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This week I announced I am leaving SJ Technologies on June 22, 2018. It’s not an easy decision either. I was pretty happy at SJ but, when I announce where I’m landing everyone will completely understand why I’m making the move. I also finished my NEXUS application this week. It made me realize that I have a problem: I change jobs too often. A lot of folks have said that and I’ve always discredited it slightly. But, when I look back since I’ve left the Air Force there’s a lot of resume there. What’s the issue here? Clearly it’s me. Or is it? There are some legit reasons in all of these job changes (pay raises, acquisitions, etc.). But, at some point, it makes you wonder, “WTF is my problem?” I’d like to say that I am on a journey of continual improvement. But, to be honest, I want to be well compensated and work for a great team at Google, Red Hat, Facebook, GitLab, or Linux Foundation. Every job is a step towards that goal. Life is weird, opportunities come and go, and I’ve been working towards a goal. ...

Trying something different this week and sending out the newsletter on Saturday. Hit Reply and Let me know what you think. The big news this week is Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub. Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at The Linux Foundation, provides a very positive and principled take on the GitHub acquisition. I have been a believer in Microsoft’s commitment to open source ever since they reached out to me to discuss how they can improve their image in the open source community. Microsoft is apologizing for the Ballmer years profusely with actions (not just words). But, I wonder if Microsoft is buying open source “cool points” too fast? The initial reaction to the acquisition from folks that didn’t work at either company was generally negative. When I discussed how far Microsoft has come back in April, the reaction was also negative. The comments harkened back to an old Microsoft adage, “Embrace, extend, and extinguish.” I understand peoples’ distrust. However, it has been three years since Microsoft took the keynote stage at All Things Open 2015 to talk about how much they love Linux. They are doing everything right so far. It’s time to start taking Microsoft’s word (we’re not at war). They are going to be good stewards of the open source communities they manage. ...

My whirlwind speaking tour continued at DevOpsDays Toronto this week. The tour continues at DevNation Federal in Washington DC on Tuesday. The event is free to all so come out and say, “Hi.” I’ll also be at DevOpsDays DC. Stop by the SJ Technologies booth and talk some DevOps or Kubernetes if you’re around. 5 considerations for continuous delivery of microservices Continuous Delivery is an essential component of any software delivery practice, including microservices. This new blog series shares five considerations we recommend keeping in mind when designing a CD workflow on microservices architectures. SPONSORED Events DevNation Federal Date: 2018-06-05 Join us to learn about the revolutions happening in communities around containers, data, and application modernization. This is an opportunity for you to hear how visionary teams in the federal government are innovating with open source, and hear from leaders in the private sector doing the same. Chaos Conf Date: 2018-09-28 Chaos Conf looks super awesome. Opening the event will be Adrian Cockcroft, VP AWS, who called 2018 “The year of #chaosengineering”. Closing out the night will be Jessie Frazelle, one of the top #containers experts on the planet currently at Microsoft. ...

I have a lot to talk about this week. I’m putting sections in the introduction for ease of reading (feel free to skip parts you’re not mildly interested in). Also, thank you to this week’s sponsors; Replicated and GoCD! ChefConf 2018 The highlight of my week was being able to meet 1,400 new friends at ChefConf 2018 in Chicago. If you are ever wondering how to run an amazing event, look no further than the good folks at Chef. From a speaker’s perspective, I have never felt more prepared for a talk. The event itself was meticulously planned and executed. I presented my talk, DevOps is Not War to a standing room only audience. Thanks to the fantastic guidance from the conference’s speaking coach, Anna Boynton, I was able to take a forty minute talk and land it perfectly inside the twenty-minute time slot I had. The event morphed my bias of Chef from a niche tool to a formidable accompaniment of software to ease automation tasks. The messages from the keynotes were like those I’ve delivered to many audiences before, “You’re not an X company, you’re a technology company.” I highly recommend adding ChefConf 2019 to your schedules as soon as it is announced. ...

This has been a whirlwind week. On Sunday, we celebrated Mother’s Day. It was a good day where I tried very hard to give Julie the day off from the rigors of Max management. I had to bail a little before Max’s bedtime though to head to Cleveland for an SJ Technologies client visit. It was a great visit but it was, in military lingo, a turn and burn. I was back in Michigan by Monday night. I was working on a couple of tickets this week before heading off to ChefConf. One issue revealed a lovely little bug in Kubernetes (login required). I was attempting to mount a ConfigMap as a file in the root directory of a container and it was not working no matter what. It was awful and the workaround was thankfully easy enough due to the fact it was a web app and Caddy was available. I created an HTTP redirect and I was off and running. I submitted some additional bug reports where appropriate and was off to the next thing. Tripping over bugs is annoying. But, there’s a great Kubernetes community right here in Michigan: Orchestructure. Thanks to y’all for helping me out this week. ...