Blog

The British government wants to build backdoors into standard encryption libraries. This means the technology that protects your financial transactions could have a backdoor. These same backdoors were just exploited in the WannaCry outbreak that just took down the NHS. Who created that backdoor? The NSA, whose incompetence allowed this “tool” to fall into the hands of a Russian government-affiliated hacking group. You don’t do anything illegal? Great! You do have a bank account, right? You do have private conversations with your significant other, right? Would you want either to be open for potentially anyone to see? Probably not. Resist government’s demands to force Internet companies to open backdoors for them. Nothing good will come of it. ...

I have accepted the position as Manager, Infrastructure & Operations at Bankrate in Detroit. Julie, Max, Sunny, and I will begin moving to Michigan in mid-June! I will be leading DevOps efforts as the Bankrate team transitions software stacks and moves from on-premise data centers to the cloud. I am beyond excited about the position and the work I will be doing. Making the decision to leave North Carolina did not come easily. Julie and I have TONS of our history here in NC. We met here, first kiss here, engaged near where I was born here in NC, Max’s first home was here. Max’s name is on the studs in his room under the drywall! We built this house here for us to live in for a long, long time. Some things don’t work out how you expect them to. This opportunity is definitely one of those cases. ...

On Tuesday, May 23, 2017, I did a DevOps talk at Open Source South Carolina. The talk was a DevOps 101-styled deep dive into DevOps. Since the number one question I get when talking about DevOps, in general, is “where do I start?” I added my “The Three Things” to the already well known “Three Ways”. This provided both the holistic view while guiding people needed an extra nudge down the DevOps path. ...

The other day my Vice President asked me a question, “What would it take to turn a good SysAdmin into a DevOps engineer?” He followed it up with, “Don’t spend more than ten minutes thinking about it.” He was not disappointed when I told him the next day I am spending way more than ten minutes on answering the question. This is a hard question for me to answer. This is a question that you won’t know if your answer is right for at least six months. ...

Disclaimer: These are real world experiences I have had within organizations that I have been employed by. Identifying information is intentionally anonymous. If you think you are in one of these organizations please consider keeping that to yourself for the sake of others. A lot of people think that DevOps, Cloud Native, Agile, GROWS, etc. are all rainbows and roses. You start small and work your way up to full blown operations or you decide as an organizational unit to change. These are the two patterns associated with a Jedi-type maturation process of DevOps. What if I told you that, like in Star Wars, DevOps has a dark side? I have seen the light side everyone thinks of and have carried the red lightsaber as well. Let’s walk into the cave on Dagobah together. ...