (1). Sınıflama PHT, primer (grup 1) ve sekonder (grup 2-5) sebepler olarak ayırılabilir (2,3): Grup 1 Pulmoner arterial hipertansiyon:İdiyopatik veye kalıtsal olabilir.Bağ doku hastalığı (skleroderma), HIV, orak hücre hastalığına sekonder. Grup 2 Sol kalp ilişkili pulmoner venöz hipertansiyon:PHT'un en sık sebebi.Kardiyomyopati, diastolik disfonksiyon, MS, MY, AS, AY. Grup 3 Kronik hipoksemik AC hastalığı:KOAH, İAH, OSA Grup 4 Kronik tromboembolik hastalık Grup 5 Çeşitli:Sistemik bozukluklar (sarkoidoz, nörofibromatozis), hematolojik bozukluklar (miyeloproliferatif) PHT anatomik ve patofizyolojik sınıflama (PMID: 26226870) Patofizyoloji Net mekanizma bilinmemekle birlikte, endojen vazodilatörler (prostasiklin vb) ve vazokonstriktörler (endotelin-1) arasında dengenin bozulması ile ilişkili olduğu düşünülmektedir. Pulmoner vasküler direnç arttığında, preload ve atım hacmini korumak için RV zamanla genişler. RV genişlemesi ise, interventriküler septumu iterek sol ventrikül dolumu ve atım hacminin azalmasına neden olur. Ayrıca, RV genişlemesi triküspit yetmezliğine neden olur. Normalde, düşük RV duvar gerilimi nedeniyle, RV hem sistolde hem de diastolde beslenir. PHT varlığında ise RV beslenmesi sadece diastolde gerçekleşir. Bu durum da RV iskemisine ve RV yetmezliğine neden olur (4). Başvuru Semptomlar nonspesifik olmakla birlikte, hem istirahat hem de egzersiz sırasında dispne en sık semptomdur. Diğerleri arasında göğüs ağrısı, yorgunluk, presenkop/senkop yer alır. Fizik Muayene Hastalığın ileri evrelerinde bulgular belirginleşir; JVD,Hepatomegali,Asit,Alt extremite ödemi veOskültasyonda artmış P2. Olgunun devamıHastanın yapılan EKO'sunda sağ boşluklar geniş, ciddi TY, Sistolik PAB 120 mmHg olarak ölçülüyor. Toraks BT'de ise pulmoner trunkus çapı 35 mm ölçülürken, emboli bulgusuna rastlanmıyor. Kistik AC hastalığı ve bronşektazi ön planda raporlanıyor. Sizce bu hastada hangi testler daha değerlidir? Tetkik EKG En sık sağ aks deviasyonu.En sık aritmi AF, flutter, AVNRT. AC grafi Genişlemiş RA, RV ve hiler pulmoner arterler. EKO Apikal 4 odacık pencerede RV dilatasyonu, RV:LV oranı >1.Parasternal kısa aksta D bulgusu.Subkostal pencerede, RV serbest duvar kalınlığının artması (>5mm) kronik PHT lehine.Diğer bulgular ise sağ atriyal genişleme, triküspit kaçağı, TAPSE < 15mm. Geniş sağ ventrikül ve duvar kalınlığı. D görünümü Lab Artmış troponin ve BNP. CT Pulmoner arter çapı >30mm (Pulmoner arter, aortadan geniş olmamalı). Geniş RV. Pulmoner arter çapı, çıkan aortadan geniş. Olgunun devamıHastanın takipnesi izlemde gerilememesi üzerine NİMV tedavisi başlanıyor. Bu süreçte hastada hipotansiyon gelişiyor ve sonrasında hipoksisi derinleşiyor. Dopamin tedavisi başlanıyor. Propofol ile sedasyon sonrası entübe edildikten kısa bir süre sonra hastada arrest gelişiyor. Sizce bu hastada hemodinamik instabilite nedeni nedir? Nasıl ve ne zaman entübe edilmelidir? Yönetim Hipoksi ve hiperkapniden kaçın

nas rv ms alt ac af hiv bu o2 ayr ra yak hasta bnp fizik ay p2 eko as it geni dopamin sizce propofol pmid koah mmhg avnrt pht jvd

224 - 2019 Bottled-in-Bond Showdown

Bourbon Pursuit

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2019 69:37

Bottled-in-Bond. It’s one of the revolutionary moments of American history, but has also become near and dear to many bourbon drinkers with good reason. We covered the in and outs of bottled-in-bond with Bernie Lubbers back on Episode 089 and it's part of our Bourbon 101 podcasts. Since we know why bottled-in-bond is important, it’s time to find out who Bourbon Pursuit is going to claim as the best bottled in bond bourbon in 2019! We blind sample our way through 12 heavy weight contenders and put them in the Bottled-in-Bond Showdown. Who is going to be crowned champion? Listen and find out. Show Partners: * Hotel Distil on historic Whiskey Row is set to open October 29th in Downtown Louisville. Book now to experience it for yourself at HotelDistil.com. * The University of Louisville now has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/pursuespirits. * At Barrell Craft Spirits, they spend weeks choosing barrels to create a new batch. Joe and Tripp meticulously sample every barrel to make sure the blend is absolutely perfect. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. * Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. * Distillery 291 is an award winning, small batch whiskey distillery located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Learn more at Distillery291.com. Show Notes: Elijah Craig Launching Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey: https://www.instagram.com/p/B3wt1feHdlZ/ Amazon Gin: https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2019/10/21/Amazon-launches-its-own-spirits-brand-Tovess This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about premium pricing. What is Bottled-in-Bond? Blind tasting of the following (in no particular order): Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond 7yr Henry McKenna Single Barrel Bottled-in-Bond George Dickel Bottled-in-Bond Old Bardstown Bottled-in-Bond Old Grand Dad Bottled-in-Bond 1792 Bottled-in-Bond Evan Williams Bottled-in-Bond Jim Beam Bottled-in-Bond JW Dant Bottled-in-Bond Early Times Bottled-in-Bond New Riff Bottled-in-Bond Wilderness Trail Bottled-in-Bond 0:00 I love bourbon, but I'm not ready to restart my career in be a distiller. I have a bachelor's degree and I want to continue to use those skills in the whiskey industry. So check this out. The University of Louisville now has an online distilled spirits business certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry like finance, marketing and operations. This is perfect for anyone looking for more professional development. And if you ever want to get your MBA their certificate credits transfer into Ul's new online MBA program. Learn more about this online program at U of l.me. Slash pursue spirits. How fast can you go through like 15 Bourbons? I'd be done. Now if you aren't asking me so many questions. 0:55 Welcome back. It's Episode 224 of bourbon pursuit. I'm wanting to host And here's your weekly bourbon news roundup. Last Thursday, heaven Hill announced Elijah Craig is launching their Kentucky straight rye whiskey. This is made from heaven hills only right Nashville which is 51% rye, 35% corn and 14% malted barley, the same Nashville that you're going to see for Rittenhouse as well as Pikeville with an SRP of only 2999 Elijah Craig Kentucky straight rye whiskey will first launch unlimited markets of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Oregon in January of 2020. Now, when you hear about a release like this, we typically hear about most people, especially in Kentucky, being kind of upset about its lack of market penetration. So we actually reached out to our contacts at heaven Hill to see what the response was. And this was a decision by the brands to focus on markets based on a variety of needs. This could be from building a brand on premise competitiveness and a particular market or too slow roll a product based on age inventory. For this release, there was no one single reason but you can read more about this post on Instagram with the link in our show notes. Jim Murray's whiskey Bible has announced that last week his top whiskey of 2020 was 1792 full per second was the 2018 William drew Weller and third was the 2018 Thomas HND, meaning that Sazerac swept all top three whiskeys of the world for Jim Murray's whiskey Bible. Now continue on the trend of Buffalo Trace, they are also releasing their next installment in the old charter oak series called Canadian oak. In late 2018, Buffalo Trace announced its old charter oak series, it's a collection exploring the different taste profiles of barrels obtained from trees grown in different countries, climates and soils. For this newest release, Buffalo Trace obtained a small number of barrels from Canada and filled them with mash number one. This is the same Nashville us for Buffalo Trace and Eagle rare Canadian oak trees differ from a American oak trees that they are harder and have tighter grain structure, which affects the bourbon as it ages. The old charter oaks Canadian oak was aged for 10 years and will be available in retail in late October. The suggested retail price will be 6999. While we're talking about new releases, let's not forget about angel's envy and their annual cask strength release. angel's envy cast drink begins West standard angel's envy bourbon, it's made with a Nashville of 72% corn, 18%, rye and 10% malted barley, aged first in new charred oak barrels, but finished in barrels at once held port wine. As these barrels are tasted throughout the year. A few are set aside to age longer MB bottled at cash drink for its special annual release. This year's release will clock in at 122.4 proof with seven different ages as port finished bourbon of 689 10 1314 and 15 years old, that are missing To create this final blend, the bottle will come in a packaged in a wooden Art Deco style box for a suggested retail price of around $200. And the last release we're going to talk about isn't actually bourbon. It's not actually even whiskey. It's a gin and it's called tow service. And it's only available in the United Kingdom, France and Germany. This is a big deal because the owner of this brand is none other than Amazon. Yes, Amazon is getting into the spirits business. And this is now available to order online@amazon.co.uk this is another one of those things that we may see as a small ripple but could potentially end up being a tidal wave years down the road. You can read more about this with the link to beverage daily com in our show notes. Bottled in bond. It's one of the revolutionary moments of American history but has also become near and dear to the hearts of many bourbon lovers and with good reason. We covered the ins and outs of bottle and bond with Bernie lovers back on episode 89, and it is also part of our bourbon one on one podcast on our website. But now, since we know why bottle and bond is important, let's move on to what bourbon pursuit is going to claim as the best bottled in bond bourbon in 2019. We take a total of 12 heavyweight contenders and put them in a blind and what we're calling the bottled in bond showdown who's going to pull ahead and become the champion this year? Well, just wait and find out. All right, let's get down to it. Here's Joe from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 5:36 Hi, Joe from barrell bourbon here, myself and our master distiller triple Stimson spend weeks choosing barrels to create a new batch. We meticulously sample every barrel make sure the blend is absolutely perfect. lift your spirits with barrell bourbon. 5:50 I'm Redman Aiken. This is above the char this week's idea comes from Patreon subscriber Brian Shabbat. He asks should bourbon enthusiasts stop complaining and embrace premium pricing for premium bourbon. MacAllan. 25 year old for $2,000 is acceptable. But 1500 for Pappy 20 is considered price gouging. Brian also wants to know what's the possible economic implications for premium pricing. Now this story really goes it's really goes back to the 1960s when bourbon is kind of changing its business model up until the 1960s. You saw bottled in bond bourbon and even straight bourbon is really kind of competing with scotch as a premium on the shelf even cognac so cognac would have been you know another brand he's would have been considered the creme de la creme and scotch and bourbon were kind of, you know, neck and neck scotch was also dubbed more blends they were so this was when scotch was predominantly a blended category. Now the 1960s scotch starts going toward a more premium ization and they focused on single malts, while bourbon decided to do things like lower their proof points from like 100 or 107, to 86 and 80. And they started becoming the everyday man's whiskey. And so they were basically setting the market up to take on the blue collar workers, the people who were fixing sinks and doing construction and in the military, everything that they were doing was really geared around people who had a budget. Well, scotch was focusing on the people on Wall Street and bankers and people who own businesses. They put a lot of effort into, you know, building this esteem. At the same time, they were also putting away whiskey. They were putting away a lot of whiskey, though at age up to you know, 50 years and today we see him coming on the market for a million or more at auction. Now today, bourbon is so popular that distilling have had to increase your prices to kind of deal with demand and it's often gets pushed back. And there's one brand that always comes out as unpopular in this conversation. And that's Pappy Van Winkle. Now, when we when Brian asked about 1500 dollars for Pappy 20 it always has to be pointed out that the distillers are not the one setting that price that is not the MSRP for Pappy Van Winkle. And so the argument can be made that the MSRP is for these premium Bourbons don't necessarily reflect what people are willing to pay. So the question is, should people increase their suggested retailers price? Yeah, I don't know. I think it's still pretty cool to have a glimmer of hope that maybe you can get a bottle of four roses limited edition for the MSRP of 100 or 150, or whatever it is versus 500 to 1500 that you'll find it in some retail stores, but it also gives bourbon a little bit of a black guy. As It's never good to increase prices 200 400 600% year after year after year, and that's essentially what's happening right now. So there is a way to increase prices, and I just don't know what the best way is. scotch on the other hand, doesn't seem to be short of those million dollar bottles anytime soon. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, if you have an idea for above the char become a Patreon subscriber and share with me your ideas you can check us out at bourbon pursuit on Patreon. Until next week, cheers 9:41 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon and today Yeah, yeah boy. We are the trio we're back here again with an awesome as can be a fun episode. But first, you know, I gotta say that shout out to hotel distil. This is where we're recording today. We're actually in the barrel room here and this is located on historical Whiskey row is going to be opening on November 1 here in downtown Louisville. It's going to be a place that has, you know, first we talked about it on the last podcast, it is used to be the home of JTS Brown. It's got an exciting history and it's now transformed into this beautiful beautiful space. So it's going to be designed to really ignite your passion for discovery and will be the anchor for levels revitalization and refinement of bourbon culture. You can book a your true authentic experience and stay at Hotel distil.com 10:31 So is it that is it is it is very nice. 10:34 Yeah, very sweet. Excited now I'm excited to kind of see what's going to happen if you're watching this on video they talked about so they haven't these barrels behind us and they've got taps on them they're gonna be having barrel aged tap cocktails like right here with inside of this room. So I'm kind of I'm kind of stuck. Yeah, they 10:48 will actually be aging in the barrel. They're going to be in like a sleeve or a bladder, because that's the only way you can technically do that legally. 10:58 Like Like a bottle of wine. So They'll 11:00 be they will be pre like Franzia. Yes, it's like the bag. 11:04 Yep, front front. 11:06 The back before 11:09 I've done it on a boat once or twice. Yeah. So if you've never played that game before, ask somebody that has a boat on the lake in front. Franzia. 11:17 Alright, so that's the bag. Let's go 11:19 All right, let's go. So what we're gonna do today is we're going to slap the bottle and bond This is going to be the bottled in bond showdown. So we are selecting what we can find as one of our favorites have 12 different bottle of bond every day and I think we got one that's outside of Kentucky we got one George decal, but the other ones these are all Kentucky. And you know, this was a combination of grabbing stuff in our basements heading to go into the liquor store and, and, and finding these and, you know, I think it's gonna be kind of fun to kind of go through this because, you know, Ryan, I'm the I'm going to test your knowledge real quick because you know, we've We've talked about bottle on the bottom on the show before we've had Bernie lovers on give folks an understanding of what the bottle and Bond Act and what it was really there for. Gosh, I 12:09 feel like that's a Fred question. I don't know. 12:12 I'm gonna put you on the spot here. Let's let's do flex some 12:14 civil so we'll get it we'll get him back. Okay. Well you know it has to be at least four years old right? 12:19 Huh? 12:20 It has to state the distilling season. Is that right? I don't know if it's 12:27 distilled in a singer to be distilled in a seagulls 12:29 Yeah. Okay. See I've already got it wrong keep going 100 proof obviously as being bonded warehouse now obviously. The what else am I missing? 12:41 So it has to be distilled at one distillery in one distilling? $1 one. Okay. And has to be 100 proof at least four years old. Gotcha. 12:50 Yep. So I hit them all. You 12:52 hit all the major points and then they need to disclose the the distillery and all that stuff where it's bottled. Yeah. And this is it. This is a Guys, I, I know we see this on the bottle and we look at it for like quality purposes. But I want people to realize how important the bottle and Bond Act of 1897 was it First of all, Grover Cleveland signed this into law. This was his last thing he signed in his in his first term. And he was the, you know, the bottle and Bond Act was really our very first consumer protection legislation as a country. So now we have all these protection measures to help us as consumers and it really begins with bottled in bond with the government trying to protect us from bad whiskey. And then, but medicinal circles and it's important to note that they've had a lot of backlash like the blenders and the rectifier. Canadian whiskey makers were very much against the bottle of Bond Act. So this was one of the first times that the Kentucky distillery community banded together for a single cause and that was to get this passed. Now they just Sue each other. 13:55 They still help each other here and there but they still reasonable This is a 14:00 true part of part of the game. Now the way I feel like I'm looking at the longest shot ski ever, like I feel like I'm about to do like my 21st birthday it is we've got we've got 12 different Bourbons that are lined up and these were, these were ones, you know, we've got one that is kind of the newest addition to this, which is the new seven year old bottle and bond. And you know, there was, it was funny because I was actually going trolling to the liquor store last night and I was I was actually flabbergasted. I was like, man, I forgot how many bottle of bond Bourbons there were out there. And then Natalie that is a great values to well, and that's what they usually are typically good values. But you know, some of the ones I selected, you know, I was going through and I was looking, you know, there were also you know, there's there's bottle of bonds that are coming from Oregon and other places. But I said let's focus on some of the stuff that's pretty regional that or should I say not regional, but pretty national can be found on a national level. at the same exact time. You know, there's also a lot of Bourbons out there that are hundred proof, but it doesn't actually say bottled in bond or bond. The word bond is not on the package. So I just overlooked it and said we'll go on that Yeah. And then you know probably there's there's probably two more that should be in here that just couldn't bring it to get our hands on it because this is Louisville and people go crazy because it's bourbon is the EH Taylor brands so the small batch and the single barrel are not a part of this big idea. I saw that bottle and I was going to bring it in but I was like, I'm not gonna share that those fuckers 15:25 I'm kidding go the value for giving me the other side of this is we didn't choose any of the highly allocated releases. You know, the old Fitzgerald spring and fall releases the Parkers 24 year bottom bond also we also didn't bring any media samples. So these are all things that we actually physically purchased and that's very important to note because most competitions are they get their whiskey from the supplier, so the distilleries will send it into the competition. So these are guaranteed all have came from a retailer. 15:58 Well, Justin full full disclosure this seven Hill bottle and bond did come from heaven Hill really this was the media sample they sent everything else though has been purchased by us in some way in some way shape shape or fashion it's a it all goes in the bourbon pursuit credit card 16:15 right that's right so so that's why we're not getting checked on this person. 16:21 Alright, so let's go ahead Well, we got we got 12 to go through so we'll dive in kind of start with the first kid I 16:27 remember we I said wanted to talk a little bit about the the 16:32 smell my glasses, so I'm just trying to make sure that there's the same because they're not number. First of all this tasting is is is flawed because we don't have the same glass for every one of them. So we will now have to like take into account some of them are neat pores are neat glasses. I would say we've got 95% majority Fiverr and the Glen Campbell and Karen but this is that this is close enough. 16:57 fault brought the nega Lazarus That's the only thing I can tribute it was the wrong glass. 17:02 But it's okay but so that's the it's the only thing and this is this is actually a pretty small flight for like a for like a blind tasting this is all blind we don't know what we know that these brands report but we don't know in what order and as we're tasting you know we're gonna find out what we gotta gotta eliminate all you gotta eliminate and everything but I think we should we should also give our notes to the audience as we're as we're thinking. 17:27 Absolutely. So we'll go with number one I you know, for me, I'm going to be excited to kind of see how this is going to go down because what, two years in a row, Fred's over there talking about Henry McKenna being the best there is in the world and yet now we're let's see, now we're going to now we're going to 17:43 that was in that was in a competition by the way, I was just one Judge of like, 40. Now I'm one of three. 17:51 We're narrowing it down. We're making the competition better though. 17:54 The first one, I'm definitely picking up some grainy notes. 18:00 These are gonna be Yeah, they're all gonna be young. 18:02 So when they're gonna, you know, there's there's definitely going to be some 18:06 that are. Most of 18:08 them I'd say are probably for younger, right, you know, we brought in. They can't be younger than for for older. Yeah, yeah. So the one thing that I think is we're going to find unique as we go through here is there's gonna be one that's going to be sort of an outlier. And that's going to be the 1792. Because the bottle and bond that the 1792 pick is actually a store selection, right? So it is a single barrel, it's a one off, it's not going to be some of the the normal 1792 UCO. Let's just 18:36 take that I know what do we want to do are we want to rank them one through three, or we want 18:40 to say best, I'd say you pick your top three. 18:43 Let's pick our top three. Okay, so by tasting number one, I'm eliminating it from my round, it's just too grainy. It's very alcohol forward. 18:52 If you were to if you were to try to pinpoint number one 18:54 and number two, number two, if it's not the decal one 18:59 I'll be sure Then you shouldn't be at San Francisco anymore. Yeah, 19:04 that's number two's nose. Yeah, 19:06 that's, that's deco all right? Yeah. But you know, and the thing is like, this was a the decal is a recent entrant to the market. And I think it's it's gone over fairly well with the community of people that are, you know, getting into it trying Tennessee bourbon and stuff like that. And so there is an opportunity to actually have George tickled, so be a part in here. 19:27 So what's our teen year in it? 19:28 So this is so this George decal doesn't have an age statement on it. They do have it they have a 13 year release. Okay. And this is the non age dated version though. Yeah. 19:40 actually enjoy it. 19:41 Yeah, I mean, one one thing I would say about decal Is it is it is often flawed and competition because it that particular note, that kind of like morality, the Flintstones a note really can stand out in a bad way for a taste Yeah, so if you're in if you're tasting a sea of things that are very Carmel forward and vanilla, and you get that note it can be very off putting or it can be very good and can help it stand out and yeah, so it's like it's one of those it's either love it or hate it in competition. 20:16 Yeah, that one I didn't get the vitamin D on the front end but it's really there on the finish 20:21 on I would recommend I would recommend Also make sure you rent when you get like some of that lingering, 20:26 lingering taste in your mouth and kind of rinse it out. Yeah, I could see that. I mean so frightening number one was read. 20:32 Just Yes. 20:33 I would say if I'm if I'm and this is the hardest part of a blind tasting is picking out what it is right. But I would say it's definitely one of the younger ones. I probably put it in a league of like JW dance or, you know, maybe, maybe the Evan Williams but I don't know. 20:52 Okay, kind of the month ago, it had like a cinnamon spice finish that I usually get an old old markdowns, maybe that could be way off. 21:00 I'll tell you to it it is like, if you're focusing on what it is instead of right what is best in the flight, then you're not then you're not focusing on the tasting. So I will will start I would recommend like trying to like figure out what they are later because that can actually be fun and I'm already 21:18 moving on to number three is notebooks like a notebook so you can pick one of them just said negative negative that's how I that's how I did it. 21:26 Now I just moved on to number three now I love the nose on number three I thought of this that's great care Marburg can move forward. Yeah, nice to the taste ended up being a little I don't want to say bitter but kind of thinned out and a little astringent towards the end. So I like you give the thumbs up in the nose. The taste is like in the middle and the finishes kind of 21:47 blow I actually think the the the palates got it like this kind of a cool lady. That's got like a KoolAid aftertaste. 21:55 Yeah, like fake sugar. Yeah, like, kinda it's process flight. Kinda we hack Kool Aid packs like when you take a Crystal Light pack and just 22:05 you just spoon Did you forgot to 22:07 put water in it? 22:08 Three put three is a maybe 22:12 it's a maybe 22:14 it's a maybe it's a maybe when we go down here and 22:17 there's a chance 22:18 there's it there is a chance that it could it could go somewhere. Yeah. So Fred kind of talk about, you know, when we got all these bottles of bonds up here. I know you've got a you've got a hard on from McKenna a little bit, but kind of 22:33 blind tasting candy. There was 22:36 help. That's what he told 22:37 me. It'd be like a $10,000 scotch. Wow, it's just one vote in that I'm bad at them. 22:43 You know, I guess Fred, you know, one one new entrant that we actually have up here that I think is might hopefully blow some socks off. And it's kind of a riff, new riff, right, 22:54 focus on what it is focus on the whiskey. No, 22:56 no, no, but I kinda want to talk about you know, new riff and You know how they got late You guys are just like we're trying to work here. He's like 23:08 now I'm gonna think it's a new roof now. 23:10 Well, I mean, I just kind of want to talk about you know, their bottom and bond, you know, coming into the market and actually having that be their first entrant. Right and I think wilderness trail did the same 23:18 exact number four was new rip and while he's talking about it just happened to be it now. 23:25 Now that I actually do like number four, I gotta days like new roof. 23:31 I like butterscotch kinda like no 23:33 it's like he planted 23:35 like a cinnamon note on the back of 23:37 their cinnamon but it's like a lot of 23:40 it it's got that fried pie crust that I love fried pie crust man you got you got some awesome tasty between you and Ryan I I gotta I gotta up my game on it that's for sure. You've got to eat a lot. That's why do eat 23:52 a lot. The thing is, is none of its fake. I know people want to say like it's it's hate but this is like I mean I've really trained and stuff And really tried to connect to everything I've ever tasted. And it all goes back to when I'm trying to get better from Iraq and I was using mindfulness techniques and tasting and I would use to one of my therapy things was I would break down what barbecue potato chips tasted like and felt like on my tongue and that would help keep me grounded and I just applied that to bourbon and so that's kind of been my my technique. 24:25 So start off with going down your local local grocery aisle finding different kinds of chips and pulling the real thing Yeah, and you mean you got to gain 10 pounds automatic 24:36 the risky take 24:37 grab like 10 varieties of fried apple pies, you know those? 24:40 Well, I'll grab 10 different varieties of like hot pockets and we'll start 24:43 right then you're born You 24:46 know, I'm not a hot soccer guy now back in college Pop Tarts and like crucibles Yeah. 24:50 You know, I used to be I did love toasters turtles because you get to design your own art on there. Yeah. 24:56 Oh man. But the thing is, is like with the Pop Tarts like I only go two flavors. It's brown sugar, cinnamon and then the wild berry like those are the only two that I would actually go for beyond that, like I'm not a strawberry jam person like, clones 25:09 never really did like number four by the way. Yeah, four is really good. Okay, there's a check for me. Where's the checkbox? Yeah, 25:15 going to five Alright, moving on to five here like that. 25:18 It's hard to analyze color in here because it's so dark. Yeah. But 25:24 yeah, I mean you got we got it. We got a variety variety really grainy. 25:29 You mean on the nose? It's getting a little too grainy for him. 25:32 It also but it does have like, it does have like that. 25:37 You go to the fairgrounds and they're serving the cotton candy you go to the cotton candy booth is 25:42 that cotton candy so I got some raw notes or something. I mean, when I just had a taste and I think you kind of get some of that that cotton candy and a little bit on the back of it. You get some grape Kool Aid. 25:53 Yeah, it does kind of kind of funky. A lot of raw notes on that. For me anyways. 25:58 So all that's pretty Though I'll ask you all When was the last time you all had some some of these other bottle of bonds that are just you know, regular kind of shelf stuff so like old Bardstown old grains. 26:11 Like this is old Bardstown. Yeah, you think? Yeah, I think this is old Bardstown. Number five. 26:16 Yeah, I now think it is. 26:18 Because it has that like a particular oak note in there that I get from their, from their stuff. 26:23 I mean, I've always early times for me like an always 26:27 early, early times. I mean it's, 26:30 I haven't spent a lot of time with early times. 26:34 But of what we have up here that I've been drinking the shit out of his new riff and I've been I've been drinking so much of their cash drink stuff, you know? That was so good. It is I it's 26:48 It is incredible. What they've been able to accomplish. Okay, so we go to the 26:53 glass, it's not 26:54 a Glencairn. Well, I think we we definitely made a mistake of not labeling these glasses either because now me and you are literally like three four little accounting like what's we're on number six already and we're trying to like go through these yeah 27:08 so I do like the nose on I do like this a lot 27:12 this is probably my favorite knows this far everything you want in America knows oh my god 27:17 that's good that's kind of full package right there yeah that's a full package that's a that's a check check plus from what what else 27:23 so let's when we say full package What are you what are you putting that in reference to what is your What is your baseline that in bourbon I'm talking about in life in life? What's your baseline for a full package? Can you 27:33 want me to just hit solid Are you referring to package 27:37 Gosh, last time I'm drinking with you all and again 27:40 often by now maybe I'm so glad we picked this over like lawsuits or something. They were like texting last night and I like put my phone down for like an hour and I come by or 30 texts and I'm like, we're not doing these. We're gonna do the bomb bomb. 27:53 It'll be much more files wave. 27:55 So anyway, my full package will be like what I kind of think of it is like it just hits the checkboxes Got the nose, it's got the flavors. And when I think of flavor, like it's nothing that's it's nothing that's crazy. It's nothing that is off the wall. It's a one off like it is it is hitting, you know, most of the high notes that you get on a bourbon flavor will you've got caramel, you've got oak, you've got pepper, you've got some of those things, and it still lingers just a little bit now all these being 100 proof. We're not going to see something that's going to sit there and just like the finishes, keep going and going and going, right? I mean, I think we will, maybe we will, but I would think with 100 proof and I'm not going to act like I've got a refined palette by any means. But I think that I typically only see that happening with barrel proof whiskey is something that like I could still sit back like 30 seconds later and it's still like those flavors are still coating my mouth my tongue 28:49 sometimes I get on that. If you have like, I've had a lot of good for roses, like the hundred proof. What is it? 28:58 Single barrel single barrel, sorry. VOB SV 29:01 Yeah, that like, you can tell the spices from the grains and not from alcohol and the finish just kind of lingers on there. And so that I really liked that one. The finish was a little flat for me, but it hit all the checkboxes on 29:15 Friday night solid six had some layers to it. I would say revisit that one. We like when we're done here, because that's definitely a contender. 29:23 Yeah. Hopefully we're not doing like confirmation bias on each other. And we're just like, Oh, yeah. Oh, no, 29:28 I disagree with you. I will totally tell you. Yeah, but that and I know that Ryan will be quick to say, Yeah, fuck you, you know. So but in his own way, 29:39 own heartwarming way that thumbs down. 29:41 You know, he'll be like, well, I don't really. I don't really agree with you on that. But I know where you're coming from, though. Yeah, Fred. I agree to disagree with you. And then Kenny will be like, well, I just don't get that. Yeah. 29:55 It doesn't have 29:56 to be that or I'll say it. Let's change this. Let's change the subject real quick. 29:59 What does that mean? The next one, what 30:00 does that look like? But seriously on to the next one? 30:03 I got my first Neagle, SB to number seven, I think we all got new glasses changing everything. You know if I'm 30:09 gonna if I'm going to go on a limb if we're gonna if anybody's gonna guess on one thing I'm going to say number seven is gonna be the old granddad bottle and bond. I just I think it's, it's okay. It's basic. It's either me that or it's Evan Williams. It's one of the other, but I feel like it's just, it's cool. It's like there but I don't think 30:26 like I don't think it's all green. I don't either know, this. I think this is 1792 that's what I was gonna say from the nose. It's got that you talking about Nana's guys that you're bananas. 30:36 You know, as there's one thing that Ryan brought up a second ago when you talk about four roses, you know there's a there's a few distilleries out there that that don't come out with a bottle and bond product for roses and wild turkey or or two of them that kind of come up to mind. 30:51 You want to know why? 30:52 Yeah, I'd love to know why the books 30:54 on the distilling season, actually and not bringing them in is very difficult. So like knob Creek, which is 100 proof that could have six different distilling seasons in the the actual audit of a bottle of bond it's actually very costly. Heaven Hill has it down because they've been doing it for so long. And they, you know, they don't really change a lot of those older methods. 31:16 Do they still audit for vault and bon 31:19 Oh, if they if the federal government wants to audit, they will audit and occasionally they will come in and out and they what they do they just look at paperwork, that's all they do. You know, it's not like they're going in there and 31:28 taking dramaturgy. Yeah, they're not doing anything like that. 31:31 But it's, it's it's pretty fascinating 31:34 to see. Really getting finished, kind of lingering. 31:38 So do you think do you think that creating a bottle and bond product is it just more paperwork nowadays at the end of the day, and maybe that's why wild turkey for roses and people like that, just don't worry about it. 31:50 It always comes down to position in the marketplace. And when you look at where bottle of wine Bond was 15 years ago, heaven Hill owned it. Nobody was getting near it. No one cared. Then Bernie lumber starts kind of striking striking the bar to me he changes he changes. That man changed the perception of the bartender community for bottle of bond. And then so other people started tacking on the new distiller started coming on. They're like we want to be bottled bond, we want to be old school. And then people like brown Forman said we need to get back into bottle the bond cc early times. You know, you see all kinds of efforts from a lot of places and people like four roses and wild turkey have always been about four roses and wild turkey. You know, so they don't want to necessarily get and kind of like a categorical lump with those particular brands. And maybe they will maybe they will and I don't know, but Wild Turkey has kind of been very anti 100 proof, you know, so the 100 it for them. It's comes out their one on one absolutely like their entire branding is around one on one. Yeah. And that's very specific. Absolutely. 33:05 Yeah, I think ball and bonds are like perfect for cocktails by the way to like 100. Like, you know, it's just it's a lot of them are young enough and like and there's enough proof there that they stand up to a lot of sweet ingredients 33:20 and like the nose on a it is. It's really nice. 33:23 And the other thing about the cocktail side is that yes, it's got enough proof that keeps it there but you know the bottle and bond this market of what we're looking at, we're looking at anything from a $15 bottle up to a $50 bottle I think 50 is the high when I was going through this so wilderness trail bottle and bond is the highest near it was 50 I believe it was between the Evan Williams bottle of bond and the Jim Beam bond and maybe the JW dan, as hitting some of the the lower lower price point therapy. Medic. Medic. Medic Ryan just Ryan just choked out over here. 33:57 Yeah, I'm trying to spit but it went too far down. No point of return. 34:03 date was very green forward to me. And it had like kind of like an undercurrent of like develop grain like an cornbread, which is a note I often get in some of the beam product. I've got a real nice like cornbread like a like a touch of like honey butter on it. 34:19 See, the thing is I actually kind of still enjoy this one. There is there's something about it where I didn't like it finished. The finish is still there for me. I don't know. I'm just gonna go the check on that one, Brian, 34:30 and I don't like it. So it didn't matter. 34:32 Well, no, I don't know. Just, there's only it's only a 33% vote over here. So you know, that's how it is. That's right. 34:40 All right. So number nine. Number nine. We were rolling through these awful quickly, aren't we? 34:45 When you got 12 to get there? 34:46 Yeah, we can have two and so on. And so I got another question I'll throw at you all because I remember this from I think was in Houston bourbon society or one of the other was you know, 34:57 when it comes to my tastings, and I'm trying to be analytic I hate when people fucking talk to me. So this is like, throw me on. Focus hit me. Can you shut up? Can we but it may be terrible, but it's true. Let's let him have a 35:10 hard I'll try the zone. Okay, all right, right on 35:13 I'm not gonna taste what you asked a question. Go ahead, 35:15 we gotta gotta keep the conversation going, right? We got to keep the listeners engaged here, right? 35:19 But you can ask Jessica I like close the door and I'm like, I'm writing. I'm doing this let me allow, you know, 35:25 we gotta we gotta make you break out of the mold here. So you're hanging out with us. You don't wear mascots anymore. Right? So we're making the breakout you 35:32 fucking hot out there too. I don't have to be on stage. So. 35:36 So. So there was I think it was a question that brought up by Wade. You know, we love Wade friend of the show. He's got a lot of bourbon knowledge out there. And and he said, you know, is it true or false that is every warehouse, a bonded warehouse. It comes down to the law. 35:53 They not everything's stored in a warehouse, but in terms of like, you know, they've been Pay they have to have it It cannot be in a non bonded the government has to know where it is. And it is it is very much on the watch list now is it a marked bonded warehouse? No, no I mean there there's there was a artists in Kentucky arts and distillery was aging in containers shipping containers for a long time and then they were aging outside for a long time and they would later be Jefferson's the growth growth product but the government knew what those were and they had to be that paperwork had to be submitted. 36:44 Okay, well see there's an LG 36:46 even have to have like a bonded Kenny and I've rented this like when when you buy do a transfer and bond from 36:52 one to another. You have 36:54 bonded transfer like so much now. This 36:56 isn't bond. This isn't anything that you have like Can I just go got, I got an f1 37:01 fit no one comes in and inspects it per se, but, but the paperwork has to be there. And if it's not, then you know, they get and when that audit comes, which the audits don't come, you know, they don't always come so like you could get away with, you know, doing that and, and I know people who, who distill, you know, illegally and then had a distillery and they added their old stuff into it. That was illegal. 37:25 But it happens. It does happen. So I'm going to go on a limb here, and I'm going to say number nine, it might be my least favorite of everything we've tried so far. 37:36 I really like the nose. But Gosh, the the finish on this, it just tastes like grass and, like, dirt. I don't know 37:46 it. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just not a fan of it. I'm ready to move on to 10 Yeah, I mean, it was just like, okay, can this one be over because I can't deal with it anymore. I don't know. We might burn a bridge there. But you know, it's just not there for me. 37:58 You got to stop worrying about the bridge. Yeah yeah they're engineers 38:04 I don't hate it as much as you guys but it's not it's not a contender for me there it's grainy Scott alcohol undertones to it got some sweetness but it's not it's not it's not an end of the world bourbon like it's not making me mad like you 38:23 I mean he's fuming yeah right here 38:24 I am off my rocker right now just going crazy. All right, number 10 yeah my guess moving on to number 10 we're we're rolling through these, I guess the thread for you Do you do these tastings a lot? Like how often or how fast can you go through like 15 Bourbons. From forest to still Bull Run distillery whiskeys are using some of the best water in the US. They're also experimenting by agent them in different types of barrels including cognac Madeira and be known to our barrels to their whiskeys are being featured by rackhouse whiskey club in their October box made from 96% corn Bull runs American whiskey is the lightest and sweetest product they offer and has very little barrel character to it. A company that in the rackhouse whiskey club box is IP No, no more Finnish whiskey. It's the same American whiskey but finished in French oak barrels. You really have to try these two side by side to see what barrel aging can do. And you can do that by checking out rackhouse whiskey club, their whiskey the Month Club on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer rockhouse boxes ship out every two months to 40 states go to rackhouse whiskey club com to check it out. And try these unique whiskeys use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. What defines distillery to 91 Colorado whiskey is it spirit passion permeates every sip since day one distillery to 91 distillers from grain to barrel to bottle by hand, distinctive Colorado whiskey, utilizing grains from the Colorado planes and water collected from Pikes Peak reservoirs. 91 Colorado whiskey is handmade the Colorado way. Everything matters. To 91 Colorado whiskey has earned bushels of national and international awards for its spirits with the unique character and the flavor of a bygone era. Named world's best Bry in 2018 by World whiskey awards, seven liquid gold from Jim Murray's whiskey Bible to 91. Colorado whiskey embodies the traditions of the past, married with the boldness of the future. Find a bottle near you at 291 Colorado whiskey.com write it like you stole it, drink it like you own it. Live fast and drink responsibly. How fast can you go through like 15 Bourbons? I'd be done now if you aren't asking me so many questions. 40:47 No, but I'm pretty quick. Like I don't. It depends on what I'm doing. Like if I'm doing it. I'm doing it in competition. It depends on the competition. I have to adhere to the rules. I'm doing it for myself. My own little fucking thing I do whatever it is whatever it is I do or I'm just trying to taste you know the big part is is like do I have someone there helping me because I don't always have someone helping me and it's hard to pour for yourself and I mean we do 200 products difficult yeah but I can you know I usually try to spend two minutes with the glass thing is I my whole thing is I want to give I want to give every glass its chance you know it's not you know someone put a lot of time and attention and effort to make it if I'm going to taste it in analytically I need to give that same kind of time and attention at least 41:38 if you do something different you you tastings multiple times if you give it a rating, right, 41:42 that's right. I will I will taste three times because right now I'm just coming off a cold memory. I texted you guys yesterday that I lost my palate. I was like I don't know if I can do this. I lost my palate. I woke up I went out that's good. Anyway, bars and found 41:55 it. I feel like we're on a level playing field and now 41:58 we're down Last night, I wouldn't read it is late. I went out with drinking with my friend and I woke up this morning. I'm back, baby. It's like all that whiskey, like, cleared it. It was like so I'm just coming off the three festivals and I've been pretty worn down and now I'm back. And I mean today I could tell it was back but, but, you know, if you have an onion, if you whatever you have for breakfast, influences your palate, our surroundings influences. Right now we're on we're in a construction area that that little bit of, you know, dust smell that's out there can influence what you're picking up. The lights can have something the fact that someone's saying, you know, talking out there can influence I mean, there's so many influences so that when I'm actually tasting by myself, I like to be in a kind of like as much of a soundproof room as possible. No music, nobody bugging me. And it's just me and the glass. You can do a whiskey quickie can take three days to 42:57 give it a thumbs down 43:00 The way you all do, that's great. 43:01 And I guess I'll kind of give you I'll throw one back at you here, Fred, because, you know, we, we catch some heat every once in a while because people think that, oh, 60 seconds that's not long enough for whiskey review in and I kind of go on the other side of that and I'm like, well, soon as you taste something you kind of realize if you like it or not, 43:19 yeah, how many times does it take? Like, do you ever come back and you're like, 43:23 yeah, there's no way there's there's not actually as many how many times I would think that you went from something that you're just like, this is like a 65 to 95. Right? Not that big not understand we're not scoring it on a on a on a, on a point scale here. We're just saying like, thumbs up middle ago. Thumbs down, 43:40 right. So there have been 43:44 there been a few that went from like 80 to 85 or 88. Something like that. 43:53 Just a few points, then yeah, 43:54 I mean, it's not it's never really, you know, too much but It is there. And you know the big thing I think, you know, we have to what you have to what you have to determine as now that you all are kind of getting in the critic role is like what is your base? What is your base? And for me, my base has always been Evan Williams Black Label. That's an 86 point whiskey. You know and the thing is is like when someone rates that when someone says that is 60 points or 45 points or something, you're essentially saying it's undrinkable. Evan Williams Black Label is very drinkable. And you know, it can be enjoyed sip, it can be a cocktail, it's it's very, you know, versatile and like that is my base. So if I if I find myself in a situation where I am being very low, I like I was I was writing some stuff really, really low for a long period I went back to taste Evan Williams Black Label to make sure I was not crazy crazy. And I was like, I was like No, I'm right. Because these are not better than Evan Williams Black Label and it was like it was the one that did it for me it was like three years ago it was Eagle rare 17 year old and and then that also the Parkers heritage came out that was really, really bad. And I was like, God, I mean, I'm about to write these two things under an ad. And it was like, that's like really, really low for for those two products. And so I went back and taste that my base and it was like, Okay, yeah, I feel firm in that. So you have to like come to your base of like, what is your throne? What what barely makes your thumb up? And then what barely makes your thumbs down that that will always help you as as a reviewer, because you have to have something to lean on. Because if you know, you know you, you want to be consistent. That's the main thing. Absolutely. Thanks to you our basis and McKenna 46:02 realize like if it's better than here McKenna we like, yeah, 46:06 it's not, then it's true. That's true. I mean, that's that's kind of what started us down our path of launching pursuit series was like a well, if this is better than here, McKenna will do this. Yeah. And so we had a first barrel sample and that's for you. Well, that's, I mean, good for you. That's another story here or there. But I kind of want to talk about maybe 46:21 I should flip the podcasts on YouTube about why you started. 46:26 Well, we can we can we can definitely do a podcast about that one. 46:29 I did that last night. But then I was like, I don't want to 46:33 sell but it's all about a hotel to stall 46:34 and they won't be self promotion. When I'm asked questions. It's good. God, 46:38 by the way, before we go to this number 10. Yes. And I was I was I was I put check check. plus, plus, I was away. I was really, I enjoyed number 1010 46:49 was very woody for me. And see, that's me. I like 46:54 my pain. And I'm just I'm writing that and one of these ones that Fred doesn't like his hitter McKenna. Like 47:01 getting old so no so here so this is this is I'm not getting that So the one thing here about here McKenna is that it's a single barrel right? It's nothing that is it's batch it's not it's not celaire age it's not whatever it is. It is it is a single barrel offering it's nothing else like it you know we have the opportunity to catch up with Josh Hey for one time and talk about after it one San Francisco and say like, Listen, we all pick and cherry barrels like we all just sending two bottles that you knew that are three bottles that you knew that were just like Primo pristine, like going to knock the socks off. And he said he said Kenny This is exactly what happened. I make one phone call down to the warehouse. You know right now we've all been in the warehouse at heaven Hill. There's just pallets stacked up just boxes and things are moving everywhere. made a phone call. said hey, I need you to take three bottles out of a box. Here's the address the ship them to. That's it. There was there was no cherry picking. There is nothing like that. 47:59 Henry McKenna won Best bourbon the year before 48:02 Yes, I wouldn't believe that but like everyone you talked to it heaven Hill had the same exact story like it same exact like it's like they fed it to them like this. Well we need to do 48:12 I went back in the judges and you know what, when we unveiled the bottles, all the bottles for the same barrel number and, and you know so that makes it that makes that a little bit more believable is because they were they said it came from one case and you know as far as I know they case up their their barrels all the same, they don't intermingle. Yeah. And so that is that is the only thing I can think of, and also the year before they won with with Henry McKenna. And the second thing is what nobody ever wants to give any credit to is that there are more than 40 judges there from around the world, the greatest palettes in the world and I'm not just saying that because Guys, you're on it. But like I'm talking about people who run the hotels in Macau, people who run Wynn Las Vegas these are the these people are ultra respected for their palates. And they are human guess what they think is a honey barrel at heaven Hill. Could be a shit turd 49:25 over there. 49:26 Yeah. I mean, I gave two years in a row on my panel. I did not metal Pappy two years in a row. And you know, YP is you know Pappy is good. I mean, I didn't metal it. So what does that say? What does that say? I mean, you don't know how the You don't know how the judges are going to react. And you don't know what panel they're going to get on. If they're on my panel, man. Like with my panel, 49:56 we submitted pursuit series and Fred was like, I didn't even get that on my panel. Yeah. 50:01 So you never you never have any idea. 50:03 So like, you know, so that I you know, there's there'll be two 300 Bourbons that come in. There's other judges I can't you know, and they split them out. And yes, they do make me drink vodka. 50:14 Oh god. Oh, you poor thing. The fourth thing, by the way, thanks for you making the sacrifice for doing that as well. You 50:21 bet 11th amazing. 50:24 11 so 11 I did a check minus that was good, but it wasn't all the way there for 50:28 me. Yeah, I thought was average for me. 50:30 I love 11 a lot. I'm already on 12 50:34 Yeah, I got some like floral Really? Because I'm the exact opposite. I am I'm unique. I'm putting it 12 is as one of the bottom of the buckets for me. 50:44 I don't know what it I'll try to 50:46 try to it smells like floor sweeping. 50:49 Yeah, I'm not I'm just not a throw up packets. 50:51 Like Can you talk about 50:52 I usually talk about that when I talk about rye whiskey that I always get this note with some rye whiskeys of of if you recall. Back in grade school and somebody would like he had a classmate that puked on the floor and you had a janitor that wouldn't put the shavings on top of it that's always a note for somehow that I always get off stuff. 51:10 Yeah that's that's a real note that green hand whiskey had that note for me 51:17 I don't like I don't like it enough to put them on top three so 51:21 so i think i think it Now it's time we go ahead but you we need to replace like your top five retail taste your tops for sure anything you got a checkbox or a yes or whatever it is that you go through I use arrows 51:35 I use arrows and like I'll do like one arrow if I'm excited about two arrows if I love it three arrows if I'm like, about to go in the room with it, you know, 51:45 there you go. I tell you what, you know I went to I went back to number three and like three is just like coming back from from 12 the kitchen just got like super caramel knows. I put a maybe check box next to it doesn't mean anything. me here yet as we keep going, 52:02 I left threes nose. 52:06 Three is got too much. It's over early for me. threes over early would mean he was over early. So like, think of herbs like deal. Oregano. Sometimes those are candy, some medicinal herbal. It's a no for me threes out now. 52:26 Yeah, that's pretty good. I get that I'm still kind of there. I don't know for me I'm still kind of there on it. But I'm going to exit for me. Well, I think that 52:34 if we need to report who's reporting for us we do not need a report. 52:37 There is there is way too much out here that we do not need a report. So I'm moving I'm going to go between like 3468 and 10, maybe 11. And I'll choose my top three out of that. 52:53 fours and for me from the nose. 52:55 I want to say it's one dimensional, but maybe we've gone through this 15 times. There's there's something that a taste that just doesn't have it there for me. And for me I'm looking for I'm looking for caramel I'm looking for oak, I'm looking for some of those things and for just doesn't have it there for me. So I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and just kind of knock that one off my lips pulling for out of your list. I'm pulling for my 53:18 lot. It's in his top five Remember that? No, well, that's still good. Like, I mean, something 53:24 they might have even though they knew what it was. Anyway, I have to I had to know. 53:28 I think I think you know, you're right. I think it was too easy to take it out. I'll go back to it. Be only because I think it definitely deserves to be up there. It was too easy to pick it out. 53:44 And it is bourbon. It is bourbon. 53:47 And I guess you know, I'll look it to you guys and kind of kind of pose this question to you as a stock start depleting as you know, higher aged whiskies available in the market or not very anymore really the one thing that we see that's very common is we see 10 to 14 and 15 year old Tennessee product that is now available Do you think that's going to help change some consumers mind about their about actually having you know very aged product that's in the market versus something that's only like four to six years old? I mean, 54:21 what help Fred and then they've given barrels kind of proven that there's some really good stuff how many Yeah, I think I think barrel bourbon is an anomaly. They are such good blenders. Yeah. And they blend out a lot of that really unsavory note that I find in some medical 54:38 product but honestly, I just put a check plus next to deco like it was just it's too good. I don't know maybe. I know most of these pretty much all these except that one coming from Kentucky but there is there is something about it. That I think most people if you've never had that kind of product before, you gotta give it a try. Because if you haven't and you you just immediately Oh, Tennessee screw that I'm not going to drink it and you haven't tried it, then you're not really giving it a fair chance and a fair opportunity because there's there's a lot of good products that 55:09 that you can't get a question for both of you 55:11 know, here we go. 55:12 How do you put when you're tasting? Like I try to surround my mouth? I'm looking at my spit cup in comparison to Ryan's and it's like 55:22 oh, Kenny's been drinking the whole time empty. Yeah. Well, I mean, my mind is full. 55:30 I mean, I put a lot of my mouth to kind of surround How much do you put in your mouth to? 55:34 To find out before we talk no leaders around? 55:37 I'm doing I'm doing baby pores over here. Right? I'm just doing baby pores. It's just enough to like, maybe coat the tongue. I think I think what you're looking for is like an overall like, are you chewing it kind 55:49 of thing. So this is very important to me as a taster. Like I have to make sure that because if you just put a baby poor on there, you're getting a small snippet of what that was. He is Now you all been doing this long enough I don't have to worry about you you know discrediting at some because of a mouthful perspective but mouth field to me is it's so important that's why I like to make sure I can at least fill it down my jaw line 56:14 but there's also I think something that is you also miss by by also not consuming it and being able to say like okay if we spit it out are you missing something? Well 56:24 you know keep in mind I have to when I'm doing this I don't like 1500 so I I'd be dead which I know some people would like that but it's not going to happen 56:34 I got talking to him over here 56:37 I got my top three 56:38 you got your top three already I went out on a tangent here 56:42 and yeah, I'm still okay I'm going back to number six because I had a check check plus i probably doesn't mean actually going to go back to it but 56:48 yeah, I'm with you on six it's checks all around. 56:52 Good stuff. Missy when I when I do take a little baby poor though I still I still try to get it in my jaw line. I still chew a little bit Try to have a cover my tongue Yeah, but I also am not the way that it's just like it's not like a full like quarter round so my mouth either right it's I've got to have just enough that I can savor the flavor be able to get it to the to the point where I'm like actually chewing on my back molars 57:18 but other than that four and six are are wanting to for me or in that they're right there. I have a run off between seven and 11 and I need to be removed from from this I need you to like you need to be kicked off the panel. No, I need I need I need to be I need these to be given to me where I don't know what they are. is what I'm saying. 57:38 Well, you don't know what they are. 57:40 No, I know what they are. I know this is 11 57:42 right? I know this seven. Alright, well turn around or put your hands above your eyes and just give them to 57:48 get over here. sevens on the other glass. I'm already going to know Yeah, 57:52 it doesn't need God this is it. This is how I do things like if like if I get like really tied to a particular one. So now now what I have Do I have to like assess this from? Like, what I like more about it and so 58:05 I'm mouse like tingling right now. Yeah, he got again shot. 58:09 I need to find out which I like more seven or 11 and we may have like a tie. Well, 58:14 I don't like either, so I'll solve that for you. 58:17 There we go. No, I'm kidding. It's a it's a consensus, pursuit consensus. You know, sometimes you go back to something and you taste it. You're like, maybe I didn't realize I like that as much as the first time. 58:28 We're all drinking. 58:30 Yeah, maybe. 58:31 So I'm going to I'm going to go with 11 over seven. Due to a berry, berry accentuated note that I happen to love. Bananas. Not bananas. 58:45 What is it? 58:47 No. marzipan is not marzipan. 58:51 It's it's cornbread. 58:51 Like a like but a particular like the Gypsy cornbread not like the like the sweeter cornbread. So I'm going with 11 59:00 So my, my, my pics are four, 59:05 six and 11 59:09 four, six and 11. Okay, so we got Fred. 59:12 I didn't put that in order. You want me to order that? 59:13 Nope, that's fine. So Fred at four, six and 11. Ryan, you got your top three. 59:17 I have four, 59:19 six and 10. 59:21 Oh, gosh, you guys are on point over. So I'm going to go a little bit different. I've got six, of course. So I think so six is by far that's that's, that's in our top 11 was closed over me. I also had 10 Okay, and 11 so at 610 and 11. Okay, so six and 59:38 11 are definitely in the top two. 59:40 Yeah, absolutely. So with that, Are y'all ready? For the reveal? 59:44 What what what what's the what's the on the third? Do we want it because we want to do the third. So we all had like a 59:51 bullet. I had four. 59:52 And you know what he and you had four, 59:54 four. I had 1010 We're all waiting. Like it's kind of like a three weeks. Split right there. Yeah. So, so we basically had four 610 and 11. Were our favorites. Okay. Okay, that's three. So we'll just take those as the four. Are you ready for the reveal? Yeah, let's do it. Alright. So number one. All right, number one, everybody remembers this. 1:00:17 We all kind of put an X on it. This is the wilderness trail. Ah, bottom, the bond. 1:00:22 I said, and I said, I thought it might be JW dan. So remember that. 1:00:26 There we go. There we go. Number two, we were all right. GEORGE deco. But you know, the thing is, is that like, I really enjoyed it. I, I would, I would honestly put that out there as my top but you know, when we look at stuff that's across the market, people that are going for, I think we look at the Kentucky Bourbons of what people really want. The George decal note like you love it or you hate it. It's one or the other. It's okay. And so, you just got you just got to find it now. Here it is. Number three, Henry McKenna. Number three is Henry McHenry. I had XR 1:00:59 Look what I put I put a line through it. Like it and see. Let me replace it. It happens it happens. 1:01:06 I know I've had some McKenna's oh they're just 1:01:08 this is not this is not smell good. So but then again remember we talked about this so now I like it. No I don't like it single barrel offering now it's hits different cannonballs McKenna phone calls this one time. Number four. New Heaven Hill the new bottle and bond heaven Hill shit. Right. So 1:01:32 so it lands on the top four. Yeah, it 1:01:36 lands on the topic. I think that was number one because we were so I really liked it. 1:01:41 You did you both you both. We both put that as your number one. Yeah. CI There you go. 1:01:48 This was my second guess about it was was an old Bardstown number five. 1:01:53 You are on point. Bardstown old parts town is number five. Right? Yep. 1:02:00 I can't remember. 1:02:01 But listen, here we go this is the one that I'm most proud about because I thought I guess it and I love this brand. I love the proctor making number six is the early times 1:02:10 body. Yeah, that six was really good. 1:02:13 Yeah, it was great. 1:02:14 Yeah, yeah, right. Exactly. So I I still stand by it. I say that is the best one liter of bourbon that you find on the market for 27 1792 1:02:26 think you think that you like somebody just like mind reading over here. I'm just like sending you like notes of Allison happening. The texts of the I really, 1:02:34 I really for him, I really do drink for a living. 1:02:37 So 1792 the bottle and bond. This was a pic that was done by the wine rack here and local and global. So that was that one. Number eight. Might have a guests. 1:02:48 I didn't have a guest on not just a negative. Alright. 1:02:50 Well, this is probably the most common bourbon you're finding the market is the Evan Williams. bottle and bond. Right. So there you go. Number nine is the Jim Beam Yeah, so to access to Exodus, I mean, I, I literally literally wrote down I hate doing this because I love the book no family I it's just like I literally wrote down. I said the worst of all of it and I'm just not a fan of it. That's just that's just how it is. Sorry. Number 10. S

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CG: Two Sleeper Stocks Looking to Wake Up & Ready, Set, Earningspalooza!

Industry Focus

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2019 38:54

On this week’s episode of Industry Focus: Consumer Goods host Jason Moser and Fool.com contributor Asit Sharma take a closer look at Land's End and Herman Miller, two sleeper stocks with some big potential. Plus Jason and Asit highlight four companies with earnings reports coming out later this week that they'll be following. Thanks to Molekule for supporting Industry Focus. Stocks: LE, MLHR, TSCO, AMZN, ORLY, ELY Check out more of our content here: TMF's podcast portal YouTube Twitter Join Our Motley Fool Podcast Facebook Group LinkedIn StockUp, The Motley Fool's weekly email newsletter Get 10% off your first air purifier at http://www.molekule.com with code fool10.

money focus consumer investing fool goods stocks herman miller plus jason motley tmf amzn molekule as it motley fool jason moser industry focus lands end tsco

Ep. 6 Jolly Old Socialist

WilmsFront

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 27, 2019 81:08

Yarra City Councillor Stephen Jolly has resigned/been forced out of the party he founded and fronted the Victorian Socialists. Where to from here for Melbourne's Marxists? I discuss that as well as reflecting on Stephen Jolly's socialist activist political career with Associate Editor of The Unshackled Lucas Rosas on tonight's episode of WilmsFront. As It's a Friday night I cover the rest of the major stories of the week which is the total collapse of the latest allegation which has led to calls for President Donald Trump impeachment. Boris Johnson still being frustrated to new heights in attempting to deliver the people's Brexit. Abortion was decriminalized in New South Wales but pro-life MPs in the Parliament pushed through major amendments to prevent late-term and coercive abortions. The Anti-Defamation League has decreed the latest hate symbols and Saudi Arabia accused Australia of being a human right abuser Wilms Front Links: Website: http://timwilms.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wilmsfront Twitter: https://twitter.com/wilmsfront Minds: https://www.minds.com/timwilms Gab: https://gab.com/timwilms Rational Rise TV: https://rationalrise.tv/ Support the Show: Membership: http://www.theunshackled.net/membership Donate: https://www.theunshackled.net/donate/ Subscribestar: https://www.subscribestar.com/theunsh... Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theunshackled Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/TheUnshackled Other Unshackled Productions: The Uncuckables: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDg6qZbQt68DJ4gmHWhOCuw Debt Nation: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKKEHuAGzwVtIEIFW3cZOPg Affiliate Productions: The Rational Rise: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdEfsAy6rUDPnm9HwKA_asg Right Minds NZ: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFcFU3Qv9lKc9rHEIqWd6Dw Matty's Modern Life: https://www.youtube.com/user/mattus52 XYZ Live: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsVPqW6Mi0XP6hOXTE4sT6g Melbourne Traditionalists: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCREh4e70ZihL5dj0N_kyaaw Other Unshackled Links: Website: https://www.theunshackled.net Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TUnshackled Twitter: https://twitter.com/Un_shackled Gab: https://gab.ai/theunshackled Telegram: https://t.me/theunshackled Minds: https://www.minds.com/The_Unshackled MeWe: https://mewe.com/p/theunshackled Music and Graphics by James Fox Higgins Voice Over By Morgan Munro

S1E29: Tales From the TAMO Cloud Featuring Al Rasheed

university fundraising leadership security recreation leaders booster jessica miller company culture it director as it leisure studies

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2019 24:01

Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a "TAMO Cloud" - which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred". It indicated an area of tech that was inscruitable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in it's output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO Cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys - both technical and theological - and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. This episode features my talk with friend, sysadmin, Tech Field Day representative, and recurring Technically Religious guest Al Rasheed. Listen or read the transcript below. Josh: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as it professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:22 Did you ever wonder why it diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside. That was originally called a TAMO cloud, which stood for Then A Miracle Occurred. It indicated an area of tech that was inscrutable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in its output for it pros who hold a strong religious, ethical or moral point of view. Our journey has had its own sort of TAMO cloud, where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys, both technical and theological and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. Leon: 01:08 My name is Leon Adato, and the other voice you're going to hear on this episode is my friend and recurring guest on Technically Religious, Al Rasheed. Al: 01:16 Hi Leon. Thanks for allowingme to participate. As you mentioned, my name is Al Rasheed. I'm a systems administrator. I can be found on Twitter, @ Al_Rasheed, and you can follow me or follow my blog, I should say at http://www.alarasheedblog.wordpress.com I'm a Muslim. I believe in practicing good Karma, in remaining conscious of your decisions in life, and in one. Leon: 01:40 Okay. And if you are madly scribbling down all those websites and stuff, you can stop and just listen and relax. We're going to have show notes so that you can find all that stuff without having to write it down. So let's dive right into it. I want to start off with the technical side of your life. Where, what do you, what work are you doing today? Al: 02:01 Ah, so currently I'm a systems administrator. I've been in it for approximately 15 years plus. Um, I've got various certifications. I've been, I've worked at all different gamuts. I've been in the education field for IT. I've worked as a federal contractor forITt. I'm a DCVmug leader. I'm also a member of the VMVanguards, the a Vmware Vexperts, Cisco Champion, Nutanix NTC. I'm also Tech Field Day delegate. And most recently I was awarded, uh, with The VMug President's award at VMWorld 2019 in San Francisco. Leon: 02:37 Right. I was there for that. So that was kind of exciting. That was amazing to see. Congratulations on that one. Um, okay, so that's where you are today. All things virtual. Uh, that's incredible. And it's always a lot of fun to have. For me, it's always fun to have friends who have those bases of knowledge because A) I have somewhere to turn when I have a question, but also B) when I get more curious, I can always turn and say, okay, "what's the cool thing? Like what should I be working on next?" So it's always neat. Um, but you probably didn't start off in all the virtual stuff with 15 years. VMWare wasn't around. So what did you do when you were just starting out? Al: 03:13 So, just starting out right out of school, uh, relatively new. Uh, I was relatively new to marriage and in my early twenties, I was in retail. And at the time it was a career that I pursued. Also, it was the, um, degree that I pursued in school. Uh, it paid well. It got me through it, provided what I needed at the time, but as my wife and I sat down and started to focus on putting, you know, we were working on a family and then having kids, the along hours got tiresome working from four to midnight and then being back four hours later, uh, gets a little bit old after a while. Again. Weekends weren't off the, there were long days. And as most of us can really relate, whenever you're in retail, a customer service customer is always right. Um, but not necessarily, but you have to take your medicine and accept it. Leon: 04:05 Yeah, it's a lot of "grin and bear it" kind of stuff. Right. Okay. So that's where you started, but how did you get from there, from that retail space into where you are today? Al: 04:16 So, um, I took a chance on myself and when I say myself, that obviously includes my wife and at the time my son, he was about two years old. Um, I jumped into IT into a help desk position. It was a relatively low paying job, but it was a starter. It was a starter role within IT and it was a sacrifice that I was willing to make. Um, but at the same time I held onto my retail job in a part time position to make up for some of the money that I'd lost during this transition. And I held both jobs roughly for about five years. So give or take on average and I'm not making excuses for myself. Everybody's got to go through this, but it's, it's worth the sacrifice and the challenge. Um, for about five years I was putting in 60 to 70 hours a week and that included weekends, but, but I knew there was going to be a reward because IT was booming. Everybody was jumping on it. The Internet had just blown up for lack of better way of putting it. And um, you know, I just wanted just like anybody else, a comfortable... I thought at the time, low stress job. But IT can be stressful. We all know that as well. Um, I don't have any regrets. I'm glad I did it. It's definitely elevated me to a point in my life in career, but also provided for my family in areas where I never thought were imaginable. Leon: 05:36 Great. That's, that's, I mean it's a lot of dedication and as a lot of us who've been sort of through that in that time period, you know, those 10 to 15, 20 years ago or (cough) more for some of us, uh, whose beards are a little grayer, it, you know, there is some sacrifice at the, at the beginning, but you see that there is you, there's a brass ring, you see that there's a reward at the end and so you're not just working for the sake of working more. Um, and that's, that's an important lesson to take away I think. Um, all right, so we're going to come back to that, but I want to, I want to flip over to the religious side. This being Technically Religious. So we're going in order, we talked about the technical, now I want to talk about the religious side of your journey, of your growth. Now I find that labels are really hard for folks. Um, you know, you say, "So what kind of Blah Blah..." whether it's Christian, Jew, Muslim, Mormon, "...like what kind?" And the answer is always, "Well, I'm sort of this and I'm sort of that..." There's, there's always an explanation to go with it. So labels are imprecise, but I'm curious how you would define yourself. Uh, you know, in a religious way. Al: 06:42 Correct. So as I mentioned, to start off this conversation, I am Muslim, but I would consider myself a conscience, conscious based Muslim, a conscious based religious person. Can I be better? Absolutely. Am I terribly bad? I don't think so. I know my right from my wrong, I try to convey these lessons learned not only to, you know, for myself but for my wife and my kids, but those around me. And um, we just try to focus on positivity, help others out as best as possible. But you know, when I have to, if I have to look myself in the mirror, I do have a lot of room to grow with and uh, there's a lot expected of me and um, I can always improve. But there are, you know, religion is a delicate subject depending on who you speak to. It can be interpreted in so many different ways. So I'm trying to be as gentle as possible when I explain how I approach it. Um, because you know, just some people take it to another level and I, I don't want to A) offend anyone, nor do I want to get into a, a "beef" for lack of a better way of putting it online or on Twitter or however, if I were to see somebody in person. Leon: 07:47 Got It. Okay. Well I will respect those boundaries too. But, uh, you know, again, I know from our other conversations that you have, you know, a pretty strong point of view for yourself, not for, uh, for anyone else, but you hold yourself to a very high standard and it definitely informs the way that you approach work. And, um, okay, so the same way I asked you about how, where you started in IT and how you got, uh, to, you know, this point in your life. So is this where you are now? Is that where you started? Is that, you know, your sort of level of observance and consciousness, religious consciousness when you started out? Al: 08:22 I would probably say no. Um, maybe prior to getting married I wasn't as conscious of everything that's around me or what's expected of me as a Muslim or someone that's following any faith. Um, it's probably, it probably has to do with just being immature at the time or just, um, not really keeping those ideologies in mind that I think as you get older you start to realize life is a little bit shorter, especially as you become, especially as you become a parent. Um, maybe you want to become, you know, obviously you do want to act as a role model and a mentor and more so when I was more actively involved with my kids' activities, now that they've gotten older, you know, they want to distance themselves from dad and mom because they seem to know everything. But we were just like them. So, you know, when I was younger I was actively involved in like their sports, their activities, but I didn't necessarily do it for my kids. I also did it for myself in the young people that they were surrounded by. Uh, one thing that I, I really cherish and I, and I can't get enough of it, is if I happen to see somebody, like one of my son's friends who I coach, let's say for example in basketball 10 years ago, so that was my son was 12 years old at the time. They'll approach me and say hello, Mr Rasheed. And I don't even recognize them because they changed. You know, they're now young adults. My son's 22 and he doesn't look like he did when he was 12, but you know, they'll always approach me and they will call me by, you know, my name. But not only that, they'll take a moment or two and say, "You know what, thank you. Because what you taught us and then has helped us grow to where we are now." And when it was, when I went up, when I was involved in their lives at that time, it was predominantly around sports. I am a sports junkie, but I tried to also teach them life lessons and I think they've taken that and learned from it. Leon: 10:22 Nice. Okay. So, uh, I think we've, we've covered your sort of religious journey or your spiritual journey along the way. Um, now what I want to do is talk about blending the two because I know that for people who have strongly held religious, moral, ethical points of view that work in general, and IT specifically can be interesting. I'm not saying it's a challenge, I'm not saying like it's a problem, but it creates a set, a set of layers to the work that folks who may not have that strong a point of view don't always, uh, have to manage or deal with. So I'm curious as a Muslim and you know, as somebody who's worked for decades in IT, you know, what challenges have you had with that overlap? Al: 11:12 I think both your career in it and your faith as a Muslim, in my case, they both require an insane amount of patience, especially when you are out of your comfort zone or you don't live in your faith-based country. Uh, I, you know, I've, I've been a US citizen for pretty much my entire life. I've lived here in this, in the States for my entire life. So I've adapted to that culture, that way of life in general. But there are times, especially in IT, and I don't know why it has to be IT-related or specific to IT, but, um, your patients. Yeah, I want to say your faith, you keep faith in the back of your mind more times than not how you are going to react to a certain situation, especially if there is a potential for it to become unnecessarily, uh, provoked or heated. Leon: 12:06 Okay. Al: 12:08 Um, I, as you can relate, many of us in, in this industry, As IT professionals, we're acknowledged, we're appreciated, but they don't know we exist until there's a problem. And they will let us know when there's a problem. Nine times out of ten,it's not done in a manner in which you would prefer to be notified there's a problem. And so when you've got a herd of people coming at you and you're already well aware of what's going on and you're attempting to fix the situation on the back end and try to keep it to a minimum, those are the, uh, those are the opport... Those are the moments where you find yourself questioning, not necessarily why you got into IT, but why do we have to go to this level to report something that can be relatively low key and fixed in a quick amount of time. Leon: 12:56 Right. But I liked it. I liked the word you almost said - it's an opportunity to have a chance to first of all reframe their point of view. And again, as somebody who has a strong, you know, moral, ethical, religious point of view to be that, uh, to be that example, to be that role model. Um, sometimes we do end up representing a segment of the population. You know, I know that a lot of times for people who especially don't know, me personally, I am a 5' 8" kippah and you know, seat seat. I'm just this religious dude who's standing there. And that's what they see. And so I do recognize that my interactions carry a weight that isn't just, hey, Leon didn't handle this well. It, it goes further than that. So you have an opportunity to not only help manage expectations as an IT person, but you have a chance to manage expectations as the whole person who you are standing in front of them. Al: 14:00 Correct. Correct. And I find it's not, like I said, it's not about me when I put it this way. I think it does apply to a lot of us in IT. Honesty can be a challenge. And I'm not saying that we always have to lie, but sometimes you've got to beat around the bush to put it mostly because if there is an issue and you're upfront and you give the end user who the individual, whoever the individual is, that's asking for an update to the situation, uh, the truth, they may overreact and take it up to another level that's completely unnecessary. And unprovoked. I'm not saying lie, but sometimes, and I hate to use expression beat around the bush, but kind of just give them as little as possible without putting yourself out there in a tough, in a tough area. Leon: 14:48 Well, and I would also say that there's, there's a way to, you don't have to say everything right. And that counts for lots of people in lots of situations. That truth is answering the question that you're being asked. Um, I will never forget that one of my children asked me, you know, 'Dad, where did I come from?" And so we sat down and had this very long, very specific conversation about biology and when I was done, my childhood, oh cause Bobby's from St. Louis and I realized I was not being asked the question. I thought I was being asked. And so answering the question that, that you're being asked, you know, "what's wrong" is a very open ended question. And if you give too much detail, people can, at best they'll ignore the answer. But at worst you're giving them bits of information they didn't really, they weren't really looking for in the first place. Al: 15:47 No, that's, that's a valid point. As the kids say TMI, too much information. I totally get it now as we've gotten older, but I know we've mentioned on previous segments on your podcast, I've acted as a mentor in my career in IT, and one of the pieces of pieces of advice that I give to young people getting into IT is keep it - and with all due respect - keep it simple stupid, the KISS method. Don't go out of your way to offer the end user, whoever you're explaining this to, an opportunity to twist your words around or maybe they just don't quite understand what you're trying to explain to them and then they can convey it incorrectly to someone else that could elevate it to a just a very challenging awkward position to be in. Leon: 16:32 Okay. So any, any other challenges that you've had again with your ethical, religious, moral point of view, blending that with your IT experiences? Al: 16:42 Um, communication is very important to me. Everyone should have an open door policy. Um, feedback should always be provided in good and bad situations cause we can only improve from it. Um, there are times where if you are going back to the honesty key point, if you are honest and upfront, there is a tendency, not, not necessarily all the time, but the occasionally that it could backfire. And um, it's, you know, the old expression, "you have to play the game" or "don't hate the player, hate the game." I don't like to be that way. I don't think anyone wants to be that way. And it's not something that I would encourage anyone to go down that path or act in that way. Um, but you know, it's a delicate balance and you just gotta be aware of your surroundings, but do it morally and ethically without not only, you know, putting yourself in a bad position, but your team as well. At the end of the day, you're a team. You have to function as one and, uh, we have to improve collectively. Leon: 17:39 Right. And, and again, you want to answer the question you're being asked, you want to offer the, you know, that those pieces of information don't overshare because at the end of the day, people, you know, they have a quick question. They want a quick answer usually, especially when something's really happening in IT. You want to be able to be brief and be brilliant and be gone. Al: 18:01 Yes, right. And all but, but be authentic, be original. You know, it's going back to what you just said and don't try to create something that you're not cause that that hero mentality sooner or later we'll come back and get you. And before, you know, you have a reputation of being that type of person and it's not something that anyone in IT or any, any, any career for that matter wants to be. Because once you've been singled out or blackballed or considered this type of individual, it's really hard to recover from. Leon: 18:35 It definitely can be. All right. So, so that's sort of the challenges. But, um, I'm curious if there have been benefits or surprises, uh, or just, you know, positive things that this overlap between your religious perspective and the IT work that, uh, you've had. If there's anything that, that you've experienced over the last 15 years. Al: 18:54 I think getting more involved more recently in the, the community in general, that the community, regardless of what platform it is, has been inspiring for me. It's opened up so many doors and created so many friendships, including with you and Josh on the podcast. Uh, it's refreshing to know that there are individuals out there that care for one another, not only from a professional aspect but from a human perspective as well. Because, you know, we work to live and we'd hate to work or we'd hate to live to work. And so I, I, that's something that I've learned over the past few years is, you know, you can put in 70 hours, but it's, and that's fine and dandy, but sooner or later it's gonna catch up to you. And before you know it, you're not going to be happy professionally. If you can't do your job in a 40 hour a week. And, and I get it occasionally you have to over your, you know, you have to overextend yourself. You have to sacrifice an hour or two here and there. But when it becomes a consistent part of your life, when you're putting in 70 hours a day, you're defeating the whole purpose of everything that you've worked so hard to get to. Leon: 20:00 Right. And again, I think that the, some of the guiding principles of our, our faith lives start to put, to put that into a particular framework of, you know, what are you doing this for? What's the point? Um, I was listening to someone speak the other day and they said, you know, if someone showed you a machine that was a perfectly self running machine, "Look, I turned it on and it never, it just completely feeds itself!" And you'd say, "That's wonderful. What does it do?" "Well, it does that, it just, it runs and it, it, it keeps itself moving and it keeps itself oiled and it's self repairs and stuff." "Yeah. But what does it do?" "Well, that's what it does. It just, you know...", You'd say, "Well that's cute, but a machine that works so that it works, it doesn't even make me a cup of coffee. It doesn't, you know, Polish the dog or like that. That's sort of a pointless, a pointless machine." And if we've become that pointless machine where we are working so that we can work so that we can keep working so that we can work, it's that sort of never ending loop. And I think that again, our faiths point us toward like, that's not it, that's not what you're supposed to do. Al: 21:06 I was just going to say, sorry to interrupt you, but then you do lose sight of faith when you're working night and day and all you do is think about work, work, work. And I don't want to come across the wrong way. Um, I, you know, I would hate for someone to characterize me in a different manner. Um, but I, you know, I, I'm a hardworking individual. I'm diligent, I'm thorough. I'll do the best to my ability. I am a team player, as I pointed out earlier. But you know, at the end of the day, I want to come home and separate work from life. Leon: 21:37 Absolutely. And I think that when you have that, when you have that ethic, everybody except the most, uh, abusive or small minded people will respect you more for it. Okay. So any final thoughts? Anything? If somebody listening this and saying, "Wow, that sounds just like me except, you know, he's way further ahead than I am" or whatever. Like what lessons do you want to share? What final thoughts do you want to leave everyone with? Al: 22:02 I would say based on where my path has taken me, you should always take a risk on yourself, especially if you've got an opportunity to do so. Uh, without, you know, without risking a lot, you'll realize sooner than later that the effort that you put into it, you'll be rewarded for it in time. Um, if you sit back and wait for someone to do something for you, nine times out of 10, it's not going to happen, but do it the right way. Um, seek help, uh, become a part of, you know, the various community groups. Um, occasionally, you know, you've got to volunteer because you've got to give and take. So you can't have everything, uh, put out on a silver platter. You've got to put in the time and effort, the blood, sweat and tears as they say. But a don't make yourself miserable doing so. And when I reflect back, I, I don't really have any regrets, uh, with what I chose to do at the time. I'm happy I'm, I'm, I've gotten to this point in my life and in my career, but moving forward, I, I still want to elevate and I still want to grow. And, um, I'm looking for that next challenge in my career. And, uh, if that opportunity presents itself for the right reasons, and if that a organization finds, um, that I am the person that they're looking for, you can always reach out to me. I'm more than willing to have a conversation. Leon: 23:17 They'd be idiots not to take you. I will, I will go out on a limb and say, Al, it is always so much fun to talk to you. Uh, I know we're gonna have you back on the Technically Religious podcast here in the near future, but thank you so much for taking some time out of your evening to talk with me. Al: 23:36 Thank you as always, and I appreciate your time and support and if there's anything I can do for you, the podcast or anybody in general, you've got my contact information, you're more than welcome to share with me if they reach out to you directly. Doug: 23:48 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious, visit our website, http://www.technicallyeligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect to us on social media.

Episode 10 - Creating digital solutions to analogue problems with Jessica Miller

Negotiate With I.T.

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2019 22:03

Jessica Miller is the IT Director for Booster Enterprises. She’s only been in post for a short while, but already Jessica is making waves in the business that she has steadily worked her way up. Booster has, for the last 16 years, been trusted by schools in over 47 states to help them raise funds and inspire students through their fitness and character programs. To date, Booster has helped raise $220m+ which in turn has helped 7.1m students. Jessica started at Booster as a Salesforce Administrator before moving to Salesforce Director and then finally to IT Director. Her current role is a far cry from the actual degree she completed, Recreation and Leisure Studies, at the University of Georgia. After graduating, Jessica quickly realized there were few jobs available in that field, and so cut her teeth using the tech systems at Shane Company, the largest privately owned jeweler in the US. As IT director, Jessica’s days are filled with creating digital solutions to existing problems, building the company culture, boosting employee morale and getting the company to operate more efficiently and effectively. In today’s podcast: Why Booster is such a unique company How Jessica has developed the company culture Why leaders are responsible for boosting employee morale What her priorities are in her new role as IT director The challenges the company is facing Why ownership is key to a successful career

S1E16: Being An Ambassador of IT Within Our Religious Community Part 2

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2019 25:00

Religious communities sometimes have a fraught relationship with technology in general and the internet, smartphones, and "screens" in particular. On the one hand, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc see the power these technologies have to build, grow, and maintain contact with the community and "spread the word". On the other, technology is often perceived as a cesspool of evil inclinations and a scourge that is destroying families and minds. As IT professionals within our religious communities, we're often asked to address, and even "fix", those issues. Last week, Josh Biggley, Keith Townsend, and Leon Adato discussed what was good about being "geeks in the pew". In this week's installment, we'll explore the challenging side of this situation and look at some solutions. Listen or read the transcript below... Destiny: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as it professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:24 This is a continuation of the discussion I started last week with Josh Biggley and Keith Townsend on the topic of being ambassadors of it within our religious community. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation. Leon: 00:37 All right, so we've talked about some of the good, we've talked about some of the opportunities that being a technologist in our faith community presents us, but what can go wrong? What is wrong with being a person of technology in a land of faith? Josh: 00:55 Really, I don't think there's anything wrong with being a person of technology in a land of faith. I think that it's the use of technology. So I like to tell people I'm a recovering video game addict and I love video games. I really struggle with the want to play video games. And by the way, most video games today are crap. It's just the way that it is. Sorry kids. They are. But the biggest innovations in video games - things like 3D and VR and augmented reality - they come from the porn industry.So Mormonism, they've embraced technology. So one of the earliest embraces of Technology was broadcasting what we call general conference, which is a biannual conference. It takes place in Salt Lake City in April and October. And so broadcasting that conference around the world, like when I grew up, our church had one of those monstrous satellite dishes outside, you know, the kind that you're, the kid in the neighborhood. His Dad used to, you know, get the free porn on. Well, we had one in our church's yard and we got broadcast from Salt Lake City sent to us. So I think that the challenge with technology isn't so much that it is technology, the challenge is: what are we willing to accept it being used for in our lives. Leon: 02:26 Okay. So that's an interesting take. I guess what I was thinking about is the things that being the technology person, like what goes wrong with that scenario when we enter our church or synagogue or mosque or are our temple. And one of the first things, and this isn't the worst of it, but one of them is that sometimes we are asked to stand and answer for technology. So, people come up and say, "Twitter's just for, you know, porn and shit posting, that's all you ever do." And you know, I'm stuck there saying, "Well no it's not." But I'm also in my head saying, "Well yeah, it kinda is sometimes" Josh: 03:08 I thought Instagram and Reddit were for porn. Right? Leon: 03:12 Well, okay, everything could be, but you know, the point is, is that I'm being asked to stand and answer these challenges and that can be, you know, it's never fun to be on that kind of firing line. Keith: 03:23 Well, you know, it's kind of like being a politician. There's no good politician. One politician has to answer for all politicians. Or you know what we, we all have faiths that have controversies associated with those faiths. So you know, you're the Christian and you have to answer for 2000 years of the atrocities of Christianity. It's the same thing in technology. "You know what, Keith, you, you help maintain the internet in some ways. So you are a contributor to these problems." You know, the fact that the FBI can't unencrypt this porn traffickers phone is your fault. Leon: 04:05 Right? I also find that we're often put in a position where we have to be the bearer of bad news. Josh: 04:11 Like "the wifi is down"? Leon: 04:11 No worse than that. I've been asked to go help somebody with their computer, only to have to tell them that their spouse is doing... Whatever it is, Speaker 4: 04:22 At work, if you've ever did any type of enterprise stuff at work and you find something illegal like child porn... it's your responsibility. You are now legally obligated to bring that up. And then for our various faiths.... I had a guy bring me his laptop and said, "you know, what, can you fix this?" And what was wrong with it was they had a bunch of spyware on it. And there's one surefire way to get spyware on your laptop. And he was a friend, so I had to have a difficult conversation with him. And this is not something that, if he would have took it to best buy or wherever - and he probably does now - but if he would have taken it to Best Buy or the Geek Squad, he would not have been confronted with a difficult conversation. So it puts us in a really tough situation sometimes. Leon: 05:20 It can be, yeah, it can be hard. And that doesn't even consider having to be the bearer of bad news that, you know, "you're just not good at this." Like "you broke it. You really..." Like, "why would you think that doing this...", you know, I mean those, those kinds of things too. I also find that there's a potential, and I think we're going to dig into this a little bit more later in the episode, but it can create dependency relationships that are not good for us and they're not good for the people that we're helping. You know that there's a feeling of a burden on our part and there's a feeling of beholden-ness on their part that can develop that is not friendly sometimes. Keith: 06:05 Yeah. I sold the guy, the laptop, so... Leon: 06:10 oh man. Keith: 06:11 So... and I think that gets to your point, there's this obligation and this is not unique to technology. We deal with this. I think the religious part of the relationship, the faith based part of the relationship, makes it that much more difficult because people can either abuse that, or you can feel personally obligated because this person is a fellow member of your congregation, mosque, or whatever, that you're obligated at a spiritual level to help maintain the system that you gave to them out of the abundance of your, kind of, blessing. You know, how many of us have... like, I literally have a laptop that's worth a couple of hundred bucks at least that, but that could do some good. And I'm challenged with what do I do with this thing? I can't give it away because if I give it away, I've got to support it. Leon: 07:03 It's your... Right, right. Hey, look, you pass within five feet of a computer and you know, it's your responsibility now. I mean, you just give it a second glance and... Yeah, that's, that's exactly it. Josh: 07:15 So have either one of you had this experience: You walk into your congregation and someone corners you and says, "You know, I'm thinking about buying..." And then fill in whatever technology. A new mesh wireless system, a new laptop, an Ipod for my kid. "Which one do you recommend?" Keith: 07:36 Oh, yeah, I've, I've had that and I almost always regretted getting it. Josh: 07:41 Agreed. Good. I'm glad I'm not the only one who regrets that advice. My goto now is, "uh, I'm sorry, I don't fix computers. I can't help. I just don't know." Leon: 07:52 Worse for me, worse than that is that I'm walking in on Shabbat, on the Sabbath. Remember how I said we can't touch anything, and sabbath is a day for, you know, no work and really focusing on on the holy, on the elevated and things like that. And there's still a couple of people who either want to talk about 'that really crazy thing that they did at work' or they hit you up with, "hey, my iPhone is doing this." Now that holding the iPhone, they're not. But what do you think that is? "Oh, I'll just jump on the psychic friends network now and.." You know, like you are describing an iPhone for the... and again, I go for that, like "it's Shabbat, I'm not talking about this." But it happens. The thing that's most wrong about being the technology person is what it does to us, to us ourselves. Because we're there. I mean, the whole reason we chose that space and the whole reason that we chose that community is because we wanted to make that our religious home away from home. We wanted to worship, we wanted to pray, we wanted to connect to the spirit, you know, however, however you want to phrase it. And the problem is that sometimes when we're doing that work, it's not happy work, it's uncomfortable work. It's work where we are really digging deeply and thinking about our behavior or our attitudes. And that's something that we're not always really excited to do, but it's necessary. And having a distraction, having somebody come up to you and say, "Hey Leon, I know that that you're in the middle of davening (or whatever), but hey, can you just... you know, the Wifi is down. Can you just, you know, kick it in a minute?" And you're like, "Yes! Please! Give me any reason not to have this conversation with God right now, cause I'm really not up for that. I really don't want to have it." I think that that's the biggest disservice that we do to ourselves. I don't know if you've run into that. Keith: 09:48 Yeah, I don't, I don't limit this just to technology. We don't have a whole lot of people on staff in my congregation, we give a good portion of what we would probably spend on staffing to missions, contributions, etc. So we're very volunteer driven, which is great and it works for the most part, but it is a awesome excuse for those who look to be doing well spiritually, to step away from the work of staying well spiritually. So whether you're doing sound, you're doing childcare, you're doing ushering, or counting the contribution, or even the book ministry, it is a good excuse to just not do the work of your faith. And the work of your face is faith is not necessarily running the church or the congregation or the mosque. The work of your faith is developing your relationship with God. And that, I think as technologists, we make that excuse. I remember early on my faith at bringing my pager in because I'd be on call and it would you go off and like, "Oh wow, this is a good reason to step away" knowing that whatever it was could wait. You know, it is a risk that does not limited to technology. Josh: 11:08 I think this is a challenge and I'm glad to hear you say that Keith, that is transcendent of religious belief. Within Mormonism, all local clergy is lay clergy. So those individuals hold full time jobs in addition to being called as a member of clergy. In fact, all positions in the church are unpaid. And I've watched without fail... And even when I acted as a member of clergy, without fail, those members who are in those positions, they stop attending Sunday school. They stop attending their meetings on Sundays aside from the meeting in which they have to preside over because they're, they're caught up in being the thing they've been asked to be. And it's everyone though, right? Because everything is volunteer driven. It's the person who fixes the boilers. It's the person who does the AV work. It's the person who is responsible for stocking the supplies for the janitor. It's everyone and there always seems to be a reason for people to be away from worship. And I don't know how to break that cycle. Honestly. I don't. I've seen it for 20 years and I'm stuck. Keith: 12:22 So, we haven't talked about, maybe it's a great topic for another day, but we have this hero syndrome in IT and this is just another way to feed that disfunction of, "yeah, I'm the hero that saved the day and my job is so important within worship that I have to do" it or that it takes away from my own worship. Leon: 12:48 Right? So you feed the martyr syndrome and you feed the importance and that really negative feedback loop, like you said of the mouse that gets the cookie. But it's doing the wrong thing. Like all those things fed into it. And the other thing is that you get the positive-negative loop of feeling put upon. "Ugh, can't anyone fix the AV this time? I'm always the one who has to do that!" But also the self importance, but also the "look, no one else can do it. I really am the hero." And meanwhile other people are feeling... You're possibly leading other people to feel jealousy or resentment towards you, which you should never be that stumbling block in front of somebody else. So it just can lead to all these horrible outcomes. And I think we've been dancing around it, but where I'd like to wrap up, where I want to go next and finish out with is "how do we manage those boundaries?" So the first thing is, you were both very clear. This is not just for it folks. This is for anybody who is doing any sort of volunteer job within our faith organization. You know, childcare is a great example, Keith, that you brought up that "I would love to be praying but baby's got to get changed. You know, someone's got to watch the kids and I never get to pray or maybe once all everyone goes and picks up their babies. Now I can have a few minutes in a quiet room by myself."Bbut do I take it for myself? Is that really the right way? Is that... So that's the first thing is it's not just for it people. But the other thing Keith, you brought up before we started recording was that it's not just for faith groups. Keith: 14:31 Yeah. This is something that any organization, there's a volunteer driven that doesn't have enough x, will lean on a resource as much as possible because the organization needs the resources cause they're resource limited. So we can be United way or and girls club. My wife worked for boys and Girls Club for a couple of years, and the amount of just extra they get out of those - even the employees and volunteers. It was to the point, and we're going to get to this, it was to the point where you wore those resources out, that they stopped contributing their talents to that organization. Leon: 15:15 Got It. Okay. So Keith, as CTO advisor, as somebody who does this professionally, I am going to lean on your expertise just a little bit - hopefully not abusively and ask what, what are your thoughts on how we can set proper boundaries? And we'll keep it with our faith community, but we understand that I will say right now I am horrible at setting boundaries in general. Josh is nodding. So if you don't know, we have video going along with this that we don't record, but so we can see each other's faces. And as I'm saying, "I'm horrible at setting boundaries." Josh, he's just nodding so much that the camera's blurring as he's doing it. So Keith, what is some of your suggestions on ways that we can both give back to our faith communities, but not so much that it becomes these negatives? Keith: 16:08 So this is one of those things that, when we all look at the basis of our faith, all our faith are based on love. So that's a given. And then there's other commonalities across our faith, which is 1) to have faith. And oddly enough, this is the area that we don't recognize that we're allowed to be challenged on. There's always always going to be too much in our face. If we're not relying on God, then something is wrong somewhere. You know, if, if, if we're the only one that can do it or solve it, then there's, you know, we're putting faith in the wrong place. So there's, you know, kind of that fundamental piece of our individual relationships with God. Whatever higher being you have in your faith is that we have to give... in Christianity we are always saying "we have to give God something to bless." Well, if we're doing it all, how are we giving God something to bless? So that's where I started. So if the babies have to be changed, if the food has to be prepped, the Wifi has to be fixed - but you're putting all of that in front of your own personal relationship with God, your families relationship with God, or you're... whatever priority your faith dictates you give to your, uh, "big boss" who ultimately I call "God". Then that's where you know your boundaries is kind of out of whack. You have to, again, in a Christianity focus, you have to put God to the test, allow things to go haywire as you go for prayer. Maybe during that period of time, other people realize, "Oh wow, I didn't know... I didn't even realize that that was a problem." When I advise people in the secular world, and just my regular job, if senior management... if you never allow senior management to know that there's a problem, you don't give them the opportunity to fix the problem. So if you're always trying to mask and hide the problem with any fish and band aids, you know what? You're going to get a result that's not what you want, Leon: 18:36 You're not giving someone else a chance to step up if you're constantly rushing in there. I ike that a lot because, if you think you're the one who's doing it all, there's a attitude adjustment - or in a slightly different context in Judaism, you're commanded to give tzdedakah, which people translate as "charity." It really means "justice", literally means justice, and you're commanded... It's one of things you're commanded to do. But the texts are very clear. Like, "you think *you're* giving that money? Oh, is that what you think? No, no. See THAT? I gave you that money to give, right? Yeah. Please do not think that you are supporting this person, that you are helping this person. You are doing nothing. I will make sure they're okay. I'm just letting you participate so you can feel good about it." And the same thing, you know, "you think that's your skills, that it's all on your shoulders? No, no, no. I'm so sorry. But you know, it's going to be there long after you're gone and someone else will be doing it. It's okay." To that end, I get pulled into a lot at my synagogue, doing some tech work, and I've started refusing to just do the work unless there's somebody else who was assigned as a project manager on an activity. I don't necessarily need one, but I need someone else to be the "one face." I need somebody else to gather the requirements, to just say, "yes, do that now." I'll give them, "here's, here's the five things that need to get done. Here's my time estimate that it will take me to do it." But you're going to have to be the one who gets approval, who deals with people who say, "I don't like that color. I want it to be more green" or whatever. And the result is that the person who's project managing me right now actually is learning to be a web designer. And he started to do some of it on his own. And so now there's two of us. And so that's okay. So I'm kind of proud of myself. I have done that. Josh: 20:39 I'm just worried that there's two Leon's in the world now. Leon: 20:41 No, no, that would be that. That's not a good thing. Josh: 20:44 Okay. Okay. All right. Yeah. Keith: 20:45 Technically my middle name is Leon, so there's that. Leon: 20:48 oh well, gee, I didn't even know that. Wow. So only special people can have that name. So what else, what are some other ways that we can set boundaries in our communities so that we can be a whole person? Josh: 21:05 You know, I liked the idea of listening to the people that love us. Whether that's your spouse, your significant other, your children, your parents, your friends. Look to them, the people who are authentic in their love for you. And this keys off of what you were talking about, Keith, our expression of our faith, our expression of our beliefs is really about love. People will not take advantage of us if they truly love us. And if they see us being taken advantage of, they will help us to establish boundaries. My wife is really good at coming down in my work and saying, "Hey, look, you need to make sure you come upstairs for lunch." Or "you need to come upstairs at the end of your workday and not push that eight to half, nine hour day into a nine and a half, 10, 11, 12 hour day." She can set those same boundaries when it comes to me in my faith community, right? "Hey, it's okay that you volunteered x number of hours this week in our faith community, but we still need you to be present as spouse, as father, as you know, whether they view me as patriarch or someday, when my older and my children have children, as grandparents, which I know both of you have that privilege. We just need to listen to our families and I think that that will help us set those boundaries because we're listening. Keith: 22:29 Yeah. I tweeted something out earlier today. You want to give some perspective on this. If you have young kids, have someone ask them what do they think daddy's or mommy's priority is? Not just in general but when you're in church or in service, like what's their priority in service, like what's important to them? And kids are extremely observant and they will let you know if the priority is, "oh, he's really, really into the audio-visual. Like if the answer is anything other than being active and participating in service, then that's great... And Joshua, the other thing I'd like to piggyback on a comment you made is my wife is very good at protecting my boundaries. She has got the, well, this is probably why I don't get asked to do AV stuff, uh, tech stuff anymore by people. She just tells people "No. You'll never get it back. Like if you give him your laptop, you'll be there for six, seven months, but you will not... he just doesn't have the time to do it. So let's protect the friendship and do not get him your technology." Speaker 2: 23:37 That's fantastic. I, uh, I've said for a long time as a parent and even as a grandparent, one of the best techniques you use is to walk slowly. Meaning if you hear your kids in the other room and they were arguing over who gets to sit on that chair or who gets to change the channel or whatever, the slower you walk, the more likely they are to figure it out before you get there. And any problem they can solve for themselves (without violence) is a better situation than you solving it for them. And I think the same thing with as a technologist that when people say, "hey, can't you come over and help me, you know, fix my router," or whatever you can say, "yeah, I, I'll probably get there in... I don't know, three, four weeks? I think I can carve out some time. It's just really busy at the office now..." And then "oh no, I need, I need a little faster than that." So walking slowly, I think, works in both cases. And in your case, Keith, it sounds like your wife has helped you to walk slower than you might otherwise. Keith: 24:33 Looking back, I'm like, "oh, that explains a lot." Leon: 24:36 So that's why she is Mrs CTOAdviser. Keith: 24:38 That is why she's Mrs CTOAdvisor. Doug: 24:40 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious visit our website, https://technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect to us on social media. Josh: 24:54 A Jew, a Christian, and a Mormon, walk into a mosque Keith: 24:57 and none of them knew how to fix the router.

S1E15: Being An Ambassador of IT Within Our Religious Community

training president surgeons as it

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 18, 2019 23:44

Religious communities sometimes have a fraught relationship with technology in general and the internet, smartphones, and "screens" in particular. On the one hand, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc see the power these technologies have to build, grow, and maintain contact with the community and "spread the word". On the other, technology is often perceived as a cesspool of evil inclinations and a scourge that is destroying families and minds. As IT professionals within our religious communities, we're often asked to address, and even "fix", those issues. In this episode, Josh Biggley, Keith Townsend, and Leon Adato explore what it means to be a tech expert in the pews. Listen or read the transcript below. Kate: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion (or lack thereof). We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:24 Religious communities sometimes have a fraught relationship with technology in general, and the Internet, smart phones, and screens in particular. On the one hand, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc. see the power that these technologies have to build, grow, and maintain contact with the community and spread the word. On the other, technology is often perceived as a cesspool of evil inclinations and a scourge that is destroying families and minds. As IT professionals within our religious communities, we're often asked to address - and even fix those issues. In this episode, I'm joined in discussion by Josh Biggley. Josh: 00:59 Hello, Leon: 01:00 And also our returning guest, Keith Townsend, Aka CTO Advisor. Keith: 01:04 Hey there, Leon: 01:05 And we are going to tell a few of our stories in this. Right. Now before we dive into any of that, I need to right a past injustice and give Keith a chance to tell everyone a little bit about himself and CTO Adviser, and what you're all about. So shameless self promotion time, Keith. Keith: 01:19 Oh, you know what it is the Technically Religious podcast so we'll start with that. I am a Christian and I've been a Christian for almost as well... yeah, almost as long as I've been in IT. So I've been in IT a little bit over 21 years, and I've been a Christian for about 21 years. I blog and stuff, mainly talk to CTOs or infrastructure architects, and you can find all that goodness on http://theCTOadvisor.com. Leon: 01:50 Fantastic. Alright, and the next thing I'd like to do is point out for people who have been listening to this podcast for a while - this is actually episode number 15, if you're keeping track - that this episode is sort of counter to our normal style or story. Usually we talk about our life is an IT person who is recognizably or somehow visibly connected to a faith, moral or ethical worldview. And yet today we're going to turn that on its head. Today we're going to talk about our life within our community of faith, but being someone who is recognizably a geek. You know, somebody who is associated with technology in some way. And where I'd like to start the conversation is what is good about that? What is good about being a geek in the pews? Josh: 02:35 So I just want to point out that I thought you were going to say that today we were going to be witty and insightful and funny. Leon: 02:43 You are always all three of those things. I don't know. I mean and self deprecating, so it's all good. Right? Keith: 02:49 You should'a known that that wasn't the case because you guys, you guys had me back on the show. Leon: 02:54 Oh the humility, the humility is just a rife around here. So, okay. No really what does it... what's good about being a geek, you know, at our church or our synagogue or whatever? How does that help us? Josh: 03:09 I mean, we're usually the first ones to know the Wifi password. Leon: 03:13 Okay. And we can share it with others. Yeah. And usually help them get their devices on. Josh: 03:18 What do you mean share? Keith: 03:19 And then when you know everyone, I think everyone's service is going to the point where they're using PowerPoint presentations to drive the sermon, which is, you know, kind of crazy. So whenever the PowerPoint doesn't progress to the next slide or the screen goes blank, after about five minutes, you can get up and walk up to the AV guys and usually get it sorted out in 35, 40 seconds while everyone looks at you awkwardly. Leon: 03:46 Got It. Okay. So I just want to hold down my leg of that conversation and just say that within the Orthodox Jewish community, this is actually not a thing. First of all, on the Sabbath, you can't touch any of that stuff. So certainly no PowerPoint presentations at that point. But also it just, you know, weekday services tend to go very fast. They're very businesslike. So none of that. Keith: 04:09 So that's interesting. Do you guys have AV at all? New Speaker: 04:12 I will say for the most part, I say certainly there's AV because there's lectures and discussions, but in terms of worship? No worship is still a very analog experience. In fact, there's a big push in a lot of Jewish spaces and certainly orthodox spaces to have people leave their screens, their cell phones and things, outside at the door and not even be tempted in between certain parts of the prayer or davening to even be tempted to look at their phone while it's going on. You know, you're there to talk to "the boss," you know, as just as, you wouldn't go into your CEO or CTOs office and in the middle of a conversation say, "Oh, hang on, I just got to check this text, oh wow, this is Facebook message, this is awesome!" Like, you wouldn't do that with your boss. Don't do that with the big boss. Keith: 05:05 That is a pretty good lesson. Josh: 05:07 When I was a Sunday school teacher we used to have a box of technology, it was a box that we would put on the table and when the kids would come in - this was at the height of the Clash of Clans craze... ( that's really hard to say.) - we used to make them put their cell phones in the box. Otherwise it was "Clash of Clans on your lap or underneath your scriptures or it was just a thing. Keith: 05:39 You guys have inspired me. I think I'm gonna start leaving my phone in the car so that I'm not tempted at all. I really don't pull it out after service, that's for sure. Cause I'm usually talking and ministering, et cetera. But you know what, I do use it to look up scripture and you can get kind of sidetracked like, "Oh, you know, I'll check Twitter or whatever." And that's a good point. New Speaker: 06:11 I think one of the things that resonates with me. So in Mormonism, there are four books of scripture: The Bible, the King James version of the Bible; also the book of Mormon; the doctrine covenants; Pearl of Great Price. Um, in the Book of Mormon, there's a prophet, King Benjamin and in Mosiah 2-17, which every Mormon out there, is going, "oh yeah, I know this verse", right? It says... Leon: 06:39 (laughs) "I know this! I know this one!" Josh: 06:39 "I had to memorize this one!" Right. "...And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God." And I think that that whole idea of serving our fellow man is intrinsic that's what God wants me to do. So when it comes to fixing technology, it's something that we know how to do and we're really good when we see that person fumbling with our technology, our natural instinct, or at least my natural instinct is to reach out to them and say, "Hey, can I help you with that?" Or you see them, they're starting to get frazzled and you know, Mormons use technology in their lessons and you see that individual up there and they're trying to get that PowerPoint presentation or that streaming video to work and knowing that you can just step up and in a couple of seconds have it up and running and going. That's very reassuring. That feels right to me. Leon: 07:33 And I think the best part of that is we all understand that they're not there for the technology piece. And so we're watching is the technology is pulling them away from the holier moment. They're there to teach a lesson. They're there to share a thought. They're there to share some of their experiences and they're getting hung up, their rhythm, their pacing, their confidence is being hit. And you don't want that and you can help get that back on track. And I think you're right. That's a great way of looking at it. I think the other thing is that as representatives of technology, we can help sort of de-escalate people's feelings about technology. I said in the intro that a lot of times in faith communities, technology is looked at as something to be mistrusted. And we have a chance to be an ambassador of technology in the sense that we are part of the community. We are a trusted voice. We understand the rules of the road. You know, at no time... I'll speak for myself... are we going to say, "Yeah, no, Playboy is okay. Just read it for the articles." Like you're not going to do that. You're not going to say, "Oh, it's okay. It's..." Whatever. If it's not okay, you understand that it's not okay. And they understand that you understand it. So when you're giving advice, you have a chance to point out where something is a true risk and where something is only a perceived risk. Josh: 08:57 Yeah. So, you know, one of the big challenges that we have as religious people, is sometimes we're perceived as being anti science or even anti technology. So, nuclear medicine is a fantastic innovation. But nuclear medicine and a nuclear bombs are cut from the same... chemical engineering is wonderful. It transforms our lives in ways that we now in the midst of chemical engineering. And I had read a great book in the last year or so about the CRISPR technology. Crazy stuff, right? But chemical weapons are horrible things that kill people and maim them. And then of course, because we're geeks, we recognize that of course the Holy Trinity of Geekdom is a Star Wars 3, 4, and 5... Uh, wait, no, 4, 5 and 6! Right? And Jar Jar Binks is... uh, I think the word that you wrote here is "an unholy abomination." Leon: 09:59 Yeah. Yeah. And I will say the character is ill-conceived. The actor is fantastic and I do not want to contribute to his struggles because he really... actors sometimes get jobs they don't expect to go the way that they go. But yeah, I'm not a fan of the first three movies. Going back to CRISPR, it's interesting because there was just a segment on NPR today that was talking about somebody who's creating CRISPR babies and they thought they would make a person, a human that was HIV resistant. And it turns out that there's all sorts of downstream consequences. However, that same technology can be used to correct some amazingly impactful diseases when used. So even within the same technology there's a balance there. And I think that being a technologist within a faith community allows us to help point out that these are opportunities to make moral, ethical, I'll say "righteous" or a "higher-power-directed" decisions about a tool. Whether that tool is a hammer or a CRISPR. Keith: 11:08 I think the other thing that we hadn't talked about is that personally, the discipline of being a technologist gives me the ability to ask critical questions. And even critical questions on my own faith so that, for people that spread the word of just believing in God - and we get challenged on that - as technologists actually come with a reputation of being critical thinkers. So I think it gives us this moral authority to speak on faith because we're reasoned in our approach to our faith in most instances. Speaker 2: 11:46 And it also lets us debunk. So there's again, the debunking of, "No, that's actually, you know, the IRS is not going to call you and ask you for your password" and things like that. There's a story that's told in Orthodox Jewish circles that I hate. It's one of those apocryphal stories, but frequently in Orthodox circles, when you're talking about technology that comes out. So there's a, there's a Kollel guy, a guy who learned scripture as his job, all day long, eight, 10 hours a day. This is what he does. And he needs to make a living. And so he goes and he gets a job and they put him in an office, and they give him a computer, and the next weekend he is violating the sabbath! And he's doing drugs! And he's having an affair! And...they tell it every time and every time you can hear my eyes rolling in my head and you don't want to contradict rabbinic authority, but you have to stand up and say, "I think there might've been a couple of other problems with this guy. I don't think the computer was really the thing that threw him over the edge, if the next weekend he was violating the sabbath and doing these things. And it sounds a little far-fetched, anyway." So it gives you a chance to be, like you said, that critical voice that pushes back a little bit. Josh: 13:10 Yeah. We call those "faith promoting lies" in Mormonism. I don't know what else... Leon: 13:14 Okay. I just call them "glurge". Keith: 13:20 This happens in technology too. We have this desire to further our point and not necessarily stretching the truth, but... and this happens on social media as well, not just technology. Our minister last week gave an incredible sermon on basically social media and revealed this fact that 70% of the stories [ed. about his religion] shared on Facebook are fake and in fact fake news. But it is an example of our bent on wanting to promote our version of the truth. And that is, I think, the thing that we enjoy about the technology space that you can spread information extremely fast. But also, part of that story is that you can spread false hoods or stretches of the truth extremely fast as well. Josh: 14:25 Twice in a row, now, Keith, you've now made a comment that's made me think of a book that I'm reading. It's entitled "The Case for the Real Jesus" by Lee Strobel. And Lee is a journalist. Also was an atheist and then converted to Christianity, and he meets with someone who actually lives over in Nova Scotia. So I live on the east coast of Canada and he meets with this historian and professor. And he's talking about the stretches of truth that have happened within Christianity since the time of Christ, and how we're looking at these gnostic gospels that have come out over the last 50 or 60 years, they've really come to light, and challenging this narrative of Jesus, which was the Coptic Gospels... with these gnostic gospels, and saying, "Oh my goodness, these things that were written a hundred years after Jesus was on the earth, but they're saying that Jesus really had three eyes!" (I know that that's not what they're saying), but it's that idea that we can make these allegations and it's really hard to back them up because the disinformation out there is there. It's really difficult. And I will point out that there is one area in which this information I think really needs to be clamped down on. And that's IT Security. You should use a password manager. Like, it is not just a scary thing. Do not use the same password on every single website. Use multifactor authentication. These are things, it's not just the boogie man. You should do that. Leon: 16:14 Yeah. And I think that goes back to debunking things that are patently untrue. Reinforcing good behaviors. I think that that allows us to do it. The other thing is that because we are representative technology, it gives us a chance to model good behavior. To quote Bill and Ted, to "...be excellent to each other" - online as well as in the pews, in our faith, building. There's a local Rebbetzin - a rabbi's wife - who is an author and a blogger, and she is known around here for saying that the only time she posts on social media is after she's asked herself three things about the things she wants to say. 1) Is it true? 2) Is it kind? And 3) is it necessary to say it? And whenever she says that, the immediate reaction from the audience is "well then I wouldn't post anything!" And she holds up her finger and says "Right. Exactly!" Maybe you should think about all the things that you're posting. And I love that. And I aspire to it. I can't say that I always meet that aspiration, but I like it. So it gives us as technologists a chance to say, "yeah, you can be in these spaces and use them to uplift, to, to shine a light, do all those things." Like, you know, you can do that. Josh: 17:43 Wait, so based on those three rules, are you announcing the end of the podcast? Are we are disbanding? Leon: 17:50 I believe that everything that we have talked about in our episodes is certainly kind, and true to the best of our ability. And I think it's necessary. Josh: 18:01 Okay. I'm willing. I was, I was just concerned. I thought you were firing us. Keith: 18:07 But it was a very kind way in which he did it. Leon: 18:12 And that's the other thing is that, you know, everyone I think has become aware that people say more online to people than they might say face to face. And I don't know your side of it, but I know that Judaism has very specific rules about what they call "rebuking" another person. You know, when you want to give them a little bit of a correction. And that's: you are not permitted - in fact, you are commanded not to rebuke somebody unless you are able to do it in private, to do it with only love in your heart, and to only do it when you are certain that the other person will hear you. So, if the other person is not in a head space to understand what you're going to be saying, you are commanded to keep your mouth shut. And the same thing, if - in saying it - you are going to become agitated or unhappy or upset, you're not allowed to say it. All those things. And I think that again, social media gives us a chance to practice that and to model it. Speaker 3: 19:16 Yeah. I try to be an example on social media. I am a bit of a pot-stir-er, to say it mildly, but I try to be provocative about being offensive, is the goal. And I think one of the things that I personally, like a personal failing of mine in which I wish I can get better, and I've kind of stepped away from talking politics for a little while, especially as Melissa's sick, and I'm trying to focus on positivity for awhile. One of the areas that I fell is: I'm very passionate about systematic challenges of minorities. So whenever something happens politically in that space it's really hard for me to balance Christianity and my desire to - and this a is not a godly desire - to get justice. Because it's not for us to get, if, from a Christian perspective, that's for God to provide. And so I try and model that and sometimes people will... I get a lot of compliments on my ability to just have very difficult but yet respectful conversations. But I have to be honest my heart is not always coming from a great place. But it's really great advice to be the change you want to see. Leon: 20:54 Well, and I will say that at first of all, struggling with, or wrestling with something is the work. So the fact that it's not easy, it means that you're at that point of growth, right? You aren't in the easy space where everything is just simple. You're pushing yourself. But I will also say, just having watched your social media accounts, that you focus on issues and you focus on events, but you don't focus on people. You are willing to go after an idea, and you're willing to go after - to call out - an event or an attitude, but you don't call out a person. And I think that... now some people may feel threatened by you challenging an idea, whether that's about virtualization or social justice or any of those things. But that's what they brought to the table. You're just calling out this situation, this design, this architecture, this financial structure - this is not, this is suboptimal. And they don't like that. Keith: 21:57 And I think the comments from our space, from being able to look at myself and people have shown me in the past where I just wasn't Christ-like. Like in loving other people. Christians, we have a very difficult time with the concept of homosexual-ality and, and sexual identity. So we look at that as a different weighted sin than other sins. And I've had that struggle in my past. And then to not look at people with the same love of Christ that I looked at. So I try and address issues and not people. Because if I treated people... if people treated me the same way that I treated people in the past when I had those views, then I would have never have changed. So I try and give people the same grace I was given, which is, "you know, what, this person has the capacity to change. And if we focused on the issue, then hopefully they'll have the space to change." So we have to give the space to have the conversation. And this is going back to technology. Technology gives us the space to have the conversation, but we have to model what that looks like. Leon: 23:11 We know you can't listen to our podcasts all day. So out of respect for your time, we've broken this particular discussion up. Come back next week where we pick up our conversation with the things that challenge us as ambassadors of IT within our religious community. Speaker 4: 23:25 Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of Technically Religious visit our website, https://technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect with us on social media. Josh: 23:39 A Jew, a Christian, and a Mormon walk into a mosque... Keith: 23:42 And none of them knew how to fix the router!

MedAll.org Podcast - Episode 1 - President Association of Surgeons in Training (ASiT), Gemma Humm

MedAll.org Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2019 34:48

Its our inaugural podcast and we hear from Gemma Humm, President of the Association of Surgeons in Training (2018/2019). She talks to us about her career to date. She talks about transitioning from another healthcare profession to medicine, how she decided to pursue a career in surgery and some tips on how to progress. We hear about really interesting projects she's worked on and she tells us about the innovative work ASiT are doing to pursue inclusivity. For more information on ASiT check out ASiT.org. You can sign up to MedAll for free at MedAll.org. We help you find great projects to work on and great people to work with on your medical projects. Because by collaborating, medics can change the world together.

S1E6: Being "Othered"

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 9, 2019 30:00

Identity is a complex concept. "Who we are" is comprised of a rich tapestry of experiences and relationships. We try to control which of those aspects we share and which we keep private. But there are times when the world around us - strangers, coworkers, and even friends - define us in ways that don’t match the view we have of ourselves. That experience can be merely surprising or terribly upsetting, and many of us struggle both with the fear of it happening and with how we should deal with it when it does. Listen to this important episode or read the transcript below: Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone, it's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called, "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked" and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of IT with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it, including where you can get a digital or print copy over on adatosystems.com. Thanks! Kate: 00:25 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experience we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion - or lack thereof. We're here to explore ways we make our career. As IT professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:49 So back when we were recording episode three, in the middle of our conversation about something completely different, there was an interesting side conversation that happened between Josh and me and Roddie. Um, so I want to play it for you right now" Josh: 01:02 I will point out though that as diverse as we, uh, as we think that IT is, we're three white males on a podcast, and... Roddie: 01:13 I'm not white. Josh: 01:13 So I mean... you look white...? Roddie: 01:17 I know I do. I do look white. I'm undercover, but then I'm full. I'm full person of color. I'm, I'm half of the... And actually thinking about this podcast for the last few months of where Leon wanted to go with it, I knew kind of that would come up because I can identify as white, right? Most people look at me and say, "Well, he's just another white guy." I'm not, I'm full. I'm half Lebanese, half Palestinian, so I'm full Arab blood. Um, but it's, but it's, it's great that you actually mentioned that Josh: 01:48 That I broached it, right? New Speaker: 01:49 (dialogue fades out) Leon: 01:50 So we ended up cutting that particular exchange out of the episode, but, uh, we here on Technically Religious wanted to circle back to the concept of being identified as somehow different or what we're calling being "othered". And that's what we're going to talk about today. Uh, I'm Leon Adato and with me today. Uh, I've got Josh Biggley. Josh: 02:12 Hello-Hello. Leon: 02:14 And also Kate Asaf. Kate: 02:16 Hello. Leon: 02:17 So those are the voices that you'll be hearing on this episode. Josh: 02:20 Well, you know, Leon, I don't think that we can start this episode or really any episode without talking about, uh, what has gone on in New Zealand. If for some reason you have been living under a rock for the last two weeks, week and a half, you know, 50 people were killed at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand by an Australian guy whose name we're not going to mention because he's not important. What is important is that he took 50 lives. It's interesting when, when I heard the news I was, I was a little gob smacked because about 18 years ago my wife and I almost moved to Christchurch. We had the process all started and I thought, "Holy crap, that is a city that we seriously considered living in," and I... The Prime Minister of New Zealand is also a post-Mormon, an ex-Mormon. Uh, she grew up LDS as well. So, you know, one other tie I, I can't say enough about her and her response and I don't even know how, I can't process it in my mind very time I sit and think about it, it just, it, I think it really ties to what we're going to talk about today, about this being othered. Because if you viewed people, um, if you viewed people as human, you would not do the things that, that, that man did and that he's not the only one. There are many people throughout history who do it, but, and I'm not suggesting that what we're going to talk about is even remotely as weighty as what happened in Christchurch to those people, both who lost their lives unto those who are, who are, who are still left, but damn right, we, we, you know, my heart breaks for those people. Right? Leon: 04:04 And, and in a larger context, the far too many incidents of violence that have happened just in the last 12 months and you know, you can keep going back. And just to underscore what you said, you know, this conversation about our personal experiences of being othered or the things that we've observed is in no way meant to diminish those large world shaking events. But really just personalize them and, and bring some, you know, an element of specificity to it. So, uh, I think maybe the next thing we need to do is, is define what it means to be othered. What do we mean? There's, you know, the dictionary definition, I guess which revolves around the them versus us mentality. When you are othered, you are being called out as being somehow negatively different, lesser, not on the same plane as the person doing the othering or the group doing the other thing. Um, it's not, it's not a positive thing and that's how it differs from, let's say, you know, I say that, you know, Tom LaRock, one of my coworkers, you know, he's really tall. He's in fact circus tall. Now that's a phrase he's actually used to describe himself. That's not intrinsically othering him. Uh, because first of all, it's very specific to Tom. And second of all, uh, it's also a way he describes himself. By the same token, when I talk about a former coworker, Chris Paap, and saying he has biceps the size of my head, which is true, that isn't necessarily othering, I think. And please tell me if I'm wrong, tell me if I'm, if I'm edging into dangerous territory. Josh: 05:57 I don't, you know, I, as you were talking about being other than, and I do remember that moment when I, you know, said to Roddie, uh, and, and yourself, hey, you know, we're three white guys on the, you know, the whole debacle about me. Uh, assuming that Roddy was white and he's not a, sorry Roddy, um, you know, welcome to my white privilege. I apologize. Um, I'm wondering though, is there a, is there a time in a place where being othered, um, is not negative, you know, you use that word, um, that, uh, that made me think that maybe there's a moment where I want to be othered. I want to stand out and I want to be different. I'm, and I'm, I'm trying to think of where that might apply. So, you know, my context is, you know, I made a very conscientious decision to step away from Mormonism and, and really to turn into a, a critic of some of the things that I thought had taken Mormonism away from what I knew about it and loved about it. Um, but I don't, you know, people who are still in Mormonism, they view me as what the word is "apostate", right. So they view me as as apostate, but does that, I do, I view that as a bad thing? Because I made the choice and I, I know that Tom didn't make the choice to be, you know, circus tall. And I, I know that Chris Papp, he probably didn't intend to specifically have biceps larger than your head, although I'm sure he's glad to know that, you know, he's reached that pinnacle. Kate: 07:26 I don't know if that's like a specific measurement he was going for. Josh: 07:29 Right? Yeah. Right. You're like, you know, 16 inches, 17 inches, larger-than-Leon's-head. I like, I don't know if to scale it works like that. Right. Um, but I, I just wonder if there are times in which we, we specifically act in a way that, um, the in which we know that we are going to be othered. Um, but we do it anyway because that's who we have to be in order to be true to ourselves. Kate: 07:50 I think that the point that you hit on there being true to yourself is that it's, it's okay when it's on your terms, right? Like, I, if you've never seen me, I have pink and blue hair, which is something that I choose to do and which occasionally Leon: 08:05 Today, Kate: 08:06 Yes, yes, for this week. Um, and that gets me some strange looks, but I know that, you know, I choose to do this and it's something that I'm proud of even being a woman in tech. Like that's not super rare anymore, but it certainly was when I started and I am very proud to be a part of that group, even though it's, it comes with some strife. Speaker 3: 08:31 Hey, we, I've got, I've got a story here about Kate, and she's heard this story before, but a couple of years ago, uh, we had, we had done an upgrade of, of our platform and we got to a point where we were having some difficulties and literally got within five minutes of having to rebuild our entire environment. And Kate swooped and saved the day. I had no idea at the time how to rebuild our environment. Like, and I was just like, oh my goodness, if Kate does not save me, I'm so screwed. Uh, and it's, it's interesting because when they said, hey, you know, we're bringing in this, you know, we're bringing in this engineer and you jumped on, Kate, it didn't even cross my mind to think, "Oh, you know, that's a woman. How should you going to help me?" I was just like, "Okay, Kate, you know, you gotta save me!" Leon: 09:22 "She's saving my bacon, that's all that matters!" Kate: 09:27 I could've been a lizard person at that point and you would have been happy to see me. Josh: 09:31 It wouldn't have mattered. Yeah. So I, I'm really interested obviously, uh, you know, White Male, uh, you know, grew up, you know, middle class, uh, lived a middle upper class life. I want to know what it's like to be a woman in tech. Could you tell me? Kate: 09:45 Well here's the funny story that you're, your thing reminds me of which, by the way, I very clearly remember that upgrade. So glad I was able to save you. Um, I was talking to a customer once and it just so happened that his escalation path when he talked to Destiny and then he talked to me. Um, and when we were on the phone, super nice guy, he said, "Let me ask you a question: is SolarWinds a woman owned company?" And I thought that was kind of strange. And I said, "No, why?" And he said, "Well, I just think it's so great that they have two women working as these escalation tiers and you guys are the engineers. And I just think that's great." And I'm like, you were so close to paying us a really good compliment. Why would solutions have to be a woman owned company for us to be in these positions? Uh, but, but thanks for the effort." Leon: 10:39 Yeah, right. I guess nice. So I just want to jump in here and say, and it's slightly pedantic, but I do that well, that, that Josh, to your point and Kate, your, your example illustrates it is there's a difference between being recognized and being othered. And sometimes, uh, especially the, in the, in the mind to the speaker, that difference can be really hard to detect and oftentimes in the ears of the listener, the target, the difference is really obvious. But there's a difference between, between being recognized for either an achievement or accomplishment or simply a state of being. Again, we're going back to Tom being circus tall. There's a difference between, between being recognized - "Oh, I need to get the really good scotch off the tall shelf. I'll go ask Tom." Versus being, being either othered or outed or, or identified as something like, I didn't think it was going to be that good, but it turns out that you actually did fine. "Thanks for the compliment? I guess?" You know what I mean? It, it is again, you know, being recognized for something versus being othered can seem like a very fine distinction, um, until you're on the receiving end of it. Uh, and, and that's, I think part of it. Um, and, and again, a lot of it has to do with the, the sometimes not so subtle assumptions that go along with it. And by the way, to bring this back to tech, right, I think that IT is not immune from the... pure it forget about people with strong, you know, religious or nonreligious views or whatever it is. Um, you know, like "Those network people" or, you know, "I, I don't understand why anybody would ever want to do storage" or, you know, "oh good. You've joined or you know, you were on the virtualization team, but now you're on the cloud team. Does it feel good to get out of the basement?" Or stuff like that? Like, "No, I was, I was really proud of my, you know, vmware certification. I was really excited about all the years I spent doing, you know, quote unquote boring old route and switch networking or whatever, like that was not, uh, uh, you know, a penalty in my mind and you just turned it into one Kate: 12:57 That was actually a big thing for me, getting out of support and going to engineering because that was, everybody sort of looked down... There were, there was this perception that I escaped, you know, or that I finally have a real career and I personally loved working in support and would, you know, go back to it if the opportunity and the circumstances were right. So, but definitely, you know, support was kind of seen is that when you said the basement, that's immediately what I thought of. Leon: 13:32 Right. And, and I think that, I think in our minds in IT, we have that IT pecking order, you know, where it's like you work the help desk until you can, like you said, escape, you know, and you work your way up and whether you're going to do the, the server application track or the network, once upon a time voice in all, you know, that track or whatever. I think there's more directions to go. You know, we believe that there are these tiers as opposed to... No, no. If you can work a help desk and take any call from any person and deal with it and resolve it and triage it, that is, you know, that at the top of the show, you know, Josh expressed basically his undying love for you. Um, and I know that's not the first, you know, proposal you might have gotten over the phone, Kate. So, you know, being able to do that for somebody is not a trivial skill. Um, that, that's so, you know, again, just keeping this tech focused. Um, I think we have that. So in fact, you know, keeping on that does, does being othered manifest differently, either better or worse in IT? Like how does, how does the, the othered-ness come out in IT in ways that are either, "Oh wow. I was othered but it was kind of interesting, or, "Oh, it's actually worse than it would be in an accounting office" or something else. Josh: 14:57 I wonder if it, if it isn't worse. Um, and, uh, so I had, uh, an interesting, uh, situation just recently where I was, uh, I was tasked with figuring out how to reduce, um, a very large spend, a into a, a much smaller span. You know, it really is not the goal that we all have. "Hey, can you do the same thing with, uh, with less money?" Great. No problem. And so I, I took a couple of the ideas that I had and I, and I, I built these ideas not, um, with, with just myself. I built it with a, um, a multidisciplinary team that I'm working with. And I've got people that know tech. I have people that have no clue about tech, but they work in IT. And I, I'm using the air quotes. Um, they work in IT, but in a very different IT, it's, it's not a, it's not the pure play IT that we think of. And, uh, the initial response that I got from some of the engineers who worked in the space that we were trying to look at was, "No, you can't do that. Nope, sorry, that's not going to work." And fortunately, I'm stubborn. Um, and a little bullheaded. Um, so says my loved ones and we, uh, we pushed really hard and to ignore those people and we stumbled on what we think is going to be, uh, the killer solution. We're super excited about it as a team. Uh, we talked to some, uh, we call them principles in my office. So, you know, engineer, senior engineer principles, uh, you know, these are the, the few, the upper echelon of engineering. We talked to one of those principles and he was super excited about it. He thought, "Hey, that's awesome." So, you know, we still have a lot of work to do. But I thought, you know, isn't it interesting that some senior engineers looked at us as, you know, a group of engineers and not even engineers and thought, well, you can't do that because you didn't think this idea. Um, you weren't part of the design. You know, we're the senior engineers and now here we are presenting an idea that is completely out of context, uh, for what we would have thought at the beginning of the project that might not only introduce, uh, you know, better functionality but might reduce costs. And I love the idea of a things like a kaizen where you bring together multidisciplinary people, it intentionally brings together others, um, and puts them all into the same, in the same room and says, hey, solve a problem. Uh, I think that doing that intentionally doing that in our organizations is extremely important. It brings in perceptions. I know we've talked previously about, uh, education and the differences and being a, someone who has an IT degree versus someone who has, I dunno, like an acting degree. I don't know anyone like that. Or someone like myself who has no degree and no real college to speak of, you know, edit a six month training program, uh, at a technical college. But that was it. That is how I launched my IT career. I technically have a two year degree or two year diploma. Um, but I've never actually gone to school before. I've never been to a college or a university. Um, I just, I think it's really important that we, we acknowledged that othering exists, but that we let it be a good thing and we learned that that diversity makes our team stronger. Leon: 18:14 So I think it is one of those places where the degree thing really shines that within the rank and file. I found very few, I'm going to say actual IT people who honestly give a rat's ass about like your degree or whatever it is. Now when you get through the HR machine, it's a whole different story. And I think it's a point of frustration for a lot of this in IT, that, that getting the job requires us to have to have certain things that actually don't matter at all. And I think that that's a whole other conversation about, you know, a whiteboard interview, um, for coding. Kate: 18:56 Oh yeah. We've all seen the job listing where it's like, must know SQL, and Java, and c++, and, you know, BASIC, and COBOL, and, and you know, have a master's degree, pays $30,000 a year. Leon: 19:09 Right? Right. And, you know, 15 years of experience with AWS and like, yeah, you know, those kinds of things. Right. We've seen, we've seen those. Um, so I think that that is a place where, uh, it's better. Quick story just where IT is kind of different. Um, for those people who are new to the podcast. Again, this is Leon. I'm an Orthodox Jew. Uh, I'm a sort of a very out and proud orthodox Jew. I have the funny little hat or, you know, kippah, or yarmulke. I have little fringy things hanging out of my pants, you know, I'm, you know, black pants, white shirt, full metal, penguin, Orthodox, right? That's how I present. And the first time I was going to speak for my company, um, and I was sort of out in front of about 300 people and I realized that this is me, but I'm, I'm representing the brand. And so I pulled the, the manager aside and I said, "Okay, we're, we're in an HR free zone. This is not about lawsuit. This is, I just want to understand. Are you comfortable with me looking like this, representing the brand or do you want me to tuck the strings in? Do you want me to put a ball cap on? Like what do ya...? And he actually turned and said, "I actually have no effing idea what those things are. I thought it was like a hippie thing." And uh, I realized that I was perhaps overthinking it a little bit. Um, and so again, in it, he had othered me, but he had othered me in a way that was honestly so ridiculous in my mind that it was like, "Oh, okay. Like moving on," like, you know, like it just didn't, it, you know, it was, it was not a problem. It was like Kate, the time that we were doing THWACKcamp and the problem with you on camera was your Wonder Woman shirt that was like, okay, all right, I understand, you know, but it, of all the things that, that - horrifically- people might have pointed out about you, it was, yeah, we're not sure if the logo was okay on camera. Like, "Oh, thank God. Like, that's so, that's so wonderful. And I'm not changing my shirt. Just to be up-front about it." Kate: 21:24 Legal did eventually approve it. Leon: 21:27 Right. But it was just, you know, like those kinds of, so sometimes it can be, it can be good. Um, all right. So any examples where IT tends to do the other thing like worse? Speaker 2: 21:38 I do think that we, in IT have a, a tendency to jump to the eye. Rolling. Are you stupid? You know? Oh my God, I can't believe you don't know that. Well, you know, there's, we all had to ask the questions at one point as well. Um, I think it's important also to try and call out that sort of jerky behavior if you, if you see it and if you can, um, that's something that I've been challenging myself to do is not let things slide. If I see something wrong with it, you know, try to correct it even in a friendly sort of, "Hey, we don't, that's not helpful or productive and we don't really need to be jumping on this person." Or some of like the little micro aggressions you see as a woman in tech and meetings. Um, well my, my big pet peeve is somebody repeating what I have just said as if it was a new point. Um, I have made it a huge point to jump in and say, "Yes, thank you for repeating what I literally just said." Josh: 22:43 Bravo, Bravo. But it's hard, Speaker 2: 22:46 Especially when that person, I have a great relationship with my boss and my boss's boss and you know, above them. But in that moment, it's hard to, you know, sort of jump in and derail the conversation to call it out. But I think it's important Leon: 23:01 if you're, if you are the bystander, you know, it is incredibly powerful to, to reinforce and say, "You know what, I, I actually said that word wrong for like a month before somebody corrected me and you know..." or whatever it is. Right. You know, um, you know, getting the words wrong, but knowing how to use the technology, right? Like are you really going to get in someone's face about whether they, you know, pronounce it scuzzy or they say SCSI or you know, something like that. Now I do draw the line at GIF versus Jif... Josh: 23:36 I KNEW it was going to come up again, Leon: 23:40 But, okay. But aside from that and, and more, more importantly, Kate, what you were about, like, you know, how much more powerful is it when you know you're about to jump up and say "Thank you for..." when somebody else says "you know, there's an echo in here," you know, or whatever that, that you're not the only one who has to be listening for that. Who has to be, um, you know, trying to, to make sure that people recognize this just happened. Kate: 24:08 It's a huge relief when I see, you know, someone else do it. Because I think a thing that a lot of women struggle with is it's important to correct it, but you start to feel like you're the asshole if you're always interrupting the conversation or constantly calling out the behaviors and when no one else says anything, you feel like no one else has a problem with it. So it's, you know, tears of gratitude and joy and, and you know, much many props to anyone else who can sort of see that and stop it so that it doesn't always have to be me or you know, the, the victim, so to speak, uh, responsible for catching that kind of stuff. Leon: 24:49 Right. Having to do, having to do that, that work have, you can't have any carry that load. Right. New Speaker: 24:54 I love this idea of, um, of being an active bystander. And I guess once you're, once you've acted, you're no longer a bystander. Um, especially in the workplace. Something that, uh, that I tried to do and I'm not, I'm not perfect at it, but I, I make a really strong effort at it. And that is when someone does something that is good, I, I call it out. Um, and I try not to do it too, you know, just my female coworkers or to just my new coworkers. But when someone is truly has done something awesome, I like to call that out. And I think that goes back to the, the value of being othered, uh, for a good reason. You know, if you, if you've gone above and beyond the call of duty in, in your job or in a project or, or really in general life, cause you know, there is life outside of IT. I know that it doesn't feel like it sometimes, but I promised the entire world does not revolve around it. (Yes it does.) Leon: 25:58 I was going to say, STOP IT! STOP IT! YOU'RE RUINING MY WORLD! Kate: 25:58 Nobody believed you as you said it. New Speaker: 26:05 I know. I didn't, I didn't believe myself. It's okay. It's okay. But I think it's really important that we take the time to reach out to people and say, hey, you know, thanks. And not only, hey, you know, thanks for doing that, but also going up that level and saying to their manager, "Hey, I really appreciate the work that, you know, uh, you know, Kate did or Leon did because it made my life easier in these ways." Um, and learning how to value people is it, it'll make you a better engineer. Learning how to value people will also make you a better human being. Um, and we, we just, we need to figure it out. Um, my wife and I were actually talking it oddly enough just today about this, about how to make sure that, uh, people, uh, feel valued around you. And what we distilled was when you, it doesn't matter how good a manager or an engineer you are, if people, if people feel valued around you, then they will want to work for you. And that means you don't need to know everything. So you don't need to be the person who knows storage and virtualization and Java and cobalt and knows how to do assembly language and you can solder with your eyes closed with your left arm tied behind your back. You don't have to be that person. You just need to be the person that really talented people want to work with and in some cases want to work for. Um, I know that I've actively sought out people who I want to work with and for, and when I get into a new company, I look for those people, I look for those people whose strength and who have othered themselves because they're not like, you know, the rest of the quote unquote, you know, typical engineers. And when I find those people, I love to latch on to them. Um, it makes me better. Uh, and again, I've got lots of privilege, right? I'm white, I'm Canadian. Um, you know, middle class, middle, upper class, upper class, Leon: 27:56 (chuckles) Josh: 27:56 Hey, don't laugh about... being a Canadian, that's a privilege, man. Leon: 28:01 No, no, I'm laughing because it's true. Josh: 28:07 It's only cold here for a little while, you know, months at a time. Leon: 28:11 I'm from Cleveland and the cold never bothered me anyway. Josh: 28:18 But, you know, I, I do think it's really... you know just to finish. I just think it's really important that we recognize that othering. Uh, we can take the othering. Uh, we've talked about being negative and we can actively switch that and make it a positive thing. Um, you know, so when you see that, and I, and I had never thought about the idea of being actively engaged as a bystander. Uh, but if we, if we are and we get involved and we say, Hey, this is, you know, this is good, that's bad. Um, how, how powerful is that? Uh, and it, I think it, it starts to dissolve the, uh, the efficacy of that negative othering. Um, and yes, we're all different, right? Uh, each one of us on this call today on this podcast, but we're different. But that's, that's what makes us so awesome and so unique to, you know, what we have here. Leon: 29:13 Right. And that goes back to, you know, taking this idea of being othered, which is, is intrinsically sort of negative and turning it into recognition, you know, then I think that's where the, that's where the real power comes. All right. Well, I, I want to thank you both Josh, Kate for, uh, joining, uh, joining me today and, uh, look forward to having everyone back on for the next episode. Kate: 29:37 It was great talking with both you guys. Josh: 29:39 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious, visit our website, technicallyreligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect with us on social media. Josh: 29:52 I think this was a really good session. New Speaker: 29:54 Yeah Leon you did really good. Josh: 29:56 Well, for someone from Cleveland Leon: 29:58 Oh for crying out loud!

Why Controlling Time Matters

Cyber Security Dispatch

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 29, 2019

An Interview with Arun Sood, CEO of SCIT LabsCyber Security Dispatch: Season 3, Episode 2Show Notes:Welcome back to the Cyber Security Dispatch. This is the first in the new series of interviews focused on innovative technology in cyber security where we talk about new solutions to protect our data and systems. Today on the show we welcome Arun Sood, CEO of Self Cleansing Intrusion Tolerance (SCIT) Labs. He is the co-inventor of all six SCIT technology patents that are based on the research undertaken at his research center. In this episode, we are setting the clock on why controlling time matters. Arun is an expert on moving target defense and building resilience systems. He offers a refreshing perspective on how controlling time can give security teams a key advantage in stopping attacks and limiting the impact of those attacks. It is a really fascinating perspective and one that can help you see things differently. For all this and much more be sure to tune in!Key Points From This Episode:Understanding moving target defense.The resilience requirement: continuity of operations.Providing higher levels of security through diversity and redundancy.How redundancy can be used to achieve a dual goal. Understanding the concept of diversity.How complexities affect cost: the additional expense.Why you can’t change the implementation in a redundancy based approach.Dwell time: a measure of how the server is performing.Steps of a cyber-kill chain. Understanding the SCIT system. Thinking of data in three different ways. Recovery systems in the cyber security space.How to think about measuring success: what does it mean?Two principle things to start with as a small user. Choosing your throttle time.And much more!Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:Arun Sood — http://scitlabs.com/about-us/teamArun on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/arunsood/SCIT Labs — http://scitlabs.com/George Mason University — https://www2.gmu.edu/Drupal — https://www.drupal.org/WordPress — https://wordpress.com/Introduction:Welcome back to the Cyber Security Dispatch. This is the first in the new series of interviews focused on innovative technology in cyber security where we talk about new solutions to protect our data and systems. Today on the show we welcome Arun Sood, CEO of Self Cleansing Intrusion Tolerance (SCIT) Labs. He is the co-inventor of all six SCIT technology patents that are based on the research undertaken at his research center. In this episode, we are setting the clock on why controlling time matters. Arun is an expert on moving target defense and building resilience systems. He offers a refreshing perspective on how controlling time can give security teams a key advantage in stopping attacks and limiting the impact of those attacks. It is a really fascinating perspective and one that can help you see things differently. For all this and much more be sure to tune in!TRANSCRIPT[0:01:05.5] AS: I am Arun Sood and I am a professor at George Mason University but currently, research at George Mason has led to six packets and at one stage, we decided to start a university startup, we are a group affiliated to George Mason has equity shares in the company so there is a close relationship between the two things. I’m the founder of this and currently in the CEO but I see we have a chief architect, we have lots of people who are helping with us and how this is going to evolve is only time will tell.[0:01:46.7] AA: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that was so interesting about what you got up to is you’re sort of focusing, you’re focused on moving target defense so that’s a concept we’ve talked a lot about on this show but for those who kind of aren't familiar with moving target defense, you just want to kind of talk about what it is and how you kind of how you kind of got involved in it.[0:02:07.3] AS: Right. There are many ways to look at this but I’m going to try something slightly different based on my experience recently at a conference in Tampa. Think of the following issue. Server security is something which everybody needs for their systems but it is becoming more and more clear that people also need resilience. Server security means the bad guys, when they come in you make sure they don’t stay in so you may have to shut the system down but that is not good enough for people who have to have continuity of operations. The resilience requirement is that you have to have continuity of operations. Now, if the two systems if you design your systems to be static, now you have a problem. If the system is static and you shut it down, it loses all the continuity of operations. We need a potentially need a dynamic solution and the moving target defense as we see it, as we have used it, as a mechanism, which it creates balance between these two things.[0:03:16.9] AA: Yeah, I think if I understand you correctly, there’s that this sort of opposition between two things, right? If you imagine, what a lot of systems are measured on is all the time, right? We are continuously to make it simple like deploying popper, right? We need to have the five nine’s right? 99.999% of the time where the system is on and then the classic way of thinking about cyber security is to actually shut things off because there’s problem there.How do you sort of square that circle? Is that, am I understanding it correctly?[0:03:48.7] AS: That’s exactly right and I think we got to make sure that we understand a resilience system is not only, has to operate continuously but it Is expected to perform even in the presence of an attack. Many of our systems are, which are operational, they may have bad guys sitting in them but they keep operating. Because of the read me generation and so on and because of the importance of the system, their continuity of operation is critical, you’re actually right.This provides a challenge, the challenge is, if you have a static system, that system is not changing and you, somebody comes and sits on it, if you shut it down, you’re in trouble, you don’t get continued service.[0:04:32.3] AA: Yeah, I’ve seen some interesting kind of models, different graphics where you’re, when you’re thinking about system design. You know, thinking about essentially redundant pathways, you know, multiple methodologies for delivering a service or allowing whatever is information travel and then essentially as you look at that design, understanding essentially assessing it based on how much of the system could be compromised and you can still essentially still deliver service or accomplish the mission, the task, et cetera. You know, I’m not a systems engineer, that’s not my background but that seems like not a concept that the majority of systems or at least many systems are built with at the offset.[0:05:20.0] AS: You're right. Many systems I see, they don’t have security as one of their requirements, it’s sort of bolted in at the end of the process, which is, makes it a challenging situation. But the idea is quite straight forward, less designer systems in such a fashion that you realize it is going to be compromised, because it is going to be compromised, we have to do something to handle the compromise and yet maintain continuity of service. There are in my view, there are two basic ways by which people provide higher levels of security and one is through diversity and the second one is through this whole idea of redundancy. The redundancy idea enables you to actually maybe can help you achieve both things that you’re able to switch things around so it’s not static. If you make the system none static, there’s a higher probability that you can achieve security as well as redundancy.[0:06:31.2] AA: Yeah, I think. Walk us through on a simple, how individuals are doing that? If you think about either together, diversity and redundancy or one and then the next. How, when a person kind of understands that those are beneficial qualities. How can you add those two a, to a system?[0:06:52.9] AS: Right. I’m going to talk a little bit how redundancy can be used in the case of diversity, we have a particular challenge and I’ll come to that in a second. Let’s talk about redundancy. The idea basically is if you want to get high availability, what do you do, you use redundancy, you want high availability, you have to serve the customer in sort of just relying on one box you may have two boxes or three boxes or let’s say you’ll have multiple servers or even if they are on the cloud, you can have multiple servers and those servers, if one of them goes down, the other one takes over the load and you are not having continuity of service all the time.That’s one paradigm. If you do redundancy now and from the view point of security, you have this redundancy, you can do continuous checking and say okay, is one of these boxes busted? If it is busted, they’re basically, you can take it offline and you can have continuative service. Fair enough?[0:08:05.5] AA: Yeah. [0:08:06.5] AS: Okay, now, let’s go to the other one to the whole idea of diversity. Diversity, you can apply at lots of levels, all the way from the application to the operating system, down to the hardware and that is in my experience, talking to CSO’s if you try to do diversity at a high level, they look at this as a very expensive proposition, there have been people who have tried to do this to elegant mechanisms but this has been a constraint so far. There are ways by which for example, is a large kind of approaches, which can provide diversity at a lower level and it is not as effective as if you were to do a diversity to higher level but it may be good enough for many situations. Is that a reasonable explanation?[0:09:06.6] AA: Yeah. I think you’re hitting upon the challenge that I think a lot of people encounter when they start thinking about adding diversity and redundancy, they’re concerned about perhaps certainly the additional cost, probably in dollars but also in kind of in investment in knowledge and expertise that their people need to have, they’re worried about, I barely – I think if behind closed doors, when you talk with a lot of sort of senior leaders in the security space, they’re like, “We’re barely kind of treading water trying to keep up with what we’ve got, adding additional complexity, you know, only scares me. I feel like I definitely be drowning that.” How do you kind of think through that, that additional expense or complexity? [0:09:58.1] AS: Yeah, I think that’s a very good question. The question is that you can have different types of complexity. As you increased some complexity then the cost is higher and some of the kind of complexities the cost may not be so high.As I gave you this example, if you’re in your shop, you decide to use four different operating systems then you have to train everybody on those four operating systems, this can become a very costly operation.[0:10:28.4] AA: Yeah.[0:10:28.9] AS: On the other hand, If you were to look at diversity, you have to then balance the question of what level of security are you seeking? The way we have tried to post this thing more recently is to talk about this whole idea of dwell time. You're asked a question, how much dwell time can you tolerate? If you can allow for higher dwell time, the cost that is the level of redundancy you require goes down and the cost will go down.If you want very good systems and hence you want, you have a – your risk profile is very high, in that case, you may want to have a lower exposure and that will increase the cost. The after I translate some of these ideas into cost of implementation so that a user can make adjustment. “Okay, I think I probably have four hours before the bad guys can do much damage. Let us change things every two hours.” You see the logic of what I’m trying to get at this. Use that logic to decide on how you’re going to do this but there is one thing that is very important in my view point.If you do a redundancy based approach, you have to make sure that you do not change the implementation, you do not go on changing the things like the application, things like the operating systems. You don’t go on changing these things for each implementation because that increases the cost.That’s what we have focused on is trying to see if you have – if you are using something, do you want to be able to use that same platform over and over again?[0:12:19.9] AA: Yeah, let’s take in a little bit on SO, for those listeners who kind of don’t think about or as familiar with the idea of dwell time, that’s basically just the time that an individual is connected or inside a system. Now, that can be just so we’re quite pointed is dwell time measured for every user or we measuring it for only users that were perhaps concerned are negative or a threat.[0:12:49.4] AS: Okay, the dwell time is really a measure of how the server is performing., what we are doing is reducing the dwell time on the server. Maybe, let me sort of conceptualize this from a higher level. f[0:13:05.9] AA: Yeah, I think they’d be helpful.[0:13:08.3] AS: Okay, if you think about this, a cyber-kill chain has basically got three steps of it. You can divide them further and more detail but the three steps are easy to understand and easy to explain. The three steps, the fourth step is somebody has to get it. This is usually done through a phishing attack. They get into somebody goes to their desktop and they click on something and the phishing attacks starts. That’s the first thing, get it.The second step is, once you get in, you have to do a lateral move to get to where the data is. If you got into some user’s laptop, that’s okay but it’s not – that’s not, we have the damage is going to be done, the damage has got to be done inside the, on the place where the data is, which is usually a server.After you get in, you go through what is called a stay in step. The stay in step means that you will do migrate to where lateral moves and so on and migrate to where you want to do damage. The last step is the whole step of act. In act, for example, if you’re entrusted in stealing data, you want to do data exfiltration so the action is data exfiltration.There’s some rules about data exfiltration. If you try to do the exfiltration of the highest speed, you’ll get detected very quickly. When you do this data exfiltration, you have to do this at a fairly low speed so that means it takes more time but you have the time because you are resting there and you're sitting in there. And you can take days, weeks and months to do your complete exfiltration. Get in, stay in and act.If we can manage to reduce the amount of time, somebody stays in and the time for act, we are going to make sure that the losses are significantly minimized. That is what we call the dwell tech, that’s the amount of time you are giving the attacker to stay in the system.[0:15:23.2] AA: Yeah, I think kind of like rough industry statistics are like the average dwell time that people realize after they’ve had an incident is kind of somewhere in the neighborhood of six months, right? Someone is in there has been at work for quite a long time, right? This isn’t like, I was in for two or three hours, right?The ability to kind of reduce dwell time to a few hours, a few minutes, it look like your goal was to take it as low as like 90 seconds. Am I understanding that correctly? [0:15:58.2] AS: One of implementations we have got it down to 90 seconds but you're absolutely correct I think in many cases, something like a dual time of two hours maybe adequate. The point is that the lower the dwell time, there’s a cost impact on the whole thing. We basically recommend a dwell time, which is consistent with your need.We had something called tellos, which is some testing for DOD insulations, we have them attack our system, which is an ecommerce system and which – they have complete access, we took a three couple time, put it on a system and basically told them, “Look, this is the name of the file, this is its location, there is no firewall, there’s no IDS, no IPPPS, no DLP, none of this is there, go get it. “When they try to get that file, the discovered that they could get in the system in less than five minutes but extraction of the file was a problem because we were doing rotations every 90 seconds and they can just complete the process in that time. They called up and said, “Look, this rotation is making it more difficult for us,” by the way, this is on their website and n our website described here, this project is describing.[0:17:18.5] AA: Yeah, I was reading this assessment, it’s really interesting. I will make sure that we link to it in the notice for this podcast so listeners can grab that right on our website. [0:17:27.5] AS: The point was, if I may just complete the story, they asked us to do an – allowed them to do an automated test. They did the automated test and they came with the same problem because it is way difficult and the second part of this issue is to, want to look as evolving. If somebody attacks us once, it may be difficult to find them but if somebody is forced to attack us twice, three times, four times, five times, it becomes easier and easier to find them.It is basically if they come in once and do the damage, you may have given another notice there. But if we are forcing them to do this thing multiple times, then our parameter defense systems will know that something is going on. In that sense, that’s an example of how getting stay and act, works with the parameter defense systems, which are really preventing the get in stage itself.[0:18:27.2] AA: Yeah, we were talking about this before we sort of recording the episode. You know, looking for a single solution is kind of, you’re not going to find a single solution that sort of solves all your problems but when you start to layer different potential approaches on each other, that becomes really interesting, there’s very positive inter play. Yeah, I can imagine if you are an administrator at an organization and you see, right, the top person connecting is probably like one of your busiest employees but then there’s this other item that keeps connecting, right? What is that? Essentially, by reducing 12 time you were making someone attack constantly, they’re going to quickly bubble up to the top of being a very active account or process. Is that how I’m understanding?[0:19:19.4] AS: yes, you’re right. We basically use a redundancy operation, a redundancy based system and our system is called SCIT. We use SCIT and we have recently added a component, which examines the system regularly so that we can actually say, “Hey, we don’t know how it happened but you have something, which have changed in your system.”That has been our approach. Try to find out what has changed, try to establish rules on, which the data should be infiltrated at a particular rate and all this kind of stuff so the thing is, when we are in this process, we are trying to add components, which solves specific problems to give a whole overall solution to the system.[0:20:15.1] AA: Yeah, is this what you – we were trying to throttling, you're sort of throttling connections, is that potential? Yeah, I think that those are very complimentary. Essentially, you re connecting it now, it limits someone from exfiltration more than a certain amount in a certain period of time. For those kind of more technical listeners, walk us through a little bit of how the system works. If you’ve got a server and you install SCIT on top of it, how does it actually do what it’s doing?[0:20:43.0] AS: It’s relatively straightforward. All our implementations are based on the whole concept of virtualization and that is broadly accepted now so we are done of virtualization or VMware kind of stuff as well as we have done it on the cloud. So rationalization has become a bread and butter if you like that’s what most of our installations are based on. So what we are basically saying is that we are going to spend more VM’s than you need and what is going to happen is that at regular intervals we are going to take some of the VM’s off, examine them and see if they have a comprise, send out an alarm and go so on. So that’s how our system works and we try to keep the number of standby VM’s to a minimum and how is that minimum defined? If I am going to have for one hour then maybe I need to have a standby VM only for five minutes. So we try to reduce the amount of resources required to complete our process. [0:21:54.7] AA: Got you, so essentially you may, if I am running a server but to use your example for an hour, I then maybe in the last five minutes you are going to spin up and additional VM and then there will be some sort of an handoff between the two virtual machines at the end of that hour to assure continuous…[0:22:15.9] AS: That’s right. [0:22:16.9] AA: Right, okay and then how do you handle and that is all happening at the application layer, what layer is that happening? I mean I know data, how do you think about where the data lives and as you think about spinning up a system and destroying the old one, how do you think about data living longer? [0:22:41.4] AS: So effectively, you can think of data and do it three different ways. There is a distinct, which ever called persistent data and persistent data is stored somewhere. We strongly recommend that you have a backup mechanism and our approach actually will enable you to have a backup mechanism and ultimate test that what the backup is actually works. So there is this persistent data and then there are also things where after all in today’s world SSD’s are very common. So you can get very faster performance but if you want even faster performance, then you have a shared memory approach. So any one of these works with our system. [0:23:26.9] AA: Got you, so essentially data is kept in this. You have a backup system in place but then also essentially as I understood, the files are not necessarily refreshing. It is more of the application operating system. The file structures get separately. [0:23:45.4] AS: Correct, we are basically focused on making sure that there is our systems are operating in a pristine state and where we don’t have the bad guys resident in our system from more than the authorized dual time. [0:24:03.4] AA: Got you and you know, when you create these environments are you – is it essentially where can you deploy something like this? Does it have to be application by application when you’re doing an implementation? Is there additional sort of custom engineering that happens there or what needs to happen to actually deploy? [0:24:23.9] AS: So to just give you an example, we have started down this road off of building system that are very specialized to the requirements of the Navy, they asked us for some things we built and showed them how this worked. Then we basically said, “Hey what we’ve done right now is we have looked at things like Drupal and WordPress and there are a lot of users there so we have actually built sample systems using Drupal and WordPress as a demonstration of what we are able to do with these kind of systems, which are very widely used,” and hopefully we are going to work with some people to adopt them in their systems. [0:25:02.5] AA: Got you, what happens if you are like in the middle of a number of users are in a middle of a session and the VM’s need to flip, right? Let’s say we’re streaming video or we are in a middle of a conference call or we’re a trader where there’s this continuous flow of data back and forth. How do you handle that? =[0:25:26.0] AS: So we just have to make sure that there is no loss of data, that’s all and our system is built to make sure of that. [0:25:32.2] AA: Got you, so there is some sort of buffering that happens.[0:25:34.9] AS: Yeah, we do a bunch of stuff to make sure. It is a challenge but we have demonstrated that it works.[0:25:41.9] AA: Yeah, let’s switch gears a little bit from the technology to sort of the environment overall. I mean I think I have been surprised by sort of the resistance or the lack of awareness about resiliency as a framework or a paradigm to think through. What if you encounter it in the space also what do you think sort of potentially stopping things from moving more quickly in that direction? [0:26:08.6] AS: Well I would say that until about two years ago or something, tables of general feeling, “Hey guys, we know how to do detection. You’ve got at all these fancy ways of doing detection. Detection is going to work why do all this stuff,” you know? I think people are now beginning to feel that it is not working. I mean it works some of the time but not all the time and when it doesn’t work then we have a problem. So there was that kind of reluctance but there is a problem that people do have built in infrastructure. So somebody is having 10 layers of or 20 layers of detection working. Now they basically say, “Hey listen, these are things. Why am I going to do a new level of complexity or a different layer of complexity?” so there is that reluctance. It is for us to come forward with solutions and demonstrations and proof of concepts and be able to do and we are trying to do all this stuff. To basically convince people that we can actually provide this in a cost effective fashion. I submit to you that if you have several layers of defense, many of these layers may be actually contradictory to each other. If you use our approach, you may be able to drop some of these layers and hence, all our cost will actually go down. So there is this kind of – it is an ongoing effort.[0:27:32.2] AA: Yeah and I think you know, I certainly feel from a lot of individuals they do feel that complexity is just their drowning, right? But I think you are right where if you accept that you do have that water shed moment where you realize, “You know what? We can’t keep doing what we are doing” that is the definition of insanity, right? We have been trying this for a while and it’s not working. Well, let us try something else. And then when you start to unpack what the potential for that moving target or refreshing systems allow you to do, you realize that it is actually the idea of just starting a fresh every day makes things a lot simpler, right? Every day or every hour or whatever that dwell time target that you are shooting for, right? [0:28:20.6] AS: Right and so many times in their presentation, I ask a simple question. “How often do you restart your servers?” because one sure way of getting rid out of malware without having to do detection is to restart the server. So I ask the question, “How often do you do this?” and invariably the answer is very infrequently. [0:28:42.6] AA: Yeah, never would be mine. [0:28:44.7] AS: Yeah and the reason for that is there is a cost of back store and there is a legacy issue attached to it. If you look at this 10, 15 years ago, you brought up a server, you never knew what state the server is going to come up in. So starting, restarting a server is a big deal but it is not unusual though. So those kind of things have to be able to grow out of it. So now basically, we start the server with fairly high level of reliability. So those are the kind of things, which have stood in the way but you’re not do decline with this, developing and there is going to be more people doing this kind of stuff and they are actually five or six companies now, which are based on moving target defense and you seemed to have talked to some of them also so. [0:29:26.7] AA: Yeah, definitely. Yeah and I think in the world of cyber security and we’re often used the terms around disease a lot. We talk about viruses and malware and infections and compromise and all of these sorts of things that helps of systems and I think we are advancing in the business, in the industry and I think the more we move towards the complexity of systems and the approaches that you see effectively in medicine and in nature itself, right? I mean I think the idea of – I mean certainly a hospital, a cornerstone of their approach to battling disease is disposable stuff. I mean gloves and needles and surgical instruments, they realize that to keep things clean the easiest thing to do is not to try and figure out where all the diseases or viruses are but just to throw a lot of stuff away, which perhaps environmental issues with waste and whatnot but certainly has been very effective. And the more that they do that, the better they do from an infection perspective and it actually becomes quite a bit simpler, right? If you don’t have to think about scrubbing everything to the Nth degree. You should just use it once and toss it, right? [0:30:50.0] AS: I agree, this is a very good example. Many times, it is not worthwhile to do a complete diagnosis. I mean the way I look at it is suppose you are driving a boat. You are in a boat and you spring a leak, what do you think you want to do? Try to find out and do an in depth analysis of the leak or try to plug the damn thing? [0:31:09.8] AA: Yeah. [0:31:10.5] AS: So that you are trying to recover from it, recover from it and so only after you have had a chance to get back to shore will you do a deep analysis. That’s what we are recommending. [0:31:21.6] AA: Right and I think to six frame on that analogy right? I think this is a little bit like working in the tech space, right? It’s like you’re out on a lake in some sort of canoe. If you don’t, you don’t know when your canoe is going to spring a leak but as long as you know that you got a lot of friends in other canoes that you can jump into, you’re probably going to be okay, right?[0:31:43.8] AS: That’s right. [0:31:45.1] AA: And so yeah, the most important thing is to either have a lot of friends or own a canoe factory, right? [0:31:52.3] AS: That’s right but this is an example of we use these ideas. It is not that we go into with this ideas but we have to translate them to this cyber security space is what we need to do. [0:32:03.8] AA: Yeah, definitely. You know to sort of build on the advancement of this sector overall and I think one of the things that I am stunned by is the lack of really clear measurements for success of any of the approaches that have been up there. I mean I think if you think about detection, when you think about blocking attacks, you actually ask a lot of practitioners like, “What are you measuring when you get a huge amount of diversity of answers?”And in many cases, the answer is nothing really very precisely or accurately or things that are meaningful. I think one of the interesting things of how you approach is that you are focused on dwell time is something that is quite measurable. Talk me through how you think about measuring success and whatnot. [0:32:59.2] AS: Yeah, that’s a very good question. The point basically is many of the detection approaches, the point is you have to take a lot of things on freight and by the way, this is okay. We do this on a regular basis but the point is, if you are going to use AI techniques there is a problematic character to them and that problematic character many times you are not able to quantify them adequately. I have been driven by the notion that we should be able to say quite explicitly what we are doing not making it fuzzy. And that is the reason we have talked about all of these idea. We are being very explicit. “Okay, your dwell time is going to be so much. Your throttling time, the time it’s going to take, the throttle will take based on such and such way." So all these are deterministic ideas but they have pretty low value and if we can combine them with ideas, which are more problemistic, I think we’ll have a good joint effort in this case.[0:34:01.6] AA: Yeah and I think being so explicit about what are we trying to improve here and what are we giving you here. You know, whenever someone says that they’re meeting 10 I mean gosh, seven, eight, nine things right? Let alone like you when you start thinking about we’re aligning to 23 different things. It is sort of like more than I can count on maybe one hand and maybe not even using all the fingers there that seems reasonable, right? If you have so many things that you are trying to focus on typically you are not doing – you are not really moving the needle on most of them, potentially all of them. [0:34:41.4] AS: Yeah but it is acting, that is a valid part but have on the justice, yes. The complexity is even more of a problem. So if you are the US Government, you can go around having 20 layers of defense. Okay, then what about this guy who runs a company, which has got $10 million of revenue a year? He can have these levels of defenses right? [0:35:04.3] AA: Right. [0:35:04.9] AS: So what are we going to do? Are we going to protect these guys or what? So I am suggesting is and that is why many of these have migrated into the cloud. So that is why the rationalization and what SCIT does should be helpful. So we have actually tried to do some of these, we are talking to a few people who have several who’s customers are small and they have Drupal websites or they have WordPress websites. And so we think that that maybe some place, which we want to explore. We can be doing much more for the bigger customers but we also want to support the guys who are smaller and are growing. Does that make sense? [0:35:45.5] AA: Yeah and so just to be really clear, if someone is undertaking this approach, what would you point to as saying, “Okay here is where you were now. Essentially your dwell time is potentially unlimited” or whatever you’re going back to kind of your – should you ask how often are you restarting these servers, right? Your restart with this force in a reconnection from everyone, right? You are saying, “Okay I am going to move your dwell time to whatever the refresh cycle is that you have chosen.” A day, a few hours, whatever that target is potentially as low as 90 seconds and then also you can throttle the flow of data to whatever you think is reasonable for those business. Those are the main measures that you would say these are the things that we are targeting to a brew or are there others outside of this? [0:36:39.8] AS: I think especially for small customers, small users I think those are the two principle things, which we would still recommend that you start with. So as we learn about these things more, we will act to these set of things but that’s where we think we should start.[0:36:56.8] AA: And let’s talk about what it takes to undertake this approach. So your technology is just at the software layer, right? Does it necessarily require any additional hardware? [0:37:07.5] AS: Correct. [0:37:08.4] AA: And we have talked a little bit, you had mentioned the level of use of the different servers like how much utilization they were seeking. [0:37:15.6] AS: You’re right, so if you want to talk about end premise systems and let’s say you are using VMware, which is utilized and stuffed and let’s say that you’re utilization of the server is less than 60% then you will not require any more hardware to implement what we do but if your utilization is more than 80%, then you may need additional hardware. But most places, which we have talked to they don’t have – they are closer to 50, 60% rather than to 80% that’s actual. [0:37:54.6] AA: Got you and then from a throttle perspective, you are just choosing that throttle based on what typical usage is, right? Or whatever the – [0:38:03.2] AS: Yes. [0:38:03.7] AA: Got you.[0:38:04.4] AS: So you’ll effectively – you are user, the guy who designed the system knows that you will be getting to a separate website, that is going to tell you how much of data is going to be downloaded on any query from there, you can tell how much of bandwidth you need and then you can choose your throttle time in consultation with the customer. [0:38:25.2] AA: Got you and then you think that there are certainly they’re like the normal patterns that you see in organizations okay, right? Most of the time where we’re just doing 10 megabits per second or whatever it is but maybe let’s say you are holding a big event and so suddenly you’ve posted a lot of materials on your website that people are downloading. How do you think about assist and then now people need to download this much larger files so that traffic is really spiking? [0:38:56.9] AS: Yes. I think what you are basically saying is that you may need multiple parts into the system, one part for the conventional user but then there could be some people who are doing their additional work and because they are doing additional work, they may need to lure download bigger files and you need to get them another part and on that part, your throttle times will be different. [0:39:20.9] AA: Yeah, exactly or just the experience is not normally distributed, right? If you think of a retailer where all of the activity happens in the holiday Christmas season, right? So bandwidth is just exploding, usage is exploding in a certain few or like Amazon day, I forgot what it is, Prime day right? You think through that. How do you think through that, is this designed in the system in that way? Can you just as simple to toggle of the volumes on a certain day or are there other options? =[0:39:54.4] AS: Well, I think this one idea of a throttle has to accommodate what the user requirements are. So you may have a bunch of users, you may be able to do something by which you tell them the throttle to the user. A user comes in, “You know that this was going to go to this website, this website, this website.” So the throttle would be different then somebody has to go to another website. So you can do all of that. Our implementation currently is a single throttle time but these are the kind of things which we need to extend our system to.[0:40:35.1] AA: Yeah, well Arun, I want to be thoughtful about time because you have been great in terms of walking through a lot of different questions about how your technology works and the application of it really enjoyed you doing that. If people want to learn more about what you’ve been up to and other resources about resiliency and moving target defense, anything that you’d recommend we can put links to stuff on the show notes. [0:41:00.4] AS: So you can go to scitlabs.com is our website and this is scitlabs.com is a website, which you can go to. We have links to several whitepapers. We have analyzed for example the worst breaches in the last decade and tried to show how our approach would have worked in those cases. There is a lot of stuff there and of course, you could always get hold of me and I can answer more questions. [0:41:29.7] AA: Cool. Well, Arun thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. Yeah we’ll check back in and see how things are going over the coming months and years too. Thank you so much. [0:41:38.5] AS: Very good, thanks very much. I surely enjoyed this. This is fun. [END]

Joseph’s Inspired Translation Part 4 of Chapter 10 of As It is Translated Corr

god mormon lord fundamentalists lds mormonism king james version as it ogden kraut mormon fundamentalists

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 16, 2018 45:00

Joseph’s Inspired Translation Part 4 of Chapter 10 of As It is Translated Correctly by Ogden Kraut. Robert Matthews gives an excellent clarification of texts from the Inspired Translation in regard to the status of little children: That little children are innocent before God is clearly established by the Inspired Translation. In explanation of the covenant of circumcision, the Lord said to Abraham that its purpose was “that thou mayest know forever that children are not accountable before me until they are eight years old. (Gen. 17:11) This interesting and valuable point is not made in the King James Version.

Joseph’s Inspired Translation Part 3 of Chapt 10 of As It is Translated Correctl

book mormon church bible protestant catholic critics king james book of mormon fundamentalists lds mormon church mormonism as it ogden kraut

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2018 43:00

Joseph’s Inspired Translation Part 3 of Chapter 10 of As It is Translated Correctly by Ogden Kraut. It is also interesting to note that in 1979 the Mormon Church published its own edition of the Bible, this being the first Bible the Church has ever published. It contains many cross references to the other standard works, a Topical Guide listing passages from the four standard works, a Bible Dictionary, and also many excerpts from the Inspired Translation. Critics from outside the Church complain that Joseph’s work, both in his revision and quotations in the Book of Mormon, were based upon the King James Translation. There were many reasons he chose that edition: Considering the vast work involved in writing the Bible, the King James translators had already done the most satisfactory job of translation.It was sufficiently good enough; the work and the spirit of it were satisfactory for people to gain the knowledge and understanding needed for their salvation.It was the most popular and common Bible publication at the time, being the most familiar to people. A completely different form of words of the same text would be more confusing and objectionable. This is easily noticed between the Protestant and the Catholic versions by their two variations of the same text.Joseph had little time to work on his revision, and for the sake of getting the task done, he made only the necessary changes in that version of the Bible. If he would have rewritten each word of the Bible, his work would never have been finished.The Bible was never intended to be a closed book. Each book was a scripture by itself and other information, visions, and revelations would or could be added.

TRANSLATING AND REVISING SCRIPTURE Part 4. Of chapter 3. of As It is Translated

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2018 20:00

TRANSLATING AND REVISING SCRIPTURE Part 4 chapter 3 of As It is Translated Correctly. Loss of Original Sources. The vast majority of the errors in the NT MSS occurred during the period that is also the most difficult to reconstruct–the first four Christian centuries. Much of the difficulty stems from the work of the earliest Christian copyists. In a time when the majority of people were illiterate and when Christianity periodically underwent severe persecution, there were probably few professionally trained scribes in the service of the church. Moreover, seldom were the scribes possessed by the spirit of the scribes of later times who worked according to the instructions of the Lord given in Deuteronomy 12:32: “Thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish therefrom.” In fact, the opposite seems to have been true of the scribes in the first two centuries. They introduced thousands of changes into the text. To be sure, the majority of their errors were unintentional and are easily discernible slips of the eye, ear, or mind. Hundreds of changes in the text were, however, made intentionally. Yet we should not think of these scribes as having acted from evil motives. If they often took many liberties in copying their texts, apparently they did so in [39] most cases in an attempt to “help out.” They were more interested in making the message of the sacred text clear than in transmitting errorless MSS. Thus, early scribes (and sometimes later ones) often “smoothed out” the Greek of the biblical writer by adding conjunctions, changing tenses of verbs, and changing word order

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TRANSLATING AND REVISING SCRIPTURE of As It is Translated Correctly. Part 3.

europe mormon bible scripture scriptures fundamentalists lds mormonism as it alexander campbell

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2018 46:00

TRANSLATING AND REVISING SCRIPTURE of As It is Translated Correctly. Part 3. Of chapter 3. Divisions and Sub-Divisions. The division of the Bible into chapters and verses also has a negative result in some instances. The various divisions and sub-divisions of the sacred Scripture into chapters, verses and members of sentences, are of human authority and to be regarded as such. Anciently all the books of the sacred Scriptures were written in one continuous manner–without a break, a chapter or a verse. The division into chapters, that now universally obtains in Europe, derived its origin from Cardinal Cairo, who lived in the twelfth century. The subdivision into verses is of no older date than the middle of the sixteenth century, and was the invention of Robert Stevens. Whatever advantages these divisions may have been in the way of facilitating references, they have so dislocated and broken to pieces the connection, as not only to have given the Scriptures the appearance of a book of proverbs, but have thrown great difficulties in the way of any of them. The punctuation, too, being necessarily dependent on these divisions, is far from accurate; and taken altogether it affords a demonstra-[32]tion that there is no more divinity in the chapters, verses, commas, semi-colons, colons and periods of the inspired writings, than there is in the paper on which they are inscribed, or in the ink by which they are depicted to our view. (Christian Baptism, Alexander Campbell, p. 39)

TRANSLATING AND REVISING SCRIPTURE of As It is Translated Correctly. Part 2. Cha

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2018 43:00

Chapter 3 TRANSLATING AND REVISING SCRIPTURE of As It is Translated Correctly. Part 2. Chapter Word Meaning. If all of the Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Syriac texts had been translated from one single text, there would still remain possible variations, due to the choice of words in translating. Every scribe has his own style of vocabulary and types of descriptions and expression. Each translator tries to express the original meaning which he thinks was intended by the person who wrote the text. Hence, many scribes differed in their interpretation of the original text language. Even though they were translating the very same words, each had a slightly different understanding of the original meaning of the words written by the author. Consider how confused a foreigner must be when he reads in a daily American newspaper: “The prospectors made a strike yesterday up in the mountains.” “The union went on strike this morning.” “Strike up with the Star Spangled Banner.” “The fisherman got a good strike in the middle of the lake.” Presumably each of these completely different uses of the same word go back to the same parent and have the same etymology.

american mormon greek latin strike fundamentalists hebrew star spangled banner lds mormonism syriac as it

TRANSLATING AND REVISING SCRIPTURE. Chapter 3 of As It is Translated Correctly.

bible fee fundamentalists guthrie nt lds mormonism biblical criticism mss latin vulgate as it mormon fundamentalists

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 24, 2018 35:00

C TRANSLATING AND REVISING SCRIPTURE. Chapter 3 of As It is Translated Correctly. Too often over-zealous and misinformed preachers of today profess to have a Bible without error. However, any honest Christian scholar will admit mistakes and inaccuracies in all Bible translations. Perhaps the erudite scholars of Bible history said it best when they declared: The need for NT textual criticism results from a combination of three factors: (1) The originals, probably written on papyrus scrolls, have all perished. (2) For over 1,400 years the NT was copied by hand, and the copyists (scribes) made every conceivable error, as well as at time intentionally altering (probably with the idea of “correcting”) the text. Such errors and alterations survived in various ways, with a basic tendency to accumulate (scribes seldom left anything out, lest they omit something inspired). (3) There are now extant, in whole or in part, 5,338 Greek MSS, as well as hundreds of copies of ancient translations (not counting over 8,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate), plus the evidence from the citations of the NT in the writings of the early church fathers. Moreover, no two MSS anywhere in existence are exactly alike. (Biblical Criticism, Harrison, Waltke, Guthrie and Fee, p. 128)

HISTORY OF BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPTS part 2 of Chapter 2 of As It is Translated Corr

Way Of The Truth Warrior Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 23, 2018 28:00

HISTORY OF BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPTS part 2 of Chapter 2 of As It is Translated Correctly by Ogden Kraut. There are three sources from which we gather information pertaining to the Bible: (1) the manuscripts; (2) the versions of translations; and (3) quotations from early Christian church writers. Most of the early Christian Fathers were writers who lived near the end of the first century and later. The most important of those who quoted the New Testament were Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria–all of whom lived in the second century. In the fourth century we have important writings of Eusebius of Caesarea as well as Jerome. From these men and the many who followed, we have obtained thousands of valuable Biblical manuscripts. However, they were all different because scribes and translators made modifications–either by accident or on purpose –with the intent to help clarify or correct.

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The Way Of The Warrior Like You've Never Heard Before - Truth Warrior Ep. 09

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2017 59:38

I think the warrior archtype needs to make a big comeback. In this episode I break down the code of the warrior in detail by featuring the ethics of Bushido/Budo & the 9 virtues of Asatru. I talk about how this code of life is important and relevant for you in life, in your personal relationships, in your training, in your job, or in your business. After the breakdown I give some realistic action steps as to how you can empower your life and fuel your personal success to the next level. BUSHIDO CODE: Righteousness (義 gi) Be acutely honest throughout your dealings with all people. Believe in justice, not from other people, but from yourself. To the true warrior, all points of view are deeply considered regarding honesty, justice and integrity. Warriors make a full commitment to their decisions. Heroic Courage (勇 yū) Hiding like a turtle in a shell is not living at all. A true warrior must have heroic courage. It is absolutely risky. It is living life completely, fully and wonderfully. Heroic courage is not blind. It is intelligent and strong. Benevolence, Compassion (仁 jin) Through intense training and hard work the true warrior becomes quick and strong. They are not as most people. They develop a power that must be used for good. They have compassion. They help their fellow men at every opportunity. If an opportunity does not arise, they go out of their way to find one. Respect (礼 rei) True warriors have no reason to be cruel. They do not need to prove their strength. Warriors are not only respected for their strength in battle, but also by their dealings with others. The true strength of a warrior becomes apparent during difficult times. Integrity (誠 makoto) When warriors say that they will perform an action, it is as good as done. Nothing will stop them from completing what they say they will do. They do not have to 'give their word'. They do not have to 'promise'. Speaking and doing are the same action. Honour (名誉 meiyo) Warriors have only one judge of honor and character, and this is themselves. Decisions they make and how these decisions are carried out are a reflection of whom they truly are. You cannot hide from yourself. Duty and Loyalty (忠義 chūgi) Warriors are responsible for everything that they have done and everything that they have said, and all of the consequences that follow. They are immensely loyal to all of those in their care. To everyone that they are responsible for, they remain fiercely true. Self-Control (自制 jisei) - With great power comes great responsibility TRUTH - (From the 9 noble virtues of Asatru) Truth is the willingness to be honest and to say what one knows to be true and right. It is often better to not say anything at all if one cannot be honest. But likewise, when one does say something, it is best to be truthful and speak what one sees, not what others would like to hear. But we also have a warning on the concept of Truth, and that is that whilst we should endeavour to speak the truth at all times, do not be fooled into speaking the truth when others lie to you. The Havamal councils us to respond to lies with lies. Tell the truth, even when there could be painful consequences. The consequences for lying are often more harmful than the quick pain of telling the truth and getting the situation over with. Courage fosters truth, and truth furthers courage- we must be incessant in striving for that which is right, what we know to be right, and what we know to be true. Truth is the underlying principle of holy realization, and ultimately that which steels us in our courage! Without truth, we have no fundamental realization on any significant level, nor the courage or will to achieve and evolve, relegating our very Being to nothing more than a farcical play. Our ancient ancestors valued truthful speech and honest deeds. This was shown by their strong avoidance of lies (unless lied to) and of oath breaking. In a society where a man's word was better than a contract, honesty was a necessity. Directly tied to truth is modesty, or rather a tendency not to exaggerate one's own feats. This may seem in opposition to the Elder Heathens' heroic boasting, but one must understand that the boasting such as in Beowulf was more a proclamation of feats done by one's self and one's forbears, and not the idle bragging of unaccomplished men. As "It isn't bragging if you can do it." Ritual boasting followed a set pattern of naming the feats of one's gods, one's forbears, and one's self before making an oath to do a great deed. This was done at the ritual sumbel and before combat. In a society where one might have to prove one's word by risking his life, there was no room for the idle boasts. HAVAMAL: counsel you second; swear no oath But what you mean to abide by: A halter awaits the word breaker, Villainous is the wolf-of-vows.9 VIRTUES FULL LIST

ritual truth speaking warriors duty hiding decisions integrity beowulf heroic honour courage compassion respect loyalty directly self control asatru benevolence as it havamal

Embedded Insiders – Episode #18 – AWS Greengrass: Are OT Device Management Pastures Getting Greener?

Embedded Insiders

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2017 9:52

As IT and OT players stake out their claims in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) landscape, Amazon and partner Ayla Networks are deploying a technology called AWS Greengrass that brings a subset of cloud security, management, and provisioning technology to the gateway level. The goal, of course, is to provide more intelligence closer to the edge of IIoT networks, but the announcement raises two significant questions: 1) Why would Amazon, a company with revenues derived mostly from cloud-based transactions, want to potentially cut off a portion of their business? 2) Do operational technologists have something to fear as IT behemoths push further down the IoT technology stack? In this week's Embedded Insider's podcast, Rich Nass, EVP of Embedded Computing Design and Brandon Lewis, Technology Editor for Embedded Computing Design, pose these questions to Bill Podrasky, VP of Business Development at Ayla Networks.

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011 - Residential Heating Systems - Waste Prevention vs. Energy Conservation - Asit Patel

Annmarie's Breaking Ground Podcast Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2017 24:38

Asit has taught over 2,200 students in several different courses related to energy efficiency in multi family residential buildings ranging from 20 to 1000 units. His students include facility maintenance and operations staff, facility management and owners, trade contractors, as well as other energy and engineering professionals. Asit and I met when I spoke on the topic of Preventative Maintenance at AEE in 2015 and again when he discussed Condensing Boilers at NYC’s 32BJ Union in 2016. I asked Asit to be a guest because I was most impressed with his extensive knowledge and understanding of residential heating systems from a practical perspective. During our interview Asit emphasized on the value of waste prevention vs. energy conservation and identified three opportunities to optimize and improve heating systems in residential buildings with existing controls. The simple adjustments can provide significant savings without installing new equipment only if certain management protocols are revised. He also touched on some “safe factors” some design engineers incorporate that cost owners lots of money in the end. Now more than ever, with a technologically advanced generation, the training that’s necessary for operations require more than just hands on and I’m glad Asit recognized and validated this during our interview. To listen to the full interview where you can hear the three low to no cost savings solutions he spoke about, please listen to the entire interview. Be sure to subscribe so you can hear about new products, more interviews, and industry news. Thanks for listening! Hope you enjoy it.

new york city aee preventative maintenance as it

Pillar One: Data Protection [Six Pillars of Security Series]

And There You Have IT!

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2017 28:49

In this episode, we discuss why shifting to a comprehensive data-centric strategy is critical to securing a business, how human nature has affected the evolution of cyber attacks, and how employee education is essential to security success. Join Forsythe’s host Cherie Caswell Dost, formerly of Chicago Public Radio, and industry expert Matt Sickles, senior principle consultant, Forsythe Security Solutions, for a multi-episode series of our podcast, And There You Have IT. In this six-part series, “The Six Pillars of Security," we’ll explore how companies can stay agile and secure in the face of an ever-evolving threat landscape. According to Gemalto's Breach Level Index 2016 Report, data breaches led to almost 1.4 billion data records being compromised worldwide during 2016, an increase of 86 percent over 2015. And Verizon's 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report found that in 93 percent of cases where data was stolen, systems were compromised in minutes or less. Organizations, meanwhile, took weeks or more to discover that a breach had even occurred — and it was typically customers or law enforcement that sounded the alarm, not their own security measures. Traditional prevention and detection methods are being bypassed, and many organizations either don’t know what to do, or don’t have the right resources in place to advance their security. To keep up with highly skilled and aggressive attackers, we need to move beyond the predictable patterns of network security and static defenses that our cyber adversaries are well-attuned to. Listen to the podcast to learn more. 10 Keys to Data-Centric Security - It is no longer enough to focus our efforts on networks and endpoints. As IT changes continue to occur, organizations need to keep pace and advance their security by focusing on the data itself through the development of a data-centric security program. 7 Key Elements of a Successful Encryption Strategy - It’s imperative to remember that your encryption program — and IT security in general — is a process, not a product. Effective encryption takes time; in addition to careful consideration of data states and encryption techniques, there are seven key elements that can help you build a successful end-to-end approach. Forsythe Technology - For more than 40 years, Forsythe has helped companies succeed by working to optimize, modernize, and innovate enterprise IT. We develop solutions that make practical business sense from idea to implementation. We help champion innovation and deliver bottom-line results. We serve as the bridge, moving you from traditional to new IT. Whatever your business needs, we make it happen.

Epiphany 4: The Sunday of the Wind and the Waves

Sermons by Pr. Mark D. Lovett

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 29, 2017

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 8:23-27 Date of Delivery: January 29, 2017 In the name of theFatherand of the +Sonand of theHoly SpiritSurely those men of Galilee were praying fervently for rescue as their little boat was being tossed to andfroby the wind and waves, threatening to be overcome by the sea. Surely they were praying for their lives, for even the unbeliever and heathen prays to the unknown God when disaster is being heaped up on him and he feels the crushing weight of chaos.In fact, the unbeliever, though he does not believe, will often ask you, his Christian friend or relative to pray for him or for his family. He’ll say something like, “Well you know I’m no Christian, but I could use some prayers.” So pray. And do not be afraid.But how shall you pray? Shall you stand then and there and speak words to your heavenly Father? Yes. Shall you wake up in the morning and make the sign of the Holy Cross, confess the Creed, pray the Our Father, and also pray for your friend? Yes, you shall. Shall you, when night falls and your eyes are heavy, not again make the sign of the Holy Cross, confess the Creed and pray the Our Father, and then pray again for your friend? Yes, you shall.It is written, “Bless, for to this you were called”(1 Peter 3:9).“But,” you say, “the Lord does not hear me. He seems to be otherwise occupied or asleep. My friend’s troubles continue to press on him and nothing seems to be getting better and now he is even cursing God because he blames God for his troubles.” And you begin to fretand to be afraid. Not that you don’t believe that God can heal or can rescue your friend from his plight, or even rescue you from yours, but the eyes see only trouble and chaos and the body only feels the weight of sin and disaster.Here our faith is revealed. Here in the tension between the promises of God our savior and the chaotic, death-filled world that surrounds us.Here your faith is revealed and fashioned.No doubt the disciples were praying for themselves and for their wives and families as surely death had come upon them. But Life was with them. And even had death come and taken them to the place of the dead, Life would still be with them. For those who fall asleep in Christ fall asleep in the lap of the Lord and Giver of Life who will raise them from the dead.Beloved, our prayers, though they are for healing and life now in this life, they are all the more for the life of the world to come. Your unbelieving friend does not merely need your prayers for healing, as though the stripes of Christ have not already healed him or his family or you or your family. By His stripes we are healed. All will be raised from the dead, which is the healing of the body. Those who have done evil will go off to the place prepared for the devil and his angels,where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,but the righteous to eternal life.No doubt those wind and wave-tossed men of Galilee were praying for salvation. “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” And the Lord saved them, though the wind and waves were no real threat. That is why the Lord said, “O you of little faith.”The Lord rebuked the winds and the waves, thoughtheywere not thereal threat.The real threat was that the disciples thought that wind and waves could steal them from the Life of the World. Why else be afraid?Your Lord has overcome death. Do not be afraid. You will rise from the dead and be with the Lord, even as the Lord is with you today.Your prayers, though they seem to be small and nearly pointless, have been heard and answered. Jesus is the answer to your prayers, even as He was the answer to the prayers of those men of Galilee. He is the answer because your prayer is always, “Lord, have mercy.” He is the mercy ofGod. Your prayer is answered because you always pray, “Lord, letuslive!” He is the Life of the World. You shall live.Though now it seems as though you are perishing. Asit seems toyour friend who beckons you to pray for him. But you are not as one who has no hope. Your hope is risen from the dead and lives and reigns for all eternity. You have the Spirit of the living God to say to your friend, “Why are you afraid? See what sort of Man the Lord is. He has overcome your sickness, your disease, your poverty; He has overcome your sin and your guilt. He is risen from the dead. Do not be afraid.”Don’t get all wrapped up in convincing your friend– or yourself –that Jesus is real or that there is a God or any such philosophical arguments. They do little good and often lead to false faiths such as Gnosticism and the theology of glory where the cross is emptied of its power.What does a world ofgoodand what does the world a lot of good arethe prayers of the Church, the Body of Christ;your prayers that are joined to the prayers of all God’s holy peoplein the mystical union of the Body of Christ.What does your friend good is you coming here to receive the blessing and benediction of your God, the Lord Jesus Christ, for then you are filled with the Spirit to bless and not curse, to raise up and not tear down, to heal not to hurt.To love your neighbor and do him good.The Lord has heard your prayers, even answered them. Don’t be afraid, you little ones of faith, for the Father loves you because you love the Son, and they have made their home with you.Say to your friend, as I say to you now, See what sort of Lord this Man is?+ In Nomine Iesu +

life man god world church lord spirit father body beloved speaker jesus christ giver surely galilee bless gnosticism our father mark d holy cross as it of god your lord father yes

172: Work Your Way With This New Project Management Tool & Easy To Use Free Task Manager‎

The Tech Blog Writer Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 4, 2017 26:02

Favro is an online collaboration tool that adapts to how you work, making it easy to plan just about anything with anyone. Used by companies in marketing, development, gaming, law, recruitment and more – Favro is perfect for the whole team and is designed to keep everyone, regardless of their role, on the same page. The IT strategy is no longer just IT’s responsibility. It now touches multiple departments from finance to marketing to HR. But, getting IT teams to collaborate cross-organization is easier said than done. At many companies, highly-technical IT professionals are reluctant to embrace collaboration outside of their team or the comfort of their IT department. While they hold a wealth of information, organizational silos often block this knowledge from outside departments. As IT strategy becomes more of a broader business problem, IT departments will need to step outside their comfort zone and collaborate with other teams. Anyone interested in learning more about why IT departments should embrace collaboration to improve the organization’s IT strategy will love today's show. Patric Palm, CEO and co-founder of Favro, chats with Neil about this new online planning and collaboration tool.

ceo as it favro

11 Powerful Tips for Dealing with Authority Figures in IT Customer Service

csp crawley dtm as it powerful tips authority figures

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2016 5:20

Don R. Crawley, CSP, DTM. 11 Powerful Tips for Dealing with Authority Figures in IT Customer Service As IT people, we work with people in nearly every part of an organization. That means we may have to support and work with people in positions of great authority such as police officers, executives, physicians, or attorneys. Sometimes, that can be uncomfortable or even intimidating. Many of the actions to use when dealing with … 11 Powerful Tips for Dealing with Authority Figures in IT Customer Service Read More » 11 Powerful Tips for Dealing with Authority Figures in IT Customer Service Don Crawley

5 Concepts IT Pros Need to Understand About Their Jobs and Careers

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 8, 2016 5:06

Don R. Crawley, CSP, DTM. 5 Concepts IT Pros Need to Understand About Their Jobs and Careers As IT pros, we understand the technology we work with, but successful careers in IT involve much more than the technical aspects of knowing how to code, set up a server, or configure a router. Here are five concepts IT pros need to understand for success in their careers. Careers Concept #1: Our jobs are not … 5 Concepts IT Pros Need to Understand About Their Jobs and Careers Read More » 5 Concepts IT Pros Need to Understand About Their Jobs and Careers Don Crawley

csp crawley careers dtm as it

Understanding the Business in Addition to the Technology

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2015 3:30

Don R. Crawley, CSP, DTM. Understanding the Business in Addition to the Technology In last week's blog post, we discussed the importance of understanding the business processes within the organizations where we work. As IT professionals, we are responsible for supporting successful communication and collaboration between the people in our workplace. We are responsible for helping our sisters and brothers in every department work together more creatively, effectively, … Understanding the Business in Addition to the Technology Read More » Understanding the Business in Addition to the Technology Don Crawley

business technology csp crawley dtm addition as it

YEDİĞİMİZİ İÇTİĞİMİZİ BİLELİM

Açık Bilim Cepyayını

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 2, 2014 14:51

"İçme yavrum onu, içi boya dolu. Hem de asitli! Şuna bak E330 E bilmem kaç hepsi bunda...". Sizi bilmem ama ben bu lâfı ve türevlerini çevremden çok duydum. Peki ne kadarı doğru bunların? Hem E330 ne ki acaba? E bilmemkaçların hepsi gerçekten kanser mi yapar? Aslında durum düşündüğümüzden daha karmaşık. Daha önce Açık Bilim Radyo Programı'nda da bir kısmı irdelenen gıda katkı maddelerini bu yazıda size kısaca anlatmaya çalışacağım [1]. Böylece siz de bir ürünün paketine baktığınızda o garip isimlerin ve kodların ne anlama geldiğini az çok biliyor olacaksınız. Doğal mı yapay mı? Öncelikle şu doğal ve yapay kavramlarına açıklık getirelim. Tanım olarak doğal bir madde doğada (canlıların vücudunda veya dışında) varolan, oluşması için insan müdahalesi gerekmeyen bir moleküldür. Mesela su, sofra tuzu, sitrik asit (meyve asidi) veya siyanür (kayısı, elma gibi bazı meyvelerin çekirdeğinde bulunan zehir). Yapay, bir diğer adıyla sentetik maddeler ise laboratuvar ortamında, kontrollü bir şekilde, kimyasal ve bazen de biyolojik işlemler sonrası elde edilen, neredeyse tamamen saf maddelerdir. Yapay maddelerin bir kısmı doğada zaten vardır ama pratik nedenlerden dolayı (miktar, saflık, üretim masrafı vs.) laboratuvar ortamında üretilir. Dolayısıyla doğala özdeştirler. Mesela C vitamini, meyve asidi ve bazı aromalar. Yapay maddelerin kalan kısmı ise ya doğada bulunmazlar ya da bir ihtimal biz henüz onlara denk gelmedik. Mesela bazı tatlandırıcılar, emulgatörlerin (yağı ve suyu birbirinin içinde çözmeye yarayan kimyasallar) veya aromaların bir kısmı. Gördüğünüz gibi doğada var olan maddelerin hatırı sayılır bir kısmı laboratuvar ortamında hem daha ucuza hem de daha yüksek saflıkta pekâlâ üretilebilir. Bazı yapay maddeler ise doğal rakiplerinin yerini pratik nedenlerden ötürü (kullanışlılık, fiyat gibi) ele geçirmişlerdir. Pazarlamacıların bakış açısından bakarsak "doğal" bir ürünün içindeki maddeler -sağlığa faydalı olsun olmasın- o ürünün içinde kendinden zaten vardır ve dışarıdan bir müdahale sonucu eklenmemiş veya ayrıştırılmamıştır. O zaman tarafsız bir bakış açısıyla şunu söyleyebiliriz: Tamamen doğal bir gıdanın insan hayatı için %100 sağlıklı, içinde katkı maddeleri olan bir gıdanın ise insan hayatı için %100 zararlı olduğu söylenemez. Şimdi isterseniz gıda katkı maddelerini kısaca inceleyelim. Katalog geniş Gıda katkı maddelerini aşağıdaki gibi bazı temel kategorilere ayırabiliriz. Yine de bazı kategoriler arasında kesişim kümeleri de yok değil. Mesela, asitler hem ekşi tat vermek, hem de yiyeceğin bozulmasını önlemek için kullanılabilir. Ayrıca bütün türler için doğal, doğala özdeş ve yapay örnekler mevcut. Antioksidanlar: Gıdanın oksijenle teması sonucu tepkimeye girmesini ve bozulmasını önlerler. Mesela C vitamini. Aromalar: Gıdaya istenen tadı ve kokuyu vermek için eklenirler. Asitler: Ekşi tat vermekten başka gıda koruyucu veya antioksidan olarak da kullanılırlar. Mesela sitrik asit (meyve asidi) veya asetik asit (sirke asidi). Asit düzenleyiciler: Yiyeceklerin asit baz dengesini ayarlamak için kullanılırlar. Asitler veya başka mineraller de kullanılabilir. Dengeleyiciler: Emülgatörlere yardımcı olmak için, yani formülün kısa sürede ayrışmasını engellemek kullanılırlar. Mesela narenciye kabuklarında bolca bulunan pektin. Emülgatörler: Su ve yağ normalde birbiriyle karışmadığı için bu iki maddenin birlikte çözünmesini sağlarlar. Aksi taktirde dondurma veya mayonez yiyemezsiniz. Gıda boyaları: Gıdanın rengini istenen seviyeye getirmek için kullanılırlar. Kıvam arttırıcılar: Gıdanın tadını bozmadan kıvamını arttırmak (yani cıvıklığını azaltmak) için kullanılırlar. Mesela jöle yapımında kullanılan jelatin. Koruyucular: Gıdanın mantar, bakteri veya diğer mikroorganizmalar tarafından bozulmasını önlerler. Köpürtücüler ve köpük önleyiciler: Sırasıyla, gıdanın köpürmesini sağlarlar ve önlerler. Kütle arttırıcılar: Gıdanın miktarını tadını değiştirmeden arttırmak için kullanılırlar,

asl baz daha peki ayr tan katalog hem yine dolay as it yapay mesela sizi aksi tamamen

05.10.2013 Ukeslutt

Ukeslutt

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2013 60:35

USA og Russland ber Norge ta imot kjemiske våpen fra Syria. ETT TUSEN tonn nervegass og kjemikalier skal ødelegges. - Må vi reise, spør 7 år gamle Asit. Asylbarna ble lurt av Krf og Venstre, mener Natans rednignskvinne. og Siv Jensen liker å sloss, sier kinesisk astrolog, som gjerne hjelper henne med temperamentet .

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How to Lose Your Audience: 5 Easy Keys to Having a Public Speaking Fail