It has been a while…

It has been a while since I last expressed myself and shared thoughts with the world via techslaves.org. Time to change that.

So what is new?

For the first time in 5.5 years, I am single and living totally, utterly alone. This is a big change that I am learning to deal with day by day.  Thankfully, I find myself busy enough that there isn’t a lot of downtime for me to dwell on negativity. I have challenged myself to use this as an opportunity to self-evaluate and change the things that I find which I do not like. I call it “Continuous Improvement”.

I recently achieved my goal of commuting by bicycle for 100 consecutive work days. I then promptly took several days off due to a series of crashes caused by the “winter” conditions here that quickly fade away. I’m now back in the saddle riding everyday and it feels great. 22km of cycling a day does the body good.

Professionally, my interest in cfengine and IT operations has been steadily increasing.

My adventures with cfengine have led to much pondering over the “meta topics” of configuration management such as the release management aspect (version controlled workflow for updating, authorizing and installing policy) and policy writing best practices such as file copy vs. file edit and policy layout/design. It is these meta topics that I find most immediately challenging when considering cfengine deployment. Learning from others, I have developed a release management workflow of sorts. Perhaps it will eventually be of quality enough to share.

With regards to IT operations, I’ve been invigorated by the LISA ’11 talks available on YouTube. These talks exposed me to several (new-ish and old) books and authors that I am now exploring and enjoying. Some favorites so far are “The Visible Ops Handbook” and “Future Shock”. I am just getting started with “Lean IT”.

Speaking of LISA, I am now registered for the Cascadia IT Conference held March 23 and 24th this year in Seattle, WA. I am super excited to meet my fellow LOPSA members (and semi-local sysadmins) that I normally only interact with via the #lopsa and #lopsa-lounge IRC channels! Hopefully the employer professional development funds can cover the registration fees… but the conference is so close to fiscal year-end and the fund might be exhausted before HR reviews my application for reimbursement. Fingers crossed.

Aside from new interests in system administration but remaining in the professional sphere, there is also an excellent potential opportunity for a new position with my current employer available to me. I don’t regard anything as set in stone so tonight I will gear up and put in my application ASAP. Some very excellent key people are waiting for it to hit their desks and I will not disappoint!

I will make no promises with regards to new content… but let it be known, techslaves.org lives!