Educating people, even myself

My climbing buddy does not understand that one of the points of my blog is to educate people.  That education is not limited to climbing.  If that lesson needs to be on respect, then I will write about that.  I purposely leave names out because I want to generalize the concept.  Some details may be specific because they need to be in order to get the point across to my readers, but I do not mention names of people because I want their identities to be protected as far as they will allow them to be.  In my climbing buddy’s case, I am trying to keep him from getting a bad name amongst the members of a particular religious group who are very numerous in the climbing community of our city and the surrounding area (meaning even down into Wyoming and over into Idaho and Washington).  I am trying to protect his reputation!  Once people get a bad taste in their mouths about you, especially if it is for being disrespectful of their religion of all things, they tend not to want to have anything to do with you, including funding gyms, and such, if that is what you happen to need them for.  Instead, though, my buddy thinks that I’m trying to dis him under the radar online.  My response to that is an emphatic, “NO,” because he is, first and foremost, my buddy, and I do not even do those kinds of things to people that I do not like, much less my friends.  I consider him a close friend, a climbing buddy, and a really good guy, and there are just a few things that experience would teach him the hard way that I am trying to help him avoid having to learn that way.  Despite what he may think, I am trying to help him.  I hope that he understands that someday…. He will always be my friend, regardless.

On another subject, my new student identification and e-mail would not work to log into the Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) student portal, even though it had been more than 48 hours.  Tech support at the university has always been kind to me (I have called them four times, now) no matter who I talk to, so I decided to call and find out what might be the matter.  I had my student identification and e-mail changed to reflect my preferred name due to some circumstances in my life, so I did anticipate a few glitches, but nothing like what it ended up being.  I spoke with Mick this morning.  Mick made sure he understood the problem that I was having and then set to work trying to help me fix it.  When none of the usual backdoor hacks worked, Mick, having to put me on hold several times to consult with some of his fellow tech specialists and trying and failing some more, left me time to try some of my own backdoor hacking…and I got in!  It was something that I did not do consciously, and more of an exploratory journey through what I know about computers from all the work-arounds I have learned in the past 25 years of working with them.  I was simply experimenting with what I knew, and some inspiration suddenly came to me.  It ended up being just what I needed, and oddly enough, what would not work for Mick on the other end of the line.  He was trying to duplicate what was going on with my computer in order to find a backdoor hack for it, but when he came back on the phone line, he sounded somewhat dejected until I told him that I had found a backdoor way in.  When I described it to him, he laughed and said that was exactly what he was trying to do, but was unsuccessful in accomplishing.  I explained what I had done to him so that he could write it down for future reference to help others who might be having the same problem.  Still not sure what the problem is, though, he kicked the ticket up a notch, escalating it to the next level of tech review so that they can hopefully resolve the issue and I can log in like a “normal student” and not have to hack in.  Strange how I accidentally became a computer hacker just trying to get into my own student account with a new e-mail address.  I had to hack into Outlook using a backdoor trick, too.  Interesting.  Interesting is a word…. Mick thanked me for my help after I thanked him and we said our goodbyes as I checked my student e-mail to make sure nothing major had happened besides me changing my password in addition to having my student e-mail changed.  Nothing major had happened, thankfully.  Technology.  When it works, it is fantastic.  When it does not work, well…headaches and other pains are common.  I will leave it at that for now.

I was texting with a friend of mine this morning and she suggested a band that I had never listened to (at least I thought I had never listened to them), so I looked them up on my iPod.  Fantastic music.  Not too frenzied, not too distracting, not too dismal and depressed in tempo, but just right.  Songs that make you want to get something done, but not over-the-top.  Just right.  Great lyrics, great tunes, great voices.  I loved it.  Very powerful music all-around.  Surprisingly, I found out that they are a Christian band.  The name of the band is MercyMe.  They have been around since the mid-90’s and are still producing music as of 2017.  As they have matured, like most bands, they have become better and better.  Funny how that works.  People in general, though, get better and better at being themselves as they mature.  By that, I mean that they become more comfortable with themselves and start living life instead of staying stuck in juvenile ways as they mature.  It is a natural process that I have observed even in myself.  I was never really a kid, but I am much more mature than I used to be, nevertheless.  Funny how that works.