It’s true, Allan is leaving VI.
It’s a difficult decision to leave the Alliances role I’ve recently joined, but I need to be more predictable for my family.
For six years (I joined on Feb 13 2009 or Feb 18 2009, depends on whom you ask) I’ve lived in 6 different places, checked out early from surgery recovery to train an FAE at LBG, delivered a sales pitch while bleeding, defeated firewalls when asked (TCP-over-DNS is my friend, just ask Boingo-in-flight), and literally driven through a forest fire to deliver services. All the while, frustrated with the challenge of keeping updated as one of many faced daily by FAEs, I built this FAE toolkit to collect the necessary bits in a way that is fairly trivial to synchronize: rsync, SkyDrive, whatever.
If you’re not using your chosen one, feel free to make a noise, I’ll go through it on Friday if asked.
Monday Feb 2 will be my last day, but the major obligations I have remaining are VICA training. Or VWAP. Or VICP. I think it’s VICP. The names change as often as our wikis, internal messaging (did you know we first used Yahoo Messenger before Skype, Jabber, and Lync?), and internal knowledge-sharing. For the record, I prefer the second time-tracking system that used calendar-synching. So many things have changed.
All kidding aside, the business of storage has changed. We no longer have to describe optical taps so often, and physical cleanliness has gained attention outside of our customers (which is what always worried me on 8gb and 16gb adoption). Various optical providers know who we are, and some are providing taps. We are one of the few utilities (not a tool) that don’t provide an API, but we may never feel that gap. We’ve cursed entities in various forms (“Allan, can you make these nicknames apply to the history in NetWisdom?” “sure…”) but come above the weeds and consider how much capability the flagship product has gained in a few short years. a business that didn’t understand SMM or IPM a few years ago now realizes how critical it is, and major providers are trying to catch up. They’re jumping into our Blue Ocean, so to speak.
I’ll miss the friends I’ve made, both in the company and outside.
I truly have treasured the opportunity to work with some of the smartest people in the STEM fields. I thank you for that, and apologize for when you’ve had to demand-teach me something I didn’t understand in time.
So I’m leaving. I’m going to manage a few servers for a while, a 9-to-5 that gives me an update in technology and a predictable time to get home every night. I wonder if they collect metrics on every switch in their network … 🙂
The EU Server expense is being adopted by Richard, but in the meantime, Stu H has picked it up. Stu and Daniel should have admin. JP has accepted a brain-dump of how to build the vitools-* projects that run the EU server autonomously, build the FAE toolkit, and just keep chugging away. Until IT provides a zero-labour replacement, I hope the EU Server will sync passwords automatically and build homedirs as needed, plus offer the FAE toolkit (and the VIP toolkit, and the Training, and the FAECORE). That’s soon out of my hands.
I open-sourced the dependencies and tools for the vw4tool to show customers but it gives us all a benefit: if you need something added — a new format parsed, a zone-vote repaired, a different output — there’s a bug-reporting tool on github. Just create a new issue and I’ll address it in the spare time that this reduced role offers me. Have a care for posting private info, you mighty need to anonymize anything sent, but I believe I’m still somewhat bound by confidentiality. Safer to anonymize.
I’ll miss my other family.
No man is irreplaceable, so don’t feel bad if you do just fine without me, but if you need me, my contact information is on linkedIn; link me in, and I’m there if you need me. https://www.linkedin.com/in/goldfish