Archives

After a bit of a hiatus, DevOps’ish is back! I’m restarting the newsletter to get back into speaking, networking, and keeping myself visible in the industry. The timing? Well, I got laid off last Friday (see my LinkedIn post and amplify it if you don’t mind). Back on the job market = the perfect time to restart. What’s different? One word: simplicity. Everything lives on Buttondown now—no more dual posting to a website and a newsletter/email platform. I’ll write in Markdown while keeping the format free-flowing and less structured. The content? Same approach: I’ll share what I’m reading, with social media interaction guiding what makes the cut. One big change is that I now have better metric aggregation, which greatly streamlines things. On AI: Yes, I’m using it for tasks here and there (for example, Claude helped me make this intro shorter). But here’s the deal—I’m not copy/pasting AI output to y’all (chances are you deal with that too much already). As a friend reminded me this week, DevOps’ish has my voice, and that’s what made it popular in the first place. That’s not changing. ...

It’s been a while. I am happy to say that DevOps’ish will be returning to an inbox near you. I’m reaching out because you were an active subscriber to DevOps’ish prior to going into hiatus. If you want to receive the new editions of the DevOps’ish newsletter, no action is required on your part. If you no longer wish to receive emails from DevOps’ish click the unsubscribe button below and you won’t hear from me again. Thank you! Chris Short Subscribe to DevOps'ish Cloud Native, DevOps, Open Source, AI, tech industry news, culture, and the 'ish between. A newsletter by Chris Short. ...

This is not how I wanted things to end. I’ve been dealing with an elbow injury for a while. I finally went to the doctor’s to figure out what was going on. That became the least of my worries shortly thereafter. I’ve been diagnosed with yet another ailment. This time it’s my heart 🫀. I’m under explicit doctor’s orders to cut stressors out and do things that bring me more joy. Basically, I need to stop doing so much. Writing a newsletter is like working under a constant deadline. DevOps’ish is many hours of extra work every week. I walk on a razor’s edge to continue managing it as an independent brand while working a full-time day job at a major cloud provider. DevOps’ish turned into a second job and income stream years ago. At the very least, I’ve proven I can do it (which means I could always do it again). Every Q4 (October), I ponder long and hard about continuing DevOps’ish. It was a topic of discussion at KubeCon with my close friends. Before I got the doctor’s order, I had decided to put DevOps’ish into hiatus mode at the end of the year. It has been an excellent six-year run. I’ve learned a lot, and I hope you have too. But, in light of this recent news, I have to idle the newsletter immediately. ...

Side Note: I have no doubt that Twitter is going to unban people that really shouldn’t be for national security reasons. With that in mind, I’ve consolidated my Mastodon presence on the Mastodon server hachyderm.io so please follow me there @ChrisShort! Also, Happy birthday, Max! My youngest’s birthday is today. Stay awesome, buddy! Let me be abundantly clear. I had a great KubeCon. It was rough physically, though, as I’ll explain. Seeing Ihor come on stage was the inspiration I needed FOR SURE. It was a negative in my “keynotes from the hotel room strategy,” though. I am truly sad I couldn’t say hello to more people and help folks more. Please DM me on the platform of your choosing. Let’s get you booked into the podcast schedule or a Zoom or phone call. Every KubeCon, I tell myself, “Take Wednesday completely off, and you’ll make it through the whole thing.” Every time, I fail. This past Wednesday wound up being the busiest day. I also over-extend myself to do more during KubeCon than anyone else could; this habit dies now. ...

Side note: I’m out of spoons some weeks and don’t write an intro. I’m not going to apologize for that. Last week’s newsletter wasn’t my best, but I make up for it this week. It’s all about the long haul. Feel free to hit reply anytime. One of the more useful things I created this week was with the help of fellow Amazonian, Tom “Spot” Calloway. Spot asked me, as a local, to suggest to him some great restaurants here in Detroit. I sat down with a list of the top 200 Detroit restaurants and pointed out all the ones I’d enjoyed over the years. Spot looked at that list and said, “We should make a doc about this.” I said, “We should make it publicly available and share it,” because people were DM’ing me asking the exact same questions. Spot put great care into curating most of the data. Please feel free to reference the KubeCon Detroit Food and Drink Suggestions should you need to pick a place for dinner one night this week. It has been crowdsourced from locals and packed with all the necessary information to make a decision. If you’re looking for a party to go to, check out this unofficial list of KubeCon NA 2022 Parties ...