A friend of mine, Mike, who I haven’t spoken to in several years, sent me an email this morning about my previous posts about moving my server to another hosting provider. Normally, this wouldn’t be worthy of a post on my blog, but he shared a practice that is worth sharing. In addition, his reaching out to me reinforces the power of social media for starting new conversations with people you haven’t talked with in several years.
Mike shared with me his frustrations he had with viruses that plagued his wife’s computer, running Windows XP. Between July and September of last year, he had to reload her laptop three times due to malware.
He also wrote about how a friend gave him a Live CD with Linux on it so he could determine if it would be a viable solution for him. As Mike was investigating Linux, he learned about how insecure his laptop was and the ability using this CD, to overwrite anything on any directory of his laptop. To put it in his words “You could drive a truck through that security hole”.
After installing Linux on his wife’s computer, Mike has not had to deal with any more viruses. Because of his success with Linux on his wife’s laptop, earlier this year he decided to purchase another hard drive for his laptop and installed Linux.
Mike travels frequently throughout the year to customers outside of the U.S. and was concerned about viruses that he spent so much time cleaning up on his wife’s laptop. So his practice when travelling is to bring the additional Linux hard drive and to only use that when he plugs into the internet. Most of the software he needs for work still requires Windows XP which means that he needs to be able to dual boot.
A couple of months ago, Mike purchased a new laptop and made Linux is primary operating system. He is using VMWare on it to run the few Windows XP applications required for his work and is thrilled with the results.
What practices do you use to avoid viruses and spyware?
Beware of Clichés and Sound Bites
After reading Ken Faw’s post on We can’t afford to hide out, I commented about how my upbringing may have played a role in my natural tendencies to be quiet, listen and be respectful. The specific phrase I wrote in the comment was “Seen and not heard”. I’ve been thinking a lot about that phrase lately and how accepting cliché’s and sound bites without thinking through what they mean to us personally is very dangerous. Let me explain.
Cliché’s and sound bites are created to be easily remembered and overtime become overused. They sound good and because you have heard the same expression repeatedly and have grown to accept it without thinking. And therein lies the problem – accepting something without really thinking about it.
As I started thinking about “Seen and not heard” it occurred to me that this phrase is only powerful in certain situations. For young children in a serious, grown up places like a religious service or funeral, it makes sense for kids to be “Seen and not heard”. On the other hand, for adults to be “Seen and not heard” in a business setting is not good if they want to show up to their bosses and colleagues as valuable to their organizations.
When you are working with people in a business setting, you are compensated for your skills and knowledge that you bring to an organization. So speaking is an obligation or duty you have as an employee or colleague to contribute to make the business more effective, productive and profitable. This doesn’t mean rambling on without purpose, it means that when you have something to say speak up.
What other cliché’s have you accepted without thinking about them? How do you think about them now?