Security Ranch Security Ranch

Just to let everyone know I do plan on making some changes soon on this blog. You don’t have to tell me. This blog is fuggly. Like really bad. But don’t worry. I agree and I take full responsibility. I do want to at least make it look better. Maybe add a wicket or two or whatever people call them these days. But changes are coming.

As far as monetizing goes. I would like this blog to at least break even with the hosting fees and everything. So I think I’ll add some donation links or something if anyone feels they have received any value from the blog.

I also want to have or create a policy page. Here is where I would put my policy down on where I stand on the whole AI thing. At least when it comes to my thoughts and opinions I won’t use AI. I don’t plan on using AI for any thumbnails or pictures either. I think the most AI I would use would be a spell checker. But that is about it. Back when I was in college writing all the time I did use Grammerly and I thought it did help me with writing with more of an active voice. And of course spelling. But, I’ve never had an AI tool completely write my papers. I’ve tried it. It was horrible. I spent more time rewriting my paper from what the AI tool tried to give me then when I just scraped the whole thing and started over.

I have considered maybe moving to something like Medium or Substack but honestly I’m getting tired of the subscriptions. I think I might be following or subscribed to around 50 channels or people on Substack. Medium I’m not sure. I haven’t even logged on in a long time.

But this whole subscription thing, especially for news articles that people link is even worse. On my Google News page I will see quite a few links to some of the news topics that I am interested in but as soon as I click on a link it just comes up to a sign up or subscription page. Just to let the world know. When I run into that I instantly block that page from my news feed. I don’t even care. If anything it saves me time.

Four or five years ago everyone was on Medium and it was basically the same. Then they started enshittificating the site. Today I don’t think nearly as many people use it as they did back then. Today its all about Substack. But don’t worry. Have not fear. Substack will get the enshittification treatment.

So its been a year or so since my last post. I’m pretty bad at keeping this blog up to date with things going on. I’m a lot more active on the YouTube channel that I started last year. I’ve learned a lot about making videos. Mostly though I learned I am pretty bad at making the videos. Yeah some did well but over all not too good.

I grant that I am pretty bad. But I also can’t help but to feel jaded though when I see a channel that has several thousand subscribers and only a few short videos. Usually the person in the videos is a female. And yes, usually good to decent looking. But man it’d be nice to have the subscribers.

Either way I don’t think I am long for the YouTube world. Somehow I’ve had about four family members follow my channel. Not sure how they even found me. But I was surprised how much that has made me consider or at least reconsider what I post. Not that I was ever going to say anything bad or malicious about them. I don’t think I would have talked about them at all. That isn’t really the purpose of my channel. But still. It automatically makes me self sensor a bit.

I don’t really have too much of a problem figuring out what to make videos on. But now that I am making videos I am a lot more critical I guess you could say about everything I see in YouTube. I’ve started noticing the same patterns over and over again. The same video topics. Same styles. I can spot AI thumbnails from a mile away (I hate ai for content creation by the way). After a while I just start to think why bother at all.

I guess this would be similar to the phenomena of when you but a car you start to see that car everywhere even though you didn’t notice it before and the cars were always there. Kind of like that.

At least for now. I’ll keep chugging along and making the videos I do make. The goal is to make at least one video per week and to try new editing techniques every once in a while. Who knows. Maybe I’ll eventually get monetized.

On the career front I still work in cyber security. And I’ve decided that I am basically done with certifications. No, I don’t mind picking up a certification book and going thru it every once in a while. But I have decided to not participate in the certification industrial complex. I’m tired of dealing with CE credits. I’m tired of paying for a membership fee just to stay in an organization. If I was in my 20s I might still play the game. However, I am almost 50. I plan on retiring by the time I hit 55. Or at least that is the goal.

So there are my thoughts for now. Next time I might start blogging about my post military retirement and my for real for real retirement. Until then I’ll write to you later.