First I want to give you fair warning: this is going to be a rambler.

It started back maybe about 20 years or so when I was setting up a NTP service on a server I was running at the time. NTP is Network Time Protocol. This rolls several of my quirks into one: precision, technical and reading documentation.

For no apparently good reason I wanted the server to be accurate to within milliseconds if not better. (There was only one server so timestamp correlation wasn’t important, within a second or two would objectively be good enough) NTP was easily able to achieve that goal.

Then I started to read about how it worked.

This is when I started to get my mind wrapped around standards and metrology in general. Metrology is the study of measurement with a big bent towards making the measurements with higher precision and accuracy (yes, they are different things!)

Now lets take a step back. There are (or at least was) bunches of servers that had a precision time source. The source could be an actual atomic clock attached to it or as simple as a GPS receiver that listened to the atomic clocks orbiting the earth. All of them of course are synced to the reference time kept by NIST.

Now a simple approach to the problem would be to ask a whole bunch of servers “What time is it?” and average the results. It would be simple, but it would be wrong. There is no sense of averaging measurements like that — there is the right time that it is now and everything else. The real key is figuring out which server is right-est and then syncing yourself to that server. The NTP RFC goes into all sorts of details about the clustering of the servers’ times, looking for how precise they are and so forth. The end result is you have a traceable link to some good time reference.

The same applies to most other references, be it length (now defined by how far light moves though a vacuum in a certain amount of time) Or the kilogram which is presently a block of platinum-iridium in Paris. (Let’s ignore the drift in the standard over time for now)

This now moves to people. Are you the average of everyone’s expectation of who you are? No. An emphatic no for that matter! Are you not the standard you? If you let yourself be defined by others you’ll never realize who you should become.

When growing up your parents likely projected their hopes and dreams onto you. Your friends tried to make you like them (and them like you). Your spouse does the same. All of these serve to shove the perception of you in one direction or other.

But it is only the perception. You are you. You can’t let yourself be defined by others. You are the standard you. I am the standard me.

The direction you go needs to be chosen by you based solely on you. Not only that but you can’t just make the default choice, but it needs to be a conscious decision. You must be aware of yourself.

Of course, like the standard kilogram you can change over time. (Metrologists, if they are reading this I’m sure would want to punch me now.  ) Like the kilogram you are still defined by you — now. You can’t strike out in some direction with no possible option to change ever. We are a product of the past (which is constantly being added to), the current world (more change!) and your own inner direction.

You need to figure out who you are. You need to complete the sentence “I am …”