028: Week of 1497758400

Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there. May your day be everything you want it to be and then some. This is my first weekend living in the Detroit Metro area so I will be quietly getting my bearings (and hopefully a car wash). I spent twelve hours in the car on Thursday and listened to more podcasts than I ever thought possible. On Tuesday, June 20th I will be attending the DevOps Detroit Meetup at Grand Circus. If you are near Detroit come check it out! It was a busy week in the world of DevOps and looks to be an even busier one this coming week. Full Stack Fest 2017: Problems of today, wonders from the future. Barcelona, 4–8 Sept. 2017 Are you a curious mind? Full Stack Fest is a week-long conference based in the amazing city of Barcelona that peeks into the web of tomorrow. Serverless, Blockchain, WebVR, Distributed Web, Progressive Web Apps… Come and see! Early bird tickets available with a 10% discount using the code DEVOPSISH. SPONSORED ...

June 18, 2017 · 4 min · Chris Short

027: Week of 1497153600

Quite the week in the greater world of technology. Apple had an event and folks had a meltdown about their new show. GitHub had a rough week, Uber sunk to new lows, and Intel has fired a massive warning shot at the future of computing. A lot of DevOps happened too. Let’s break it all down. Full Stack Fest 2017: Problems of today, wonders from the future. Barcelona, 4–8 Sept. 2017 Are you a curious mind? Full Stack Fest is a week-long conference based in the amazing city of Barcelona that peeks into the web of tomorrow. Serverless, Blockchain, WebVR, Distributed Web, Progressive Web Apps… Come and see! SPONSORED Department of Patent Pedantry Intel took us down memory lane this week with a blog post discussing how X86 is almost forty years old. Remember the 8086? MMX? SSE 1 through 4? VMX? Good times! Oh and remember that Intel has 1,600 patents and they are not afraid to sue the bejesus out of you. Intel is firing a shot across the bow for anyone trying to do X86 emulation without ponying up licensing fees to Intel. “…we fully expect other companies to continue to respect Intel’s intellectual property rights.” Axios points out, “Microsoft and Qualcomm have announced plans for a version of Windows 10 on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 that uses emulation to run older applications designed for x86-based Windows machines.” ...

June 11, 2017 · 4 min · Chris Short

026: Week of 1496548800

It was a very busy week for me personally and in the world of DevOps. The news I hinted at last week is my public announcement I’m leaving SolarWinds MSP, moving to Detroit, and taking the role of Manager, Infrastructure & Operations at Bankrate. I am beyond excited about the position and the work I will be doing. If you want the job I’m vacating, apply with SolarWinds. Not to downplay its significance, but, The Open Organization released its latest book, The Open Organization Guide to IT Culture Change this week. The book as a whole is a feat of open source community in and of itself. It is a quality piece of work based off what I read during the open editing process. I’m still trying to read through it between working, packing, staging, and sleeping. I was very fortunate to have been able to contribute to this book. It’s a free download and if you want a physical copy it will be available soon in print! Also, if you want to convert the ODT to an ePub we are accepting pull requests (my eyes will thank you). ...

June 4, 2017 · 3 min · Chris Short

025: Week of 1495944000

Memorial Day has many meanings but, this weekend I will remember those we’ve lost in service to freedom around the globe. Take a moment to reflect on the good in the world this weekend. Remember, living our lives to their fullest are the best thing we can do to honor them. The world of DevOps was a little chaotic this week. More and more I realize that people need a shock to the system to realize that they are just layering on more and more technical debt while driving themselves to obsolescence. We as a society have become two things: 1) a disposable society in which we would rather get something new than fixing a broken thing, and 2) an Apple society in which we expect simplistic concepts to have equally simplistic implementations. “It just works” has permeated our consciousness. Not many people care how it works. Department of Choice Concepts Thirty common challenges to DevOps and how to resolve them. ...

May 28, 2017 · 3 min · Chris Short

024: Week of 1495339200

Ever have one of those weeks where you feel like more of a consultant than a full-time employee? That was my week. I do not mind it at all. But, sometimes it’s nice to not be bombarded with questions all week long. Also, I hate building VPNs. In other news, I received a request to make the newsletter more responsive and readable. If you are reading this in a mail client then you should be benefitting from the hour or so I put into the new template. Reply to let me know what you think. Department of Choice Concepts Ben Sima shared the first three things he installs on any new server. I’m surprised he doesn’t have this in Ansible for easy deployment. Being agile and working smart are not the same thing (TechBeacon) Matt Micene reminds us all that DevOps isn’t some apparition that appeared out of nowhere. DevOps is the course correction to a culture that is a byproduct of Taylorism and Sloanianism. ...

May 21, 2017 · 3 min · Chris Short