Cyber Synapse S.R.L.

Linux/Unix people

DevOps Engineer

"I had a career, I didn't like the look of it"

Through the course of our lives, we each experience a number of situations. These are some of my stories.

This explanation from Colin about why he was in such a seemingly menial role, despite obviously (at least it seemed to me) being highly intelligent, didn't make a lot of sense to me.

When I found his good mate Dave, my boss, sat on the PABX room floor with his head in his hands, this rapidly made a lot of sense to me: The ~0.5 meter high telecom bill in front of him did not contain good news.
In fact it was particularly bad news: a sizable amount of fraud had taken place due to a misconfiguration of the voicemail system attached to the PABX, and Dave was now preparing to deliver to his boss the good news about the associated invoice.
I'd already learned in life that shit can get pretty real pretty quick, and this clearly wasn't going to be a fantastic week/month/performance review period for Dave.
I was still reporting to Dave when I got my first professional "jolly".
A curious lesson that used to come from answering "important" peoples phones, was that sometimes callers would get you confused for an important person, and invite you to London for lunch and pre-sales Q&A & drinks.

I caused quite a bit of disappointment on that trip:

- I didn't book a first class train ticket, and apparently set a bad example for how costs could be reduced
- When I arrived at the lunch with the salesman, I promptly explained I was an industrial placement student, had zero budget and almost as much purchasing influence, before setting about my lunch.
- A highlight was being far more technical than the pre-sales "technical" team, which did seem to improve the sales guy's mood, as he left them with 10+ followup points they needed to go away and research, while we decamped to some kind of bar or pub
- Having established I wasn't being much use as our salesman's wingman, and being wary of missing the last train back from London, I left him and the women he'd accosted with fake champagne from his expense account to enjoy their evening.
I did speak to him once after - apparently my giving his tech's a going over meant he got minimal hassle for whatever else he ended up expensing that night.

Another character from that time was Simon.
Simon was a (the?) Unix admin.
I didn't know it yet, but Simon was the BOFH personified, but as far as I could tell, did not have a PFY.
It was not a role I was interested in.
They must have been short on names, because Simon had a different Dave for a boss, and was the only person I ever saw put his hand to different-Dave's face and bark WAIT, and live to tell the tale.

As it turned out, I would eventually end up working for different Dave, though a couple of years later & he was based over seas at the time.
"Overseas" was always an intreguing place for me, and working for different Dave meant I got a few trips myself.
These must have been the twilight hours of when even a junior employee flying inside Europe might be allocated a business class fare, which opened an exclusive world of the airport lounge and free food / bar.
Of course there were new people and customers to meet, freshly-purchased-yet-systemically-broken software to force into working in production, and the wonder that is overnight support for what I'm convinced was the shitiest piece of software SAP ever put their branding on.

This overseas thing became an actual thing.
It turned out it was cheaper / less hassle to send me to Australia than to fire me in the UK.
That might not be entirely true, but in all honesty the longer version of that story is heavy on reading and light on learning, so I think I'll give it a miss.
I can say though, both times I've eaten for free at https://donovans.com.au were pretty good, and I have even eaten there on my own dollar, albeit with another story I think I'll save for a different time.
If you got this far and are pissed about the lack of technology mentioned, fight me.

Just kidding, here are some moderately technical talks I've done in the past:

From a practicality point of view?

Install Debian on OnePlus 6

Is a much better option.

But back to Colin: I only ever got a bollocking from Colin once, though who knows I must have earned at least a few more.

I think at a party at original Daves, on hearing Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World, I remarked that it wasn't.
Let's say he explained my incorrect point of view.
A lotta folks are facing a lotta stuff right now, but on balance I think Colin is right.
And RIP Dave S.
Gone but not forgotten.

About the Author

Ewan Nisbet - DevOps Engineer

"The future is already here — it's just not evenly distributed" - William Gibson. Allegedly.

I redistribute the future, helping people:
1) Decide where they want to go.
2) Get there.

For the most part I've achieved these outcomes by guiding interactions with technology.
Frequently this has been intertwined with the adaption of one or more business processes.
I've done this through a mixture of mentoring and bringing people together, insight, and good old fashioned hard work.
Sometimes I've supported, other times I've led. When appropriate, I've simply gotten out of the way.

My Gallup EP10: (Entrepreneurial Profile)

Strategic style of leadership, with a top four talent order of:
1 - Disruptor
2 - Profitability
3 - Delegator
4 - Risk

https://calendly.com/ewan-nisbet

See you in the next one!

If you wish to support our project

Donation link (Buy me a coffee):

https://buymeacoffee.com/Alex_Cyber_Synapse