What Does Ethereal Mind Mean ?

When think­ing of a name for my blog, I wanted some­thing that indic­ated the tech­nical or net­work­ing nature of my writ­ing but also reflec­ted that it would be per­sonal and maybe a little bit more than that. I wanted to express my think­ing about the way I work, about the pro­fes­sional life we lead and think­ing how we can improve the small worlds that we inhabit.

This is import­ant to me since small changes can have big impacts. I want to believe that a small change in my atti­tude, my approach, my skills can make a dif­fer­ence to someone else.

Mind

“Mind” was an an obvi­ous choice, since I am ‘speak­ing my mind’, it sug­gests that this is my per­sonal thoughts and opin­ions. I find that through listen­ing, dis­cuss­ing and shar­ing the details of our pro­fes­sional lives with oth­ers that I learn that we have the sim­ilar prob­lems, cares and reas­ons for working.

Ethereal

Wiktionary defines ‘eth­er­eal’ as:

• Pertaining to the hypo­thet­ical upper, purer air, or to the higher regions bey­ond the earth or bey­ond the atmo­sphere; celes­tial; oth­er­worldly; as, eth­er­eal space; eth­er­eal regions.
• Consisting of ether; hence, exceed­ingly light or airy; tenu­ous; spir­itlike; char­ac­ter­ized by extreme del­ic­acy, as form, man­ner, thought, etc.

I think that this is a reas­on­ably accur­ate descrip­tion of what Network Engineers do. I use con­cepts, rules, know­ledge, design prac­tice, and other men­tal activ­it­ies in my work every­day. This know­ledge is intan­gible, immeas­ur­able and the res­ults are accep­ted by our peers. In a real way, many per­ceive what we do as ‘otherworldly’ — try explain­ing what you do to other people .

I also enjoy the spir­itual con­nota­tions. I am not a reli­gious per­son, at least not in any con­ven­tional sense((a man with his eyes fixed on heaven is not look­ing where his feet are going — David Eddings)), but I believe that you should exam­ine your­self, your life and the people around you. Search for ways that bring good­ness to them and your­self and your life will be joyous.

A life unex­amined is a life not worth living — Socrates

My per­sonal defin­i­tion is (more or less): an elev­ated or altern­ate spir­itual plane where we can glimpse some truth or higher pur­pose. We can find insights into our own exist­ence, envir­on­ments and the people that sur­round us every­day if we just take the time to chal­lenge ourselves and look at the world in a dif­fer­ent way. This includes our pro­fes­sional land­scapes. Think some­thing like — “when you work in the mud all day it’s hard to remem­ber being clean”.

Ethereal Mind

So Ethereal Mind is a mostly per­sonal col­lec­tion of blab­ber­ings about the human con­di­tion of Networks Engineers. Sometimes tech­nical, some­times a per­sonal view­point. My per­sonal motto when writ­ing is “I don’t have any­thing to say, I’m just say­ing it”.

Humour — The Difference Between Network and Server Engineers

Challenging Assumptions - Autonegotiation on Ethernet — it works

Opinion — Certification Matters — Experience Less So

Technology — Bluecoat and Cisco Switches

Postscript

Historically, Wireshark used to be called Ethereal, a net­work traffic ana­lyzer, but Etherealmind was not chosen for this asso­ci­ation. I don’t have any spe­cial skills in packet ana­lysis, most of my work is at fur­ther up the OSI model.

Also, an eth­er­eal creature, e.g., a fairy or myth­ical being of del­ic­ate or gentle nature — and I don’t feel very myth­ical.… or del­ic­ate or gentle.

Postscript — from my wife

My wife would like to sug­gest that Ethereal Mind could also mean “Air Head” and this is is not a bad descrip­tion of me (at times).