Happiness According to the Experts

 

If you had a serious medical question, chances are you would not ask your brother-in-law the politician. If you are like most of us, you would not only seek out a doctor who specialized in your ailment, but you would probably go a step further to find the smartest one. In an age where this type of research is only a few keystrokes away, there’s no excuse not to seek an expert.

This same approach makes sense when dealing with the most pressing life questions that each of us face – What is the meaning of life, and what is my purpose? In 1982, The Washington Post printed the oft-quoted “Life’s a bitch, and then you die”, attributed to a 15-year-old named Tony Daniels. According to Quote Investigator, this is the earliest recorded use of the phrase, although there are literary references to a similar notion dating back to 1922. History does not tell us if young Tony grew up to be a politician, and we can certainly hope he didn’t qualify as an expert.

Much of what is written about these critical questions comes from the great philosophers, who often control the conversation until equations are written and measurements are taken. Thirteenth Century Persian poet Rumi wrote “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” While this is a great prompt for a Philosophy 101 paper, it is not the answer most of us are looking for. Contemporary philosopher John Lennon had a more accessible view.

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

While John’s cheeky answer feels a bit more grounded, there are credible ideas that lie somewhere between a 13th century poet and a 20th century rock star. Among the Top Ten Smartest People of All Time are four very recognizable names each of whom had something to say about happiness.

Like John Lennon, Albert Einstein was a 20th century musician/thinker. Although Albert played the violin, he is more closely identified with esoterica like the photoelectric effect or special relativity. He also found time to ponder happiness and is remembered for this 1922 note on the subject.

“A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.”

This idea caught on, and in 2017 Albert’s handwritten note sold to a happy buyer for $1.8 million.

Nikola Tesla, the unsung 19th century genius who is better known as the namesake of a popular EV, is considered by some to be the inventor of our modern world, with over 700 patents to his name. While Einstein was a brilliant thinker, Tesla was a prolific achiever. Nikola found his own personal happiness in bringing his ideas to life.

“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success...such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.”

Tesla appears to have accepted the constant restlessness Einstein warned about in order to experience the occasional bursts of happiness - the “thrill that goes through the human heart” – that come with success. Based on his staggering number of successes, he must have led a happy, albeit solitary, life.

Sixteenth century Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci had much to say about happiness, some of which was later echoed by Tesla and Einstein. Leonardo stressed curiosity and independent thinking as the foundation, and his own insatiable quest for knowledge is legendary. Da Vinci once said, “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding”, and he is remembered for questioning everything. Independent thinking is much more difficult in this modern world of information overload, but finding your own personal truth is worth the effort. American poet Henry David Thoreau echoed this thought.

” What lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.”

The experts have spoken. A wide-ranging sample of the greatest minds over the past many centuries encompasses fundamental beliefs about life. Creating is more fulfilling than just consuming, and sharing those creations brings joy. Meaning is found by rejecting the noise and looking inward. Curiosity leads to understanding and satisfaction. Serenity and modesty are more desirable than traditional success. Happiness is personal and begins within.

My personal takeaway is that the meaning of life is simply to be happy, and our purpose is to spread happiness in the world.

But then I’m no expert.

Author Profile - Paul W. Smith - leader, educator, technologist, writer - has a lifelong interest in the countless ways that technology changes the course of our journey through life. In addition to being a regular contributor to NetworkDataPedia, he maintains the website Technology for the Journey and occasionally writes for Blogcritics. Paul has over 40 years of experience in research and advanced development for companies ranging from small startups to industry leaders. His other passion is teaching - he is a former Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Paul holds a doctorate in Applied Mechanics from the California Institute of Technology, as well as Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Quick Cabling Tip

 Installing and troubleshooting layer 1 is a big part of my job.

I cant tell you how many issues I resolved by simply “getting off my butt”, going for a walk (when possible) and discovering the root cause is at layer 1.

I’ve seen a ton of variations at layer 1. Here is an excerpt of what I’ve seen; dirty fiber, ethernet copper cable wrapped around a MIG welder, ethernet copper cable wrapped around a generator, fiber pinched in a door, female to female coupler coming apart, cable resting on a heater, cabling chewed through by a rodent, poor grounding on outdoor installs, cheap old cables falling apart, bashed in face plates and improperly punched down patch panels.

In this video I show you what took down a wireless access point – chewed cable. Please make sure you protect your cabling with a conduit or whatever is appropriate for the installation environment.

4 Tips for TAPs. The Key Usage of Permanent Monitoring

 

1. Think Outside the Network

The network manager frequently receives complaints when things on the network slow down. Usually, more links, bandwidth, and faster routers are requested. Even though the network is generally to blame for complaints, the real offender can be somewhere else.

The world in which we live is application-oriented. Marketing, sales, human resources, payroll, and benefits are all frequently outsourced to specialist third-party applications. Although the network manager has no control over how these applications operate, they can have an impact on how the network functions and how the client experience is felt in general. The user frequently blames the network even if it is lightning-fast and has plenty of capacity available if an application is taking too long to respond to a request.

Network traffic should be continuously monitored as a fix for this problem. The genuine response time problem can be easily identified if the network manager is aware of the applications being used and receives reports on application response times. Although organizations may not have direct control over application quality, with the right monitoring and analysis, they can identify the cause of response problems. Effective monitoring can prevent spending money on issues that do not exist and offer the data required to collaborate with third-party application providers to solve problems and enhance service.

2. Future Planning

Growth is inevitable. The network upgrade from last year already requires an update. BYOD allows employees to work remotely using laptops and cell phones. Demand for networks has increased due to digital change. Even more devices will be connected to the network as a result of IoT and 5G expansion. Engineering for "peak times" has been superseded by a worldwide business model requiring access around-the-clock. An increase in computer speeds, bandwidth, and a variety of other considerations now requires thoughtful planning.

Understanding the past and present is necessary for making future plans. A thoughtful study of what can be anticipated in the future can be developed with the aid of knowledge of past and present traffic patterns. With no predetermined path for future expansion, the goal is just to ease current pressure, which results in a vicious cycle of crisis management.

On the other hand, ongoing observation of traffic patterns, application usage, and device expansion can result in informative analysis that aids in the development of a long-term growth strategy. This kind of intelligent expansion planning helps decrease network bottlenecks and outages, rush charges, and create a clear route forward within established budget and performance criteria.

3. Embrace Your New Normal

This advice is vital. You won't be alert to potentially disastrous anomalies if you don't have visibility into your traffic and know what is typical. A 2022 study in IT Governance found that it takes an average of 287 days to identify a data breach. When organizations did not adapt their IT to cope with the pandemic or make other similar changes, the average cost of a breach was $5.01 million, as compared to the global overall average of $4.24 million. An intriguing observation was that 53% of breaches are found by a third party. All of this suggests that businesses are unable to distinguish between legitimate and malicious traffic.

Organizations can develop patterns and construct metrics to determine what traffic belongs on the network and what traffic has the potential to be harmful by constantly monitoring and recording all network traffic. Today's AI tools even can foresee potential issues before they do damage.

4. GIGO

Garbage In, Garbage Out is a dated computing phrase that applies here. For your network's present and future, the three suggestions listed above are essential. Continuous traffic monitoring and analysis can assist identify issue areas, plan for future expansion, and more rapidly identify potentially fraudulent traffic that could end up costing the organization millions of dollars. Traffic analysis, however, is only as good as the data fed to the tools.

Independent network TAPs offer a fail-safe connection of monitoring links to tools that provide traffic visibility and analysis. TAPs give these instruments perfectly accurate and comprehensive mirror copies of the traffic. TAPs pass all packets, in contrast to SPAN or mirror ports that could erratically drop packets during busy times or fail to pass all of the packets. Additionally, TAPs are network-independent and do not increase internal switch traffic or add latency.

To learn more about network monitoring and visibility, contact Network Critical’s expert team at www.networkcritical.com

DNS Troubleshooting?

 This video covers a troubleshooting scenario where clients experience intermittent performance issues, or as they call it, “stuttering”.

The point of the video is to review some troubleshooting best practices where we ‘validate and verify’ what we are told, document any observations, test and document your results.

So even though this looked like a DNS issue, after troubleshooting, it ended up being a routing issue. As I mentioned at the end of the video, you should always perform a “routing audit” to document, confirm and learn where packets route in your environment.