Thoughts On Choices And Life

• The Good
• The Bad
• The Balance
• Footnotes

Occasionally, I see a social media post¹²³ re-quoting:

Hard Choices, Easy Life
Easy Choices, Hard Life

NOTE: This phrase is also a common headline for LinkedIn profiles. Try searching LinkedIn for “Hard Choices, Easy Life”.

This popular quote is attributed to Jerzy Gregorek ⁴. The post’s comments are filled with messages of agreement and confirmation. At first, this quote rings true. It sounds like a different form of advice I’ve been given many times.

Proving Congruence For Fun

Background

I want to understand the math behind asymmetric cryptography.¹ This field relies heavily on Modular Arithmetic.² I bought an undergraduate math textbook for self-study. This article is a record of a proof exercise in the book. It is also a good exercise in writing math equations using LaTeX.

NOTE: I asked ChatGPT to confirm the proof. No grades are being assigned here, the point is to learn.

Problem

Let \(m\geq1\) be an integer.

A Piecewise Hashing Example

• The Problem
• Cryptographic Hashing
• What Is Piecewise Hashing
• The Obvious Weakness
• Final Thoughts
• References

NOTE: ChatGPT was used to create some portions of the code in this article. The words are mine.

The Problem

When cybersecurity analysts find malicious files, they share their finding with the greater security community. They run the file through a cryptographic hashing function and share the results of this function, called a hash. The hash is a kind of fingerprint that identifies the file based on the information contained in the file. Others can look through their environments, hash their files, and compare the results to hunt for the malicious file.

Operate Versus Innovate

• Misunderstanding Continuous Improvement
• Operating
• Innovating
• Don’t Do Both At The Same Time
• Continuous Improvement Redefined

Misunderstanding Continuous Improvement

Early in my career, “Continuous Improvement” was a popular buzzword. Every company claimed to have some type of program that constantly looked to improve its processes. I misunderstood the concept of “Continuous Improvement”. In my mind, commitment to continuous improvement meant that, at any point during the completion of a task, if a potential improvement could be made then everything must stop while the process is updated. I wanted to change or improve a process while I was executing it. Every time I found an opportunity for improvement, the real work stopped and the work around how to improve it starts. Disrupting the work and creating inefficiencies instead of fixing them.