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21 Days of Posts – Day 3 – My Driving Music

Reading Time: 3 minutes

This is day three of twenty-one days of posts between January 10th and January 30th of 2021. Hello again to those who read previous days, and hello to those of you who may have stumbled across this post “out of order”. You should go back and read from Day 1, for a few reasons. It explains why I am doing this. It is the first one, and I may make reference to something in it in this post or a later one. It also has a list with each day’s post (once they are available) and you can jump to whatever topic you are interested in. Thanks for reading!

I love music. Anyone who has read any of my posts relating to music knows that. I love all kinds of music. I like music to be playing pretty much any time except when I am asleep. Then it tends to bother me…

One place I like to have what I call “my own music” is in the car. I hate being dependent on the radio to provide me with music during my short commute back and forth to work. There is no skip or back button anywhere for the radio. Needless to say, I vastly prefer to have my own music in the form of an iPod in one of our cars, and a USB thumb drive in the other.

Why so particular?

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21 Days of Posts – Day 2 – My Current Writing Project

Reading Time: 4 minutes

This is day two of twenty-one days of posts between January 10th and January 30th of 2021. Hello again to those who read Day 1, and hello to those of you who may have stumbled across this post “out of order”. You should go back and read from Day 1, for a few reasons. It explains why I am doing this. It is the first one, and I may make reference to something in it in this post or a later one. It also has a list with each day’s post (once they are available) and you can jump to whatever topic you are interested in. Thanks for reading!

Welcome to day two! Today’s topic is under the main topic of writing, but specifically about my active project, my fantasy novel.

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month happens every year in November, and I participated again this year. I decided to be a NaNoWriMo rebel this year and continue to write on an existing work in progress. I picked my fantasy novel, which had a solid 50,000 words already from two years ago. After adding another 50,000 words to it this past November, I realize it will take yet another 50,000, minimum, to finish it.

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21 Days of Posts – Day 1 – Give Me Patience…Now!

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I’m serious. I want patience now.

Now!

Alright, I won’t get patience now, I get it. Before I discuss that, let me welcome you to 21 days of posts, 2021 edition. I did this last year in January as part of my annual fast. The experience was good, so I decided to do it again this year, with a couple of twists.

I covered a variety of topics last year, from faith discussions to my favorite bands. This year, I am limiting my main topics to these three – faith, writing, and music. Under these main topics, I will have seven subtopics each for a total of twenty-one topics, one for each of the twenty-one days. I’ll rotate through the topics, starting with faith, then writing, then music, then back to faith, and so on.

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It Starts Tomorrow…

Reading Time: 2 minutesTomorrow begins 21 consecutive days of posts on my blog. This endeavor is part of my annual fast. I was successful in this last year, so I hope I will be again. I have determined all of the topics I am going to write on, but not the order.

I am limiting my main topics to three items this year – faith, music, and writing. I will rotate through these topics, starting with faith on day one, then moving to writing on day two, then music on day three, then back to faith on day four until the 21 days are ended. In addition, I am also attempting to journal every day for 21 days during this time, which will be private and not available for public consumption, unless my journal entry wanders across one of my planned post topics. I hope to do 300-500 words for each journal entry, but I am going to be flexible on this, as I am more concerned with the blog posts.

Other items of my fast include refraining from visiting news sites, social media, and similar websites that tend to take up a lot of my time. I hope the time I gain from avoiding these sites is adequate to give me enough time to write my post every day and make an entry in my journal. I am using Notion to write my journal, and sometime after the fast is over, I will write an article on my experience using it. (Note to self – put this on my publication calendar)

Abstaining from the sites mentioned above will leave me somewhat ignorant of current events, which at this point is probably a good thing. The world, our country, and many other aspects of life are in a total mess right now anyway. I know I won’t totally avoid some information and events, but the more I can leave out of my daily thoughts, the better.

Following this course over the next 21 days will leave little time for writing in my fantasy novel, but I hope the time away will help me move forward once I start back at it. I have some daunting tasks ahead of me, including continuing to world build, develop characters, tie together my narrative and make sure that the story moves along and makes sense. I have 100,000 words written in my first draft and I expect to do at least 50,000 more to come close to completing the book. I hope and pray that I can stick with this project starting in February. I really need to finish a book.

I encourage you to drop by the for next 21 days as I post each day. Each entry will be written, edited and posted on the corresponding day, so they may post late in the evening, but I hope to always finish before midnight, so that each day has a post. It will be challenging, fun and interesting for me, and I hope it is for you also, dear reader.

 

Featured Image: Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash

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A New Era

Reading Time: 2 minutesA new era is about to begin, at least in reference to this website. With 2020 now thankfully in the pages of history, I have decided on some radical changes to this site and my web presence.

First, and most importantly for those who actually read this and aren’t here just to spam the comment section, the address of this site is changing. The winsome “quietly passing by me” address is going away in favor of something leaner, quicker to type, and more…representative.

The new address will be QPB.one. That’s right, six little letters (and a period) will get you to the site. Way back when I first picked the “quietly passing by me” address, it was an opportunity to go on the cheap for my web domain. I cost a mere $0.99 for that domain the first year. Of course, it was twenty times as much when I renewed, but it had grown on me, so I kept it.

I liked the domain, it was quirky and fun, but I’ve recently been making changes in other parts of my digital life, so it was time for it to go. It will no longer get you to this page as of February 2021. The domain will probably disappear for a time, maybe to be picked up by some other blogger and author. Who knows?

I was going to go simple and just get the address “QPB.me”…until I saw the price. Apparently, that is a premium domain and the initial cost was $1000. Yep, you read that right, one thousand dollars. Being the budget conscious blogger that I am, I decided not just no, but #$%@ no. This led me to other potential TLDs (top level domains – i.e. .com, .org, etc.) and I came across the .one TLD. Cool. Now my quirky address could be nonspecific. Huh?

My previous address suggested that things or people “quietly passed by me”, but now with the nonspecific “one”, things could be passing by me OR they could be passing by the reader. I still wanted the much shorter “QPB” and guess what? It was available and at a bargain. I am now saving over $10 on domain costs a year, and that wasn’t an introductory price. It will cost the same next year when I renew. Cool.

Second, I am retiring the Security Is site and wrapping the one article I published there into the soon to be renamed QPB site. I have enough WordPress sites to maintain as it is and there is no real reason to put security stuff on its own site. I now have moved that article, added an InfoSec category to my category list, and will begin to use tags to more specifically denote what topics are being covered in a post. So you will see that the KINDLY article I moved here has been categorized as InfoSec and Technology, with a tag of “Social Engineering”. This should reduce my workload and make it easier for you to find my articles, because if you thought typing quietlypassingby.me was long, I’m sure you felt typing securityis.quietlypassingby.me was excruciating.

That’s it for now. Look for an article about my NaNoWriMo victory back in November in the next few days. I hope…

 

Featured Image: Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

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The KINDLY Method of Appraising Email

Reading Time: 3 minutesI wanted to discuss a topic that everyone deals with at some point – email.

Specifically, how do I figure out if an email is valid? Have I really won millions of dollars from a  lottery in another country? Does the president of my company really need me to send a purchase order for thousands of dollars right now? Does a foreign diplomat really need my help transferring millions of dollars into my country? Emails that use these approaches seem outlandish and easy to spot as fake, but a surprising number of people fall for these tactics every day.

Fake emails, also known as spam (but this is actually a different kind of email, with a different goal), phishing, spear-phishing, social engineering and other colorful names are sent by the millions every day to people all over the world. Many are far more subtle than the ones listed above. How do you tell what is real and what is fake?

There are all kinds of red flags that I can talk about, and methods of determining the validity of emails have been floated by information security bloggers and writers for years, but I offer this method as a quick reality check. I call it the KINDLY method. It is geared mostly to English speaking recipients, as much of the logic used is based on American spelling, speaking, and writing constructs, but it can be used by non-English speakers as well. Here it is:

K – If the word “kindly” is used in the asking portion of the email, as in “to secure your account, kindly log in with your username and password”, this is the first red flag. No English speaking person routinely uses “kindly” in this fashion in either writing or speech. This same idea holds true for other words and phrases that seem idiosyncratic and out of place, regardless of the language used.

I – Incorrect grammar and spelling. If the emails contains poor grammar or incorrect spelling, especially if purports to be “official correspondence”, it is most likely spam. This is, believe it or not, intentional, and intended to weed out the security aware from the suckers. Regardless of this, it is a major red flag.

N – No association. If an email comes from a company you do not do business with, such as a bank at which you have no account, it is most likely either general spam or an attempt to steal your credentials. If you haven’t ordered a package, don’t click on the link in an email claiming it is from UPS and has your shipping information attached. More than likely, that attachment is full of malware that will install onto your computer and cause mayhem.

D – Desperate timing. Evil emailers all want to create a sense of urgency. If they can rush you into a decision to click on a link or open an attachment, they have succeeded. Our logic breaks down sometimes when presented with urgent, time sensitive issues, even if those issues are fake. If the email states the matter is urgent, or payments are due today, or they have tried multiple times to reach you, more than likely the email is fake.

L – Links/Lottery. The letter L pulls double duty in this process.

  • First, it stands for links. If an email has a link in it, you can almost always hover over the link (don’t click!) and see where it goes. If the email claims to be from Amazon, but the link goes to somewhere other than “amazon.com”, for example “amaz0n.com.ru’, a domain I just made up, but one that has some characteristics that should be pointed out. See how the “o” in the domain is actually a zero? Also, see that the domain seems to contain “amazon.com”, but doesn’t end at “.com”, but actually ends in “.ru”. Spammers, malware spreaders, and phishers all use tactics like this to make links appear to be valid upon first glance.
  • Second, L stands for lottery. The plain fact of the matter is that NO ONE wins a lottery they never entered and you generally can’t be randomly entered into a lottery. Those millions of dollars you (supposedly) won in some lottery in another country are not real, I guarantee it.

Y – Yelling. Common Internet standards suggest that using all capital letters in an email, text, or post of any kind constitutes yelling. If you receive an email that uses all capital letters, especially when referencing large sums of money that you either won, or are available to you, you can rest assured it is fake.

So that’s it. The KINDLY method of appraising the validity of an email.

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Here We Go Again…

Reading Time: 3 minutesIt’s October 30th as I begin to write this and if you’ve read many of the articles here on my site, you know what is coming next…National Novel Writing Month otherwise known as NaNoWriMo.

Yes, the mad dash by thousands of people to put 50,000 words into a book in 30 days is back!

I was VERY hesitant to participate this year. I was the Municipal Liaison for two years for my area and I was seriously considering not even writing, much less taking on ML responsibilities in this time of COVID-19. I had long let the opportunity to ML pass me by back in late spring. I didn’t even start to consider writing until this week. It’s all the result of a NaNoWriMo email, so I completely blame them for this.

I saw the email.  I thought about what it took to write those 50,000 words every November. It was hard work. It was early mornings, which I hate. It was late nights, which make me hate the mornings even more. It was weekends planted in front of the computer making up for the words I didn’t write during the week. It was writer’s block at the worst time. It was working around (and in addition to) everything else I’m supposed to care about in these crazy times. Masks. Social distancing. Washing hands. Disinfecting. Presidential elections. Violent riots. Peaceful protests. Disinformation. Blatant lies. Social bubbles. Zoom meetings. The list could go on forever.

I considered what I could write about in the midst of all this. I didn’t want to do any kind of contemporary action thriller novel, as I felt compelled to consider this stupid virus as a contributing factor in the narrative. I’m so DONE with this virus. I’m in a vulnerable population and I’m to the point that I can barely care about it. So anything contemporary was out.

Science fiction was an option, but my head is currently filled with too many conflicting storylines. I took advantage of a trial for the Peacock streaming service to watch their rendition of Brave New World. Good stuff. Nothing like the book past a couple of characters, settings and plot devices, but really good stuff. I may do a reaction (NOT a review) post later…after November.

I also dug into the vaults of my TV series collection and I’m rewatching Revolution from back in 2012 and PaInkiller Jane from even further back in 2007.  Both of these series were cut way too short. Not as bad as Firefly which I also watched again recently, but still, too short. Revolution was one of the most well-written, interconnected storylines EVER. Just sayin’, connecting all the dots on this show was akin to figuring out Lost, which I don’t think was ever accomplished, even by its own writers…

The thought of writing about people with hidden, “super” abilities caught my attention (and my fascination, thankfully) and I finally decided to try and complete my 2017 NaNoWriMo project Apocalypse. Fifty thousand words is just scratching the surface of this story. I may do another 50,000 this November and still not be close to done. I have a glimmer of understanding as to why George R. R. Martin has such a hard time finishing his fantasy books. There’s so much story to tell. Nothing can be assumed. These are totally different realms from our world and the ideas clamor to escape the mind of the author. I get it, in my own limited way.

So, here I go again, trekking toward 50,000 words in a mere 30 days. My project is officially/unofficially named Apocalypse Part 2 and I will post my word count updates, my highs, and my lows here as the month progresses.

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What Happened in the Drive-Thru Line

Reading Time: 3 minutesIt’s funny how you can get jarred and jolted out of your everyday routine, even have your innermost thoughts, feelings, and preconceptions destroyed. It can happen in the blink of an eye. It happened to me the other day in the drive-thru line, of all places.

I have to admit, when I first saw multi-lane drive-thru setups, I told myself “this will never work well, because people are people”. I was roundly confirmed in that notion the first few times I used one, but it eventually got better. They do have their advantages. If one lane has “that person” who just can’t decide what they want, or feel the need to dictate every detail of their order multiple times, an additional lane can ease the bottleneck.

I eased into the shortest lane, hoping to get through the line faster (I never pick the fastest/shortest lane, not here, or at grocery stores, but at least here I had a 50/50 shot). Everything went well until I pulled past the order space and attempted to merge behind the car from the opposite lane. As I sat there, the car behind them eased up, obviously framing themselves to go next in the line, even though I had emerged from the order space first.

“Here we go,” my primitive brain told me. “That lady is going to completely ignore me”, along with, “she did that on purpose”. Choice words flooded my thoughts, even though the actual “damage” to me was maybe an additional 30 seconds in line. It didn’t matter-my fight or flight response was in full fight mode…in my head, anyway. I rolled up my window, turned up my music, and fuming, waited impatiently.

When we pull around to the first window to pay, I notice that the lady takes forever to pay, twice handing over her card to the cashier and receiving it back with a receipt. I fumed even more. Why did this lady have to be in my way? What possessed her to pull in front of me? Was her time that more important than mine? My mind was spinning with anger and frustration (I’m certain due to the condition of my moods and such lately, as explained in this previous post.

I rolled my car window back down as I pulled up to the payment window. As I was about to ask about a discount, the cashier interrupted me to say, “That lady before you paid your ticket.”

Huh?

Boom.

I was gobsmacked. That lady, the one I was busily insulting in my head, the one I was certain was entirely without manners, the one who cost me a few more precious seconds at the drive-thru during my all-to-brief lunch hour, had paid for my lunch. I didn’t know what to do other than ask how much was the order of the person behind me.

I got off easy…$1.07 for a sweet tea (which tells you what restaurant I was at). While my order wasn’t much more than that, I was still paying less than I would have. With limited cash in hand, and the bewildered looks on the faces of the two young women running the register, I was afraid to ask how much the order for the car two back from me was, so I paid for the sweet tea, gave them a big smile, and drove off.

As I pulled onto the highway, I had to both laugh at and berate myself for being the “jerk in the room”, because even though I had not said anything out loud, or made any rude gestures, or indicated in any way that I was upset, I had still excoriated that woman in my head. “She was the worst!” my angry brain told me, until she obviously wasn’t, and I was.

It’s funny how things happen sometimes.

Taking a deeper look at this incident, I have to acknowledge that it happened on purpose, for my benefit. I think the message is clear. God put me there, at that time, in that spot in line, behind that woman, to remind me that things are not always as they seem, and that I need to work on my love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Extra time should apparently be spent on patience, peace, and kindness. Since there is no law against these things (Galatians 5:22-23), if I can allow the Holy Spirit to develop these in me, I’ll have fewer instances like this one.

I can’t imagine the embarrassment, shame and disgrace that might have overwhelmed me if I had vocally or physically responded to this woman with the thoughts that were rattling around i my head. How terrible and awful a situation that would have been, because I would have immediately regretted it, even if she had not bought my lunch. It was only God’s grace that kept me from misbehaving.

 

Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash

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Finally, A New Post…

Reading Time: 3 minutesI haven’t posted to this site since January of this year. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’ve spent hours reworking the look and feel of the site, adding images and better navigation, but I haven’t written anything, aside from a new landing page.

So here is a post.

You would think that I would have so much stuff to write about that I couldn’t keep up. The year 2020 started out fairly normal, but between ridiculous impeachment farces, murder hornets, the “novel” coronavirus that is anything but novel, senseless violence and riots across the nation, the rise of petty tyrants in state and local governments, and this being an election year, there was indeed no shortage of things to write about. I just didn’t want to.

Every time I would start to write, the words invariably became harsh, angry, and unpleasant to read. Everything went into the digital dustbin, the zeros and ones scrambled to randomness. My mood since March when everything really started to get rolling with “the virus” and I was one of the lucky ones who could do their job remotely, has either been one of deleterious detachment, certain uncertainty, or simmering discontent. I should have felt immense gratitude that I could still work, still earn a paycheck, and not be wondering whether I could pay my mortgage or put food on my table.

I had every reason to be grateful, feel blessed, and thank my God that I was in the situation I was in. But…I didn’t. I said the words. I agreed with my friends who were in the same situation, as most of them were very grateful and said as much in our Zoom conversations. But…I wasn’t. I can’t explain why, anymore than I can explain calculus to a toddler (or anyone else, for that matter). It just wasn’t in me.

After committing to, and succeeding in writing and posting to this site for twenty-one consecutive days in January, I just stopped. The year had not yet even got rolling down the tracks toward the crazy train. I just remember that I was happy that I had written those twenty-one days and I was out of ideas. So began my slow, but inexorable slide into…my current state.

I’m trying to pull out of the slide.

Case in point, I’ve acquired a new hobby – woodworking. I’ve collected and organized a fairly good set of tools, completed my first big project (my workbench), am working on my second big project ( a new desk for my home office), and continue to be fascinated by the amount and quality of information available on the Internet. Between YouTube and other sites, I’ve learned a LOT about how to measure, cut and reconnect wood pieces together so they make things which are useful and attractive (still working on the attractive part).

Woodworking helps fill some of the void in my mood. I am awed by the output of the people on YouTube and other sites, sometimes by the absolute beauty of the work, and other times by the perfection in function. I try not to be discouraged by their success and keep reminding myself that I have just started taking baby steps in this hobby, so I have a long way to go.

Some of you who have read my blog before know that I write books, also. Well…I write parts of books. I can’t yet say I’ve written an entire book, much less had one published. Will I ever finish one? I have over ten in progress, everything from sci-fi and fantasy, to action thrillers, and even a romance. I don’t know the answer to that question. I hope so, if only for the satisfaction of completing something. 

If I am able to make myself continue posting here, expect a post about woodworking, possibly after I finish my current project, at least one post on this weirdest of election years, maybe another with an excerpt or a character sketch from one of my (incomplete) books, and maybe another “random thoughts” post like this one where I can attempt to unravel my current state of mind, or if things go well, report that I am once again mentally and emotionally in better health.

Not that anyone actually reads this blog…posting here is about the same as writing on my basement wall – no one will see it unless I specifically ask them to take a look.

Who knows? Anything could happen. If over-reaction to the virus doesn’t bankrupt us all, or we aren’t all overcome by murder hornets or assaulted by rioters, things could eventually turn around and 2020 end like any other year…but I’m not holding my breath.

 

Photo by boris misevic on Unsplash

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21 Days of Posts – Day 21 – The Christian Life – Learning and Pruning

Reading Time: 3 minutesWelcome to the last day all you who decided to follow along as I posted for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. For those of you just jumping in, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1 (which it does not), then you should stop now and go read from Day 1, or take a peek at Day 2 and pick a topic you are interested in. Thanks to those who were brave enough to join me.

Day 21!

Wow!

I did it!

I’ve posted every day for 21 days straight. Yay, me! Now for this last post…

One of the main points of this fast we do every year is to devote more time to study and prayer, or even just contemplation. When we deny ourselves things we normally do not go without, we tend to notice other things, especially if we are giving up items of food. But even if we are just staying off social media, or not continuing a bad habit, or some other act of relinquishing, we hopefully go through the thought process of “what do I do now?”.

What do we do? What do we notice as we stay away from comfortable, familiar things? If we truly take the time to study and pray more, we probably learn things. Devoting more time to the Word of God is never a waste, nor does it fail to eventually reap benefits. Did you add a devotion to your quiet time? Did you read a book or two of the Bible, or dive into a Christian learning book? These weren’t required, of course, but they could have significantly contributed to your relationship with God.

Did you give up a bad habit? Quit eating an unhealthy food? Quit doing something that you knew you shouldn’t be doing, but just didn’t care enough or feel like you had the will or strength to quit? Are you dying to do that thing or eat that food, or has the desire ebbed and now, you could take it or leave it? A fast is a great way for us to prune things out of our life that aren’t good for us. If you did desist from a habit or food, I hope that you are able to toss it away for good, if that was your goal.

We as humans don’t like to be uncomfortable. We generally like familiar things, creature comforts, and unregimented use of our time. When we fast, we purposefully make ourselves uncomfortable. It is in the discomfort that we should look for an anchor, and I can think of no better anchor than our God. He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, so he will be able to help you, knows exactly what you need, and will never leave you. What more could we ask for in a time of discomfort, whether purposeful, as in a fast, or when the unexpected happens, as when tragedy strikes?

As Christians, we should constantly be going through cycles of learning and pruning, as we strive to be closer to God and to develop those connections mentioned in yesterday’s post. Those connections are critical, as is our learning and pruning process. The more we do to take full advantage of these cycles, the closer our relationship with God will be, and the more fulfilling our life will be, even if it has been stripped of our comforts and familiarity.

Thank you so much for reading to (the very) end! It has been very gratifying to post for 21 consecutive days, even if no one reads any of it.

I will be posting more regularly in the future, at least once a week, so if you are interested, come back by and check out what is in my head. If I have time tomorrow, I will post a conclusion and summary of my takeaway of these past 21 days, maybe in the evening after the celebratory worship service.

 

Photo Credit – Photo by Kamil Szumotalski on Unsplash