TetriTherapy?

A friend of mine sent me this link which discusses the output of some research on the positive benefits of playing Tetris to reduce the incidents of traumatic flashbacks. I have to admit that after a hard day at work or when I am particularly stressed out I find myself wanting to play a game. For me it's always been a way to de-stress and unwind where others might turn to more harmful vices such as smoking, drinking, or drugs.

One of the drawbacks I've found is going too far down and playing too much. This has caused me to have the reverse effect where I can't sleep and I toss and turn with thoughts consumed from the game. I can play whole games in my dreams and wake up frustrated with very little deep sleep. On the other hand if I find myself not having played games for a few weeks I'll end up with nightmares where my brain goes into overdrive and so I balance things out with a little gaming every few days keeps me emotionally and mentally on an even playing field.

I'd love to hear others and what their stress outlets are as I suspect this type of conditioning and self treatment isn't segmented to me or gaming. Am I alone and a freak on this or can others ratify my realizations?

Blog Format

I've been talking with my co-worker Chris Ebbeson (@ebbynezer) about his blog and our common situation. We want to blog more but we don't have enough to say to justify sitting down and writing something formal. We agreed that Twitter is far too small and Blogging is often too big. I am going to start writing smaller blogs as a matter of practice and not let size of the article prevent me from sharing my thoughts.

Chris on the other hand is giving Tumblr a try. I have to admit I've not actually gone to Tumblr before so I created me an account (solarcurve.tumblr.com) and will be checking it out. I am impressed with all these sites and their ability to post to one another and seamlessly get your information out there. I am also afraid of overkill and duplicate postings. What are your thoughts?

A new look at the old password

In this day and age it's important to have a strong password and most organizations are doing a good job of requiring a password with higher degrees of strength. More importantly more and more organizations and even your operating system are opening up to much longer passwords that support special characters such as spaces.

If you are like me you have different passwords for different things and you probably have a hard time remembering the cryptic codes of mixed numbers, letters, and special characters. A few years ago I switched over to pass phrases which have eliminated a lot of issues but also helped me with my attitude and self-confidence. You might be thinking what?

Microsoft Windows for example will support passwords up to 128 characters in length including spaces and special characters such as exclamation points (! also known as bang), asterisks (* also known as splat), and even question marks. Many other sites are supporting moderately long passwords which open up more possibilities. Rather than a password of “abcd1234!” or something similar to fulfill the complexity requirements consider to switching to something more fun, easier to remember, more secure, and possible self supporting.

For example I was using a variation on "I am organized!" which is pretty easy to remember and helped me think about wanting to stay organized when I was doing my work. This is much easier to remember and is 15 characters instead of the traditional 6 or 8 characters which means it's MUCH more difficult to crack. The spaces and punctuation are keys to a tough-to-crack password and ways to make it unique to you to avoid easy guesses.

With that being said it's important to not have something so obvious that it becomes part of the standard password guessing and hacking attempts. A bad example would be "I am sexy" or "I am smart". Both of which might be helpful but you need to customize it in some form or fashion such as "I! am very smart" which supports that need as well as pushes the affirmation to another level. I do not suggest that you have to start with an "I am" prefix as you can and should create a variation that supports your personality and needs such as "On time is how I roll."

Given that I lock my work station every time I get up at work and I have to log back in I've found this approach to be quite a positive and helpful change. Since I have different passwords for different things I am bombarded with positive messages throughout the day as I log into various systems and sites because I think it as I type it. I hope that you will give it a try and that it will work for you too.