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Sunday 14 July 2019

#100kmday - 100 kilometers in 24 hours

Few months ago me and my friend Mihkel we had few beers and decided to have some fun because why not. Fun to complete 100 kilometers on foot within 24 hours, within one day, from 00:00 am till 11:59 pm. (EDIT: radio interview with Mihkel in Estonian in Kuku Raadio)
Facebook event was created, a lot of people were invited only one condition. Gather your people, make your group, track your route. Easy enough, isn't it?

Months passed, 13 people attended the event and on the day of 29th of June. Saturday, 7 brave souls gathered to make a journey. Turned out that out of 300+ people only 7 of my fiends decided to take the challenge. Three of them had in mind max 50 kilometers.

We started off exactly at 00:00 on Saturday morning.


Start was simple, bags where packed, we had food, we had water, we had change of socks and lots of  patches for feet. Most important stuff was needle and a thread to get rid of the blisters which where doomed to come.

First steps were quite amusing and people were in perfect mood, it was bound to change. After 20 kilometers people got more silent, only one thing in their head: "Why I am doing this". Actually it was maybe only in my head. After a while we decided to start to make breaks for 5 minutes long.


It was really cold around 4 am in the morning when the sun started to rise, actually in never went fully down and the asphalt road was killing our feet. There was just five us left and we desperately were keeping our eyes open for some road off the grounds we were currently on. We got to Saadjärve, there was some race 16 km around the lake, we managed to grab some pictures from the finish. Two girls who joined us started heading back to Tartu around 22 kilometers from the beginning.




We hoped  that the road near Jääaja keskus gets us somewhere but it was dead end. Oh the pain what we had to turn back few kilometers on the road where we have already been on. 

After a while we did bit bigger break at Elistvere Loomapark. Around 30 kilometers in. It was still very cold. I only had one warm shirt and then sport shirt on top of it. It has been almost 6 hours from the start of the trip - 6 am in the morning. 

We headed towards to the Maarja-Madgaleena where I changed my walking shoes to running shoes. It felt amazing. We managed to stay at a Saarjärve lake for like 10 minutes, and forest road took us there. That felt so good for feet. By 9 am we crossed big road where one of our walking buddy took a bus back to Tartu on the 45th kilometer mark. 

Next up we saw a sign that RMK walking route starts. thinking, yes, no more asphalt, but it was long long road of nothing else. At some point it turned to gravel road and those long straight walks you just wanted to keep your eyes low not to see the entreaty to of the walk. Imagine walking an hour on a straight road without and end and after each corner there was another one of those ahead. 

At lunch 12:00 am, 60 kilometers were behind us. There was one RMK table where we had lunch, longer stop and had some sleep on the bench. Wasted a needed hour there. Starting to walk again was very difficult, took at least 10 minutes to get feet back working on those straight roads. Approximately 5 kilometers later we were out of fresh water.  10 kilometers later we saw a house where the owner happily filled up our bottles. Time was 4 pm. This water was so good. Drank one bottle empty and refilled there.

On 77th kilometer there was a shop. Took some lemonade, ice-cream, chocolate and few beers. It was not a good beer but at that moment of time it was the best beer in the world. Not particular fan of Santanos.
Also near by was another farm where we filled our water supplies once again. Then the terrible part was about to start. Big highway. Big highway for 12 kilometers. Had another stop in Olerex to go to the toilet and to get some complimentary beers before last 10 kilometers. We sat down near Tartu Vallavalitus and decided to have a go for last 10 kilometers.


When we got to Tartu we had still 6 kilometers ahead of us. Time was already 9:30 pm. Those 6 kilometers were a pain. It took 1,5 hours to finish finally at 11 pm.

There were lots of plastering, lots of blister draining, exhaustment, mood swings, tiredness, lack of water, lack of energy but we managed to pull it trough.


This trip was awesome, will do it again next year. The feeling was very very good after we sat down at Satiir and had few cold beers and awesome pins from Kiiks ja Knihv  gift shop with a twist.




I've also asked few questions from the participants. (Marilis actually wrote bigger response, I quoted some parts of it, you may hear the rest from her, very exiting story!)
  1. What was in your mind when you decided to walk with us 100 kilometers in one day?

    Gen
    : "I will try this trip, no particular thoughts"

    Karmo: "I am already so tired, why I am not sleeping in my bed"

    Marilis: "It was crazy enough, extreme, nevertheless doable and exiting. A chance to test my limits, though all my friends stared at me with a stupid face when telling them the plan. I only knew Mihkel from before so I didn’t know whether I would click with the others… I knew that the dead would be left behind so making it till the end was the only alternative."

    Mihkel: "Since being a small part of this crazy idea, I was mentally prepared since the day we decided to make the #100kmday a thing! I was looking forward to it with eagerness and the moment I started the track recorder on my watch, I felt light-footed and intrigued of what was ahead for us for the next 100km"


  2. What did you feel after 20 kilometers?

    Gen: 
    "After 20 kilometers all was still good."

    Karmo: "All was bueno, awesome!"

    Marilis: "Hip joints got a bit sore, but it was a child’s play for the rest of the body. I did make 1.3-1.4 steps for each step guys made, so I had to ignore them and focus on my own pace and breathing. Rising sun brought some warmth and it was clear for me that these are the perfect people to walk the walk."

    Mihkel: "The first 20km went by quite fast, the company was great, jokes were flying all around, the pace was decent, maybe even a tiny little ahead of schedule. A light burning feeling under the soles of the feet slowly started to show little signs of itself, but nothing serious. The 80 head didn’t look like a unconquerable distance."


  3. Would you participate again next year?
    Gen: "Blisters made too much damage so I would skip next year."

    Karmo: "Asphalt road killed my legs after 30 kilometers, so also skip."

    Marilis: "Hell yeah!"

    Mihkel: "Would I? What kind of question is that – of course!"
  4. What did you feel during lunch break when we managed to finalize 60 kilometers?  (now there was 4 of us left)
    Gen: "Garish hunger and sleep was needed."

    Marilis: "It was good to eat, but I wasn’t really hungry. My shoulders, that usually annoy with pain, were like brand new, even with a backpack! Let’s be honest, I was longing for this bigger break and it did not disappoint – it was divine to rest a bit. Some slept, Taivo even snored within a second after laying on the bench. We should have had more water, though. Lack of it brought the morale down a bit. A friendly farm host, who filled our bottles, doubted in my capacity to make it till the end but that just got my trot going."

    Mihkel: "Since we arrived at the 60km “checkpoint” almost exactly on schedule (12h of walking), motivation was still quite high. But at the same time it felt so good to take off the shoes and let the feet breathe for a tad longer while. And seriously eat for the first time (not counting the small energy snacks on the road). The pause was much needed, cause getting back on the road seemed like a big challenge but getting back to the needed pace was quite easy."


  5. What would you do different next time?
    Gen: "Would need to get really good shoes to make it with as less as blisters as possible."

    Karmo: "I would not walk on the asphalt."

    Marilis: "I didn't know the route but then again I don't think any of us really did... less asphalt, plan water better, take less things with you and prepare body even better... oh, and yes - pick an alternative route, just for fun 😀"

  6. Mihkel: "Even though we thought that starting blind and going wherever is a cool concept (which it certainly is for shorter distances), walking on hard surfaces was killing our legs quite fast. So looking for and preparing a track with lots of hiking trails in the woods is a must. Cause straight boring roads are mentally even more exhausting than physically."


  7. How did you feel at the end of the trip?
    Gen: "Emptiness and small disappointment about the blisters. Bit jealous for Taivo and Mihkel since you didn't have so much blisters.

    Karmo: "I went to the bus stop, slept there, slept on the bus, slept on the city buss. Eye shut down once I sat down. Actually it was awesome, I loved it, asphalt was the bad guy and it was very uncomfortable to walk. If there would have been more softer ground, it would have been piece of a cake."

    Marilis: "About 30-25km before the end I understood that I should make less breaks or I would not get back to speed any longer. I was almost all worn out and had to very much force myself but then we reached Olerex, I took my last set of drugs and I could continue with ease. Pure awesomeness. Once we had finished, it was cool to hear next to a cold beer that people already knew about our trip and they asked how it was. Looking back I think I needed that challenge - I know now that I’m capable of even more."

    Mihkel: "I still haven’t quite figured out why we did it and I had the same feelings in the end of the trip. But a sense of accomplishment is still lingering in me and I feel really proud about myself and my friends who walked this crazy challenge with me. So without any fear we’ll repeat it next year as well!"

Monday 17 June 2019

First pre summer hike


Prequel 

After my Christmas walk me and few of my best friends gathered and did a winter hike. We gathered around at 10 am on Saturday morning and took a bus to Kanepi. We hiked to Kooraste Metsamaja on 20th of January. Total 14.8 kilometeres.
We slept overnight at the Metsamaja and hiked back to Kanepi in the morning. Trip back was 10.8 kilometers. 

We experienced a lot, imagine, you have back-bags filled with clothes, food, drinking water, sleeping-bag, mattress  and find 3 additional crazy persons to join the idea, the trip and make it, enjoy it. Having some fun.

It was actually quite amazing, we had a lot of fun and this gave us kickoff for next trips. 


From that trip we planned another hike, now bigger, more kilometers and especially because me and Mihkel planned a trip of 100 kilometers on the 29th of July, starting from 00:00 am and finishing 11:59 pm. We needed to prepare and we had planned out the next hike.



Pre Summer Hike On 1st of July

This time it was so much easier since we didn't need to take heavy back-bags and so much drinking water. We could get water everywhere.
Again we started by taking a bus, but now a ride from Tartu  to Mustvee. Starting from Mustvee we hiked 13.6 km to Tammispää camping. The road there was pretty much major road and we took forest trails as much as possible, but still it wasn't pleasant.

The company was excellent, we had another extra member this time with us. There was't so much to see on the walk there, we had small round trip in the forest which was good.

When we got to Tammispää camping we were surprised, we had fresh water, extra mattress, clean bed sheets, even electricity and it was around few hundred meters from Lake Peipsi. The water was cold but still a small swim was in order. After we finished grill we had another visitor, local cat who enjoyed our company.


The weather was warm and since it was also bit windy then we didn't have to worry about mosquitoes. Played some cards and pepaired for hike forward tomorrow. Goal to get to Kauksi beach. Additional 20.1 km of hiking. 

RMK has got really lovey camp site near there. Raadna vacation area.

One of our Friends tripped back to Mustvee and for some reason we didn't see that the same bus comes from Kauksi to Mustvee, so he left us at some point of time and we went forward. Surprisingly we caught up with him and at some point he missed his bus stop so he took a leap of faith and believed that the same bus what brings us to Tartu has also stop in Mustvee. Lucky it happened.

We need to start planning next trip, but in between there will be 100 km in one day hike. #100kmday will happen. Live feed from my Facebook.








Tuesday 1 January 2019

Christmas walk

This year I decided that I just want to have some piece of mind during Christmas and decided to take small hike. Initial idea was to start on 24th of December, but for some reason I had small fever, which went away during the day itself. Most likely I just needed some rest.
I've got a good hiking bag and sleeping bag from my friend, also mess kit. So my bag contained:

  • Sleeping bag
  • Mess kit
  • 2 pair of woolen sock
  • 2 pair of sport socks
  • 2 shirts
  • Additional sweater
  • 5 liters of water
  • Gift - a one sparkling wine from Veinimäe Talu
  • Gift - One Tanker craft beer Hallucination  from Satiir
  • Small ax
  • My hunting knife
  • 450g of pork
  • One Hawaiian casserole dry mix
  • Few candles
  • Some hygiene equipment, matches, old newspapers and toilet paper.
  • 10'000 mha battery bank


On the morning of 25th of December I got up at 8 in the morning and had to catch a bus to get to Tartu and then from there to train to get to Põlva. I was so lucky that it took bit more time to dress-up in the morning and bus was bit early. Missed that bus.

Walked back indoors, took my rain-boots, jacket, snowboarding pants off and waited an hour. This time I was bit earlier and got to the bus which got to Tartu Bus Station 3 minutes before bus to Põlva took off. According to schedule the bus actually should have been arrived at the same time when the next one deployed.

My day started at 8 am and I got to Põlva at 11:20 am. Lost few hours. Põlva itself is a very nice city. I really loved the park in city center, haven't seen outdoor boxing bag before, in here, in Estonia.
Also they had a clubhouse and one statue made for accordion player.

Hiked from Põlva to correct direction, initially I planned to walk from train station but life turned out else and started from bus station, it meant that I walked parallel route. The road was slippery and basically nothing to see, unfortunately. The most thrilling place was Süvahaava, where it was 12% of decent and then 13% of accent. River was still flowing.




After Süvahaava the road took me to a place where the snow was not plowed, it was knee deep. Turned out that it was forest trail what was suitable for summer. I quite often thought that I will cut some spruce branches and sleep there. Also it turned dark. I had flashlight but retinal rod photoreceptors in eye will adjust in the dark around 30-40 minutes, I had my bets on that.


2+ hours of hiking in the dark, snow was slowing me down, I kept going. Finally thought that now I am out of the woods then I still had one hour to go. It was around 6 p.m. in the evening. I was seriously thinking wtf I am doing why and hoped secretly that I was the only one who was in the cabin.


Finally I got there, then I saw that around 20 candles were lit and one couple was trying to make some tea outside on the grill spot. Since it was public ground then we all went inside. I still think that I ruined their romantic getaway. We had some sparkling wine, shisha and then I left them alone. So much for my alone in the forest alone trip. I put on my noise canceling headphones and watched some TV shows in the sleeping bag.

They left around 9 a.m. in the morning, I bathed myself with some snow, made some fire while in my trousers and 4 people came in while I was doing breakfast. I quickly put on some clothes and they
were sweet, offered some tea, also the couple in the evening offered some mulled wine. It was sweet.

After the company left my friend picked me up and took me to his cottage home in Ruusmäe. His parents and grandma was there and they welcomed me with open arms and I had pleasant stay there almost 2 days until we got on bus with Mihkel in Võru and got back to Tartu.





Now planning for next hike, it was actually very challenging and got some good tips for next trip.

  1. No need to take so many clothes for change
  2. No need for so much water, nature is there, boil snow if needed
  3. Try to avoid deep snow
  4. Try to avoid the dark unless it is clear night when stars and moon is out
  5. Take your watch charger

 The route and rest of the pictures:

Tuesday 12 June 2018

100k Step Challenge

100k steps in one day - doable?

TL;DR at the end.

Me and few of my friends had a plan, to do something crazy - 100 000 steps in one day.

Date was set - 9th of June 2018. Start was whenever Saturday started and end when Saturday finished.

Got to Tartu from Tallinn around 1:30 a.m in the morning, having left behind 2 days of Geekout event and basically coming straight from Geekout afterparty. 2 days of standing already had a nice toll from my feet, but nothing to worry, 100k steps is like a walk in the park.


Having myself equipped with Sony Xperia Z1 with very low battery capacity and three 10000mah battery banks, 3 liters of water, change of clothes, laptop (I had it with me when I came from Tallinn) and then off I went. Turned on my sports-tracker and started the journey. Having a plan that I can make half hours of nap during the way since I was up since Friday.


Start was quite amazing, people playing table tennis early in the morning (3 a.m). and city was full of people who just went or came from different bars. Continued my trip next to Anne kanal. And saw the sunrise near the Sõrpuse birdge where my path went towards Ihaste. At that place my compadres texted me that to hold up, the are starting their path as well. Obviously they were at the end of this view and I didn't feel like to wait around half hours.




One of landmarks where we all made pictures was the graffiti on the bridge of Ihaste. Other guys went several times pass that bridge and took several pictures and picture edits of it.

Passing through Ihaste I saw that they are having Horse Sports Centre (Ratsasprodikeskus). I had no clue that this kind of thing exists there. Pleasantly surprised.


Around 4:30 a.m I got out of Tartu and took direction to Luunja. After the border of Tartu, there are lot's of new developments, some of either have their own lakes where fishing and swimming is prohibited people who are not living there. Cannot even imagine the price tag of those developments. Few more steps and there was a forest and one deer spooked me. I just walked forward and tried to avoid major roads. Just narrow and small places.

During the road to Luunja there are lots of places where you can go swimming and camping near Emajõgi. One of them which I passed had few fisherman who enjoyed the morning and tried to catch some.

Finally around 6:30 I got to Luunja. The place was completely something else that I had expected. I always was hoping for cucumbers, as Luunja Kurk. I, all against my exceptions found really nice river side, harbor, swimming place, new park, one old park. Also a pink basically full size horse sculpture. It worth of a walk. Unfortunately I had to recover this walk from the GPS coordinates which I had on the pictures. Luckily I made a lot of them in there.

There my feet took me across Emajõgi and I got to Kaagvere. There is now nice 6 hole disc golf track and basically I was on opposite side of Emajõgi. On the other side there was Luunja. Trough Kaagvere I got to Roiu. Starwed, haven't had a bite since 21:00 p.m on Friday, just 2 pieces of chocolate. Sat down on the grass and waited when the shop opened. Instantly at 10 a.m shop was full of locals and everybody knew everybody. Felt myself as total outsider. Got some snacks and Vytautas and trip took me to Põlva-Tartu highway. Some bike competition was going on, but didn't see any.  Competition signs where already before Roiu. This was the first time when people asked direction from me - how to get to Lennumuuseum to see Air show event.

From Põlva-Tartu highway got few more snacks and continued my trip to Kambja. Haven't never really been there, so I checked it out. First when I saw that it is uphill, then I figured, how long way it can be. It was a very long way. At least at the border of Kambja I saw first familiar faces. Most likely they were surprised to see me there. Kambja, on first sightings had at least 2 churches, a beach where to swim, bit bigger shopping malls and a lot of people visited the cemetery. 

Next stop for me was Nõo. This was long road. Before startting this road I saw some more familiar faces. I had to decline a lift. The road to Nõo was quiet. Only thing what bothered me was empty broken bike inner-tubes, water bottles and gel snack packages on the side of the roads. I had so much more respect to bikers before, this basically went to the same level as people who smoke in the car and throw cigarette packages to the site for the road.

Before I got to Nõo there was Unipiha manor and the park of it. Near by was also Luke manor, but 3 kilometers of gravel road was bit scary as I already felt how my feet don't like asphalt anymore. I started to feel every small rock trough my shoes.  Unipiha minor park was actually neat and I had small break next to the park. Going forward there I saw strawberry plantation, first I though that it is some place where you can hold events, but those were just camping houses for foreign workers in that strawberry plantation. 

Once I reached Nõo and passed it, I got very nasty highway so looked the first exit out. Finally found one - Külitse. This took me trough Külitse and to familiar place called Haage - place on the way to home. I knew that from Haage there is very nice road for travelling either by foot or bike and it had a gas stop where I could do final recharge. Coke and sugar it was. Even on that road some of my colleagues wanted to give me a lift. 

From here the road was most painful, feet didn't work, lots of kilometers to go. Life was not very nice anymore. When I got to Biometicum then it took tremendous amount of time to reach to the Riia street. Where I stopped the tracker and took the bus to city center. Finally small shower to give some rest to my muscles.

After that I made one final stretch to get to Shisha Studio for one hookah. I met my friends on the way and they though that I was either really drunk and beaten up or something worse....It was not so bad, I just walked very slowly, limped, was swollen from the face due sunburn, standard regular Saturday.

TL;DR version:

Table

Duration Distance Steps Kcal Step length Link
3:11:46 17,05 19096 1495 0,892857143 Part # 1
1:00:59 3,90 4367 314 0,893061598 Part # 2
5:03:22 15,39 17235 1306 0,892950392 Part # 3
1:42:58 7,98 9161 677 0,871083943 Part # 4
1:54:12 7,84 9122 681 0,859460645 Part # 5
1:22:04 6,05 7110 497 0,850914205 Part # 6
1:09:09 4,28 5452 360 0,785033015 Part # 7
0:42:10 3,06 3471 258 0,88159032 Part # 8
1:06:36 4,28 5725 358 0,747598253 Part # 9
0:49:24 2,85 3617 253 0,787945811 Part # 10
0:40:05 2,32 3199 197 0,725226633 Part # 11
0:23:50 0,88 2458 91 0,358014646 Part # 12
0:05:36 0,16 573 23 0,279232112 Part # 13
0:12:58 0,62 1148 56 0,540069686 Part # 14
    19:25:09 h   76,66  km     91734 steps     6566  kcal    0,835677066     Full map     

Map



At least my friends did it, superb guys (y)

























So what did I miss, like 4 kilometers? :)
Cheers and till next time.

Friday 21 July 2017

Cyber Security Summer School - Social Engineering

Third year in a row there has been one very big cyber security event in Tallinn  Cyber Security Summer School. This years topic was related to Social Engineering (http://www.studyitin.ee/c3s2017) . It took place between 10th of July and 14th of July  5 full days of workshops and practical sessions, from 8 AM to 8 PM. 


Somehow I managed to get myself in and taking into account that there were participants from 25 countries, including USA, Australia, Morocco, all over Europe and maximum 50 people were accepted.  And presenters were had very different backgrounds and positions. There were people from NSA (Louisiana), Cambridge (previously worked in Royal Navy, Norwegian Armed Forces, NATO), Temple University in the States (Criminal Justice), Netherlands Forensic Institute,  CERT,  University of Applied Sciences Mittweida (Germany), and of course, Estonia.

Although I cannot go in deep details due confidentiality agreement which we had to sign, but will give as much as possible to you. We don't  want ,even can't damage or victimize anybody and this agreement was signed just to protect people. Everybody owns a chance for privacy.
We had sessions and practical work, people were randomly divided into teams and we had total 8 teams from A-H. Each team was assigned 2 mentors, once technical one more soft skills oriented. And then the game was on. Organizers made a deal with one company which we could start hacking and making reports of this for each day. Imagine, you have basically 50 people, who will target your organization and find out all social vulnerabilities and those people are all taking a part in cyber security event? 


Employees of this company had no clue what started to happen, this company for our exercise  was not picked randomly, summer school organizers had done a lot of pre-work to keep it all ethical and legal. Contracts were all signed between that company, summer school and ourselves.  The CERT  was  also informed and tons of discussions  were held with the ministry of justice. It is illegal to hack somebody, please do not engage  into those activities. This was purely educational and not a training to become a cyber terrorist, but training how to build our systems stronger, better, and to fight back unethical hackers, to discover them and make their life harder.


We got 5 different big missions.
  1. OSINT - Open-source intelligence which was meant for passive data gathering, no personal contacts with anybody, finding out company structure, who is on vacations, who does what and when, also finding potential holes and confidential documents from the web. Every piece of information is useful in order to start planning your attack. This mission was very thrilling and interesting, there are so many tools available online for this also Kali Linux is useful. I cannot disclosure the tools which we learnt and how to use them, but web is full of it.
  1. Second mission actually wasnt directly related, but still relevant  we had to social engineer one person away from laptop with roleplay, it was public inside classroom and laptop owner played along, then we needed to get data off from that laptop, specific files, folders, crypto keys. Time window was 10 minutes, all what was needed was to prepare random pdf, image or some other type of file, which you look at it is legit, but it is jacked with malware and if it is ran then we have a shell on their computer. Voila, we can do whatever we want. And we had fully patched windows8 which we used for that exercise.
  1. Creating a fake persona  well this one is simple, isnt it? But what if you have like 4 days in order to set it up and aim is to get as many as friends as possible and have comments, likes, etc? You needs to start from the beginning. Where is this person born, parents, sisters, brothers, etc. Huge amount of work and you need to make it look as legit as possible.
  1. We had a mission not to get caught by shoulder surfers, but you yourself wanted to shoulder surf others. Minus and plus points were given depending if you were photographed or you were the photographer. From here we had some extra missions as well, like if we had a screenshot of organizers Taxify then they asked from us to social engineer the hotel and the room number. Hotels cannot disclose that information without knowing the name and room together, but still we managed to get it within 30 minutes.
  1. We needed to map down a profiles of all the mentors who were there. A huge work of research.


Also we had extra assignments as well. With mission 1 and 2 we learned some skills and then we were allowed to make fake domains which is related to that company which we targeted and then send them legit e-mails and Spear Phish 2 persons from that company. Each team had their own persons. With proper research you most likely get anybody.

I wish I could disclose more information but my hands are tied. There are 2 movie suggestions which are very relevant to all this:



Beware, noting is 100% secure, everything can be hacked, even you. Make sure that you just have a plan how to get up and running once it happens. There is no when, it will happen. Locate the attack, isolate it, do not let it spread. It might be your phone, laptop, IOT device, your best friend or YOU.


And again - summer school had full permission to host this kind of event in order to raise awareness for the dangers and problems of social engineering. 




Be Safe,



Taivo
from team G-spot 
impossible to find

Monday 15 May 2017

School - I026:- Book review - Be Fast or Be Gone: Racing the Clock with Critical Chain Project Management by Andreas Scherer.

It describes a man who goes to work in a new company and starts implementing Critical Chain project management methodology. Book is novel based, quite good reading.

Few words, I wouldn’t like to spoil the reading experience of the 234 pages.

It starts with a reason why one man changed his company where he had successfully used Critical Chain methodology and needed to implement it in a pharmaceutical company.

At the beginning there is a test project what will show what this method can do and throughout the process of implementing it to all company. It includes complex relationships with management, workers and includes a lot of interesting twists and turns. 

The book has got good examples how to communicate delays and how to make very clear, visible reports of the projects.

One interesting part on page 138 witch I would like to share, rest of the story you can get by reading this book.

“What you need is the relay race mentality we’ve encouraging in the <Project> team.  We were able to substantially beat the previous timelines, because we relentlessly worked on the tasks on the Critical Chain with high priority and focus. We constantly looked for ways to regain lost ground. This has to be the mindset on all of our projects. If it is, you’ll win. It’s that simple.”


Amazon shop link: https://www.amazon.com/Be-Fast-Gone-Management-ebook/dp/B004THZ9VK

School - I026: XIV - Pick one company's code of ethics and analyze it in the blog

The piece of writing related to I026. This session concentrated on the ethics and IT. It is actually quite fun to write on those different topics. Having some guideline, make some research, write your heart out. Hopefully will have more post coming in the future as well. Need to take on some challenge.

We had to pick one company and analyze the code of ethics about this company. Since I have covered Tesla in many of my past posts here, then let's go over their Code of Business Conduct and Ethics.

They have 14 sections and one for CEO and senior financial officers and of-course introduction. PDF contains total 4 pages, but also it is readable in their webpage, no need to download the file.
I made high level summary of all those chapters below. It is written in more detail in the document, but everything is very clear.

Introduction

It is very specific, if you break the code, your contract with the company will be terminated and if the code of ethics conflicts with the law, then always follow the law.

1. Compliance with Laws, Rules and Regulations

Laws of the countries are most important and if needed, always ask for help. It is straight forward and they come back and tell that laws is most important topic.

2. Conflicts of Interest

Easy and simple - do not work with competitors, do not use your position in the company to gain benefits, try to avoid loans and other guarantees between employees. If you cannot fulfill your obligations to the company, notify your superior.

3. Insider Trading

Do not use confidential information for trading.

4. Corporate Opportunities

Do not use company property for personal gains.

5. Competition and Fair Dealing

Outperform competition with fairness and honesty, not by sabotage.

6. Discrimination and Harassment

They will not tolerate any illegal discrimination or harassment of any kind.

7. Health and Safety

Be safe, keep others safe.

8. Record-Keeping

Mark down your actual work hours, keep records in detail. Keep in mind that every e-mail, note, memo is candidate for becoming public. Be honest.

9. Confidentiality

Keep confidential information confidential.

10. Protection and Proper Use of Company Assets

Company equipment should not be used for non-Company business, though incidental personal use may be permitted.

11. Payments to Government Personnel

Do not bribe.

12. Waivers of the Code of Business Conduct and Ethics

Any waivers  of the code can be done only by the Board of Directors.

13. Reporting any Illegal or Unethical Behavior

Talk with supervisors always when you see something which shouldn't be tolerated.

14. Compliance Procedures

Ask first, act later. Do not be scared of asking and do it without fear. Anonymity will be protected if needed.


CODE OF ETHICS FOR CEO AND SENIOR FINANCIAL OFFICERS

This chapter basically describes how and what are responsibilities of CEO and senior financial officers. All those chapters are understandable and it is basic ethics

Conclusion

I feel that Tesla's code of ethics can be easily adopted to any company and they are more than reasonable. Nothing unnecessary and it is basic ethics. Coming to think that is it ethical that I wrote this post using my company's laptop? In the end my company will benefit once I have finalized the school and even during when I am in school. Something to think about though. Since I have company's chat and e-mail client also open and will not reject any email or chat then I am not so conserned.