Someone recently brought to my attention that I’ve offended/hurt someone by the (by now, months old) words on my blog.

That is perfectly fine. I’m not here to be a politically correct person. This is my space on the Internet—and I’ll say what I like here. You know how I believe in freedom and its natural limitations? No? Well, I’ll say this until the day that I die: one person’s freedom ends where another person’s freedom begins. I’m free to say what I like, and you’re free to read it in any way you like or even not at all. Now, I won’t talk about other people by name on my blog unless I have permission to do so—especially if I’ve nothing positive to say, so don’t say that I’m not being at least a bit nice to you—but if I write a post here and it’s about you and you know that from nothing other than reading that post, maybe that is saying something more than what I have said here. If that has ever been the case in the past, or if it ever becomes the case in the future, then know this: it’s better you read what I have to say about you here, than wish that I were willing to spew my unfettered anger in your direction in person. And shoot, if you’re doing things that are illegal (such as running unlicensed proprietary software) and I haven’t turned your ass into law enforcement, you should be thanking whatever deity you believe in. Honestly.

Anyone who knows me—even if they do not know me well—knows that there is absolutely nothing that will make me angry like willful ignorance.  “Ignorance is bliss,” as the saying goes, but ignorance when combined with the lack of desire to fix it in what you claim to be a domain of specialized knowledge which you possess is just plain inexcusable. If you manage a network, you should know the basics of how it all works. There are people that I know that manage Windows networks and know nothing—not even the high level overview—of how Windows networking actually works beyond the painted pixels on the screen. Guess what? That means that you really do not know what you’re doing.

And lest anyone get offended or butt-hurt over being called ignorant, don’t. Let’s remember what ignorance actually means, and remember that it’s not an insult or a sleight against anyone—everyone is ignorant about many things, even in their own fields of work and expertise. However, willful ignorance in one’s own field—that is, ignorance that you’re not willing to fix all on your own like a big boy or girl—is absolutely something that you should be offended at! It is simply not possible for a single human being to know everything, even in his or her own specialty.  We have reference works, documentation, and vast seas of information in every field that I can think of, more than can fit in a human brain. But what matters is that you know what you know, and know what you don’t, and know how to find it out quickly and efficiently. And that means having a sort of self-initiative. And for that matter, I’ll even point people in the right direction, if they’re willing to do the legwork themselves to decipher the information once I’ve pointed them at it. I certainly don’t spoon-feed though, and if you expect that (in your own field, no less!) then I will stand by my assertion that you should not work in that field at all. And I will stand by that assertion whole-heartedly, no matter how much that gives a person pain.

If you’re ignorant about something that you never do nor have a desire to do—say, you’re an auto mechanic and you don’t care to know how to sew or crochet—then that’s fine; that’s your choice! But if you work in a field, and you learn that there is something that you don’t know, then learn it. Or at least learn where you can learn it when you need to, and get a friggin’ overview in your head. Read any single RFC and you’ll realize that there is no way that any of us can memory every single detail of every single specification for every single type of system that we manage. It’s just not possible without spending so much time studying that as to make it impossible to get anything useful actually accomplished. But if you manage a mail server and you don’t know the first thing about SMTP or POP3 or IMAP or whatever-else protocols your mail clients and servers are using, yes, that’s a problem. You certainly do not need to be able to have a conversation with your SMTP server, but you should know how to look up just how to do to that should you ever have to do any really low-level troubleshooting or log capturing. You shouldn’t need to know how to speak any application layer network protocol directly for that matter (though a lot of the text based ones are simple enough that you can learn them as needed over time). But you absolutely should know how to find the information that tells you how to speak those protocols if ever you have a need. And you should know enough to be able to make intelligent decisions on things like physical network infrastructure, management of your client and server operating systems, and so forth.

As an example: I am nowhere close to an expert on Windows—and I know this. (I will say that I know an awful lot about the way Windows bootstraps itself, as I have had to fix systems with multiple infections by hand because there were no automatic tools available to fix the system… but that does not make me an expert on the whole system, and probably not even the bootstrapping process of the system.) But I will research any issues that I encounter while supporting Windows users and find out—empirically, if I must—how to fix the problem. It’s what I do. And there are many, many places where I can find that sort of information, including booting up a copy of Windows itself and trying to figure it out that way. It does probably take me a lot longer than it would take someone who knows the system in and out, and I’ll grant that. I am absolutely the strongest on POSIX/UNIX-family systems. But that doesn’t stop me from being able to learn it and handle it. Even if it does take longer.

The difference between me and the unidentified person in my last post? I’ll spend any resources necessary—time, money, effort—to learn what I need to learn to get the job done. I don’t cut corners. My goal isn’t to get everything done sloppy and fast. Even if it takes me longer, I’d rather know and understand the problem—and its solution!—completely before moving forward with doing anything about it. Especially if I can find a short-term workaround that will enable me to come up with a quality solution. I eschew willful ignorance in my field. Do you?