Relative to your interests

• Cluetrain at 25 - This was an important book to me when it came out. It probably had a huge influence on my professional life. All these years later, I think it was right. The biggest evolution, unexpected, was that the Big Bad Corporate Octopus took it seriously and figured out how to monetize the shit out the Cluetrain. Toot! Toot!

• How to Stay Grounded Through Organizational Chaos - There’s a lot of good advice here, but the most important is here: “If your organization’s approach raises concerns or if you find yourself constantly questioning its strategies, it’s worth considering whether you’re in the right place. While “pretending that certainty exists is delusional,” it’s possible to find an organization that’s more aligned with your values, and where work feels less like a constant whiplash.” // The toolkit to examine if your company has a good strategy, operations/execution, and the stability needed to function…that toolkit is hard to assemble, use, and trust. // Also, I’ve become leery of the “the only thing you can control is yourself.” This is an easy mindset for a Roman emperor to have, and equally easy if you live in a big-ass clay jar with no other responsibilities or possession in life. But in the middle of those polls, the problem starts to be more than just your mental vibes, and getting to inward looking detracts from fixing the overall system.

• What is a long context window? Google DeepMind engineers explain - “Previously, Gemini could process up to 32,000 tokens at once, but 1.5 Pro — the first 1.5 model we’re releasing for early testing — has a context window of up to 1 million tokens — the longest context window of any large-scale foundation model to date. In fact, we’ve even successfully tested up to 10 million tokens in our research. And the longer the context window, the more text, images, audio, code or video a model can take in and process.” // Once they allow uploading multiple files (in the EU, where I live), that will be something. There’s only so many tokens you can cut and last into a web browser field (literally, they cut it off!).

• Tanzu Spring Runtime: Empowering Developers for Tomorrow’s Challenges - If you’re using Java apps to run your business, you should get this integrated stack instead of worrying about doing all the DIY work to take care of and update and secure that stack itself. Also, it means you’ll have support and training.

• Addressing cloud waste: 4 steps to cloud computing cost optimization - “Organizations with little or no cloud cost optimization plans rush into cloud technology investments,” according to Gartner. “They end up overspending on cloud services by up to 70 percent without deriving the expected value from it.”

• 9 Things You Need to Know About the Threads Algorithm - Getting the juice. As ever, fucking around in the comments seems to help.

• AI Companies Lose $190 Billion After Dismal Financial Reports - When share prices drop that much, it means that money was never there in the first place and was just made up fantasy-land shit. Nothing was lost if nothing was there.p

• How I’d use generative AI to modernize an app - As it says

• Kmart October 1989 : Tape-A-Thon - A pile of tapes of the in-store music is available. Amazing! Here’s an overview of it.

• Giving Fifty Percent - “perhaps a lot of the extra effort we thing we’re putting into a task is actually comprised of anxiety and stress and maybe we could just relax and get the same thing done to the same level in roughly the same time, and be happier about it.” // This is one - accurate! - way of looking at the mysterious part of the creative process, whether programming, writing, whatever. The actual activity - typing, painting, cooking - is a small part of the overall, uh, “value stream” needed to create. When you ignore the value of all that other stuff, you damage the whole process. We’re just starting to understand this in enterprise software development: you have to pay attention to the entire span of time between an idea and a person using your app. It’s even more so in non-programming creativity. Taking a walk and seeming to “do nothing” is literally part of the process and if you remove it, you degrade the “business value” of the “business outcome.” There’s some more musing on this in this week’s Software Defined Talk - subscribe, mofos!

• Quick Riff on Narrative Strategy - “Narratives as worlds. Consultant as world-runner.” // There’s something important here for marketing people: a lot of marketing work is actually the company figuring out it’s own narrative, studying what products it does, what customers it has, those customer’s jobs to be done, even how sales is done. “Strategy” is supposed to do a lot of that, as is product management. But at most tech companies I’ve worked at, marketing ends up being where that all comes together and becomes…legible? This can be very good, but it can also be very dangerous. Customers don’t really care shout your inner looking narrative; they don’t want to read summaries of your therapy sessions. They just want to know why they would give you money, how and why your product/service will solve their problem without costing more that it should. Investors want to read the transcripts of your therapy sessions, sure, but “the market does not.” If your find that your marketing is spending a lot of time on story telling, and not much on product, you should be very careful.

• Related: in tech marketing, customers don’t care how hard it was for you to make the product. Just tell them how it’ll solve their program and that the pricing isn’t a rip-off or enterprise-gouging.

• Fight Between Employees, Managers Over Return-to-Office Is Getting Messy - He’s not a fan of remote work. And, really, what worker is?

Wastebook

• “sales inflictment.” Here.

• “Hastily made hobo-porn.” Here.

• “Woke up very confused at how my brain functions, but very excited for dream Margot Robbie’s financial future.” Here.

• Move “having made something” to “making something.” - finishing something is just part of the larger joy of making something. It’s in the cycle of creation, feedback, and improvement that you find the real work. Savor the meal, but remember, the best part is knowing you’ll get to cook again soon.

• “I now understand that tote bags are bumper stickers for pedestrians” Here.

Conferences, Events, etc.

Talks I’m giving, places I’ll be, and other plans.

Executive dinner on Java Security, March 13th, Dallas; DevOpsDays LA, March 15th, Pasadena “We Fear Change” talk; KubeCon EU, March 19th, Paris; Tanzu (Re)defined, April 11th, Palo Alto.

Come to our little party at KubeCon EU, it’s Thursday night. Register for free here! And, if you’re going to KubeCon EU and haven’t registered yet, you can get 20% off with the code KCEU24VMWBC20.

Logoff

I forget if I’ve actually written this, or wrote it and deleted it from here… I’ve been thinking much recently about what exactly it is I do: do I still enjoy it? Is it still relevant? To put in a dangerous way: do I like my job?

My focus for almost ten years has been “how large companies get better and building and running software” (hence my easy alignment to Pivotal - “transforming how the world builds software” and then getting all butt-hurt about Kubernetes destroying all of that). And what are the results? It’s easy to say not much, but I think I just get used to the new normal. I talked with a gaggle of C-types this week on the getting better at software topic and it was both well received and fun for me. There is still a tremendous amount of interest in the topic…because large organizations have a lot of “transformation” ahead of them still.

Still, what am I doing here? I want desperately to avoid being that old thought-leader that just says the same old thing over and over, for years. After awhile, it causes a “no thoughts found” Ker-chunking in my brain. Also, it’s so boring.

It’s easy to say (to myself, as I often do) that what I should do is re-learn Java and Spring and go down the stack some. There’d be so much interesting to learn and talk with people about when it comes to using AI in big companies. All of that “secure software supply chain” thinking and stuff applies to AI - it’s just more apps, tons of regulated data flying around…but it’s actually very close to “the business.” Talking about AI is a bigger, even more important field than talking about (or caring about!) Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, even Java itself.

There’s also been a severe reduction in the amount of business travel I do. Obviously since COVID, but also because of the more cost conscience state of my work and strategy fluidity over the past few years. It’s made me realize how many of my friends are road-friends. I don’t mean this in that “self-care” way of being dismissive about friends you make at work. I think that’s utter bullshit: friends are friends.

So, you know: what am I doing here?

Relative to your interests

• Can we reenergize the transactional workforce? - Hmm.

• Cloud without Kubernetes - Start by hiding Kubernetes, only touch it as needed. There’s enough work to do already.

Wastebook

• “Unhappiness with air travel took a new turn when maggots rained down on passengers on a Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, on Tuesday.” Here.

• The only reason I get away with all this shit is that I just started trying to get away with it.

• I’m not procrastinating, I’m thinking.

• “[jerkoff motion]”

• “FUD-pedition”

• “Goblins: The Unsung Heroes of Humanity’s Defense Against Sentient Toasters.” Gemini.

• I don’t know anything about this topic, but I’m a professional public speaker, so I’m happy to talk about it for 45 minutes.

Speaking of Goblins

I’ve been working on a conference talk that pulls together D&D, generative AI (whatever you want to call it - can we just start saying “AIs” without having to expend the energy to roll our eyes at the nerds who correct us?), and boring ass enterprise software shit. Here is the talk I just submitted to DevOpsDays London and will start submitted elsewhere.

Are goblins the only thing holding back the AI Takeover? Benchmarking generative AI with Dungeons & Dragons

They say AIs will wreak havoc on human lives, from jobs to sapping and impurifying all of our precious bodily fluids1 to feed its insatiable need for energy. But is AI really a substitute for humans? What better way to answer that question than having the AIs play a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master? D&D follows an intricate, yet ambiguous set of rules, requires constant creativity and unexpected imagination, empathy, and playfulness. Being a good DM requires skill at almost all the parts of being human. I’ve developed a sort of Turing test that uses a handful of D&D scenarios to test AIs: how it DMs a goblin ambush, role plays generic tavern encounters, and creates interesting open-ended adventures and world-building. More than benchmarking, this is an excellent way to learn how to create prompts, to understand what AIs are, and pretend like you’re working which you’re having fun playing games. This talk will cover my method, the results, and observations. (This talk proposal was NOT written by an AI…yet.)

//

Every time I pitch this idea to someone you can see their interest slowly light up. At first they’re like, “yeah, yeah, D&D - since I know what you’re talking about, thanks for reminding me how much of a nerd I am. I finally got mainstream society to accept me.” And then I go over it more, they’e very silent. Then they say, “holy shit!” and we talk for an hour more.

It’s not that far from playing D&D with an AI to figuring out customer service chatbots, think through brainstorming with an AI to figure out supply chain issues, or the “game” of ISO 9001 certification (you know, 9001, 9002, whatever it takes).

Conferences, Events, etc.

Talks I’m giving, places I’ll be, and other plans.

Executive dinner on Java Security, March 13th, Dallas; DevOpsDays LA, March 15th, Pasadena “We Fear Change” talk; KubeCon EU, March 19th, Paris; Tanzu (Re)defined, April 11th, Palo Alto.

If you’re going to KubeCon EU and haven’t registered yet, you can get 20% off with the code KCEU24VMWBC20.

Logoff

I struggle to get the “software is what runs your business, not some enterprise side-hustle you keep reducing the budget for” idea across, and I really like this phrasing:

digital native business often sees technology as a central part to their business strategy, not just an enabler of strategy. They don't really separate business strategy from technology strategy. They look at technology investments different.

Good toast.

Never use slide notes

Relative to your interests

• Organize Your Change Initiative Around Purpose and Benefits - ‘An easy method of finding a change project’s purpose is to continuously ask, “Why are we doing the project?” Usually, you need to ask this question three to four times to get to the core purpose.’ // Does anyone actually have this level of clarity? When would executives have/make the time to do this work?

• The Wrong Way to Use DORA Metrics - Metrics used to figure out how to fire people are a bummer.

• Majority of applications will use cloud-native technologies in two years - ‘Respondents expect the majority of applications to incorporate cloud-native technologies within two years. Currently, 41% of organizations are using cloud-native techniques for more than half of their applications, but this figure is expected to rise to 61% within two years, reflecting an acceleration in the use of cloud-native application architectures. In addition, prior surveys have found cloud-native adoption to be strongest at organizations with more than $1 billion in revenue and among digital transformation leaders. This survey finds the use of cloud-native application architectures to be strong across organizations of all sizes, industries and digital maturity, confirming that cloud “nativity” is the default platform for software deployment.’

• three personas of the ai ecosystem - JJ goes over three roles/people you’ll encounter in AIrel.

• IDPs Give Developers More Freedom to Write Code - We’re merging the functionality of automation (usually Kubernetes automation) too much into the concept of IDPs. Automation stands on its own, and when we talk about it as just a feature of IDPs, things get too confusing. It’s tone for IDPs to be a MoM. Historically, a unified suite of ops functionality is hard to sell: people always want to swap in their own components, and the coders have to prioritize across too many different features. And now, we’d also throwing in developer collaboration sites and tools. Imagine if you combined Atlassian, CI/CD, Chef, and your entire developer tools and portal stacks into one product. It’s better that we keep these things as separate concepts that, sure, can be pre-integrated together. But automation is its own thing. I mean, do you like big suites of tools? They are always confusing and you often don’t want to switch over to using all of those pre-integrated tools.

• These are really great. I feel like it’s the last thing that ever needs to be said on social media, it finishes all that “is this good/bad, etc.” talk that’s constantly going on, and also is instruction for how to be a human on social media, or in meatspace. The other project over there is fun. And, you know: man, I still love flickr even though I’ve largely abandoned it a year ago.

Wastebook

• “…because we’re running a business here, not a shit-show.”

• “Apple TV+ has become HBO.”

• “Malibu Country Mart.”

• “Ridiculous, but dry.”

• Be your own best friend. Listening, supporting, validating, cheering up, accepting.

• “Almost weekend!”

• “Man Survives Steve Ballmer’s Flying Chair To Build ‘21st Century Linux.’” 2011.

• “[Waves egg sandwich around.]”

• “And on and on…”

Conferences, Events, etc.

Talks I’m giving, places I’ll be, and other plans.

Executive dinner on Java Security, March 13th, Dallas; DevOpsDays LA, March 15th, Pasadena “We Fear Change” talk; KubeCon EU, March 19th, Paris; Tanzu (Re)defined, April 11th, Palo Alto.

If you’re going to KubeCon EU and haven’t registered yet, you can get 20% off with the code KCEU24VMWBC20.

Logoff

This story is a good reminder of what “fun” looks like.

Speaking of, we found an apple that has a butt:

//

If you’re an “executive” and you’re curious what’s up with Tanzu now, we’re hosting an in-person conference in April on just that topic. It’s sort of like a multi-party EBC - if that makes sense to you, it’s something you might just like. We used my suggestion for a name: Tanzu (Re)defined.

Why did Kubernetes Win the Kontainer Wars?*

John Willis finally explains why the underpowered, not fully ready, overly complex container orchestrator from Google became the cloud native juggxrnaught.

Also, there’s much whole lot more DevOps and Demming talk in the interview I did with him last week.

*Also, sure: I know that the victors never like the “war” framing. Yup.

Wastebook

• “Well, we lost a lot of material things, but the great thing is, we’re all still alive, and Mom only broke one hand, and now Dad can buy a new toupee, and that will look lots better!” Bruce Sterling.

• “Superior And Relentless Alignment.” Here.

• “an army of fleece-clad adult toddlers” Kara Swisher.

• The customer is always right, except when it comes to pricing.

Conferences, Events, etc.

Talks I’m giving, places I’ll be, and other plans.

DevOpsDays LA, March 15th, “We Fear Change” talk; KubeCon EU, March 19th. Executive dinner in Dallas, March 31st.

If you’re going to KubeCon EU and haven’t registered yet, you can get 20% of with the code KCEU24VMWBC20.

Logoff

I have some links laying around here somewhere, but I seem to have misplaced them.

////

I could totally do this, except it’d be PowerPoints instead of music…? I guess I’d need some music in the background, sure.

Also, if I shoot the video in my entire house, does that mean I can write off my entire house as my home office?

What I’m doing here is trying to figure out some benchmarking tests to rate all the AI systems out there. The “application” I’m using is Dungeons & Dragons, in particular, having it be a Dungeon Master. Today, I tested out one of the more difficult parts of D&D, combat. There’s a stack of rules, and then crossed with different monsters, player abilities, terrain, etc., there’s a ton of combinations and possibilities.

In the video today, I wanted to test out how it handles combat. I used a road ambush scenario (perhaps the most popular scenario in D&D) from The Lost Mines of Phandelver to test out the ChatDM.

It went really well, actually!

I’ll do another ~5 minute post-game analysis of what I learned and next steps soon. In the meantime:

• ChatGPT 4 has improved a lot at combat since I tried it last. I think its ability to write and run code helps. It also can track hit points and ongoing status of the players and monsters.

• It was pretty impressive at remembering the spatial nature of things: where the goblins were, my players, and what that meant for attacks.

• There’s some minor, but important tuning to do. For example, if the players are walking into an ambush, don’t tell them they’re walking into an ambush.

• It wasn’t great at interesting and clever tactics. But with some coaching it did what you’d expect goblins to do.

Anyhow: I think it was very instructive.

I think there’s at least two more scenarios I want to add to this “test suite”:

1. Role playing of some sort - maybe a meeting in a tavern where you have to learn some information. Maybe just getting past some guards at a gate, parlaying with some hobgoblins.

2. Open-ended exploring - you walk into a village and explore it, resulting in something. There’s a lot of adventures that work this way. The Village of Hommlet in The Temple of Elemental Evil is a good example of this, or just loading up, like, the Boulder’s gate or Waterdeep overview and seeing what happens when the character scurries about.

Logoff

That’s all for today.

Well, a little bit more.

I talked with my old pal John Willis about this project today. He’s been going bonkers with AI so he had a lot of feedback and questions. According to John, what I need is something called a “vector database” and a “rag.” I’ll see if we have any of the second in the wash.

Here’s an overview of the prompt I’m currently using to play D&D with ChatGPT:

In my mind, I’ve got as new talk that evaluates several of the AIs out there based on how well they can play Dungeons and Dragons. After using ChatGPT for about a year, I have first hand experience that makes all the hype - good and negative - seems a lot less amazing. ChatGPT is practical, it’s quick, fun, and even creative. But, it’s not perfect at being a D&D dungeon master right out of the box. It takes a lot of work, adapting, and work on the player’s part. This feels like a good test case to learn and experiment with what exactly all this AI stuff can do in all domains, business or fun.

While it’s a game, Dungeons and Dragons has extensive rules, almost endless lore and commentary on the Internet, and an open ended nature that means you can do anything. To work well, it requires strict adherence to a lengthy set of rules, but a lot of judgement in how they’re applied and interpreted. And, at the same time success at Dungeons and Dragons requires a lot imagination, creativity, and, well, making shit up.

That’s just like business strategy, marketing, product development, maybe therapy, law, and most things that are high-value activities. I mean, what do us humans do except try to predict what is going to happen next and predict what should happen next, or, predict what we want to happen next?

Put another way, I think if I can get ChatGPT to play a dungeon master well, I can probably get it to do other human-creative things well.

Furthermore, there’s a lot of these generative AI things out there. How would you rate them? Usually you take the same problem/task, come up with some criteria for grading the thing’s performance, and then run that test across all the options. That’s the second part that I want to do: come up with a way of rating and judging the performance of each AI setup. In this case, when it comes to being a dungeon master.

If I come up with a few criteria and test cases (like, an adventure to play on each), I can evaluate ChatGPT versus Bard versus a Tanzu OSS stack versus Bing/CoPilot versus Claude (whenever it’s available in the EU) versus Watsonx, etc. & what have you.

We’ll see! This could also just be an elaborate excuse to play D&D instead of organizing my desk drawers.

The, uh, “analysis” of my prompt above is based on a session I did live today which you can also watch if you’re into seeing it all happen step by step. It ends right as combat starts with some goblins, which I’ll have to pick-up next time. In that livestream recording, you can see the tool-chain and technique I use for solo playing with ChatGPT, along with some commentary on the project.

If you want to check out the prompt more, it’s in the description of the video.

My Content

• Write the letters - Software Defined Talk #452: This week, we examine the balancing act CEOs face between maintaining operations and pursuing growth, the IRS's attempt to automate tax filing, and defining success in thought leadership.

• How to get over your fear of public speaking.

• For conference presentations, use your own visual style.

Relevant to your interests

• Return to Office mandates boost company profits? Nope - More studies.

• To CEOs and VCs Suggesting Tech-Staffing Cuts - He’s not in favor of the app architectures of the past 15 years. Nor kubernetes, or Scrum.

• Can Enterprise DevOps Ever Measure Up? - A check-in on developer productivity and DevOps metrics.

• Gartner Survey Finds Sales Analytics Has Less Influence on Sales Performance Than What Leadership Expected - “Eighty-four percent of sales leaders agreed that sales analytics has had less influence on sales performance than what leadership expected.”

• GitHub Copilot Research Finds “Downward Pressure on Code Quality” - The AI generates too much code and does not favor code re-use.

• AI Design Patterns - As it says! This is from a VCs perspective, collecting together the patterns they see.

Wastebook

• “He was getting his team to paint a fence.” “About ten percent of the drowned men had their flies open.” Here.

• “Repatriating the partner margins.” Here.

• “I wonder how long it would take to reach product-market-fit if I start with a double-sided spoon…” Derek Sivers.

• “I just replied to an email from 2018.” Current year: 2024. Here.

• I don't understand very much but I know a lot of things.

• “I recall hearing a presentation by a GE senior executive at a conference I attended almost ten years ago. Accompanied by a surfeit of PowerPoint, the executive spoke about how GE was reinventing itself as an information technology company. Yet the talk, with its generalities, platitudes and bureaucratic and taxonomic framing, sounded like the corporate America of a bygone age. I walked away from the session convinced that the company had no future. The successful tech people were … crazier than that, more ambitious and more focused on what their companies can and cannot do well. And they don’t use PowerPoint.” Here.

• “I’m a shower idiot!” Tyler Cowen.

• “Dungeon Crawler Carl.”

Conferences, Events, etc.

Talks I’m giving, places I’ll be, and other plans.

DevOpsDays LA, March 15th, “We Fear Change” talk; KubeCon EU, March 19th. Executive dinner in Dallas, March 31st.

Logoff

Weird.

There is already a delightful article on all this, but… If I needed some kind of thesis or dissertation, how about the roll of alcohol in Wes Anderson movies. How is it used as a plot device, character motivation, and just overall establishing the Wes Anderson feel.

The rat in The Fantastic Mr. Fox is motivated by “cider,” it’s what made kept him going - an alcoholic. Mr. Fox makes a rash celebratory toast after, as he says, having had too much to drink already. The animals tunnels are then flushed out with a flood of Bean’s cider!

Bean is said to survive primarily on his cider, which is extra strong and custom made. We must presume he is drunk the whole time, drinking what looks like between two to three gallons of cider a day (though, perhaps his wife shares the cider so it’s slightly less). This is likely what makes him obsess over the fox and make the dumb decision at the end to keep sieging the animals out.

Despite this alcoholism, Bean retains all of his dexterity. He also has a vert Hunter Thompson look: tall, thin, and with a constant cigarette holder and drink in hand - also always with a pistol!

The beginning of The French Dispatch uses the delivery of a tray of drinks as a sort of pacing and structure. I don’t know the term, but that plate of drinks is what drags (directs? creates the path for?) the camera through the first scene.

Also in that one: in prison, Moses is slowly killing himself by drinking 14 pints of mouthwash rations per week" until he’s motivated to re-discover his art in his art class. As he says:

Well, I’ve been here 3,647 days and nights. Another 14,603 to go. I drink 14 pints of mouthwash rations per week. At that rate, I think I’m going to poison myself to death before I ever get to see the world again, which makes me feel very sad. I gotta change my program. I gotta go in a new direction. Anything I can do to keep my hands busy, I’m gonna do. Otherwise, I think maybe it’s gonna be a suicide. And that’s why I signed up for clay pottery and basket weaving. My name is Moses.

About midway through her lecture, J.K.L. Berensen, abruptly stops saying something like, “now, I’ll have my drink,” pulls out what looks like a portable martini set from under the podium, pours a drink, takes a sip, and then keeps lecturing.

What do each of the drinks say about the characters? Bill Murray’s character in The French Dispatch has a Prairie Oyster, harkening back to Kansas, but it has an actual oyster in it, something you wouldn’t actually have in Kansas (so close from the sea in the _1950s). And the actual person, Bill Murray, has a bunch of booze lore already.

And so forth!

Wastebook

• There’s a lot urgency about urgency around here.

• “Pre-emptive nothingburger.”

• Wow! COMIN' HOT! “We don’t run blogs because blogs are not journalism. We run news analysis stories or opinion columns (which are written in the first person and demonstrate an opinion). If you do not have an opinion that can be backed up by compelling and expert knowledge, do not write in the first person.” // The number on thing they’re missing is how much - if at all! - you get paid.

• I’d never argue with them. They’re way too smart.

• “The concept of a fey creature is a gamer-created mishmash of virtually all folkloric creatures that don’t eat humans, aren’t of godlike power, aren’t significantly larger than humans, are corporeal, and are basically of a human body type.” Tome of Adventure Design.

• “The kingdom of Wessex was now a swamp and, for a few days, it possessed a king, a bishop, four priests, two soldiers, the king’s pregnant wife, two nurses, a whore, two children, one of whom was sick, and Iseult." The Pale Horseman.

• “We do not 'leverage” anything." Google diction directives.

• “unlocked efficiency gains.” They found that lost key.

• “This floor has been taken over by sentient water coolers that stab people with their water dispenser faucets - which are now fanged - to suck their blood.” Here.

Relative to your interests

Only two today. If you want more links you should be subscribing to and reading Seroter’s daily reading list. I look forward to it each day…and often steal links from him!

• Apple Card Users Earned More Than $1 Billion in Daily Cash Last Year - I don’t really use my Apple Card, but I like the savings account. They should setup an auto savings option that buys into an S&P index, or those age-driven Vanguard accounts. That’d be #DefaultsLifestyle FTW.

• Handwriting beats typing for turbocharging your noggin - The sample size was only “36 university students,” but they did scan their brain.

Logoff

I haven’t “released” this video yet, so here, dear readers, you can get a sneak peak:

Sorry about the coffee mustache. It’s one of those things that happens as you get older.

I’ve been filming and putting up more tiny videos (and a few for work). Predictably, the how to have more fun with solo Dungeons and Dragons one is doing well.

I’m starting to like this short video format. It’s kind of like Tweeting used to be. 60 seconds is just for YouTube. Thanks to how quick I can edit with Descript, I’ve been making two versions: a 60 second or less one for YouTube, and as long as it should be for LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram.

“They say all foxes are slightly allergic to linoleum, but it's cool to the paw, try it.”

Enshittification considerificated

This week’s Software Defined Talk, episode 451: How does anyone use the Internet? This week, we discuss what “enshittification” is, what causes it, and whether it can be prevented. Plus, stay tuned until the end to hear the Software Defined Talk origin story. (Sadly, we made no 451 Research references.)

Relative to your interests

• Enterprise developers: what they do, where, and how - Highlights for a recent survey of developer types.

• Container Networking: From DIY to Buy - People don’t cover Kubernetes networking, they say. And it’s yet another hassle: “the networking burden falls on DevOps teams who have not traditionally been (and should not be) responsible for network deployment and management. To do so, they need to learn about Layers 3 to 7, border gateway protocol (BGP), subnetting, network address translation (NAT), and the like, but that’s a fairly long training path.”

• Everything’s a Dungeon: A Different Approach to Exploration Design - How to think about the “node-paths” of an adventure, in a dungeon-crawl, city, etc.

Wastebook

• “I was trying to play a simple fantasy rogue adventure, but the AI is obsessed with half naked busty women.” Yup.

• “1 hour of flying toasters.” Here. (I feel like there’s not enough toast in this one.)

• Looks like we need to re-send the memo.

• “Displeased unhappy bearded Caucasian man with cone hat on head and party horn in mouth looking at camera with bored dissatisfied expression as his birthday party sucks.” Here. (And, see below for said bearded Caucasian man.)

• “Some research has found that asking people to simply set aside half an hour a day for worrying allows them to avoid worrying during the rest of their day.” Here. By “simply,” they mean “only.”

• “Also, for the record, this woman is the woman who was thrown out of a Walmart for cleaning their bathroom, but she is NOT the woman who went and stocked shelves at a Target.” Here.

Logoff

I’ve done a lot of slide work today for my upcoming “We Fear Change” talk.

As Mark Cathcart, Distinguished Engineer at Dell and previously IBM, once said to me, shit-eating grin on his face looking up from his cubical, “I used to be good at my job. Now I’m good at PowerPoint.”

This presentation I’ve been worked on today gets buck-wild right from the start:

First, we’ll see if I actually use this. Second, what’s going on here is this. I really want to use that Wayne’s World bit.1 It’s what I named this presentation after! But, when you start a presentation you don’t just go cold into the title slide, you have to mess around with wires, wait to get the signal to start, etc. So I needed some kind of resting slide before the title slide. What better than toasters? Then, you can just put “slide zero” up - the toasters - and go into the title slide when needed, making sure you can time the, you know, joke.

Yeah.

We’ll see if I actually use it next week.

IT COULD BE TOO MUCH.

The “p” in IDP is for portal, not platform.

I think about this headstone often. It’s a well known, eye-rolling cliché is that, of course, he meant to let art flow through you effortlessly. He was, after all, a poet.

For those of us who can’t just pour the muse out of a bottle, there’s something more to “Don’t Try.” And that is: stick to what you’re good at. If you’ve developed a skill (or, I guess, an outlook on life) make sure to do it a lot, by default even.1 You also don’t need to show off and get validation for it, just do the work. Don’t try to do more than you’re good at in day-to-day life.

Of course you should learn new things, improve, and push yourself. But not that much. If you’re always focused on how you could be better, you’ll get depressed. You know, gratitude journals about how well things are going, and how good a person you are just the way you are.

There is also the Don’t Try of getting too involved outside of your area of concerns at work.

And, there's the Don't Try that therapy is always telling me: all these things you're tormented about are actually not that bad, most are even "nothing." You are the one tormenting yourself because you're trying too hard to care, to think things matter when they don't. Instead, don't try to see what's not there, just accept what the flow of life. It's probably fine.

Anyhow. I could probably try to make this point better. But, you know…

Update your Java apps to do that FinOps magic

If you run Java apps, chances are high you run Spring. This year, you should make sure you've upgraded to the latest version: you'll get huge performance boosts like uses 70% less memory and faster boot-up times that I can't even calculate the improvement for. Check out my pal DaShaun demonstrating these improvements in this quick video.

That means saving money if you can FinOps your way into using less beefy, costly cloud doo-dads and shutting down long-running Java process because you can’t afford the VM startup-time delays. Also, many older versions will not longer have support available. Upgrading is easier than you'd think and it'll get you these free payoffs. Plus, you know, actually new functionality and happier developers.

And, if you want a free way to see if your app can get these benefits, check out our Spring Health Assessment report. It’ll look at your app and take a swing at how you can make it run rul-better-like.

Wastebook

• Reading Rainbow: Business Book Edition - “Synergies in the sky! I can crow CAGR twice as I high! Take a look, it’s in a PowerPoint, Reading Rainbow!” Yes, and, who would be the host?

• GUM IS TERRIBLE WHEN OUTSIDE THE MOUTH.

• “It’s not something I keep a tab open for.” _Dear John Letters, Jan 18th, 2024

• Well, you know what they say about “hope,” right? What? Yeah, neither do I. That’s probably why I ain’t got none.

• One powerful benefit of getting older is the default stance of knowing less about pop culture and generally not caring. As an aging Gen-X’er, you can really amp this up by taping into your mutant super-power of not giving a shit about anything. If you’re getting older, and you find yourself getting upset more and more, then you’re doing it wrong, and just giving yourself the shits.

Logoff

Awhile back I mentioned that I was asked to contribute to a 2024 predictions round-up. Here’s the final article, converted to an interview style with just me.

Tell me the last new condiment you tried that you didn’t like.

Developer Productivity

One of my co-workers worked at Uber for awhile on their internal developer tools and platforms. In this week’s Tanzu Talk episode, Cora and I talk to him about what they did, why, and how as well. Check out the video below, or the podcast episode if you prefer that.

Relative to your interests

• Pitchfork & The Death of the critic - Death of the critic? No, as always, when the medium changes, how the job is done is changes. // “The culture critics who spent days creating words of criticism now have to evolve to use today’s tools to help others think differently, try new things, and have an influence. Playlists are the new words. Followers are the new readers. Critics of yesterday are now ‘tastemakers.’ While anyone can be a tastemaker, to be good, and have real influence, one still needs to have skills that add up to a professional critic – broad awareness of modern and past works, other aspects of life, understanding of popular culture, knowledge of society, and contemporary politics, economics, and global context.” // Socrates hated writing. His medium was talking. He feared that writing would ruin philosophy. Plato learned the new medium, and the reach was more powerful effective and durable. A 60 second video may not seem like a critical piece, but if it contains critical analysis and, even, recommendations, of course it is.

• Why Agile doesn’t work for most IT pros: The bigger you are, the harder you fall - I thought they’d stopped doing the State of Agile surveys, so it’s fun to see a new one.

• Bell Labs & Google: bookends of the same sad story? - “Whether it’s Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, or IBM Research Labs, the story is always the same: corporate overlords are so married to the staid predictability of their cash cows that they fail to make bold decisions. Middle managers who eventually rise to the top lack the imagination or risk-taking capabilities to put their companies on new growth curves.” // I don’t like this as a complete failure explanation. The missing piece is something more like innovation in business models: figuring out how to create a business out new products and new features, and often failing to! The comments from Google people are right, though: you need some kind of innovation and product driven leadership to keep the product going. In contrast to the usual innovate or die mindset, an appreciate for cash cows: yes, your company is “just” a cash cow with predictable, low growth revenue. That is how most businesses function and it’s perfectly fine: you just have different expectations as an investor and an employee. You are low risk, you are steady, and likely you are part of how society functions. You move slow and care for things.

• Related, incremental improvement (or “drift”): “In other words, to build a great data business, today’s startups don’t have to come up with particularly novel ideas or get a bunch of bets about the market right. They just have to rebuild what’s already there, but more deliberately and on more certain ground than the original pioneers could.”

Wastebook

• I have no idea what they’re doing, but they’re obviously not very good at it.

• Two models of judging “value”: (1) how much value you can create, (2) how much value you can take. You can grow a forest, or you can harvest a forest. You can lower prices, or you can raise prices. You can collaborate, or you can take credit. We aspire to turn all those or’s into and’s, but we mostly do one or the other.

• All process improvement can be learned by how to manage the flow of laundry and dirty dishes. And we should take the overwhelming nature of those as therapeutic council that you can never master it consistently. Especially when you have kids.

• “On the other hand, the frenzy is destabilizing.” Here.

Logoff

It’s a regular hurry up and wait situation at the moment.