Day: December 25, 2019, 1:57 PM

It All Began

Chill Uncategorized

My path was a fairly long one, but it all started with being on the night shift (in a non-IT job), and being the only one who was able to find the power button to hard-reboot a hung production server at 1AM, preventing the on-call engineer from having to drive to work in the middle of the night.

Two other people had been in there, couldn’t find the power button. I found it (having never seen that model of server before) when I was still twenty feet away from the server….

It helped that I’d been playing with and working on computers since I was four years old. From there, helpdesk, then jr. sysadmin, then onward and upward…till eventually infrastructure engineer roles.

Purple Squirrel

Chill Regular-ass Post

Yes. I see this more and more in my field, too, which is parallel to programming.

Often I see:

Must be an expert in AWS, Azure, GCP, Cisco (CCNP or above), Linux, PowerShell, Python, Bash, MS SQL, Juniper, SIEM, VMWare, Active Directory, Oracle, SCCM, CISSP, SonicWall firewalls, help desk, ITIL and Solaris.

Generally, a regular person can be an expert in two or three areas in their career field. I am very good, so I am an expert in 6-7 areas. I’ve met a few really exceptional IT folks (one out of a thousand or fewer) who are experts in 7-9 different IT arenas.

Those jobs that expect you to be an expert in 15+ areas are just completely delusional. This person does not, cannot exist. There is just not enough time in the world no matter how large your IQ and how little you sleep.

And they wonder why they never can hire anyone, paying $60,000 a year* for someone who literally is impossible to find.

*If you want an expert in 6-7 areas, expect to shell out $110,000 a year, bare minimum. Much more in expensive locales.

Language of Motion

Chill Uncategorized

I know it’s fashionable to hate Quentin Tarantino by those who don’t really like or understand movies that much and are embroiled in identity power jockeying, but Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a movie that causes one to think about it days after viewing. How many movies do that? I’d say maybe one in twenty I watch, if that.

That said, I mostly agree with this review. As I noted earlier, the movie is sort of a mess. But it’s a glorious mess.

And this scene really did shine.

Tate represents an innocence about show business that is best realized in a scene where Tate ducks into the Bruin Theater in Westwood to watch The Wrecking Crew, in which she appears alongside Dean Martin’s James Bond knockoff Matt Helm. Listening and looking around at the audience as they laugh and respond to her performance, Robbie makes Tate’s delight palpable and heartfelt — the sheer, unfiltered joy of making movies (for perhaps the director as well) captured in her dazzling smile.

Kudos to Robbie to selling that so well with no dialogue and sitting down, too. Whatever his flaws, unlike a lot of directors Tarantino consistently gets top-notch performances out of his cast.