benspoke

[benspoke]

A developer no more...

I started my career in technology as a web developer. I learned HTML by taking it apart. I went to the darkest corners of the web, clicked on View Source, and learned what I could do with a little bit of syntax and an idea. It was the turn of the century and a time where mashups happened before “mashup” was a term. I started with HTML, grew into DHTML (precursor to jQuery/AJAX), Javascript, JAVA, and eventually PHP. I stayed with PHP for years.

It was a simpler time before there were any real front-end frameworks. Frontend developers were more graphic designers with coding skill versus full fledged developers, at least in practice. Now, much change has happened. Almost 20 years into my career, I am an architect for a cloud company, but I have long strayed away from code. I went from PHP web developer to B2B account manager, to systems administrator. In the early 2000s, PHP didn’t pay as well as .net and I was not the Microsoft-centric technologist that I am now.

As a Systems Administrator, there wasn’t time to be a developer beyond simple automation scripts. Many of the daily task in supporting a Microsoft environment came down to subjective user-behavior. After several years, I had becomes more comfortable in a GUI than in a Command Line. Then…. It happened. We deployed Exchange 2007 and all of my bright, shiny, point-and-click tools had disappeared. Microsoft had moved all reporting functionality to third-party tools and PowerShell. My job wasn’t willing to spring for untested third-party tools. PowerShell became my weapon of choice. It immediately felt painful but in practice, it was great. It was easy to follow as much of the object notation followed syntax I was familiar with from Java, including constructs, inheritance, and development behaviors. It was also as flexible as PHP where variable definition could be reset on the fly and symbols followed a similar ‘dollar-sign’ prefix. It was the best of times, and the worst of times. I gained a shiny new skill, but the expectations were high. I was no longer a developer with a practiced mindset. I was a SysAdmin doing shotgun development… what some of us now call a DevOps Engineer.

After a few years supporting this environment, watching it grow, and re-architecting it to be more self-sustaining … I left. I architected a global scale compute environment to allow for pro-active support. When you can shut down 50% of production and no one notices, you’ve done a good job. It was time for a new challenge. During my career, I had joined the IASA and taken an office in the local chapter. It was time to push forward as an architect. So I did. And it has been a great ride that I’m still on. I am not a developer. I am not a DBA. I am not a Data Analyst. I do understand how all of these roles function and what is required to support them. I know how to build, scale, secure, and manipulate the infrastructure required to support each role and the workloads created by those roles. The gift of being an architect is that you get to learn everything. You get to be “the person” that has a 1000-foot view of all workloads and all infrastructure. There’s nothing you don’t get the opportunity to learn, understand, or design. It is a place where true generalists are able to shine.

Now that I’ve very briefly described my career and experiences in the tech world from 1998 - now, I sit at my desk looking at archive files. It’s copies of papers and old application code that I’ve written. One archive went so far as to include a detailed business plan attached to software written using a 10-year old version of a given PHP framework. It’s been several years since I’ve had to write code for a web application. It’s time. It’s time to press delete, possibly keep the idea, and write new code in a new language.  As an infrastructure architect and technology generalist, code is a tricky subject. Developers and Operations do not get along until they do. I’ve been both and think it’s time to start blurring that line again. Am I going to modify this instance of Wordpress? HELL NO! Am I going to write a few microservices or something else? Possibly. Let’s see how this journey goes. Once a builder, always a builder.

[benspoke]

Why I have a server in my basement

I’m a career technologist. I love my field of work. I enjoy learning new technology and implementing the coolest and freshest tech. I quite literally live for the challenge of interesting problems and finding solutions to them. These are not the reasons why I have a server in my living room.

I’m an online shopper. I’ve spent years working in systems engineering and network security and have seen some truly awful mishaps. I have wifi baby monitors for my son. ISPs do a terrible job of securing the connections of their customers. The Internet of Things is resulting in an explosive growth of new devices that are not generally well secured… And hackers are real. They don’t just happen in movies. The ubiquity of UPnP on consumer and ISP routers leads to enormous surface areas for attack without consistent mitigation. These days, relying on your ISP router and the antivirus you barely update isn’t really enough. It’s just a waiting game until your Windows computer or Mac (yes, I said it) gets hacked and joins a bot net, gets harvested, or just goes kaput. You need better security.

Communication on the Internet is a two way street. Unless you have some business grade (and properly configured) kit, the most you’re getting is SPI or Stateful Packet Inspection. This means that when you initiate a connection (like opening a website or sending an email, etc), you open an incoming connection for the length of time that you need to send a receive data. Anything can happen over that connection. Knowing that, do you feel safe when your brand new shiny Amazon button calls out to the Internet? It doesn’t have its own firewall. It doesn’t have anything. It’s just spewing data by poking a hole in your firewall. The same is true for other IoT and cloud-connected devices. So what do you do when you see how open you are? You get better.

The server in my living room isn’t just a set of hard drives where I store my music and movies as a NAS. It’s so much more. It’s where I break from the mold and better protect what goes on after my ISP gives me Internet. And you know what? It’s easier than most people think and doesn’t take a lot of time. I'm running a tiny private cloud at home. I have intrusion Detection, Intrusion Prevention, firewall, VPN, a couple of blogs, home lab, and have a shitload of media and backups. I’m not the average user. So what?! That doesn’t mean you have to be less secure.

There are two new markets emerging from the current boom in technology. One market is the data consumer who is unknowingly supplying companies, hackers, and anyone who wants it with tons of personal data and behavioral information. The other market is a niche market in devices, software, and appliances for home users who don’t want to get hacked.

For the prosumer who wants to secure what goes on behind the wire, it’s time to look at Untangle, Zyxel Armor, Firewalla, Bitdefender BitBox. These devices and related software provide home and small business users with a good firewall (better than the crap one that comes with your internet), intrusion Prevention (stops unwanted attacks on your home network), intrusion detection (let’s you know that someone is trying to get in), and in some cases VPN (a secure link back to your home from anywhere).