Not-A-Tree
It’s family tradition each year to get a real, live tree for Christmas. There are plenty of stories and subtraditions to go along with this, including the numerous incidents involving either my father or myself nearly getting knocked off ladders trying to cut the netting, the wide (when netted!) trees that don’t fit through the front door, the trees that are too tall and need to be cut in approximately half just to be stood up in the living room, and the replacement of the tree stand every third year or so because the one currently in use just won’t hold this year’s tree.

My parents decided to forego all of the “frustration” (as they put it) this year and opted for a fake tree, an idea I’m having a rather difficult time warming up to after twenty years of pine scent and sap. And in a way, I do think I’ve got reason to gripe: the “not-a-tree” (as I’ve so eloquently dubbed it) is more of a faux-pine cylinder (at least, from certain angles) than it is a tree-shape, and I just don’t think a tree I can pull into at least four pieces without the need of a bow saw screams “Holidays!” to anyone. Honestly, I feel like I’m celebrating Festivus every time I walk past the “tree”, what with the metal trunk and all.

Not So Gifted
Despite my parents complaining year after year that I’m one of the most difficult people they’ve ever had to shop for, they usually come through reasonably well. It’s all but certain that I should expect a few books under the tree every year, and in most cases the books I end up with are reasonable selections.

This year, however, my mother decided to eschew any Christmas-morning confusion and plain out told me the books I should be expecting. One was the latest in a series of books I’ve been reading since my childhood. To be honest, they’re (disturbingly) below my reading level at this point, but I find them an entertaining read now and then, though it works out better when I hadn’t been given the same book for Easter.

The other book? Well, I’d rather not mention it, but now that I have…erm, Twilight. (Yes, I shuddered when she said it, too.) I’m sorry, but fantasy romance novels aren’t my cup of tea. Nor have they ever been. I think perhaps the closest I’ve come to that genre was the Harry Potter series. And that’s also as close as I would like to come to it, thank you very much.

Tower In The Snow
Christmas Eve generally ends up being the calm before the storm, with a (relatively) quiet family dinner, T’was The Night Before Christmas, and perhaps a viewing of It’s A Wonderful Life.

Not this Christmas Eve, however. Two of my siblings decided that the best way to honor the holidays was by honoring their gender. And they did so alright, ‘erecting’ what can only be described as a five-foot-tall phallus in the middle of the front lawn. It’s since been partially dismantled, but I’m sure the neighbors have more than a few questions for the next person they see setting foot outside my house.

Mugshot
I may have a digital camera, but I don’t often pull it out at family gatherings to take pictures of everyone and everything for posterity’s sake, and I own perhaps a single picture frame, which at the moment probably rests haphazardly in a drawer in my dresser. (One day, I’ll probably have a different mindset, but that’s another topic…)

Imagine my surprise, then, to open up a gift from my aunt to find this keychain picture frame resting inside the colorful paper.

I wasn’t the only one to double-take at the idea, either. Rachelskirts offered up a few of her suggestions on how to use the device, but I’m not quite sure that stuffing it full of pictures of the Pope or Elijah Wood qualify as intended uses for the product. I’m open to any other suggestions on how to put it to use, but pending anything worthwhile, it’s sitting on my desk and will probably be given off at some point.

There have been a multitude of other headache-inducing moments, including my mom figuring out how to use a snowblower for the first time, resulting in a driveway’s worth of snow in the garage, and the series of mishaps right before dinner on Christmas Eve, but those are perhaps better kept to myself.

I realize that this mostly sounds like a giant complaint post, and perhaps you’re right if you’re thinking so. To that, I’ll simply point out that there’s not much of a happy story to be had when the holiday magic is gone.

Humbug?

Such is the case with an organization that had an idea of where they were going and what they wanted when they contacted me to do some work for them.  After a face-to-face with one of the higher-ups who would be making decisions, I agreed and took on the job.  I put in the work, and even took time out of my day to go to their meetings to present what I had done as progress.  I got feedback and regular communication, and overall things went along more smoothly than I could ever have hoped for; I still don’t think I’ve taken on a job that went together as easily as this one since.

Not to be leading or anything, but this was my ideal modus operandi:  Get some requests, put out what they want, get requests for improvement, implement, lather, rinse, repeat…when everything works like clockwork, everything gets done in reasonable amounts of time and nobody is left waiting for the rest of the people involved to play catch-up.

Eventually, they ran out of at-the-moment requests, and the project went live following me purchasing a few needed essentials like a relevant domain name.  At that time, all that was left was to follow a roadmap of new and additional features that were to be implemented when A) I had the chance and B) They had the content.  Well, I had plenty of chances…they just never came up with the content, and that’s where everything seemed to fall apart.

Part of the initial design requests was that everyone that might have a need to change some of the site content would have the appropriate access to it.  Therefore, my work had centered around a modified WordPress installation with a few tweaks and hacks to get what they needed.  Since at the time the site went live this was included, I would not need to routinely be posting on behalf of everyone; they could post themselves (even the computer-illiterate ones who had not ventured beyond Microsoft Word…just turn on the TinyMCE editor in WordPress and away you go, eh?) and as such I didn’t have to be bothered to modify things all the time (which in turn would require me to be around and available for communication, things I already was and still am to this day).

Now, everything seemed well and dandy, and everything seemed to have gone well.  I had done what was needed and they seemed to approve of the path I had chosen, so I ventured on to other things, leaving the immediate attention of the project in question on the back burner, checked constantly, but without interruption.  Also, at this time, my point of contact for the team had changed from the people overseeing the entire group to their communications coordinator – the guy responsible for everything from their newsletter to weekly e-mail updates.

During a routine checkup on things a short period after the project went live, I decided to spend a few seconds checking out some of the more obscure nooks and crannies making sure things were going well (and in a way being my usual self and correcting mistakes i.e. spelling and grammar…yeah, I’m paranoid like that and felt that it looked a lot more professional and to the group members’ benefit if they didn’t look like a herd of buffoons).  Now, ever since the project went live, the group heads had decided that he should be the one modifying everything, and so I had had to grant him access as well (which I did…).

In the course of my poking around, I read the most recent post or two and found that this “communications” guy had not only bothered to poke around, but that he had replaced most of what was posted with links to a different site.  In short, I was pretty much providing free Google credit to this new page.  (As a quick aside, I’d just like to mention that this new site is hosted by none other than GeoCities and uses one of their templates…as laughable as it is, the new site looks like garbage and I would like nothing more than to gouge my eyes out every time I see it.)  I was nice; I simply set up a redirect so the new domain goes automatically to the other (until it expires, at which time they can buy it if they want as I have no intention of renewing); on the other hand, I could have completely smeared them (though this route would have been doubly dangerous due to an additional reason I’ll explain in a moment).

Let me run over the details one more time:

• I had run out-of-pocket to get this project online, including costs for hosting and a domain, expecting to be paid back at a later date.
• I made sure that they and their requests were of the utmost priority.  Anything they requested of me was followed through upon promptly, and I even made subtle changes to help them look more credible as things went on.
• They never repaid me for the work, and were using me as a combination manual redirect/search results enhancement.
• I never saw a cent or any other repayment other than the small accreditation I myself had appended to the footer of the WordPress template, more in hopes that people would contact me if they had problems with the site than anything else.

So, in short, it’s one more reason why my motto is “Trust is a weakness.”  It’s times like these where you feel not only stabbed in the back, but like your pocket’s been picked and you’ve been hung out to dry.

Ah well, so some people learn the hard way.  Never again will I offer to do any work without priorincentive…i.e. knowing that I’m going to get paid.  People like myself do this work not only because we enjoy it or because others don’t know, but because it pays bills, at least when people are honest and hand you what your work’s worth.  When you get ripped off like that, it’s really painful to even consider getting up and looking for work to do, since now there’s the “expectancy” that your work could just as easily have been stolen or reduced to useless overnight.

This happened a while ago, but all the same I think people can learn a few things from my story.  I’ve got a few tips below to help you out (and undoubtedly there are plenty more to pull out of that story).  I can also say that these (for the most part) apply not only to the world of web development, but to my other work as (what I like to call) “tech support.”  Anyway:

1. Don’t do anything free.  As much as some people look for a demo of what you can do, at least get reasonable assurance before you hand anything over; it’s easy enough to have one person do the design, another do the implementation, and never have to lift a finger or pay a cent.
2. Don’t go out-of-pocket unless you know you’re getting reimbursed.  The client should pay for everything, and it should be arranged in their name.  Yeah, so the domain name and hosting was a stupid move on my part.  But I say this for two reasons:  If you’re not going to get reimbursed, there’s the obvious “theft-of-service” you can accredit your client to, but there’s also the problem that you’re stuck with the (probably useless) hosting and a (most likely useless) domain.  Oh, and I could also mention the fact that if they cop out on you and switch to someone else, it’s more than easy to stake up a claim with ICANN or a similar organization to have them remove the domain from your possession and given to them…with your payment still attached.
3. Don’t do business for friends and family.  Normally, I would tell people to find someone they get that personal feeling with, but without all the chummy Christmas cards and party invitations and this and that.  I’ve violated this way too much for my own good, but I say it for a reason:  You’re going to be expected to work for free, or pretty close to it.  If you have any hope of paying the bills with your work, you’d have to rack up multiple jobs of the family/friend type as opposed to just one or two with any other client.  Not to mention, if you have to deal with these people in other manners than just business, you’re going to feel violated in their presence if they pull what the particular group from my story did.
4. Meet your clients personally, and establish a chain-of-contact before doing work.  What I’m going to say may or may not make sense, but it’s at least relevant to this case.  In short, though, get to know your client, how they act and react, and what they’re looking for so you can gauge how much work you’re going to be expected to do and for what kind of payout.  If they won’t shell out for some stupid little thing, chances are they don’t find you worth their time or money either.  I also say this because in the event of problems or complications, there’s a pre-established chain.  If there’s a change in that chain as a result of something they or you did, immediately make sure you can get to know this new contact and estimate whether it’s more worth your while to stay in the game or pull out before everything comes apart. (In my case, I didn’t do this, and it probably would have helped me realize sooner that he was going to be pulling a bag of tricks out of thin air.)

I suppose I promised an explanation for why I can’t be an ***hat and redirect the domain in my possession to something stupid or dirty; the gist of it is that I didn’t follow a few of the maxims I just stated above.  Part of the reason I got this particular assignment was because I knew the members of that leader board, and they knew I’d be able to perform to their expectations (or so they informed me).  And considering I deal with these people on a near-daily basis, I’d never hear the end of it if they went and found that something that I was held accountable for of theirs is amiss.  So again, another reason never to do business with friends and family.

I hope you can learn something from my tale, or at least use the text as filler in lieu of Lorem Ipsum.  I’ll see you in the new year with more commentary about everything.

What you’re looking at folks, is the IronKey, a thumb drive so secure, it shouldn’t exist for the simple fear of you not being able to get your information back.

Seriously, here’s an excerpt of the description of the blasted thing:

Passwords can be hacked, but not the IronKey. It’s built to withstand attacks both virtual and physical. 10 incorrect password attempts, and the encryption chip self-destructs, making the contents of the flash drive totally unreadable. The contents of the drive are filled with epoxy, so if a hacker tries to physically access the chips, he’d more likely damage them instead. Even if he did get access to the memory chips, they’d be worthless without the encryption chip. Electron-shielded, even a scanning electron microscope can’t get inside.

While 10 invalid password attempts might be good enough for some people who don’t think anybody’s ever going to be touching the drive (in which case, why not settle for something that isn’t a nuclear option like this), I see it as more problematic, especially if you’ve got a problem typing croretcly correctly (Yes, that little typo was actually on purpose…).  If you come back to find someone screwing with your drive (or, perhaps more believably, you’ve forgotten the password, but remember what you think it might be), only to find that they’ve (you’ve) burned through all your password attempts and the drive’s gone and self-destructed, you’re screwed.

It’s almost as if the designers put this thing together intentionally to teach people a valuable lesson:  backups need to be as secure as the originals.  Why do I say this?  They specifically mention that restoring to an IronKey takes minutes, as calmly and caringly as though it happens that people need to replace them all the time.  I don’t think encrypted backups on a DVD (or any other medium) are going to self-destruct after a few failed password attempts, and it’s pretty damn easy to just image the disc and walk away to deal with it on my own time in my own lab.  And I won’t even go near the fact that it’s filled with epoxy…while useful for security, epoxy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…though on the bright side it will be guaranteeing that you won’t be getting a refurbished drive off Woot anytime soon. (Where’d I put that heat gun?)

And the idea of a Tor-based “secure” web browser built in is fitting, it’s also laughable.  Not only has Tor been found to have several vulnerabilities (despite them, it’s still a great service if you want to try to be anonymous in your surfing) .  The exact same experience is delivered by simply using something along the lines of Torpark; while you still end up having to trust other people you’ve never met, you also don’t have to trust the traffic to be monitored by the people manufacturing the device.

So, with all that in mind:  Why do people bask in the illusion of security, thinking that just because a product claims it’s safe, it’s the best product for them?  It’s my question posed to you for the moment.  What makes people feel that their information is inherently secure in such a device, but they don’t realize that not only are they securing it from the outside world, but from themselves as well?