Personal

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    Just Doing What’s In Front of You

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Let’s face it, we all have things that we haven’t had space for in the last couple of years. If you are holding off on using PTO because you can’t make the big travel adventure happen right now, why not use that time to create that space? Personally, we had a couple of weeks in October scheduled for an anniversary trip overseas that has since been canceled. I haven’t canceled the PTO for one simple reason, I still want to use those 2 weeks to create the space, mentally, to do some of the things I’ve been too busy to do, like figure out where I actually want my career to go instead of just doing the work that’s in front of me, or indulge in some of those hobbies that have fallen by the wayside, or maybe even try and catch up with some friends virtually. 

    We all need that space, and it keeps getting harder and harder to find it. There’s nothing wrong with doing the work that is in front of us, professionally and personally. Frankly, if you can keep going and getting those things done in this environment, you are to be commended. On the other hand, just doing that prevents us from making changes and doing things differently. It keeps us stuck, and I know far too many people who are stuck right now, waiting for the space to make changes. 

    Make that space, any way you can. Give yourself the PTO you deserve. 

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    As a Straight, White, Male – Why Now is a Great Time to Attend Employee Resource Group Meetings

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Luckily, with everything having remote options now, it’s actually pretty easy to pop in and simply listen without really being noticed, or at least, feeling a bit better about not being noticed.

    And, really, you should. Everyone should. Not because you necessarily have anything to add, but because you have an opportunity to listen.

    Listening to different groups of people talk about their issues will open your eyes to the things that we, as white men, don’t notice. It gives us the opportunity to hear about racism and sexism that still happens to real people that we know and interact with every day. The stories about things like street harassment aren’t happening to random women complaining online, they are happening to the same women I just spent hours working through a project with, the people who’ve been victims of racist violence aren’t random names in the news, they are the folks we were just chatting about the weather with before a conference call, and collaborating with on documentation for the last week. The things we might read about adding pronouns to an email signature make it sound like a decent thing to do, but hearing someone you work with talk about how life-affirming it is to not be the “one” person at the company doing it? Yeah, it hits different when you hear that from someone you know.

    So, as much as I have gone about my professional life glad that there were resource groups available but not really paying much attention to them, I’ve recently made a change and tried to drop in and listen where I could. It’s been a challenge. These are not fun, light, conversations. They shouldn’t be.

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    Linked: 35 years ago ‘rock porn’ Senate hearings made a free-speech showdown

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Young people may not remember this, but I was 17-18 when this was happening, and I remember it well. And, mostly, I remember this lesson:   Diving into this 1985 time capsule is instructive in showing just how fevered arguments over the boundaries of free expression almost always are. These hearings also demonstrate how moral…

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    Talking Privacy and Security on the Nuix Unscripted Podcast

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    Corey Tomlinson from Nuix reached out after reading my blog post about their software demo to engage me in a conversation with him and Hoke Smith, also from Nuix, about the issues raised. Specifically, we wanted to talk about the fine lines organizations walk between monitoring their network and devices for misuse or data leak,…

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    Linked: Sale of 4 Million Stolen Cards Tied to Breaches at 4 Restaurant Chains

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    Krebs lists the details, but really does it matter? There have been so many breaches that I think we’d all do well to just follow this advice: Just remember that while consumers are not liable for fraudulent charges, it may still fall to you the consumer to spot and report any suspicious charges. So keep a close…