Recently, I read Codifying devops practices, a blog post written by Patrick Debois. This is food for thought. I spent some time trying to identify the patterns I recognize in daily practice. I may continue to update this as I learn more opportunities and categories. Approached with a build-measure-learn philosophy, patterns are less about the "how" and more about opportunities to improve and grow. These opportunities may be considered best practice, but are circumstantial based on your organization, your project, or other factors. I personally advocate addressing the most glaring problems

Hands down, a huge pet peeve of mine is a lack of reliability. Let me be clear, this is by no means to say that I am impatient. I often provide people countless opportunities to be reliable. But, I've learned over time that the more patient I am with something, the higher my expectations get. I've found it critical to try to express my expectations as soon as I recognize them or to provide just-in-time feedback when they are not met. I've learned to own my expectations and that I cannot be critical if I have not made them clear. Too often, I've held too much confidence that issues will work

BackgroundI recently changed companies and am going through the process of onboarding. One of the big draws to the new company was an emphasis on people and culture. The whole balance between a for-profit business and a focus on employee needs, in my experience, can be in conflict. I have been learning more about how these goals are achieved. In some onboarding documentation, there has been a reference to "The Agile Manifesto". A swift Google search, let me to this page. The core values are defined as follows:Individuals and interactions over processes and toolsWorking software over

I recently had a difficult situation in which I could not debug a hanging Simpletest in Drupal 8. Before continuing on, add the dblog module as a dependency to the Simpletest you are writing and rerun it. Your test may be hanging because it cannot write to the error log. If it continues to hang, read on. Hanging test with no outputWhen a test hangs, there are no signs of life. It leverages Drupal's Batch API. The screen just sits on a progress bar of death. This process continues to run indefinitely and then causes performance issues. When running the test, it will never leave the batch screen

This morning I read this article. It's a short phrase that stood out: simple beauty of life. This reiterates a common thread from many others with severe illness or little time left. Notably former CMU Professor Randy Pausch, who died of cancer, who left a lasting impression with his last lecture. Mitch Albom wrote a popular book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, about a life's reflection and purpose. Admittedly, I spend too much time thinking about this. We witness others discover their life meaning through their challenges. Do we lack that focus and vision until we're faced with grave

This evening, my daughter and I were playing doctor. I laid on the floor and she gave me a checkup. She looked at my ears. "Better". She checked my heartbeat. She nodded her head. And, lastly, she checked my temperature. Her response was perfect and I hope I never forget it: "My temperature is happy". An Unhappy TemperatureIt's been a while since I have blogged. My temperature was far from happy. I spent the better part of eight months working on a challenging project. My spirit was crushed after dedicating myself to its success. Loose lips sink ships and blogging about my experiences as they

I'll try to stay focused on the picks in the first two rounds, as it's very difficult for a novice like me to be an expert after that. BackgroundThere are two philosophies the Steelers never deviate from. They certainly will not this year:They will draft the best player available, not based on need.They only draft "special" secondary players in the first two rounds.The following picks represent my best guess at where the Steelers will go. I'll also note other players I believe they will consider. Round 1Nate Orchard - OLB from UtahLeadership skills, strong and has decent size. A slight chip on