advice

2023

Car buying guide

4 September 2023·2180 words·11 mins

If you love to nerd out on just about anything, give it a try the next time you buy a car.

Open source contributions: Just do it

16 August 2023·1174 words·6 mins

Want to make a change in an open source project? Take the Nike approach and Just Do It. 👟

Engineering through layoffs

25 June 2023·1461 words·7 mins

Layoffs create traumatic times for many. Find ways to break through the frustration and pain. For those that stay, your ability to influence the business can grow. 🪴

Red flags

5 January 2023·1386 words·7 mins

Every job has its ups and downs, but when is it the right time to double down or the right time to leave? Make a list of red flags that help you decide. 🚩

2022

Amateur Guide to Running

6 November 2022·1314 words·7 mins

Running gets me outside and gives me a challenge where I can compete against myself. Here are my tips for becoming an amateur runner. 🎽

Strong impacts require soft skills

8 September 2022·814 words·4 mins

Success at work depends on more than your technical ability. Improve your soft skills to increase your impact. 💪

How I write blog posts

17 August 2022·744 words·4 mins

This feels very meta, but I thought it would be a good idea to share my blog post writing process anyway. 📝

Raise the bar with an SBAR

2 August 2022·1467 words·7 mins

Efficiently communicate a problem and your recommendation in record time with an SBAR. 📝

2021

Persuasion engineering

11 July 2021·2360 words·12 mins

Improve your persuasive skills to get your team on board with solutions to tough problems. 🤔

2016

Why should students learn to write code?

11 October 2016·990 words·5 mins

There are lots of efforts underway to get students (young and old) to learn to write code.

Preventing critical services from deploying on the same OpenStack host

9 August 2016·582 words·3 mins

OpenStack’s compute service, nova, manages all of the virtual machines within a OpenStack cloud.

Talk recap: The friendship of OpenStack and Ansible

29 June 2016·574 words·3 mins

The 2016 Red Hat Summit is underway in San Francisco this week and I delivered a talk with Robyn Bergeron earlier today.

Troubleshooting OpenStack network connectivity

17 May 2016·1145 words·6 mins

NOTE: This post is a work in progress.

Lessons learned: Five years of colocation

22 April 2016·1969 words·10 mins

Back in 2011, I decided to try out a new method for hosting my websites and other applications: colocation.

Fight cynicism with curiosity

17 February 2016·784 words·4 mins

I’m always interested to talk to college students about technology and business in general.

Nobody is using your software project. Now what?

15 January 2016·891 words·5 mins

Working with open source software is an amazing experience.

2015

Talking to college students about information security

10 November 2015·1437 words·7 mins

I was recently asked to talk to Computer Information Systems students at the University of the Incarnate Word here in San Antonio about information security in the business world.

Impostor syndrome talk: FAQs and follow-ups

2 September 2015·1084 words·6 mins

I’ve had a great time talking to people about my “Be an inspiration, not an impostor” talk that I delivered in August.

Fedora Flock 2015: Keynote slides

14 August 2015·85 words·1 min

Fedora Flock 2015 is still going here in Rochester, New York, and I kicked off our second day with a keynote talk about overcoming impostor syndrome.

Book Review: Linux Kernel Development

21 June 2015·764 words·4 mins

I picked up a copy of Robert Love’s book, Linux Kernel Development, earlier this year and I’ve worked my way through it over the past several weeks.

Adventures with GRE and IPSec on Mikrotik routers

27 May 2015·1702 words·8 mins

I recently picked up a RB850GX2 from my favorite Mikrotik retailer, r0c-n0c.

Review: Lenovo X1 Carbon 3rd generation and Linux

30 March 2015·857 words·5 mins

After a boatload of challenges with what I thought would be my favorite Linux laptop, the Dell XPS 13 9343, I decided to take the plunge on a new Lenovo X1 Carbon (3rd gen). My late-2013 MacBook Pro Retina (MacbookPro11,1) had plenty of quirks when running Linux and I was eager to find a better platform.

Helpful, low-FUD information security sites, mailing lists, and blogs

8 January 2015·188 words·1 min

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2014

Evade the Breach

24 May 2014·831 words·4 mins

This post appeared on the Rackspace Blog last week and I copied it here so that readers of this blog will see it.

DevOps and enterprise inertia

17 April 2014·785 words·4 mins

As I wait in the airport to fly back home from this year’s Red Hat Summit, I’m thinking back over the many conversations I had over breakfast, over lunch, and during the events.

Annoying security requests highlight company silos

10 March 2014·125 words·1 min

I stumbled upon this video earlier today via Tripwire’s Twitter feed:

Be an inspiration, not an impostor

5 February 2014·514 words·3 mins

Many of the non-technical posts on the blog are inspired by the comments of others.

2013

Information security nuggets from DevOps Weekly #150

17 November 2013·279 words·2 mins

Keeping an eye out for the DevOps Weekly email is something I’ve enjoyed since it started at the end of 2010.

One year in information security

13 November 2013·1390 words·7 mins

Going to the dark side.

Need an edge at work? Learn accounting and finance.

17 September 2013·644 words·4 mins

I spent two days last week in a class called “Accounting and Finance for Non-Financial Managers” at UT Austin’s Texas Executive Education program.

Handling terminal color escape sequences in less

22 May 2013·268 words·2 mins

This post is a quick one but I wanted to share it since I taught it to someone new today.

Changing your ssh server’s port from the default: Is it worth it?

15 May 2013·544 words·3 mins

Changing my ssh port from the default port (22) has been one of my standard processes for quite some time when I build new servers or virtual machines.

Reprint: Stop Disabling SELinux!

19 April 2013·708 words·4 mins

This article appeared in SC Magazine and I’ve posted it here as well.

Seriously, stop disabling SELinux

16 April 2013·147 words·1 min

After many discussions with fellow Linux users, I’ve come to realize that most seem to disable SELinux rather than understand why it’s denying access.

Survive the Google Reader exodus with Tiny Tiny RSS

17 March 2013·301 words·2 mins

It’s no secret that Google Reader is a popular way to keep up with your RSS feeds, but it’s getting shelved later this year.

Controlling sensitive company data means losing some control of it

3 March 2013·1073 words·6 mins

This year’s RSA Conference was full of very useful content but the most useful session for me was a peer to peer discussion regarding BYOD on mobile devices.

What my toddler taught me about information security

13 January 2013·894 words·5 mins

My new role has caused me to look at information security in a different way.

2012

Monitoring and protecting your reputation online

6 August 2012·706 words·4 mins

After a recent issue I had with some users in the Puppy Linux forums, I thought it might be prudent to write a post about how to monitor and protect your reputation online.

Great guide for using traceroute and understanding its results

13 June 2012·237 words·2 mins

Anyone who has been a system administrator for even a short length of time has probably used traceroute at least once.

What installing a ceiling fan can teach you about administering servers

11 June 2012·577 words·3 mins

The feedback from my last lengthy post (Lessons learned in the ambulance pay dividends in the datacenter) about analogies between EMS and server administration was mostly positive, so I decided to do it again!

Lessons learned in the ambulance pay dividends in the datacenter

31 May 2012·1495 words·8 mins

While cleaning up a room at home in preparation for some new flooring, I found my original documents from when I first became certified as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) in Texas.