Setting up devops is a learning journey for most programmers. Early in my engineering career, before cloud computing was invented, making my programs work in my company’s datacenter could be summed up as making the program: configurable: by having no hardcoded paths and secrets in the code, supporting feature flags (both static - which were driven through property files, and dynamic - driven through databases) deployable: in different machines other than mine....

Its been a rocky start for my journey to be a consistent meditation practitioner. As resources, I referred to both the Calm app and Pema Chodron’s book on How to meditate. I am finding the book more useful and relevant for my current milestone to quiten my mind. I practice meditation in the morning, at the beginning of the day. I start a new Meditation workout on my Apple watch (in the hope that maybe health data such as BPM will be a useful review later on)....

I find joy, happiness, and pleasure in anticipating, experiencing, and reminiscing life events. Our 2016 sojourn in Iceland has me excited for our upcoming summer vacation plan to tour Scandinavia. Scandinavia is one of the least populated, most scenic, and well connected parts of Europe. Politically, Scandinavia is the collection of five countries: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Estonia. English is the second language of all peoples, making it convenient for US travelers....

I struggle maintaining healthy work life balance, and I suspect that this is true for many other software engineers. Recently, joining back work after an extended holiday break, I felt this disruption acutely. I actively need to tackle this problem, as otherwise I slip into an unhealthy pattern of constantly ruminating on work concerns. This leads to affecting quality time spent with family, and ultimately making performance at work suffer....

At work, I am navigating the middle management rung of the corporate ladder. My job requires managing up, down, and sideways. The quarterly 1:1 check in document is a tool I use to align my teams work towards meaningful outcomes for business customers and share holders. Every quarter, I ask people to write, share and review (with me) a document with answers to the following questions: What outcomes (in the past quarter) were delivered for the business and users?...

I have built and operated software development platforms in multiple industries for over two decades. A 1:1 discussion inspired this blog post. Software development platforms allow product development teams to deliver features in less time, with high security, reliability, performance, and built in compliance. Unfortunately, in the long haul, this turns out to be a two edged sword. As these platforms age, they tend to become monolithic (more code, less modular), and more complex (offering too many configuration options, feature flags)....

It took us three hours from the Atocha in Madrid to reach Granada. Hotel Anacapri, located in the moorish quarter of Granada, remained an unsolved mystery for our taxi guy. Dragging our luggage, we found our way into our quaint and small room. They were sold out, so our request for an upgrade also went amiss. Unperturbed, we stuck to our plan of hiking up to San Nicholas viewpoint. The hike goes right through the middle of the town, and the colorful lamps constantly attracted us like moths to a flame....

Writing a daily personal journal is a procedure to express and record our thoughts for ourselves. It is not easy to journal consistently My earliest surviving journal entry from 2017 attests to this difficulty in a rather stark manner: [2017-09-23 Sat] diary? 3rd attempt to start a daily diary. grievances: - fucking nothing happening on my own startup - whatever Journal entries Weekly reviews Year Tooling 4 0 2017 Google docs 2 13 2018 Google docs, sheets 8 15 2019 Google docs, sheets 18 1 2020 Google docs, sheets 91 5 2021 Git, Emacs, Org-mode 334 0 2022 Git, Emacs, Org-mode My journaling journey is a story of six failed starts, three or more changes in tooling, and finally resulting in one year of being somewhat consistent....

Happy New Year! As I’ve grown older, I would want to imagine that I am growing wiser. However, its more the case that I have more experience of things not turning out well. I am not just talking of high stakes risk, reward scenarios, but also the mundane straightforward tasks that we all have to perform from time to time. An example from a recent experience may help clarify: a regular oil change service that I reserved time for, and on the day spent 30 minutes queuing, and finally being advised that due to the rush, the shop will only deliver back my car in the evening (spoiling my weekend plans)!...

What better way to spend the last day of the year than making up predictions for the next one? Technology layoffs are temporary, and reshuffles brain trust in the industry without associated increase in labor costs. Why? Smart-X (substitute X for phone, car, home, office, and entertainment) trends continue, and accelerate through advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Both chat-gpt3 and generative AI are impressive tools that will find widespread use in these industries....