I have always been interested in the way that a person thinks, or acts. Especially when certain personalities can be affected by the people or events happening around that person. I was talking to some friends the other day and the concept of crowd mentality came up and it turned into an interesting debate about the power of crowd mentality. You dont see very many people by them selves standing up to a group of officers with pepper spray because they are out numbered, but when the crowd is substantially larger than the number of officers all of a sudden they come super man and start to really tear shit up. But then this made me think of another dynamic to crowd mentality, yes there are times when the entire crowd is trying to all do the same thing (riots in other countries for human rights or what have you), and then there is the thought that the majority of the crowd might be there for peaceful reasons, but there is the small group of people in that larger group present to tear shit up and steal, burn, or destroy and the larger crowd just blocks the identity of the dangerous ones, making it very hard for them to be caught. It all comes back to the way I try to live my life, you dont know who a person is just by looking at them, you have to really to get to know them. I usually give someone i have just met the benefit of the doubt, unless their reputation precedes them. Sometimes I get screwed, and sometimes I don’t. Thats just like when I offer a stranger help with something, be it on the side of the road or on campus, there is that first few seconds where they are looking at me trying to figure out if I am trust worthy and really want to help them or if I am going to try and take advantage of the situation and cause them harm. Its sad that society has come to this point where I can’t trust everyone out there. I use to live in a very small community where everyone knew everyone else. I didn’t lock my house or my truck, ever. Didn’t need to. I would sleep at night with windows open and the keys in the ignition of my truck, because if somebody needed to borrow it they did, and then brought it back with a full tank of gas as a thank you. Now I have to keep my truck locked 24/7 or people will steal my radios, which they have done in the past. I sleep with my house locked and a gun by my bed, I see the police driving through all the time and sadly its not because they want to, its because someone in this neighborhood called them for a reason. Its sad to see people do the things they do, I was always raised to do what needs to be done, always work hard and be proud of what you have. I thank God everyday for the upbringing that I have and will do my best to raise my kids the same way.

So its been a while since I have posted here, and I figure this will just be a general post with my current thoughts.

The first thing is what has been on my mind the most. What am I going to do after I graduate from college in May? There seems to be a split in the field I am wanting to break into. That field is digital forensics / investigations of crimes involving computers. Half of the people I have spoken with (albeit all of them have been online posts like forums) have said that I need to go and join a law enforcement agency and spend time in a car. That seems a bit counter productive to me as I am about to get a degree in digital forensics with a minor in criminal justice. Im not trying to say that there is anything wrong with joining a law enforcement agency, but I am saying that I feel that is not where I want to go. The other half of people I have spoken with have been graduates with a degree similar to mine, and they have all stated that I shouldn’t worry about getting law enforcement experience and just try to break into the forensics world now, which they all agree is not an easy task. So that is the route I am taking, going to focus on graduating and then try to break into the field. It seems like there are not a lot of entry level positions but I have seen some that I feel qualified for. This will probably be a topic for a few more posts as I get more comfortable with what I am looking for and how I think it is going to go and maybe even some lessons I have learned in this journey of searching for work.

Another topic is the fact that I feel like I need to stop trying to do a thousand things with my free time and just find a few hobbies that I really enjoy and maybe spend more time focusing on a few of those instead of bouncing around to all of the things that I am constantly trying to do. I feel like I am pulling myself in a million different directions and so I am not enjoying anything as much as I would if I could just spend more time and energy on that hobby or activity. So that is something that I will be focusing on, and hopefully one of those activities is writing here. I know there is no readership now, but if there ever becomes one I hope people understand that this site is more of a play ground and a place that I can just unload my brain and see what sticks later. I don’t want to say its a journal because I am not laying out all of my personal problems and crying here, I just don’t trust the internet with that kind of information from me. The vision I have for this blog is more of a brain dump where I can post about topics that are interesting to me and then perhaps one day a few people may stumble through here and post of something in regards to anything I post here. But mainly I see this site as being something that I can refer back to later to recheck my thoughts from this time in my life. Might be an interesting aspect down the road to look back and see what I was thinking about or trying to learn about now. Anyway we will see what happens I guess.

Damn its already that time of year. Previous years I have come up with a whole bunch of new years resolutions and then work hard and track them all really well….for less than a month. Come February im back to the same ole shit and forget about what I wanted to change. So I spent December trying to find ways to track my resolutions and see what I can make of them. The main resolutions are:

1. Lose weight, get in better shape (who doesn’t want that?)
2. Complete a project 365 (a picture a day, everyday of the year)
3. Spend more time on this blog/website. I dont want to become a major blog for any certain subject, but I would like to turn this site into a great resource for a few different subjects.
4. Get more involved with APRS
5. Get more involved with an open source project