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Windows 11: The Optimization and Performance Improvements

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2021 12:44

The Windows 11 team gives an exclusive look at the Windows 11 performance optimizations, improvements to the Windows servicing model and orchestration engine, as well as policy management and the rationale behind Windows 11 system requirements. Steve Dispensa, VP of Enterprise Management at Microsoft, joins host Jeremy Chapman to take you under the hood of Windows 11. This is the first Windows conceived for Zero Trust and a hybrid work world. For users, we've removed distractions as you work to make it easier for you to focus with the new modern interface and refined aesthetics. For IT, we've made incremental improvements that are designed to fit like a glove in your existing management tools and processes. Save time- Choose which screens you want to focus on most with the new Snap Assist feature. Save resources- Configure new sleeping tabs to go dark after inactivity. Resume your PC from sleep instantly. RAM stays energized and other process threads run faster. MEM policies for Windows 10 also apply to Windows 11. Feature updates are delivered once per year; Enterprise and Education is supported for 36-months. ► QUICK LINKS: 00:00 - Introduction 02:09 - Prioritizing apps and processes 04:22 - Resume from sleep 05:42 - Reduced disk footprint 06:25 - Windows 11 hardware requirements 07:28 - Application compatibility & servicing model 08:38 - Update process for admins 10:16 - MEM policies 11:38 - Wrap up ► Link References: Try Windows 11 for yourself at https://insider.windows.com/ Learn more about the new Windows DCH drivers at https://aka.ms/DCHdrivers IT resources are available at https://aka.ms/Windows11Docs Check out our shows on Windows 365 at https://aka.ms/CPCMechanics ► Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? We are Microsoft's official video series for IT. You can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at #Microsoft. Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries?sub_confirmation=1 Join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog Watch or listen via podcast here: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/website ► Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/

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Windows 365, your Cloud PC | What it is, how it works, and how to set it up

Microsoft Mechanics Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2021 13:54

Windows 365 is your PC in the cloud. Securely stream your personalized Windows experience, including your desktop, apps, settings, and content, at any time to all of your devices. For IT, see how easy it is, as a fully-managed service, to assign and configure Cloud PCs using familiar tools like Microsoft Endpoint Manager. Given the need to work remotely and securely, there has been a huge demand for cloud based solutions in the past year. Windows 365 modernizes the way Windows experiences are delivered for anyone on any device. It's a premium experience for both end users and IT. It's easy to use, and just as easy for IT to manage using familiar tools and processes. Scott Manchester, Partner Director of PM for Windows 365, joins Jeremy Chapman to show how it works and how to set it up. ► QUICK LINKS: 00:00 - Introduction 01:08 - User experience 05:39 - Admin experience: Deployment 09:01 - Monitor health and performance 11:16 - Security and compliance 13:11 - Wrap up ► Link References: Get started at https://www.microsoft.com/Windows365 Find the latest info on the Trust Center at https://www.microsoft.com/trust ► Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? We are Microsoft's official video series for IT. You can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at #Microsoft. Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries?sub_confirmation=1 Join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog Watch or listen via podcast here: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/website ► Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ Follow us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/microsoftmechanics/

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S3E09: Tales from the TAMO Cloud - Keith Townsend

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2021 48:43

Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a "TAMO Cloud" - which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred". It indicated an area of tech that was inscruitable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in it's output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO Cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys - both technical and theological - and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. This episode features my talk with my friend and frequent Technically Religious guest, Keith Townsend. Listen or read the transcript below. Into music (00:03): [Music] Intro (00:32): Welcome to our podcast, where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT, we're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh, or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. TAMO intro (00:53): Did you ever wonder why it diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside that was originally called a TAMO cloud, which stood for then a miracle occurred. It indicated an area of tech that was inscrutable, but nevertheless, something we saw as reliable and consistent in its output for IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO cloud where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting, to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the it community to explore their journeys, both technical and theological and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today and where they see themselves in the future. Leon Adato (01:39): My name is Leon Adato, and the other voice you'll hear on this episode is long-time technically religious, uh, contributor, Keith Townsend. Keith Townsend (01:47): How's it gone. Leon Adato (01:48): It is going great. It is so good to have you back on the podcast this year. Um, before we dive into any of these conversations, I've been waiting to have this one with you for a long time. Um, I want to give you a moment of shameless self promotion, where you can talk about anything and everything that is particularly Keith and CTO advisor and stuff like that. So where can people find you? What are you doing these days? All that stuff. Keith Townsend (02:12): All right. So you can find me, uh, easiest. Wait, you know what, there's a new website that we did this year. So let's Hawk that the CTO advisor.com has been a completely revamped. It's a completely new platform and, and sculp. Uh, we did it. We're pretty proud of the work there. Leon Adato (02:30): Awesome. So we'll check that out. Fine. And how about on the Twitters? Which we like to say to horrify your daughter? Keith Townsend (02:35): On the Twitter? Because you know, my daughter loves that it's @CTOadvisor. Leon Adato (02:42): Perfect. Um, anything else that you want us to pay attention to where people can find you and what you're working on? Keith Townsend (02:48): Well, what I'm working on is a, you know, we've been in the throws of cold COVID just. Leon Adato (02:54): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (02:54): Before the, you hit the big red button. We talked about just the impact of, uh, looking for the vaccine. What we're looking for at the CTO advisor is looking beyond that, we're going to do a road trip in which we're going to hit 12 cities over three month period. Me and Melissa driving around the big Ford pickup, pulling a Airstream and talking to people who listen to this podcast. So people in technology and, uh, technology vendors, we're we're going to have a good time over the three months. So keep checking the website, check the Twitter feed on for our travels. Leon Adato (03:33): Fantastic. Okay. And the last thing is, um, just briefly your religious ethical or moral point of view. Keith Townsend (03:39): So, you know, uh, this is a big, uh, questionmark for a lot of people, but I think I have it down pat, I'm non-denominational, Leon Adato (03:50): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (03:50): However, I'm from a branch of the Chicago, I mean of, uh, the churches of Christ. So if you're a Christian and you think of the churches of Christ as a denomination there, that's where I'm at. Leon Adato (04:03): Fantastic. Okay. And if you're scribbling any of the websites or stuff down, this is just a reminder to keep your hand on the wheel, pay attention to the road. Don't worry about it. There's going to be show notes that come out the day after this podcast drops. So anything that Keith and I are talking about here is going to be written down there for you. You do not need to make notes. With that said, I want to start off with the technical side. So CTO advisor doing road trips, like what, what is your day to day technical life look like? Keith Townsend (04:32): Well, you know what? I was just sharing with my wife, Melissa, that that has become a lot more blurry. So I can identify religious, really religion, really easily compared to what I do technically anymore, because I spent so much time as a business owner on the administrative parts of busy, of the. Leon Adato (04:51): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (04:51): Business, when I'm not spending time on the administrative parts of the business, selling product, creating product, et cetera, I'm doing analyst work. So I get briefed, I disseminate that information from technical folks. I create content around that and help, uh, decision makers, make decisions around purchases. And occasionally I'll take the advisory role and advise a company on their hybrid infrastructure journey. Leon Adato (05:19): Got it. And, and I know that you do a lot with, you know, basically in the cloud space, uh, you have a couple of opinions about Kubernetes. You, um, may even dabble in building data centers for yourself for fun. Keith Townsend (05:36): For fun, or for profit. Yes, I, so I do, uh, I have the CTO advisor hybrid infrastructure, which is, you know, we, this whole Kubernetes thing and all of the journeys we talk about moving from public, from private data center to public cloud, very abstract terms, the CTO adriser hybrid infrastructure is a concrete something I can put my finger on and say, this is what their journey from private data center to hybrid infrastructure looks like. This is what it tastes like. This is what it feels like. Here's the pain points, the gadgets. So we built a data center with the intent of showing the journey from private data center to hybrid infrastructure. Leon Adato (06:20): Very cool and nice that, that you have a visceral sense of what that looks like, and you can convey that. That's really cool. Okay. So I'm going to presume that you were not born with a silver keyboard in your mouth, that you were not that upon your birth, your mother didn't look at you and say, yes, let's call him CTO advisor. That's what we will do. Where did you start off in tech? What was your, your, you know, rough beginnings? Keith Townsend (06:42): So rough beginnings, the, uh, old man, as you know, we like to call them, uh, bought me a color computer 2 a tan TRS 80 color computer 2, for those of you that were born after the year 2000, this machine from, uh, I bought a car from somebody that was born in 20, in 2000 last night. So that was a really interesting experience. Leon Adato (07:06): Wow. Keith Townsend (07:06): But, uh, uh, in 1984, 1983, my dad bought me a color computer 2, uh, Leon. We're both of an age group that we remember war games, Leon Adato (07:18): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (07:18): The great geek movie of all the greatest geek movie of all times, Leon Adato (07:23): Possibly yes. Keith Townsend (07:23): And I had in my mind, you know what, I'm going to go play TIC TAC TOE on a, the color computer. And that started my love for technology. Uh, you know, and then you forward through the hobbyist phase to, when I actually started to get involved in tech, it was post, uh, my initial con uh, career in hospitality. I always had the bug for tech and I got a job, uh, pre year 2K when you had a win, if you had a pulse and could spell windows, you could get a job in technology. I parlayed that into a job working in the help desk for a, uh, commodities data provider, uh, commodities trading, uh, data provider, uh, for the third shift. And that's way back in 1997, I think. Leon Adato (08:14): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (08:14): So that's, that's the start. I just supporting commodity traders, trying to get real time data feeds off of our product. So that was a really interesting experience, uh, trying to, uh, explain to somebody with an Indian accent, what a Tilda was. Leon Adato (08:30): What a Tilda Yeah, What does that exactly look like? Keith Townsend (08:33): What is a Tilda? Leon Adato (08:33): And also on their keyboard, where would you find it possibly nowhere? Keith Townsend (08:37): Exactly. Leon Adato (08:37): Um, yeah. And, and I've commented a few times on the show that that help desk is for many of us, one of the formative experiences that we have that either show us that we never ever want to work in tech ever again, or that there is so much richness and so much, you know, to learn and so many different directions to go in that we just can't ever get away from it. Um, all right. So then the next question is, you know, started off post TRS, you know, color to TRS 80, uh, post that into the help desk. How did you get from there to where you are today? What was that progression like? Keith Townsend (09:18): Wow, that's a, that's a really great story, uh, or, or question, and it was a lot of, uh, just excellent people throughout my career and grit. The great thing about starting out and learning about technology, of a passion for it. This is one of those industries where you can make a really great living for your family and not have a degree. I don't have one, at the time. I did not have a degree in computing. I didn't even have a degree. I only had maybe six months of community college under my belt from a, from going to community college for two years. I'll probably only hit six months of credit. So, uh, the third shift job, I grabbed a MSCE, MS, MCSE, and then, Leon Adato (10:08): MCSE. Yeah, I have to say it really fast to get it right. Keith Townsend (10:10): MCSE certification guide. And I went down the journey of consuming every bit of information I can around certification. Uh, I'm super proud that I took the windows 95, uh, certification test, which was way harder than a windows NT4 old test. And I got like 98% on it. And I was super geek because I studied for it for months. But, you know, I use that certification path as a way to elevate myself into my next career opportunity, which was again, working at the help desk. But this time at the, at the Chicago Tribune making 20 grand more a year, Leon Adato (10:48): Whoo. Keith Townsend (10:48): Uh, the going again that self study route, uh, mentors, et cetera, moved on to network administration, not even a year after taking the job at, uh, the Tribune, still at the Tribune moved from that to a low dip. I started this brand called Townsend consulting. It's still part of my email address. I can't, uh, but I was super naive as many 20 or 20 something year olds are at the time, uh, thinking that I knew enough to actually advise and consult people on, on how to deploy windows technologies. I guess I was as knowledgeable as anyone, uh, took a hard turn in my career, actually, uh, personally I had to file bankruptcy because it was a very, very bad career move. Uh, I should have, uh, stuck with a full-time employment, uh, but, uh, this is around 9/11. Uh, so I spent, uh, think about six or seven months unemployed, uh, because I made wrong turn in my career. Uh, we, we re, recouped, spent a bit of time, uh, and a mid size organization doing again, network administration where, uh, did a lot of really cool projects like, uh, deploying a backup system, deploying my first sand storage area network, Leon Adato (12:15): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (12:15): Uh, just cutting the next five or six years, just really earning my stripes in IT around the 10, 11 year point of my career. Uh, I finally finished my degree and, uh, computing BA in computing from DePaul university. We, uh, moved to Maryland because we were in and yet a, another recession. This is around 2008, 2009. Leon Adato (12:43): Right. Keith Townsend (12:43): Uh, we moved to Maryland where I took a job at Lockheed Martin, which completely, uh, changed my career. Uh, uh, telemetry. Leon Adato (12:52): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (12:52): I went from very engineer focused. This is if people have ever followed me throughout my career, I was virtualized geek back then, uh, moved from, uh, being kind of an engineer to an architect, a lot more customer facing, uh, uh, roles and opportunities, managing projects. I finished up my Master's in IT project management, uh, that opened the door for me to, uh, move to PWC, which where I became the CTO advisor, the conversation has changed from, should I, you know, use I scuzzy versus NFS versus fiber channel to, you know, what should we outsource all of IT? Uh, the, so that's where, you know, I stepped away from the keyboard. This is circa 2012, 14, and ever since I've been kind of, you know, that's been the brand and the focus of my career, not necessarily, uh, I'm, I'm a management consultant. Not necessarily I am a management consultant necessarily, but I'm a management consultant with deep technical chops. So I can talk, you know, everything from, uh, file systems to storage technology, and other storage technologies to, uh, EBGP all the way to "Should, uh. we, you know, use OPEX versus CapEx for a purchasing decision is how I, how I landed here. Leon Adato (14:25): Got it. That is so what's wonderful about that, that narrative is that I think a lot of people who've been in it for a while can say, Oh, I, I can see myself in that journey. Again, a lot of us have gotten our start in or near the help desk. A lot of us have made several, um, you know, career or company changes, which led to career changes, or at least technical pivots and what we did. So, um, it's really nice to hear that story validated in your experiences. Um, you know, that, that there is a pattern to it. So many people come to it from so many different directions that sometimes you feel like, yeah, it doesn't matter what you do. It's and I, you know, who knows where it's going to end up? No, there really is. There really is sort of a path to it, even though it may not be as formalized as say, you know, a trade or, you know, one of the, we'll say the higher, How do I want to say this, one of the more traditional degreed paths, like, you know, get, you know, being a physician or a lawyer or whatever. Um, okay. So that covers the, the technical side of it. I want to flip over to the religious side and, Keith Townsend (15:40): Uh huh. Leon Adato (15:40): I always like to make the caveat that, um, labels are challenging in a lot of cases, you said that you had a very easy time sort of identifying yourself, but I know that a lot of folks, when they say, when I say, what are you, they're like, well, I'm a, I'm kind of this, but not that, not that part of it. I, one person on a earlier show identified themselves as a kicking and screaming Christian. So, you know, stuff like that. So I want to start off by saying, how do you identify religiously today? Tell us a little bit more about, um, where you place yourself religiously today. Keith Townsend (16:14): So, you know, it's really interesting because, um, I think when most people, um, for those who you can't physically see me, I've never physically seen me and can't tell by my voice, cause voices are hard. I'm an African-American. And when most people think of African-American Christians, I think they have this image in their head of Baptist, Leon Adato (16:35): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (16:35): uh, traditional soulful worship type of church. Nah, I go, I go to a multi-national I'm in a multi-national, uh, congregation. Leon Adato (16:48): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (16:48): And, um, community. So there's a bit of everything. So you can kind of think of it as a little bit more reserved, which has some really interesting, um, uh, I think impacts because traditionally I think you would think of the churches of Christ as more of a Evangelistic. Leon Adato (17:11): Ok. Keith Townsend (17:11): Movement. So when you think of the Evangelistic movement, you think of the politics around that today. And I'm very much not of the politics of the evangelistical movement, uh, and that creates some really interesting conflicts within our, uh, with our, within our multi-national multi-racial community, because you have a lot of that culture mixed with a whole lot of black folk. So, uh, if, if for those who need a point of reference, you'll think of the traditional evangelical, uh, doctrine, Leon Adato (17:53): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (17:53): But mixed with a lot of, uh, multi-racial, uh, congregation and you get the complexities and the flavor of that, but bubbling, bubbling up. Leon Adato (18:06): Yeah. It's, it's never as simple as I think the media, or, you know, a quick, you know, three inches of a New York times article wants to make it sound, there's always nuances. There's always, you know, people are complicated and they bring themselves to everything that they do. So it's, it's never, never a simple thing. So, um, that is interesting. And again, as I said, with the, with the tech, you probably weren't born as a multinational multicultural, uh, church of Christ evangelical, but not that kind, kind of a Christian. So you know, where do you start off? What was your home life? You know, what was your home religious life like growing up? Keith Townsend (18:48): So the, one day, if my mother was in tech, uh, she make a amazing, uh, guests because she kind of covers the, the spectrum. Uh, we, my mom specifically, my father was not religious. Uh, much of all, he has Christian, like many Christians are like many religions. If you're, if you're culturally a Christian, you know, you identify as Christian, but you're not really practicing. Leon Adato (19:13): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (19:13): So my father was a non-practicing Christian, just, you know, uh, but my mom, uh, when we were in, around, when I was in junior high, basically, uh, became a Jehovah's witness and my mom is now a Muslim. So, Leon Adato (19:32): Ok. Keith Townsend (19:32): That is, that has been quite the journey. And it's always an interesting conversation, uh, with her. And we'll get into that, I think, in, in another podcast or another date, but it's an amazing, uh, conversation, but which makes it really, which has made my Christian journey, my religious journey really interesting. Uh, what is common between events, if Jehovah's witnesses were, uh, political at all, I think their politics were probably lean towards what the evangelical churches will will, Leon Adato (20:04): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (20:04): But more importantly, culturally they're very similar. Faiths might be slight doctrine may be slightly different, Leon Adato (20:12): Sure. Keith Townsend (20:12): But culturally they're very, very similar. So I'm finding that a lot of the, of what I remember in my childhood as worship and as, uh, meeting and community is very similar in my, uh, religious experience today. Leon Adato (20:29): Got it. Okay. So yeah, so the, the, the feeling of it was the same, even if the, the particulars of the expression of it may have been slightly different, so that's. Keith Townsend (20:40): Yes. Leon Adato (20:40): Okay. Very cool. And so having grown up in a Jehovah's witness house, even though your mom herself went through her own religious journey, what was yours like from, from that, to this, to where you are today? Keith Townsend (20:53): So, what's really interesting is that I, I, uh, I wholeheartedly believe than the, uh, Jehovah's witnesses doctrine when as a, as a teen, as a, uh, fairly young adult, when my mother, uh, uh, faith changed so that mine's. Mines didn't change to the extreme that my mother's did, where she, uh, where, uh, where she went with a completely different lineage of faith, Leon Adato (21:25): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (21:25): Mine's changed in the fact that, uh, it wasn't as strong as I thought it was. Uh, I was sound in, um, the beliefs of Christianity, that I don't think has changed. Leon Adato (21:38): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (21:38): What had changed was whether or not I become, whether or not I was a practicing Christian or not, and that I was not. So in my early twenties, uh, from my post high school to my early twenties, right before I started my, uh, technology, my career in technology, I was not a, a practicing Christian. I did not, my life did not meet up to what my religious beliefs were, you know, so, you know, you're Jewish and you're Orthodox Jewish. So some of the stuff we can easily relate to because we're, uh, uh, I think, you know, Orthodox Judaism may be one of the most disciplined faiths you can, uh, go down. And when you come from a Jehovah's witness background is a very disciplined faith. Leon Adato (22:27): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (22:27): So there's strict, uh, beliefs around things like sexual immorality. So the fact that me and Melissa, who I've been with since I was 20, Leon Adato (22:38): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (22:38): That we were living together and not married, bothered me, uh, uh, from a faith perspective. Leon Adato (22:46): Got it. Keith Townsend (22:47): So I didn't reconcile that until, uh, I started to study the Bible again, uh, with the churches of Christ and become a baptized Christian around age 25. Leon Adato (23:00): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (23:00): Or so. And that kinda got me from, you know, kind of Jehovah's witness, uh, uh, on the verge of becoming a Jehovah witness to kind of stepping away from Christianity, to re-engaging in the faith in general. And then, you know, I, you visually morphed into, you know, as you think through kind of the entire journey from age 25 to I'm now 47. So a 22 year, uh, Christian journey, you know, it went from being, uh, you know, that fiery early Christian, uh, going out and preaching on the, uh, on the street corners to having teenage children and trying to, uh, help them with their own religious journeys and understanding life just isn't as black and white, as we all would like to think. Leon Adato (23:54): Right. Keith Townsend (23:54): You know, it's, it's just, it's an amazing, like, if, once you start the pull part, the details of it, and we'll talk about things, some of it, and some of your next questions, but you know, things about, uh, things about my faith around, uh, uh, taboo topics, such as sexual orientation. Like once you become a full realized adult, and you have queer friends, how do you reconcile having queer friends? But your faith is saying that, uh, the doctrine of your faith is saying that this is something not acceptable. So. Leon Adato (24:32): Right. Keith Townsend (24:32): Separating the two or reconciling the two has been just a really interesting journey as I've matured. Leon Adato (24:38): Yeah. And, you know, friends or relatives, you know, to that. Keith Townsend (24:42): Yeah. Leon Adato (24:42): To that matter. Keith Townsend (24:42): I have a niece that I love to death and she's engaged to another woman. So, you know, we had them over to dinner before COVID, we had them over to dinner and we had a great time, but it is, it's some really tough questions that you, you end up, uh, just dabbling with. Leon Adato (25:02): Right. And if you're reconciled to it, to those things, to those contradictions, which I think, I think the tension, the, the religious and Holy tension, I think is where the excitement is the, the, the work, the introspection, the, the, again, as an adult, as a fully realized, mature, adult, and I recognize that as I say this, uh, if my wife or children listen to this podcast, they will laugh hysterically at my believing myself to be a fully realized mature adult, but that aside, um, I think that figuring out those things about what, what I believe and what I practice and, um, how I reconcile, what my, both, what my religious peers, my co-religionists are saying, and all those things, that's where a lot of the really interesting, dialogue can be found. Um, you know, I don't mean arguments, but I mean, real dialogue, like, you know, what do we mean when we say this? Um, and I will say that, you know, as, as IT people, I'm not trying to diminish it, but as IT people, I think we're used to, those hard conversations, those challenging conversations of, no, I really think this is the way we need to fix this, or this is the way we need to build this. No, that's not it, I think this is how we need to build it based on my experiences or my understanding of the facts on the ground. And I think that that's, that's part of the thing that makes, uh, folks with strong religious identities who work in it. I think that's where we find those, those overlaps. And that sort of takes us to the next, the next part of the, of the episode, which is when, as a person with a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, who works in IT, I'm curious about how those two things overlap, you know, has it created any friction and how have you overcome that, but also have there been any, you know, wonderful discoveries, delightful discoveries, I like to call them where you didn't think that being religious was going to help your tech, or you didn't think that being technical was going to enhance your experience of your faith. And yet it happened. So let's start off with the, well, we'll start off with the not so great stuff. And we'll end on a high note. So was, have there ever been moments when your faith caused friction with your tech or vice versa? Keith Townsend (27:35): So that's a really interesting question, I think, and this is not just, I think, unique to tech. I think the science is there's two areas. There's kind of work-life balance that category that we put in work-life balance and tech is unique in a sense that we don't ask our payroll people to run payroll at 10 o'clock at night. Leon Adato (27:58): Usually not unless something's going really wrong . Keith Townsend (28:02): But when, you know, when people are looking at me funny, and you don't have this problem because of, uh, your faith, but you have the conflict, uh, the, when people are looking at me funny, because I step out of service because I got a text, is weird. That was early on like, Oh, I get the servers down on a Sunday afternoon and I'm doing service. I think Orthodox Jews kind of get this part, right. Uh, you know what? You won't get that text because you don't have a pager on. So the, uh, the, uh, that's one aspect of it, but there's the second part of that, which is the work-life balance is when you need to push back, uh, from that the computers don't care that you go to service Wednesday nights and on Sundays. So I remember, uh, very vividly one night I was getting off of work at five o'clock and my, uh, I get a page, uh, right before I leave. And the former CEO of the Tribune is now, uh, running the, uh, back then, once you became the former CEO of the Tribune, once you retire from that, you became the CEO of Tribune's, uh, uh, charity, whatever that was named the, Leon Adato (29:28): Oh ok. Keith Townsend (29:28): Uh, and they had a problem and it was my job to troubleshoot that problem. So, you know, there's this super important person and the organization I'm working the help desk, I'm on call. I get a page that this senior executive has a problem, but I have church service. And that I can't that mentally I, in my mind, I cannot Miss Church service. So I have this conflict. Do I go help the executive? Or do I go to church in which you know, is so for me, it was really a question of faith and I chose to go to service. And this is just a good piece of advice for work-life balance. In general, I always always push against deadlines that conflict with my personal life. Leon Adato (30:17): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (30:17): I've done enough stuff to know that most deadlines are autofit are artificial. Someone somewhere said that this has to be done by a date unless we're talking about, Oh, VMworld is scheduled on the 19th of September, and this presentation will be delivered. And it has to be in by the morning of 19th of September, then everything else is negotiable. If it's not a written. And even then, you know, we get these weird deadlines and it, and in business in general, thou shalt have their, your presentation in a month before the thing. And I kind of just brush all that stuff off. I try, I tried to respect it if I can, but if I have conflict, I manage that conflict. The second thing is by definition, and I'm sure people who listen to this podcast struggle with this. When I read the old Testament and I see that Joshua prayed and the sun stopped in the middle of the sky, I simply don't believe it like, and you can, you can kind of water over your faith if you want to and say, Oh, you know what? I'm just being unfaithful. Or, and yes, I will believe this theme that I don't believe. I try to be as honest as possible when it, when it, when my, my semi scientists technical, technical brain can't reconcile something that I read in my religious texts, I don't cover it up. Like, I don't believe Adam and Eve, I don't believe the, I don't, I'm a Christian, but I don't believe the creation story as written and the texts that we read today. And those are the things that I truly struggle with. I don't struggle with, you know, um, again, I'm, I'm a mature adult. I have plenty of years of experience. I know how to push back on areas of conflict when it comes to scheduling. But as a, even as a 22 year old Christian, 22 years of my faith, I still struggle with reconciling what my technical brain tells me and what my faith wants to, uh, what my faith teaches. Leon Adato (32:35): Right. And, and that is actually a topic that we're going to cover, uh, In a future episode, which is this idea of proof and how do we reconcile our, you know, fact-based, don't go with your gut, say it with data, or don't say it at all, kind of 9 to 5 lives with our, uh, again, you know, biblically found, biblically founded ideas of how the world works and how it's structured and things like that, um, at the same time. So I want to just highlight the idea that, yeah, deadlines are artificial. If you're on call the challenge I think, again, as a, as a, another religious person, the challenge isn't reconciling your faith with on-call, it's reconciling your organization with on-call, that is being done by a human. Because, okay, you had church service, you could just as easily have had bath time with the kids. I'm sorry, I'm elbow deep in a bathtub with a two year old. I'm not turning around to go fix the server right now. It's going to wait another 10 minutes or 15 or whatever it is. You know, I have family emergencies. I have all those things. How does an organization handle the fact that on-call is a point of, you know, if the emergency is so bad that my not responding to it in the first 15 or 20 minutes caused it all to die, all to go away, Then there were some pretty fundamental problems with the system that had nothing to do with my failing on-call. Keith Townsend (34:13): Yeah. You have to be able to triage. Leon Adato (34:15): Yeah. Keith Townsend (34:15): You have to be able to say, you know, what is this really? I know I got a page for it, but is this really important because, uh, both of us have older children, mine are a bit older than yours, but there are times where I just simply can't get back. Leon Adato (34:31): Yeah. Keith Townsend (34:31): And I think back, wow, was getting that, uh, was getting that CRM system up in 2 hours versus 6 really worth missing that game. Hmm. Leon Adato (34:44): Right. Keith Townsend (34:46): Retrospect, maybe not. Leon Adato (34:47): Yeah. And I will say, I am absolutely a workaholic. I am. I mean, at this point in my life, I'm 53, I've been in IT for 30 years. There is no getting around it and there's probably no solving it. I am, I, I enjoy my work so much that it is very hard for me to walk away from it at the same time. Um, I've had some very hard conversations with my family who said, of course, you worked 12 hours to get that thing done. And you got the kudos. All we got was not having you. That's all we got out of it. And that, again, this is apropo of nothing that we're talking about in terms of tackle religion. It's just one of those life lessons that, you know, old tech dudes, you know, are sharing, but you really have to think, you know, not only is the applause you're going to get from your company, fleeting, you know, are you going to get a, an attaboy and that's it ain't worth it. Ain't worth dropping date night with your wife or your significant other isn't worth, you know, it's not worth dropping it for Oh, wow. That was really good. Thank you. It's not worth being asked to do it again. It's not worth thinking you will always be there and it's also not necessarily worth the frustration and the anger that you may see long-term in your family's faces when they start to hate your job. Keith Townsend (36:17): Yeah. The, uh, I love it. That my kids have memories of jobs that I had, that they loved. They were like, Oh, I love that job that you would take me to. And they don't. Leon Adato (36:28): Ahh. Keith Townsend (36:28): Know what I did, but they say, Oh, I love that job that you did, and there was the refrigerator full of soda and I can get free soda. And we, you know, we stop in and then we go, and then afterwards, we go across the street to, you know, one of my favorite stories is recently, my son said he took, uh, he took his girlfriend to the restaurant that was across the street from that job. Leon Adato (36:53): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (36:53): And he said he was so disappointed and heartbroken when his girlfriend just said, Oh, it was okay. And, uh, he said, I have some of my best memories of being with my dad and my family after he, you know, take us, uh, to work at the, he did a server upgrade or whatever. He take us across the street in, have this place in. And he said the other day, Oh, and to boot is now closed in. So there's this thing that you have to balance. We have tough jobs and information technology. And as, as, and most faiths have this thing, uh, and I think it's pretty consistent that pride is a sin. Leon Adato (37:37): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (37:37): And there's no better job than being an, IT Ex that feeds your pride. Leon Adato (37:44): Yes. Keith Townsend (37:44): Then what we do, the ability to be the superhero, the person who saw, saved the day, uh, I got, I had a CEO, tell me, Keith, you took us out of the stone age, et cetera. We get all the kudos in the world. And it feeds that pride. Leon Adato (38:01): RIght, right. Keith Townsend (38:02): At the end of the day, we have to ask the question and we'll get into this, in one of your, uh, next series of questions around, you know, what pride is a horrible thing for both your career and your personal life. Leon Adato (38:15): Yeah. Um, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna quote her correctly, but Charity Majors, who's the, I think she's still the CTO of honeycomb IO. She is still part of honeycomb, but she has gone from, I think the CTO to one of the engineers or back again, she founded the company, but she gets to have whatever job she wants in it. And she said, she's very much anti firefighting. She said, I actually do not give anybody credit in our company for fixing a problem that blew up. I want to give credit to the person who found the problem before it occurred, who did the steady, regular testing and, uh, quality control so that the problem never occurred. And I think IT is horrible at that as a, uh, as a industry where we lionize the 2:00 AM firefighter while completely overlooking the person who shows up at 9 leaves at 5 does good, solid, reliable work that is consistent,and has few, if any flaws, that person never gets a bonus. That person. I mean, in terms of like, when we think about, you know, bonuses for saving the day, that person never gets it because yeah. They just showed up. They just did their job. Yeah. They just did their job. Perfect. You know, uh, consistently all the time. That's the part that we should be holding up as the example. Um, but we don't. So you're absolutely right. And I actually made a note that, that, uh, we definitely need to do an episode on pride goeth before the fall, for sure. To talk about like what that means in tech and religion. Okay. So we've talked about some of the challenges. Are there any moments, uh, as I said before, this delightful discoveries, any times, when you're you realize that your faith was really a asset, a benefit to your technical life or vice versa, where you were at church, and you realize that being an IT person was really, and not just, I'm going to go back to an earlier episode, we had where it was like, Oh, Keith can fix, it keeps the AV guy, not the, again, that lionizing the problem solving. But anytime when you realize that, that your technical mindset created a deeper or more powerful connection to your faith. Keith Townsend (40:29): So let's talk about how the faith has, uh, impacted my work life and techno, uh, as a technologist, uh, you know what we, we'll talk about it, I think in a future episode and we'll address the, in the proof piece of it, but sometimes somethings just take faith, true story. Uh, the, I was on call and there was the help desk reporting system was running on NT 4.0 server when NT 4.0 was the latest OS from Microsoft out and available, Leon Adato (41:02): Right. Keith Townsend (41:02): But it was still then a horrible OS, and I was in there to do, uh, updates that you get in via CD back in, back in that time. And I came to it, hit the KVM. It was blue screened already. Like even before I touched anything, it was blue screened hours later. The, and this is, this has been a system that had been giving, uh, uh, problems. I called the director. He said, look, Keith, if this thing isn't up, by the time we get back into the office in the morning, we both might as well go out looking for new jobs. So I'm like, Whoa, hold on. I was just coming in to do updates. So how did I get lumped into this whole losing your job thing? It got to the point that it had to be about three o'clock in the morning. I literally got in the middle, on the middle of the data center floor. I got on my knees and prayed. Because I had no idea how you guys have to remember this. This is 1998, 1999. There is no internet blogs that you can just go to Google or AltaVista and Google and find. Leon Adato (42:09): Right. Keith Townsend (42:09): The solution to the problem. If you get on the phone with Microsoft, you're going to be on the phone for hours before you. Leon Adato (42:16): Yeah. Keith Townsend (42:16): Can get to someone who can help you, Leon Adato (42:19): Help you through it. Keith Townsend (42:19): So my only main line, my Google was just praying. I got some crazy idea to do it. So I've never, I've never shied away from my faith and my job. And I've taken principles from my Christian faith and apply them to my approach to work. I'm ethical. I, I'm moral, and I'm a better leader because I embrace the love of Christ in my approach to my job. I, uh, literally do not approach my job as I'm working for, uh, the Tribune or Lockheed Martin it's, I'm working for God and is what my is, is my work acceptable? Is this something that I can present to him? Is my leadership something that I can present to him? Uh, is it something if, uh, I, my, am I taking credit where I don't deserve to take credit? Leon Adato (43:20): Um hmm. Keith Townsend (43:20): That's how I approach my work because of my faith and people, uh, people give me kudos about it all the time, and I don't always succeed in doing this, but I am who I am because of my faith. You take away my faith from who I am as a person. And I'm pretty unlikable. Leon Adato (43:43): Got it. Yeah, it's, uh, it, it definitely is a, uh mitigating factor for a lot of us. Um, I will say also, just having known you for a while and worked with you in, uh, several different, um, venues that you, you bring that perspective to, is it worth doing? And, you know, you'll look at projects that I think a lot of folks in your position would say, I know that's not worth it. No, no, no. There's, there's a message here that I want to deliver. There's a, you know, there's a conversation I want to have. That's worth being part of or whatever. You, you value things in a way that, um, is not, is not necessarily business like or business centric, but it is, um, humanity centric. And it is really about, you know, what can I do to help? In a lot of ways. Keith Townsend (44:38): Yeah. I remember what it was like too. So my brother is also a business owner. My youngest brothers are business owners. He had a, Leon Adato (44:46): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (44:46): Uh, he had a employee. Uh, he was thinking that, you know what? I think I might be overpaying this particular employee. No, not overpaying, He said, you know I think I might be underpaying this particular employee, I really need to consider this. And then in a casual conversation, a week later, the employee said, you know what? I was at the grocery store, my wife, and it was the first time in our lives. And this person is over 40. Uh, this is the first time in our lives, where we went into the grocery store and we weren't worried about our checking account balance, and what we were buying for and being able to buy groceries. So IT technology has transformed my life from a, Leon Adato (45:32): Uh huh. Keith Townsend (45:32): From just a privileged perspective, you know, I'm, I, the, my wife got tagged in a photo of a billionaire. We're not rich, but we have access and privilege that the 12, 16 year old Keith could never even. Leon Adato (45:51): Yeah. Keith Townsend (45:51): Fathom. I just did not know this world existed. So when, whether it's your day job, or you personally, or someone comes with an opportunity for me to open that door to other people to have similar transformative experiences, why would I want to pull that ladder up from them and not give them the same opportunities? As I mentioned, it was grit partially that got me here, but it was also people willing to extend a hand. Leon Adato (46:19): Yeah. Keith Townsend (46:19): And help me up that ladder. Leon Adato (46:21): Very nice, Keith, it is always a privilege and a pleasure to talk to you. Uh, this is the lightning round. Any final thoughts, anything that you want to share with folks, um, just to think about on their way. Keith Townsend (46:34): So you know what the, I think if you can take anything from this conversation, it's don't be fearful of your faith. Um, people are people. There are some of them, there are truly jerks out there. One of our fellow contributors get challenged because of his faith on Twitter, but overall you impact way more people positively by sharing your faith, whatever that faith is. I'm not in a position to judge what you, how you choose your relationship with your God or your spiritual being. But what I am saying, the positivity from that will positively impact your career and others, way more than the pain for the most part inflicted upon us, because we're open with our faith. Leon Adato (47:20): Right? The, yeah. The benefits outweigh any of the challenges and sometimes the challenges are there to be overcome. Keith Townsend (47:26): Yes. Leon Adato (47:27): Um, I like it. Uh, fantastic. One more time for people who want to find you online, who want to see what you're working on, um, where can people get in touch with you? Keith Townsend (47:35): Yeah. So as CTO visor is the easiest way to get in contact with me. DMS are open, but don't send me anything weird, cause I will block you. Uh, and theCTOadvisor.com is how you get to me professionally. And I post a lot of stuff to LinkedIn because it's a very powerful platform. Leon Adato (47:53): Yeah, you, uh, you, you have a lot of nice talks on there too, that I've noticed, uh, from time to time you give a, it's almost like a mini podcast there. So. Keith Townsend (48:01): Yeah. Leon Adato (48:01): That's another thing to check out is that LinkedIn link. Well, uh, thank you again for taking some time out of your day. It's actually the middle of the day for both of us. And, uh, I look forward to seeing you back on the show. Keith Townsend (48:11): All right, Leon, I'll I'll hopefully I'll see you in person. When I visit you via the road show. When I visit Cleveland, Leon Adato (48:18): If the roadshow is coming to Cleveland, then we are absolutely going to do a tour of every kosher restaurant. I will weigh 900 pounds when we're done with it. Keith Townsend (48:25): I love me a kosher hot dog. Leon Adato (48:27): Perfect. We'll get you one, take care. Keith Townsend (48:30): Take care. Speaker 6 (48:30): Thank you for making time for us this week, to hear more of technically religious visit our website at technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions or connect with us on social media.

The Family Altar Audio Devotional - Day 117

Ten Thousand Worlds

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 27, 2021 5:30

And he said unto them, How say they that Christ is David's son? And David himself saith in the book of Psalms, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Till I make thine enemies thy footstool. David therefore calleth him Lord, how is he then his son? (Luke 20:41-44) 140 To be borned of the Spirit, is to believe and behave yourself in the Spirit, is to understand and believe with your heart that Jesus is Christ and This is His Word, that no other words can be added to It or taken away from It without your name taken out of the Book of Life. That was a strong one. If you add one thing to It, in your tradition, or take one thing from It, well, Christ said, Himself, “Your name shall be rubbed off the Book of Life.” Now, find organization, denomination in the Bible. You’ll run from it! All right. Regardless of the flesh, denomination teaching is contrary to the Bible. Yeah. Borned again means “a new Birth from Above; birthed from Above.” Then we are active in the things from Above. Oh, my! For It is Himself acting in His Word through you, His branch, to the Vine. 141 That’s the reason Jesus said, “If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not.” Oh, certainly! He said, “No man has ascended up to Heaven but He that come down from Heaven.” Watch Him fix Nicodemus here, when Nicodemus…You know, they thought, Him being a Man, He couldn’t be God. And He said, and there He said, “No man has ascended up to Heaven but He that came down from Heaven, even the Son of man which is now in Heaven.” That was too much for him. How could He, the Son of man, come down from Heaven, come down from Heaven, was the same that ascended up to Heaven, and the same One that’s standing here on top of this house, talking to Nicodemus, was now in Heaven? Well, he ought to have seen that it was God. He’s omnipresent, everywhere! See? But he, in his traditions, didn’t know that. He wasn’t spiritual-minded. The carnal mind, and couldn’t catch it. He says, “Who does man say I the Son of man am?” “Some says, well, ‘He’s the Son of David.’” 142 He said, “Then why did David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ say, ‘The Lord said unto my Lord, “Sit Thou on My right hand, till I make Thy foes a footstool”’?” How that He is both Root and Offspring of David; He was before David, He was David, and after David. See? “He is the Root and Offspring of David,” the Bible said so, both Root and Offspring of David. How could He be His Son then? How could He be His Lord? The Bible said, “From henceforth they asked Him nothing.” I guess it was a good thing, too. Yes, sir. All right. 62-1111e - "Why I'm Against Organized Religion" Rev. William Marrion Branham ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Order your own copy of the Family Altar at http://store.bibleway.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Appreciate what we do? Consider supporting us: https://anchor.fm/ten-thousand-worlds/support --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ten-thousand-worlds/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ten-thousand-worlds/support

god jesus christ life family lord book bible spirit man birth root vine his word altar nicodemus his son my father offspring book of psalms thy him lord his lord for it audio devotional

S3E06 - Tales From the TAMO Cloud with Doug Johnson

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 6, 2021 41:53

Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a "TAMO Cloud" - which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred". It indicated an area of tech that was inscruitable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in it's output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO Cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys - both technical and theological - and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. This episode features my talk with my long time friend, fellow Clevelander, and co-conspirator, Doug Johnson. Listen to our discussion or read the transcript below. Intro (00:03): [Music] Leon Adato (00:32): Welcome to our podcast, where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate, IT, we're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways. We make our careers, it professionals mesh, or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is technically religious. Leon Adato (00:53): Did you ever wonder why it diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside that was originally called a TAMO cloud, which stood for then a miracle occurred. It indicated an area of tech that was inscrutable, but nevertheless, something we saw as reliable and consistent in its output for it. Pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view. Our journey has had its own sort of TAMO cloud where grounded technology and lofty, philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting, to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the it community to explore their journeys, both technical and theological, and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today and where they see themselves in the future. Leon Adato (01:39): My name is Leon Adato, and the other voice you'll hear on this episode is a frequent contributor to technically religious and a friend of mine for 30 years. Doug Johnson. Doug Johnson (01:52): We are so old. So very old. Leon Adato (01:52): We are so old. Before this podcast started, we realized that there may be close to a hundred years of experience on this particular episode. And there's just two of us on the line, Doug Johnson (02:01): Man. I'll tell you been at this for a little while. Yes, indeed. And this wasn't my first career, so really? Think about that. Leon Adato (02:10): Yeah, it's really, were like Methuselah put us in a jar. Um, okay. So as we are want to do here on technically religious, we're going to start off with a shameless self promotion, Doug, tell us a little bit about what you're working on, any special projects, how people can find you on social media and required, uh, is your religious ethical or moral point of view? Doug Johnson (02:31): Okay. Basically there's two, technically speaking things that I work on, I work for a company called Southwestern health resources, which is an accountable care organization, health kind of stuff down here in Dallas, Texas. Leon Adato (02:45): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (02:45): Um, when they sold this to me a year ago, I, remember I was working on my own. So I really wasn't looking for a job, but this cool thing came up that put all my background together and I thought, Oh, that's cool. And they said, well, this is a startup. Now keep in mind that this startup was, uh, peeled off from the two big 800 pound health gorillas, thousands and thousands of employees in, in, in Texas. So this startup that I've been part of for a year has 800 employees, $2 billion in revenue, plus et cetera, et cetera. That's not what I thought of when, uh, when we said startup, but there we are. So I am the web developer for the marketing department. And if you're a technical person, you know how most technical people feel about marketing departments. So the fact that I'm the only technical person in the marketing department should tell you a little something there, but it's kind of fun. They, their expectations are really low. So I exceed them all the time and it works out really well for me. Leon Adato (03:44): There you go. Doug Johnson (03:44): My side gig, the one that's going to go ahead and make me a multi-billion million. Okay. A hundred thousand air maybe if were lucky,. Leon Adato (03:52): You'll be able to buy coffee. Doug Johnson (03:54): I'm hoping. Yeah so far, so far it's cost a lot of money, but basically where we do a inventory management for small to medium size, uh, healthcare offices, primarily optical at this particular point using radio frequency identification. And I am the CTO, the chief technology officer, I supposedly know everything that I'm doing. I've designed it. It's working well. We've been breaking even for almost a year and we actually expect to make a profit this year until we then hire an, an employee. And then we'll go back in the red again. Leon Adato (04:24): It's all going to go, right? It all goes down the tubes again. Doug Johnson (04:26): That one is wave rfid.net. So if you have an optical shop and really actually want to control your inventory, go there. Leon Adato (04:35): Awesome. And your religious point of view, Doug Johnson (04:38): Religious point of view, I am a born again, evangelical Christian, but not one of those weird ones. I don't know. You know, I mean, you know, there are evangelical Christians who basically will smack you over the head with a really heavy Bible until you give up. I'm more one of the ones that thinks that we should talk about it and if you come to it, that's great. Um, Leon Adato (04:57): Got it. Doug Johnson (04:57): So yeah, I have, Leon Adato (04:59): I was going to say, Doug is one of the weird ones for those people listening he is, Doug Johnson (05:02): I am one of the weird ones, but not necessarily in the way that you expect me to be weird. Leon Adato (05:06): An evangelical Christian. Doug Johnson (05:07): Exactly. Leon Adato (05:07): Yeah, um hmm. Doug Johnson (05:08): Exactly. So there you are. So that's, that's my, I mean, I've read the Bible multiple times. I do know what I'm talking about. Um, but by the same token, I, I, I respect, I respect your, uh, right to choose, uh, the wrong choice. Leon Adato (05:23): [laughing] I was waiting to get around to that. I Knew somewhere along the way, Doug Johnson (05:31): I keep, I keep on going with the, I could be wrong. I don't think I am, if I'm wrong. Oh, well, uh, I'll deal with it when the time comes. And by this, you know, by the same token, I'm going to try and convince you that, uh, this is the right way to go. Leon Adato (05:45): Right. You might be wrong, but you gave it your best shot. Yeah. Point, you know, it has certainly worked for me over the years, A for enthusiasm. Um, okay. So tales from the Tambo cloud is, uh, structured in a particular way where we talk about your journey first through tech and then through religion. So I want to talk about where you're at now. I mean, you gave us a taster and amuse-bouche perhaps of where you're at technically, but in terms of the day-to-day work that you do, what are you doing today? Doug Johnson (06:14): The stuff that I'm doing today is actually well below my technical capabilities, um, which is fine. I'm okay with that. Um, I, uh, in my, in my day job, I am doing web development. Uh, I was just on Friday given the, uh, requirements to go ahead and re-skin one of our sites in WordPress in two weeks, which most people wouldn't be able to do. And certainly none of our, the people we normally hire at ridiculously high rates would be able to do, but they also know that I'm going to be able to pull it off. So. Leon Adato (06:48): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (06:48): And actually, technically speaking, I'm supposed to have it done in a week so that they can go ahead and get the content over. So having actually worked with a couple of our vendors for months not to get this to happen, I get to do it in a week. So, you know, it'll work, it'll work out okay. On the wave RFID side, I am the CTO. I don't actually do the programming. We got a great team of people in India who were actually doing all the work we're working in a stack that I understand. So they can't get too far out from underneath me. Well, you know, Leon Adato (07:20): Right. Doug Johnson (07:20): Sometimes, sometimes people who are, you know, they don't know the technical stack and, anything could happen at that particular point. I could in essence, dump them at any at any point and take it over, but God, why would I want to, these guys are great. Leon Adato (07:33): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (07:33): I've known them for years. They're doing a good job. It's a layer of L slash PHP slash react stack. It's working great. Clients are happy. They don't care how we do it. And so that one is more, uh, advisory than anything else. I do the design. I make sure that it will go ahead and scale as we grow to thousands of clients instead of tens of clients. And, uh, you know, that's, that's, that's my day to day. Leon Adato (08:03): Well, and, and I'm going to having known you for a while. I'm also going to sort of fill in some of the blanks there, which is that for as long as I've known you, you've always been in, you've always been one of the best examples of an architect level, uh, developer, meaning you're the big idea guy. You're the one who sees that we're gonna, you know, this is the goal we're going for the end result that we're going for. And here's how we're going to get there. You know, the stack, the code, the whatever, you'll, pseudo-code out, what needs to be done. You'll, you'll talk about the flow. And if somebody gets sick or wins the lottery and buys an Island and disappears, you can take over for them, but you don't want to, because you don't really want to be a code monkey day after day after day, you want to jump in, solve the really hard problems or point the way to solving the hard problems and go on. But you certainly could if you needed to. Doug Johnson (08:54): Yeah. And pretty much that would be accurate. I mean, yeah. And, and just for those people who are wondering, gee, I wonder if I should go into tech someday and all that kind of stuff. I'm completely self-taught. Leon Adato (09:04): Yes. Doug Johnson (09:05): I did not get it. I don't have a CS degree. In fact, there's a couple of jobs that I wanted along the way that I lost, because I couldn't do an algorithm on a whiteboard. It just, no, I'm serious. Leon Adato (09:16): No, I know you're serious. Doug Johnson (09:17): I flew out to LA, I flew out to frickin Seattle. I talked with the CTO of the company and he was happy with me. And then the guy who was going to be my boss threw this link list thing at me, and I was like, I, I know how to do what you're talking about, but I don't know how to do that. I mean, you know, I was just. Leon Adato (09:38): Right. Doug Johnson (09:38): And I lost, I didn't get the job as, as a, as a tech evangelist who doesn't actually have to write code because I couldn't do a link list thing. Leon Adato (09:48): Yeah. Doug Johnson (09:48): Do I sound bitter? Leon Adato (09:50): My, not even a little. My, my response in those situations is frequently. Is this something that your employees do often? Doug Johnson (10:00): Right. Well and that's a, Leon Adato (10:01): You do code on a board without, anything like, is that how development is done here? Doug Johnson (10:08): well, Yeah. Unfortunately this was early enough in a job change that I would, at this point, if they had said, if he had said, I need you to do a link list thing, I would go, I don't do that. That's what I would do now, because now having been in that situation one, Nope. I don't have a CS degree. I know what link lists are. I've taught it, but it was 30 years ago, you know? So I don't know. I don't do that anymore. If that's not good enough, I'll just go home fine. Leon Adato (10:35): Right. Exactly. Okay. Doug Johnson (10:36): But I'm old and cranky now, so. Leon Adato (10:38): Right, exactly. So you've earned the ability to be blunt a little bit. Listen, Sonny. Um, so, but you, you hit upon where we're going next, which is that you are self-taught, you didn't, uh, depart the womb already knowing how to code with a silver keyboard in your mouth. Doug Johnson (10:55): Yup. Leon Adato (10:55): Um, so how, where did you start out? Doug Johnson (10:58): Technically, I started out in college. I went to college where they invented Basic. And so you could, in fact, they, they encouraged all departments to do stuff with the computer because we were kind of big on that whole thing. In fact, the, uh, one of the inventors of basic became the president of my college and his signature is out of my diploma. So, so basically you could go down to the, uh, computer center or to a couple of different places around campus, put in your, uh, your college ID number, no password mind you, um, and just put it in and then you'd be on and you could do basic on a teletype. Leon Adato (11:40): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (11:40): And so, and I, you know, I, I did various incentive things. We would all do. English classes would have you do something on the computer, blah, blah, blah. But in physics class, I, uh, the, the first real, uh, indicator that I was, uh, going to do something, interestingly weird with this, I was trying to go ahead and do this, uh, make something, uh, orbit around the planet. Leon Adato (12:07): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (12:07): And all of a sudden on the teletype, there were dots everywhere. I mean, just asterisks cause remember. Leon Adato (12:14): Its full of stars, Doug Johnson (12:15): It's little, Little asterisks everywhere. And I went, okay, that's interesting saved. It went off, uh, went to a different building where they had a, uh, a plotter. And I went ahead and did the 150, uh, baud modem with the phone to go ahead and get it to connect. And it did this really interesting loopy thing. And I went, Oh, that's interesting. And so what had happened was I had, I had actually divided incorrectly in my program. Leon Adato (12:47): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (12:47): And so what ended up happening was I had negated the effect of gravity on, um, on orbits. So by going ahead and doing different numbers with this kind of stuff, I got these really cool loopy things. And remember, this is like, this is early seventies when this stuff was considered to be cool. Leon Adato (13:04): Uh huh, right. Doug Johnson (13:04): Um, , you, you wouldn't even think about it now. You'd go, what are you just a fricking idiot? But at the time, no, you know, it's like, and so I got, I now have on my college degree, uh, not on the degree, but on, on my, uh, resume it basically, I have a citation in physics for a modified gravitational model of a, uh, on a computer. I forget exactly what the words are, but it is a citation in physics keeping in mind, I got a C plus in physics because I really wasn't that great at it. Leon Adato (13:37): Right, right. Doug Johnson (13:38): So I knew, I knew if a computer mistake can do this for me, this was probably a field for me someday. Leon Adato (13:45): There you go. Okay. So that was, that was your humble beginnings. Doug Johnson (13:48): yes, but then I became a disc jockey. Leon Adato (13:48): Your humble beginnings was a citation in physics. Doug Johnson (13:52): I know really? Yes. Except that, except that I realized that now, remember, I wasn't a science guy. I mean, I did, I was thinking about pre-med until I got to biology and realized that wasn't going to work. And so, uh, eventually I got my degree in philosophy. Leon Adato (14:07): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (14:07): I was a disc jockey. They would pay you to sit there and actually tell people what time it was and what song you had just played. And so that's what I kind of did for the next 10 years. Leon Adato (14:16): Right. Right. And actually for those people who were wondering, he was, uh, the number one, uh, was it, Doug Johnson (14:22): Mid day. Leon Adato (14:22): it wasn't DriveTime. Yeah. Doug Johnson (14:24): Mid day. Leon Adato (14:25): Number one mid day, jockey up against, um, 105 in Cleveland, the Cleveland market. Doug Johnson (14:32): Yes. For at least one or two books. I forget. I'm sure Matt, the cat hated me for it, but that's just the way it is. So I beat him. I beat you Matt. Leon Adato (14:41): There we go. Claim, yet another claim to fame, Doug Johnson (14:44): Right. So did that, uh, stop doing drugs? Um, got married, um, worked for the phone company for 12 weeks, nine weeks training, three weeks on the job went, okay, this ain't gonna work. And then I was with Eastern singing telegrams for a whole year. That was a good job. And then I got a job selling computers. So here we are at the end of, uh, when did the Lisa come out? 82 or 81. And it was the October for October before the Lisa came out. Leon Adato (15:16): Okay. Doug Johnson (15:17): Uh, because I, I know that because I did the Apple Lisa rollout training, I'm one of the few people that's ever seen a Lisa let alone a room full of them. Um, but, uh, so basically at that point I was selling computers. Um, and you know, it did rather well at it. Uh, I had a knack for it as it turned out and we were off and rolling. So somewhere along the line, um, we started instead of being just an Apple shop, we picked up IBM's and the way I had been selling apples all along was people would come in and they would say, I need to do a, uh, I needed to be able to do a mailing list. And so I would show them on the Apple, how they could go ahead and set up using profile to do this thing and, and put all their names in. And, and they would say, well, I'm looking at the IBM. I said, well, okay, that's good. I have just shown you on the computer. How I can do this. I would need you, you, you should probably go back to the IBM guy and have the IBM salesman, show you how they're going to do that. Now at the time on the IBM, the only real database for doing that was the thing called dBase wonderful little database program. And when you type dBase at the prompt, A dot would appear. That's all, Leon Adato (16:34): That's what you got. um hmm. Doug Johnson (16:35): And most salespeople would never show you anything on the IBM, because they didn't know how it worked. Now. We decided to carry the, I, we decided to carry, and then they would come back to me and buy the Apple because it made sense. Leon Adato (16:49): Because they could do things. Right. Doug Johnson (16:49): Exactly. Well easily without being, you know, a computer programmer. So basically when we, when my company decided to sell IBM's, I said, nobody is going to do that to me. I went in, learn dBase. I would, Oh, sweet. Okay. I learned how to do my example, so I could do it for my, anybody I was selling to, but I found out, gosh, I can do this. I can handle, I mean, this is programming. I can do this. And it was difficult because it was really early on. But, but the answer is, I just found out I had a knack for it and went out. I was the DBAs expert, then a FoxPro expert. And, you know, I would just keep on learning new stuff as we went along and I keep on learning new things and .NET and Delphi and C and C sharp and keep on going. I mean, it's just like, if it, and then I got into PHP and Drupal and WordPress and combine it, it's just like, yeah, whatever would offer, essentially ahead and allow me to, to continue to pay the bills and have a good time doing it. I would just keep learning it. And as long as you keep on learning in this wonderful world of technology, you're okay. It's when you decide, you know, as much as you need to know, unless it's COBAL, in which case you can keep on working until you die. But come on. There's a lot of COBAL calls still out there baby. Leon Adato (18:10): There's still a lot of COBAL out there. Well, there's a lot of support stuff. I remember meeting a guy who was in his like mid twenties and he decided to really get good at COBOL. And, you know, I'm like, okay. And he just pointed around the bullpen where they were all sitting and he's like, look around me. They're going to die soon. Doug Johnson (18:26): Yep. And he's absolutely correct. I mean, what would they say? Most banking codes still runs on COBOL. Leon Adato (18:32): Yeah. yeah. Doug Johnson (18:32): So I mean now, I mean, I've read COBOL. I've never actually written any useful COBAL code, So that's one of the few languages I can't claim that I've been paid to write. Leon Adato (18:44): There you go. All right. And that covers the, Doug Johnson (18:47): So that's how I got here. Leon Adato (18:47): That, that covers how you got from there to here. So that's, I mean, that's a journey. Um, and I think one of the lessons to, this is something you told me a while ago is that somebody who's new on the market can probably use the latest tools and use them competently. Um, you know, and probably will work for cheaper than, than someone like us at our point in life. But what we bring to the table is that we know what came before it, and probably what came before that. So we know why the current version works the way it does. Doug Johnson (19:18): Yup. Leon Adato (19:18): And how to get around all the hidden bugs. And I remember specifically, I was working with Tivoli at the time and I was trying to, uh, at the time they had just created one of their GUI's and I was putting containers, you know, uh, nesting containers. And every time I would nest something inside of something inside of something inside of something, the entire database would corrupt. And I was complaining to you as I am, want to do often. And you said, well, yeah, because it's a Corba database and I, I don't like banana hamster? Like, what are we talking? Like, why is it no, no, you understand Corba databases are one of the first object oriented database structures ever. And they only handle three levels of can, you know, have container ship after that, the database corrupts, you literally did what it can't do. And I'm like, okay, but who would, who would know that, you know, coming at it new. Doug Johnson (20:10): Yup Exactly. But, and the flip side to that though, and again, this is, I've had all kinds of people saying, well, I'd like to get an attack, but it's way too late. And I'm going, no, you are exactly two years behind the cutting edge. So if you pick out whatever's cutting edge now in two years, you'll be the expert and people down the road will be saying, I don't know how to do this. So, you know, it's like, you're never too late in our industry to jump in. You just have to, you just, you don't want to start with something that's so fricking old that you're battling against everybody like me. Who's been doing this forever. You want to be battling. You want to be battling on the front lines and learning it. And then in two years, yes, it'll take you a little while for the cutting edge to move back. But if you pick the right cutting edge, you know, you will be the expert in two years and making the money you want to make. Leon Adato (21:03): So what you're saying is that Moore's law may not be true until the earth, So the sun dies because of heat death, but it will in terms of chips, but it will be true in terms of getting a career in it that Moore's law will, Doug Johnson (21:17): Surprisingly Moore's law actually is key. It keeps on con, it should have died years ago, and yet it keeps on rolling. Leon Adato (21:25): Right. And once again, if you're old like us, you know what we're talking about when we talk about Moore's law, okay. I want to, I want to pivot, we talked about tech now let's pivot to the, um, religious side. Doug Johnson (21:37): Ok, works for me. Leon Adato (21:37): I know that labels, labels are difficult and often incredibly imprecise. And most of the time on this, uh, on these TAMO episodes, when I say so, what are you, you know, religiously, the answer begins with well, and it ends, uh, several minutes later, when many, many, many qualifications have been given to an answer. That being said, how do you, you know, besides, you know, evangelical, evangelical Christian, but not one of the weird ones. How do you define yourself religiously? Doug Johnson (22:08): Basically, Um, I believe the Bible is to be the word of God. I believe that, um, Christ is the Messiah that he is, uh, my savior that he has. Um, he died for my sins, and I actually, there's nothing that I can do to make myself worthy in the eyes of God. Other than to say, I am the, Christ said, I'm okay. I've trusted in Christ. Therefore, uh, if, if Christ is your son, God, and you think he's okay, then could you maybe think I'm okay too? Leon Adato (22:50): Okay. Doug Johnson (22:51): That's pretty much it. Leon Adato (22:53): Okay. Doug Johnson (22:53): I mean, that's, it's, it's the base that it's, it is the basis of real Christianity. That's a really good book by CS Lewis called Mirror Christianity that I recommend to people all the time. Uh, it's a little more philosophical than most people are willing to slog their way through, although it was a series of radio interviews for God's sake. Uh, so it's, it's good reading, but it basically covers the basis of what Christianity is. And I really have not gotten much beyond the basics, um, could, because it's when you get off in all the weird, you know, differences that Christians tend to go ahead and get in trouble with each other. If you stay with the, the mainstream stuff, for the most part, we agree. Leon Adato (23:37): Got it. Doug Johnson (23:37): So I, so I try and stay, stay pretty central. Leon Adato (23:41): There we go. Okay. And, uh, you mentioned the whole born again thing a minute ago, several minutes ago, Doug Johnson (23:46): Yup. Leon Adato (23:46): But I wanted it. So you, that was not the family, that was not the household into which you were born. Doug Johnson (23:51): No. Leon Adato (23:51): So where did you start? Doug Johnson (23:52): It works the same as my technical journey. Surprisingly. Leon Adato (23:56): Um hmm. Doug Johnson (23:58): When I was, I went to, um, uh, I belong we went to church every Sunday, blah, blah, blah. Um, we, we would, uh, be yelling at each other on the way to church because we were late and we would be yelling at each other on the way home from church, because, uh, we weren't respectful enough in church. So, you know, you, you got a good solid feel for how great church is, uh, and that sort of situation, but, uh, Leon Adato (24:22): Big motivation to go every week. Doug Johnson (24:24): Exactly. Leon Adato (24:24): You look forward to it. Doug Johnson (24:25): But at the same time, you know, I mean, I, I did, I went to, went to youth group and all that kind of stuff. I was, uh, I was one of the three people who did stuff on the senior sermon day, you know, when I was a senior in college, but just for the integrity purpose, there was a, there was a statement of faith that we were supposed to make at some point, along the way, uh, community, uh, not confirmation. It was like a confirmation thing. And I specifically did not actually say some of the words in the statement that we were supposedly standing up and making. So, you know, I was a little bit of a, of a re reactionary there. So I went to college. Okay. At college was where I first got my first introduction to computers. Well, in college, that's where I first went and said, you know what? This is kind of, this is garbage. And. Leon Adato (25:15): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (25:15): I actually, I can actually remember some Christians coming to dorm room going ahead and, you know, trying, you know, laying out the whole Christian thing. And I knew the Bible better than they did, and basically, uh, shot down all of their arguments. And I, I hope I pray to God that I did not ruin their cause I will feel really bad if I was able to go ahead and push them off of their path. Leon Adato (25:39): Knock somebody else off the, yeah, Doug Johnson (25:41): Exactly. Leon Adato (25:41): I so, so, just to hold that thought for a second. Um, first of all, uh, just a point of order for people listening, never, ever get into religious argument with somebody who's in the philosophy department. That's really not, that's not the, the part of the dorm you want. Like if the, if there's a philosophy wing to the dorm, which God help them, if they really did that. But if they're like, if they say so what's your major philosophy. Thanks. Great talking to you. Bye. Just go, just go. Um, and second of all, I heard from actually one of the other folks that we talk with a lot, um, Josh Begley, who said that the missionaries that we, they send people out on, on mission work, not to try to change anybody else's mind, but to try to deepen the faith of the people who are doing the mission, because being told no repeatedly and aggressively causes you to dig in harder into your own, uh, point of view. So they do it because they want that reaction. So you probably helped many, many people develop a stronger tie to their faith. I'm, I'm working really hard, make this okay for you. Doug Johnson (26:44): Well, in the end, and again, based on what I believe as I stand before the, uh, the, the throne and get told, well done thou good and faithful servant. I have a feeling that he's gonna say, Oh, and Doug, I got a little conversation with you ok? Just yeah. Right. With these people. And then you and I, we're going to talk just a little longer, so we'll see how that all works out. But so basically I managed to get through, uh, college, uh, with what I would consider to be a somewhat hedonistic philosophy that basically said, if it's not hurting anybody at camp, it can't be all bad. Leon Adato (27:20): Okay. Doug Johnson (27:20): Right. And, um, and I lived that out. I was a philosophy major. I truly lived that out. I was a disc jockey after that, everything bad that you've ever told your daughters to avoid. I was that thing, right. Leon Adato (27:34): You were that boy. Doug Johnson (27:35): I was that boy, I was the poster boy for who, who you shouldn't have your daughter bring home and, you know, went through that whole thing, blah, blah, blah, uh, graduated from, uh, has got cut, got out of college, was a disc jockey, did all kinds of things for about 10 ish years or so. Leon Adato (27:55): Um hmm. Doug Johnson (27:54): Um, And then I was a disc jockey in Cleveland and then, um, got invited to, uh, a business meeting. We've all heard of Amway. Leon Adato (28:08): Um hmm. Doug Johnson (28:08): So, you know, it sounded interesting went blah, blah, blah. Did that for a while, went to a, uh, big meeting on the weekend. They had a religious service on Sunday morning and they did an alter call and I said, okay, God, here's your shot. Leon Adato (28:28): [laughing]. Doug Johnson (28:28): Don't laugh. I mean, it really is. I know exactly. So I said, fine, I will go forward. Here you go. And it was one of those, you know, hit, God figured he had his one shot, hit me with a two by four tears, blah, blah, blah, the whole thing. And you know, it, it, it stuck. Leon Adato (28:50): Okay. Leon Adato (28:50): So, you know, when, when they say born again, not everybody, uh, I, I don't think you have to have a dramatic, uh, con uh, a dramatic change in your life. I did it. And it probably is the only thing that would have gotten my attention. So I did what I was, I started studying the Bible, doing all kinds of things. Next thing you know, somebody said at the door, Hey, would you like to study the Bible? I went, sure, come on in. I think these Jehovah's witnesses had never actually had anybody really invite them in before. Now, of course, I didn't know much about the Jehovah's witnesses at that point, because I hadn't been saved that long, but so we're going through it and we're studying on a weekly basis. And, um, and in fact, one of the fun things was there was an Easter service that we went to that they, you could, they called you up to the front to take communion. Leon Adato (29:38): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (29:38): Well, I didn't know. You're supposed to be one of the 180,000 saved people to go up. Leon Adato (29:44): Oops Doug Johnson (29:44): So I went up, well, I w. Leon Adato (29:46): Wait, wait, this isn't snacks. I was hungry. Doug Johnson (29:48): No, exactly. It was kind of like, it was like that. I was told later that I shouldn't have done that, but it was okay. You know, I wasn't going to go to hell, but, but then it got weirder and weirder as time went on. And so I made the mistake of reading to the end of the book, Leon Adato (30:04): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (30:04): And now we're back to the philosophy major thing. Leon Adato (30:07): Yeah, uh huh right. Doug Johnson (30:07): And so they came in the next time and I said, um, you don't actually believe that God is, that Jesus has God, do you? And they went, well, blah blah blah, I said, no, apapapa, this is a yes, no question. And so that was the end of me with the, uh, Jehovah's witnesses. And, uh, when we went to another church, uh, we went one Sunday morning and, you know, the place where you sign your name and, and we just lived across the way. And I said, uh, I said, lamb in search of a shepherd. And next day, [knock on door sound] pastors says, how could I not come to your door after that? So, and, and so I was discipled there and, you know, as time has gone on, I've learned more and been discipled by different people and irritated multiple denominations, but, you know, uh, have worked well. Leon Adato (30:59): Yeah, that's, it's an incredibly on brand for you. So, you know, Doug Johnson (31:02): Well, it is, I mean, it's, it's been, it's been fun even when I've been wrong. I've been right. There was there, there was a time when I was teaching a Sunday school class, and this was when I was traveling 45 minutes to a church that was having some trouble, you know, we had moved. Leon Adato (31:16): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (31:16): And so I ended up running late, you know, it's just cause it was a long drive. And the, as I'm going into my Sunday school, getting set to teach my Sunday school class a little bit late, the elder posts, says that it's irresponsible for you to be late, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, I've got a class to teach. We'll talk about this later, went in, taught my class, went home, searched scripture, Leon Adato (31:40): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (31:40): Sent him a thing and said, I searched the Bible. The only thing, only time I ever saw somebody arriving late was when Samuel arrived late, and, uh, Saul went ahead and did the sacrifice ahead of time because he wasn't willing to wait. And the elder apologized to me. So, so I knew we were okay. Leon Adato (32:01): There you go. Doug Johnson (32:01): So, and so over a period of time, I've been church, I've been, God help them. I've been deacon in a church or two, you know, I mean, can you imagine, Leon Adato (32:10): What were they thinking? Doug Johnson (32:10): I don't know, I've been, I've been a worship leader. Oh, I can remember once as worship leader, I was there and I was leading us, but I lost the melody. And so the organist go ahead and, and really knocked out the melody. And I said, here I am in front of the whole church. I rely on the kindness, strangers, Thank you, Blanche Dubois. Leon Adato (32:38): Right. Doug Johnson (32:41): So that's been, my, that's been my journey. Leon Adato (32:44): Amazing. Both, you know, both the technical and the religious journey has been, uh, Epic in many ways. Um, I think what's interesting about that is that given both the variety and also the duration of it, and yeah, I did just call you old. Um, the, you know, Doug Johnson (33:06): I'm not old, I'm durable! Leon Adato (33:06): Right. Durable, experienced, seasoned, like an old cast iron pot. Um, so I, I think that the, the number of times that the opportunity to blend these two very compelling, very consuming parts of our lives together, um, you know, becomes equally memorable. So, uh, both on the good and the bad, let's start off with the challenging part, you know, have you ever, have there ever been times when blending your religious life observances and your technical obligations or life has created a, a particular challenge for you and how did you overcome it? Doug Johnson (33:47): Um, yes. I mean, it pretty much has to be a conflict or. Leon Adato (33:53): Right. Doug Johnson (33:53): What you don't have conflict. Where's the story. Come on now. Leon Adato (33:57): Right. Doug Johnson (33:57): Yeah. I always tell people when they had a really bad vacation, they went, Hey, you got good stories. Nobody wants to hear what a wonderful time you had, They want to hear everything that went wrong, but I can, I mean, I can remember that I had a consulting firm, um, for a long time where I was doing accounting software and I can remember a couple of different occasions where, uh, I ran into when the one place he went, uh, so, uh, I need to have some, uh, I need to have some inventory disappear. Can you make that happen? Leon Adato (34:30): Okay. Doug Johnson (34:31): And I'm going, I don't think we need to work together anymore. You know, it's just like, yeah. I mean, could I have done it? Absolutely. I mean, do I, you know, I knew, I knew the accounting software well enough that I could have made it, made that happen. But in fact, I was actually played by somebody once. Um, he, well, he thought, anyway, a friend of mine had a company. He had a guy who was managing his company. So I got in there and the guy said he had done a bunch of test, uh, test transactions. And could I move the, could I get the just test transactions needed to get re needed to get them off? And so I did move them off, but I moved them off to the side. Leon Adato (35:10): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (35:10): It turns out the guy was embezzling, Leon Adato (35:13): Right. Doug Johnson (35:13): They weren't they weren't test transactions. They were real transactions. And so I got to, uh, uh, be an expert witness in his trial. By the way, if you ever want to know how boring your life is, be an expert witness. I could see the people nodding off as I'm describing accounting software. Leon Adato (35:33): Yeah. Being an expert witness in a technique. Yeah. In a, in a computer accounting fraud. Doug Johnson (35:37): Oh yeah, Exactly. It was bad, but you know, it was so in that was a case where I was played, but of course, uh, you know, I, I covered for it. So I was able to actually, you know, the guy went to jail and he should have no. So just the way it was, uh, I, I can remember being in another place where looking, you know, looking at his stuff, um, there was no way that he had, he could afford the boat, that he had a picture on the wall of, Leon Adato (36:05): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (36:05): Based on what I was seeing here. So only thing I could figure out was he was laundering funds somewhere. It was the kind of business that would have been good for that. So I let that, that's again, a case where I went. Yeah. I think I need to let this client go. So. Leon Adato (36:20): There you go. Okay. So, uh, that's, that's sort of the challenging side on the good side. Has there ever been a situation where the blend of technology and religion has really turned into something surprising and kind of delightful? Doug Johnson (36:34): It's sort of a yes and a no? I mean, I, the nice thing about being able to do what I do is that I, I am able to go ahead and help out non-technical organizations with technical stuff that they should have. So there's been things that I've been able to do for various and sundry, different organizations that I've been involved with. Keeping in mind that I actually made an active choice not to do religious or church software relatively early on, because I knew that if I did it to make my living, I would ended up hating my brothers and sisters in Christ. Leon Adato (37:12): Right. Doug Johnson (37:12): As a volunteer, as a volunteer, it was okay. But if I. Leon Adato (37:15): Yeah. Doug Johnson (37:15): Had to make my living that way, there was just no way that that was going to go ahead and work. Leon Adato (37:19): It doesn't people who love to cook and decided to open a catering company. And not only do they hate to cook now, they also hate people. Doug Johnson (37:26): Yeah. Pretty much how it all works out. Yeah. I've done a few catering gigs, but yeah. I don't want to make my living that way. Leon Adato (37:33): Um hmm, yeah. Doug Johnson (37:33): So yeah. And I love to cook. Um, the best part of it for me is that technical stuff is very, uh it's. Yes, no. I mean, you really have to, I I've got a client that every time something happens, he goes, boy, that's weird. And I'm going, no, it's not weird. We just don't know why. Leon Adato (37:56): um hmm. Doug Johnson (37:56): Right. Leon Adato (37:56): Right. Doug Johnson (37:56): I mean, it's like, computers are really, there's always a really good reason why they're having a problem. Right. And you taking that same logical philosophical, uh, bent that I have. Leon Adato (38:10): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (38:10): It works really well for me. Christianity does make sense. I mean, Leon Adato (38:15): um hmm. Doug Johnson (38:15): Pascal, the mathematician it's, it's called Pascal's, uh, gambit or whatever it is. But he basically said, if I'm a Christian and I am wrong, what have I lost? If I'm a non-Christian and I'm wrong, I've lost everything. So it, it, for me, Christianity works both from a logical and a systematic thought basis. Um, that, that appeals to me, and. Leon Adato (38:43): Um hmm. Doug Johnson (38:43): It's the same thing on the technical side, you can always work through a computer problem may take you forever, but. Leon Adato (38:48): Right. Doug Johnson (38:48): You know, but, but, but it there's always an answer there somewhere. It can be ridiculously difficult to track down, but it's always there. Leon Adato (38:58): Nice. Doug Johnson (38:58): They sort of play off against each other sort of nicely that way. Leon Adato (39:02): Wonderful. Okay. So this is the lightning round. Are there any final thoughts? Any lessons you want to share before we wrap this up? Doug Johnson (39:10): One of the things that, uh, sort of bugs me about Christians in general. Leon Adato (39:15): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (39:15): Is we believe, as Paul said here in, you know, here in earth, great. Uh, I die. I go to heaven even better. Okay. Leon Adato (39:25): Uh huh. Doug Johnson (39:25): Why do Christians? Why are Christians so afraid of death? Why are we so afraid of dying? Leon Adato (39:30): Hmm. Doug Johnson (39:31): It's just, it's silly. I mean, I understand that there's an unknown there, but if we believe what we say, we believe then we should be, Sweet! I actually said that once we were in, we were in a thing. Leon Adato (39:46): Oh god! Doug Johnson (39:46): we were in, we were. Leon Adato (39:47): Not at a funeral, please Doug, not at a funeral. Doug Johnson (39:48): No, wait wait, it wasn't a, Oh, by the way, I give great funerals. I give great funeral, just so you know, I've been asked to do several eulogies and I give great eulogy, but I have people laughing until I have them crying. Leon Adato (40:02): Aww. Doug Johnson (40:02): Every time I'm good at it. But in this case, we were in a meeting and the guy was the guy who was leading was blah, blah, blah. And he was going, so, so you leave here and you walk out the door and you accidentally step in front of, step in front of a truck. And I went, sweet! And he went, that is the first time anybody's ever said that. And you are completely correct. Leon Adato (40:25): Okay. Doug Johnson (40:25): Well, it is. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, golly, no pain, no suffering. And you're with God, come on. How bad is that? Leon Adato (40:34): Right. Doug Johnson (40:34): That's not bad at all. So the, that's, that's one of my big beefs with, you know, in general, if we believe what we say, we believe we should not be so afraid of death, that's the whole point. But there you are. Leon Adato (40:49): Got it. There you go. All right. As always, it is a delight to talk to you even when we're not recording, but when other people get to share in this, uh, Whoa on them, I guess. I don't know. It's uh, but we had a good time. So thank you for joining me as always. Doug Johnson (41:06): I appreciate it. And I will see you. I will be up there in September, by the way. Leon Adato (41:11): Woo hoo! Up in Cleveland, in September picking the right. Oh, wow. That's that's not next month. I, it, time has no meaning for me anymore. Doug Johnson (41:19): Sorry I know, It is pretty much, no, it it's my 50th, uh, high school reunion a year and a half late. Leon Adato (41:25): Well, yeah, of course it is yeah. Doug Johnson (41:28): But so yeah, Leon Adato (41:30): Because 2020 is just a big blank spot on the calendar. Doug Johnson (41:33): Oh, it didn't happen. 2020 nah. Didn't happen. No. Oh, well, all right. Well, I can't wait to see you. Thanks again. New Speaker (41:40): All right. Talk to you later. Leon Adato (41:42): Thanks for making time for us this week, to hear more of technically religious visit our website, technically religious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect us on social media.

S3E05 - Tales From the TAMO Cloud with Jason Carrier

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 30, 2021 23:03

Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a "TAMO Cloud" - which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred". It indicated an area of tech that was inscruitable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in it's output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO Cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys - both technical and theological - and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. This episode features my talk with a fellow Solarian, Jason Carrier. Listen to our discussion or read the transcript below. Intro (00:03): [Music] Leon Adato (00:32): Welcome to our podcast, where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate, IT, we're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our careers, it professionals mesh, or at least not conflict, with our religious life. This is technically religious. Leon Adato (00:53): Did you ever wonder why it diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside that was originally called a TAMO cloud, which stood for then a miracle occurred. It indicated an area of tech that was inscrutable, but nevertheless, something we saw as reliable and consistent in its output for it. Pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view. Our journey has had its own sort of TAMO cloud where grounded technology and lofty, philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting, to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys, both technical and theological and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today and where they see themselves in the future. Leon Adato (01:40): My name is Leon Adato, and the other voice you'll hear on this episode is Jason carrier. Jason Carrier (01:45): Hey, thanks for having me. Leon Adato (01:46): It's great to have you back. Um, so as is our want here on tech, uh, technically religious, we want to start with some shameless. Self-promotion Jason, tell us a little bit about yourself, where people can find you on the interwebs, what you're working on, all that good stuff. Jason Carrier (02:00): Sure thing. So, uh, my name is Jason carrier. I'm a product manager at SolarWinds, and I do a little bit of freelance on the side. Uh, I've got a strong interest in startups, uh, technology, venture capital investment banking. Uh, you can find me on Twitter at, uh, @network_carrier, uh, and LinkedIn at @adjacent-carrier. Uh, you could also find me on my website, which is, uh, bodhi.net, B H O D i.net. And, uh, religiously, I consider myself a Buddhist, but I'm also kind of a general student of philosophy. I like kind of studying, uh, different schools of thought in general. Leon Adato (02:34): Very nice. Okay. And if you were scribbling all that stuff down or you start scribbling the stuff we talk about later, stop it, put your hands back on the wheel and pay attention to the road because we will have show notes for all of that the day after this podcast drops. So you'll be able to find all the links to anything that we talk about over there. All right. Um, so this is the tales from the TAMO cloud, where we talk about sort of our journey through tech and religion. And I want to start off with the technical side. Let's start with, what work are you doing today? What kinds of stuff in tech are you focused on on day to day? Jason Carrier (03:10): Uh, so my, my day job, I'm a product manager for network performance monitor and voice network quality monitor. So, uh, basically it's like network monitoring products, uh, that sort of help people get visibility into their, uh, network infrastructure. Leon Adato (03:23): Uh huh. Well, I, I I'm familiar with monitoring myself since we work at the same company, so that's good. Jason Carrier (03:29): Definitely, definitely. Leon Adato (03:31): Um, so I presume that you did not, uh, exit the womb already doing monitoring software and uh, product manager work. So I guess the question is where did you start in tech? Jason Carrier (03:44): Yeah, so, um, I almost did. Not network monitoring coming out of the womb doing technology stuff. Um, my dad has, uh, was an electronics technician in the air force and, uh, so I was kinda raised, you know, building RF cables and, uh, he used to take me on jobs, building, uh, cell sites, you know, back in the, uh, late nineties, you know, Leon Adato (04:03): You were really? Jason Carrier (04:03): So I, yeah, I was just going to say, I grew up learning electronics theory and stuff like that. So I went to high school and got into computers from there. Leon Adato (04:11): Yeah. I was going to say you were born with a silver cat five cable in your mouth. I mean, Jason Carrier (04:14): Pretty much it was spoon-fed. Leon Adato (04:15): Which is kind of toxic, but for a baby, but, but still, yeah. Wow. Um, that's a great pedigree to have. So, uh, although it may be, I could probably write a story that filled in the gaps. I want to hear how you actually made it from, from those humble beginnings, uh, at your father's knee as an electronics technician. How did you get to where you are today? Jason Carrier (04:40): Uh, I've, I've traveled a lot. Um, so basically started in El Paso. Leon Adato (04:43): Lot of frequent flier miles. Jason Carrier (04:45): Yeah, very much so, but literally and figuratively. Uh, so I started out in El Paso, uh, working at a, an internet cafe, uh, back in the, uh, early nineties or late nineties, like 99 ish, 98, right in there. And then, uh, joined the air force after that, uh, traveled to a bunch of places, Okinawa, Saudi Arabia, um, Thailand, uh, and then Omaha and Tucson, uh, less fun, but, uh, uh, then was DOD contractor for a while, about 10 years or so. Um, did a tour in Iraq, spent some time in Kuwait and then, uh, spent some time in Hawaii too, which was a lot of fun, uh, working with the sock pack guys out there. Um, and then I took a hiatus, uh, one year off of massage for massage school. Uh, it had been something that I'd wanted to do for a while and, uh, kinda was, was bleeding into the religious views and philosophic views. I had, I wanted to do something kind of different work on, uh, you know, kind of the emotional intelligence and personal skills and you know, that kind of thing. Leon Adato (05:39): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (05:39): And then, uh, uh, decided there's not enough money in it. So I went back to a government contracting for a bit, uh, worked at Fort Huachuca and, uh, went back to Hawaii for awhile. And then, uh, I kind of came to a point where I wanted to make it so that my efforts were, uh, not going to a war fighter so much, but I'm sort of focused more in a, um, entrepreneurial kind of direction, which has always been a side passion. I'd been kind of neglecting. Uh, so I came to Austin Texas to do the, the technology commercialization program over at UT, uh, which was a great program, highly recommend it. Um, I worked at a Clear Data, local startup here for a bit, uh, as a network engineer while I was going through school. And then, uh, after that, I was a venture partner over at, uh, John Bromley, Texas venture labs at the university there, um, at UT. Uh, so I basically helped, uh, uh, startups with, uh, go to market validation and, um, uh, kind of business research projects. Uh, so pairing cross-functional teams and grad students up with, uh, uh, local area startups. Leon Adato (06:40): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (06:40): And that's what led me to SolarWinds. Leon Adato (06:42): Very nice. Okay. So I couldn't have written that story at all. I mean, that was not the path that I would have invented if you had given me just the starting and end points. And I think that that's an important thing for, to remember if you're listening, is that, um, many times our route from the there to the here, it can be circuitous, uh, along the way. I also, I want to talk for a minute. You said something really interesting about that, the work you were doing in the air force wasn't necessarily, um, the, the work or the support you wanted to be providing in the world. And I think that's another important recognition is that sometimes the modalities or the things that we do at one point in our life are incredibly valuable and they help us get to where we are today. And yet we couldn't go back to them. We couldn't do them now because they wouldn't serve us the way that they served us at the time. And I'm not thumbing our nose at our past or trying to, uh, wave it away or anything. But just to, to say, yeah, that was, that worked for me then, but it doesn't work for me now. And I recognize that I changed, right. I mean, it seems like there's some of that in there. Jason Carrier (07:53): Oh, absolutely. I have nothing but respect for everyone in the armed forces department of defense. Uh, I, the experiences I had there were, were definitely transformative as I was growing up. I got a lot of my discipline, grit, hard work, you know, uh, ethos kind of thing comes from that military background. Uh, I couldn't, you know, plus with my dad, you know, being a retired air force guy, uh, it it's had a lifelong impacts for me. Um, it's just the kind of the future facing direction. I'm looking at more like the outcome and I'm trying to live, uh, a life. That's kind of more in alignment with the philosophy that I've arrived at. It's been a long, lifelong evolution. Yeah. Leon Adato (08:30): Right. And that's a perfect segue to the second part of the episode, which is the religious side. So I will qualify this by saying that labels are frequently very difficult for people to, uh, settle on they're imprecise, no matter how many words you throw into it. When I ask people, you know, what are you? They usually start with some form of, well, I'm kind of this, and I'm a little bit of this, it's always, there's always a qualifier in there. Despite that fact, if you were going to define yourself religiously, what would you call yourself? Jason Carrier (09:05): And that's why I use the phrase. Self-styled Buddhist. Leon Adato (09:07): OK. Jason Carrier (09:07): Because if you say, if you say Buddhist, it's sort of denote in my mind, it sort of denotes that there's a, a group that you're a part of. And, uh, I've never really been a joiner when it comes to that kind of stuff. I've always kind of more, uh, dabbled and kind of pulled from it and ingrained it. Uh, what's gonna work for me kind of way, you know, Leon Adato (09:27): Right. Synthesized it to, to fit in with your lifestyle and your values and your general worldview. No, I can absolutely say. Jason Carrier (09:35): Exactly. Leon Adato (09:35): And again, I find lots of people do that, whether or not that synthesis is more easily, um, is more easily defined as a mainstream, whatever mainstream Catholic or mainstream, you know, Orthodox Judaism or whatever it is. And they're comfortable within those boundaries. There still some synthesis that happens where it's like, well, I'm at this, except I do this other thing too, or whatever it is. So that's, that's not uncommon. So that's where you are today. Um, and I want to, because it is self-styled, is there anything that, um, you would use as touch points for somebody who's saying, okay, so I know a little bit about Buddhism, but what does he mean by self style? Like what are some of the aspects of that that I would notice? Jason Carrier (10:20): Sure. So, uh, I, I really, I tend to get away from the things that I can't prove or validate that don't have. Uh, so for, for example, uh, if you're talking about kind of like ancient Vedic gods and things like that, I have less of an interest in that. I focus more on things that you would also find in like the realm of psychology or. Leon Adato (10:39): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (10:39): Neuroscience or, you know, things that kind of be, can kind of be empirically backed. I have a tendency towards those. Not that there's anything wrong with, you know, going with a more mythology driven approach to things it's just. Leon Adato (10:50): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (10:50): Not my chosen path. Right. And I think it's, you know, many, many journey are many different paths. One destination is sort of the, the, the view that I have on that. Leon Adato (10:58): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (10:58): Um, that, yeah, I think that answers your question. Leon Adato (11:00): Great. Great. Okay. So I'm presuming that that's not how the faith that you were born into, so, uh, Jason Carrier (11:06): Definitely not. Leon Adato (11:06): Where did you start? Jason Carrier (11:08): Well, so my, my mom, uh, actually did her best to raise me as a Presbyterian. And then we transitioned to the Lutheran church when I was growing up. Um, so I played the part, you know, went to Sunday school and, um, uh, you know, was an acolyte for a bit and, Leon Adato (11:23): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (11:23): You know, did all that kind of stuff. Uh, but I never really felt like it was something that I believed in. It was just something that I was kind of doing for mom, you know? Leon Adato (11:30): Right. Jason Carrier (11:30): So, uh, when I was around 16, I basically just stopped going to church and considered myself agnostic. That was the, the label I used for for quite some years. Leon Adato (11:39): Yeah. And again, you know, when we, when we're growing up, first of all, all we know is all we know. And, um, there's a lot of layers, even though it's easy to pigeonhole religion as a thing, the fact is that religion carries a lot of additional layers of community and, um, friendship and family and just all those ties. And so there are parts of our religious experience, especially as kids that really it's like actually the religion part was never part of it. It was always the social, or it was always the work, you know, we were always out doing, you know, helping somebody, you know, repair somebody's house or whatever. And I just liked swinging a hammer. Like you could call it Lutheran, but I like swinging, swinging hammer. So, you know, a lot of times it takes us a while to parse out the fact that these are the pieces that work for me and those pieces actually have no or minimal religious impact. And at that point, then you end up asking the question, well, what do I believe? So picking up where you were 16 and you had settled on the label agnostic, how did you get from there? The Presbyterian Lutheran, social, you know, 16 year old dutiful son side to the self-styled Buddhist. Like, what was that path? I won't even try to pretend that I know how that was going to look. I want to hear this one. Jason Carrier (12:57): Sure. Uh, my, my life's had all kinds of twists and turns in it. Uh, I've been told it's, you know, it would be a fun book or something someday, but, um, so I, I w I was going through my divorce actually. And, uh, there was a quote that I had heard, uh, just prior to that, that moment in my life, uh, from, from Einstein where he talked about, uh, uh, basically it was I'm going to butcher it, it was something along the lines of, you know, uh, all religions are probably false, but if one could really help the world, it would be Buddhism. It was something along those lines. Um, and, and that, that I've always been a big fan of, uh, Einstein. Uh, so, you know, that kind of had a little bit of an impact. It was tickling in the back of my mind. Jason Carrier (13:34): And then I came across a book as I was going through my divorce called storms. Can't hurt the sky. Leon Adato (13:39): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (13:39): The byline was a Buddhist path through divorce. Um, and so I read that and it just, it, it was the most resonant description of a worldview I'd ever heard before. Uh, some of the words that I heard just, just really had a big impact on me. And so I started drilling into, uh, this was about the time I went to Iraq to, uh, I started reading all kinds of philosophy books, uh, primarily from the Dalai Lama and, uh, Pemasha drone is a, uh, monk who lives up in Canada. Um, Leon Adato (14:08): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (14:08): And, you know, did, uh, a lot of writing on, uh, kind of internalization and reflection and introspection and, you know, that kind of thing. And, uh, it was around that time. I just, you know, kind of started describing myself as a Buddhist instead of an agnostic. You know. Leon Adato (14:21): Nice. Okay. That's good. And it is, it is absolutely delightful. And, um, life changing when you, you hear your experiences reflected in the words of someone else, and you say, Oh my goodness, that's me. And, and you have more ways of describing your experiences or who you are, because it's reflected in the words of another person. I mean, you know, you, the, the phrase, the con, the phrase that you hear a lot right, is you can't be it if you don't see it. And so having seen someone reflect the thing that, um, echoed or mirrored your experience allowed you to put a better, more accurate and more compelling label on it, that's really, um, that's wonderful. And I still couldn't have written it. Jason Carrier (15:09): Yeah. I think that's an important point too, is that it's, it's just a label. It's just a, it's just a badge you wear on your sleeve, you know, inside we're all the same, regardless of what words you want to use. There's just one, you know, uh, yeah, Leon Adato (15:23): Right right. well I mean, Jason Carrier (15:24): The rest of it's it's semantics. Leon Adato (15:25): Yeah. I mean, self-definition in one, respect self-definition is important. Um, I'm a big believer that affinity, you know, affinity groups, uh, matter, because again, you, you, we look for mentors, whether it's as it people or it's as, you know, co-religionists or whatever it is, we look for people who have a frame of reference where I can say, I'm going through this thing. Do you know anything about it? And they can say, yes, actually my experiences or what I've read, or this piece of work, you know, helped me, maybe it will help you. And that could be, I really am having trouble wrapping my head around SDN right now, because I'm a systems guy help me. And they're like, yes, absolutely. This is written with the systems guy in mind. So I think those labels are not throw-away as much as again, their self reference, you know, Jason Carrier (16:17): Yep. Leon Adato (16:17): Referent, plural. Um, they're a way of me being able to quickly and accurately describe a set of experiences that I'm having so that you can respond to it and hopefully support it. I don't know if that, that works for you. Jason Carrier (16:31): Yeah, that definitely. Yeah. I totally agree with that. It's a way of, uh, kind of communicating to one another kind of where, uh, where we're coming from, like what viewpoint we sort of default to. Yeah. Leon Adato (16:42): Right, Right. And, and that's why I start the section by saying that that labels are imprecise because they're, without writing, without handing someone a book of me and say, here we go read this and then you'll know who I am right now, because its going to change. Jason Carrier (16:56): Sure. Yeah. It's always more complicated than the two words you share. Yeah. Leon Adato (16:59): Right. Exactly. Um, all right. So that, that lets us pivot to the blending of the two, um, the, the challenges and, or the, the joys that you found as somebody with a strong religious, moral, or ethical point of view, and also somebody who is deeply involved in the technical side of the world. And we know that those things sometimes create conflict. Sometimes they create amazing, um, complimentary experiences. I was just curious, you know, what kinds of things you've had in your journey, your dual journeys? Jason Carrier (17:33): Yeah. So from a technology, we actually had a conversation about this in one of the other episodes we just did recently, uh, talking about how technology is actually helped with, uh, from, from my perspective that the religious pursuit aspect, Leon Adato (17:46): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (17:46): Um, the, or Philosophical, however you want to, uh, coin that. Um, Leon Adato (17:52): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (17:52): The, the, the other piece though, is, uh, coming from a DOD, you know, defense, a warfighter kind of background, and then, uh, really delving into, uh, for all intents and purposes, pacifist, religion. I don't really consider myself a true pacifist if we're doing labels, but, uh, Leon Adato (18:08): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (18:08): Uh, it's, it's definitely a very pacifist type religion, you know, uh, shies away from violence. And so that created kind of a con, over a period of time. It wasn't an overnight thing, kind of created an internal conflict of desire to, um, really just focus my efforts in a different, um, industry, you know, Leon Adato (18:25): Right. Jason Carrier (18:25): Different do, do a different thing. That was the biggest kind of impact that, that had from a career perspective. Leon Adato (18:31): Nice. And, and yeah, that, we talked about it earlier, that that need to pivot away from one thing to move on to another, because of your growth, because in one respect, the thing that you were doing before was working until it didn't. And when it doesn't, you have to be honest with yourself and say, this isn't working. It doesn't make it bad. It just makes it not working for me right now, for whatever reason. Um, a friend of mine who we haven't gotten on the show, um, likes to talk about the moment as he was progressing from sort of reform or non-Orthodox Judaism into Judaism. And he said, you know, I always ate pepperoni pizza. Until the day I didn't. And that was the day I didn't. And that was it, you know, there was, there was nothing more to it, but there was also nothing less to it. So, you know, that those, those work experiences before worked for you until they didn't, and then, You move on. Um, so that was Jason Carrier (19:25): It's simple, obvious and also profound all at the same time. Yeah. Leon Adato (19:28): Right, right. Yeah. Well, it's, it's a big deal for you. It's often not as big a deal for anyone except your mother, especially with food. Usually if you say, I don't eat blah anymore, usually moms have a really hard time. In fact, there's a, there's a Jewish book that's called, "What Do You Mean You Can't Eat in My Kitchen Anymore?" And it is all about a daughter who becomes Orthodox and navigating the maternal relationship about, you know, will you eat over here anymore? How do you do that without creating, without creating emotional conflict, but still remaining true to this set of religious, you know, uh, values and, restrictions that she had taken on. So same thing, like I said, you know. Jason Carrier (20:13): Yeah, Yeah. I definitely, that definitely resonates with me. My, my mom, uh, came from a pretty conservative, you know, uh, background and did her best to raise me in that, uh, you know, kind of ethos. Leon Adato (20:24): Yeah. Jason Carrier (20:24): And, uh, seeing me go to Okinawa and embrace sushi and seeing you go to, you know, uh, India and just, I love Indian food. I, I love all kinds of, uh, that kind of thing. You know, having that much more global perspective than, than what I was really raised with, uh, has led to a lot of interesting conversations. For sure. Leon Adato (20:44): Nice. Um, so that was one of the, one of the challenges that you faced with your technical and your religious life. Were there any points or any experiences where it created, um, sort of a positive outcome where it's like, Oh, wow. You know, being technical is really great for my Buddhism or being Buddhist is really great for my technical work or whatever it is. Jason Carrier (21:03): The job that I have now. Yeah. Being a product manager, um, being able to, uh, listen to folks calmly and, uh, objectively as they're, you know, tearing your product apart sometimes, uh, with, uh, you know, pointing out all of its deficiencies or, you know, but being able to stay calm and not take it personally and, you know, just, just stay in the moment and be with them and, uh, practicing empathy and compassion and, um, um, social skills, you know, those are, those are things that I learned more so through faith in massage school, then I learned, uh, the way that most do in, in like a grade school, uh, you know, interacting with their peers. Leon Adato (21:40): Oh, I don't, I don't know that, um, no, the dog, the dog is fine. I agree with the dog. Jason Carrier (21:46): Ok. Leon Adato (21:46): Um, the, uh, I think there's a lot of people who didn't learn it in grade school either, but I think that they learn it in the school of hard knocks. And so being able to pick that up and embrace it as part of your faith journey is fantastic. I'm, you know, I'm definitely a fan, um, of that. This has been an amazing conversation. I loved hearing the story of your journeys. Um, any final thoughts, lightning round, anything else that you want to share with the listeners? Jason Carrier (22:15): You know, I had to really think about this one to, to just pick one. And the one I landed on is a lot of us seem to walk around kind of on autopilot. So, uh, one of my, my big lessons learned in life, um, that sounds really simple, but it's actually profound is stop and breathe. Leon Adato (22:32): Uh huh. Jason Carrier (22:32): Take a few breaths, you know, let it sit for a second, whatever it is, let, let the answer sort of bubble up from a place of calm. And that's my best advice. Leon Adato (22:42): Very nice. Very good. Jason, it's always a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much. Jason Carrier (22:48): Sure thing. Thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun. Leon Adato (22:51): Thanks for making time for us this week, to hear more of technically religious visit our website, technically religious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect us on social media.

She's Gotta Have It

Let's Watch It Again

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2021 61:08

For It's 35th Anniversary Rob Lee & Kumari review Spike Lee's debut, She's Gotta Have It. Be sure to check out other great episodes here.

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Big Trouble in Little China

Let's Watch It Again

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2021 72:27

For It's 35th Anniversary Rob Lee & DeAyres review Kurt Russell's 1986 fantasy/action film, Big Trouble In Little China.

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Silence of the Lambs

Let's Watch It Again

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2021 64:21

For It's 30th Anniversary Rob Lee & Kumari review Johnathan Demme's acclaimed Silence of the Lambs.

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#27 DoK Community: Cost management for OpenShift, a new SaaS service to understand your Kubernetes costs // Sergio Ocón

Data on Kubernetes Community

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2021 56:43

Abstract of the talk… For IT decision-makers, this goes above and beyond just keeping infrastructure running and efficient; it is about understanding how your IT budget affects your business, and how well your resources maximize the use of your budget. This makes it critically important that IT teams can more quickly and easily see the totality of their IT costs across the hybrid cloud. We're pleased to introduce a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering intended to help our customers better understand the costs of their OpenShift environments: OpenShift cost management. Available free of charge as part of a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform subscription, OpenShift cost management provides a simplified, more intuitive view into the costs, from the macro to the granular, of an OpenShift deployment. Bio… Telco Engineer with an MBA, I've been in different positions in the market, from R&D to sales, and now work as a product manager for a SaaS service offered with Red Hat OpenShift, focused on cost management. Key take-aways from the talk… Cost management is a SaaS service that is offered with OpenShift Container Platform at no additional costs. Allows you to see the costs of your infrastructure and map them to OpenShift resources. Use tagging and cost models to provide better insights on your infrastructure.

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The Golden Child

Let's Watch It Again

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2021 56:22

For It's 35th Anniversary Rob Lee & Torin review Eddie Murphy's 1986 fantasy film, The Golden Child.

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Crazy Women Country Present an Interview with Dani Jack

Crazy Women Country

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 1, 2021 21:59

Hello Friends! Join Donna and Paula as they chat with Dani Jack! Be sure to check out the interview on YouTube “Dani Jack has one of those voices that makes you sit up in your chair and take notice.” After seeing Dani perform on Broadway in downtown Nashville, Ann Walczak of Edible Nashville shared the sentiment that is often voiced after hearing the bold sound coming from “the cute brunette in a leather jacket.” Dani's first taste of the stage came when she was cast as The Little Drummer Boy at just four years old. Since then Dani's singing and performing abilities have taken her to various venues around the world, from Los Angeles to Nashville and all the way to Haiti and China. After moving to Nashville in 2016, Dani immersed herself in the collaborative community that was now her home. When she had a collection of songs she truly believed in, cowritten with some of the best the city had to offer, Jack launched a Kickstarter to fund her debut EP. Fresh off the release of her debut single "Fallin' For It" in June 2018, which was released exclusively on WSMV TODAY in Nashville, Dani introduced to fans her highly anticipated debut EP, Grace, produced by Luke Forehand (Travis Tritt, Blackbird Studios). Music blog Out from the Pine Box described the EP as “a balance between feisty and fun lyrics with seamless segues to the more sentimental and slow songs. The remaining songs on the EP explore the emotional pain that comes with a relationship coming to an end, learning to love again, and building yourself back up after falling down.” Variety Beat's Jencita Vargas says, "Her vocals shine through in each track and offer so much variety. It's not just the same sound set to different music, but each track is truly a different experience." Website - https://www.danijack.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crazywomencountry/message

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From Dusk till Dawn

Let's Watch It Again

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 23, 2021 46:02

For It's 25th Anniversary Rob Lee & Rudy review Robert Rodriguez's 1996 Heist/Horror film, From Dusk till Dawn.

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Let's Watch It Again Podcast - From Dusk till Dawn

MTR Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 19, 2021 46:02

For It's 25th Anniversary Rob Lee & Rudy review Robert Rodriguez's 1996 Heist/Horror film, From Dusk till Dawn.

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Scanners - Let's Watch It Again Podcast

MTR Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 14, 2021 63:08

For It's 40th Anniversary Rob Lee & Ku review David Cronenberg's 1981 film, The Criterion Collection Scanners.

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Implications of the SolarWinds hack

Tech Insights

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2021 27:18

The headlines were everywhere. Hackers infiltrated the U.S. government and some private firms by exploiting vulnerabilities in SolarWinds' network management software. More than 250 networks were pierced and it's believed that Russia's S.V.R. intelligence service is behind the attack. Other vendors like Microsoft and FireEye also say they were breached in the attack. For IT pros that are accountable for security and returning from the holidays wondering what this means for them, today we will recap the news and explore some practical steps to take to ensure vendors aren't creating security problems. Joining me to help me with that is Howard Solomon, a cyber security reporter that is a main contributor to ITWorldCanada.com. We also have an analyst from Info-Tech's cyber security team. Jimmy Tom.

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127 - Fourth Quarter Madness

Humanize IT

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2020 29:40

For IT professionals, the fourth quarter can best be described as chaotic. Between looming deadlines, end of year budgets and swag from vendors, IT departments everywhere are left scrambling while the rest of the office is Christmas shopping or eating turkey. But, with some careful planning and collaboration, this Fourth Quarter Madness can be avoided. Find out how in this episode of Humanize IT!

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ASKDPROS - S2E35 - Arn Terry - Coach/Mentor (Freetownmindset)

AskDproS

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 29, 2020 64:13

Askdpros Media had the opportunity to sit with Arn Terry who shared his remarkable story. He nearly lost everything back in 2008 during the global recession. Moving on from that, he invested his time and money to learn about making money online by using social media so when the Virus crisis happened in 2020 I was ready FOR IT. So much takeaway for me, please listen and get inspired.

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Interview - Enterprise collaboration market booming thanks to forced work from home

Tech Insights

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2020 16:31

Companies around the world are adopting cloud collaboration apps like crazy. Whether it's Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Cisco WebEx, Google Hangouts, or who knows what else, this is one software category that is booming right now. For IT departments, it can be a confusing time. Supporting everyone in a situation where they're now dependent on a collaboration tool is tough. And choosing the right option can seem daunting. Even if you've implemented one, your users are probably adding on other shadow IT options to fill in the gaps. So here to help us sort through it all is Thomas Randall, a research specialist at Info-Tech Rsearch Group.

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Positive Vibes Only

Wave Talk Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2020 19:38

S/o to my guests which are @pakk.royal , @chiefuzo , and @bigmoneyviic thank you for the intro and outro which is “For It” and “Thottie”. Also you can listen to their music on Spotify/ Apple Music On Today's episode we talk about things that influence us in a positive way , positive ways to get over a hard time , and leaving negative alone. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/larry-the-wavey-fellow/support

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S2E09: Tales From the TAMO Cloud with Jesse Nowlin

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2020 28:21

Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a "TAMO Cloud" - which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred". It indicated an area of tech that was inscruitable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in it's output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO Cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys - both technical and theological - and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. This episode features my talk with the founder of TABGeeks, Jesse Nowlin. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon (00:32): Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our careers as IT professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon (00:53): Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside. That was originally called a TAMO cloud, which stood for "then a miracle occurred." It indicated an area of tech that was inscrutable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in its output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view. Our journey has had its own sort of TAMO cloud, where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging, to uplifting, to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys, both technical and theological and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. Leon (01:39): My name is Leon Adato, and the other voice you're going to hear on this episode is Jesse Nowlin. Jesse (01:45): Hi everyone. Leon (01:45): As is there a want on Technically Religious. We don't make the uh, audience wait to hear all the good stuff the juice news about our guests. So Jesse, you've got a moment here for shameless self promotion. Tell us who you are, where you work, what's going on in your life, and just remember to tell us, uh, what your religious or ethical and moral point of view is somewhere in there. Jesse (02:06): Yes. So first off, I'd like to say start by saying, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be on your podcast and on the other side of the mic so to speak, I've got my own podcast as well. Just finished recording an episode. So it's fun to be on the other end now, or on the receiving end of this, I am the founder and head geek at a company called Tab Geeks, which is a conference for a small to mid-size IT support professionals. We focus on a sponsor free show that is focused on the content and not a pitch session, which many of the largest shows are, or only on a particular type of product line. Whereas most people in small to midsize companies, you've got everything from working on the printer to the coffee machine is under your purview. And there really isn't very much in the way of other conferences out there that are addressing all of those in a show. Jesse (02:59): So we've built a community in the conference, uh, focused on training on those particular topics. Again, it's sponsor free. Our stage is kind of like, uh, the Holy ground. You can't go up there if you're a sponsor. We don't even have sponsors on, uh, on our, uh, we don't even have sponsors at the conference at all or in our Slack channel, which is a, another safe space for IT to be able to just come ask for for help and uh, and even vent sometimes and my day job because that's not enough to keep me busy on top of being a father of two kids under three, I also am, I am also the CTO of a 500 employee real estate company that has about 75 offices across three States and I manage all of that with a team of five IT professionals. And I as you go into this, in the beginning of the podcast you asked me to mention the religious affiliation. Obviously that's the point of this podcast. I am an Orthodox Jew and I have found that for me, being able to take that break every week is one of the things that has helped me to avoid burnout and has helped keep me sane in this industry. Leon (04:07): Awesome. Okay. We're going to get, definitely get into that more. Um, any, how can people find you on social media if they wanted to find you someplace, where would they go? Jesse (04:16): Yeah, so I'm on all the major platforms. I am @MrJNowlin on Twitter or @TabGeeks. If you want to check out the uh, the tech community that we've got on LinkedIn, I'm just Jesse Nowlin, Facebook, I'm just Jesse Nowlin and uh, I'm active on all of them posting all kinds of content. We've also got our Tab Geeks website is tabgeeks.com. And our Slack is tabgeeks.com/slack. Leon (04:46): Fantastic. All right, so I'm going to round this out. Uh, I am Leon Adato. I am my actual title, my official title is head geek. Uh, I took the job sight unseen when they told me that was going to be able to be on my business card. I work for a company called SolarWinds, which is another solar nor wind. It's a monitoring software vendor because naming things is hard. You can find me on the Twitters @leonadato. I pontificate about things both technical and religious at www.adatosystems.com and I also identify as an Orthodox Jew. And if you are frantically scribbling that stuff down, trying to figure out whether it was two W's or three or whatever, uh, stop. There's going to be show notes with all the links to everything that we're talking about today. Uh, so you don't have to do that. Leon (05:31): Just sit back, relax and let the awesome wash over you. Um, okay. So I want to dive into the structure of this now. This is the tales from the TAMO cloud. You know, where we talk about our journeys both through the world of tech and religion. And I want to start off with the technical stuff. So tell me a little bit more, you sort of gave us a sketch, but tell me more about what your work is on a day-to-day basis, whether that's with Tab Geeks or as part of the real estate firm, you know, what is, what is your daily job look like today? Jesse (06:01): So day to day, uh, during the day I'm at the real estate gig as I mentioned before, and that is managing a team of five people, uh, which is a challenge of handling the amount of employees that we have to support with that amount of people. That's not the greatest of ratios from what I've been able to see in my research. Um, I've recently been doing a lot of research into this area because we, over the last couple of years, the real estate company grew, uh, pretty much tripled in size in the last three years. And I came on about four and a half years ago and when I started, it was just me and one other guy and he had been shipping computers in from Vegas to California when they would break. And it was literally like a 10 day turnaround time for a computer that had, that had gone down. But if you're not, not counting, of course the costs that it would take to ship it, the downtime costs and the fact that the people didn't have anything to work on in the meantime. Leon (06:55): I'm sure the end users were delighted with that. I'm sure they loved every part of that. Jesse (06:59): To be honest. They didn't really know anything better. They were using Pentium 4 computers on a, um, Exchange 2003 mail server. And this was four years ago. This is, we're now in 2020 is, you know, in terms of, uh, the, the forever evergreen content of podcast world. We're now in 2020. And this was only a couple of years ago. I've only just, uh, recently managed to get rid of the Windows 2000 domain that's been running for a long time because there was just so much other stuff that needed to be done. Uh, the first thing I did when I came on was up the internet from a 80 meg shared cable coax internet line to a 200 meg synchronous, you know, proper internet connection and get everybody off that exchange server and onto G suite. So I'm a, I'm a big G suite fan and um, you know, so that's, that's pretty much what's going on in the day job. We um, have been working, in why I mentioned that I do a lot of that research or have been doing a lot of that research is because, we scaled so much, we haven't really had time to catch up. We were just duct taping things almost literally just to get them working. And so now we've been taking time to pull back and reorganize and create policies and procedures and actually get this stuff standardized. And uh, I hope to actually write a book on this one day. Managing a small to mid size IT department. Leon (08:19): That's fantastic. Okay. So that's where, where you are today, Jesse (08:22): right. So that's the day job and that I come home, eat dinner, well come home and put my kids to bed, eat dinner and then work for two or three hours a night on Tab Geeks doing podcasts and content and stuff like that. And you asked, um, you know how I got into it and you know, where, where all this came from. I've been into tech, uh, since I was a kid. I've told the story before on my podcast that I was, uh, my earliest memory is as a three year old, I had a toy truck that I absolutely loved that broke down and what else was I to do other than to take it apart and try and fix it and sure enough, and I don't know how I did it, but I took it apart and mess around with some wires, put it back together and it turned on and it worked. Jesse (09:03): And that was, you know, that set my brain on fire. I was like, Hey, there's really something here. And then throughout my formative years, so to speak, I was one of the kids that would just pick up computers off to the side of the road when people would throw them away. Of course, back then people didn't really have in mind data privacy. So there was all kinds of stuff on their computers, which made it very entertaining to look through as a teenager or pre teenager. Um, and I would basically just take these home and build my own home lab and then, uh, build environments that would get viruses on the computers and I'd work on destroying them and then try and figure out ways to figure my way out of the holes I was putting myself in. And then in high school I started my own company fixing computers and the rest is history, self-taught all the way. Leon (09:49): Wow. Okay. So that, uh, that explains both where you started and how you pretty much how you got from here to there. So, cause I know that a lot of people who listen especially to the TAMO series, uh, are interested to map their own career, whether they're at the beginning or the middle or, or even, you know, near the end where they're just passing along knowledge themselves, um, to hear how other people got through it. So let's turn, let's turn things around a little bit and let's talk about the religious side. You mentioned the top of the show that you are an Orthodox Jew. And I would like to clarify that labels are really challenging that when you ask somebody, so, so what are you, more often than not, you're going to get an answer of something like, well I, it's a little complicated, I'm sort of this or sort of that. So understanding that any, you know, two or three word label is not going to be able to capture the full complexity and nuance of your religious life. Um, how do you define your expression of Orthodox Judaism today? Jesse (10:48): Well, it's kind of the same way that I describe my title as IT manager. Despite being CTO and highest ranking a it professional in the business is that, you know, it depends what you're doing. Titles are, especially in this industry, in the tech world, titles are all over the map. It depends the size of the company you're at. It depends what you are tasked with or what you've picked up over the years. And you know, religion is the same way. At least for me, it's, there's a lot of things that we're told to do. Some of it it makes sense. Some of it doesn't make sense. Some would, some people would say none of it makes sense. And uh, you know, it's, it's kinda just figuring out really what works for you. And what works for me is having that time every week where I have the Sabbath and from sundown Friday night to sundown on Saturday night, I'm totally disconnected and I will read, you know, uh, secular books. Jesse (11:39): I've been an avid fiction reader my whole life, but a couple of years ago when I realized that IT management was really a direction I wanted to go in, uh, and coinciding with a book reading challenge that my sister-in-law and some family members and I set upon to do a book a week because we're all crazy. Leon (11:57): cause you have nothing else to do. Right. You needed a hobby. Jesse (11:58): Nothing better to do. Yeah, exactly. So it turns out when I read a nonfiction, I don't read it nearly as fast as I read fiction. So I did not succeed at that challenge. But I, I challenged myself further by saying, Hey, I want to see if I can actually learn something this year instead of just reading, you know, 52 books, which is easy. I could do that. And um, it really broadened my knowledge and accelerated a lot of the things that I was working on in my career because I was taking the time to do that. Jesse (12:24): And a lot of that time where I was able to do that was because of the Sabbath. Because I'm not using electronics. I'm not on Facebook, I'm not on Twitter, I'm not, you know, reading some article that that is sitting in my queue of things to read or one of the 8,500 tabs that are open on my browser at all times. And you know, things like that have really been both a strength for me. And also sometimes frustrating because we've got a lot of holidays where you're also not allowed to do the whole technology thing. No work, no driving, no computers, no internet. And uh, there's one story that comes to mind since we are talking about being religious and tech, is a couple of years ago it was one of the high holidays I believe. And there was something going on at the office and they just, they couldn't crack it and they couldn't figure it out. Jesse (13:14): And they were working with the service provider trying to get an internet back and going and something and like they refuse to talk to anybody because they weren't the authority on the account. And they actually ended up saying to the tech who was on site, let's go for a ride. And they drove to my house and said, can you tell this guy that he can talk to us please and what he's supposed to do. And I was like, all right, fine. No problem. Because it didn't break the rules. Technically I wasn't, you know, getting on my computer and doing it. I was just saying, okay, here's how this and this is connected and yes, you are authorized to do whatever they need you to do. Leon (13:45): Wow. Okay. So we'll, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll dive into some of that in a little bit, but okay. So that's, that's where you are now. That gives us a good sense of where you are now. The question is, is that the environment that you grow up in? Because when we start out, we were sort of, you know, we, we are in the environment that we're born into usually. And for most of us, we don't start to question it until, you know, our teens or maybe a little bit earlier, maybe a little bit later, maybe never. So the question is, where did you start out religiously? Does it, you know, uh, did it look like what it looks like today? Jesse (14:20): So until age seven or eight, I was a practicing religious Christian going to church every week. And that's because my father's not Jewish. My mother left the faith when she went off to college. And, um, you know, that's just, that's where we were at that point in life. And I remember being a five year old when my mother told me that we're Jewish. And I was like, okay, whatever. You know what that means? Cool. And then, um, a couple of years later, uh, she was looking for some more meaning and with some of her family and kind of getting back to her roots and realized that she had a lot of questions that were really related back to her roots in Judaism. And the questions that she was asking was based on the stuff that she had learned when she was a kid in Jewish school. And, uh, we were paired up with a rabbi in, in, uh, somewhat near to our house at the time. Jesse (15:11): And they started, you know, the process of, not necessarily the process, but just kind of talking and, and learning, learning together. And, um, at some point it became clear that we were learning a whole lot about being Jewish and what that meant. And then we started doing those things. And a couple of years later we moved to a more religious area, which was back where my mom had grown up in the New Jersey, New York area. And then I, that was when I was 10, we entered into a major Jewish community and a, a proper Jewish school, which had like, I don't know, 600 kids in it, which for me coming from rural New England at the time with a school that had, I dunno, a hundred kids in it total was quite a culture shock. And I knew none of the language. I knew no Hebrew and not that everything was taught in Hebrew, but it's still the, you know, they teach the texts and stuff like that that you're, you're trying to translate. Jesse (16:02): And I had a serious handicap in that. And what ended up happening to me is interesting and it's probably something that that helped me a little bit later on is that the school I had entered into, uh, for the grade I was in at that time for Judaic studies, they actually held me back two grades. And then because I'd moved around so much getting there, I had to repeat fifth grade on the secular side, but advanced on the Judaic side. So now I had three years of friends and people that I knew in those grades, which then translated into a very wide network as we grew older and went off to school or when it's college, went off to study and you know, abroad we do a gap year in Israel. So I knew just a ton of people and you know, networking is really everything or almost everything in this business. And that really gave me a great foundation. Leon (16:53): So that definitely, uh, tells us your whole progression from, from there to here. So that's interesting. So now being in the world of tech and having the strong religious point of view, um, a lot of times we find that we're, those two things are brought into conflict that are IT life. And, and you were mentioned one case already where our IT life sort of encroaches on a religious life and sometimes vice versa, sometimes our religious life encroaches our IT life and it makes it challenging. So I'm curious if you have any other stories. Cause you did tell the one about having to drive the technician. Somebody had to drive the technician to your house, just so you could give approval, but, uh, were there any other situations you can think of that, uh, where the two things were brought into conflict and how you resolve them? Jesse (17:34): Well, as I was saying before about the high holidays, um, for anybody who knows anything about Judaism and the high holidays, the entire month of October or September, wherever they fall is basically nonexistent for me. I'm like, nothing can happen during October is dead during the month of October. Don't try anything new, don't want, don't look for any new projects. We're going to make zero progress. And that is okay. Um, I recently had several, uh, religious Jewish people on my team and, um, for various circumstances they were reassigned or left to, uh, to move or, um, to look for a new position. And I diversified my team a little bit because, um, you know, not that I was trying not to hire Jewish people, we actually didn't have really any of them, um, apply, which isn't surprising we're at a small Jewish community in long beach, California. But it was helpful that I actually did not hire Jewish people for my entire team because now I have some of that coverage where they are there and I don't feel uncomfortable telling or asking somebody on my team who is Jewish but isn't religious. Jesse (18:43): Hey, can you do this thing over the weekend that I can't do because somebody has to do it when I really shouldn't be telling you to do that. Right? So now I don't have that conflict internally. Um, you know, it's, it's things like that that crop up over time that you really wouldn't think is an issue and then all of a sudden you're on vacation for Passover in a different country and there's nobody to do tech except the one older IT guy who's been there from the beginning who is just completely overwhelmed now and has do everything himself. Leon (19:15): Right. And, and that was a point that we covered. Um, in our very first episode we called religious synergy where you realize that having that mix of people from different, um, you know, faith experiences allows you to see the world from multiple perspectives but also lets you get things done in a way that you couldn't if it was all homogenous. So, yeah, that's, that's definitely, that's interesting. I like it. Jesse (19:36): Yeah. I like to joke around that the time between Christmas and New Years is my most productive time of the year. Yes. Everybody goes on vacation and I get some work done. Leon (19:45): Right. It gets real quiet for everyone, but you and you can finally get that flow time, that mythical flow time that people talk about all the time. Jesse (19:52): Yeah. Well that's when I catch up from October. Leon (19:54): Yes. Well, there, yeah, there you go. Yeah. And you start the year sort of on an, on an even playing field, um, at least until it gets to Passover and then, you know, everything goes out the window again. Um, which is what we're facing now. We're actually recording this just the beginning of March. And, uh, I think for a lot of us Orthodox Jews, we see Purim is just a week away. Passover is just peeking over the horizon and we're like, Oh, I don't know that I'm ready for all of this yet. Um, in any case. So the flip side of those challenges is that sometimes unexpected benefits pop up that, that either our perspective or our training or something about our religious or ethical or moral point of view offers us an insight or a capability in our tech work that we wouldn't have otherwise had and certainly wouldn't expect it. I was wondering if you had any situations that were like that. Jesse (20:46): As I was talking about in my intro, uh, I've been, I have moved around a lot as a kid. I've been in different cultures and I, as many Orthodox Jewish people do, at least from the Tristate area, they go and study abroad in a Yeshiva or a religious school in Israel for a year. And that can give you some wonderful experiences. For me, it was a particularly difficult experience because I'm not the scholastic type. I actually didn't go to college. I've just been in it in my whole life and I'm, you know, community taught, self-taught and have managed to, to make a career out of it. And um, going and traveling around different parts of the world gave me an appreciation for what is now our reality in cloud computing and always on, always available access to different, um, solutions because I was in Israel where, and it's funny to think about it, but because they don't have work on Fridays because you know, Saturday, Friday night to Saturday night as the Sabbath. Jesse (21:47): Thursday night is the party night. And so if you're trying to work, which I used to do remote work for an American company, if you're trying to work on Thursday night, the entire country goes on the internet. And then again, Saturday night the entire country goes online and now Israel, I mean over the years they've increased their, their bandwidth, but they have one pipe that goes over the ocean that comes over to all of the wonderful servers providing these services in the US or in the other direction to Europe. And it gets abysmally slow and things are not necessarily available over there as readily as they are over here in the States. And so having to come up with creative solutions, even five, six years ago, have given me insights to kind of how to build out a distributed team here because I was forced to think about, okay, well if I connect this service to that one, my Google voice calls my Skype number and Skype will work in Israel, then I'm able to combine these services and I can have an American phone number or if I want to stream the Superbowl or if I want to, you know, be able to use a different services over there, whatever. Jesse (22:54): I'm able to do that by stringing these things together. And it's that kind of mentality that, and we're sort of raised with this, you know, when we're learning some of the Judaic stuff that the discussions that they have is kind of the logical mindset. A little bit of a Spock thing going on there to borrow from Star Trek a bit because we are a bunch of geeks, you know, is, is thinking things through and kinda, you know, massaging the system to get what you want out of it. And it's those experiences and you know, I'm sure that other people from other religions have similar stories or different things that have given them those inspirations. But because I've dealt with so many people from all over the planet and so many different types of systems, and I even did a stint doing a networking for the Israeli Defense Forces for the Israeli army, uh, working on some archaic systems in some state of the art systems. It's all given me the opportunity to have a lot of experience with a lot of different things, um, in my relatively short career. Leon (23:52): Fantastic. All right, so any final thoughts? Anything you want to share with the audience? Anything you want them to remember about you? How can they find you? You can remind them of that, you know, any, anything you want to leave us with, words of wisdom? Jesse (24:03): Yeah. So you know, religion is community and um, you know, community in IT is difficult especially because a lot of IT people are introverted and are not necessarily able to relate with a lot of other people. And oftentimes just being able to have that time with your family where you get together or as I like to joke, we have Thanksgiving every Friday night. Gives you the opportunity and the ability to unplug and unwind. And you know, one of the big topics that is tearing through the industry right now, and we actually have a session on it at our Tab Geeks conference coming up is burnout. Burnout is an enormous issue for IT professionals because if it weren't for things like the Sabbath where I am forced to disconnect, I would literally be on my phone, on my computer seven days a week. And you know, there's some something pulling at my, my brain. Jesse (24:57): It's a puzzle. I'm trying to figure it out. That is our nature as IT professionals, that's how we work. We want to solve these things and oftentimes won't be able to sleep until we do. And having that time, whether it's time with family time, where you set those boundaries or in our case where you know, God, so to speak, said that we're not allowed to do things. Or at least, you know, we extrapolate from what God actually said, that we're not allowed to do those things. Gives us the opportunity to, you know, have that back to earth connection and to, and to really take that break that is necessary. I think that for me as I'm becoming more of a manager that focus on family and the focus on the importance of taking time off to be with family and the fact that we're forced to, and it gives me the insight, not just in tech but also in management, that those are the things that are important and help keep me sane. Jesse (25:50): And so as I'm managing my team, it's important to remember those things and that other people need those things as well. And you will have people that will try to just work all the time. And um, there was a company, uh, Buffer actually, which is a very transparent company. They're a social media scheduling tool. They've been very famous about having total transparency and everything that they do and they talk about all of their internal operations, which would be nerve wracking as hell for me, but Hey, why not? Um, they, they said that they give everybody unlimited vacation and nobody took it. They had to turn around and tell people, here's $1,000, I think it was even per family member, you must take a week or two weeks, whatever it was off per year and we're going to pay you $1,000 per family member to go and get away because that's important, and I think that's what's really been able to help me stay so focused and still and so engaged in IT over the years. Jesse (26:48): If you want to hit me up on social media, I am always very active and always happy to to meet new people, talk to people. I think that networking is very important. We have a, in Judaism for Jewish people out there, we've got that game, Jewish geography, which is basically our version of how many degrees of separation. And in the Jewish world, especially because everybody's related to everybody else who has lived all over the world or went to school in Israel with, you know, somebody else, it's been a huge benefit to be able to reach in and tap into some of that network. And, uh, you know, networking is, is really something that helps everybody, uh, get ahead and just learn together, which I think in today's day and age where it's so hard to keep up with cybersecurity and all of the vastness that is the, the tech industry. Jesse (27:33): The only way we can do it as if we work together. And so, you know, networking is important. And the reason why I'm saying that is because I want you to come and say hi. And on Twitter. I'm @MrJNowlin once again, and Tab Geeks is @TabGeeks. That's T. A. B. G. E. E. K. S, which, I'll let you in on a little secret actually stands for tech and business geeks, because we exist at the intersection of both. Speaker 7 (28:10): Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of technically religious visit our website, technicallyreligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect us on social media.

S2E06: Tales from the TAMO Cloud with Jez Marsh

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2020 19:08

Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a "TAMO Cloud" - which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred". It indicated an area of tech that was inscruitable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in it's output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO Cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys - both technical and theological - and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. This episode features my talk with friend and fellow SolarWinds aficionado Jez Marsh. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon: 00:06 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh, or at least not conflict, with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:53 Did you ever wonder why it diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside. That was originally called a TAMO cloud, which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred." It indicated an area of tech that was inscrutable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in its output for it pros who hold a strong religious, ethical or moral point of view. Our journey has had its own sort of TAMO cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys, both technical and theological and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. My name is Leon Adato and the other voice you're going to hear on this episode is Jez Marsh. Jez: 01:44 Hello. Leon: 01:45 Hi there. Thank you so much for joining me today. Jez: 01:47 No problem. Leon: 01:48 Before we dive into the actual conversation here on technically religious, we'd like to do a little bit of shameless self promotion. So Jez, tell us a little bit about yourself. Jez: 01:57 All right. Well I'm the founder and principal consultant for Silverback Systems, which is a UK based, um, enterprise monitoring, professional service, uh, consultancy service, but specializing in the SolarWinds mindset. Yeah. Well, you know, uh, and that's basically how we got here, but we'll talk about that later. Um, my website is a http://silverback.systems either with an S or not. It'll work. Oh, sorry. HTTPS or HTTP. Either one will work. Um, and I suppose if I had to say for this podcast perspective how people would describe me. Ah, well I would describe myself as an agnostic. Leon: 02:35 Okay. And if people wanted to find you on social media, do you have a presence or have you completely issued that and just stayed away? Jez: 02:42 No, I uh, I burnt my Facebook account over two years ago cause I could see where that was going. But you can get me on Twitter. I'm @JezMarsh on Twitter. Um, and I'm also on LinkedIn if, uh, if you've got a business persuasion. Leon: 02:57 Got it. Okay. So I'll wrap it up just to make sure that we have like bookends, uh, with the social, with the shameless self promotion. My name is Leon Adato. I'm a Head Geek at SolarWinds. Yes, that's actually my job title and SolarWinds is neither solar nor wind. It's a monitoring vendor. And we'll probably end up talking about that a little bit on the podcast. You can find me on the Twitters, as the younguns like to say, @LeonAdato. I also blog at HTTP://www.AdatoSystems.com. And I identify as Orthodox Jewish. And if you are scribbling all these things down, madly stop it. Just listen, relax and enjoy the ride because we're going to have show notes that'll have every link and everything that we talk about in there including a transcript. So you don't have to do that. So let's dive right in. I want to start with the technical. Um, and I want to start off with today. So what are you doing technically today? Describe the kind of work that you're doing and what a typical day looks like. Jez: 03:54 Well, as mentioned in the introduction, um, my business specializes in providing professional services to customers, either new or old of, uh, the SolarWinds platform. Uh, I look, I do a bit of dabbling and others, but SolarWinds is pretty much where I live. If you cut me, I bleed orange. A typical day for me really would be, um, dialing into a customer environment. Most of my work is remote these days because the is there, why not? And dealing with whatever I've got on my plate or whatever. Uh, part of the particular scope of work I have to do on that day. Uh, it's pretty frenetic. Uh, I mean my, uh, contract is with a specific customer right now until, until the summer. Uh, but there's always people asking me questions and I do like to be helpful. Leon: 04:46 Got it. And uh, for those people who aren't familiar with the SolarWinds ecosystem, Jez is very helpful over on THWACK.com. Yes, that's actually the name of the website. What can I tell ya? Naming things is hard. Okay? SolarWinds, THWACK, it's just, it can be very difficult. So over on THWACK.com, Jez is part of the crowd of MVPs: Most Valuable Persons, who, uh, answer questions when he's not, uh, working with clients. And I presume that you were born again, bleeding orange, that you, uh, came out of your mother's womb already knowing all things about SolarWinds, uh, back in... No, probably. That's probably how it work. So where did you start off in tech? How did you get into it? Jez: 05:26 I guess there's a lot of, it started when I was very young, probably around about 10 or 11, my father brought me a, a Zenex Spectrum, 48K with the rubber keyboard back in the day. Um, and I saw, I learned very much at the beginning literally by going through the Input magazine. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but uh, it would over months and months and months it would give you all of the code to type in to get this program running. And back then there was no colorization there was underlining of the code to say if you've made a mistake. So yes, I did spend weeks typing things in and need to find, I had a typo somewhere and then having to try and find out where it is. It was a nightmare. But that's where it all started. So a hobbyist I suppose you could say. Speaker 6: 06:12 Um, at 10 years old it's, there's no like, it's not like you're a professional at 10, so we were ALL hobbyists with everything at 10, but okay, fine. You were not thinking of doing this professionally when you first started. Okay. Jez: 06:26 Like most people, I didn't really know what I was going to do. Um, funny story really. I went through school, got into secondary education, which is around about 16, 17 years old. Did well in the, what they call GCSEs over here, which is the, um, high school education, I guess, uh, in the States. Um, and then went to the next level, which is college, I guess for you guys. Um, and sat down on day one and the teacher said, "Okay, we're going to do, we're going to learn BASIC." And uh, and I put my hand up and I said, "We did that for GCSE. When are we going to learn something useful?" Right. I know that. Well, yeah, I know, I know. Right. And um, the teacher stood firm and said, "No, this is, this is the curriculum I decided to go with. So you either do this or you get out. "And they actually kicked me off the course. Right. So that, that was a huge, huge thing. But I was, even then, I was adamant that I wanted to learn. I didn't want to repeat what I needed to do. What I had done previously, I wanted to learn something new and keep going. And that's something that stayed with me. But anyway, coming back to where I started in IT... Leon: 07:32 I just want to clarify, the thing that stayed with you was, um, was standing firm and being useful, not speaking up and getting kicked out of places. Jez: 07:40 No, no, no. Yeah, I don't like getting kicked out of places. I, I tend to uh, stop there, you know? Okay. Leon: 07:47 Just making sure, you know. I like to say the biggest barrier to my employment is my personality. Jez: 07:53 But who could ever not employ you? Leon? Come on. Leon: 07:58 A few. Demonstrably a few people, but this is about you, not about me. So moving on. Jez: 08:05 Okay. So my first job was, um, working for a very small, um, it support type mom and pop store, but it was lifted just run by one guy. Um, so it was building PCs, um, changing toners, that sort of thing. Really basic stuff. So in the trenches, like most people start. Um, and then from there I went to other companies and did more advanced versions of the same thing. And then it went through a mat work for a managed service provider and so on and so on until, um, I made the decision back in 2015 to start my own business. Um, it was basically the, the, the managed service provider I was working with, they'd been bought out by another company. They had a slightly different direction for the operations side of it to, uh, how we were running things before we were bought out. And the effect of he made my role as the, uh, monitoring engineer redundant. Um, so they said you can go back and do third layer Microsoft support or, um, you can take the money in, roll the dice. And that's what I did. And it was a good decision cause you know, uh, this worked out for me and uh, uh, it was obviously the right decision, but it was brave man. I was, uh, I was really, really not sure what was going to happen. Leon: 09:21 It, you know, I know that a lot of the folks who listen either are running their own business or are thinking of it and In IT I think that that's a pretty common thought is, you know, "Why am I working for this other person when I could go out and hang up my own shingle?" And yet the intestinal fortitude that it requires to actually take that leap is PRETTY challenging. So a full full props for, for doing that. And like you said, it's worked out for you so far. Jez: 09:47 Yeah. So far touch wood. Leon: 09:50 Exactly. So, uh, so that's how you got from there to here is really just that steady IT tech progression. I want to turn things around now and talk about religiously at the top of the show you mentioned that you were agnostic and I'm going to guess that you weren't born into an agnostic family, that you probably started someplace else. So, uh, first I want to hear what does your religious ethical point of view look like today? Jez: 10:18 Well, I think it's more a case of believing in more than just the flesh and blood on the ground... procreating,. But having read and spent time with people of various religious beliefs, um, I can't hang my hat on any one. So I believe there's something and I respect everybody for their views, but I'm not ready to, uh, hang my colors on a particular one. Um, so definitely not an atheist. It's more a case of there's something, but I'll find out when I do, when I need to or if something makes itself known, shall we say. Leon: 11:00 Okay. And is that a, is that the prevailing attitude in the household? I know that, um, you have kids and uh, so I wasn't, is that the whole household? Was that your personal philosophy? Jez: 11:13 Personal philosophy? I would say. I would say the children, um, were, did spend some time with, uh, in a Baptist church because we have relatives that is, um, that, uh, I don't even know what's the right word. A, a lay preacher I suppose for, for the, for the church there. And um, yeah, we used to go there quite a bit. Sleep were very involving. They had a "messy church" thing where you could take the kids and they can have fun and you could also spend time talking to the people who actually go on a regular basis. Leon: 11:40 A messy church. I like, I like that terminology. We have, we have a messy church and the families are like, "Okay, we can be here. Like you don't have to worry about knocking things over." That's wonderful. I that that's a terminology that needs to get picked up by a lot of other places. I think. Jez: 11:56 Yeah. I mean, I think the idea behind it was that the children can go, um, and then they have, they have these, um, activities for them. So you paint something, uh, make a Christmas card or make whatever at that particular time. They have a number throughout the year. Um, and uh, my wife, again, Baptist orientated, uh, I know her grandmother on her father's side was, uh, very much, uh, a church goer on a regular basis. Um, but it didn't, didn't, uh, didn't stick with her. So I think the whole household, I believe, uh, are believers, but not specifically in any one thing. And I'm being very, um, open minded for my children's sake. They can do whatever they want. I'm not gonna make them follow me into one thing or the other, but that's not why I'm an agnostic. It's more a case of they make their own mind up is their own. It's their own journey. Leon: 12:54 Okay. Oh, so going back to something I said earlier, you probably were not born into an agnostic house. So how, how were you raised, you know, what was the house when you were growing up? Jez: 13:04 Okay. Um, my father's family are not religious really. They are, um, arms length Church of England, I would say. Uh, so, um, Protestants rather than Catholics and my mother, um, well, you know, may she rest in peace. Uh, she's no longer with us, but um, she had a difficult upbringing. She did spend some time living in a nunnery. Uh, but that was mainly because her parents walked out on her when she was very small. Um, so she was, she had a Bible, she had a, a prayer book. I've still actually got that somewhere that I made sure I had when she passed on because I can always remember her leafing through. It's got lots of paper, uh, newspaper clippings and stuff in it. And um, but you know, she always went to midnight mass and then the local in the local Protestant churches. And uh, I would sometimes go with her to support her, but my father never did. Um, so I suppose the growing up the family weren't really practicing any particular religion, but they were, I suppose if you had to say they were Christian. Leon: 14:13 Okay. And then the question, similar to the technical conversation we had earlier, so how, how exactly was your progression or your journey from, you know, "there" in that, you know, generally Christian identifying family into where you are today. Were there any, were there any, you know, specific moments or milestones that you said, "Okay, this is, this is what I am now?" Jez: 14:37 Well, I suppose I've always had a bit of a liberal bent, um, myself and some of the, some of the decisions of the Catholic church or sorry, the, the Protestant church where there, no, at the time anyway, when I was growing up, no, uh, no, no female priests and so on and so forth and their ideas of, you know, like, uh, 'LGBT is wrong' or that sort of stuff. So back then I thought, well, you know, at the end of the day, if there is one God and He supports everybody no matter what color you are, what creed, no matter what, then why are you kind of saying no to that? That doesn't make any sense. So I think it started there when I realized that there are some people who were effectively excluded. And from there I just thought, well, there's definitely something, but I'm not happy with that label. So I'm just gonna bump along on my own. Leon: 15:25 Okay. Nope, fair enough. Okay, good. So, given that fairly, you know, I'm going to say wide open worldview of religion, um, and your long time career in tech. I'm curious if there were ever any points where the two came into conflict where you found that the technical work that you were doing and your particular ethical, moral point of view were somehow um, you know, creating a challenge for you? Jez: 15:52 Uh, it's when I was working with the MSP, um, or managed service provider for those who aren't a technical bent listening to this, um, there were a number of customers that we were supporting who were uh, aggressive investment bankers, uh, to the point where they would - there's nothing wrong with that per se - but it was more a case of the way in which their businesses bought other businesses, pare them down to the nth degree and then sold them at a profit. And I didn't like supporting that sort of behavior cause there are people who are going to suffer. And I found out a few years down the line that does actually exactly what happens! But yeah, I mean, but ultimately my job is to put, to support the customer. Um, and whether I don't agree with it morally, um, I couldn't afford not to support them. So that was the, my job, you know, my team had that customer and we had to support them. Leon: 16:45 So on the flip side of that, were there ever any moments where, you know, your, again, your moral, ethical point of view created a benefit or a positive that you weren't expecting but sort of, you know, came up and you realized with some surprise that "Hey, wow, this really worked out well"? Jez: 17:00 Well, I suppose putting myself out before the children were born. Um, we had a number of people who on the 24 hour rotation that we had at the MSP weren't able to work for whatever reason. And you know, and I stepped up and covered the shifts for them. And it meant that those people could have their time with their family cause they needed it. Because there was one occasion where somebody whose parents weren't very well in other occasions where the children weren't well. And whilst, you know, I knew that effectively I was missing out time with my family. I wasn't married at the time. Uh, it was my, my, uh, my parents and my sister. Um, I felt it was important that I could give something to them and help them in a time of need. So ultimately it's more a case of being flexible and I suppose being agnostic means you can afford to be flexible because... Leon: 17:47 Right. You don't have quite as much of a dog in the, when it comes to, uh, you know, specific holidays and things like that. Jez: 17:54 Yeah. I mean, obviously now I have children, it's a little bit different. Um, but, uh, you know, I still have respect. Like for example, my, uh, my eldest daughter has a friend who is from an Indian family and they celebrate Diwali and all the rest of it, and they include a, include her in that and I'm completely happy with that. Whereas potentially I may not have been if I had actually hang my colors somewhere else. Leon: 18:17 All right. So any final thoughts? Anything you want people to think about or, or ponder as we finish up this episode? Jez: 18:24 I suppose in this time of potential problems in the Middle East, um, ultimately everybody deserves to have a life. Um, and don't look down on those simply because they don't have the same outlook or religion as yourself. Everybody needs to have food and water for their children. Speaker 3: 18:44 Jez, thank you so much for taking a few moments out of your, uh, this is actually the end of your holiday, so thanks for carving out some time in and talking to us. Jez: 18:53 Not a problem. Anytime. Leon, happy to be here. Leon: 18:56 Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of technically religious visit our website, https://wwwtechnicallyreligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect to us on social media.

#13: How To Stay Consistent With Your Workouts

Wined Up Women

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 22, 2020 30:53

FIT COMMUNITY INFORMATION: https://shannonshaheen.wixsite.com/mysite/workout-with-me HOW DO I STAY CONSISTENT WITH MY WORKOUTS? To be honest…. I don’t even think about it. ITS HARDER for me not to do my workouts than to do them. BUT that is 5 years in. I was spending $50 a month at a gym where the elliptical and 10 minutes on the lifting machines weren’t working…hmmmm surprise. Not to mention I was a full time unpaid intern, full time student, while living at a random house with strangers I met on craigslist because I was 1000 miles away from home…. I would rush to work bc I had zero morning routine (aka hitting snooze x10) then work from 9-5 and go to the gym from 530-630 and then drive home, cook dinner, do homework & internship work, binge greys anatomy…and then start all over again. I was sick of not seeing results, but also not knowing what the hell I was doing.. I was skeptical about at home workouts but I knew I needed to try something different to see different results. In 2015 I decided that instead of renewing my membership for another month and saying “this time it’ll be different”, I signed up for these at-home workouts, with zero confidence, zero knowledge in nutrition, zero equipment and zero clue of what I was getting myself into. 5 YEARS in, consistent with my workouts ever since I started. HOLY SHIT. I never thought that was possible I was the yo-yo workout girl in college and now I AM THE committed, driven, enthusiastic girl who has stayed committed to her workout routine for 5 years straight. 5 FREAKIN YEARS! So you can say “at-home workouts don’t work”, or that “this year will be different” but at the end of the day, nothing changes unless YOU change and nothing works unless YOU work FOR IT. Day in, day out. A year from now you can either be grateful you started today, or wish you would have. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/shannon-shaheen/message

workouts holy shit stay consistent for it

S2E03: Tales From the TAMO Cloud with Ari Adler

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 21, 2020 28:51

Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a "TAMO Cloud" - which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred". It indicated an area of tech that was inscruitable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in it's output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO Cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys - both technical and theological - and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. This episode features my talk with friend, co-religionist, programmer, and recurring Technically Religious guest Ari Adler. Leon: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as it professionals mesh, or at least not conflict, with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:21 Did you ever wonder why it diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a TAMO cloud, which stood for Then A Miracle Occurred. It indicated an area of tech that was inscrutable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in its output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO cloud, where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys, both technical and theological and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. My name is Leon Adatto, and with me today is Ari Adler. Ari: 01:11 Hi. Leon: 01:13 All right. Before we dive into the topic, uh, let's do a little bit of shameless self promotion. Ari, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you work, where we can find you, all that stuff. Ari: 01:23 Currently I'm working helping to make applications at Rockwell Automation here in Cleveland, Ohio. I have really in my career up to this point, been mostly focused on the front end, specifically working with the angular framework that's Google. And right now I am working in the research and development department in Rockwell for a really important application of theirs. Um, and yeah, it's really great rewarding work and I'm part of an amazing team. Leon: 01:51 Fantastic. Okay. And if people wanted to find you online, can they do that? Are you anywhere or are you just invisible? Ari: 01:56 I am visible. I have a LinkedIn, um, account. So that would, that would definitely work. Um, AriAdlerJSProgrammer, JS doesn't stand for Jewish Stud but rather Java script. Leon: 02:10 Okay. Uh, but now it does from now on, I will never be able to unthink that. So, uh, for those people who might be scribbling madly, "J S does not stand for...", Uh, we'll have the links in the show notes, so don't worry about that. And finally, how do you... Religiously, how do you identify it? Ari: 02:28 So, um, I'm definitely part of the Orthodox community. Leon: 02:32 Okay. And we'll get into more about that in a, in a minute. And just to round things out, a little bit of promotion for myself, I'm Leon Adato, I'm a Head Geek. Yes. That's actually my title at SolarWinds, which is neither solar nor wind. It's a software vendor based in Austin that makes monitoring software. You can find me on the Twitters @LeonAdato. I write and pontificate about things both technical and religious at https://www.adatosystems.com. And I also identify as an Orthodox Jew. So let's dive right into it. Tell us a little bit more about the kind of work that you're doing today. Nothing specific. Cause I know you're working on a very top secret project that can't... Actually, it's not top secret but you know, we don't try, we try not to talk about those kinds of things here on the show. Just in case there are nondisclosure issues. But tell us what kind of work you're doing today. Ari: 03:21 The project I'm involved with is using a lot of newer types of frameworks, mainly using node.js, which is a very, very powerful, um, way of setting up servers and running the back end. Um, and the language is mainly with TypeScript and my particular role has always basically been with my career working with the front end, with the, with the creating UIs. Uh, the user interfaces. Generally been done using a framework called angular, which is a very robust, full, involved framework. It's quite complex and I've used a new, a lot of different capacities, whether it be dealing with splitting large amounts of data, or getting user input. And without going into any more detail about the project I'm doing, it is definitely a very, very important and highly recommended framework. If you do have to make a web application. It's, you know, it's well known and there's very good documentation and tutorials that are easily defined. But that is mainly the tech that I'm, I've been using. Leon: 04:35 So I, I presume that you were born knowing how to work with angular, that you came out of the womb, in fact with a keyboard in your hands and you know, all that's up is that, no, that's not how he's, he's looking at me and just like staring. Okay. So where did you, if you didn't start off, you know, coding from, from birth and how did you start out, you know, what was your starting point? Ari: 04:57 Well, there was, there was, there was a little "A", on my diapers... Leon: 05:01 Right. So that was a for angular or...? I think it was for "Ari" Ari: 05:04 Well, it had the little symbol there for angular in it. Yeah. Yeah. Leon: 05:08 No, he was the chosen one. Ari: 05:10 I wasn't born with it. Angular is actually, a lot of people don't realize this. Like, if you ever have to write a job description and you want somebody to work for angular, don't ask for 10 years of experience or the framework that only you know, came out with the, uh, with the production version and May, 2016. Leon: 05:30 So that's, that's a pro tip to anybody in HR who's listening to this, who's, you know, writing job descriptions is find out how long the technology has been out for before you say, "must have, you know, 16 years experience with, you know, windows 2016. Ari: 05:45 A framework, which has only been out for six months. Right. Leon: 05:48 Okay. So where did you start at? Ari: 05:50 I did not start out in tech. Um, I actually taught for a few years in middle school and an elementary school. I taught in Queens and Brooklyn before we relocated to Overland park, Kansas. I taught at the Hebrew Academy there. Um, and um, from there we moved to Cleveland and I met, um, inspiring young man named Leon Adato and I, um, joined the a a course to learn, um, the, the tech world. And, you know, I'm hoping at some point in my, as I continued in my career I might find a way to go and I do have a master's degree in education. I'm hoping that at some point maybe a cross paths a little bit, I know that there is a lot of it has been done and I'm sure there's plenty that can still still be done in this field without getting into too much detail cause I haven't really thought it out so fully yet. Right now I'm kind of busy with work and, and family life. But I, you know, as soon when I get to a certain stage where it's things quiet down a little bit, education and technology I think are two things that very much can go hand in hand. Um, I view tech as a tool and it's something that obviously can be very distracting and very harmful if done in the wrong ways, but if used correctly can really help solve a lot of problems. And I know educationally speaking, there's a lot of challenges that, that kids have in their... There are, there is a lot of things. I know that Math Blaster, I had to even that when I was a kid, there's really no end to what it could do to help. Just even writing algorithms that can help figure out for a particular child what, what they're missing and what pieces would help them improve. You know, there's, you know, whatever the future is, is exciting and uh, I hope to be, to be part of it. Leon: 07:41 Okay. So you didn't... you started out in education and you mentioned a little bit about the, there was the program that has been mentioned on Technically Religious before. What I affectionately refer to is "Frum Guys Who Code", but it was really, um, Gesher. Uh, it was uh, the Gesher Upper Level prefers a short program to get, uh, get some folks started on technology. Ari: 08:05 It was a bootcamp. You can call it a bootcamp. Leon: 08:05 Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's uh, probably the best way to describe it. But getting from there to here. So you, you did a bootcamp, you took some online courses. Um, but how did you get from there, from, "Hey, I just learned how to program in JavaScript!" Or whatever to where you are now in Rockwell. What was, what did that path look like Ari: 08:27 From the program. So I met people, you know, who had different companies that were looking for help. Um, and I met, uh, I w I worked in a small software development company here in Beachwood, Ohio. They, they really used the, um, the, um, JavaScript stack there. Um, they was called the MEAN stack, um, stands for mango DB express, JS, angular and node.js. And um, that's kind of, even though Cleveland overalls tends to be much more of a microsoft.net town, you know, this company was very much invested with the MEAN stack. He, they, they felt like it was, you know, a lot of promise and a lot of it could excitement. Um, and it was at least then it was pretty new. Now it's become a lot more mainstream, but you know, you're not going back that many years. But it's ancient history as far as the tech world is concerned. Leon: 09:20 Right, it's been 15 minutes. So that epoch is over now, right? Ari: 09:27 Um, I learned a lot of the ropes from there. And then, um, from that, I, I, I've moved on, I'm working for or worked for Park Place Tech, um, for stint. And then after that I got, um, I got my placement at Rockwell. So I've been at Rockwell really since March. I'm in a different division than it was when I started. Um, yeah, it's really been an amazing ride and I'm still learning tons. Um, you know, one thing that I've needed to do recently, which I was never asked to do and I know a lot of developers, you know, really either dread this or just avoid completely is learning to write them unit tests, which is something that I'm Angular itself. If you read the documentation, they think it's very important. Um, and I, it's really something that I wanted to improve at. And um, I think I have, um, Leon: 10:15 Well you do, you do a couple dozen of them or 20 or 30, and you start to get good at it. Ari: 10:19 Yeah. But there, there's all different, yeah. Things. And you know, it's, it's a, it really is a complex area, you know, to a certain degree, in order to really do it well, you have to almost be developer, not just a tester, cause you have to really know how the code works. Um, and the company definitely recognize that and they wanted, um, to get developers in the testing a role also. So that's actually what I'm trying to really be the most current, uh, you know, area. But you know, it's, I, you kind of have to wear all hats and which is, you know, brings you back to education. A big part of what I love about tech and I, I feel like almost any job really, if someone has this mindset and it's not just professional, but really how you live your life is solving problems. Right. You know, don't get, when I was in the classroom and you know, there, there was, I needed to accomplish a certain thing. I didn't view that. You know, any child would be like, uh, you know, was anything, was, was beyond their capabilities. As long as they had the right encouragement. And you could connect with them in the right way. And I was very successful in the classroom. Um, and tech is basically the same thing. I'm definitely blessed with the team now that, that definitely has that, that viewpoint. But anybody who is focused on "Why I can't do something" versus "How can I accomplish, uh, what it is that has to get done" is really, um, they're really looking at it the wrong way. And this is true, in almost any aspects of like, I know we're going to get into the religious aspect, but, you know, it's, uh, it's just, it's, it's really that, uh, that there is a focus on solving, solving problems and making things better and always improving and never, you know, getting caught up in the, uh, in the problems. But rather, how can I make this better? How can I get this to work? Leon: 12:08 All right. So that is actually a perfect dovetail. So you said at the top of the episode that you identify as an Orthodox Jew. Tell me a little bit about, more about what that looks like. Um, as I've said before, uh, especially on these TAMO cloud segments, labels are imprecise. They're difficult. A lot of people sort of bristle at the idea of being pinned in to one particular kind of thing. When you say that you identify as an Orthodox Jew, what does that mean for you? How does that look? Ari: 12:33 So it's funny you asked me this. Honestly, I haven't had that much exposure to a lot of elements of the Orthodox Jewish world a little bit before I came to Cleveland. No, I, I always defined myself as like a, uh, individual thinker. I feel, and this is very much downplayed, at least I feel like in my own circles, I'm assuming it's true and for many other communities that, um, I feel like people, you know, th the main job that anybody has as a religious person, my feeling is that like, you know, obviously that comes with believing in a higher power, right? Believing in God and therefore what that comes with and what scientists don't constantly have to struggle with this idea is that we have free will, right? We, we, we have the right to be able to go into choose right from wrong. Um, and society at large obviously feels that we otherwise you couldn't have a justice system and so forth. So as much as people want to, to, um, deny the kinds of a higher being, if it doesn't, uh, suit them, we, we, you know, most people definitely believe in freewill. I don't know how that can work if you don't think that, you know, there's a guy who ever came from monkeys or whatnot, like, you know, everything just happened on its own. For sure as a society overall, we believe in and free will and people have to really, therefore by definition come to their own decisions for themselves. That means that we constantly have to be choosing, right? Free will lends to choosing and, and if a person is choosing without knowing anything, they're going to be making a lot of mistakes. Therefore, people always have to be learning in order to be able to, and it's very different. It's very difficult. It's very challenge cause we're always faced with new things and new problems. But if you have that solid foundation of education and always learning... And the problem is that if somebody doesn't know how to learn, if they don't understand for their own, because you can't always just rely on asking somebody else that's, that's not really possible. Right. You know, we're constantly faced with decisions and choices the same way that free will is a constant factor in our lives from when we wake up to when we go to sleep. It's really something that really has to be to, you know, I, I feel like that that getting people to be independent thinkers and independent learners is really, really critical. And I think this is something that's is, it's downplayed to a large degree. I'm not going to get into why. Therefore, I kind of view myself as, I don't want to call like independently Orthodox, but very much from the mainstream that to a certain degree, being part of a of a larger group is good, but it should be really understood what limitations that that can bring that if people feel like, well, as long as I, I stick with the Joneses, I'm, I'm going to be pleasing God. I think that they're making a major fallacy with that viewpoint because I think that the, a person always has to be looking at themselves and, and thinking that I'm really the only person who can improve me if they're hiding behind society a large, I think that that is something that is, um, is a real, real danger. Leon: 15:49 So you're saying that herd, herd immunity does not work when it comes to perhaps heaven? Ari: 15:54 Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I, I don't know if that like fully answered the question of how, how I define myself religiously, but someone who, I guess I call myself a learning Jew. Leon: 16:05 Okay, fine. That's fine. So, uh, the question then moves into, is that how you grew up? Is that the Judaism that you were used to or is that the experience that you were used to in your younger life? And again, I've said this before on other episodes that when we're growing up in our parents house or wherever we were growing up, whatever was happening in the house where we grew up, that's what we did because that was what was around us. So we then left and came to a point where we realized to your, to your point that there's a moment where you can choose and that's when you start to formulate your own experience. So what did your, what did, what did your growing up world look like? Ari: 16:50 So both of my parents were not raised Orthodox. They kind of, they kind of needed to become more religious at a later stage in life and they didn't get, um, in as much as of or nearly as much as the formal education that I was blessed with. So, obviously it wasn't really possible to be, you know, to have been, been raised in a way - As often happens when people don't get the education in their youth - it's hard to catch up. I lost my father at a young age, so like it was very much, I was kind of to a certain degree, I mean my, my mother is, you know, she should live in, be well is, you know, really an amazing person. Um, but you know, she'd be the first to tell her she's no Rabbi. Right. And she's, she's always learning and going to classes, but you know, obviously, you know, with her background is coming from quite as a secular place. Um, so, you know, she's, she's who's also seeking and learning and, but she, she doesn't have the same kind of background, not having any kind of like formal education in, in her younger years. So, you know, my house is very different than the house I, I grew up in as a child, therefore. Um, so I definitely grew up in a, in an Orthodox home. Um, but there's, there's lots of different levels to what that could mean. Leon: 18:14 When I talked to other people about this, what's called Baal Teshuva, you know, people who came to Orthodox Judaism later in life, and my wife, my family and I are, are in that community. It's very much, it's very similar to the immigrant experience. Where you come to this foreign country called the "Orthodox community" and now at whatever age you arrive there, you have to learn a whole set of rules and expectations and language and behavior and jargon and things like that. And you do the best you can and you learn to code switch and you learn to adopt that, but you're never quite natively fluent the way that a child who's born into that country or community is. So that for, in a lot of ways that that experience you're describing is similar to growing up when your parents are immigrants and you were born in that country. So you have a level of a perception and a level of fluency that they're not going to have because again, they, to your point, they weren't, they weren't born with it. How did you get from there to here? You know, when you were, so you were grown, you were born into a Baal Teshuva family and now your house looks very different. What was the formative element, aspects of that from point there to point here? Ari: 19:25 Because I went to, um, a Jewish school, so I was able to get much stronger education and I carried that with me post high school, going on to a Yeshiva. I studied for many years. So that was able to give me a much stronger background and a much stronger foundation in understanding the religion and what, you know, what we believe God expects of us. Um, and so in a nutshell that that really is the, uh, you know, the reason. Just through education, through, through the more understanding I was able to, um, hopefully be able to make some, let's call it better choices. Some, uh, you know, some, uh, have a little little more control over from a religious standpoint what my home should look like, what, what I should value, what I want to give over to my children. Like, like I was saying before, and you know, knowledge is power and no matter what stage somebody comes in to the game, you know, it's, it's, it's not really important about, again, like being socially, you know, accepted by the peers. Because like, like I was saying before, it's, it's, so... The main thing is really individual and you know, sometimes people get like a little bit caught up in, "Well, you know, do I fit in with this, with society at large?" But again, that's not, that's not the point of the every religion to in with society. It's about making the right choices and recognizing our, our free will, the best way that we know how to, um, and ultimately anyone you know, is going to believe that, that it's up to God to kind of judge us as to where we wound up. And now, honestly, we were with ourselves, why we did what we did. And that's really very important foundation, I'm assuming, to any religion for sure. For mine. Leon: 21:10 Okay. So we've talked about the technical and we've talked about the religious. So now I want to blend the two. I'm curious about any situations where in taking your strong religious point of view along with this technical career which you've moved into in the last couple of years, if there's been any conflicts or any challenges that have come up between those two things. Any points of friction? Ari: 21:33 So that's a very interesting question. Inherently I don't see any conflict at all between the religious world and the technical world, but I find a lot of conflicted people in, in it. On both ends of the spectrum. You have a lot of people in the religious world who shun, or are very, are very anti, a lot of aspects of the technical world. And I found a lot of people in the, in the, in the technical world tend to be pretty anti-religious. Um, you know, my first day at one job I, I am overheard a fellow person on my team. They were having a conversation, I think I had mentioned something, whatever, but you know, we were talking about, you know, being, being bored or whatnot. And one of the person just blurted out, "I haven't, I haven't been bored since the last time I stepped into a church." And I think he said after that, that was when he was like eight years old or whatnot. So, you know, he, he obviously probably didn't consider himself to be too, too religious. I didn't, you know, follow up in the conversation. But I, I, I've certainly met a good deal of people who kind of, let's say to a certain degree, substitute their religious life with, with the tech. I think that that's, although I kind of understand that a certain level, why they mentally would be able to do that. I think that they're gonna leave a huge vacancy just in, in their own souls. I mean, in, in, in, in their own completeness as a human being. Cause I, you know, I mean, I, I, you know, assuming that we were all created by God, so there's this idea that the whole reason why there is concept of religion is, is not just, no, it's not, not a scam. People have the, this, this natural yearning for, for, for spirituality to be part of a higher purpose and to have a real meaning in life. Um, which is something that, which with a technology can kind of like give somebody maybe to sort of be a sense of purpose. Not really, but it could give someone the facade of that. I like, to use the example you could have, you know, I, I have a, a young baby at home and you know, from a young age, human nature gives us a... Really, from birth or even in the woman shown the this natural desire to, to suck, which is obviously it's a necessary thing for a baby to be able to nurse or bottle feed or whatnot. If, if the baby can't get access to food when it's hungry, it's gonna suck on what's ever there or there be a rock nearby or a sticker, a, you know, a teething toy. Right? It's just gonna because it, that natural, it's got a suck on something. So if it can't suck on something that's going to help it gonna suck on something that can't help it. But I think it's kind of like the same idea over here. That like people do feel like they have to be part of something bigger and they want to have a meaning and, and a sense of purpose. And that's not the idea of, you know, when, when the, the original Turing machines, and you go through the history of computer, it was not meant to be sucked on. It was not meant to nourish the spiritual side and the fact that you get so many people that I think to a certain degree are using it in that way I think is a real, I mean, it's a real shame and it's, you know, really something that is, um, I had never really heard or spoken about, but I think it very much exists for my own personal, uh, you know, meetings, people from all different spectrums and so forth. Like, um, what I was saying before. The two really have, you know, can, can very much augment one another. No, no question. They really are two separate things, but to a certain degree you have, you know, I, I don't know if like religions can sometimes feel, feel threatened by tech and you know, I, I certainly know people who definitely feel that way. And you definitely have the reverse that people like wind up going the other way that they feel like "Iif I have tech I don't really need religion." Um, and again, like neither one of those things make too much sense to me. Technology is a tool to just, you know, help us and you know, become better at what we, you know, at who we are and what we do. Leon: 25:55 So that's the, the, again, the friction points or the challenges that you found between your religious life and the technical, but how about the happy surprises? Were there any benefits or anything about your religious life that brought almost like a superpower or a secret trick that you didn't think was going to be useful but in your technical life, it turns out it was really, really helpful. Speaker 2: 26:17 Um, yeah, sure. Most of the way I, I, I analyze and think comes from my religious studies. So it's really, it's given me a tremendous advantage coming into the, the technical world. I think there's certainly a lot of people with a lot of just raw intelligence. Brain power, which is really, really great. But, you know, I think to a certain degree I have the ability to kind of look at things sometimes from a little bit of a different perspective and being able to analyze things a little bit of a different way. Being the fact that I've been able to intensively learn things at a high level from both a religious aspect and a technical aspect. So I think that they can really, um, aid and abet my critical thinking skills and my analyzing skills in my, um, creative thinking skills, which is something that, you know, it was really a lot of, of overlap in both, both areas. Leon: 27:19 This has been a great conversation. I'm just curious, any final thoughts, anything that you want to leave the listeners with? Ari: 27:24 Yeah. Well. Um, I think that the, the, this idea of the, um, anyone who's listening to this podcast, obviously you're probably very much, um, care very much about these two topics of religion and technical, uh, this, you know, field. IT. Um, you know, I, I think that it's, um, it's, it's really great to kind of put the two together and like a whole in a wholesome way to, to go, you know. Because some, like, like I was talking about before, since sometimes those things are viewed as being mutually exclusive to a certain certain degree or at least not friendly. You know, I, I don't, I don't know if that is necessarily true. And I'm, this, this is really, this is really, you know, it's, uh... Religion means a lot of different things to a lot of different people and the importance and what the capabilities are with the technical world also means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So, you know, a podcast like this, putting the two together and get, getting people's thoughts, thoughts, and either ideas. It's really, it's truly, uh, it's, it's a wonderful accomplishment and I think a very worthwhile endeavor. Leon: 28:32 Thank you. All right. All right. It's been fantastic having you here. Ari: 28:35 Thank you. It's been great talking to you, Leon. Leon: 28:39 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious visit our website, http://www.technicallyreligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect us on social media.

S1E35: Tales from the TAMO Cloud with Chaim Weiss

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 10, 2019 15:07

Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a "TAMO Cloud" - which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred". It indicated an area of tech that was inscruitable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in it's output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO Cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys - both technical and theological - and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. This episode features my talk with Programmer Chaim Weiss. Listen or read the transcript below. Doug: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:24 Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a TAMO cloud, which stood for Then A Miracle Occurred. It indicated an area of tech that was inscrutable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in its output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO cloud, where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys, both technical and theological and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. My name is Leon Adato and the other voice you're going to hear on this episode is Chaim Weiss. Chaim: 01:15 Hi. Leon: 01:16 Hey there. So thank you so much for joining on this particular episode of Technically Religious. Before we dive into things, I want to, uh, do a little bit of shameless self promotion. Chaim, tell us a little bit about who are you and where you work and where people can find you. Chaim: 01:30 Yeah. Hi everybody. Hi, I'm Chaim Weiss. Here right now I am a front end angular developer working at Decision Link. We're doing some front end work. If you want to get a hold of me, I'm, I'm on LinkedIn. Get messaged me. Say hi. Leon: 01:43 And how do you identify? Like are you Buddhist? Are you Hindu? Like what's your religious point of view? Chaim: 01:48 Yes. Oh yes. And I am a, I consider myself an Orthodox Jew. Leon: 01:52 There we go. Okay. Boring because I am too. Can we get some variety here? That's all right. But at least birds of a feather. And I should do, I should do the same intros. Uh, my name is Leon Adato. I'm a Head Geek at SolarWinds. Yes, that's actually my job title and SolarWinds is neither solar nor wind. It's all geek. Uh, you can find me on Twitter @LeonAdato. Uh, you can also hear my musings and ponderings that I write about, uh, on the website AdatoSystems.com. As I said, I also identify as Orthodox Jewish. And if you're a scribbling madly trying to write down all those websites, don't bother, just sit back, relax, enjoy the conversation that's about to occur because, uh, we'll have some show notes and all the links to everything we've talked about is going to be in there so you can just relax and leave the driving to us. So I want to start off with the technical side of things. Um, tell me a little bit more about what kind of work you're doing today in technology. Chaim: 02:48 So right now today I'm doing some front end work building a website. We have this app, awesome app, and it's actually kind of a startup really started doing really well, but they need a website, everyone needs a website. Everyone needs an app. We're doing the front end work. I'm in the JavaScript world of programming. It's programming. Programming is awesome. There's front, then there's backend, done it all. It's all awesome. I recommend it to everybody, I think. I don't understand why everyone doesn't do it. Leon: 03:14 Right. Everyone should be a programmer. Everybody. You! You're a plumber. You should still be a programmer. Yeah. Yeah. And did you start out as a programmer when you first thought about a career or you know, you just start someplace else? Chaim: 03:29 Actually, I'm funny you ask, I started, I started my career. I started teaching. I was here in local and Cleveland. I was teaching in one of the, one of the religious institutions in the Beachwood Kollel. I was there for a number of years and throughout those years I knew nothing of tech. Everyone said, "You needed something in tech? Don't, don't ask. Chaim. Oh, he doesn't know what he's doing." Uh, last time, how often was I on a computer? Almost never. Microsoft word. Maybe. I knew nothing of nothing. I, I w I mean, I was, I was, had a great time. I was doing my teaching all my teaching I wanted to do, but had very little attack. Very little. No computers. I wasn't um. I had a flip phone, a flip phone! Nothing. Imagine I didn't even have an email address, can you imagine? Leon: 04:22 Ya. Luddite! Chaim: 04:24 Yeah. Yes. I had nothing but after a few years, there was an amazing, incredible course that I took. It was of course, the, the amazing Head Geek of SolarWinds, the, the handsome, famous Leon Adato decided he was going to open up a computer course and say, "Hey, I know you guys." It was a few friends of mine. He said, "I know you guys know nothing about computers, but it's easy. It's not hard. You just need a little direction. "So he sat with us for quite a few weeks and taught us the ropes. And slowly but surely we were like, "Yeah, this is easy and big sense. Oh this, Oh, of course. And this is more than easy. This is fun. This is exciting." As we went on, as the weeks went on, we got more and more learned more and more until eventually I got, um, basically an internship out here in Cleveland and, uh, another fantastic place at FireCoding also here in Cleveland. Great place. He was mentoring and teaching. He had awesome clients. So I really learned to work ropes, real world programs and there are a lot of great programming and, and it really took off and I'm super happy. I did. Uh, I really enjoy what I do and I have fun doing it. Leon: 05:34 Nice. And thank you for the kind words. I appreciate. I'm, I'm, I'm over here blushing. Chaim: 05:38 I, I'm, I'm totally serious. It was fantastic. It was really great. Leon: 05:42 Yeah, well it was a, it was a really unique group of, of guys and that's the topic of a completely different podcast episode. I'll, I'll, what we need to do is get everybody back on and talk about those days. But, um, everybody worked really, really hard and they had, um, some really good brain power behind them because that's the only thing that that was gonna... That was the only thing that was going to get you from, from there to here. So you, you started off, like you said, with nothing much more than a flip phone, not even an email address. And now you're programming front end, back end, angular, javascript, .net. You know, the whole, the whole stack. Chaim: 06:20 The works! Leon: 06:20 That's, you know, that's fantastic. Um, so I wanna take the same set of questions and turn it around and talk about religion. Starting off with where you are now. Labels are hard and a lot of times when you ask somebody, "So, so what are you?" You know, somebody says, you know, "I'm, I'm Hindu or I'm Muslim" or whatever. It's like, well, what does that mean? Like what kind are you? And that's where a lot of the, "Well, I do this, but I don't do that. But there's this, but there's that." It's, it's more nuanced than a single title or label. So tell everyone a little bit about what Orthodox Judaism means for you. Like how, how that comes out for you. Chaim: 07:02 Yeah. So Orthodox Judaism, it's, it's, I've been doing it forever and before I was born. Leon: 07:09 (laughs) Infinitely I've been infinitely doing it? Chaim: 07:12 Yes. Yes. I, I, yeah, I was born doing it. I grew up doing it, went to school, doing it. For the first part. I, I don't, I don't even know of anything else until, until I got to see the other big part of the world. I thought that's all there was. Um, I, I went to school that was religious. I went to high school, Orthodox, religious, and that's what I'm doing. Everything was doing, it was just all about the rules, the laws, and following it all. So as I went on, um, I learned more. I, "Hey, there's, there's more to the world". And it was in the beginning as I was going out into the world, seeing things from other people's perspective, I have to understand, Hey, I know I'm Orthodox. They're not, they don't understand what I'm doing. They don't understand my customs. They don't even, they don't even, they even think they think I'm, I'm Amish. Leon: 08:00 This is a common, it's a common mistake. Chaim: 08:06 Yeah. Well it's really happened. Leon: 08:08 So that's an interesting point that your religious experience has been fairly consistent from, from birth forward. But I'm curious even within that, you know, did you find yourself, you know, when we grew up in our parents house, we take on their level of observance regardless of whether we were talking about, again, Islam or Judaism or Christianity or whatever, you know, our parents' houses, our parents' house, and that's what happens. But when you go out on your own, did you find that there was your own particular spin? Maybe, you know, you were doing some things more strictly or less strictly or not even on a spectrum of, of more or less, but just different. Did you find that that changed as you grew, as you started a family, those kinds of things? Chaim: 08:50 Um, interesting question because really, um, in religion, in, in anything specifically religious for anything that means something, you have to make it your own. Um, so if you, you want to be genuine, you want to be genuine. If you're just doing somethings out of rote because you always did it, it's not going to have as much meaning yet. You have to understand things and you ha you have to, you have to understand thing and do, do it for what you want. Right. So that'll automatically, sometimes you'll be different. On the other hand, I'll always understand that things are just out for me. People that are older, you are smarter than you. They know better. So yeah, no you don't. We don't just say, "I'm, I'm, I'm going to start this myself." But yes, I try everything. I go out of my way to try and do things different to, to understand, yeah. I go out of my way now that I was on my own. And married, had a family. Yeah. I'm doing things like... I don't want to do things just like before. I want to do it my own because I want to understand, I want it to be real. I want it to be genuine. Leon: 09:48 So we talked about the technical, we talked about the religious and I'm curious about now you've, you've been in tech for how long now? Chaim: 09:57 Close to three years. Leon: 09:58 Three years. Okay. So fairly early in your career, you know, um, we have some people on here, uh, on the podcast who've been doing it for you know, decades. Um, you know, some, uh, you know, moving on in some cases to half a century, um, in time. So, which is, you know, kind of mind boggling, but those people are around. So even this early in your career, has there been any situation that you found with the overlap between your, you know, religious life, which is a strongly held point of view. It's not just a nice to have, it's off on the side. It's sort of central to your life. So has there been a point where that created a conflict or a challenge or a hurdle that you had to get past to make it mesh with your technical career? Chaim: 10:45 Yeah, definitely. Until, until my career until three years ago. Right. Everything I did, I was teaching that was religious. When I jumped into, into the tech world. So that's, they care about deadlines. They don't care about religious. Leon: 10:58 (laughs) That IS the religion. The religion is "get it done" Chaim: 11:02 Yeah, exactly. So yeah, th th there were definitely things... There are definitely conflicts. And besides the conflicts, the people who are working with, they didn't even know about my conflicts. They said, "well, of course we're working late into the night Friday. Why wouldn't you?" They just don't understand. Now I know, Hey, I'm really just like, I can't work late late Friday, Friday and Friday night. We have, the sabbath, we can't... We can't do that. There's your conflict. But what I did notice, at least in up until now in my short career, people are great. Um, so for, in my situations, everyone's totally understanding. Everyone's, everyone's out to be, to be nice. I mean, you don't walk over anybody. You say, "Hey, I'd love to work it out. I have to make sacrifices. I'm going to work Saturday night to finish what I need to do for Friday." And everyone's okay with that. They're just, people just don't know. People love to hear. People love to listen to. People love to learn. They say, "Oh, you're Jewish. Oh, what does that mean? What does that mean to you? What do you have to do? What are the rules? Oh, you can't work Friday, Friday night. Oh wow. Really? The whole day, like, like no cheating. Oh my." Leon: 12:06 (laughs) I love it. No cheating. Yeah. My other favorite was "Every week?". Yeah. Sabbath comes every week. It's amazing like that. Chaim: 12:14 But, but people are accommodating. It's super nice how people who are, who don't share my views, don't, don't observe what I observed there. They're out there. Ultimately, you just ha if you're out, if you're open, everyone can get along. Everyone can be accommodating. You just have to be open and be clear and be straight, and then it's just, it's really great to have people work together. Leon: 12:35 That's wonderful. Okay, so that was, those were some of the challenges and how you, how you overcame them. I'm curious if they were any... That almost sounds like this, the second part of the question, which is, you know, were there any unexpected benefits or surprises where your religion actually ended up being a, a benefit that you didn't expect it to be? I think sometimes when we come into the technical workplace we think that our religious life and you know those restrictions are always going to be negatives, are going to be challenges or hurdles that we have to get over. But every once in a while there's something that just pops up and it's like, "Oh wow, this is like, this is like a secret super power. This is, this is a skill I didn't expect was going to be usable or leverageable in the workplace." I was curious if you've had anything like that. Chaim: 13:19 Um, so actually well there's the obvious one that since I do, I do religious holidays, so non religious holidays, I'm free to work on. Awesome. Beside for that and the Beachwood, Kollel, one of the things we did was we constantly, we were constantly learning, constantly studying, analyzing, going back and forth. The, the fighting, the, the figuring out to getting to the, uh, to the bottom of things that totally... That. Well, at least programming and I'm sure he played an all tech. Basically it's analyzing problems, coming up with solutions, figuring things out that that's what it is. And I knew that I could do that. That was great. Oh yeah. Figure out this problem. It's super exciting. I could do that. There was, it was totally fun and I, I've done this before, so that was pretty cool. Speaker 2: 14:03 yeah, you've, you've never done, you've never done this before, but you've done this before. Chaim: 14:06 Exactly Leon: 14:07 That's, that's the, it's a wonderful discovery when you realize that this, this whole set of skills that you'd honed for a completely different reason are applicable in this different context. That's wonderful. Do you have any final thoughts? Anything that you want to leave everybody who's listening, you know, with a little nugget of wisdom or just your experience or anything like that? Chaim: 14:28 The only thing I'd like to say is that I know I could tell you 15 years ago I did not think of, I did not think I would be here today. The world of tech was, was out of my horizons. I do not think it was possible to me. I was in a totally different world, but here I am. Really? You can do anything. It's but specifically the tech is. It's, it's there. It's out there for the taking and go for it. Leon: 14:48 Wonderful. All right. Hi, I'm thank you so much for joining me. Chaim: 14:52 Thank you so much for having me. Josh: 14:54 Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of Technically Religious visit our website, TechnicallyReligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect with us on social media.

Émission du 27 novembre 2019

Voyage Funktastique

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 27, 2019

Cézaire - The West Coast Interlude Pimoh - Pimoh - RoutineAmalia & The Precious Lo's - Sanctify (feat. Brian Ellis - T-Groove's Smooth Mix)James Meriwether Jr. - ElevationThe Pendletons - You Do You (Potatohead Remix)Third Rail - Reachin' For ItPark Avenue-Slow MotionOmega Sunrise - HeartbreakerCool Notes - Look What You've Done to MeMaya Killtron - Found You (Instrumental)Temu - Wear My ShoesThe Pendletons - Life To MeRojai - So SpecialThe Kount - YoMoniquea - Who Is That Girl (feat. Kevin "Slow Jammin" James & XL Middleton)Take Three - This Good Good FeelingTotal Contrast - Be With You TonightSteve Shelto - Don't You Give Your Love Away (Original Shep Pettibone 12" Club Mix)Linx - You're LyingDeco - Fresh IdeaOliver Cheatham - Everybody Wants To Be The BossDavid Morris - Saturday Night Bell Brothers - Give It UpCrown Heights Affair - Far OutKalu - Funky FeverLee Moore - Do You Feel Like A PartyBileo - You Can't WinRaw Silk - Summer s Here Caché - Jazzin' & Cruisin'

mission lying elevation club mix sanctify cruisin for it smooth mix xl middleton

S1E33: Tales from the TAMO Cloud with Corey Adler

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 26, 2019 36:59

Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a "TAMO Cloud" - which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred". It indicated an area of tech that was inscruitable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in it's output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO Cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys - both technical and theological - and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. This episode features my talk with friend, co-religionist, programmer, and recurring Technically Religious guest Corey Adler. Listen or read the transcript below. Josh: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:22 Did you ever wonder why it diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a TAMO cloud, which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred." It indicated an area of tech that was inscrutable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in its output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO cloud, where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys, both technical and theological, and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. Leon: 01:09 My name is Leon Adato, and the other voice you'll hear on this episode is Cory Adler. Corey: 01:14 Alon-zee, Mr. Adato. Leon: 01:16 Very well done. Uh, Alonzo. So, uh, before we dig into the actual topic, uh, let's take a moment for shameless self promotion. Corey, tell us a little bit about yourself. Corey: 01:27 Hi, my name is Corey Adler. I am a lead engineer at Autosoft who currently makes software for car dealerships. You can find me on Twitter @CoryAdler. Uh, you can find me on stack overflow as Ironman84 and I am an Orthodox Jew or as sometimes or sometimes cultist in the church of Jon Skeet. Leon: 01:47 There we go. You pray at the altar of Jon Skeet. Corey: 01:50 (whispering) Jon Kate is the whistleblower. Leon: 01:52 Okay, good. You heard it here first. Anyway, uh, just to keep things, uh, evened out. My name is Leon Adato. I am a head Geek at Solarwinds. You can hear, uh, my ponderings and read some of the stuff I've done at, adatosystems.com. You can find me on the Twitters @LeonAdato and I also identify as Orthodox Jewish. And if you're scribbling this down madly trying to catch those, uh, websites and stuff, stop and just listen. Enjoy the show. There will be show notes after this and you can have all of that and anything that we mentioned along the way. So... Corey: 02:26 dat da-da da! Leon: 02:27 Right, exactly. Just enjoy. Take a moment, smell the flowers, bask in the sunshine. All right, so the tales from the TAMO cloud has a very specific structure as you know. Um, so I want to start off with the technical side of the conversation. Tell me a little bit about what work, like what is the work that you're doing today? I know you said lead engineer, but what does that mean on a day to day basis? Corey: 02:50 So we are currently redoing our entire dealer management system from, uh, our existing product, which is about 20 years old. I am currently lead for the accounting team. We're reworking, uh, the accounting module, various transactions, maintaining your journal, cashier, all kinds of various items that inherently in a dealership needs. But very few people end up thinking, "Oh yeah, the dealership is going to actually need software for all of that." So currently we're working in a .Net tech stack with an angular front end, um, SQL server, uh, for a database and hibernate that as our ORM of choice. Um, well except data teams trying to remove that because they want stored procedures and other things that are more efficient with our time as if, as if developers are efficient know. Leon: 03:48 (laughs) Right. I see. If you take that as a personal insult, so, okay. So it's a little bit of what you do. So you're coding, I mean, you know, for, for those people who, who aren't quite as in the weeds, you're, you're a programmer and you work mostly in the .net stack as far as that goes, which is cool. Um, where... Think back now, think back to those early days. Where did you start out in tech? Corey: 04:11 Professionally I've been a.net developer my entire career. Uh, it's funny actually because I didn't start out and done that. Actually college and grad school both were in Java actually. Um, and the only .net class I took was for half a semester. My senior year in college, the one, the one semester of senior year that I had before I graduated, which was a computer games class and first half was, you know, still in Java. And the professor basically just had this thing of every week you're making a game. The way he phrased it was, "If I tell you to make a game in two weeks, you'll spend two weeks to make a game. If I tell you to do it in one week, you'll spend one week and you'll make a game." So one week he switched over to, um, to.net halfway through because that, uh, Microsoft has this X and a framework that for people to make games that you can download to your X-Box. So he had us doing that and I ended up, uh, programming in a team doing, uh, this site's girl shooter game where you were enemies could do drop bonus weapons. Then you could and had this little animation for, you know, attaching it. And I wrote most of the most of the code for this game and I brought that code actually with me to my first job interview and they were like, the interviewers, like these guys are senior developers. They were actually like, you could, I could actually tell on their faces, they were rather impressed with some of the stuff. Leon: 05:53 You realize that you were going to have to post your game in the show notes, like you're going to have to have that someplace where people can download it and play it. Corey: 06:02 The professor himself actually, I believe, does not delete his course pages. So it probably is still up there. Leon: 06:09 Awesome. Okay, fine, fine. Fair enough. Um, all right. So that's where we started was with, you know, like basically the equivalent of the XKCD cartoon, "That one weekend I spent playing around with Perl" was how you built your career, which, you know, fine. Okay. It's not Perl, but whatever. Um, so then the question is, where did you go from there? You know, you're, you're a, you're, you know, you're a full stack .net dev. Now you started off programming in your C, you know, comps, eyeglasses. But how did you get from there to here? What was your progression? What was the journey? Corey: 06:42 So I graduated college and I knew I wanted to get a masters and I knew because we were expecting our first kid at the time. Leon: 06:53 You're, I should clarify your wife and you were expecting not the development team, right? I just told them to, but, well, they were expecting your first company and have a completely different way. Corey: 07:02 I mean, this was after college. I hadn't worked professionally yet. Leon: 07:06 Oh, okay. Corey: 07:07 Yeah. So, so we were moving out of New York. Yeah. Thank God. And the choices were either too near where my family lived in Chicago or near to where her family lived in Cleveland. And I ended up getting into case Western here. Um, but then they, so they said to me, "You know, we don't really give financial aid for master's students, but if you'd be willing to enter the PhD program, we would be happy to make you a TA and tuition would then be free and we would pay you a stipend for being a TA in a couple of classes." As well as full time taking classes. I said, sure, I'll do that. Um, so I ended up, you know, TA-ing and getting a reputation for being strict, which has helped throughout my career because you know, especially as being a team lead, all those little strict things that I asked those students to do that long ago is stuff that I'm still correcting people on doing. You know, please sort you're using, please write some comments, please document your code, Leon: 08:25 (laughing) Comment your damn code! You hear that everyone? Corey: 08:29 Sort your damn usings or your imports if you're in Java for the love of God, have some professional pride in your work. Leon: 08:40 Perfect. I should point out before we go much further that you wrote a whole series of posts on the SolarWinds user forum. THWACK.com. Yes, that's... Naming things is hard apparently. So the SolarWinds user form is called THWACK dot com... And Corey wrote a series of I think four or five posts on just how to be a basically good programmer. Jjust you know, fundamentals and we'll link to that in the show notes. Corey: 09:05 Fundamentals are fun, Leon: 09:07 Right. We put the fun fundamentals, yes, I got it. Okay. So you've got to case Western. You were a TA in the an a P in the PhD program... Corey: 09:15 In the PhD program. And then so through various occurrences, I ended up in a situation where there was no money for me to work for the university over the summer, over a summer. And they said to me, "Well we can have you back at the TA the second year, you know, with same salary and everything, but we don't have anything over the summer. You don't have to do something else over the summer." And what, so what I ended up doing was, because I wasn't, I always wanted to just do masters anyway, was I just said, okay, well I'm going to switch out now to the master's program and I'm just going to go flat out and get a job. And I ended up getting a job at a company called MRI software that does, um, property real estate management software. So both commercial and residential property management. Um, I worked for them for awhile and I was taking, I took a night class at Cleveland state, uh, to continue on. And then two things happened. Number one was I got promoted very quickly at MRI from being from being a associated, you know, junior level basically to being, you know, mid level. And the second thing was was that, um, I had an advisor who, you know, was an awesome guy but didn't really give me such great direction in the final project. To the point where I just realized there was no added benefit... I was already in mid level. I was already doing really well. There was very little point in me, you know, basically killing myself to get a master's that may not have actually helped at that point. You know, people tend to get masters to help fast track their careers and I'd already done that through my own hard work at the company. So did it re would it really have helped me on future jobs to get an added degree there? Yeah. Versus say like a certification which probably would have. So I ended up, uh, dropping grad school, uh, worked for MRI for a little while, uh, then switched to a company called Rosetta. They, I think they still exist, but they're entirely Java now. They had two departments. They had a Java and a .net. wing And I was part of the .net wing working on a project for this big huge project. That - like many big, huge projects ended up getting canceled. Um, Leon: 11:58 (laughs) okay! Corey: 11:59 Uh, for a company called Safeguard properties, but so worked on this pro on that project for awhile and that's, I mean I started out learning at MRI, but Rosetta was a lot of like where a lot of my foundations really took hold. I had a couple of, because there's a difference that I noticed, especially for me, this doesn't apply to everybody, but there was, there was an especially big difference for me in somebody showing me directly, "Hey, this is how you do it and this is why it works." Versus I had a couple of guys and um, shout out to, uh, Sean and Ed if you guys happened to be listening to this, I don't know if you are, but shout out to you guys for this, which was me saying, "I don't understand why this, why this isn't working." And one of them saying, "Go look up this feature or this class." Not saying, here's "how you do it." This is just, okay, well write something down, hand it to me and say, "Go look this up. Go look at why this works." I said, I'd spend, you know, an hour or so researching it and I come back to my, I said, "Oh, okay, so if I do this and this, that should solve this problem." It's like, yeah, yeah. And that was just like, Oh, okay. Like the, the direction of you go that way. Leon: 13:17 Right. It's not, it's not, "Well figure it out on your own. Good luck." It's, "I'm going to point you in generally the right direction and let you take it from there." You know, that way, you know, you're not completely going off on a wild goose chase, but I haven't just spoonfed it to you either. Corey: 13:34 Yeah, exactly. So that provided a lot of, you know, the my bedrock, basically during my time there. I ended up then going back to MRI, in a completely different department - internal applications was there working on, because the company had bought a couple of, not exactly competitors, but also you know, software companies that were also in the same market doing different things in the same markets. So they wanted to integrate those systems into their own product. But now they have four different companies of billing and needed one package to the, to your bill in bill, their customers in. So start was writing on that. They ended up switching platforms. I ended up getting let go because the platform they were switching it into, I was not well first and um, apparently product development said "no" when it came time when they asked if they wanted to take me back. So... Which was fine because um, and I've told this story to people many times about... And usually in the context of how wonderful of a market there is for .net developers everywhere. But especially in Cleveland. Which was I got let go on a Friday by the following Friday, even with having laryngitis that week, I had about 10 phone interviews. I had two in-person interviews at a job offer by the following Monday I had a second job offer and I was at work the following Friday for at a job that paid more than the last one. Leon: 15:16 Know your strengths and know the market where your strengths are valued. Corey: 15:19 Absolutely. Leon: 15:20 You know, a lot of people in Cleveland, uh, you know, you and I both know folks who are coming up through the ranks of IT and you know, learning programming and they're learning, you know, "I want to learn Python and I want to learn Ruby and I want to learn... You know, you know, it's like those are great languages. They're very useful. Corey: 15:38 Ruby is a four letter word. Leon: 15:39 Okay. But there's no market for those skills in Cleveland. It's a very small market. We really are very much a production, you know, you know, get it done. .net tradition. I'll say traditional market. That's, that's not a slam on Cleveland. It's just a recognition of this is what this it market is. It's not Austin or Seattle or you know, whatever. You know, New York, Corey: 16:05 Chicago I've heard has got a lot of Ruby shops, which is, which is disappointing cause I'm from Chicago and that's just sad. Leon: 16:12 I understand. Okay. So that's how you got from here, more or less, how you got from here to there? Did I did Corey: 16:16 So, so then I, um, so I've got a job at Paragon consulting, which does websites for companies that don't want to hire full time developers. So using content management system and worked there for awhile and then got a hankering for, uh, working with not with, not working in content management systems anymore. And uh, so moved over to AutoSoft just as a regular mid level. And um, I think it's been working out pretty well. They've, yeah. you know. Now I'm the team lead and you know, things are, things are soaring. Leon: 17:01 Nice. Okay. So that, so that's the journey as far as the technical side go, but we are ]Technically Religious here. So, uh, let's talk about the religious side. You identify, as you said at the top of the show, um, as a Orthodox Jew. Did, you always start off at that level of observance, you know, where, where did you, sorry, let me, let me step back. What does Orthodox Judaism look like for you today? Because, as I like to say, especially on these kinds of shows, labels are hard and they're often imprecise. And a lot of times when you ask somebody, "What are you?" The first thing people says, "Well... I'm sort of, you know..." And then they give this sort of very qualified answer. So in, in the long form, how do you identify your religious observance today? Corey: 17:48 I remember one website that would give you a list of choices for which label really worked for you. And the funny part was you would click on like the, on the overall Orthodox part and then there would be eight different choices within that label. And included in that, you know, we have this term "modern Orthodox", they had it listed twice. First one was with MODERN in caps, the second one was with ORTHODOX in caps. So I'm kind of in between on those. Leon: 18:28 So you're camel case, Corey: 18:29 I'm camel case. Leon: 18:32 All right, fair enough. Corey: 18:33 So to me, I live in a very modern world while juggling the responsibilities of an Orthodox... Of a strictly Orthodox Jew. So for those who know that, I know Shulchan Aurch, i know Gemarrah, all those things, you know, I follow and I try to learn and I try to teach my children and whatnot and which, which means I'm carefully selecting the beer I'm getting. You know, when, when the fun car comes around at work. Leon: 19:05 You know, no, you're keeping kosher, you're keeping Shabbat, you're, you know, doing all that stuff. And for those people who don't know Corey, he's also what's called the Gabbi at our synagogue. He's the person in charge of making sure that people are running the parts of the service that need to get run and they're going as fast as they need to go and no faster. And that they stand up when they need to stand up and sit down when they need to sit down. And he also reads Torah at least twice a week to make sure that that happened, you know, so he, he is the glue that keeps things moving. So: knowledgeable and also taking responsibility for things. Corey: 19:40 I'm the Orthodox Jewish version of a bartender. Nobody notices me unless I've screwed up. Leon: 19:46 Right, exactly. And everyone has an opinion about how to mix the drink regardless. So, okay, good. So, so that's how you identify today. So then back to the question I started asking, is that where you, obviously you didn't start off as Gabbi, but did you start off in this type of, or this flavor of Orthodox Judaism or was there a progression? Corey: 20:06 I was born and bred in the gabbai tanks. Leon: 20:11 Next to the Kwisatz Haderach on Dune. Yes. I understand. Corey: 20:16 Uh, no, actually I did not start out religious. Uh, originally growing up I went to a Solomon Schechter school, which is a more conservative, uh, Judaism school. Uh, my family went to an Orthodox shul, uh, the local Chabad. Classically, there are two versions that you'll find in the wild of Chabad Shuls. One is the, you have all these Chassidic Jews who are all meeting together. In most other locations though they are, where like the handful of Orthodox Jews will be, but where they will get some of the, of the more non-affiliated or nondenominational people to come in and celebrate being Jewish and have some kind of connection that way so that. Leon: 21:09 It's the outpost. Corey: 21:10 It's the outpost, which was what we were. Um, but we would still drive to shul on Shabbos. We would easily eat out non-kosher and when not. But that all changed, uh, from two major events. Number one was my brother William going to Yeshiva in Israel after high school. Which got me more thinking about being religious. And the second thing was, uh, I ended up leaving Solomon Schechter because of a couple of bullies basically. Uh, and so the only other option as far as Jewish school was wa was, um, uh, an Orthodox one, which is what I went to. And called Hillel Torah in Chicago. I went there and then through osmosis, you know, and through seeing my brother becoming more religious, I ended up following suit there and then ended up going to a more religious high school than he had gone to. Uh, and then when also followed him to into having a Israeli yeshiva for two years, um, afterwards. And then, you know, unlike my brother though who went to Yeshiva University in New York, I ended up going to New York University and more, more secular school. Leon: 22:42 That solidified your sort of observance as it looks today. And I know that you talk about being Gabbi even at NYU that you were in charge of making sure that the, the congregational responsibilities within the, you know, NYU within the college crowd happened efficiently and effectively also. Corey: 23:01 Which basically consisted of me in the kosher cafeteria every day yelling out MICHA!!!! Leon: 23:07 So we've talked about your, your progress, your starting and ending point, um, in, uh, technical terms in religious terms. So now I want to focus on the overlap between the two. As a person with a strong religious, ethical or moral point of view. In this case, the Orthodox Judaism, who has a long career in tech, how have those two things, um, what challenges have you found along the way with those, with those two parts of your life? Corey: 23:36 I've been very lucky, lucky in that most places that I've gone to, they've been very accepting of my religious beliefs, especially in agile environments. When I say, "Hey, I'm going to have to take off early on Fridays, but I'm going to spend more time the rest of the week to make up for that. I'm still going to get my work done." My sprint work, I'm still going to get, you know, my at least 40 hours. And is that okay? And for, you know, everybody said, "Yeah, yeah, sure. That's cool." The only struggle that I had with that was, uh, at one company where the raises and bonuses and promotions were dependent on you're competing with your fellow developers. So if you had a number of developers who were working 60 hours a week and you were only working 50 hours a week, well they were more in line to get raises and bonuses and promotions, then you were. So for someone who's, you know, got 24 hours where 25 hours where they're not on the computer at all. That takes away a lot of times from being able to potentially join those ranks. So that was kind of frustrating and it ended up leading to me eventually leaving that company. Cause I, I'm competitive when I play board games. I don't want to be competitive in the office. I want to be, I want to be in a situation where I can be recognized for my own work and you can be recognized for your own good work. And I feel like, I feel like morale is better when you have that in a company versus that versus the pressure of "I've gotta be better than you." Leon: 25:31 Yeah. When it, when it's the accounting team versus the IT team and they're up six to four, everybody's losing. Yeah. But, but yeah, collaborations is far more effective in the workplace then than competition in that way. Corey: 25:45 There was one other thing, which is minor, very minor, but it's the fact that people sometimes have a need to apologize for things that I'm so used to for a long time that I don't even notice it. But yet people feel like they have to apologize to me for those things. The biggest example being kosher food. So your company has a lunch and learn, we're all going to be learning about this topic and they bring in pizza and of course the pizza has got, you know, pepperoni and sausage and they'll have a regular vegetarian one, but it's not kosher anyway. Yeah. Leon: 26:32 So people are apologizing... Corey: 26:33 So the people, Oh my God, you know, I'm so sorry. None of the kosher places deliver nearby. And I'm really sorry. I'm like ever since college, and we're talking now about, you know, 15 years, there's never been kosher food except maybe a couple of times. And even then it was sponsored by the Judaic studies department. So computer science, I had computer science talks in college. I had colloquium in grad school, I've had 10 years of being a professional developer. I don't expect kosher food. It's a slight irritation. It's a minor irritation, but it's still an irritation. When people apologize to me for not having kosher food or stuff like that, it's like I don't, I don't need it. Leon: 27:21 Right. It wasn't even on the table. Like it was never on the table. I appreciate, yeah, I appreciate the sensitivity and you demonstrating that you are sensitive to it, but really wasn't ever on the... like let's just have our meeting and keep on going and I'm going to eat the sandwich I brought anyway. Corey: 27:36 Although there was one company Paragon shout outs to Mark for, for doing this for me who said, uh, "If you want, when we have those lunch and learns, if you're willing to spend the time to drive over to one of these places, pick up food and come back, I'll give you the company credit card and you can go out and buy it." And I was like, "Hey, deal!" And then I ended up, uh, creating a series of lightning talks at the company. So I could not, not just so I could get free food, but... Leon: 28:07 Okay. I will say though that that especially when you're dealing with, um, team members who have specific dietary needs, whether it is vegan or gluten free or Halal or kosher or whatever, um, I think sometimes companies they err by saying, uh, "So we'll, we'll buy this thing that's kosher, we'll buy this thing that's Halal." And yet there are nuances to those dietary needs that the person who needs that food understands, but the rest of the company doesn't. And so you end up in a very awkward situation of somebody said, BUT BUT YOU SAID it was kosher." "Yes. But it's not a hecksher. It's not a standard that I hold by," you know, or "Yes, you got, you know, gluten free but it wasn't nut free" or whatever. And you end up with, you know, sometimes for feelings and things like that where as saying to somebody, Hey, we really want you to feel included. Will you go buy, will you go get well, you make sure is sometimes not the burden that it might sound like to the outside person. It's actually, you know, much more inclusive because now I know the food is going to meet my personal standards. I'm not saying higher or lower. I'm just saying that's my personal standards and it's gonna be what I wanted and it's, you know, I'm not going to have to have an uncomfortable conversation about you just went through literally hell and high water to get this and I'm still not eating it. So I like that. That was really smart. Good work Mark! Okay. So those are some of the, you know, again, nothing major but um, you know, some of the, the challenges between your religious and technical life and I want to spin it around now. Were there any benefits, were there any surprises, positive surprises that you had where you showed up into your technical world and realize that your religious point of view was actually an unexpected benefit? Leon: 29:59 Uh, I was working at Paragon and at the time we were working in this medical office building, which was kind of weird cause we were all in these offices instead of, you know, being in a room together. Cause it's just like these tiny offices. And there was one seat open in the room I was in. And Mark says to me, "Hey, we've got a guy who's coming in who's going to be taking over that seat. It's a man named Kamran and he's going to be starting on Monday. And yeah, just make sure he feels welcome." And I said, "Oh," me thinking, you know, because we had at Paragon we had, and I think they still do have a fair amount of people from Indian descent who worked there. And I said, "Oh, that sounds vaguely like an Indian name." And he goes, "No, actually Kamran is originally from Pakistan." And you know, the, the alarm bells almost went off in my head as it were because okay, now I'm going to be in this situation where I'm working with somebody who's obviously Muslim and I'm very openly Jewish. I wonder how this is going to work out. You know, not, not being pessimistic, but just like, okay, this is going to be something new for me. Working with somebody who is Muslim. And I am, uh, I was, I had a very positive experience at NYU with, um, uh, Jews and Muslims, uh, being very friendly together. Um, there was, as an example, there was a trip shortly after Katrina hit where they had Jewish and Muslim students going together and rebuilding some houses in new Orleans. And those kids ended up getting along so well with each other that you would see them frequently at the kosher cafeteria eating lunch and dinner together. You know, so very positive experience there. And so I was like, you know, I'm going to, this is going to be new for me because now I'm in that situation and I'm going to, I took it upon myself. I said, I'm going to, I'm going to really try and do exactly like what those kids did. I'm going to. And so, um, Kamran and I ended up becoming very good friends actually of working together and to the point, and of course we would have discussions and discuss. Of course the conflict in Israel in the middle East came up and we had our discussions and there were always respectful discussions. And I remember one time we were talking about something that was in common between Judaism and Islam. At one point I was just looking at me at all, "Why are we fighting? Like so many things that you have in common, why are we fighting?" He goes, "I don't know man. I don't know." Yeah. And the second story, I would come run his holiday party. And those are two very loaded words everybody, Leon: 33:11 We're going to have an episode on that coming up soon on technically religious about the dreaded holiday party in the office. Yeah. Corey: 33:18 But I, I still remember he brought his wife to the holiday party and she was in, uh, she was in full, uh, attire. Um, not, not a burka, but I, I'm blanking on the term off the top of my head... Leon: 33:31 Hijab? Corey: 33:31 Yes. On top. And then long skirt or dress or, I don't know that the technical term for it, but [and I'm like, Oh, I get to meet Kamran's wife. Cool. And there were a few people ahead of me who were truffle, wanted to meet her also, and she was shaking hands with these people, with these guys. And I'm just thinking in my head, you know, Judaism, we have an idea that the sexes don't really shake each, you know, make physical contact unless you're a family member. I wonder if Muslims have that too. And so I specifically did not shake her hand, but then I worried about it for like the rest of the weekend. I'm like second guessing myself. I'm like, did I God, I hope I didn't insult her. I went in and insult him and I come in on Monday and I said to come on by the way, I didn't shake your wife's hand. And he looks at me and goes, "You guys have something like that too, don't you?" I said, "Where we don't shake women's hands?" Yeah. He goes, "Yeah, we've got that. Also. You were the only one who knew about that." And just like, that's just so cool. So yeah, that's we, I mean we had a... Mark arranged when we moved to a new new building. Your range for us to have a closet basically that was designated as our prayer space. Which Kamran and I would always joke that if we got another religious person in, we'd have to have a signup sheet. Right. Because especially there was the afternoon prayers were so closely timed where I would go to the closet, and it would be locked. I'm like, Oh, Kamran's daven... Kamran's praying right now. I almost said Kamran was davening right now, which is the Jewish term for it. And so that was, that was an instance where it was so, it was so nice being religious and sharing, being religious in tech with this person and becoming good friends even with our differences. So there, that was both. Yeah. Benefit and to surprise. The other, the other benefits have been, I mean there's, you see really so many amazing people who you really get to see just how respectful people can be about it. Where if you weren't religious, you mean maybe they'd still be respectful, but there are so many times you find people willing to go out of their way to be accepting of you. I mean, there've been plenty of times where I've said to my team like, "Hey guys, I got to get out of here. I've got prayer services that I have to go to and then. Leon: 36:11 Sundown is coming fast. It's winter or whatever it is. Corey: 36:14 And especially Friday. I mean, so many times we've since changed it to a Wednesday to Wednesday a sprint. Right? But there were times where Friday's last day of the sprint, and I say, "Guys, I've checked in some code. It doesn't work. It's not, it's not finished. But I got to go." And somebody saying, I've got it, I'm going to, I'll take it. You know? And that's, that's been a wonderful sight to see, has been, has been those, that kind of reaction. Doug: 36:45 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious visit our website, http://TechnicallyReligious.com where you can find our other episodes. Leave us ideas for future discussions and connect to us on social media.

HLC - Dead by Daylight and "It," by Stephen King

Westside Fairytales

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 18, 2019 93:55

An off-the-cuff discussion of October’s literature and random horror recommendations, Dead by Daylight from Behavior Interactive and “It,” by Stephen King. For “It” we discuss not only the novel, but the television miniseries and recent movies as well.Check out True Crime Horror StorySupport us on Patreon or by purchasing some merch!Follow us on social media: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Join the Westside Fairytales Horror and Lit ClubSend us an emailArtwork by Yui Breedlove See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

dead stephen king daylight dead by daylight for it

S1E29: Tales From the TAMO Cloud Featuring Al Rasheed

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2019 24:01

Did you ever wonder why IT diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside? That was originally called a "TAMO Cloud" - which stood for "Then A Miracle Occurred". It indicated an area of tech that was inscruitable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in it's output. For IT pros who hold a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, our journey has had its own sort of TAMO Cloud - where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys - both technical and theological - and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. This episode features my talk with friend, sysadmin, Tech Field Day representative, and recurring Technically Religious guest Al Rasheed. Listen or read the transcript below. Josh: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as it professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:22 Did you ever wonder why it diagrams always use a cloud to show an element where stuff goes in and comes out, but we're not 100% sure what happens inside. That was originally called a TAMO cloud, which stood for Then A Miracle Occurred. It indicated an area of tech that was inscrutable, but nevertheless something we saw as reliable and consistent in its output for it pros who hold a strong religious, ethical or moral point of view. Our journey has had its own sort of TAMO cloud, where grounded technology and lofty philosophical ideals blend in ways that can be anything from challenging to uplifting to humbling. In this series, we sit down with members of the IT community to explore their journeys, both technical and theological and see what lessons we can glean from where they've been, where they are today, and where they see themselves in the future. Leon: 01:08 My name is Leon Adato, and the other voice you're going to hear on this episode is my friend and recurring guest on Technically Religious, Al Rasheed. Al: 01:16 Hi Leon. Thanks for allowingme to participate. As you mentioned, my name is Al Rasheed. I'm a systems administrator. I can be found on Twitter, @ Al_Rasheed, and you can follow me or follow my blog, I should say at http://www.alarasheedblog.wordpress.com I'm a Muslim. I believe in practicing good Karma, in remaining conscious of your decisions in life, and in one. Leon: 01:40 Okay. And if you are madly scribbling down all those websites and stuff, you can stop and just listen and relax. We're going to have show notes so that you can find all that stuff without having to write it down. So let's dive right into it. I want to start off with the technical side of your life. Where, what do you, what work are you doing today? Al: 02:01 Ah, so currently I'm a systems administrator. I've been in it for approximately 15 years plus. Um, I've got various certifications. I've been, I've worked at all different gamuts. I've been in the education field for IT. I've worked as a federal contractor forITt. I'm a DCVmug leader. I'm also a member of the VMVanguards, the a Vmware Vexperts, Cisco Champion, Nutanix NTC. I'm also Tech Field Day delegate. And most recently I was awarded, uh, with The VMug President's award at VMWorld 2019 in San Francisco. Leon: 02:37 Right. I was there for that. So that was kind of exciting. That was amazing to see. Congratulations on that one. Um, okay, so that's where you are today. All things virtual. Uh, that's incredible. And it's always a lot of fun to have. For me, it's always fun to have friends who have those bases of knowledge because A) I have somewhere to turn when I have a question, but also B) when I get more curious, I can always turn and say, okay, "what's the cool thing? Like what should I be working on next?" So it's always neat. Um, but you probably didn't start off in all the virtual stuff with 15 years. VMWare wasn't around. So what did you do when you were just starting out? Al: 03:13 So, just starting out right out of school, uh, relatively new. Uh, I was relatively new to marriage and in my early twenties, I was in retail. And at the time it was a career that I pursued. Also, it was the, um, degree that I pursued in school. Uh, it paid well. It got me through it, provided what I needed at the time, but as my wife and I sat down and started to focus on putting, you know, we were working on a family and then having kids, the along hours got tiresome working from four to midnight and then being back four hours later, uh, gets a little bit old after a while. Again. Weekends weren't off the, there were long days. And as most of us can really relate, whenever you're in retail, a customer service customer is always right. Um, but not necessarily, but you have to take your medicine and accept it. Leon: 04:05 Yeah, it's a lot of "grin and bear it" kind of stuff. Right. Okay. So that's where you started, but how did you get from there, from that retail space into where you are today? Al: 04:16 So, um, I took a chance on myself and when I say myself, that obviously includes my wife and at the time my son, he was about two years old. Um, I jumped into IT into a help desk position. It was a relatively low paying job, but it was a starter. It was a starter role within IT and it was a sacrifice that I was willing to make. Um, but at the same time I held onto my retail job in a part time position to make up for some of the money that I'd lost during this transition. And I held both jobs roughly for about five years. So give or take on average and I'm not making excuses for myself. Everybody's got to go through this, but it's, it's worth the sacrifice and the challenge. Um, for about five years I was putting in 60 to 70 hours a week and that included weekends, but, but I knew there was going to be a reward because IT was booming. Everybody was jumping on it. The Internet had just blown up for lack of better way of putting it. And um, you know, I just wanted just like anybody else, a comfortable... I thought at the time, low stress job. But IT can be stressful. We all know that as well. Um, I don't have any regrets. I'm glad I did it. It's definitely elevated me to a point in my life in career, but also provided for my family in areas where I never thought were imaginable. Leon: 05:36 Great. That's, that's, I mean it's a lot of dedication and as a lot of us who've been sort of through that in that time period, you know, those 10 to 15, 20 years ago or (cough) more for some of us, uh, whose beards are a little grayer, it, you know, there is some sacrifice at the, at the beginning, but you see that there is you, there's a brass ring, you see that there's a reward at the end and so you're not just working for the sake of working more. Um, and that's, that's an important lesson to take away I think. Um, all right, so we're going to come back to that, but I want to, I want to flip over to the religious side. This being Technically Religious. So we're going in order, we talked about the technical, now I want to talk about the religious side of your journey, of your growth. Now I find that labels are really hard for folks. Um, you know, you say, "So what kind of Blah Blah..." whether it's Christian, Jew, Muslim, Mormon, "...like what kind?" And the answer is always, "Well, I'm sort of this and I'm sort of that..." There's, there's always an explanation to go with it. So labels are imprecise, but I'm curious how you would define yourself. Uh, you know, in a religious way. Al: 06:42 Correct. So as I mentioned, to start off this conversation, I am Muslim, but I would consider myself a conscience, conscious based Muslim, a conscious based religious person. Can I be better? Absolutely. Am I terribly bad? I don't think so. I know my right from my wrong, I try to convey these lessons learned not only to, you know, for myself but for my wife and my kids, but those around me. And um, we just try to focus on positivity, help others out as best as possible. But you know, when I have to, if I have to look myself in the mirror, I do have a lot of room to grow with and uh, there's a lot expected of me and um, I can always improve. But there are, you know, religion is a delicate subject depending on who you speak to. It can be interpreted in so many different ways. So I'm trying to be as gentle as possible when I explain how I approach it. Um, because you know, just some people take it to another level and I, I don't want to A) offend anyone, nor do I want to get into a, a "beef" for lack of a better way of putting it online or on Twitter or however, if I were to see somebody in person. Leon: 07:47 Got It. Okay. Well I will respect those boundaries too. But, uh, you know, again, I know from our other conversations that you have, you know, a pretty strong point of view for yourself, not for, uh, for anyone else, but you hold yourself to a very high standard and it definitely informs the way that you approach work. And, um, okay, so the same way I asked you about how, where you started in IT and how you got, uh, to, you know, this point in your life. So is this where you are now? Is that where you started? Is that, you know, your sort of level of observance and consciousness, religious consciousness when you started out? Al: 08:22 I would probably say no. Um, maybe prior to getting married I wasn't as conscious of everything that's around me or what's expected of me as a Muslim or someone that's following any faith. Um, it's probably, it probably has to do with just being immature at the time or just, um, not really keeping those ideologies in mind that I think as you get older you start to realize life is a little bit shorter, especially as you become, especially as you become a parent. Um, maybe you want to become, you know, obviously you do want to act as a role model and a mentor and more so when I was more actively involved with my kids' activities, now that they've gotten older, you know, they want to distance themselves from dad and mom because they seem to know everything. But we were just like them. So, you know, when I was younger I was actively involved in like their sports, their activities, but I didn't necessarily do it for my kids. I also did it for myself in the young people that they were surrounded by. Uh, one thing that I, I really cherish and I, and I can't get enough of it, is if I happen to see somebody, like one of my son's friends who I coach, let's say for example in basketball 10 years ago, so that was my son was 12 years old at the time. They'll approach me and say hello, Mr Rasheed. And I don't even recognize them because they changed. You know, they're now young adults. My son's 22 and he doesn't look like he did when he was 12, but you know, they'll always approach me and they will call me by, you know, my name. But not only that, they'll take a moment or two and say, "You know what, thank you. Because what you taught us and then has helped us grow to where we are now." And when it was, when I went up, when I was involved in their lives at that time, it was predominantly around sports. I am a sports junkie, but I tried to also teach them life lessons and I think they've taken that and learned from it. Leon: 10:22 Nice. Okay. So, uh, I think we've, we've covered your sort of religious journey or your spiritual journey along the way. Um, now what I want to do is talk about blending the two because I know that for people who have strongly held religious, moral, ethical points of view that work in general, and IT specifically can be interesting. I'm not saying it's a challenge, I'm not saying like it's a problem, but it creates a set, a set of layers to the work that folks who may not have that strong a point of view don't always, uh, have to manage or deal with. So I'm curious as a Muslim and you know, as somebody who's worked for decades in IT, you know, what challenges have you had with that overlap? Al: 11:12 I think both your career in it and your faith as a Muslim, in my case, they both require an insane amount of patience, especially when you are out of your comfort zone or you don't live in your faith-based country. Uh, I, you know, I've, I've been a US citizen for pretty much my entire life. I've lived here in this, in the States for my entire life. So I've adapted to that culture, that way of life in general. But there are times, especially in IT, and I don't know why it has to be IT-related or specific to IT, but, um, your patients. Yeah, I want to say your faith, you keep faith in the back of your mind more times than not how you are going to react to a certain situation, especially if there is a potential for it to become unnecessarily, uh, provoked or heated. Leon: 12:06 Okay. Al: 12:08 Um, I, as you can relate, many of us in, in this industry, As IT professionals, we're acknowledged, we're appreciated, but they don't know we exist until there's a problem. And they will let us know when there's a problem. Nine times out of ten,it's not done in a manner in which you would prefer to be notified there's a problem. And so when you've got a herd of people coming at you and you're already well aware of what's going on and you're attempting to fix the situation on the back end and try to keep it to a minimum, those are the, uh, those are the opport... Those are the moments where you find yourself questioning, not necessarily why you got into IT, but why do we have to go to this level to report something that can be relatively low key and fixed in a quick amount of time. Leon: 12:56 Right. But I liked it. I liked the word you almost said - it's an opportunity to have a chance to first of all reframe their point of view. And again, as somebody who has a strong, you know, moral, ethical, religious point of view to be that, uh, to be that example, to be that role model. Um, sometimes we do end up representing a segment of the population. You know, I know that a lot of times for people who especially don't know, me personally, I am a 5' 8" kippah and you know, seat seat. I'm just this religious dude who's standing there. And that's what they see. And so I do recognize that my interactions carry a weight that isn't just, hey, Leon didn't handle this well. It, it goes further than that. So you have an opportunity to not only help manage expectations as an IT person, but you have a chance to manage expectations as the whole person who you are standing in front of them. Al: 14:00 Correct. Correct. And I find it's not, like I said, it's not about me when I put it this way. I think it does apply to a lot of us in IT. Honesty can be a challenge. And I'm not saying that we always have to lie, but sometimes you've got to beat around the bush to put it mostly because if there is an issue and you're upfront and you give the end user who the individual, whoever the individual is, that's asking for an update to the situation, uh, the truth, they may overreact and take it up to another level that's completely unnecessary. And unprovoked. I'm not saying lie, but sometimes, and I hate to use expression beat around the bush, but kind of just give them as little as possible without putting yourself out there in a tough, in a tough area. Leon: 14:48 Well, and I would also say that there's, there's a way to, you don't have to say everything right. And that counts for lots of people in lots of situations. That truth is answering the question that you're being asked. Um, I will never forget that one of my children asked me, you know, 'Dad, where did I come from?" And so we sat down and had this very long, very specific conversation about biology and when I was done, my childhood, oh cause Bobby's from St. Louis and I realized I was not being asked the question. I thought I was being asked. And so answering the question that, that you're being asked, you know, "what's wrong" is a very open ended question. And if you give too much detail, people can, at best they'll ignore the answer. But at worst you're giving them bits of information they didn't really, they weren't really looking for in the first place. Al: 15:47 No, that's, that's a valid point. As the kids say TMI, too much information. I totally get it now as we've gotten older, but I know we've mentioned on previous segments on your podcast, I've acted as a mentor in my career in IT, and one of the pieces of pieces of advice that I give to young people getting into IT is keep it - and with all due respect - keep it simple stupid, the KISS method. Don't go out of your way to offer the end user, whoever you're explaining this to, an opportunity to twist your words around or maybe they just don't quite understand what you're trying to explain to them and then they can convey it incorrectly to someone else that could elevate it to a just a very challenging awkward position to be in. Leon: 16:32 Okay. So any, any other challenges that you've had again with your ethical, religious, moral point of view, blending that with your IT experiences? Al: 16:42 Um, communication is very important to me. Everyone should have an open door policy. Um, feedback should always be provided in good and bad situations cause we can only improve from it. Um, there are times where if you are going back to the honesty key point, if you are honest and upfront, there is a tendency, not, not necessarily all the time, but the occasionally that it could backfire. And um, it's, you know, the old expression, "you have to play the game" or "don't hate the player, hate the game." I don't like to be that way. I don't think anyone wants to be that way. And it's not something that I would encourage anyone to go down that path or act in that way. Um, but you know, it's a delicate balance and you just gotta be aware of your surroundings, but do it morally and ethically without not only, you know, putting yourself in a bad position, but your team as well. At the end of the day, you're a team. You have to function as one and, uh, we have to improve collectively. Leon: 17:39 Right. And, and again, you want to answer the question you're being asked, you want to offer the, you know, that those pieces of information don't overshare because at the end of the day, people, you know, they have a quick question. They want a quick answer usually, especially when something's really happening in IT. You want to be able to be brief and be brilliant and be gone. Al: 18:01 Yes, right. And all but, but be authentic, be original. You know, it's going back to what you just said and don't try to create something that you're not cause that that hero mentality sooner or later we'll come back and get you. And before, you know, you have a reputation of being that type of person and it's not something that anyone in IT or any, any, any career for that matter wants to be. Because once you've been singled out or blackballed or considered this type of individual, it's really hard to recover from. Leon: 18:35 It definitely can be. All right. So, so that's sort of the challenges. But, um, I'm curious if there have been benefits or surprises, uh, or just, you know, positive things that this overlap between your religious perspective and the IT work that, uh, you've had. If there's anything that, that you've experienced over the last 15 years. Al: 18:54 I think getting more involved more recently in the, the community in general, that the community, regardless of what platform it is, has been inspiring for me. It's opened up so many doors and created so many friendships, including with you and Josh on the podcast. Uh, it's refreshing to know that there are individuals out there that care for one another, not only from a professional aspect but from a human perspective as well. Because, you know, we work to live and we'd hate to work or we'd hate to live to work. And so I, I, that's something that I've learned over the past few years is, you know, you can put in 70 hours, but it's, and that's fine and dandy, but sooner or later it's gonna catch up to you. And before you know it, you're not going to be happy professionally. If you can't do your job in a 40 hour a week. And, and I get it occasionally you have to over your, you know, you have to overextend yourself. You have to sacrifice an hour or two here and there. But when it becomes a consistent part of your life, when you're putting in 70 hours a day, you're defeating the whole purpose of everything that you've worked so hard to get to. Leon: 20:00 Right. And again, I think that the, some of the guiding principles of our, our faith lives start to put, to put that into a particular framework of, you know, what are you doing this for? What's the point? Um, I was listening to someone speak the other day and they said, you know, if someone showed you a machine that was a perfectly self running machine, "Look, I turned it on and it never, it just completely feeds itself!" And you'd say, "That's wonderful. What does it do?" "Well, it does that, it just, it runs and it, it, it keeps itself moving and it keeps itself oiled and it's self repairs and stuff." "Yeah. But what does it do?" "Well, that's what it does. It just, you know...", You'd say, "Well that's cute, but a machine that works so that it works, it doesn't even make me a cup of coffee. It doesn't, you know, Polish the dog or like that. That's sort of a pointless, a pointless machine." And if we've become that pointless machine where we are working so that we can work so that we can keep working so that we can work, it's that sort of never ending loop. And I think that again, our faiths point us toward like, that's not it, that's not what you're supposed to do. Al: 21:06 I was just going to say, sorry to interrupt you, but then you do lose sight of faith when you're working night and day and all you do is think about work, work, work. And I don't want to come across the wrong way. Um, I, you know, I would hate for someone to characterize me in a different manner. Um, but I, you know, I, I'm a hardworking individual. I'm diligent, I'm thorough. I'll do the best to my ability. I am a team player, as I pointed out earlier. But you know, at the end of the day, I want to come home and separate work from life. Leon: 21:37 Absolutely. And I think that when you have that, when you have that ethic, everybody except the most, uh, abusive or small minded people will respect you more for it. Okay. So any final thoughts? Anything? If somebody listening this and saying, "Wow, that sounds just like me except, you know, he's way further ahead than I am" or whatever. Like what lessons do you want to share? What final thoughts do you want to leave everyone with? Al: 22:02 I would say based on where my path has taken me, you should always take a risk on yourself, especially if you've got an opportunity to do so. Uh, without, you know, without risking a lot, you'll realize sooner than later that the effort that you put into it, you'll be rewarded for it in time. Um, if you sit back and wait for someone to do something for you, nine times out of 10, it's not going to happen, but do it the right way. Um, seek help, uh, become a part of, you know, the various community groups. Um, occasionally, you know, you've got to volunteer because you've got to give and take. So you can't have everything, uh, put out on a silver platter. You've got to put in the time and effort, the blood, sweat and tears as they say. But a don't make yourself miserable doing so. And when I reflect back, I, I don't really have any regrets, uh, with what I chose to do at the time. I'm happy I'm, I'm, I've gotten to this point in my life and in my career, but moving forward, I, I still want to elevate and I still want to grow. And, um, I'm looking for that next challenge in my career. And, uh, if that opportunity presents itself for the right reasons, and if that a organization finds, um, that I am the person that they're looking for, you can always reach out to me. I'm more than willing to have a conversation. Leon: 23:17 They'd be idiots not to take you. I will, I will go out on a limb and say, Al, it is always so much fun to talk to you. Uh, I know we're gonna have you back on the Technically Religious podcast here in the near future, but thank you so much for taking some time out of your evening to talk with me. Al: 23:36 Thank you as always, and I appreciate your time and support and if there's anything I can do for you, the podcast or anybody in general, you've got my contact information, you're more than welcome to share with me if they reach out to you directly. Doug: 23:48 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious, visit our website, http://www.technicallyeligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect to us on social media.

Gotta Ride the Taco Jet Plane: GenCon Aftermath and Interviews with Bicycle Games

Have Fun and Play

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 24, 2019 50:05

In this week's episode the gang discussed coming home from GenCon and the record-setting attendance. Starting with Thursday an immense number of people and moving through the weekend discussing how busy we were, with early mornings, much to the chagrin of Myron. Despite of the activities, it was a great experience for everyone. Transitioning into the desire to keep up the gaming pace despite being in the world. The conversation quickly transitions into discussion of the games; Someone Has Died and Tiny Tina's Tea Party. Both outstanding experiences where the gameplay can rise or lower to the level of the players. The gang shares interviews for Tattoo Stories with Eric Slauson and It's Blunderful with Brooke Schwartzman. During Tattoo Stories, the team asks Eric about his experience creating and developing the game. Then, we play the game with the creator; really setting the tone of how the game is played. We argue our tattoo designs to Eric to win some points. Then, Tom just cannot say Totoro. The group then waxes poetic about social, drawing games. For It’s Blunderful, we ask Brooke about this more grown-up game where betting points and answering awkward personal questions to earn enough to win the game. Then, the team discusses strategies of playing the opponents more than the cards to maximize bets. @stmgames @bicyclecards #GenCon #HaveFunAndPlay #bicyclecards #drawatattoo #boardgames #havefunandplay Remember to look for all episodes of our podcasts on iTunes, Stitcher, and TuneIn. Make sure to subscribe to the show so you’ll never miss an episode. Also, you can keep up with us on our website: havefunandplay.com. We are constantly thinking about adding new content, so roll the dice and come join us!

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CMIO News to Know for the Week of July 15

CMIO Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2019 29:57

3 news stories and my list of 7 rants. 1) We do what is hard for IT if it makes it easier for the clinician. 2) We train our clinicians to a level of proficiency on our IT tools BEFORE they touch a patient. 3) An infinite number of alerts does not make us infinitely safer. 4) Our customers are not always right and we need to deliver a product that exceeds their expectations. 5) For IT to build trust, we must have transparency. 6) Operations determines the "what" and the "when", IT determines the "who" and the "how". 7) When training, we meet our providers where they are and deliver content in the format they need.

operations for it cmio

Theresa Kushner – Partner in Business Data Leadership, & former Sr. VP of Dell

Intelligent Automation Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2019 20:15

The famous management consultant W. Edwards Deming once said “In God we trust, all others bring data.” Enterprises embracing digital transformation are bringing that data in droves, and cultivating it in ways unimaginable even just a few short years ago. Thanks to new tools, techniques, and technological advances, massive volumes of historical & real-time data can be analyzed to make forecasts about future events. This field of “predictive analytics” has enormous implications for everyone. For IT professionals, it offers a chance to not only anticipate problems before they occur, but to automate their mitigation before they materialize. Predictive analytics seems like the modern day equivalent of a crystal ball, but with data scientists and statisticians divining the future instead of fortune tellers. To get us up to speed on the state of predictive analytics today, we turn to one of its most notable thought leaders, Theresa Kushner, recent inductee into the Analytics Hall of Fame. Having managed huge analytics projects for Dell, Cisco, VMWare & IBM, Theresa knows what it takes to convert data into ROI-generating predictions. In this episode, she’ll share with us some of the unexpected ways predictive analytics can be used, how a new occupation called "Business Scientist" might be the key to alleviating the drastic shortage of data scientists, and what the single most unrealistic expectation is plaguing the field of predictive analytics.

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Claire Radel On The Chris Top Program

The Chris Top Program

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 20, 2019 65:17

Claire Radel is a 19-year-old IN/Nashville based BMI singer/songwriter, and NSAI member. In the last two years, Claire has worked with two-time Grammy winner Chad Evans, was nominated for an IHeart Radio WOBA award, and is apart of 102.5 NASH FM's artist group.Claire performs acoustically, in Indiana and Nashville. She has played well-known venues, and shows such as The Bluebird Cafe (Nashville, TN), Commodre Grille (Nashville, TN), Belcourt Taps (Nashville, TN), Two Old Hippies (Nashville, TN), Bobby's Idle Hour (Nashville, TN), Carmel Christkindlmarkt (Carmel, Indiana), Indy 500 Marathon (Indianapolis, IN), RhumFest (Kokomo. IN), Strawberry Fest (Kokomo, IN), Indiana University's Take Back the Night Fundraiser for Domestic Violence (Kokomo, IN), Hawgin' the Block (Kokomo, IN), Memphis Farmer's Market (Memphis, TN), South Main Sounds (Memphis, TN), Speckled T's with 90 Degrees West (Slidell, Louisiana), and Neutral Ground Coffeehouse (New Orleans, Louisiana). Claire has opened up for artists such as, American Idol winner, David Cook (RhumFest, IN 2015), Shiny Penny (RhumFest, IN 2016), and the Jason Skaggs band (Veterans Campground, IN 2018). Claire, shares her unique vocals, as well as honest, and relative songwriting skills on her debut EP "You're Askin' For It", which consists, of three self-written tracks. Released September of 2018. Kokomo native, Douglas Showalter, former guitarist for country-singer Cam, says “Claire Radel has a voice and narrative that is far beyond her years. Her ability to tell stories of teenage love in a way that any listener can relate to showcases a talent that has the brightest of bright futures. Brighter then she's probably even aware of. And that is a very good thing.”For booking inquiries please contact: claireradel22@gmail.com

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Bio-IT World | Advancing Life Sciences Research: Accelerating innovation in the age of cloud

CHI Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2019 9:41

For decades, high-performance computing (HPC) has played a crucial role in advancing healthcare. Enabled by techniques like next-generation sequencing (NGS), modern computer systems have helped us understand the biology of disease and helped facilitate the development of newer more effective drugs. While once deployed mainly in research, today HPC is edging ever closer to front-line clinical care supporting advanced diagnostics, genetic counseling, and personalized medicine. While core bioinformatics applications aren’t going anywhere, modern medicine is increasingly a big data problem as well. Determining the optimal treatment depends on collaboration, the fusion of genetic data with other rich datasets like MRIs, ultrasound images, and population level studies. Increasingly analytics and AI techniques like machine learning are helping healthcare providers sift through massive amounts of data to make better decisions for patients more quickly and efficiently. For IT organizations, providing a foundation to support this rapid innovation has been challenging. With the need for increasingly specialized hardware, new application frameworks, cost challenges, and the need to share data as never before, institutions are increasingly embracing cloud computing. Univa has played a key role in helping life sciences companies manage diverse workloads on HPC clusters both on-premises and in the cloud. In this Podcast, Univa will discuss how workloads are evolving, share some of the pressures faced by their life-sciences customers, and discuss practical approaches to modernizing IT environments to support the increased variety of applications in the life sciences software ecosystem.

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Alkaline Podcast 050 - Dirty Dan

DIRTY DAN's PODCAST

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 20, 2018 117:46

This is my Irobot mix for Burning Man 2018 (no interview or comments) Check out Burner Podcasts and Alkaline your source to the sounds of Playa! https://soundcloud.com/burnerpodcast Tracklist 1. Mutant Disco feat. Maars (org.) - Maceo Plex 2. Roots feat. Ella (acapella) Dirty Dan Edit - Mattei & Omich 3. Voices (org.) - Monki 4. Machine (N- Telekia Mix) - Superchip 5. Save The Children (David Mayer Remix) - Zakir 6. personal Slave feat. Charles McCloud (Harry Romero Mix) - Honey Dijon 7. Rolling (org.) - Fernando Messa 8. Star People (org.) Andre Butano, Aldo Cadiz 8. Dancin Machine (org.) - Pornbugs 9. Hands Up (acapella) Dirty Dan Edit - Eli Escobar 10. Heater (org.) - Franky Rizardo 11. Speechless feat. Carl Craig, La Scalars (Gesaffelstien Mix) - Agoria 12. Body Jack Get My Swerve On (Franky Rizardo Mix) - Max Chapman 13. Trip (org.) - James Dexter 14. Barbero (org.) Cassim 15. Ruckus feat. Richard Judge (Amine Edge & Dance Mix) - Tube & Burger , Richard Judge 16. Funky Spaceship (org.) - Junior Sanchez , Gene Farris 17. For It (org.) - Dalfie 18. This Is House (This is House-a-pella) Dirty Dan Edit - John Julius Knight, Roland Clark 19. Crazy Pee (org.) - Alex Kennon 20. iris Stan ( Eli Brown Mix) - Pirate Copy, Rion S 21. I have been a shit (Tube & Burger Mix) - Ante Perry, Maxim Lany 22. Ocean Drive (org.) - Danny Serano 23. Wild Child (org.) - Alex Kennon 24. Restare Andare` (Black Spuma Remix) - Cristalli Liquidi 25. Poison Lips (extended) - Vitalic

Episode 259: Long Live Unix | BSD Now 259

BSD Now

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 16, 2018 107:36

The strange birth and long life of Unix, FreeBSD jail with a single public IP, EuroBSDcon 2018 talks and schedule, OpenBSD on G4 iBook, PAM template user, ZFS file server, and reflections on one year of OpenBSD use. Picking the contest winner Vincent Bostjan Andrew Klaus-Hendrik Will Toby Johnny David manfrom Niclas Gary Eddy Bruce Lizz Jim Random number generator ##Headlines ###The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix They say that when one door closes on you, another opens. People generally offer this bit of wisdom just to lend some solace after a misfortune. But sometimes it’s actually true. It certainly was for Ken Thompson and the late Dennis Ritchie, two of the greats of 20th-century information technology, when they created the Unix operating system, now considered one of the most inspiring and influential pieces of software ever written. A door had slammed shut for Thompson and Ritchie in March of 1969, when their employer, the American Telephone & Telegraph Co., withdrew from a collaborative project with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and General Electric to create an interactive time-sharing system called Multics, which stood for “Multiplexed Information and Computing Service.” Time-sharing, a technique that lets multiple people use a single computer simultaneously, had been invented only a decade earlier. Multics was to combine time-sharing with other technological advances of the era, allowing users to phone a computer from remote terminals and then read e-mail, edit documents, run calculations, and so forth. It was to be a great leap forward from the way computers were mostly being used, with people tediously preparing and submitting batch jobs on punch cards to be run one by one. Over five years, AT&T invested millions in the Multics project, purchasing a GE-645 mainframe computer and dedicating to the effort many of the top researchers at the company’s renowned Bell Telephone Laboratories—including Thompson and Ritchie, Joseph F. Ossanna, Stuart Feldman, M. Douglas McIlroy, and the late Robert Morris. But the new system was too ambitious, and it fell troublingly behind schedule. In the end, AT&T’s corporate leaders decided to pull the plug. After AT&T’s departure from the Multics project, managers at Bell Labs, in Murray Hill, N.J., became reluctant to allow any further work on computer operating systems, leaving some researchers there very frustrated. Although Multics hadn’t met many of its objectives, it had, as Ritchie later recalled, provided them with a “convenient interactive computing service, a good environment in which to do programming, [and] a system around which a fellowship could form.” Suddenly, it was gone. With heavy hearts, the researchers returned to using their old batch system. At such an inauspicious moment, with management dead set against the idea, it surely would have seemed foolhardy to continue designing computer operating systems. But that’s exactly what Thompson, Ritchie, and many of their Bell Labs colleagues did. Now, some 40 years later, we should be thankful that these programmers ignored their bosses and continued their labor of love, which gave the world Unix, one of the greatest computer operating systems of all time. The rogue project began in earnest when Thompson, Ritchie, and a third Bell Labs colleague, Rudd Canaday, began to sketch out on paper the design for a file system. Thompson then wrote the basics of a new operating system for the lab’s GE-645 mainframe. But with the Multics project ended, so too was the need for the GE-645. Thompson realized that any further programming he did on it was likely to go nowhere, so he dropped the effort. Thompson had passed some of his time after the demise of Multics writing a computer game called Space Travel, which simulated all the major bodies in the solar system along with a spaceship that could fly around them. Written for the GE-645, Space Travel was clunky to play—and expensive: roughly US $75 a game for the CPU time. Hunting around, Thompson came across a dusty PDP-7, a minicomputer built by Digital Equipment Corp. that some of his Bell Labs colleagues had purchased earlier for a circuit-analysis project. Thompson rewrote Space Travel to run on it. And with that little programming exercise, a second door cracked ajar. It was to swing wide open during the summer of 1969 when Thompson’s wife, Bonnie, spent a month visiting his parents to show off their newborn son. Thompson took advantage of his temporary bachelor existence to write a good chunk of what would become the Unix operating system for the discarded PDP‑7. The name Unix stems from a joke one of Thompson’s colleagues made: Because the new operating system supported only one user (Thompson), he saw it as an emasculated version of Multics and dubbed it “Un-multiplexed Information and Computing Service,” or Unics. The name later morphed into Unix. Initially, Thompson used the GE-645 to compose and compile the software, which he then downloaded to the PDP‑7. But he soon weaned himself from the mainframe, and by the end of 1969 he was able to write operating-system code on the PDP-7 itself. That was a step in the right direction. But Thompson and the others helping him knew that the PDP‑7, which was already obsolete, would not be able to sustain their skunkworks for long. They also knew that the lab’s management wasn’t about to allow any more research on operating systems. So Thompson and Ritchie got creative. They formulated a proposal to their bosses to buy one of DEC’s newer minicomputers, a PDP-11, but couched the request in especially palatable terms. They said they were aiming to create tools for editing and formatting text, what you might call a word-processing system today. The fact that they would also have to write an operating system for the new machine to support the editor and text formatter was almost a footnote. Management took the bait, and an order for a PDP-11 was placed in May 1970. The machine itself arrived soon after, although the disk drives for it took more than six months to appear. During the interim, Thompson, Ritchie, and others continued to develop Unix on the PDP-7. After the PDP-11’s disks were installed, the researchers moved their increasingly complex operating system over to the new machine. Next they brought over the roff text formatter written by Ossanna and derived from the runoff program, which had been used in an earlier time-sharing system. Unix was put to its first real-world test within Bell Labs when three typists from AT&T’s patents department began using it to write, edit, and format patent applications. It was a hit. The patent department adopted the system wholeheartedly, which gave the researchers enough credibility to convince management to purchase another machine—a newer and more powerful PDP-11 model—allowing their stealth work on Unix to continue. During its earliest days, Unix evolved constantly, so the idea of issuing named versions or releases seemed inappropriate. But the researchers did issue new editions of the programmer’s manual periodically, and the early Unix systems were named after each such edition. The first edition of the manual was completed in November 1971. So what did the first edition of Unix offer that made it so great? For one thing, the system provided a hierarchical file system, which allowed something we all now take for granted: Files could be placed in directories—or equivalently, folders—that in turn could be put within other directories. Each file could contain no more than 64 kilobytes, and its name could be no more than six characters long. These restrictions seem awkwardly limiting now, but at the time they appeared perfectly adequate. Although Unix was ostensibly created for word processing, the only editor available in 1971 was the line-oriented ed. Today, ed is still the only editor guaranteed to be present on all Unix systems. Apart from the text-processing and general system applications, the first edition of Unix included games such as blackjack, chess, and tic-tac-toe. For the system administrator, there were tools to dump and restore disk images to magnetic tape, to read and write paper tapes, and to create, check, mount, and unmount removable disk packs. Most important, the system offered an interactive environment that by this time allowed time-sharing, so several people could use a single machine at once. Various programming languages were available to them, including BASIC, Fortran, the scripting of Unix commands, assembly language, and B. The last of these, a descendant of a BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language), ultimately evolved into the immensely popular C language, which Ritchie created while also working on Unix. The first edition of Unix let programmers call 34 different low-level routines built into the operating system. It’s a testament to the system’s enduring nature that nearly all of these system calls are still available—and still heavily used—on modern Unix and Linux systems four decades on. For its time, first-edition Unix provided a remarkably powerful environment for software development. Yet it contained just 4200 lines of code at its heart and occupied a measly 16 KB of main memory when it ran. Unix’s great influence can be traced in part to its elegant design, simplicity, portability, and serendipitous timing. But perhaps even more important was the devoted user community that soon grew up around it. And that came about only by an accident of its unique history. The story goes like this: For years Unix remained nothing more than a Bell Labs research project, but by 1973 its authors felt the system was mature enough for them to present a paper on its design and implementation at a symposium of the Association for Computing Machinery. That paper was published in 1974 in the Communications of the ACM. Its appearance brought a flurry of requests for copies of the software. This put AT&T in a bind. In 1956, AT&T had agreed to a U.S government consent decree that prevented the company from selling products not directly related to telephones and telecommunications, in return for its legal monopoly status in running the country’s long-distance phone service. So Unix could not be sold as a product. Instead, AT&T released the Unix source code under license to anyone who asked, charging only a nominal fee. The critical wrinkle here was that the consent decree prevented AT&T from supporting Unix. Indeed, for many years Bell Labs researchers proudly displayed their Unix policy at conferences with a slide that read, “No advertising, no support, no bug fixes, payment in advance.” With no other channels of support available to them, early Unix adopters banded together for mutual assistance, forming a loose network of user groups all over the world. They had the source code, which helped. And they didn’t view Unix as a standard software product, because nobody seemed to be looking after it. So these early Unix users themselves set about fixing bugs, writing new tools, and generally improving the system as they saw fit. The Usenix user group acted as a clearinghouse for the exchange of Unix software in the United States. People could send in magnetic tapes with new software or fixes to the system and get back tapes with the software and fixes that Usenix had received from others. In Australia, the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney produced a more robust version of Unix, the Australian Unix Share Accounting Method, which could cope with larger numbers of concurrent users and offered better performance. By the mid-1970s, the environment of sharing that had sprung up around Unix resembled the open-source movement so prevalent today. Users far and wide were enthusiastically enhancing the system, and many of their improvements were being fed back to Bell Labs for incorporation in future releases. But as Unix became more popular, AT&T’s lawyers began looking harder at what various licensees were doing with their systems. One person who caught their eye was John Lions, a computer scientist then teaching at the University of New South Wales, in Australia. In 1977, he published what was probably the most famous computing book of the time, A Commentary on the Unix Operating System, which contained an annotated listing of the central source code for Unix. Unix’s licensing conditions allowed for the exchange of source code, and initially, Lions’s book was sold to licensees. But by 1979, AT&T’s lawyers had clamped down on the book’s distribution and use in academic classes. The antiauthoritarian Unix community reacted as you might expect, and samizdat copies of the book spread like wildfire. Many of us have nearly unreadable nth-generation photocopies of the original book. End runs around AT&T’s lawyers indeed became the norm—even at Bell Labs. For example, between the release of the sixth edition of Unix in 1975 and the seventh edition in 1979, Thompson collected dozens of important bug fixes to the system, coming both from within and outside of Bell Labs. He wanted these to filter out to the existing Unix user base, but the company’s lawyers felt that this would constitute a form of support and balked at their release. Nevertheless, those bug fixes soon became widely distributed through unofficial channels. For instance, Lou Katz, the founding president of Usenix, received a phone call one day telling him that if he went down to a certain spot on Mountain Avenue (where Bell Labs was located) at 2 p.m., he would find something of interest. Sure enough, Katz found a magnetic tape with the bug fixes, which were rapidly in the hands of countless users. By the end of the 1970s, Unix, which had started a decade earlier as a reaction against the loss of a comfortable programming environment, was growing like a weed throughout academia and the IT industry. Unix would flower in the early 1980s before reaching the height of its popularity in the early 1990s. For many reasons, Unix has since given way to other commercial and noncommercial systems. But its legacy, that of an elegant, well-designed, comfortable environment for software development, lives on. In recognition of their accomplishment, Thompson and Ritchie were given the Japan Prize earlier this year, adding to a collection of honors that includes the United States’ National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the Association of Computing Machinery’s Turing Award. Many other, often very personal, tributes to Ritchie and his enormous influence on computing were widely shared after his death this past October. Unix is indeed one of the most influential operating systems ever invented. Its direct descendants now number in the hundreds. On one side of the family tree are various versions of Unix proper, which began to be commercialized in the 1980s after the Bell System monopoly was broken up, freeing AT&T from the stipulations of the 1956 consent decree. On the other side are various Unix-like operating systems derived from the version of Unix developed at the University of California, Berkeley, including the one Apple uses today on its computers, OS X. I say “Unix-like” because the developers of the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Unix on which these systems were based worked hard to remove all the original AT&T code so that their software and its descendants would be freely distributable. The effectiveness of those efforts were, however, called into question when the AT&T subsidiary Unix System Laboratories filed suit against Berkeley Software Design and the Regents of the University of California in 1992 over intellectual property rights to this software. The university in turn filed a counterclaim against AT&T for breaches to the license it provided AT&T for the use of code developed at Berkeley. The ensuing legal quagmire slowed the development of free Unix-like clones, including 386BSD, which was designed for the Intel 386 chip, the CPU then found in many IBM PCs. Had this operating system been available at the time, Linus Torvalds says he probably wouldn’t have created Linux, an open-source Unix-like operating system he developed from scratch for PCs in the early 1990s. Linux has carried the Unix baton forward into the 21st century, powering a wide range of digital gadgets including wireless routers, televisions, desktop PCs, and Android smartphones. It even runs some supercomputers. Although AT&T quickly settled its legal disputes with Berkeley Software Design and the University of California, legal wrangling over intellectual property claims to various parts of Unix and Linux have continued over the years, often involving byzantine corporate relations. By 2004, no fewer than five major lawsuits had been filed. Just this past August, a software company called the TSG Group (formerly known as the SCO Group), lost a bid in court to claim ownership of Unix copyrights that Novell had acquired when it purchased the Unix System Laboratories from AT&T in 1993. As a programmer and Unix historian, I can’t help but find all this legal sparring a bit sad. From the very start, the authors and users of Unix worked as best they could to build and share, even if that meant defying authority. That outpouring of selflessness stands in sharp contrast to the greed that has driven subsequent legal battles over the ownership of Unix. The world of computer hardware and software moves forward startlingly fast. For IT professionals, the rapid pace of change is typically a wonderful thing. But it makes us susceptible to the loss of our own history, including important lessons from the past. To address this issue in a small way, in 1995 I started a mailing list of old-time Unix aficionados. That effort morphed into the Unix Heritage Society. Our goal is not only to save the history of Unix but also to collect and curate these old systems and, where possible, bring them back to life. With help from many talented members of this society, I was able to restore much of the old Unix software to working order, including Ritchie’s first C compiler from 1972 and the first Unix system to be written in C, dating from 1973. One holy grail that eluded us for a long time was the first edition of Unix in any form, electronic or otherwise. Then, in 2006, Al Kossow from the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, Calif., unearthed a printed study of Unix dated 1972, which not only covered the internal workings of Unix but also included a complete assembly listing of the kernel, the main component of this operating system. This was an amazing find—like discovering an old Ford Model T collecting dust in a corner of a barn. But we didn’t just want to admire the chrome work from afar. We wanted to see the thing run again. In 2008, Tim Newsham, an independent programmer in Hawaii, and I assembled a team of like-minded Unix enthusiasts and set out to bring this ancient system back from the dead. The work was technically arduous and often frustrating, but in the end, we had a copy of the first edition of Unix running on an emulated PDP-11/20. We sent out messages announcing our success to all those we thought would be interested. Thompson, always succinct, simply replied, “Amazing.” Indeed, his brainchild was amazing, and I’ve been happy to do what I can to make it, and the story behind it, better known. Digital Ocean http://do.co/bsdnow ###FreeBSD jails with a single public IP address Jails in FreeBSD provide a simple yet flexible way to set up a proper server layout. In the most setups the actual server only acts as the host system for the jails while the applications themselves run within those independent containers. Traditionally every jail has it’s own IP for the user to be able to address the individual services. But if you’re still using IPv4 this might get you in trouble as the most hosters don’t offer more than one single public IP address per server. Create the internal network In this case NAT (“Network Address Translation”) is a good way to expose services in different jails using the same IP address. First, let’s create an internal network (“NAT network”) at 192.168.0.0/24. You could generally use any private IPv4 address space as specified in RFC 1918. Here’s an overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatenetwork. Using pf, FreeBSD’s firewall, we will map requests on different ports of the same public IP address to our individual jails as well as provide network access to the jails themselves. First let’s check which network devices are available. In my case there’s em0 which provides connectivity to the internet and lo0, the local loopback device. options=209b [...] inet 172.31.1.100 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.31.1.255 nd6 options=23 media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT ) status: active lo0: flags=8049 metric 0 mtu 16384 options=600003 inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 nd6 options=21``` > For our internal network, we create a cloned loopback device called lo1. Therefore we need to customize the /etc/rc.conf file, adding the following two lines: cloned_interfaces="lo1" ipv4_addrs_lo1="192.168.0.1-9/29" > This defines a /29 network, offering IP addresses for a maximum of 6 jails: ipcalc 192.168.0.1/29 Address: 192.168.0.1 11000000.10101000.00000000.00000 001 Netmask: 255.255.255.248 = 29 11111111.11111111.11111111.11111 000 Wildcard: 0.0.0.7 00000000.00000000.00000000.00000 111 => Network: 192.168.0.0/29 11000000.10101000.00000000.00000 000 HostMin: 192.168.0.1 11000000.10101000.00000000.00000 001 HostMax: 192.168.0.6 11000000.10101000.00000000.00000 110 Broadcast: 192.168.0.7 11000000.10101000.00000000.00000 111 Hosts/Net: 6 Class C, Private Internet > Then we need to restart the network. Please be aware of currently active SSH sessions as they might be dropped during restart. It’s a good moment to ensure you have KVM access to that server ;-) service netif restart > After reconnecting, our newly created loopback device is active: lo1: flags=8049 metric 0 mtu 16384 options=600003 inet 192.168.0.1 netmask 0xfffffff8 inet 192.168.0.2 netmask 0xffffffff inet 192.168.0.3 netmask 0xffffffff inet 192.168.0.4 netmask 0xffffffff inet 192.168.0.5 netmask 0xffffffff inet 192.168.0.6 netmask 0xffffffff inet 192.168.0.7 netmask 0xffffffff inet 192.168.0.8 netmask 0xffffffff inet 192.168.0.9 netmask 0xffffffff nd6 options=29 Setting up > pf part of the FreeBSD base system, so we only have to configure and enable it. By this moment you should already have a clue of which services you want to expose. If this is not the case, just fix that file later on. In my example configuration, I have a jail running a webserver and another jail running a mailserver: Public IP address IP_PUB="1.2.3.4" Packet normalization scrub in all Allow outbound connections from within the jails nat on em0 from lo1:network to any -> (em0) webserver jail at 192.168.0.2 rdr on em0 proto tcp from any to $IP_PUB port 443 -> 192.168.0.2 just an example in case you want to redirect to another port within your jail rdr on em0 proto tcp from any to $IP_PUB port 80 -> 192.168.0.2 port 8080 mailserver jail at 192.168.0.3 rdr on em0 proto tcp from any to $IP_PUB port 25 -> 192.168.0.3 rdr on em0 proto tcp from any to $IP_PUB port 587 -> 192.168.0.3 rdr on em0 proto tcp from any to $IP_PUB port 143 -> 192.168.0.3 rdr on em0 proto tcp from any to $IP_PUB port 993 -> 192.168.0.3 > Now just enable pf like this (which is the equivalent of adding pf_enable=YES to /etc/rc.conf): sysrc pf_enable="YES" > and start it: service pf start Install ezjail > Ezjail is a collection of scripts by erdgeist that allow you to easily manage your jails. pkg install ezjail > As an alternative, you could install ezjail from the ports tree. Now we need to set up the basejail which contains the shared base system for our jails. In fact, every jail that you create get’s will use that basejail to symlink directories related to the base system like /bin and /sbin. This can be accomplished by running ezjail-admin install > In the next step, we’ll copy the /etc/resolv.conf file from our host to the newjail, which is the template for newly created jails (the parts that are not provided by basejail), to ensure that domain resolution will work properly within our jails later on: cp /etc/resolv.conf /usr/jails/newjail/etc/ > Last but not least, we enable ezjail and start it: sysrc ezjail_enable="YES" service ezjail start Create a jail > Creating a jail is as easy as it could probably be: ezjail-admin create webserver 192.168.0.2 ezjail-admin start webserver > Now you can access your jail using: ezjail-admin console webserver > Each jail contains a vanilla FreeBSD installation. Deploy services > Now you can spin up as many jails as you want to set up your services like web, mail or file shares. You should take care not to enable sshd within your jails, because that would cause problems with the service’s IP bindings. But this is not a problem, just SSH to the host and enter your jail using ezjail-admin console. EuroBSDcon 2018 Talks & Schedule (https://2018.eurobsdcon.org/talks-schedule/) News Roundup OpenBSD on an iBook G4 (https://bobstechsite.com/openbsd-on-an-ibook-g4/) > I've mentioned on social media and on the BTS podcast a few times that I wanted to try installing OpenBSD onto an old "snow white" iBook G4 I acquired last summer to see if I could make it a useful machine again in the year 2018. This particular eBay purchase came with a 14" 1024x768 TFT screen, 1.07GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 1.5GB RAM, 100GB of HDD space and an ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card with 32 MB of SDRAM. The optical drive, ethernet port, battery & USB slots are also fully-functional. The only thing that doesn't work is the CMOS battery, but that's not unexpected for a device that was originally released in 2004. Initial experiments > This iBook originally arrived at my door running Apple Mac OSX Leopard and came with the original install disk, the iLife & iWork suites for 2008, various instruction manuals, a working power cable and a spare keyboard. As you'll see in the pictures I took for this post the characters on the buttons have started to wear away from 14 years of intensive use, but the replacement needs a very good clean before I decide to swap it in! > After spending some time exploring the last version of OSX to support the IBM PowerPC processor architecture I tried to see if the hardware was capable of modern computing with Linux. Something I knew ahead of trying this was that the WiFi adapter was unlikely to work because it's a highly proprietary component designed by Apple to work specifically with OSX and nothing else, but I figured I could probably use a wireless USB dongle later to get around this limitation. > Unfortunately I found that no recent versions of mainstream Linux distributions would boot off this machine. Debian has dropped support 32-bit PowerPC architectures and the PowerPC variants of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (vanilla, MATE and Lubuntu) wouldn't even boot the installer! The only distribution I could reliably install on the hardware was Lubuntu 14.04 LTS. > Unfortunately I'm not the biggest fan of the LXDE desktop for regular work and a lot of ported applications were old and broken because it clearly wasn't being maintained by people that use the hardware anymore. Ubuntu 14.04 is also approaching the end of its support life in early 2019, so this limited solution also has a limited shelf-life. Over to BSD > I discussed this problem with a few people on Mastodon and it was pointed out to me that OSX is built on the Darwin kernel, which happens to be a variant of BSD. NetBSD and OpenBSD fans in particular convinced me that their communities still saw the value of supporting these old pieces of kit and that I should give BSD a try. > So yesterday evening I finally downloaded the "macppc" version of OpenBSD 6.3 with no idea what to expect. I hoped for the best but feared the worst because my last experience with this operating system was trying out PC-BSD in 2008 and discovering with disappointment that it didn't support any of the hardware on my Toshiba laptop. > When I initially booted OpenBSD I was a little surprised to find the login screen provided no visual feedback when I typed in my password, but I can understand the security reasons for doing that. The initial desktop environment that was loaded was very basic. All I could see was a console output window, a terminal and a desktop switcher in the X11 environment the system had loaded. > After a little Googling I found this blog post had some fantastic instructions to follow for the post-installation steps: https://sohcahtoa.org.uk/openbsd.html. I did have to adjust them slightly though because my iBook only has 1.5GB RAM and not every package that page suggests is available on macppc by default. You can see a full list here: https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/6.3/packages/powerpc/. Final thoughts > I was really impressed with the performance of OpenBSD's "macppc" port. It boots much faster than OSX Leopard on the same hardware and unlike Lubuntu 14.04 it doesn't randomly hang for no reason or crash if you launch something demanding like the GIMP. > I was pleased to see that the command line tools I'm used to using on Linux have been ported across too. OpenBSD also had no issues with me performing basic desktop tasks on XFCE like browsing the web with NetSurf, playing audio files with VLC and editing images with the GIMP. Limited gaming is also theoretically possible if you're willing to build them (or an emulator) from source with SDL support. > If I wanted to use this system for heavy duty work then I'd probably be inclined to run key applications like LibreOffice on a Raspberry Pi and then connect my iBook G4 to those using VNC or an SSH connection with X11 forwarding. BSD is UNIX after all, so using my ancient laptop as a dumb terminal should work reasonably well. > In summary I was impressed with OpenBSD and its ability to breathe new life into this old Apple Mac. I'm genuinely excited about the idea of trying BSD with other devices on my network such as an old Asus Eee PC 900 netbook and at least one of the many Raspberry Pi devices I use. Whether I go the whole hog and replace Fedora on my main production laptop though remains to be seen! The template user with PAM and login(1) (http://oshogbo.vexillium.org/blog/48) > When you build a new service (or an appliance) you need your users to be able to configure it from the command line. To accomplish this you can create system accounts for all registered users in your service and assign them a special login shell which provides such limited functionality. This can be painful if you have a dynamic user database. > Another challenge is authentication via remote services such as RADIUS. How can we implement services when we authenticate through it and log into it as a different user? Furthermore, imagine a scenario when RADIUS decides on which account we have the right to access by sending an additional attribute. > To address these two problems we can use a "template" user. Any of the PAM modules can set the value of the PAM_USER item. The value of this item will be used to determine which account we want to login. Only the "template" user must exist on the local password database, but the credential check can be omitted by the module. > This functionality exists in the login(1) used by FreeBSD, HardenedBSD, DragonFlyBSD and illumos. The functionality doesn't exist in the login(1) used in NetBSD, and OpenBSD doesn't support PAM modules at all. In addition what is also noteworthy is that such functionality was also in the OpenSSH but they decided to remove it and call it a security vulnerability (CVE 2015-6563). I can see how some people may have seen it that way, that’s why I recommend reading this article from an OpenPAM author and a FreeBSD security officer at the time. > Knowing the background let's take a look at an example. ```PAMEXTERN int pamsmauthenticate(pamhandlet *pamh, int flags _unused, int argc _unused, const char *argv[] _unused) { const char *user, *password; int err; err = pam_get_user(pamh, &user, NULL); if (err != PAM_SUCCESS) return (err); err = pam_get_authtok(pamh, PAM_AUTHTOK, &password, NULL); if (err == PAM_CONV_ERR) return (err); if (err != PAM_SUCCESS) return (PAM_AUTH_ERR); err = authenticate(user, password); if (err != PAM_SUCCESS) { return (err); } return (pam_set_item(pamh, PAM_USER, "template")); } In the listing above we have an example of a PAM module. The pamgetuser(3) provides a username. The pamgetauthtok(3) shows us a secret given by the user. Both functions allow us to give an optional prompt which should be shown to the user. The authenticate function is our crafted function which authenticates the user. In our first scenario we wanted to keep all users in an external database. If authentication is successful we then switch to a template user which has a shell set up for a script allowing us to configure the machine. In our second scenario the authenticate function authenticates the user in RADIUS. Another step is to add our PAM module to the /etc/pam.d/system or to the /etc/pam.d/login configuration: auth sufficient pamtemplate.so nowarn allowlocal Unfortunately the description of all these options goes beyond this article - if you would like to know more about it you can find them in the PAM manual. The last thing we need to do is to add our template user to the system which you can do by the adduser(8) command or just simply modifying the /etc/master.passwd file and use pwdmkdb(8) program: $ tail -n /etc/master.passwd template::1000:1000::0:0:User &:/:/usr/local/bin/templatesh $ sudo pwdmkdb /etc/master.passwd As you can see,the template user can be locked and we still can use it in our PAM module (the * character after login). I would like to thank Dag-Erling Smørgrav for pointing this functionality out to me when I was looking for it some time ago. iXsystems iXsystems @ VMWorld ###ZFS file server What is the need? At work, we run a compute cluster that uses an Isilon cluster as primary NAS storage. Excluding snapshots, we have about 200TB of research data, some of them in compressed formats, and others not. We needed an offsite backup file server that would constantly mirror our primary NAS and serve as a quick recovery source in case of a data loss in the the primary NAS. This offsite file server would be passive - will never face the wrath of the primary cluster workload. In addition to the role of a passive backup server, this solution would take on some passive report generation workloads as an ideal way of offloading some work from the primary NAS. The passive work is read-only. The backup server would keep snapshots in a best effort basis dating back to 10 years. However, this data on this backup server would be archived to tapes periodically. A simple guidance of priorities: Data integrity > Cost of solution > Storage capacity > Performance. Why not enterprise NAS? NetApp FAS or EMC Isilon or the like? We decided that enterprise grade NAS like NetAPP FAS or EMC Isilon are prohibitively expensive and an overkill for our needs. An open source & cheaper alternative to enterprise grade filesystem with the level of durability we expect turned up to be ZFS. We’re already spoilt from using snapshots by a clever Copy-on-Write Filesystem(WAFL) by NetApp. ZFS providing snapshots in almost identical way was a big influence in the choice. This is also why we did not consider just a CentOS box with the default XFS filesystem. FreeBSD vs Debian for ZFS This is a backup server, a long-term solution. Stability and reliability are key requirements. ZFS on Linux may be popular at this time, but there is a lot of churn around its development, which means there is a higher probability of bugs like this to occur. We’re not looking for cutting edge features here. Perhaps, Linux would be considered in the future. FreeBSD + ZFS We already utilize FreeBSD and OpenBSD for infrastructure services and we have nothing but praises for the stability that the BSDs have provided us. We’d gladly use FreeBSD and OpenBSD wherever possible. Okay, ZFS, but why not FreeNAS? IMHO, FreeNAS provides a integrated GUI management tool over FreeBSD for a novice user to setup and configure FreeBSD, ZFS, Jails and many other features. But, this user facing abstraction adds an extra layer of complexity to maintain that is just not worth it in simpler use cases like ours. For someone that appreciates the commandline interface, and understands FreeBSD enough to administer it, plain FreeBSD + ZFS is simpler and more robust than FreeNAS. Specifications Lenovo SR630 Rackserver 2 X Intel Xeon silver 4110 CPUs 768 GB of DDR4 ECC 2666 MHz RAM 4 port SAS card configured in passthrough mode(JBOD) Intel network card with 10 Gb SFP+ ports 128GB M.2 SSD for use as boot drive 2 X HGST 4U60 JBOD 120(2 X 60) X 10TB SAS disks ###Reflection on one-year usage of OpenBSD I have used OpenBSD for more than one year, and it is time to give a summary of the experience: (1) What do I get from OpenBSD? a) A good UNIX tutorial. When I am curious about some UNIXcommands’ implementation, I will refer to OpenBSD source code, and I actually gain something every time. E.g., refresh socket programming skills from nc; know how to process file efficiently from cat. b) A better test bed. Although my work focus on developing programs on Linux, I will try to compile and run applications on OpenBSD if it is possible. One reason is OpenBSD usually gives more helpful warnings. E.g., hint like this: ...... warning: sprintf() is often misused, please use snprintf() ...... Or you can refer this post which I wrote before. The other is sometimes program run well on Linux may crash on OpenBSD, and OpenBSD can help you find hidden bugs. c) Some handy tools. E.g. I find tcpbench is useful, so I ported it into Linux for my own usage (project is here). (2) What I give back to OpenBSD? a) Patches. Although most of them are trivial modifications, they are still my contributions. b) Write blog posts to share experience about using OpenBSD. c) Develop programs for OpenBSD/BSD: lscpu and free. d) Porting programs into OpenBSD: E.g., I find google/benchmark is a nifty tool, but lacks OpenBSD support, I submitted PR and it is accepted. So you can use google/benchmark on OpenBSD now. Generally speaking, the time invested on OpenBSD is rewarding. If you are still hesitating, why not give a shot? ##Beastie Bits BSD Users Stockholm Meetup BSDCan 2018 Playlist OPNsense 18.7 released Testing TrueOS (FreeBSD derivative) on real hardware ThinkPad T410 Kernel Hacker Wanted! Replace a pair of 8-bit writes to VGA memory with a single 16-bit write Reduce taskq and context-switch cost of zio pipe Proposed FreeBSD Memory Management change, expected to improve ZFS ARC interactions Tarsnap ##Feedback/Questions Anian_Z - Question Robert - Pool question Lain - Congratulations Thomas - L2arc Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv

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A050 - Dirty Dan [Spanky's Wine Bar]

Alkaline

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 13, 2018 159:21

Dirty Dan of the famous Spanky's Wine Bar compiles a very special episode 50 for us. I had the chance to sit down with Dan and do the very first Alkaline interview! Check out the stellar mix and an amazing conversation to follow. Thank you all for you support and heres to another 50 episodes. Tracklist 1. Mutant Disco feat. Maars (org.) - Maceo Plex 2. Roots feat. Ella (acapella) Dirty Dan Edit - Mattei & Omich 3. Voices (org.) - Monki 4. Machine (N- Telekia Mix) - Superchip 5. Save The Children (David Mayer Remix) - Zakir 6. personal Slave feat. Charles McCloud (Harry Romero Mix) - Honey Dijon 7. Rolling (org.) - Fernando Messa 8. Star People (org.) Andre Butano, Aldo Cadiz 8. Dancin Machine (org.) - Pornbugs 9. Hands Up (acapella) Dirty Dan Edit - Eli Escobar 10. Heater (org.) - Franky Rizardo 11. Speechless feat. Carl Craig, La Scalars (Gesaffelstien Mix) - Agoria 12. Body Jack Get My Swerve On (Franky Rizardo Mix) - Max Chapman 13. Trip (org.) - James Dexter 14. Barbero (org.) Cassim 15. Ruckus feat. Richard Judge (Amine Edge & Dance Mix) - Tube & Burger , Richard Judge 16. Funky Spaceship (org.) - Junior Sanchez , Gene Farris 17. For It (org.) - Dalfie 18. This Is House (This is House-a-pella) Dirty Dan Edit - John Julius Knight, Roland Clark 19. Crazy Pee (org.) - Alex Kennon 20. iris Stan ( Eli Brown Mix) - Pirate Copy, Rion S 21. I have been a shit (Tube & Burger Mix) - Ante Perry, Maxim Lany 22. Ocean Drive (org.) - Danny Serano 23. Wild Child (org.) - Alex Kennon 24. Restare Andare` (Black Spuma Remix) - Cristalli Liquidi 25. Poison Lips (extended) - Vitalic Listen on iTunes, SoundCloud or TuneIn Radio Follow on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter #AlkalinePodcast #BurnerPodcast #BurningMan

Wills & Snyder: Wind Turbines On Lake Erie - Those That are For It

Cleveland's Morning News with Wills and Snyder

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2018 8:37

Bill Wills talked the idea of wind turbines on Lake Erie. Those "For It" - Lorry Wagner, Ph.D. President - Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LEEDCo). http://www.leedco.org/

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Ep2: Is You Paying for It

Out Of Bounds

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 20, 2018 70:32

Is You paying For It! This episode im with my man Rell shooting the shit talkin bout everything from XXX death to sports To our main topic Paying for Sex! sit back relax get a drink or dutch and listen to the real!!!!

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Episode 65 (Acts 2:1-41)

30 Minutes In The New Testament

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2018 32:24

Daniel and Erick are in the same room for this episode. The Holy Spirit comes and the Apostles start preaching in languages they don't know. What is going on here? Who killed Jesus? What is Peter's response to those looking to be saved? Who and what is baptism FOR? It's a good time live. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network CHF North Dakoda

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56 – Hamilton: One Year Anniversary Episode

We Really Like Musicals

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2018

Episode 56 – Hamilton. Well guys, we did it! We’ve been doing this podcast for a year now, and we had some of our best friends join us to talk about Hamilton. In this episode we rap (or try to), we reveal a new song for our “Rate” For It segment, and a special guest … More 56 – Hamilton: One Year Anniversary Episode

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Podcast #71: In Search of the Magic Pill

No More Excuses: Monday Motivation podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2017 10:32

WELCOME BACK LISTENERS! Or... WELCOME if this is your first time listening! This is the weekly podcast NO MORE EXCUSES! I appreciate you being here, for SHARING - yes SHARE my podcast, as you never know who needs to hear what I have to say! :) And, you'll be helping me. Please! This week I got a bit more of ME back. Yep, I shined up my pointy shoes and dusted off the 'ol whip as I found my EDGE again. And, well the theme here is NO MORE EXCUSES right? So, what's yours? Last week's podcast was about GETTING SHIT DONE! With NO more excuses. So, what did you do to help YOU? If you have NOT yet listened, please do so (podcast 70) and then email me to let me know what you HAVE done. OR... are you still looking for it? The "easy way"? For "IT" to come to YOU? For the MAGICAL ANSWER. That one thing that makes everything seem to fall into place. That special MAGIC PILL? It's out there... but where?! In this week's podcast I talk about the "Web-Md'ers! Those of you (well, ok we have ALL done it at some point in our life), who search The Google for an answer! Your "self-diagnosis" as to WHY you haven't made any progress. Achieved any goals. Why you feel and think the way you do. Listen in this week and tell me (email me) what you've found that "sounds like you". That gives you that feeling that you're not alone. And then tell me what advice you were given to "cure yourself". Do you need to be cured? So you found out "why you are like you are"... so what now? I look forward to hearing from you! And thank you again for sharing this podcast! Have a great week! Cheers! Sandi

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115 Spider Goat Games - Dark Web

Legends of Tabletop Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 20, 2017 52:22

I'll be talking with Jonathan Ruland from Spider Goat Games about their current Kickstarter Dark Web. Featuring retro ASCII art, Dark Web is a card game of computer hacking in the 1990s. A small band of freedom fighting hackers team up to take down an evil corporation, and they meet anonymously over computer networks to conceal their identities. But there's a problem -- one of them might be working for the corporation! The goal of the game is to search the servers and download enough data files to expose the corporation's nefarious plans. But be wary of searching too deep as security software may kick in, lock you out of the servers, and you will lose all the data you've found! For IT players, do whatever it takes to stop the hackers--lie about your cards, play disruptive scripts, and undermine their plans. But be careful of revealing yourself too early as once you do, the hackers will work around you! Playing time: 30 minutes Player count: 3-5 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1467733339/dark-web-a-game-of-computer-hacking-and-corporate http://www.spidergoatgames.com/ https://www.facebook.com/SpiderGoatGames/ https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepublisher/28263/spider-goat-games https://twitter.com/SpiderGoatGames Theme music created by Brett Miller http://www.brettmillermusic.net/ https://www.birdscoffeecompany.com/ Use Code Legends10 to get 10% off your order! https://beta.podchaser.com/ Use code legendsoftabletop for access and consider leaving us a review

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Christina Morillo, Enterprise Information Security Expert

Inside Out Security

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 18, 2017 28:31

If you want to be an infosec guru, there are no shortcuts to the top. And enterprise information security expert, Christina Morillo knows exactly what that means. When she worked at the help desk, she explained technical jargon to non-technical users. As a system administrator, Christina organized and managed AD, met compliance regulations, and completed entitlement reviews. Also, as a security architect, she developed a comprehensive enterprise information security program. And if you need someone to successfully manage an organization’s risk, Christina can do that as well. In our interview, Christina Morillo revealed the technical certificates that helped jumpstart her infosec career, described work highlights, and shared her efforts in bringing a more accurate representation of women of color in tech through stock images. Transcript Cindy Ng: Christina Morillo has been in the security space long before automation and actual data became the industry's "it" word. She has been helping organizations advance their infosec and insider threat programs through her deep technical expertise in centralizing disparate systems, strengthening and automating tasks, as well as translating complex issues between the business and IT stakeholders. In our interview, Christina highlights hallmarks in her career, turning points in the industry, and how she worked her way to the top. Cindy Ng So, you've been in the security space for almost 20 years, and you've seen the field transform into something that people didn't really know about. Into something that people see almost regularly on the front page news. And I wanted to go back in time and for you to tell us how you got started in the security business. Christina Morillo: So, I actually got started in the technology industry about 18 years ago, and out of that, in security, I've been like 11 to 12 years. But I pretty much got started from the ground up while I was attending university. I actually got a job doing technical support for, at the time, compaq computers. So that's like I'm aging myself right there. But back when compaq computers were really popular, I worked for a call center, and we did 24-hour technical support. And that's where I kind of learned all of my troubleshooting skills, and being able to kind of walk someone through restarting their computer, installing an update, installing a patch, being able to articulate technical jargon, in a nontechnical format. Then from there, I moved on to doing more desktop support. I wanted to get away from the call center environment, I wanted to get away from that, and be in, like, an enterprise environment where I was the support person, so I could get that user interaction. So that's where my journey started. It feels like yesterday, but it's been a long time. Cindy Ng It goes by quickly, and how did you get started at Swiss Re? Christina Morillo: When I came back home from university, I am originally from New York City, I was looking for work. And I wanted to really get into financial services, doing IT within the financial services industry because I knew that would be a good strategic move for my professional career. I bumped into this recruiter, and he told me about a position at Swiss Re within their capital management investment division. And so I gave it a go even though I didn't have the experience. You know, I took a shot. And they really liked the fact that I had prior experience with active directory and networking. And since I was very much hands-on and I had just taken some Microsoft certifications, so I was like really into it. So I was able to answer the questions really efficiently, and they liked me, so they gave me the shot. That's what started me into the world of information security, and identity, and access management, and access control. I learned all my "manual foundation" I'll call it, manual fundamentals, at Swiss Re. Cindy Ng Would you say that your deep understanding of AD was an important part of your career? Christina Morillo: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Cindy Ng And what do most sysadmins get wrong when it comes to their understanding of AD? Christina Morillo: There is a lot to do with the whole permissioning and file structure. A lot of times people don't really go into the differences between share permissions and NTFS permissions. And it can get really complex really fast. Especially when you're learning in school, you create your environment, right? So it's very clean. But when you start at a company, you're looking at years of buildup. So you go into these environments where it's nowhere near what you learned at school. So you're just like, oh my goodness. And it becomes really overwhelming very quickly. I think it's, like, not having that deep understanding and deep knowledge, and just kind of taking short routes. Because we're very busy during the day, and there's a lot to do, right? Especially for sysadmins. They have a lot on their plates. So I think a lot of times it's like, okay, use your own backlist. Just throw them in whatever group, we'll fix it later. And later never comes. I don't fault them, but I just think that we need to be a little bit more diligent with understanding structures and fundamentals. Cindy Ng How did you spend time figuring out how to restructure a certain group, if that was an important part in your job? In your team? Christina Morillo: Yeah. Of course, absolutely. I always want to because it makes my life easier. But, you know, you're not always able to. And that's because, like I said, it's so complex, and there's so many layers that peeling these layers back will cause chaos. So sometimes you have to prioritize. And just from like a business perspective you have to prioritize. You know, is this something that we can do gradually or look at setting up as a project and completing it in phases, or is it high-priority, right? And so, the first thing I do is I talk to whoever owns the group or let's say whatever specific department, like finance. So who approved access to this group? So I like to kind of determine that. And then work my way backwards. So, okay, if this is the owner of the group, then I like to say, "Who should get access to this group?" What kind of access do they need to this group? Do they need read-only access, or do they need modify access?" And then go from there. And who should be the initial members of the group? And a lot of times its a matter of having to recreate the group. So create a fresh group, add the individual users, read-write or modify, or read-only, and then migrate them into the group, and then delete the old group. Which that part can take time because you don't know what you're touching. A lot of times people like to permission groups at different levels where they don't belong. The worst thing that can happen is you can cause an outage and you never really want that. Kind of investigating and using tools like DatAdvantage to help with the investigations to better understand what you're doing before you do it. So it's a process. I mean, I wouldn't say it's something easy. That's why, a lot of times, it's put on the back burner. But, you know, I feel like it's something that has to be done. Cindy Ng Your next role which was at Alliance Bernstein? Christina Morillo: So at Alliance Bernstein, that was a short-term contract. That was part of their incident response & security team. 50% of the time I was handling tickets, and, you know, approving out FTP access, and approving firewall access, and checking out scans or anti-virus scans, and making sure that our AV was up to date, and doing all that stuff. And then the other 50% was working on identity management and, like, onboarding applications into the system and testing. And then training the team that would handle day to day support. So it's like a level two, level three. And then defining the processes. You know, onboarding the applications, defining the processes, writing the documentation, and then handing over to the support team to take over from there. So it was a lot of conversation with stakeholders, application owners, and I really appreciated being able to be a part of those processes. That's why I started seeing more of the automation. I mean, at Swiss Re, we were very much manual for the first couple of years. Which was fantastic because, you know, although it was a pain, it was fantastic because I got to understand how to do things if the system was down. It gave me that understanding of like 'Oh, I know how to generate a manual report.' So when it came time to automate, I was like, 'Oh. Okay, this is nothing. I understand the workflow,' right? I can create a workflow quickly, or I can... I understand what we need, right? And it also helps when people are just like, "That's gonna take four days." I'm like, "Absolutely not. That's going to take you 45 minutes." So it was a great experience. Cindy Ng Would you ever buffer in time if systems went down? I'm thinking about something like ransomware. Christina Morillo: Thankfully, that never happened while I was at these companies. That never happened. And since it didn't hit my team, I think I've always been more on the preventative rather than being on the reactive side. A lot of times you did have to react to different situations or work in tandem with other teams, but I'm really into, like, preventative. Like, how can we minimize risk? How can we prevent this from happening? Kind of thinking out of the box that way. You have to not be an optimistic person. Like, you have to be like, well, this can happen if we leave that open. Right? And it's not even meant to sound negative, but it's almost like you have to have that approach because you have to understand what adversaries and hackers, how do they think? What would I want to do? Right? Like, if I see a door unlocked. It's almost like you're on the edge and you have to think that way, and you have to look at problems a little bit differently because, in business, you don't rank, you just want to do their work. Cindy Ng Did you develop that skill naturally, or was it innate, or did you realize, 'Oh my God, I need to start thinking a certain way'? The business isn't gonna care about it. That's why you're responsible for it. Christina Morillo: I think I've always had that skill set, but I think that I developed it more throughout my career. Like, added strength in that skill throughout my career. Because when you're starting, especially with network administration and sysadmin stuff, you have to be the problem solver. So you have to be on the lookout for problems. Because that's, like, your job, right? So there's a problem, you fix it. There's a problem, you fix it. So, a lot of times, just to make your job a little bit easier, you have to almost have to anticipate a problem. You have to say, 'Oh, if that window's open and if it rains, the water's gonna get in. So let's close the window before it rains!' It sounds intuitive, but a lot of times people just don't think that far ahead. I think it's just a matter of the longer I remain in the industry, the more I see things changing. And then you just have to evolve. So you always have to think about being one or two steps ahead, when you can. And I think that skill set comes with time. You just have to prepare. And also, like, the more you know... Like, I'm very big on education and training and learning even if it's not specific to my job. I feel like it helps broaden my perspective. And it helps me with whatever work I'm doing. I'm always taking either, like, a Javascript class or some class, or just like a fun in web development class. I've been looking for a Python class. Like, I did a technical cert, like boot camp. Like, I'm preparing for a cert. But it's a lot. But I also take ad-hoc stuff. Like I'll take a calligraphy class, just to kind of balance it out. You know I'll go to different talks at the 92nd Street Y. Whether it's technology related or just, like, futurism related, or just innovation related. Or something completely different. Cindy Ng I've read your harrowing story about taking a class at General Assembly with having kids and a husband. Oh my God, you are so amazing. It's so inspiring. Christina Morillo: Definitely hard. But, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. And it's a problem because when you become a parent, it doesn't mean that you lose your ambition. It just kind of goes on a temporary hold. But then you when you remember, you're like 'Oh, wait a minute. No. I have to get back to it.' Cindy Ng So let's talk about Fitch Ratings. That role is really interesting. Christina Morillo: Yeah, yeah. Thus far, it's been one of my favorites. Because, at Fitch, I was actually able to deploy an identity and access management platform. So, on nothing to create something completely new and just deploy it globally, right? So what that means is that I changed the HR onboarding process and offboarding process. So, like, how new-hires are added to the system. How people that are terminated are removed from the system. How employees request access to different applications. How managers approve. How authorizers approve the entire workflow. So that was amazing. Basically, when I started, they wanted to go from pretty decentralized to a centralized model to purchase this out of the box application. They had a lot of transitions, so they needed someone to come in and own the application and say, like, "Okay, but let me implement it." It was just on a like a development server, not fully configured. So, my job was to come in, look at the use-cases, look at what they needed. At least initially. What needed to happen? How did they need to use this application? Then I needed to understand the business processes. Current things, or how do they perform this work today? Like, does the help desk do it? Does a developer give access to a specific application that they manage? What are they developed for? What happens now? So I took time to understand all of the processes. Right? Like, I spoke to everyone. I spoke to HR. I spoke to finance. I spoke to legal. I spoke to compliance. I spoke to the help desk. I spoke to network administration. I spoke to application developers. To compile all of that information in order to better create the use-cases and the workflows, and to kind of flesh them out. Then what I did is I started building and automating these processes in that tool, on that platform. My boss gave me... He said, "Oh, I'll give you like a year." And I was like, "Okay. Fine." But, I guess, once I got into like the thick of things, I got like really aggressive, and I really was hard with the vendor. Because I was a team of one. You know, I had support from our internal app team, and network administration team, and the sysadmins. But I completely owned the process, and owned the applications, and owned building it out. So I rode the vendor like crazy just to get this done, and understand, and just to look at it from top-bottom, bottom-to-top. And we were able to deploy it in five months. You know, I got them from sending emails and creating help desk tickets, to fully automated system, onboarding, offboarding, and requesting entitlements. But more importantly, I was able to get people on board. Because that's one of the other big things that you don't really discuss. A lot of times we got a lot of pushback. While what we do is extremely important, especially in security, and sometimes we're not the ones that are the most liked. People are afraid, right? So it's also about developing new relationships with your constituents, with the users, right? And helping them understand that you're not trying to make their lives miserable, you're just getting them on board. I think that also takes skill. It takes finesse. It takes being able to speak to people, relate to people. And also, it takes being able to listen at scale. Right? So you have to listen to understand. You know, I think if a lot of us did more listening and less talking, we would definitely understand where people are coming from and be able to kind of come up with solutions. I mean, you're not always gonna make people happy. Maybe some of the time. Not all of the time. But at least you've communicated, and they can respect you for that. Right? So I was able to get pretty much the entire company on board. And to welcome this tool that they had heard about for so long. And they weren't hesitant. To the point where I couldn't get them to leave me alone about it. Cindy Ng You were able to help them realize that you're still able to do your work, but to do it securely. Christina Morillo: And better. Cindy Ng When you say scared and concerned, what were they worried about? Christina Morillo: When you say the word "automation," the main worry is that people are gonna lose their jobs. When someone says, "Oh, I heard that the tool will allow you to onboard a user.' People won't need to call the help desk anymore for that or won't need help with that. Then you're taking away like a piece or a portion of their work that may affect their productivity. And if it affects their productivity, it will affect the money that the team or the department gets. If that happens, then, obviously, we don't need ten help desk people. We only need five. Right? So, pretty much, it's like fear of losing their jobs or fear that they're becoming obsolete. So that's usually the biggest one. And also when there's, like, a new person coming in asking you how do you do your work, what is the process, that's kind of scary. "Why do you want to know? Are you taking over? Are you trying to take away my work?" You're always going to get push back. I think that's part of the job, especially when you're in security. You're just always going to. And, you know, people fear what they don't understand. So that's part of it too. Cindy Ng Let's talk about Morgan Stanley now. So at this point, you're at a really more strategic level where you're really helping entire teams managing risk? Christina Morillo: Yeah. So while I was at Fitch and, you know, while I loved it, it became more of a sysadmin type of role. So I decided to begin looking for my next opportunity. And Morgan Stanley came up with that summer. And I looked at it as, well, this is a great opportunity for me to be at a more strategic level and understand, become a middleman, right? Almost like a business analyst where I'm understanding what the business needs and the kind of liaising on the technology side. So I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to hone that skill set on the business side and look at values opposition. But also because of my technical background, I'll be able to communicate with and get things done on the tech side. So that was amazing. I mean, I learned a lot about how the business and IT engage. What's important, and how to present certain, I guess, calls for action. Like, if you need something done, like, oh, you implement a new DLP solution. Are you solving a problem for the business or are you solving a problem for technology? Understanding the goal. Understanding your approach. And looking at things two ways. Looking at how to resolve a problem tactically. How can we resolve this issue today? And then what is the strategic or long-term solution? So a lot of business-speak, a lot of how to present. I think I would almost equate it to... My time at Morgan Stanley... And I'm no longer at Morgan Stanley, actually. But my time at Morgan Stanley I equated to getting a mini-MBA because it really prepared me and allowed me to think differently. I think, you know, when you're in technology you tend to stay in your tech cocoon. And that's all you want to do and talk about. But understanding how others think about it, even how project managers engage with a business. The business is just thinking about risk, and how to minimize risk, and how they can do their jobs and make money. Because, at the end of the day, that's what the goal is, right? Yeah, it allowed me to understand that. Whereas normally, on the tech side, I never really had to deal with that or face it. So I didn't think about it. But at Morgan, you have to think about it, and you have to create solutions around it. Cindy Ng Also, IT’s often seen as, a cost center rather a money generator. Christina Morillo: I've always had an issue with that. Even though IT, like, we're seen as a cost center, without us... And I'm biased, obviously... But I feel like without us, you wouldn't be able to function. At the end of they day, are we generating money? I think so. But then it goes into that whole chicken or the egg thing. But that's my argument, and I guess I'm biased. I've always been in IT, right? Cindy Ng What's most important to business? Is it always about the bottom line? For IT people, its always about security and minimizing risk. Christina Morillo: It is about the bottom line. There are many avenues to get to there more efficiently, or just a little bit smarter. It's like working smarter. But I think one of the ways is by listening at scale. Just like if you're starting a company, you're providing a service, you need to understand who your target market is, right? You need to understand what they want and why they want it. And that's how you know what service you can provide or how you can tailor your needs to them. Why? Because then they will buy it from you, or they will seek services from you. And what does that mean? That means you get to collect that money. And sometimes you need, like, a neutral group. You know? Like a working group. I realized they have a lot of working groups. So a lot of discussion. Sometimes that can be good and bad, but I see it as more of a positive thing. And the reason why is because you need to be able to hear from both sides, right? Both sides need to be able to express themselves, and everyone needs to be one the same page or get to that same page somehow. You need to understand what I need as a business user. I need to be able to book a trade, or I need to be able to do this, and I need to do it in this amount of time. Now how can you help me? And then the IT person, or the security person, whoever needs to be able to say, "Okay. Well, this is what I can do, this is what I cannot do right now. But maybe this is what I can do in the future." Again, it goes back to that we are problem solvers. So we're all about solutions and how to keep the business afloat and keep the business running and operating. That's our job. We're not there to say we have to do it this way. That's not what we're there for. So I think it's also understanding what role everyone plays, and understanding that we all have to kind of like work together to get to that common goal. Let's say we have a working group about implementing Varonis DataPrivilege globally, right? So then you have stakeholders from every department, or every department that it would touch. So if that means if that the security team is going to be involved, we have a representative from the security team. If that means that the project management who's managing the project is gonna be involved, we have someone from that team. So you pretty much have a representative from each team that it will affect. Including the business, at times, so that they're aware of what's going on. And then you have status updates on what's going on. What do we need? Where are the blocks and the blockers? And people get to speak, and people get to brainstorm, and you get to bring up problems, and what you need from the other team, what they need from you. And it just helps with getting projects moving and getting things going quickly and just more efficiently without anyone feeling like they weren't represented in the decision-making process. It also speaks to that as well. Cindy Ng Before our initial conversation, I had no idea that you used DatAdvantage. Christina Morillo: My last employer, they used DatAdvantage, and were also implementing portions of DataPrivilege. The company before that, Fitch, we used DatAdvantage heavily. So, like, recording. You know, it's been a couple of years, so I don't know if they still use the tool. But I know when I was there, I actually used it for reporting purposes, and to help me generate reports, and just do, like, investigations, and other rule-based stuff. Cindy Ng Was it helpful for, like, SOX compliance? Christina Morillo: Yeah. Yeah, especially when whether it was internal or external audits, we always got the call. Like, "Can you come and give me access to this group on such and such date?" or, "Can you come and get this removed?" or, "Can you tell me this?" Just weird ad-hoc requests. That makes sense, right? But at the time, you're like, 'Why did you need this?' Being able to kinda quickly generate the report was, like, super helpful. Cindy Ng And finally, I love what you do with the Women of Color in Tech chat. Christina Morillo: Yeah, yeah. A friend of mine, Stephanie Morillo...no relation, just same last name...but we both work in tech. And in 2015, we decided to co-found a grassroots initiative to help other women of color, and non-binary folks and just under-represented people in technology to have a voice, a community. We started off as Twitter chats. So we would have weekly, bi-weekly Twitter chats. Just have conversations, conversations with the community. And then we started getting contacted by different organizations. So they wanted to sponsor some of our community members to attend conferences, and just different discussions and meetups and events. So we started to do that. We also did, like, a monthly job newsletter, where companies, like Twitter and Google, they contacted us. Then we worked with them. We kind of posted different positions they were recruiting for and shared it directly with our community. And then, the thing we're most known for is the Women of Color in Tech stock photos, which basically is a collection of open-source stock photos featuring women and non-binary folks of color who work in technology. So those photos, the goal was to give them out for free, open-source them, so people that can have better imagery, right? Because we felt that that representation mattered. The way that that came about was when I was building the landing page for the initiative, I realized that I couldn't find any photos of women who like me who work in technology. And it made me really upset. Right? And so that activated... I feel like that anger activated something within me, and maybe it came as a rant. Like, I was just, like, "Okay, Getty, don't you have photos of women in tech who look like me?" Why is every... Whether white or Asian or whoever... Why is any... And I see a woman with a computer or an iPad, it looks like she's playing around with it. Those are the pictures that I was seeing. This is not what I do. This is not what I've done. So I just felt like I wasn't represented. And then if I wasn't represented, countless of other folks weren't as well. I spoke to a photographer friend of mine who also works in tech. And he started like his side passion stuff. So he agreed, and we just kind of started out. I mean, we went with the flow. It turned out amazing. And we released the photos. We open sourced them, and we got a lot of interest, a lot of feedback, a lot of features, a lot of reporting on it. And we decided to go for another two rounds. You know, a lot of companies we talked to were like, "We want to be a part of this. This is amazing. How can we support you?" So a lot of great organizations. If you look at the site, you see of those organizations that sponsored the last two photo shoots. We released the collection of over 500 photos. And we've seen them everywhere, from Forbes, Wall Street Journal. It's like I've seen them everywhere. They're just, like, all over the web. Some of our tech models have gotten jobs because they started conversations. Like, "Wait, weren't you in the Women of Color in Tech photos?" "Yeah, that's me!" Whatever. Some people have gotten stopped, like, "Wait a minute, you're in this photo." Or they get tags. They've been used at conferences. Some organizations are now using them as part of their landing pages. They're like all over the place. And that was the goal. But it really, you know, makes us really happy. But just seeing photos all over the place, and the fact that people recognize that those are our photos, it was just amazing. We actually open sourced our process as well. We released an article that spoke about how we got sponsors, what we did, in hopes that other people, other organizations would also get inspired and replicate the stock photos. But we also get inquiries about, you know, "Are you gonna have another one? Can you guys have another one?" So it's up in the air. I'm debating it. Maybe.

Back to Life Podcast S05E04

Back to Life Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 17, 2017

The guys are all back together in the Back to Life Podcave for a round of “For It, Or Against It”. Other topics include “Logan”, “Kong: Skull Island”, Dan’s haircut, and St. Patrick’s Day plans. MUSIC Sammy: The Replacements “Kids Don’t Follow” Dan: The Cure “Love Song” Break: Hey Saturday Sun “Dream Girl (Feat. Mon)” [...]

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Episode 35

Broome Anglican Church Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 3, 2014 22:55

Matthew 13 - 20 This is a critical passage we look at today. For It talks about something that will disqualify you from God's kingdom. Look at v20. Unless... You will never... Not just about being in the kingdom; but about entering. This is what excludes you. But how do we enter the kingdom?

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Half The World Away #9 - Season Review

Hail Hail Media

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2013 150:14

Kev & Pat are joined tonight by Maryhill's finest and now Melbourne based, Martin Kelly (@melbbhoy). We talk about Heineken, as well as an in-depth overview of the 2012/13 season, Heineken, Johnny Russell, tifos and Heineken. Everyone involved in the HTWA podcast support the Kano Foundation's "For It's a GRAND old team to see" campaign. Please support them if you can. http://www.hailhailmedia.com/a-grand-old-team-to-see-with-the-kano-foundation/

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Soul Testified (Jazzy Instrumental)

RaceRellish Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2012 4:49

in with a case of Out~takes from a space moment thru The inner path of Race... Rellish the moment of ones Soul as U Testifiy to Justify Ur Feelings... Race 2 It... For It only Cums when it wants to... And where this is from... I do not know.. Not so sure just where it goes.. Im certain I will catch it later... It always returns to its Original Creator! Like a Turtle born in a distant sand.. It Never forgets this HomeLand... It leaves without question on the quest to sure learn greater.. Not knowing its destany will means its return Later! Rellish ;)

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AlignIT Manager Tech Talk: Straight Talk About Windows Azure

AlignIT Manager Tech Talk (MP4) - Channel 9

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2011 29:34

By now, you've heard the term "Cloud", but what does it actually mean to your developers and architects, your IT staff, and your organization. For developers and architects, the Cloud is a flexible and familiar environment to easily create and host applications that can have nearly infinite scale. For IT staff, the Cloud means on-demand computing with the right infrastructure to host, scale, and manage all your services with ease and speed. For your organization, it means being always available and being global while cutting down on maintenance and operational overhead costs by paying for a service.But at the end of the day, what does that all mean? How do you transition from the way things are today to a Cloud model? In this episode of AlignIT Manager Tech Talk, Ruth Morton and Jonathan Rozenblit sit down with Joel Varty, Director of Research and Development at Agility CMS in Toronto, Ontario, and talk about moving to the Cloud. The discussion focuses around the business problems Windows Azure can solve, the opportunities that can arise, and what it takes to transition developers, architects, and IT staff from traditional application development to the Cloud. Joel shares how he worked with his team to get up to speed on Cloud development and their strategy for moving applications to the Cloud.ResourcesCloud Optimization - Expanding Capabilities, while Aligning Computing and Business NeedsFor many applications, the cloud is an ideal solution. For others, moving parts of an application's architecture to the cloud is preferable. To determine which applications are likely to derive the greatest benefit from cloud computing, organizations will want to explore a number of considerations. Delivering a New Kind of Business Value Using the CloudCloud computing with Windows Azure means that your developers can deliver a new kind of value to your business. Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Server and Tools division, talks about the new world of development and how to get started building Cloud applications today. Strategy and Training as Pre-Requisites to Cloud Development"Developing for the Cloud" seems to be the phrase these days. You see and read about it everywhere, and as such, many will just jump right in. To ensure the success of your organization's journey to the Cloud, you need to take a step back and tackle two very important things first - your cloud strategy and training plans. AlignIT Manager Tech Talk PodcastThis episode is also available as a podcast.Listen Now | Download as MP3Want more IT manager audio podcasts? Subscribe to the Align IT: IT Manager Podcast Series >>About AlignITThe Align IT program is dedicated to keeping IT leaders informed about what really matters in business and technology. We do that through in-person events, web casts, our blog and of course, this Manager Tech Talk series. You can find more information about the Align IT program at www.alignit.ca.Comments, suggestions and ideas for future topics can be left below as a comment or emailed directly to the Align IT program feedback alias at alignit@microsoft.com.

Virtualizing the Application: How Thinstall Streamlines Deployment and Support

VMware - A Connected Social Media Showcase

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2008

For IT professionals responsible for introducing applications into an enterprise, compatibility testing can often be a daunting exercise. You must not only test every known OS version against the application, but you also need to[

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The Pied Piper CIO

CIO Talk Network Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 14, 2007 55:24

For IT to be truly successful at delivering value, the non-IT members of an organization must know and trust IT enough to adopt the positive changes IT can foster. Just how effective are the various internal communications methods such asbrag emails, speeches, 'town hall' meetings, etc., currently being used to promote IT? Can we do better?

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Noel Anderson and Taroon Mandhana: WiFi in Windows Vista: A Peek Inside the Kimono

Black Hat Briefings, Las Vegas 2006 [Audio] Presentations from the security conference

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2006 58:29

"Windows Vista comes with redesigned support for WiFi (802.11 wireless). For those of us who live with a laptop in easy reach, it’s going to have an effect on our workday. For users there’s a new UI experience, helpful diagnostics and updated default behaviors. For IT pros who manage Windows clients, there’s improved management via Group Policy and Scripting. For sysadmins & geeks there’s a new command line interface. But behind these more obvious changes there’s a new software stack. A stack designed to be more secure, but also more open and extensible. This talk will take a deep dive into that stack, describe the various components and their interaction and show where developers can create code to modify and extend the client. Want to build a site survey tool, a wireless IDS, or hack your own driver? We’ll show where to plug in. We’ll describe in detail how the behavior of the wireless stack has changed from XP, explain the rational behind this, and show how this is reflected in the user experience. Finally we’ll look at how Microsoft tests WiFi in Windows Vista."

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Noel Anderson and Taroon Mandhana: WiFi in Windows Vista: A Peek Inside the Kimono

Black Hat Briefings, Las Vegas 2006 [Video] Presentations from the security conference

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2006 58:29

Windows Vista comes with redesigned support for WiFi (802.11 wireless). For those of us who live with a laptop in easy reach, it’s going to have an effect on our workday. For users there’s a new UI experience, helpful diagnostics and updated default behaviors. For IT pros who manage Windows clients, there’s improved management via Group Policy and Scripting. For sysadmins & geeks there’s a new command line interface. But behind these more obvious changes there’s a new software stack. A stack designed to be more secure, but also more open and extensible. This talk will take a deep dive into that stack, describe the various components and their interaction and show where developers can create code to modify and extend the client. Want to build a site survey tool, a wireless IDS, or hack your own driver? We’ll show where to plug in. We’ll describe in detail how the behavior of the wireless stack has changed from XP, explain the rational behind this, and show how this is reflected in the user experience. Finally we’ll look at how Microsoft tests WiFi in Windows Vista."

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Noel Anderson and Taroon Mandhana: WiFi in Windows Vista: A Peek Inside the Kimono

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