incite

For most of you reading this document it will be news.
Despite years of planning this, I am not really sure where
to start.

I am likely dead, this post has been updated automatically.
I also know the tense is wrong, but deal with it.

I must first tell everyone left behind, how sorry I am that I had
to affect you this way. I have thought for many nights over this.
However, I do not regret having to do what has already been done,
otherwise this would not be here.

This letter is for you, to understand what I felt.
I think you deserve to know, if you want to know.
If you do not, please don't continue.

This is not intended to harm.

As you know for 11 years now, I have lived with very shitty migraines.
They hurt beyond description, and I honestly feel that I have gone though
many average lives worth of pain.

The pain really is terrible, and if you don't believe me , a part of me
hopes you get one.

Most of you do know me well, and have no doubts. However, thats where most
of your understanding ends.

For 10 years now, I have been on drugs to counter act, prevent, and otherwise
try to end this terrible disease. Many serious anti-depressants (depakote,
celexa, nortryptyline , just to name a small few ) have come in and out of my
life, beta-blockers, and various other more serious drugs which no longer work.

I am at the end of what I would consider reasonable treatment. The only
class of drugs worth considering are MAOI inhibitors, and other off the
wall drugs that have very serious side effects.

The hidden side of this is life not only feels plastic, it feels entirely dead.
Each generation of drug I take, and headache I get, I loose a bit of myself.
I feel I have lost the majority of what I would consider good. These drugs are
not designed for or well tested at the duration I have been taking them.

Even if all of this is likely tolerable, if everything else is going well in
your life. However, my life is not going well. Life is already zero sum.
I have a high pain cost, and I am incapable of feeling the positives of life.
I am truly broken.

I can't even remember what being happy is like, or even when I was happy.
I have felt this way for a long time, and I am tired of working towards
absent goals just to survive a simular day.

I feel, no one has the right to ask me to continue though this, and that
all other choices are only delaying and propagating the damage of this.

For those of you who will think I have gone 'insane'. I really don't think so,
I just think I am faced with the cost of my life early on. Think about all the
things that might bring you close to this, then think about how that compares
to my life.

This is where I was about a year ago, I have tried everything that I could
think of to be happy. I found some nice distractions, but only places to
hide. No shelter in sight.

There are a few more things I have to say before I wrap this up.
I know the pain of a friend committing suicide. Dustin did nearly the same
thing, and I know that this is going to be a magnitude worse for my
small group of friends/family.

Here are some thoughts that might help:
#1) I need to do this now instead of 10 years from now when I likely would
have someone to love and potentially have children. Now is the least
amount of pain I can cause people.

#2) I am falling apart in the ways that you know me, and this started
a long time ago. The person I would end up being would be far different.
We all know people rarely change for the better.

#3) No one caused this, there is no blame. Don't try to make imaginative
connections, this is something I did.

My real friends/family were the only reason I haven't done this earlier.
I know it is selfish, but ultimately a choice I made.

I ultimately knew this was the right choice after I set a date, a huge
weight was torn from me. This date was chosen for a reason, but I will
keep that in mystery (It is easy to figure out).

Please don't carry my choice on your name, be happy!
Forget me quickly, or pretend I am happy somewhere else.

Also if one of my technical friends could do me one last favor, break into zerospace and look in /home/keepcc/perl/stuff/posttoljf.pl My mom and karin might
want my lj password.

if you are curious, you can look around too, but please do not change anything.
It is the only thing I have done that I still cherish some.

There is a lot of stuff marked private ok poetry, and harsh thoughts and truths.
Read at your own risk.

To my family:

I do love you, I am sorry about this. I love each and every one of you.
Dad: I am sorry I couldn't make it though this, please forgive me.
Mom: I know you blame yourself for my migraines, DON'T.

Kelly: Sorry brother, I just couldn't get though this. You set a pretty
good example that I always tried to follow. Please take care of Jason and
James. If that girl is worthy hold her tight.

James: Hey man, I know you hate this shit. Please don't be mad at me too
much. We don't talk too much recently, but you really are awesome.

Jason: I am not sure if mom will let you read this for a while. You are
growing up to be a very good man. Go to school, get lost in education.
Its hard, but in the end I think you will enjoy it.

One last quote:

"I can see the curtain, the ending, I knew it was on its way , leaving , I just
didn't want it to be today" Chemlab - Force Quit

I am very bored at work, here are a list of BBS games I used to play on a regular basis.


L.O.R.D (wasn't really into it, but I did beat the dragon several times to fanatic player's
annoyance).
Usurper
Operation Overkill II
Tradewars
Pimpwars

the bad old days, but there was definately some class.

'If they ran we shot them, and if they didn't run we shot them anyway.'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1071214,00.html

The heroic 'good' of war.

At work late again as per usual.

this is without a question the coolest thing to happen in a while, too bad they outlawed the whole fire and stake bit.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/6934584.htm

It has been a while since I have updated my journal with a public entry.

The end of summer has been a somewhat numbing experince for me. I have been sleeping away my weekends
in a stubborn discourse. I hope I can afford snow boarding this year, but I have a dreadful feeling
that I wont be able to. :(

Work continues its momentum, and it is still surviving.

I am still terribly broke however.

I noticed on my last paycheck that there was a field for the actual number of hours I have worked since January.
I have worked 1800+ hours, which sounds almost reasonable, except that it is only august. Most people who work
40 hours a week, hit 2080 hours a year.

The insanity even further behind this, is over the last two months I have cut down significantly on my overtime,
to only 0-5 hours a week. The average boils out to 53 hours per week from the 1800 above.

Kind of crazy.

I have been sick since last thursday night. Some kind of mutated sinus/ear infection with a super irritated throat.
So bad that I didn't go to work for the last two days.

I lost my voice at work, mainly just occasionaly sentances, with lots of squeaking.

Something funny happened, I was going to the conveniance store to pickup some caffeine because I have only
had 4 hours of sleep today. Luke made a not so abnormal request for me to pickup some cigarettes. No thought went into
what was going to happen.

I grabed my nessicary food items, and had just enough voice to ask for a pack of dave's lights. The two store clerks gave me an
awful look, like I was morbidly obese and was asking for 10 big macs. I made several vain attempts to say "these arn't mine",
"I don't smoke". My vocal cords where having none of that. In the end I paid the cash register, and left as they quite literally
stared as I walked out the door.

I am obviously the most addicted chain smoker they have ever seen. Funny how that happens.

Worked 12 hours today, I need to go home and pass out.

Accidently left my cellphone at home, and I dont have sam and angies number. We didn't hang out because of it, suck.

Either way, today has been hectic to say the least. I have a billion things to do, and I never have time for personal things.
This is just stupid.

I am working on yet another stupid project for work. This has absolutely nothing to do with my job. I hate it, it is also stupid.

Upside today, I woke up really energetic, and it helped a bit.

Wireless stuff is on the near horizon, as soon as my tax return arrives it will be ordered that day.

I awake to the blurry vision of sleep, and remembering the visions of sleep. I slowly and grudgingly crawl away from my habitable bed. The covers of my bed are wrapped up twisted in some chaotic manner, that only can happen after 8 hours of unfulfilling sleep.

The radio alarm clock continues its furious pace of music and commercials. My pace isn't even remotely near that yet. It is unwelcome in both timing and obtuse approach; it is a good alarm clock.

The clock show that I must get my head out of the flighty skipping thoughts of early morning. I have to leave very soon to be nearly on time to my place of work.

I throw on some questionably clean pants, and a clean t-shirt. I slide the switch on my alarm clock to turn it off, I always leave it on for a bit just incase I fall asleep somewhere.

I make several attempts at managing my bed hair. Handful of water, comb, quick frantic patting and brushing. It looks better, but not exactly something to be proud of, a few more attempts at it, and I know I must leave.

I throw on my tennis shoes, and make the first exit of the day. I make the vertical then horizontal journey to my car. Three flights of stairs and 60 paces out. The drive to work is always short, which is a good thing I only have 3 minutes to get there. I wonder if I should have stayed longer and fix my slightly goofy hair.

Uneventful drive to work, living close to work is a very convenient thing. 1 minute left. I arrive and promptly exit and lock my car. Quickly I enter though the various locked doors. I have arrived in the cubicle farm of my work. The first person of the day is usually Zach to greet me, however it was luke today. After a quick hello. I sit down to my workstation.

My hands fly over my keyboard to enter my password, and remove the matrix style screen saver, Now I can actually start working. I open my email client and start digging though the various issues. I live my life though my email client. My job is to resolve all network abuse ( aka babysit ) that our customers cause. Network abuse is anything against policy, but in general falls under being illegal or a nuisance. The details aren't important, but one of my unwelcome but important responsibilities is to deal with spam issues.

Looks like the server Lumina is pushing thousands of viagra emails to AOL users. I find the source of the spam with a simple but useful script I have written. Presto, it is gone. I dump the outgoing mail with the word viagra in it.

I send a vinegar/honey email to the customer reminding them of our policies that they will ignore, and be conveniently oblivious to in the future. I charge this customer
some minor fee for my work, and I go back to my list of complaints.

I read hundreds of emails a day, I filter even more than that. Today is no exception. I must process the true garbage of the Internet and get some cohesive picture. Lots of times it is fairly straight forward, sometimes it is not.

I find a few security related tickets associated to me, I fly though those at a neck-breaking pace. Just doing a few simple audits, and in general holding the hands of complete cluebies. It is easy to be arrogant when everyone else you are dealing with is stupid/ignorant.

I just hope that they have something in life they are better at. Perhaps they are a marvelous painter, or musician, or a very good mother, and this just a hobby. Unfortunately, I know this is "it" for most of our customers, and that saddens me beyond everything else

I don't claim to be a security guru/expert, but what I do understand is light years beyond your average user, and slightly above what most every system administrator knows. The level of creativity that attackers ("hackers") use to break into our machines deserves some credit. However, it is usually pretty boring. Find some piece of exploitable software, exploit, setup an IRC bot, perhaps denial of service someone, start scanning for more.

This is really 80% of all security problems I see. Cleaning them out can be quite painful, but difficulty usually depends on what level of access they achieved with their exploit.

I have two categories of machines that I take care of. Ones that are truly the companies
that we manage everything on, and our customers server that they are responsible for taking care of.

Our own machines are taken care of fairly well, despite our horrible customer sign up policies that allows anyone to fill out a web form and get an account. However, the security on our customers machines is abysmal. They are outside my scope of control, and they are routinely hacked.

I know tomorrow when I go in, I will have at least one customer compromised machine.
Despite our best efforts to tell our customers to upgrade software, they are usually
exploited by some vulnerability that is 1-2 years old. If you are running software
without security updates for that long you deserve it.

There are some added advantages to this, I have gotten pretty good at going into a
machine and cleaning them out. However, sometimes I give up and just tell the customer
to reload the operating system because I can't spend more than 1-2 hours working on it.

Back to the spam complaints, I always have more work to do here. False complaint here,
valid complaint there, forged compaints for a domain that I have seen thousands of times.
I doesn't even take more than 1/4 of a second to find those any more.

I have come to the conclusion that I have read more spam than most people will in their
entire life.

As per usual I have a constant bombardment by our other technicians for questions.
The older and better techs tend to not do this so much. It is really hard to keep focused, but I think I manage it fairly well. I have learned to keep lists of things of what I am doing, just incase I get pulled away. It works most of the time.

Its really not their fault, some of our software is horribly undocumented and buggy.

It is lunchtime, I need something to eat. I always must leave certain issues floating, because I can't resolve issues dead/hungry.

I walk out the same set of doors.

I leave the parking lot with the sinking feeling that I need to return, but knowing that a good part of my day is over. I have have found all kind of new food where I live. It is a huge landscape of new things to try. I am now accustomed to sushi, and it is a very good thing.

No sushi today I am too broke. I make the short journey home and cook up a frozen dinner and try to clean up a bit for my hour lunch. The time never lasts very long.

However it is usually when I get most of my domesticated work done. Laundry, dished, vacuuming is all pretty normal. Today, I will try to clean out my bathtub while my dishes, and laundry are in their respective machine. Why do I always wait until their is a layer of algae to clean it out, Sigh. I really need a home schedule, but I know that I would likely avoid the added structure.

Lunch is done with, back to work.

Back to the insane, frenzy drive of work. Emergencies, after crisis,
after melt downs. All under the assumption that we don't have any time
for preparation to avoid the issues we deal with.

All at any rate, that makes it fly by quickly when there aren't any hangups.
However, it always seams there are at least one or two hangups a day.

Could be worse, I could be working in a coal mine.
Could be better.

Details always fly by at this time of the day, I am pushing for completion of the day. While trying to balance everything. Its now 8:00pm I should have left an hour ago. This is really when I get quality work, and side projects done.

Where I can throw out all the tasks of the day, and focus on prevention. I usually stay around till 9:00pm.

I make my final exit from work, after I have done the requisite personal Internet surfing.

I come home, I pickup a security book, and now it is 1:00am. Time for bed, or some quick journal writing. It is now, this day is complete, time to repeat.