Virtually Benevolent

Kernel Panic

I’ve been thinking for over two years about how to talk about this, how to talk about the day I couldn’t process anymore. The day where my bullshit buffers overflowed. The day of my internal kernel panic. When starved for resources, my brain finally threw up a PSOD, and quit.

vmstan 1.0 build 11091983
PCPU 0 locked up. Failed to ack.
frame=4C lbs=E1 age=21
VMK uptime: 9:15:33:45.014
No coredump target configured

If there were some predictive analytics running on me back then, it would have been evident that this was coming for a long time. Unbeknownst to anyone else, I knew that I couldn’t keep up and that I couldn’t go on forever in my degraded state. The warning signs were all there, but no one was reading the logs.

The root cause analysis would tell you: lousy code embedded on possibly flawed hardware. No permanent fix, but mitigations are available.

Excess Battery

I recently picked up an iPhone XS Smart Battery Case, for my iPhone X. I’ve previously owned the 6S battery case for my iPhone 6, and the iPhone 7 case. Let me first say that even though Apple has designed the case for the XS, it worked on the X running iOS 12.2.2 without any effort.

Revisting Essential

Back in July 2017, I wrote about my 10 essential iOS applications. I thought now that we’re reaching the end of 2018, it might be a good time to revisit that list.

As I mentioned at the time:

Certified Expert

I’m pleased to announce that yesterday I passed the VCAP6.5-DCD exam, thus earning the VMware Certified Implementation Engineer – Data Center Virtulization “milestone” after elevating the VCAP5-DCA exam that I earned back in 2014.

Shine On

Once upon a time there was a meeting of minds,
The sun and the moon made a deal with the sky,
One would take the morning and the other the night,
Together they would blanket the world with light,
But the moon had a shadow, he felt like a liar,
The sun was the only one who carried the fire,
The sun saw this, she kept on glowing,
Bound to the moon, never saying, “you owe me”
She said “I’ll shine on you.” Jason Mraz

Who will you shine on today?

VMware TAM

I have accepted a job with VMware, as a Technical Account Manager (TAM).

To say I’m excited about this would be a gross understatement. VMware has been the company I’ve spent the majority of my technical focus on up to this point, and since announcing this change on Twitter last week I’ve been thrilled with the replies like “I’ve been here 4 years and it’s an amazing place to work.” During the interview process, one of the current TAM’s told me point blank: “This is the best job I’ve had in my career.” All of this has maintained a level of anticipation about this career change that I’ve not had for any other.

Blueberry Lover

Occasionally I’ll wear my “blueberry” VMware certification shirt to work. Some people in the community love these shirts, some people don’t. I, do.

Blue also happens to be my favorite color.

Doorbell Tweets

I received a lot of feedback from my tweet about ditching a new Ring for Nest Hello.

I think my Nest Hello preorder has shipped, or is shipping soon. Credit card has been billed.

Ditching the Ring 2 that I picked up last month. Have not been thrilled with it.
— Michael Stanclift (@vmstan) March 15, 2018

Rather than tweetstorm it up, I’ll try and summarize it all here as to why I’m switching.

Define Essential

Two weeks ago, after regretfully trying to use the iOS 11 developer betas on my primary devices, I was forced by general instability to roll back to iOS 10.

Unfortunately, there’s no great way to do this without doing a restore and fresh install. I had a backup from iOS 10 that I’d taken prior to jumping on the beta train, but it was old now. This process is further complicated by the way Apple Watch activity and health data is really maintained on the phone, not the watch itself.

The result was I ended up fresh installing iOS 10.3.3 (beta 6) on my iPhone 7 and iPad Pro 10.5”, as well as doing a factory reset of my Watch. It also meant losing a couple years worth of workout data, awards and streaks. But such is beta life. It did give me an opportunity to reassess what gets installed on these devices. I find it helpful to mix things up from time to time, even going as far as doing a reset of my app icon layouts periodically to reshuffle the deck chairs and throw out any old cruft hiding in corners. One of my favorite activities is to delete apps that don’t get used anymore, or used enough to take up my attention.

Reasonable Salary

The process of looking for a new job is stressful. If you already have one, you’re a bit like a secret agent, sneaking around town trying to complete the mission of getting someone new to agree to sign your paychecks, without the old boss finding out. If you don’t have a job, it’s even more stressful, as you wait around and watch your bank accounts dwindle, with nothing to replenish it.

I knew by March of this year that I was ready to move on from my now previous employer. I’ve never really had a difficult time finding a job when I decided to commit to the process. I don’t think this time was any different in that respect, but it was interesting. I was fortunate and excited to accept the position that I had the most interest in of all those I looked at during the entire process.

My process was around the same time that my friend @davemhenry was in the midst of his #HireDaveNow campaign on Twitter. It was fun to watch Dave advertise himself, while I was lurking in the shadows, although I’m sure it was super stressful for him at the time. It would have been refreshing to be able to shout “I’m available” to the world.

Someone eventually hired Dave.