Wow. I always feel so energized. I just spent the last week being sleepless, yet I coveted every minute of energy restoring snooze that I snoze. I’m an academic now. I can officially make up words. Well, not officially I can’t, because I’m not a doctor yet. That’s the degree you get to make up words. That’s why it’s called a degree of letters. You can officially make words. But if you are just a Ph.D. Student, like me, you sort of can’t do that yet because, well, you're a student. Which means your Ph.D. parents get to correct your words and suddenly empiricist becomes a title and ontological becomes a vocabulary word, and things like mostest and words like snoze really make sense early on Sunday mornings when you have just woken up from real sleep.

I’ve seen learning occur this weekend. I’ve seen people bond again. I’ve seen leadership displayed. I’ve seen personal discovery. I’ve seen true education. I’ve experienced an open and safe community of learning. I’ve been in a vulnerable place where sharing occurs and not criticism. Not because criticism is not warranted but because criticism is not the purpose at this stage. That will come enough on its own later.

Now we are tiny caterpillars, with a whole world of bushes that we get to devour. I think I just found out what our mascot is. A forest tent caterpillar. We crawl around like babies devouring everything we can with no filter. No ability to say no to new knowledge but soon we will get full.

These weekends are exhausting, but if not for three things: my wife who gives so freely and supports me in this journey, my cohort of learners who contribute to these experiences, and my coworkers who encourage and support. Then there are the faculty. Those amazing and talented stalwarts of learning who maintain the chivalrous line of academic integrity. They know that the line starts and stops with them and they police it with integrity and zeal. I have seen it and I respect it because a great man once said, “There’s freedom within the rules.”

Soon it will be time to pick up books. I’ll go into the office and put the books back on the shelves. It’s a symbolic gesture that signals the weekend is over and it’s time to get back to the week. There’s no doubt that I will get all my books back out again, scrambling to find connections and truth and using them as jumping off points to further explanation or linking points to bridge gaps. But for now, they get put up. Just like we teach children to pick up their toys, academics, especially Ph.D. students, should be encouraged to pick up their books. It’s a symbolic act of cleaning up old ideas and making way for new ones. Cleaning the playroom has a purpose.

So the weekend is over. Enjoy the glow of sweet success. The first presentation is done. You did what a first presentation is designed to do– create learning opportunities. Now go out and eat, filling yourself with knowledge, saying no to nothing. Seeking, striving, tasting and growing.

Just remember to pick up your books.

QED.

Location Timeclock built for success and safety.

TIMING KNOWS NO BOUNDS

Keeping track of every member of your team is a challenge. TimeLink is a time clock management solution that incorporates geospatial and geofencing informatics to give every knowledge and administrative center the power they need to make the right decisions.

REAL-TIME GEOFENCE & NAVIGATION REPORTING

From navigation reporting and geofencing, to timeclock applications for multiple jurisdictions and rule sets TimeLink is not just a TimeCock solution for home base but we have large remote, safety-conscious work teams in mind as well.

MAINTAIN SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

In a situation where your team is the first on a scene, placement tracking and administrative tasks such as time records management is the last thing you have time to worry about. It's saving lives that concern you. TimeLink provides real-time streaming data access from every endpoint. Keep the lives of your people and others at the forefront of your mission. Then information can be processed later based on your evolving needs.

EMPLOYEE RECORDS MANAGEMENT MEETS THE GEOSPATIAL AGE

Originally developed for automated timekeeping, the application vision quickly changed to incorporate georeferencing and geofencing. The team realized that many safety related applications and complex staffing applications would benefit from enhanced records management. TimeLink is the solution to large administrative timekeeping problems.

Manage Entry and Exit Points With Ease

The TimeLink client app becomes your public key for any secured portal which means that remote physical locks no longer become a burden and that rekeying can be accomplished immediately. Personal access can be tracked and controlled with PIN or biometric access.

Check out the GitHub Repo for Project Psuedocode

The frontend data management subsystem of the application was modeled in psuedocode. Ana analysis was presented of which information the app would begin to process, store, and transmit.

KC-Clockhacks/Frontend-psd at 3e22ce2a7b3405bac05dfea4f802b3090335893d · dld2517/KC-Clockhacks

TimeLink. Contribute to dld2517/KC-Clockhacks development by creating an account on GitHub.

dld2517GitHub

TimeLink is not a real application system, but it is real in the hearts and minds of the Kilgore College CIT Hackathon Team. This marks the KC Hackathon Team's 2022 ClockHacks North America Hackathon submission. ClockHacks is the first hackathon for all of the participants.

DevPost Submission for ClockHacks 2022

TimeLink: Timekeeping Information and Geofencing Application

TimeLink is a time clock solution that uses geospatial information to give knowledge and administrative center the right information for real-time and recordkeeping.

dld2517 DardenDevpost

Team members include:
Danielle Pierce
William Atkinson
Redger Daniels
Alec Childers
Jorge Cisneros
Leanid Musaik
Haider Pervez

Academic Advisors:
Danny Darden
Andy Taylor

The screen is one way that KittenBot can communicate with the user but what if it could send signals to space? Or through space.... we will practice.

Enter both sections of code. When you are ready to carry out the plan, move the execute flag to the correct code block.

In order for this process to work best, you need to have a friend. Find a partner and make an agreement on who will be the transmitter and who will be the receiver.

Notice the block that says "If X Then" this reads as "If X is true then..." X is only true if it receives some information. Otherwise it has a zero in it or None.

Let's see if we can modify our code to send some text. How would we do that?

Now let's modify our code in Python to ask for some input from the user.

We will generate the Transmission Code in Python and add the lines:

s=input("What would you like to send: ")
r.send(s)

Test your code by running it, entering the command and check to see if your partner received the words you sent. Partner may need to hold down the button in order to stay in Receive mode.

Have fun modifying this project!

KC Coding Camp, Day 4

Let's supercharge KittenBot and put it into Warp Drive Mode.

We will use variables and randomize the values that get assigned to them in order to create a nice screen graphic.

We will start with the operator to pick a random number, and combine it with a method to draw a line.

If you enter the following code, you will get a very neat Warp Drive pattern.

We will start here and will use the Python editor to do even more. Here is the code that is generated for this program.

In order to start generating this, we will also need to create some variables.

It will be important to plan your code and get things set up in order. So start by using the duplicate tool and get everything ready for insertion.

Be sure you have randomized values for x,y,r,g & b as well as the set statements for each one.

While it is not necessary to do it this way if you are coding directly in Scratch, because we will be moving to Python this will be the way to do it to see how everything works. We can change it later if we want.

Finally you can build the code block below.

Modify the second x and y parameter in order to get some more interesting effects. Try several different modifications, including random numbers. Try changing the parameters and observe what happens. Keep some constant and change others.

Next jump into the Python code generator by clicking the Code button. Once your program starts running you can wait for it to complete, but if it is in a Forever Loop you will need to press Ctrl-C to stop it.

You have the ability to issue commands directly to the KittenBot from this command prompt. It will do whatever you tell it to do as long as the commands are defined correctly. Try some of the things that are listed above and observe what is happening.

Try typing just the line that starts with screen.line but instead of variables, enter some numbers. Be careful which numbers you enter or you could go out of bounds.

Bounds:
x 0-127
y 0-159

r 0-255
g 0-255
b 0-255

Now go into Scratch and make this line. The "Flag" block has to be included for Scratch to generate the Python code. You can have multiple flags set.

Now there is much more to do.

Try working with any number of the drawing methods. And remember, you can always use the screen.clear() function on the command prompt to clear your workspace.

Do you notice the difference between the drag and drop method of Scratch and the control you have with Python? There are lots of opportunities to make typing errors so debug your code carefully and take it slowlly.

Now drag some more of the drawing methods onto the Scratch canvas and convert them into Python code:

You can type in the screen.line draw method one time and use the up-arrow to go back and re-enter what you typed. Use your arrow keys to change up some parameters.

You can modify the code directly in the Python window once you get familiar with  how the parameters work. Practice using some of the other draw methods.

KC Coding Camp, Day 3

As part of the next project we will work with the magnetic sensor on the KittenBot to determine the cardinal directions that the device is pointing. In order to do this we have to use some coding structures such as If.. Then Statements.

Start by coding a basic numerical comparison:

Start by coding a basic decision block:

Now the trick will be deciding what values to place in the comparison tags. Look at the chart below of the compass and the degrees. Remember that we want the sensor to read a certain direction based on a heading so we will need to report one direction as the compass moves toward and away from the main direction.

Here is what the blocks will look like. You will have one for each Cardinal and Intermediate direction.

The chart of cardinal directions will look like this:
337-0 N
1-22 N
23-67 NE
68-112 E
113-157 SE
158-202 S
203-248 SW
249-294 W
295-336 NW

Why do you think there are two sets for North?

Use your coding skills to change the screen text based on the direction.

We will go outside and test our projects.

KC Coding Camp, 2022

Welcome to Camp, Day 4!

Our goal today will be to make a program that will utilize the customize the temperature sensor on board KittenBot to make a "Radiation Exposure Monitor". Coding the project is just one step in the process. As you do this you will have to think about the following:

• Temperature conversion formulas
• Measurement units
• Ambient and direct temperature
• Threshold and trigger values
• User communication

First we will code for temperature and light by reading the sensors. Enter the following code in the visual editor:

What we have here is temperature reading on the top and a light reading at the bottom. Your readings may be a little bit off. Do you know why?

Let's make two changes.

1. Convert Celsius to Farenheit temperature.
2. Make the program update the sensor values continuously.

The formula for temperature conversion is:

The temperature T in degrees Fahrenheit (°F) is equal to the temperature T in degrees Celsius (°C) times 9/5 plus 32:

T(°F) = T(°C) × 9/5 + 32

or

T(°F) = T(°C) × 1.8 + 32

Example
Convert 20 degrees Celsius to degrees Fahrenheit:

T(°F) = 20°C × 9/5 + 32 = 68 °F

In order to convert the temperature, you'll have to use the operators functions.

Once you have the formula entered in correctly, your temperature should show a more realistic number. It may be a bit challenging to get the formula built correctly but keep practicing.

After you have put the sensor readings in a loop, look for an operator function that will get rid of the decimals in the temperature. Which one did you pick?

Next, use your phone's flashlight to find out where the light sensor is and how the intensity of the light changes the value. Move the light around and observe its effect on the sensor.

Hold the KittenBot in your hand for a while and watch the temperature sensor change. Blow on KittenBot and watch what happens to the temperature in the breeze. Does it go down?

Now that we know that the sensor values work properly, we will change our program.

Make the following changes using your coding skills:

• Flood fill the screen a solid red color based on a temperature above 90 degrees.
• Flood fill the screen a different solid color based on a temperature above 98 degrees.
• Flash the text "RADIATION EXPOSURE!" on the screen in Bold White when the KittenBot has been blasted by a large amount of light.

Here is the basic decision block you will need to create in order to change the screen. Notice we use x, a variable, which holds the temperature calculation so you only have to do it once.

In order to do this you will need to pay attention to the values of the light meter when you are holding your phone flashlight up to it. This will help you determine the amount of light that should be present in full sun.

We will make other modifications and test them.

This article discusses specific applications of cloud storage and assumes that the reader has some knowledge of some cloud topics. I have prepared a kinder introduction to some of these topics in a preceding article that can be found be clicking on the dynamic content box below:

At the end of this article I'll place a link of a great tutorial to putting a static site on Amazon S3. The author cites cost as a motivating factor instead of spooling up server he decided to use a tool to crawl his own site and create some static pages and the push them up to an Amazon S3 bucket to be served from there using CDN. I will investigate some benefits to this as well as some reasons why a person might want to use LightSail instead.

While the article below is quite technical in nature I am linking to it here so I can share it if you are interested but also so that I can find it again. In the current time we live in which is "Information Overload" or "Information Everywhere" it is harder and harder to keep track of things. Mandeep does an excellent job at walking the administrator through the process of putting the site in a static position using an S3 Bucket.

Hosting a Ghost blog on AWS S3 as a static website

This tutorial teaches how to host your Ghost blog on AWS S3 as a static website

Mandeep SinghCoding Fundas

Static Vs. Dynamic: What's the difference?

In different areas of information technology these two terms have different meanings. When discussing IP or network addresses a static address is one that doesn't change and a dynamic one is one that does change. When referring to web content, static content is pre-made and served to a visitor while dynamic content is content that is assembled on the fly from components on a per-demand basis.

In web world, websites consist of both static and dynamic content. In one way think of some images as static content. Other images can be dynamic when the browser renders them because they can be stretched or moved around the screen. But the actual image that is served doesn't changed. It's a static resource. Because some content doesn't change (often) it can be served a different way than content that changes with every visitor.

So it's All About Speed Then?

Speed comes into play when search engine optimization becomes part of the plan. If I want my website to rank higher in Google than it did before I went to make sure that I meet all the requirements of Google. Now in one way Google gets to dictate how the web forms. I suppose that is just a part of being the biggest player. That doesn't mean that's how it has to be but if people are competing for search rankings it helps to play by someone's rules.

When I serve assets statically I get to beat the speed game. I don't win at the SEO game though. Even though I can now say that a certain percentage of my web content and assets are served statically they still won't be served through content delivery networks (CDN), which is where the scores really start moving in the favor of the big search kahunas like Google. So in order to get my static assets into a CDN I can rely on a special webhost like CloudFlare and pay a special fee for mirroring my site or I can use Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) to store my content.

So Why LightSail?

The article I linked to above goes into great detail about using Ghost to run a copy of the server on the local machine.

What Are the Disadvantages?

There are a couple of issues to be aware of  in taking the site to a static state vs leaving it in a dynamic (served) state.

This was a logbook that I created in an attempt to begin the documentation process of understanding how to spoof a user agent and why that event might need to be done. A problem was encountered when I had tried to automate the process of downloading a collection of files that were placed on the internet. My request to download them came from a utility wget which is not a normal web browser but a program that handles requests just like web browsers do.

I kept running into an error in that the download request triggered an application residing in the web browser that wanted to check my humanity. Because this is a book publisher's site, no doubt it was to protect their copyright. But the same type of thing could come up in any number of cases where a request is made but it turns out the programmer doesn't like "how" you are accessing the file.

So this is an exploration of how one might begin to investigate changing a user agent in wget to match the user-agent in Chrome.

Problem definition

Using the command wget to download a pdf document.
The command kept failing with the following output:

Will not apply HSTS. The HSTS database must be a regular and non-world-writable file.
ERROR: could not open HSTS store at '/home/ddarden/.wget-hsts'. HSTS will be disabled.
--2020-05-27 10:26:48--  https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-94-007-6863-5.pdf
Resolving link.springer.com (link.springer.com)... 151.101.192.95, 151.101.128.95, 151.101.0.95, ...
Connecting to link.springer.com (link.springer.com)|151.101.192.95|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/html]
Saving to: ‘Group-Theory-Applied-to-Chemistry.pdf’

Group-Theory-Applied-to-Chemi     [ <=>                                              ]  13.54K  --.-KB/s    in 0.03s

2020-05-27 10:26:48 (504 KB/s) - ‘Group-Theory-Applied-to-Chemistry.pdf’ saved [13860]

So we can see here that it appeared that the file was saved and we get a confirmation that we have it. Wget interpreted our command correctly and saved the output it received to the file we told it to in the '-o' switch but notice the file size. It is very small.

Work to resolve the issue

Attempted to open the PDF file in a viewer failed. Invalid file.

Opened the file with vi:

meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge,chrome=1"/>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=2.5,user-scalable=yes">

    <title>Security check | SpringerLink</title>
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/springerlink-static/409335052/images/favicon/favicon.ico">
<link rel="icon" sizes="16x16 32x32 48x48" href="/springerlink-static/409335052/images/favicon/favicon.ico">
<link rel="icon" sizes="16x16" type="image/png" href="/springerlink-static

It is html output.

So this looks just like regular HTML output. But notice it's nothing more than a link to the favicon.ico file and a "Security Check". My request to grab the file is getting interpreted as an automated bot. But how? I went into Chrome and downloaded the file, and the download completed successfully.

Idea: Change the user agent

The theory is that if I change the user agent that I am passing over with wget the system will interpret my request properly and will give me the file that I am asking for.

Using chomre:\ settings to display the user agent.

Look under Version for User Agent and copy the string:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/83.0.4103.61 Safari/537.36

How to pass user-agent string to wget.

man wget | grep 'user'

Indicates that there is a user-agent command switch.

--user-agent=""

Using --user-agent="" gives the same error when dowloading the PDF file.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/83.0.4103.61 Safari/537.36

I assigned this string to a variable and sent it through wget. It is still not working.

When I enclose it in quotes it literally evaluates every parameter as a website. When I leave the quotes off it still errors out but I have no way to know that it is actually sending the user-agent string properly.

Still getting a robot alert message when I go back to my browser from trying wtih the wget command but I am able to download the PDF in the browser after I go through the robot check.

In order to check both how Chrome browser is sending the command and how wget is, try checking headers.

3. Set Other Request Headers

Real web browsers will have a whole host of headers set, any of which can be checked by careful websites to block your web scraper. In order to make your scraper appear to be a real browser, you can navigate to https://httpbin.org/anything, and simply copy the headers that you see there (they are the headers that your current web browser is using). wgetwwwwwwwwex

Source: https://www.scraperapi.com/blog/5-tips-for-web-scraping

So what are next steps?

This problem is not complete. However the next steps that I want to take in the solution are the following:

1. Check to see what other headers WGET as well as Chrome are sending over by using the website in the article.
2. Attempt to set the User Agent to the correct string on wget and test it.
3. If that doesn't work, attempt to set some headers as per the article and see if I can get anythig different.

It may be if I continued this out that I will need to modify X-headers sent by the browser. Unlike a browser, wget is not an interactive process. Therefore, being hit with a humanity check is a very frustrating process especially when we are attempting to use automation to solve problems. It's also an unrecoverable error.

Feel free to keep going in this challenge to find the appropriate user agent and or X-header needed to solve the problem.

This is a series of articles dedicated to passing the CCNA exam. Part of it is content that I created while I was studying for my own test. If it would be a help to my students I have placed it here on the site.

Knowledge Is Power But Sometimes it's Crazy

I can fill my brain up with some pretty useless information. For some reason its the useless trivia that can stick while the information that may be more urgent or important doesn't make it in. So here are some important facts that you may want to commit to memory for your CCNA exam and hopefully some easy ways to remember that information.

I was trying to come up with a way to remember some of the things like IP Address information, especially IPv6 information as well as some other more esoteric topics like Port Aggregation Protocol, EtherChannel information, and HSRP. I had to really trick myself to get it in my head, but there is something about accessing my tickler for trivia that works.

One thing that I suggest that my students do to prepare for their exam is to plan to write out a block of mnemonic information on the digital whiteboard or slate before the test even starts. At the end of the article I will reproduce that information in a form that can be easily recorded and reproduced on test day.

IP Addressing

IPv6 can be a challenge for many folks. The format can be pretty intimidating. While it is four times as long numerically as a regular IPv4 address it doesn't have to take four times more mental power to work with. There are some special addresses to remember in order to make everything work.

The special forms of the IPv6 address are:

• Link local addresses (fe80)
• Unique local addresses (fc00)
• Multicast Addresses (ff00)
• Unique global addresses (2000)
• Documentation addresses (2001:db8)
• EUI64 Universal/Local (ffee)

Now how do I remember all this? Well one trick is that I have to start somewhere. So I decided to start with what I know. I always remember the link-local address which is (FE80::/10). The reason I remember that one is all the times that I have spent configuring Cisco routers in the past. Whenever you do the link-local address, before you type in the magic command:

ipv6 unicast-routing

You must type in the link local address and fe80::1 is that address that is the default. The next device on the link will default to fe80::2. This corresponds to the Windows APIPA address (169.254.0.0/16).

The second form, the unique local address corresponds to the private addresses that we would normally use behind NATTed networks. The way I remember those is I think about RFC 1918. RFC 1918 is the IETF RFC that discussed unroutable local addresses. So in my mnemonics I start with a list and I remember the FC in RFC and the FC in FC00, like this:

RFC 1918 IPv6 FC00::0//
172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16, 10.0.0.0/8
172.31.255.255, 192.168.255.255, 10.255.255.255

By typing it out like this it helps me to remember the inside addresses in case I see one of those in a random question. The more I write the less trivial details I have to remember during the test.

The full IPv6 address mnemonic would look like this:

ff00::/8 - Multicast 224.0.0.1/8
fe80::/10 - Link Local 169.254.0.0/16
2001:db8 - Documentation Address
2000::/3 - Global Unicast Address
fc00::/7 - RFC 1918 Private Addresses
172.16.0.0/12 - 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0/16 - 192.168.255.255
10.10.0.0/8 - 10.255.255.255

CIDR Host Tables

Another thing that you want to do very quickly before the test starts is to reproduce a subnetting CIDR table.

This table will show the CIDR notation and align it wtih the number of available hosts in a subnet as well as the increased-bit decimal values for the subnet mask.

Here is the example

This table is going to help you when you are asked several questions on the exam about subnet creation. The format of the questions on the exam are such that a person who is not well-versed on the subnetting question is going to spend a lot of time on making the subnets. The way that the test asks it is that one question will be written to ask about a subnet which must be formed from an existing subnet. In order to solve the problem the test taker must usually create three or four more subnets from a larger one and pick from one of those to select an answer. Writing down this handy chart will save time in this process and it will prevent you from trying to do these types of problems in your head, which can cause errors.

The first row labeled CIDR gives the slash notation for the number of masked bits in the network portion of the IP address starting at the third-octet boundary position, or /24. The second row labeled Mask is the cumulative decimal value of the netmask bits from left to right starting with the first zero bit of the fourth octet and continuing on to having all the bits set. This will allow you to visually have the subnet mask created from the CIDR-notation in a very quick period of time without having to mentally compute it. The last column, IP's, are the number of IP addresses in this mask set. Note that it is not the number of hosts.

While the questions will always ask you in most cases the number of hosts, I specifically leave this out in my chart. I need to know the number of IP addresses in a subnet block. I do not care about the number of hosts unless the question specifically asks about hosts. Note that the gateway address is always a host address. The two addresses that make up the difference between IP's in a CIDR block and hosts in an IP block are well-known: the network number or subnet identifier and the broadcast address. These are always positional. They are always first and last in the IP block.

Route Administrative Distances

The last thing you want to have here are the administrative distances for the varying route types. Cisco routers handle these different route types and give specific priority to competing routes based on the type of route. This means that a certain routing protocol advertising the exact same route as another would get priority given to it.

These again are just things to memorize and are shown in the following table:

    C/Local  0
    Static   1
    eBGP    20
    EIGRP   90
    OSPF   110
    RIP    120
    iBGP   200

Key things to remember is that a static route takes precedence over an external BGP route which takes precedence over all other routes. The other is that Internal BGP one of the lowest priorities. It is imperative that a test taker memorize this chart and values.

Stress relief

One of the most important things that memorization of these key topics will do for you as a test taker is to reduce test anxiety. If you memorize these things and spend the first three minutes of the test writing them down using the provided electronic white board (or physical slate), it will serve to reduce your test anxiety.

That's why memorization of these is so important. One thing that this will do is get your analytical juices flowing during the first part of the test. Don't worry about what the first question is, just immediately write the memorization topics down. Then you can start the test.

Good luck on your CCNA adventure.

Thomas J Watson said that "all the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think." He was right. If we spent more time thinking and less time doing other things, surely there would be more benefits to all of humanity.

Reader you could be the next person to solve an amazing problem. You might be the next person to realize that the problem exists. If so, find out who is solving it and join them. Find out what needs to be thought about and think it. Then write it down.

There are three very amazing things that I have heard in my life that are worth repeating. First, God has the days of man ordained, He loves man and He sent Jesus to save him through repentance, not condemnation. Man is already condemned through his own sin. All we have to do is accept His free gift.

"All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work." - Thomas J. Watson

The second thing worth repeating is that the difference between goofing off and science is writing it down. I am going to write more of it down. I want to be known for my science not my goofing off.

The third thing is this: Stop reading and start writing. Up to this point I’ve spent my whole life reading and I have the rest of my life to write, but because of the First thing, I don’t know how long that is. So I need to do the Second thing so I will have something to talk about when I do the Third thing.

That’s pretty much it. This website Darden Dot FYI will be filled with things that are too good to print. I am also on Medium at

Danny Darden – Medium

Read writing from Danny Darden on Medium. Network engineer, Information technology professor, security enthusiast, Texas Aggie. Deep thinker. Writer. Lover of the Word, follower of Christ.

Medium

This article was originally published on Medium.

It’s been said that if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. I stand for truth. For many out there that find themselves washed into the rolling tide of unease and violence, of hearing the narratives that are designed to focus your attitudes and aggression into something that looks victorious on the outside, the invitation is being made for you to listen.

That thing that looks victorious on the outside is a shadow. It’s a dark cloud. It’s invasive, like the locusts that currently roam across India and Africa. People starve while we shout and fight. Tons of food destroyed in a matter of hours. That’s what an invasion does. It eats. It eats so heavily and mightily that it consumes everything consumable in and around it’s path, leaving nothing but death and destruction. That is what is happening in our nation. An invasive consumption of death at every quarter masked as voices to be heard. Your voice has been heard loud and clear. And it is the voice of death.

This brings to mind a scripture in the Old Testament book of Joshua. In Chapter 24 of that book Joshua is giving the Israelites a history lesson as he tells them what God has said to remind them of their identity, where they have come from, and who their Holy Protector is. He then gives them a choice as a people, whether they will serve God or the idols that they have continuously kept with them.

God said “I gave you a land you did not labor for, and cities you did not build, though you live in them; you are eating from vineyards and olive groves you did not plant.” — Joshua 24:13

We live in a world that we did not create, build or labor for, yet we benefit from all of those that have come before us. But please, listen. Your insatiable hunger to purge away things that you did not build, and destroy things that you did not produce, and stamp out ideas you didn’t think— this insatiable hunger is a darkness in the soul of our country and it controls you as its pawn to all of our demise. If you really cared about the things you say you care about, you would be encouraging fathers to stay in the home. You would advocate a public life of honor in families and not destruction on streets. You would honor the first amendment to our Constitution, which gives you the right to peaceably assemble. You would decry with totality every type of violence. You would not seek to honor criminal behavior and would denounce lawbreakers at every turn. You would value education, true dignity through honest pursuit, and not seek to protect the identify of looters and criminals. Please, hear what I have to say.

I heard today that there is a push to remove a certain statue at Texas A&M. One of the the many best and brightest institutions of higher learning in the world. Texas A&M is home of some of the greatest minds and innovative thinkers in this country. Just like every institution it has a history. A history not of power dominance and disparity but one of overcoming through knowledge. When I was a student there I had the honor and privilege to know and study under a great man, Dr. Norman Borlaug. He was the leader of the Green Revolution. He saved the lives of millions of starving people all across the world. It is said that he saved more lives than any man who has ever lived. He did it with knowledge, and with science. He did it out of a pledge to deliver knowledge that was greater than himself to a world that also was greater than himself. Yet he was humble enough about who he was to teach a clueless agronomy student how to separate plant leaves from stems. This is selfless service and it is embodied in the statue of one man that sits in a place of honor on the campus.

“Lawrence Sullivan Ross, 1838–1898. Soldier, statesman, knightly gentleman. Brigadier General, C.S.A. Governor of Texas. President of the A&M College.” — Inscription on the reverse base of the statue.

There is a petition that seeks to remove the statue of Lawrence Sullivan Ross from that place of honor in Academic Plaza on the A&M campus. Sadly these purges have already occurred in many places in our nation. Once again they have come back with an insatiable hunger to purge away history. To do that is to begin to extinguish a flame that lights a great path of knowledge and a quest for truth. How many lives were changed because that man fought to keep Texas A&M alive in the face of its demise. How many lives were changed because of the Prairie View A&M campus just down the road. How many soldiers went out from A&M to fight for freedom. How many scientists and engineers came out of her to not only enable the world we live in but to save untold lives. But you want to bring down a monument to freedom through perseverance in the face of power. You want to destroy the memory of a man that held to the tenet that education for the sons of farmers of any race was a noble cause and one worth defending with sacred honor. You would not be removing a statue of a confederate general. No, you would intend to continue your great consumption. Your great purge. Your agenda. Your dark scourge on this country. Your death march.

Should you continue to succeed, your bastions of evil — currently represented by an enclave in the heart of Seattle and a named plaza in Washington DC — will be forever known as the days of American darkness. The day communism arrived at our shores.

Danny Darden is a network engineer, a privacy advocate and security researcher who writes content on Medium. He is a community college instructor where he swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, whose First Amendment gives citizens the right to peaceably assemble . He also regularly teaches courses on information technology, computer security, and customer service.

Danny Darden is a network engineer, a privacy advocate and security researcher. He is Associate Professor of Computer & Information Technology at Kilgore College and regularly teaches courses on information technology including computer security, computer networking, computer operating systems, and cloud deployment. He is a full-time Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Tyler.

Danny holds a MBA in Finance and International Business from LeTourneau University, a BS in Agriculture & Leadership Development from Texas A&M University, and an AS in Computer Science from Kilgore College. He has been active in the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He reads Internet Engineering documents at bedtime.

Danny has won awards for his research, quality of work, sales records, and most recently, for teaching. He has been a featured guest speaker on nationally syndicated radio, and he also developed one of the first bibliographic databases on the web for information command & control methods. He writes articles to help his students stay successful in the workplace and always challenges them to prepare for the career they desire.

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