Welcome! (i mirëpritur; welkom; bienvenue; benvenuto; witamy; bienvenidos; 欢迎 أهلا بك; ようこそ; 환영; chào mừng; soo dhawow; karibu; Taŋyáŋ yahípi). I'm a coffee-addicted professional consultant with a background in solving people's problems collaboratively, not for them. I also teach people how to adopt new technologies, including Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Community and Culture-driven DevOps, from concepts to processes. My life is a constant round of "could you, should you, and would you?" It's like "kiss, marry, or avoid" but for technology-related products. Believer in the https://wiki.c2.com/?ScottyFactor and advocate of https://dbad-license.org Open Source Solutions. Never be afraid to ask for help, but try to learn to ask well https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask ( AI sidekicks (agents and MCP) are the future... )
| Conditions I like to work in; | The times/hours I like to work; | The ways I like to receive feedback; | Things I need; |
|---|---|---|---|
| I am odd, I either like being at the front of a room with a whiteboard illustrating solutions and architecting plans, flows and concepts or in isolated environments, if my headset is on, probably best to Slack me. |
- I'm an early bird, but I respect our global challenges. - You'll find me on Slack from 8 am, and still paying attention during most workday evenings. - Friday is sacred; don't push your luck. |
The best ways to communicate with me; - Slack for quick things. - email for complex questions that need evidence and answers. - For your own safety, don't send me a screen grab when you can copy-paste an error message. |
Honestly, directly, and with good communication. People generally suck at all three so that's a fun stance. |
| Things I struggle with; | Things I love; | Other things to know about me; | |
| I like to be involved, I like to see over communication about what is developing and ideas, I don't mind not being involved directly, but I hate things that creep out of the woodwork due to bad communication. | - Opinions with no basis, lack of evidence, and not understanding wider plans and processes. - Bad communicators, or a lack of communication. |
Coffee, smiles, and natural fun interchanges while brainstorming. | - I'm Dyspraxic, and the later in the week it gets, the more people I've had to interact with, the closer I get to burnout and introversion. - I call it people points, and they get used up. |
Influenced by https://cassierobinson.medium.com/a-user-manual-for-me-d3a851fbc694
- "If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there.", "My psych profile fit a certain... 'moral flexibility' would be the only way to describe it."
- "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve" https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Bilbo%27s_birthday_speech
- "A man is not dead while his name is still spoken." https://xclacksoverhead.org/home/about
The whole internet is a highway of shared data, and original content or thought is hard to come by, thanks to https://towardsdatascience.com/build-a-stunning-readme-for-your-github-profile-9b80434fe5d7 and https:/medium.com.
Here are a few things to read to understand my views of the world.
- https://www.jrothman.com/mpd/management/2014/08/people-are-not-resources/ Why yes, this is a long-held belief.
- https://medium.com/notbinary/people-are-not-resources-13ac7a380f95 Just in case you thought it wasn't still a problem.
- https://ipstenu.org/2011/the-scotty-principle/ Software and engineering people generally suck at scoping time and level of effort; if we all applied the Scotty principle, we'd be better and still not give ourselves enough.
- DevOps is the combination of Responsibilities, Capabilities and Communication in your organisation. Both in a passive product or tools, the capability to both communicate and provide capabilities, and a person's active role in providing capabilities and communicating their responsibilities to provide the subset of those capabilities they are responsible for. https://www.astroarch.com/tvp_strategy/devops-engineer-25120/.
- https://dev.to/dvddpl/make-mistakes-and-ask-questions-its-ok-gah but also https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask
- Automating things is hard, it's not just about how, it's about should you, when should you, and should you let the automation run https://blog.danslimmon.com/2019/07/15/do-nothing-scripting-the-key-to-gradual-automation/ This helps with that conversation.
- My "Ghost engineer" title, is a flagrant dig at the content of this Tweet, on twitter ( never X ), the discussion on Reddit. All good engineers are Ghost Engineers no matter the industry, all engineers in a DevOps organisation should be Ghost Engineers at some point in their day. Ghost Engineering is the component that stats can't show and A.I will never be able to replace. Spend some time talking, showing, explaining, tutoring and continuing to learn the stats don't show all, they are not the be all and end all.
For contact information, npx digitaladept or take a look at the Geek Card README