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It’s 2016 (almost 2017) why is the time off on your system clocks? It became apparent to me that there are some folks out there that do not realize their clocks are off for a reason. Julia Evans recently made a graphic about distributed systems that mentioned clock issues and it made me really sad. Photo Credit: Julia Evans We had a saying when I was in the Air Force, “Timing is everything.” We lugged around GPS receivers that hooked up to our bulk and circuit encryption devices so that they would have accurate, consistent time with other encryption devices around the world. ...

The month of October was quite unique for me. I went to a number of conferences and talked to tons of people from all walks of life. All of the events were great; DevOpsDays Raleigh, AnsibleFest Brooklyn, DevOpsDays Detroit, and All Things Open are all events I would recommend to anyone considering them. One distinctly unique opportunity was to sit down with the folks from The Cloudcast to tell my DevOps story. The Cloudcast #277 - DevOps Perspectives from the Front Lines is available on their site or you can listen here: ...

If you have not heard the news, Google Fiber is no longer expanding its installation in the 10 markets they service and the head of Google Access (the Google Fiber overlord company), Craig Barratt, is stepping down. Also in the news, was a little-publicized statement from AT&T’s chief executive, Randall Stephenson, where he said, “I will be sorely disappointed if we are not going head-to-head” with cable companies by 2021. As an aside, AT&T’s plan to compete with cable providers is already feasible. AT&T is already testing its 5G network and expects a full 5G deployment by 2020-2021. A 5G network will be more than capable of providing TV over internet. AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV and their upcoming 5G network means they have the ability to go head-to-head with cable companies in a big way. They only need Time Warner to compete with Comcast because Comcast owns content creators; AT&T does not. ...

I was invited to speak at DevOpsDays Detroit 2016. I had a fantastic time speaking with the crowd in Detroit. This talk was my first foray into the talk world. I went long and could probably optimize the content of the slides (less words). However, I was very happy with the positive feedback and was blown away by how great the DevOpsDays volunteers and organizers. Slides

A few weeks ago, one of my DevOps counterparts was working on building out a new environment for one of our applications. This deployment included a new Puppet server (we are in an orchestration/configuration management state of flux) and my teammate was having some issues provisioning users (I did not ask why nor did I really care). My teammate asked if I could help with some Ansible knowledge. User management usually falls into one of two categories; disjointed or a monumental effort. This Ansible solution could be that nice middle ground between the disjointed and monumental. ...