First of all, I want to apologize to anyone that understands the concepts I am talking about, without all of my figures of speech.
I live in a world where very few people that I know, truly understands what I'm trying to say. Most of the time, when I try to explain an idea, or a process, I get blank looks. Some people even have the audacity to point fingers and tell me that I'm the one at fault. Some, simply because they don't understand or have a background they can pull from; some simply because they don't really care.
As an example, Weialgo. The concept is simple, ping stuff, and then graph it en mass, and use those graphs to get a better understanding of how applications work over your network. Some people just don't understand all the technical talk, but they could, if they wanted to, understand green is good, yellow means caution, and red is bad or stop. Strangely, only a few people have ever realized what I was saying with this. Few being a handful; almost everyone else that I have talked to about this simple idea has ridiculed it or told me I was crazy or wasting my time. They ask questions like, "Who else is doing this?" "Wouldn't HP be doing this if it was that useful?" "Why don't we hear about this from Cisco if it's so great?"
To me, weialgo is about as plain of a concept as I believe it could be. There are no drawbacks. While some may debate the usefulness of the information gathered by pings, tell me, what's the harm? The information gathered is very useful, in my eyes it's critical for some things. Why is it so hard for people to understand?
Over the years, to help illustrate my points, I've developed a method of explanation using hyperbole, analogy, similie and metaphor. These simplified explanations have progressively gotten even simpler over the years, trying to make it easier for the non-technical audience to understand. At times though, I forget there are people out there that are more technical and do understand concepts at their core.
Second case in point. IPv6, RIP Layer 2.
Looking back at it, I could probably go on for an hour about everything wrong with that post. But, my reasoning behind escalating the use of 'figures of speech' is, I can't get anyone to listen to me. If people really would stop and understand the impact of what I am saying in that post, I would get an immediate response. However, since I didn't receive a response, I decided to try a bigger audience.
I cross posted it to Reddit.
Now, in hindsight, this was a huge mistake. But not for the reasons you may think.
On reddit.com/r/networking, there were people that actually understood what I was saying. Of course, I received the usual "you're a moron", "this is the dumbest thing I've ever read" comments. I couldn't care less about that, I'm used to it.
What really bothered me was that there were some people on /r/networking that actually seemed to understand the concept. But all of the layers of hyperbole, analogy, similie and metaphor got in the way of their understanding. The people that I wanted to reach were put off, by the very things I was trying to do to make the concept more understandable.
There are people in this world that I don't need to use all of the figures of speech with. They understand what I'm saying, without having to explain it like it was a different language.
At that point, I realized that I had made a huge mistake. I realized that my manner of explanation was insulting to everyone. If someone didn't understand what I was saying, I was insulting them by "talking down to them" with the 'figures of speech' I was using. If someone did understand what I was saying, I was insulting them by insinuating that they couldn't understand the idea I was trying to relate.
It led to several days of soul searching. Really. Am I really where I want to be? Does the idea of spending the rest of my life talking down to people help me or anyone I'm trying to help? What would it be like to work somewhere that had people at a level that I didn't have to explain everything using simplified, and in many cases, inaccurate due to simplification, descriptions of everything?
So, first, I want to repeat.
I apologize to anyone that understands the concepts that I'm trying to convey without all of my 'figures of speech'. I really don't mean to insult anyone.
Second.
Within this blog, I'm going to try to write (bad habits are hard to break, forgive me if I slip) as though everyone reading this blog can understand what I'm saying without covering it up with 'figures of speech'.
That's it. Have a great day.
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