How many of you know about the Nigerian Prince scam? You know, the one where you get an email from a Nigerian prince who is trapped somewhere and can't move his money, and needs your help to get out of danger, for which he will share a percentage of his wealth with you for your help. And all he needs is your bank account number to begin the process. For those of you still waiting to hear back from Prince Chetachukwu, I would advise you to make a call to the credit bureaus when you get a chance.
<-------- this guy did not email you.
For everyone else, there is apparently an updated version of this for the current events going on. Apparently, a new scam involves using the same idea but in the scope of relief funds to be redistributed, or a small business that needs to make financial maneuvers in order to avoid a crippling bankruptcy, that kind of thing. If you want to read anymore about it, here's a link.
I, like many of you, have been forced to stay indoors and not work, and it has pushed my perspective and focus onto subjects it might not have been previously. Under normal circumstances, I would be engrossed in sports right now, because we would have just finished an NCAA tournament and the NBA playoffs would be fast approaching. The NFL draft would loom larger than it already does, since they are going out of their way to ensure that it can still occur in some form. Still, it is tough to focus on things like sports the same way, even with the early release of a 10-part documentary about the Jordan-era Chicago Bulls, called the Last Dance. If you haven't seen the first two episodes yet, stop reading this and go watch those right now. Seriously, this is not as important as that, you need to see it. It's awesome. And I need all the episodes to drop so I can watch the whole thing back to back in one sitting.
But alas, here I am, trying to stay busy, and for the most part doing alright. I've been reading more, I've been working out every day, brushing up on a few types of coding, I've been drinking...less than before. Also, been playing a larger amount of video games online, can't deny that. Oh, and I finally have time to tinker with some more tech-related things I used to study. For example, I was playing around with a virtual machine version of Kali Linux, and I started trying out different exploitation tools on our home wireless network to see what kind of vulnerabilities we've left open on our devices. This one program, Spartan, lets you scan all IP addresses on a network within a certain range and then will give you a rundown of all the different ports that may be vulnerable for each IP address. Another, Wireshark, is a well known packet analyzer that can break down the traffic of every single bit that passes through, detailing where it came from, its destination, what protocol it deals with, which computer port, and what was being delivered. Am I saying I'm becoming paranoid or willing to use these tools for more nefarious motivations?
Anyway, I've been reading and listening to podcasts about cyber security. It's interesting to get perspective, from people that used to exploit for bad or questionable reasons to those who spend all day defending against that first group, people that work in HR of these groups, people that do ethical hacking, all sorts of groups. There's also a ton of stuff on YouTube that either discusses what you're interested in, or actually demonstrates it for those of us that want to become familiar. And they all seem to hit on one idea in one way or another: the most important part of starting a career in this field is persistence.
Regardless of background, age, initial aptitude, ect., there's a ton of information. And the ones that every group seemed to want to work with were the individuals who never got discouraged, who kept churning and kept trying to learn and would not give up on whatever task they were working on. I suppose there are a lot of fields where a formal education is just as important, but obviously persistence will win out against educated and informed but lazy. At least sometimes. Maybe. Eventually.
I know all about needing to stick with something to get real traction with it, and trying and trying and getting basically nowhere and trying again, and still not getting anywhere, and then getting better, but then still not getting to enjoy it because everyone else around you got better than you. I know all about that. You see, I used to play basketball. Used to.
Well, the honest truth is, I used to be a scrub at basketball.
Picture a goofy, 5'3 kid with long arms and not much coordination trying to run back and forth, dribbling and shooting terribly, usually forgetting whatever plays were called, that had hills and valleys of confidence in what he was doing. All through elementary and middle school, I tried and tried to get better as a skill player who could shoot from all over and could handle the ball well enough to shred defenses and get to the basket at will. I tried to watch enough basketball so I could understand the game and be able to see things happening while the games were happening in real time. I tried to will myself to grow so I wasn't so disproportionate to everyone I had to guard against.
Didn't work so well.
I was never a very good shooter, for one. It didn't seem to matter how many shots I would take at practice, in the park, or at home on our own hoop. Sometimes it would be consistently close, other times it wasn't. Which is why I think it was always a matter of confidence, which I struggled with all through middle and high school. I used to go to all of these summer camps for basketball and I would work on shooting and ball handling drills , and eventually I became better, not great, at ball handling. But I was always one of the smaller kids on the court anytime I was playing in those days. And in basketball, being tall comes in handy. And, worst of all, no matter how much I worked at it, I always found myself getting too caught up in the moment when the games came down to the wire. I could never slow down and remember what the plan was. Every damn time I was in at the last moments of a game, I found myself watching instead of keeping focused on what needed to be done.
The only real reason I kept making the teams were because of the kind of shape I was in. I could run up and down the court with the other kids and have a lot more energy than they did most of the time. I could defend most kids that were bigger and more developed than me, I could jump with a lot of the taller kids and still come away with rebounds, and I always fed off of the other team's players when they got frustrated. So if I could make a play or two, and it made a difference, then I would get motivated and try to feed off of that.
So, somewhere in between 7th and 8th grade, I was playing a game in the gym and a guy on the other team stole the ball from me. We were right near half court, and I tried to fake him out or something, and he picked the ball right away and was going for a breakaway. So out of frustration, I run after him, and I figured I was too far back to do anything, he was going to get the layup easily, so I was thinking I would just jump up and try to touch the backboard, just kind of to see if I could even get up that high. And the next thing I know, my hand hits something large and I lose my balance as I push against it, and have to kind of twist around to land on my feet. And I realize that the ball is in my hand somehow.
I later found out that I didn't technically goaltend the other kid's shot, because I touched it before it touched the backboard, so technically it was a legal block. But the thing that stood out in my mind was not that I had made a good basketball move. I was surprised I could get up that high. I had never really focused on it before, but one of our coaches mentioned that I should come out to track and field that spring when basketball was over that year. So I did. I tried long and high jump and ran sprints, eventually doing triple jump too. And you know what? I was a scrub at that too for a while. Among the kids who really knew what they were doing, I was nothing special when I first started.
But I liked it, it was fun to be faster or a better jumper than other kids. So I kept working at it, learned some technique, and kept going, and I grew a little, and got stronger, and eventually I got really good at a few events in track. And so that's what I focused on after my freshman year of high school and ultimately college. I played basketball for two more years because I have always enjoyed basketball, between playing it and watching it. That's ultimately why any of this happened in the first place. I found something I liked doing and wanted to do it better. And I was willing to keep trying to get better even when I clearly wasn't getting better and was embarrassing myself over and over. Maybe that's the best reason that any of us do anything.
Persistence really does matter, even if it doesn't work out for the reason you think it will. Keep pushing yourself, and adjust your approach when necessary. The evolution of the Nigerian Prince scam can attest to that. They say, "find something you love to do and you'll never work a day in your life." My version goes, "find something that you'll keep doing while you suck at it."
See ya later.
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