Leaving North Carolina

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....

June 1, 2017 · 5 min · Chris Short

A Night of DevOps at Open Source South Carolina

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....

May 30, 2017 · 1 min · Chris Short

"Good SysAdmin to DevOps Engineer in Six Months"

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....

May 11, 2017 · 8 min · Chris Short

The Dark Side of DevOps

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....

March 10, 2017 · 7 min · Chris Short

Why I'm Giving Up Content Blockers

Since the release of Apple’s iOS 9, iPhone and iPad owners are able to install content blockers. These content blockers are often referred to as ad blockers. Providing content blocking functionality through third party apps is a reasonable request. Apple has had this functionality in iOS since 16 September 2015. As a user of content blockers on the desktop, I jumped at the opportunity to install one on my mobile devices....

February 9, 2017 · 5 min · Chris Short