Texx (Ex denizen of Grand Central Starport)

July 4th in El Cerrito went OK.
I didnt get out to the site untill the 3rd.
Setup starts a week in advance and I was busy with jobsearch.

A lot of things I usually do are no longer happenign and the gaps in my life give time for depression to set in.

Except for 2 months early this spring, Ive been out of work since Halloween.
Im a Sr Systems Admin, mostly Linux & Unix.
The workspace has changed and Ive not been good at keeping up with it.
This is my fault.

Ive been plinking away at Python in the meantime with online tutorials.
This helps.

I had been marketing myself at a Sr sysadmin, but sysadmin of any level now implies Jr level.
I held off on calling myself Dev Ops because I could not define it, and the very term seemed a buzz phrase.

Now I can define it.

Dev Ops is just a diffderent way of doing Sysadmin.
Classic Sysadmin, you interact with each machine one at a time.
When we only had a couple hundred machines, this worked.

Thanks to virtualization and containerization, its easy for a company to have 50,000 machines,
and classic sysadmin wont work on that scale.

In Dev OPs, we edit control files and let other software (CF Engine, Salt, Ansible, Chef, Puppet)
go out and do our bidding.
I note that in Salt, the client process is called a "minion".

In 2012, I was modifying web pages at Yahoo and these changes propagated to the machines I was working on.
A year later, I was editing XML files to do the same.
In other words, Ive been doing Dev Ops for 5 years without realizing it.

Rebranding myself as Dev Ops, Im getting nibbles at market rates, and Im hearing from more recruiters.

In Nov, I was nervous about my Python, so I was downplaying it.

Im no longer doing that and Im passing online code challenges at least half the time.

I only have about a year of Docker & Kubernetes each.
Most recently, they have stopped asking about Docker.

Im increasingly being asked if I have a GitHub account.
WTH?
I write scripts for internal use. I dont work on end user apps.
I realized that they equate having a Git Hub account with Docker proficciency.
This is bad logic, but Im on to them so Ive gamed them.
I opened a GitHub account.

So whats the killer now?
AWS.
Ive started working on an online AWS cert program.
We will see if the cert covers for not having used it on the job.

This spring, at a Python Meetup, someone talked about its use in artificial intelligence.
I never expected to userstand AI, leaving it to the PHDs.
The speaker touched on the primitive level mechanisms for AI and I understood it.
Its much simpler than I thought it would be.

"Object Oriented" was a buzz phrase to me from the mid 90s on.
When I took up PYthon 2 years ago,
(Exposed to Python & Ruby in 2014 but didnt actually start writing Python til 2 yrs ago)
I got an idea of how object oriented systems work.

Interestingly enough, once i started to get Python,
I found that I could understand many other languages I dont write in.
Suddenly everything from Ruby to Java became understandable.
Python functions as a Rosetta Stone to other languages.

Then came Mandel Bears (AKA Computer Curmudgeon) recent post on computer languages.
I really wish Id read that post in the early 90s.

I would love to see Steve expand that into a book,
because he gets into things Ive never seen in a computer language book.

Im really wondering if Steve might pursue teaching at community college.
Being able to cut through the BS, get to the point,
but still include the historical references is a hard skill to find.

We didnt get it together in time, so we arent going to be able to bring
the common press (AKA Roaring Dragon) out to Renn Faire this year.
This is ther 10th anniversary of Sully's passing,
and there has not been a printing booth at Renn ever since.

I joined the Dickens Fair printshop 4 years after his passing.
We started talking about printing out at Renn about 2 years ago,
and people are just about ready to renew the tradition.
This year, Dickens is 6 weeks long, so its going to be a brutal slog.

Incidentally, we are starting DCF prep already...

My older niece, Ali (cultural anthropologist) may be joining us in the shoppe at DCF.
I was working on getting her in the the fencers when she told us that she really
wanted to come print with us.

Her back story:
"Sent to London to live with her excentric uncle to catch a husband, but caught a career instead."
Shes such a wallflower, you dont expect a witty bit like that.

I had no idea she was interested in printing.

Moms BFF from 6th grade throught HS had 2 daughters about the same age as my sister and me.
Kathy & Trisha and my sister Margaret & I consider ourselves siblings,
and I refer to Kathy & Trish as my half sisters.
Trisha has taken up restorative book binding, which also surprised me.
Printing is slowly invading our family.

I enjoy apropriating an NRA slogan:
"I own a printing press, and I KNOW how to USE it!"

Scholars of history realize just how threatening this statement it.



Raise your voice! ... Even if its quavering.