Resume & Rant
The operator
First and foremost. I’m a real human. Yes, my name is Art Vandelay. Yes, I have a long history of computing. Seinfeld is my gimmick branding, yeet. I can help you with your *Nix needs. So I’ve been at this as a UNIX engineer, software development and admin/support, fibre channel storage area networks, networking since the early 90’s. I learned about UNIX for Berkley University UNIX and AT&T System 5 in a datacenter working the gaveyard shift hovering over several VT terminals as an operator (of course reading BofH to pass the time).
UNIX
UNIX isn’t a mainstay much these days after the extremely high cost of license fees. I’m from the Sun Microsystems camp (Stanford University Network) professionally trained and very much admired SGI Irix and NextStep as a hobby. AIX, HP-UX, Tru64, Ultrix, etc I did have experience with their own merits, some truly innovative and others were business decisions. Yes, I adopted the MacOS / Darwin XNU when released in 2001 as I loved NextStep. OSX took a lot of pointers from Jobs time developing NeXt. Software development comes second nature these days and still fun. Storage administration is not as fun provisioning LUNS. Although the zoning of fibre zones can be interesting if you’re developing the infrastructure from scratch. I like forensics, kernel core dump analysis for what processes were in memory and where and what files where open when the systems crashed, time stamps for last time a file was accessed and does it match an MD5 hash, dtrace an off the shelf application. I’m not sure why I started discussing this stuff but hence the rant aspect.
Linux
Slackware Linux released their first 3.5″ floppy install for 286/386/486 computers roughly around that time and I remember trying it out on a Compaq Deskpro with a stack of floppies. Many people hear Linux regularly which is an OpenSource adaptation of UNIX and does its best to stay true to its roots. As UNIX was a philosophy and a methodology of how to accomplish your computing needs. I miss the rc scripts as a norm, not the exception. But Cloud these days, “it’s in the cloud”. No, it’s on someone else’s computer you’re renting. A fantastic idea of relieving companies of system administration or field service repairs or endless upgrades for bigger bloated software, give me CPU cycles and I’ll pay the fee for renting your depreciating asset.
My Rant
Here’s my rant, the mindset has changed over the years. I get asked at interviews, if I know how to applications like Chef or Jenkins, which is insulting. Might as well ask if you know how to use Word or Excel to the Woz, they are just apps people ask technical questions about technical things. Linux has lowered the barrier of entry for young people and the cost of business as a computing utility. It has also lowered the standards and pay rate of the long time UNIX Wizards and gurus who do more than click click click. I’ve actually met Linux guys who only use the desktop, unbelievable. What they should ask are questions if they grasp the conceptual technology principles from computer science, mathematics, engineering. Hire people who like computing and do more than play games. Does this compute? That’s my .02, if we can’t raise the bar in general, lowering the expectations isn’t an option.
Data abstraction
When teaching someone Linux or UNIX I would start with everything is a file. Everything. Files pointing to other files, but a file representation for everything to easily manage your data. Then containers and dockers and they are on top of virtualization of physically partitioned hardware which may include virtualization of hardware. We abstracted the data and compartmentalized everything, I love it, data organizational skills increasing. This is one of the greatest achievements in computing these days, aside of everything networked. The computer is the network slogan is why I like digital ledgers / Crypto decentralization, resembles RAID parity striped across the planet.
Development
I’ve been writing code since the 1980s and I moved on to C, unix shells scripting and Perl as languages of choice for quite some time. These days though I write mostly C++, although dabbling with Rust. I dabble in Java, but don’t get me started on the memory hog, thank you Sun Microsystem for creating that steaming terd as the Sun Microsystems legacy still widely used today (ZFS, containers, and Dtrace don’t get the same amount of Sun Microsystems credit). Python is cool depending on the project, usually data statistics where I love that language. SQL has just always been there and unchanging.
Funny story
In 1999, I worked at State Street Global Advisors as a contractor with the title of data security officer. An unglamorous job despite the name. In that investment bank I was compartmentalized to changing passwords, writing perl code from 4 to 5 and powerbroker. I got bored and decided to do a pentest as my hubris got the best of me that I was data security for the bank. I had a Sun workstation at home and had remote access. I ran Satan remotely on the weekend and opened up a shit storm. When I went into work on Monday my badge was deactivated and all my accounts locked. They had contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that they were being hacked. I explained that my communication should have been better so as not to scare the crap out of the HelpDesk weekend people monitoring Tivoli. Everything was laughed off as a misunderstanding. I was offered a Vice President role a few years later when working for Fidelity Investments.
“Like shaving a monkey…”
-Someone
I don’t know, I’ve been doing this for so long I just see the same old stuff going around in circles with another layer or something similar with a different color. It’s just a part of me.