i got a rock

ok...a little background to make this story make sense...

the company i work for takes halloween very seriously.

as in, they have a full-on contest for individual and group costumes, with pretty significant prizes, including an extra paid day off for the top winners.

and the teams have top-secret meetings to plan out not just their costumes, but also the skits that go along with them. see...if you don't have a skit, you can kiss the big prizes goodbye.

and...except for one time several years ago (and i was a judge, so i did not compete)...i have not partaken in halloween.

altho not for a lack of some killer costume ideas.
it's just...well...not normally something i tend to do.
and here's why:

i have this particular idea about trust.
especially when it comes to being someone who handles data networks.

gaining the trust of a business owner to handle the single most precious asset they have--one that these days may very well be their business--means being the kind of person who doesn't need to be "a wild and crazy guy."

case in point: one of our competitors in town likes to make a lot of jokes about being chemically dependent upon certain controlled substances. ha ha...funny...whatever.

if i were a business owner, i might chuckle, but i sure wouldn't let him anywhere near a single one of my pc workstations, let alone trust him to keep our entire network up and running, monitored, secured, all that.

so that's why i approach fun stuff like our halloween thing very cautiously. even tho it has cost me quite dearly sometimes in the past when it comes to getting to know my co-workers, it's been a trade-off i had to make professionally.

it's perception, sure...but perception is reality more often than not.

and that's exactly the point. when it comes to the integrity of a network, either one under my control or not, there's nothing that would make me cross the line to betray someone's trust. simple as that. but sometimes, to make sure the folks who need to know that fully and truly believe that about you...well, you gotta be the wet blanket.

so now that i've said all that...i am planning on competing this year. have a killer costume idea, and a partner.

no way we can lose.

and...if we win...i promise here and now to post a pic of our winning entry.