I started this blog in 2016, and I never advertise it. Partly this is because I don’t really care if people are reading it. Partly it’s because I’m concerned some of my views might controversial in the industry and I don’t want to blast them far and wide. When I started this blog, my goal […]
Author: ccie14023
The type A conundrum
An old theory of personality holds that people fall into two types–A and B. Put simply, Type A personalities are highly aggressive and competitive, whereas Type B are not. We all have seen this broad difference in personalities. Some people we encounter seem ready to walk over their own grandmothers to get ahead. Like all […]
It is the network
When I worked at the San Francisco Chronicle, I started a project to bring Internet connectivity to a number of sites that had only limited mainframe circuits. To do this I decided to get DSL lines and run IPSec over them, a relatively new way of doing things for the time. It was a lot […]
Can you spare a quarter?
I’ve been thinking about the corporate world, how it operates, and the effects of corporatism on our lives. If you’re a network engineer and think this is boring, pay attention. Corporate culture, the influence of Wall Street, and the rise of a non-skilled management class have direct impact on your work and personal life. The […]
Consulting Gigs
In my years in the corporate world, I’ve attended many corporate self-help type sessions on how to or increase leadership, creativity, and innovation. There are many young consultants who are starting their careers off helping us to develop new skills in these areas, so I thought I would provide some helpful tips to get started. […]
My first Ethernet Network and Router
I’ve mentioned in the past how my first job in IT (starting in 1995) was as a “systems administrator” for a small company in Marin County, California. The company designed and built museum exhibits, and its team of around 60 employees was split between fabricators, who built the exhibits, and office workers. Some of the […]
The problem of permanence
Some years ago, I worked for a company with a CEO who had a background in marketing. It was 2010, and he decided to use his marketing skills to launch a huge new campaign called “Mission 10”. Our goal: to become the next $10 billion company. At the time I think I revenue was less […]
The AWS Outage
I have to give AWS credit for posting a fairly detailed technical description of the cause of their recent outage. Many companies rely on crisis PR people to phrase vague and uninformative announcements that do little to inform customers and put their minds at ease. I must admit, having read the AWS post-mortem a couple […]
Automation gone wild
As I write this, a number of sites out on the Internet are down because of an outage at Amazon Web Services. Delta Airlines is suffering a major outage. On a personal note, my wife’s favorite radio app and my Lutron lighting system are not operating correctly. Of course, this outage is a reminder of […]
Technical Confusion
How often have you learned about a new technology, and couldn’t understand it? How many trainings and presentations have you sat through that left you in a mental fog? It amazes me how many technologies we are supposed to master in our industry, and how many we never do. Let me give an example. When […]