System Administration 101

If you’re a sysadmin long enough, I guarantee one of your biggest pet peeves will be people telling you what command to run, rather than what their problem is. Trust me, suck it up. Be polite. Solve the problem the right way.

@AOC is the Elizabeth Holmes of politics.

Just finished watching the Theranos documentary and this was my take-away.

China town, Los Angeles

Cassini’s Grand Finale

I’ve had the phenomenal opportunity to work on NASA/JPL’s Cassini mission as a computer systems engineer supporting the Radio Science team since I started work at JPL in 2000.

This month, the core Cassini mission will conclude in a beautiful and, at least for me, bittersweet, way.

Cassini’s Grand Finale:

Click image for larger version.

Shorts and flip flops: Tech companies in 2016

Below is an actual email I received from a technical recruiter. I’ve changed the company’s name to “ACME” to protect the innocent:

Subject: Nice profile!

Hi Kevin,

After reading through your profile 3 times, I couldn’t help but reach out.

We’re ACME, a Los Angeles based tech company shaking things up in the Programmatic Advertising space.

We’re growing at 70% annually and have a new role for an Information Security Engineer. You’re probably not actively looking but so are 90% of the people I reach out to. But once they learn more about ACME, they’re very happy I reached out.

We have a pingpong table, pool table, foosball, and the people here are awesome. Dress code: ties and jackets are not allowed, shorts and flip flops are common.

Come see for yourself, you have nothing to lose and so much to gain. Can we talk?

If I was 30, and it was 1999, this job might have sounded interesting to me. But these days the last place I would want to work is a marketing company with a fraternity like atmosphere.