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Just Admit You Were Wrong

When you passionately push opinions, it sucks to be proven wrong later. It’s happened to me plenty of times, and I’ve learned to simply correct the record as I go. Doing so keeps me honest.

What follows are posts I’ve done here and in my work-related blogs when I’ve had a change of heart.

The lesson: When you’re wrong, just admit it. It’s the right thing to do, and it will keep your credibility intact.

“The Women at RSA Conference 2015“
A couple years ago I suggested that renowned writer Violet Blue had no business speaking at BSidesSF because she wasn’t a security practitioner and this was a security conference. As I got to know her work better over time, I realized she did indeed bring something to the table.

“Revisiting My Earlier Argument About Security Curmudgeons“
In May 2011, while writing the Salted Hash blog for CSOonline, I wrote a post called “Take the Word Curmudgeon and Shove It.” I took aim at those in the industry who pride themselves on being cynical and suggested that they cut the vitriol. I still see this as a problem, but back then I painted the community with too wide a brush.

“I Was Wrong About Lance Armstrong“
When Lance Armstrong was first accused of doping, I defended him. I saw someone who had overcome cancer to rise to the top of his game, so I argued that he didn’t deserve to be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. Time and additional evidence proved me wrong, so I said so.

“The Danger of False Memories“
I didn’t own up to any specific misjudgment in this post. But I did note that in a semi-autobiographical blog, it’s easy to mis-remember the past.

“Spectre of the Past” by EddieTheYeti
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To the Cop Who Stopped Dimebag’s Killer

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the murder of Pantera/Damageplan guitarist Darrell Lance Abbott.

For metalheads like me, the loss of “Dimebag Darrell” was painful. But for James Niggemeyer, the cop who stopped shooter Nathan Gale before he could kill anyone else, life has been hell.

Mood music:

More people almost certainly would have died that night at Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio, where Damageplan was just beginning to play as the shooting started. Jeff “Mayhem” Thompson, the band’s head of security, was killed tackling Gale, as was Alrosa Villa employee Erin Halk. Audience member Nathan Bray was killed while trying to perform CPR on Abbott and Thompson.

Niggemeyer has been called a hero since firing the kill shot that ended Gale’s rampage, and he certainly deserved to be called that. But he hasn’t felt very heroic.

He told The Columbus Dispatch that he’s no longer a police officer. According to the article, he remained on patrol for three years after Dimebag’s murder, but the city eventually decided, with the advice of doctors, that he shouldn’t be a first responder. He was transferred to the robbery section as a detective. He told the paper:

I found out real quickly that you don’t have any control over your brain. It’s going to do what it’s going to do. Cops are regular human beings. Things affect us the same way they affect everyday citizens. We relive it and have to deal with the aftermath.

I was going to write an open letter to Niggemeyer, telling him how great I think he is. but I’m down and people try to buck me up by telling me how appreciated I am, it tends to make things worse. I appreciate the sentiment, but it usually leaves me wondering why people feel that way when I feel like such a mess.

And I don’t have PTSD. I suspect Niggemeyer feels that way times 10.

So I’ll end this post with a prayer for the former officer. I hope and pray he finds peace and a way forward and that he is able to appreciate his blessings more easily with the passage of time.

James Niggemeyer

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Depressed Minds, Not Beaten Souls

In 2011, I was sobered by a report in USA Today that said 1 in 100 adults had planned their suicide in the year leading up to the article —  a statistic that didn’t surprise me, knowing what I do about depression.

Mood music:

I’ve suffered a lot of depression in my day. I’m experiencing it right now. While I’ve never seriously considered ending it, I can easily see how someone in that state of mind could head in that direction.

From that 2011 report:

There’s a suicide every 15 minutes in the United States, and for every person who takes his or her own life there are many more who think about, plan or attempt suicide, according to a federal report released Thursday.

The analysis of 2008-09 data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that … more than 2.2 million adults (1.0 percent) reported making suicide plans in the past year, and more than 1 million (0.5 percent) said they attempted suicide in the past year, according to the researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

I think I just got lucky. Or, more likely, my religious beliefs made suicide a line I wouldn’t cross. Instead, I dove head-first into a self-destructive existence, where I lived for my addictions.

Perhaps subconsciously, as I binged my way to 280 pounds and ate painkillers for breakfast (I was prescribed them for chronic back pain), I was slowly trying to kill myself. A troubled mind can easily rationalize that it’s not suicide if you’re not jumping off a building, pointing a gun at your head or wrapping a noose around your neck. Fortunately, I came to my senses before I could finish the job.

But I’ve seen relatives get hospitalized for suicidal talk and my best friend became one of the tragic statistics on November 15, 1996. When depression takes hold of the vulnerable mind, you stop thinking clearly and, at some point, you lose full control of sane actions and thought. Some people think suicides were simply cowards who couldn’t cope with life’s everyday challenges. But they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Depression lurks like a vulture, waiting for you to get just tired enough to submit to the torture.

I’ve learned to see my own depression as just another chronic illness that comes and goes. I’ve learned, in a strange way, to still be happy when I’m depressed most of the time. That sounds fucked up, but it’s the best way I can describe it.

Being lucky enough to have reached that point, I’ve made it my mission to help break the stigma.

Sadness and suicidal thoughts need not be the end. For a lot of people I know, it turned out to be just the beginning of a life full of wisdom and beauty.

The report understates an important point:

1 in 100 adults plotted suicide; 99 did not.

That doesn’t mean the 99 weren’t troubled, depressed and going through difficult times. But whatever the difficulties, they soldiered on. Just as I do today.

Because a depressed mind rarely equals a beaten soul.

Left hand with writing: I am stronger than Depression

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Eleanor Roosevelt Was a Badass

I’ve always admired Eleanor Roosevelt. She defied the society of her day and forged a new path for women. She was a tireless fighter for the disadvantaged. During WWII, she traveled to the front to visit the troops, despite the danger. She was an early fighter for civil rights. One of her most famous quotes was to do something every day that scares you.

The older she got, the more badass she became.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/ede2_tuZJp8

In the 1950s, when she was in her late 60s and early 70s, she insisted on driving around the country to promote her various causes. The Secret Service freaked. A former First Lady was a tempting target, especially given her support of civil rights. That made driving around the South particularly perilous.

As a compromise, she agreed to pack a pistol.

I remember learning about that during a visit to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y. But I had forgotten about it until Slate published a picture of her firearms license.

She didn’t let danger stop her, and she certainly didn’t let her age or sex stop her.

Have a look, and be inspired.

Eleanor Roosevelt's pistol license

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Cancer: Faces of Bravery, Faces of Fear

The photos tell the tale clearly. Beth Whaanga, mother of four, has been through hell. She has the scars to prove it. And when she decided to show the world, people on Facebook unfriended her.

Mood music:

Whaanga has been in a long and brutal battle against cancer. Multiple surgeries have left her body mangled, though when fully clothed, the scars are hidden. She chose to reveal those scars in a photo series called “Under the Red Dress.” According to The Huffington Post, she lost 103 Facebook friends over it.

“When Beth posted these images on Facebook, 103 of them UNFRIENDED her immediately,” columnist Rebecca Sparrow wrote. “Some felt the images were inappropriate or even pornographic.”

Some say the people who did so are jerks, uptight prudes who prefer that life’s unfair twists remain hidden from view.

I prefer to think that they just acted on fear. They see the danger to their own lives and those of their loved ones in the photos. The first thing most people do in the face of fear is turn and run away. We’ve all done that. I certainly have. The hope is that over time we learn to turn back and face the fear. In time, I think at least some of them will.

What Whaanga did was brave and beautiful. She shows us that despite the damage she suffered, life goes on. She continues to live and love.

I know too many people with cancer. Some are distant friends, some are in my immediate family. They’ve shown bravery in the face of cancer in their own ways, but I hope Whaanga’s photos offer them additional inspiration and hope.

red dress

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The Courage of Brian Krebs

Brian Krebs has been kind enough to compliment me on this blog a few times, telling me I have courage for writing about the demons. Today I celebrate Krebs’ courage, which is far more formidable than anything I could ever hope to possess.

Mood music:

For years at The Washington Post (which foolishly cut him loose) and more recently through Krebs on Security, the man has relentlessly investigated online crime and written scores of groundbreaking articles on his findings.

Hackers lurking deep in the bowels of the Internet’s seedy underbelly have good reason to hate Krebs’ guts. This is the guy who broke news of the recent Target breach, not to mention most of the other big security stories that went mainstream in recent memory.

And the bad guys aren’t happy. In the past they have:

  • Sent poop and heroin to Krebs’ doorstep
  • Stolen his identity half a dozen times
  • Targeted his website with withering denial-of-service attacks
  • Triggered a SWAT team raid on his home just as his mom was arriving for dinner

None of it has stopped Krebs.

As a journalist, I always envied the man. You could say I hated him as much as the black hats of the underground. Too many times to count, I had to follow up on news stories he broke for the sake of getting headlines on my employers’ sites. It always frustrated me that he could sniff out the tough stuff. It often made me feel inferior.

This was the typical newsroom conversation:

Editor: Did you see that Krebs post? We have to have something on that.

Me, in standard reporter denial mode: Fuck Krebs. He’s not writing about where the security industry is headed. All he writes about is the latest cybercrime.

Editor: Yeah, and he’s winning. Follow it up.

Me: Fuuuuuuuuck.

But in time, I came to appreciate and admire him. I even started to see him as a hero.

Though still a writer, I’m no longer a reporter chasing news, and that has allowed me to shed the last of the biases I may have held against Krebs.

Or, maybe more to the point, it allows me to admit something I probably wouldn’t have acknowledged in those earlier roles — I was jealous of the man’s tenacity and balls. Jealous with a capital J.

Krebs’ boldness has captured a lot of headlines lately, including this one in The New York Times, whose editors were probably delighted to remind The Washington Post of how stupid it was to fire him.

He has also received a lot of awards lately. Tuesday, for example, the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group awarded him its M3AAWG Mary Litynski Award at the organization’s meeting Tuesday in San Francisco. In announcing it, the group said:

With an intense passion and impressive self-taught technical skill, investigative journalist Brian Krebs has persistently and courageously shed a rare light on the dark underbelly of the Internet that has resulted in the disruption or shutdown of innumerable cybercrime operations.

The award and comments are well earned.

Congrats, my friend. The world is a better place because you’re in it.

Brian KrebsKrebs at work. Photo by Daniel Rosenbaum/New York Times News Service

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Proof That Mental Illness Needn’t Be A Career Killer

A few months back, I was interviewed for a Forbes article on people who turned their mental illnesses into a career strength. I’m happy to discover there are more success stories to share.

Mood music:

A good friend forwarded me “Why I Hired an Executive with a Mental Illness” by Rob Lachenauer, CEO and a co-founder of Banyan Family Business Advisors. Lachenauer describes hiring someone after a job interview in which the candidate came right out and told him she had a mental illness and was on medication. He writes:

My reaction to the candidate’s disclosure was, frankly, disbelief — disbelief that she found the courage to make herself so vulnerable before she was hired. She had to be interviewed by other members of the firm before I could invite her to join us, but we did hire her — and over the past few years, she has become not only a core member of our team, but a large part of the glue that holds the firm together.

He correctly points out that while The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prevents employers from discriminating against people who have a mental illness, the discrimination still happens a lot. In fact, he notes, when he told a former VP of a major investment banking firm about his column, he warned him against publishing it. “Clients are afraid to work with firms that have mentally ill people on the professional staff,” the former VP told him.

I’m glad that didn’t stop Lachenauer from running with it, and I’m grateful he gave that job applicant a chance to prove herself.

I outed myself when I was already comfortably entrenched in my job, having proven myself a thousand times over. I still felt I was taking a risk by starting this blog, but my bosses and colleagues turned out to be very supportive.

By the time I interviewed for my current job, the blog was already well known in the industry. My current boss had been reading my work by that point, and my continued blogging about life with OCD, depression and anxiety was not an item up for debate.

I’ve been fortunate, and I’m happy to see, through stories like Lachenauer’s, that the needle continues to move in the right direction.

leader

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Sending Our Kids to Another School

After weeks of agonizing, debating, praying and researching, Erin and I made the painful but necessary decision to move the kids from the only school they’ve ever known to someplace new.

Mood music:

In three weeks, Sean and Duncan won’t be starting school at St. Joseph’s in Haverhill. Instead, they’re going to St. Augustine’s in Andover.

We love the St. Joe’s community and always will. But the bottom line is that both boys have extra needs the school simply isn’t equipped to provide. Sean needs more of an academic challenge in the next two years, as he sets his sights on getting into a prestigious, private high school. Duncan needs an environment better equipped to meet the needs of his IEP (Individualized Education Program). St. Joe’s has struggled to do what’s needed for a child with ADHD.

We’re excited to send them to St. Augustine’s, which has many more resources to meet those needs. But getting to that decision was hard. And telling the kids was even harder.

Like many parents, we instinctively want to shield our children from trauma. Few traumas are greater to kids than being sent to another school, particularly when they’ve been in the same place since pre-school. As expected, they were upset when we told them. There were tears and protests. We were emotionally spent by day’s end.

The next morning, we took them to the new school for admissions testing and a tour. We spent more than half the morning there, and by the time we were done, the kids were smiling. They still have their anxieties about the unknown. They are not jumping for joy, and they won’t be. But by the time we left, I think they knew this was for the best and that they were going to be just fine.

They know they’ll make new friends, and we’ve made it clear that we’ll help them stay connected to their St. Joe’s friends. Doing so won’t be difficult. We’re still parishioners of the school’s parent church, All Saints. Sean is still part of the church youth group and will see many of his friends there. And both boys are still Scouts, which will ensure another level of continuity.

In the final analysis playing it safe was unacceptable to us. Kids are going to have tough experiences in their lives and need to learn to roll with it. As parents, we have to give them our time and attention and help them stay on the right path. But we also must take occasional risks, upsetting the balance in the face of opportunity, teaching them to do the same.

And so we have.

The New School

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Amputee OT Shows Us How to Have Fun With Adversity

I found some information about Christina Stephens, the amputee who made herself a limb out of LEGOs. The video of her making the leg was inspiring on its own, but there’s more to this woman than becoming a YouTube sensation.

It turns out she has made a series of videos about life as an amputee. Here’s footage of her the day after her amputation:

Her YouTube channel has dozens of clips of her learning to live without part of her leg and mastering the use of her new prosthetic. She also has a Facebook page.

Stephens, a practicing occupational therapist, clinical researcher and peer educator, was working on her car in mid-January when its supports gave way and the car crushed her foot. In one video, she shows viewers her black toes and explains why she chose to have her lower leg removed instead of trying to salvage it.

Through it all, her humor and grit is on full display. The LEGO project has gotten much of the attention because LEGOs are fun. But most of these videos are fun, because that’s the approach she decided to take. I’ve never lost a limb, but it has to be one of the more traumatic experiences a human being can have. I’m sure she’s having her share of inner pain. But she’s showing others that something like this isn’t the end of the world, that living life to the full is never beyond our reach.

It comes down to attitude.

We’ve seen a few stories about amputees displaying grit and courage in recent months, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings. They smile for the camera as they go through the painful process of getting on with artificial limbs. One of the best examples is that of Jeff Bauman, who lost both legs in the attack. Some of the most dramatic photos of that day are of him being rushed from the scene in a wheelchair, his legs clearly blown to shreds.

I’m sorry they’ve gone through this. But I’m also grateful to them for showing us the way. We’re all lucky to have them around.

Amputee OT
Photo courtesy of Amputee OT.

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The First Victim of 9/11

I’ve been studying up on Akamai Technologies’s history since starting work in the InfoSec department earlier this month. One of the coolest and most moving lessons has been a study of company co-founder Danny Lewin, who died aboard Flight 11 on 9/11 when terrorists drove it into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Mood music:

Lewin is actually considered the first casualty of that terrible day because he was killed during an attempt to stop the hijacking. I wrote about it in “InfoSec Central To Lewin’s Legacy” in the Akamai Blog. Check it out!

Thanks.

Daniel M. Lewin