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I received my first credible death threat from someone over the internet when I was eighteen (I was working for an ISP and had to cancel an account for terms violations). No one knew what to do then. A few years later, I referred a credible threat to the FBI for investigation (Muslim extremists). No one knew what I should do then either. A few months ago, a Twitter troll hounded my personal and several corporate accounts FOR DAYS. Why? I liked a tweet telling the troll people aren’t obligated to talk to them because they released open source software. I liked a tweet and had to watch a troll degrade my team, background, and professionalism. But, corporate policy is don’t feed the trolls, so I didn’t. I know folks that have gotten a lot worse. One of my coworkers did something awesome behind the scenes and I got credit for it. When I asked my coworker if I could credit them, they asked me not to. They didn’t want “that kind” of attention. That kinda sucked but, I completely understand. I talked to a friend of mine this week that was going through a hard time. They were getting all manner of trolls and “creepy fetish emails” this week. They protected their Twitter account and contacted their superiors as needed. But, at what point is the employer obligated to step in and digitally protect their employee? Sure, physical protection at events is excellent. But, the harassment on the internet this week alone has me thinking that employers do share some responsibility for it. We have these public personas for our jobs. The e-mails come to work addresses. At what point do we need to force Human Resources, Corporate Security, InfoSec, and others to sit at the table and figure this out? ...

Chef announced this week they were giving up on letting users have binaries for free. Instead, you now can have all the source code for free but, not any of the binaries. Adam Jacob cited one company as having already adopted this model; Red Hat (my employer, see disclaimer). It’s a rather dubious claim because this Free Software Product model, developed mostly by Adam Jacob in the past sixth months, definitely does not predate Red Hat. I sure haven’t seen an announcement about how Red Hat is changing anything. Nor have I seen any policy about adopting this specific model (full disclosure, I was on PTO Friday). Regardless, I guess the thinking is if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But, what if the Red Hat model didn’t work? Red Hat is getting acquired by IBM but, is that a win? That remains to be seen. The Red Hat model is likely a win for investors once the acquisition closes. But, is that a win for open source? Are we even playing the same game? 🤔🤔🤔 ...

There is something to be said about simplicity. The amount of yak shaving needed these days is enormous. I’ve been on and off trying to get a container up and running in a cloud native manner. I’ve tried all of the major cloud providers and a few more. But, to a cloud, they all have inadequacies of one sort or another. If one has weird load balancing, the other has an absurdly expensive database service (compared to the competition). If one has a clean Kubernetes implementation, the other is missing a few features. This stuff isn’t easy and if anyone thinks it is they’ve likely gotten ahold of a round peg they can force into a square hole more times than not. Keep your heads up out there. “Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.” —Will Rogers Log Management Modernized With LogDNA’s fast, multi-cloud logging platform, DevOps and Engineering teams can easily and quickly aggregate all system and application logs into one efficient platform. Whether on-premise, in the cloud, or a hybrid solution, we have you covered. Don’t take our word for it. Try it yourself. ...

No introduction. Enjoy your week! “Listen to your instinct, grab the opportunity when it presents itself and then give it your all.” —Helen Mirren New Microsoft Azure Elastic Agent Plugin for GoCD With GoCD’s new Azure plugin, run your CI/CD pipelines on Azure virtual machines, and let GoCD scale up on-demand agents based on your need. Remove bottlenecks and reduce the cost of your agent infrastructure. Learn more about GoCD: www.gocd.org Learn more about GoCD’s Azure plugin: https://extensions-docs.gocd.org/azure/current/ SPONSORED Audiobook: Lean Enterprise How well does your organization respond to changing market conditions, customer needs, and emerging technologies? This practical guide presents Lean and Agile principles and patterns that enable you to move fast at scale—and demonstrates why and how to apply these methodologies throughout your organization, rather than in just one department or team. Through case studies, you’ll learn how successful enterprises have rethought everything from governance and financial management to systems architecture and organizational culture in the pursuit of radically improved performance. SPONSORED ...

I learned this week that I’ve had Shingles since at least November. If you don’t know, Shingles is adult chickenpox and can suck the life out of you (get your kids vaccinated). I didn’t notice the first sign of shingles, pain, due to all the medications I’m already taking. I chalked up the fatigue to a busier than normal travel schedule. I had several opportunities to get the first outbreak looked at and didn’t. This second outbreak did get looked at and it is a wake-up call. The point is if you don’t take care of yourself, how able are you going to take care of anything else? “Every day is a new beginning, take a deep breath and start again.” —Unknown New Microsoft Azure Elastic Agent Plugin for GoCD With GoCD’s new Azure plugin, run your CI/CD pipelines on Azure virtual machines, and let GoCD scale up on-demand agents based on your need. Remove bottlenecks and reduce the cost of your agent infrastructure. ...