Jamie Duncan: All right, and thanks for joining us on the
first episode of 2021. For the K files, this is Episode 12.
We had planned to do an episode in late November, early December
to round out 2020. And then the world kind of ended.
And then the world never really started back up. So we will get
back to the CI CD series we talked about, we just honestly
do not have the bandwidth in our brains to do that extra work and
to be able to deliver any kind of meaningful thought on it. So
what we talked about earlier, and we were kind of figuring
out, we knew we wanted to record something we knew we wanted to
get something out there. And the first thing I think it was out
of I think, john, you're the one that said it maybe it was you,
Tarik, I don't remember which, but why is why is it all so damn
hard? Like, and that's what we're gonna kind of try to
explore. And it may take a couple of different directions.
I think, john, you're thinking like, why is it so hard to get
started in it? That's kind of where your brain is. My brain is
more? Why is it so hard to solve a problem in our industry right
now? Why does everything take 400 extra things when it didn't
feel like it used to do that? torque?
Tariq Islam: Yeah, I love the same mind to do Jamie, I am at a
point now where it's like, I can't even Hello World Without
googling eight things. And there's just no getting away
from that now, every time I think john, you put it best,
every time you sit down at your computer, it's like you have to,
you're starting a whole project from scratch, and it's gonna
take you eight years to,
John Osborne: to get anywhere. It is I mean, it's the, I think
that trend has been, you know, where thing is getting harder
and maybe optimizing for, you know, really use cases that
aren't in the now has been happening for a while. But then
with 2020, for me, personally, you know, I was just kind of
like, wiped out emotionally all year. And the time I had to work
was in was just not as much that as the year before. And so, you
know, sometimes, you know, I'd be doing meetings and other
stuff, and you know, non coding and non, you know, real hands on
keyboard stuff. And then, you know, I'd sit down after like
two or three weeks, I'm not doing anything. And, you know, I
have a lot of experience, but it was like starting over. You know
what I mean? Because it's like, none of that stuff's in short
term memory, it would take so long to get back to where you
were. And it, I spent a lot of time just thinking about, you
know, I think some of us were, we're lucky that we had a
fundamental baseline knowledge of things. And we saw things
like, you know, Kubernetes, and serverless, and all these types
of things that are in the know now, but I think if you're
starting now, it's, it's actually really hard because you
don't have, you know, deep learning experience or
understands, like, deep networking, or how, like, the
software defined network just kind of makes sense to you and
those types of things. And so, you know, it's like, where
people ask me, like, how should I get started, and I try not to
be too prescriptive, because everyone learns differently.
But, you know, I do have some, some thoughts on it still,
Tariq Islam: I'm gonna, I'm gonna call out also parents,
right? I mean, during COVID, we got we got knocked around really
hard, all year long, and we still kind of are, and the
exhaustion between the navigating the pandemic, and
work, and the kids. And just things happening, you know, by
the time you sit down, and you're like, you know, what,
today's the day that I'm finally going to learn go, right, right,
right. And it just, it just, you just don't have the energy for
it. And then you get that anxiety and then you run out of
time, because you know, you got a kid screaming, or you can,
something else has come up, that's higher priority than
learning a language that you probably won't end up using on a
regular basis tomorrow.
John Osborne: I mean, I had so much anxiety, like we're also
building this house way over budget, like, you know,
financial stuff, and like, I had so much anxiety for a lot of
2020 that I would go 90 days without returning somebody text
messages like people wish me happy birthday in August. I
replied in like, November, December, and then I got so much
anxiety because one day I just like had a cup of coffee and I'm
like a reply though. And then they started replying right
away, like I replied, You know, it took me nine days to reply,
they replied right away, and then
they replied right away. That was john. And then and then I
just replied to those their text messages like last week. And so
it's like, if I can't even reply to a text message from a friend
like how am I supposed to sit?
There do all this stuff, but it's like, you know, it's just
been crazy.
Jamie Duncan: Yeah, there's got to be something to that because
I kind of live my life in a in a state of interrupt.
John Osborne: You really do. I'm actually floored with how, like
you can context switch so easily, Jamie, that it's kind
Jamie Duncan: of right. I do it constantly, right. So it's
purely a learning Skill because I have no attention span
whatsoever. And I used to think I had this amazing ability to
focus. And when I got a little self awareness, I realized I
wasn't focusing at all. I was just spinning 50 plates at once.
Yeah. And so I always thought that kind of burnout. I wasn't
burnout proof, no one's burnout proof, but I thought I was more
resistant to it than other people. And I felt it. And I
think that, and I've kind of built in my own head, the thing
that I value my own skill, is it if if it's just if the thing
between me and doing something well is hard work, I feel okay.
That 100 we're sitting down to knock it out, I'm good. If I've
got to outwork somebody, I've got that in the back. Man the
past few months, like more times than I want to admit freely, I
would be sitting at my desk and realize I was staring at the
same screen for 10 minutes. And then the only thought in my head
was go lay on the couch in the other room.
John Osborne: Oh, yeah. I mean, like, we're just
Jamie Duncan: like the work like it's oppressive. And I don't
know how much of that is just sort of, I don't I don't know
how much of the Why is everything so damn hard, is
because the world we're living in is essentially a wood
chipper.
John Osborne: I think it's they're related. I mean,
everything has been getting harder. But the emotional energy
that you have to do it all. Again, we're just not there. I
mean, there were times Yeah, we're not like, you know, I have
to be on video a lot, too. So and I'm introverted. So you
know, two hours being on video talking a lot. Like, yeah, I'd
have to lay down after the middle, you know, like,
Jamie Duncan: lay down, you mean fetal position. And
John Osborne: then I'm gonna go, you know, cry in the shower
floor.
Jamie Duncan: I was actually so I had lunch with a friend, a
good friend of mine, like, we worked together for years. And
so we're sitting, you know, we're doing the whole social
distancing. But we hadn't seen each other in months. And we
were kind of in she was in the bubble. pretty consistently. So
like, we're like, we've shared enough germs that we're kind of
in the same in the same bubble. And we hadn't seen her since God
before Thanksgiving. So we had lunch yesterday. And she's like,
How are y'all doing? Like, how's the family and the only thing I
could express to her was, I don't have any capacity left.
Like, I'm just empty. And but the list of things on my to do
list is not empty. It's not going down. And part of it is
that the industry has gotten so nuts and I don't know another
word to put to it. Yeah. But it was like, it's,
Tariq Islam: there's this. I think I might have a term for
it. It's
it. There's, it's like a fetishization of abstraction. I
feel like, I'm going to put it I maybe that's not the right term,
but I feel like that's the right term. It's just everything. And
I think that's why I end up having to, like, if I want to do
hello world, you know, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, take you like
45 seconds, right? Sit down, do it knock it out. Now. It's like
frameworks on frameworks on abstractions, and just doesn't,
I'm in the trap. Yeah, exactly. Like someone that personality
has been around for a long time, though. Cuz I remember, the
first time I actually got my first job out of college, I just
wrote c++ and didn't talk to anyone, which I, which I didn't
like, at the time, but now I'd be like, Oh, that's amazing job
dream job, like.
John Osborne: But the first time I actually looked at somebody
else's code, as part as a full time coder, was like, there's it
was Java code. And there was like, eight levels of
abstraction and like clicking this abstract classes interface,
and you got to actually see what the find like three lines of
code. And I do feel like there's a personality in tech that just
likes that, like, it's a very, quote unquote, clean to them.
Tariq Islam: If that makes sense, that that abstraction,
that abstraction, you know, when you I mean, that, that that
object oriented, Java abstraction, right, the the
interfaces and the implementations and the
templating. And all that. That's when that's when I feel like, at
least for me, I was like this, someone's gonna over engineer
the hell out of something using this. And lo and behold, you
know, now we're here and everything feels over
engineered. Everything's got to be an abstracted framework.
Everything's got to be, you know, some sort of standard. So
I feel for folks that are entering into the industry. I
mean, I see folks on Twitter that are, you know, starting
their journey in tech as a developer. You see, Jamie
mentioned 100 days of code. It's, it feels I feel exhausted
for them.
Jamie Duncan: Yeah, now that's legit. So I mean, I'm doing a
writing project.
John Osborne: Great, john, every aspects gotten harder. I mean,
if you look at front end developers Even or something
like that, where it's like before, you could just write
some JavaScript and, you know, now it's like, it just feels so
much more, more complicated. Even doing web development, you
know, this, in front end development can get super
complicated. Especially if you start doing things like some of
the advanced html5 elements and things like that, I actually
think it can get more complicated than the back end
development, because there's like, the artistic side to it.
Tariq Islam: Part of it is also, you know, I guess back in the
day, I don't want I hate saying that, because it makes me feel a
little old. But back in the day, you know, you only had so many
languages and frameworks to choose from, like, for me, it
was basically c++, Java, jQuery, CSS, PHP, go right or not go not
actually, like, take those and run with it, right. And
everything was built off of that, and it was great. And you
learn all the concepts and picking up new languages is not
that big of a deal. You know, but now it's, it's, I feel like
I could I could pick up a language Yes, but it what's
gonna, is it gonna be relevant in two weeks?
John Osborne: Before I feel like languages the difference, what,
like 15 years ago, the difference in languages was
largely syntax. And now it's different fundamental ways of
thinking, if you think about functional programming, versus
like rust versus go and there's a lot of, it's more than it's a
lot more than syntax. Now, you actually have to retrain your
brain. In some cases, languages went from being general purpose
to specialized in a way, but but there's but people still try to
use them from purpose languages. Oh, yeah.
Tariq Islam: Use go for everything.
Jamie Duncan: One of the things, of course, duh. I mean, this is
a Kubernetes. podcast, that has to be the answer. So there, I'm
working on a little writing project for for a thing. And
part of like, the little introduction chapter, or
paragraph is a little bit of a history lesson. And I was
looking up some dates earlier today. And it really kind of
blew me away because I'm thinking about them in the
context of this. We're on this runaway train. Things are
getting harder, exponentially. And when did that start? And I
don't know when it certainly didn't start with Kubernetes.
But it certainly didn't start with Docker. It didn't start
with whatever. But just to kind of put it in context. openshift
to Dotto, so we all we were all at Red Hat at the time.
openshift to Dotto was December 2013. So that was just over
seven years ago. And that feels like at least 47 years ago. It
really does.
John Osborne: I mean, I can show you a picture of me for 2013 20
years.
Tariq Islam: I mean, to be fair, though, to be fair, the last
year feels like it was 40 years ago.
Jamie Duncan: I know it but I get that. I thought that but
then I was like So look, I had to look up some other dates.
Kubernetes one Dotto was only a year and a half after that.
Yeah, there was only 18 months
John Osborne: before filling every year, yeah, celery gets
Jamie Duncan: gray and gray. So we've been on this train for a
long time, and then it ran into 2020. And we all fit in a wood
chipper is the only thing the only analogy I can draw.
John Osborne: You know, part of the issue is the the technology
is iterating. So much faster than where most organizations
are now, that every year that gap gets greater and greater.
And so every year, it just feels like I mean, if you look at the
technologies that you know, what is supposed to be like the
simplest way to get up and running, you might think that
might be you know, a managed serverless instance, right? But
then you go look at it, and it's like, Okay, well, I need more
than just the serverless framework, you know, I gotta
connect it to an API gateway. And then I gotta get a web
application firewall, and then I got to learn how the, you know,
kinesis is gonna work. And then you need a cache and an object
store before you know what you've learned via service
meshes. Yeah. Before you know what you've learned, 10
different. Your API gateway. Yeah, get out, you know, to get
like a web app going. And never mind the fact that you got to,
you know, learn all this stuff. You have that.
Tariq Islam: So, so I think I think there's two there's two
things to this. So when when I first went when I guess all of
us right when we first learned Kubernetes It was like, what's a
pod was a service was a deployment, right? Then there
was the openshift specific stuff back then anyway, right, the
build config and you know, image stream and things like that.
That was like 80% of it. Now, five and a half years later, I
mean, it's a it's a freaking me. Yeah, I mean, in fact, in fact,
there are folks there are folks out there learning You know,
Kubernetes at layers of abstraction, where they're not
even considering things like learning what an actual
Kubernetes service is, or does or what the different types of
services there might be, they're just clicking buttons and
learning Kubernetes, you know, at the managed layer, where
Yeah, I've touched Kubernetes before I've installed and spun
up and used Kubernetes. But if you'd ask them, what a, a, you
know, what the different types of a service are in Kubernetes,
they probably wouldn't be able to tell you. And and I don't,
I'm not saying that that's wrong, or that these individuals
know less. Because, you know, they don't have to no more than
that, necessarily. But it's a huge gap. And I would argue that
you still do need to know that underlying stuff. But I don't
think that I just don't think that people have the energy for
that I put together a there are some, there's some folks that,
you know, we've we've hired, and they're aspiring to specialize
in the Kubernetes ecosystem. So I put together this, this
curriculum of sorts, and this is maybe about a year and a half
ago, year and a half ago. And I kind of went through, you know,
everything that you need to know, in the community, or from
a community perspective, right, the big, you know, major tools
and technologies that you should be aware of, and that you should
be able to talk to, and then from a product perspective,
right from from, you know, Google the vendor. And this
document was like five pages long. And I'm looking at that,
and I'm like, How did this happen? And this was 18 months
ago. So I if I had to redo that Doc, I probably have to be
adding another couple of pages. It's it's not.
Jamie Duncan: So I wonder. So it was somewhat one of the people
Clark and I work with rich Schroeder is one of the project
managers for for Google in the in Google Cloud. He had a tweet
and I was looking for and I couldn't find it. But he was
talking about some new thing. Oh, I think it was about like
the some low code product that Google is, is is has released.
And my response to it, because it's a pretty compelling thing
for like, I think the tweet, he had had some statistics, like,
in 2019, X percent of applications were low code, no
code, and that number is going up into the right, and all that
kind of thing. And my response to him was that we abstract away
the things that don't provide business value. And my thought
at the time was, eventually virtual machines stopped
providing business value, and we abstracted them. And we've tried
that a couple of different ways. And then containers are stopped
are not really the business value, like getting to the
container, the cost savings of running Kubernetes running
containerized apps, isn't there anymore, because it's everyone's
doing it, so no one's doing it better. So we're abstracting The
next thing? Is that kind of where is that where your head
is? Tarik? Is that what you're thinking? Or? Because in to me
that that kind of makes it a little valid? Because I'm trying
to think, is this good or bad? Are we building a house of
cards? Or is just the Tower of Babel getting taller?
Tariq Islam: I think it's the latter. But at the same time,
it's still technology, right To this day, you know, however many
years we've we've had Linux, right? It's always the network.
It's always DNS, it always comes back to the fundamentals. And I
think the risk is that, with this sprawl that we're
experiencing, and the sheer velocity and the acceleration of
of this tech proliferation, I guess we can call it, it's gonna
get harder and harder for folks to not just keep up. But even to
start, right. And I think what's going to have to happen is folks
are going to have to start from an abstracted level, and then
work their way down on a case by case basis, which is not ideal.
But
John Osborne: if someone asks you how to get started, what do
you normally kind of advice that you give them? Because for me,
personally, the way I learned is to build apps, or to build
things that, like I want to build and kind of learn by
doing, but I can't, like I can't just sit down and read, if I
have all the fundamental framework. Yeah, I can read the
docs and things will click but like, if I'm starting up from
scratch, like I don't even read the docs until after I start
using it because nothing will click.
Tariq Islam: So interestingly enough, I'm actually I'm
actually doing this with a with a couple of folks. Again, these
are the same individuals that that are brand new to the space.
So it's really interesting to see how they're taking all of
this up. And it's gonna take at least a year to two for them to
get caught up. But I actually had them start with getting a
solid understanding of what makes up a container. Like I had
them start at that level. Right? And I told them, don't touch
Kubernetes. Don't touch any of the products right at the vendor
level. Don't even think about that stuff. Just get good with
containers. Linux and Linux networking like it, you know,
get those fundamentals down, because as soon as you do that
everything else just gets easier from there, it just flows right?
It'll take longer. But once you have that foundation, and I
think that's what's so critical about this, right, I feel like
folks are starting at a at an at an abstracted level, that's not
giving them a proper foundation. For example, if I'm, if I'm
billing myself as a Kubernetes, expert, and I've only ever
touched, you know, Eks, and aka s, and G, ke, and all these, you
know, automated offerings, I might be good at all of these
automated offerings. But as soon as I'm asked about, you know,
something lower than that, I get hung up. So that's, I think, you
know, it's, it's, it's a point of exposure that I think folks
are, it's the blind spot, actually,
Jamie Duncan: I guess that's what put it, at least in my
personal experience, I've always found it easier to go up the
stack as opposed to down the stack. Are we? Do you all agree
with that, or the percentage so like, we're gonna have a whole
lot of people that have to go down the stack, we're gonna have
to figure out how to account for that. Being, you know, the
older, current, get off my lawn generation, in our industry.
Tariq Islam: Yeah, I don't I don't mean to gatekeepers here.
That's not I hope that's not the tone that we're taking, you
John Osborne: know, trying to be the opposite. It's like, how do
we make it more?
Jamie Duncan: How do we make how do we make that consumable?
consumable? Yeah.
Tariq Islam: I think the culture has to change, right? Like, I
think I think we have to promote, we have to start as a
tech industry, tech Twitter, right, like social media, I
think we have to start promoting the this notion that it's okay
to start from the bottom and to go slow, right there. This is
not a race. And, and having a good foundation from the basics.
And the fundamentals is only going to make everything else
that much easier, you'll accelerate and your velocity
will get to a point where it matches everybody else's. Right.
But you got to spend the time and get get get those
fundamentals down. And I think we have to promote that type of
thing and reward it.
Jamie Duncan: I don't know. I don't, I don't know that I'm
100% there. And the reason Are those the reason that I'm not
sure there is are those 100 100 days of code people there is
there is in this massive influx of people making 725 an hour who
are going through some Bootcamp, they saved up for self driving
through some program, like 100 days of code. And they're
looking at 6070 $80,000 a year Junior, whatever jobs, I don't
want to slow them down. I don't want to tell them to take it
slow, because $7 an hour sucks.
John Osborne: That's a whole there's a whole slew of people
out there, which I found myself on this kind of subgroup of
Twitter, where and I think it's awesome, by the way, but they
they basically use certifications to you know, pump
up their salary. I would and I think that's awesome, by the
way. And I do think we did the certifications episode. You
know, I do think it does provide a good baseline knowledge. But
yeah, they're out there. And, you know, they're getting all
these certifications, and they're getting really high paid
jobs, and which is awesome. But then how do we take every little
practical experience? Yeah,
Jamie Duncan: I found that experience. And the other
thought that popped into my head was, and it stuck in my head. I
mean, this is I guess, a year or so ago, was talking Duffy
Cooley, who is Oji Kubernetes. awesome guy. I worked with him
at VMware. I think he's he's moved on to a different role.
Now. He's, yeah. He was talking about how we're we being the
Royal we in industry, in it are massively outnumbered. And he
had some numbers. And I wish I remembered the numbers. But my
brain doesn't do that. Talking about like, the number of
applications, the number of servers, the number of thing
widgets in it over the next five years, and how we would, at the
current rate of growth of the it workforce, we'd all be
responsible personally, for like 50,000 servers. We're gonna be
drastically outnumbered for what the world is doing and the world
the fact that the world is becoming this IoT platform.
Yeah. So we have to get these people in, we have to figure out
how to get them up to speed. And I think maybe part of it is that
maybe we make specialization a little bit more. Okay.
John Osborne: I think it has to be because if you look at like
even managed services, right, like if you use a managed
database, that doesn't, that helps you have less people on
your team that need to know, deep database level knowledge,
but still to do all the backups, the synchronization, the what
happens when a production outage happens, like you still need to
have some people that go really deep into databases, right?
Inside rant I actually the more I thought about it, I think this
kind of this sprawl of technologies actually happen
first at the data layer, not at the application layer. Because
if you think about how fast we went from just using SQL
databases to all the different, no SQL databases, to all the
things with caching and invalidation to brokers, and
queues, and Kafka, and all that stuff, and how fast that layer
happened, that actually, to me happened first, and everyone
knows what CAP theorem is now and things like that, where it's
like, okay, that's a problem that we didn't have to that got
a lot harder, a lot faster, just kind of a specialization of the
data layer. But that did happen because of scale issues. I think
that part of the challenge is like, well, not everyone's
having a scale issue, right.
Jamie Duncan: Yeah. So and then I guess, to top it all off, you
know, not only are all of those things happening, they're
happening in an ever increasing rate. And at least in the US,
but we're certainly not the only group suffering from this.
Society is, you know, in a horrible state right now, in a
lot of places. Like, like, I'm just sort of, I don't want to be
a Debbie Downer, but man, kind of a crap way to be right now.
John Osborne: It is because they don't have the emotional energy.
I mean, it's like somebody who's got shot in the street, and I'm
supposed to sit down. And you know what I mean? Like, yeah,
deep. And I was like, I can't I'm sorry, I just can't do it.
Yeah,
Tariq Islam: well, I was I was having a very productive day on
January 6, up until the coup, and right at that point, that's
when I realized what was actually happening. I just kind
of stopped working. And it wasn't even like a conscious
decision, right? Where I was like, Okay, I'm going to cancel
all meetings, and I'm not going to do anything at work, I'm
taking the rest of the day off, it was literally like, it's
like, my, my brain just stopped. Right. And I just, I was combing
through social media, looking for whatever coverage I could
find, and looking at the pictures and the videos and the
the sheer pandemonium of it all. I was just in desperate state of
disbelief. And I couldn't, I completely forgot about work.
And I was like, mid, like, in the middle of typing an email
when when this all went down. And I, you know, I got to a
point Finally, where, you know, I told I told folks, you know,
please, please do what you got to do for, for your safety and
for your mental health. But, uh, man, there was a couple of
hours, there was just a total total pause. There was somebody
John Osborne: in that there was somebody at the Capitol yelling
Turn on the gas. I mean, how am I supposed to work? during that?
How am I supposed to work? People getting shot? How am I
supposed to work when there's people on Reddit even
bankrupting a $10 billion hedge fund? Right? It's been really
hard. It's like, it's,
Tariq Islam: we'll see that thing, things, things. I mean,
this is a really good mirror of what's been happening in tech.
Not that tech, is that tragic, but what I'm saying is that
there's so many things happening, you know, our memory
is only so long. And January 6, feels like half of an eternity
ago. And we don't even we're not even, we're barely talking about
it. Now. Right now, we're talking about GameStop. And, you
know, market manipulation by retail investors, and is that
even mid relation, and they're sticking it to the man, you
know, the hedge fund managers and things like that.
Jamie Duncan: But also weaponizing, Wall Street.
Tariq Islam: Right? Right. And three weeks ago, we literally
had a coup of our government.
John Osborne: So we have no emotional energy, we sit down,
and technology's a billion times harder than it was five years.
Yeah,
Tariq Islam: I think I think the theme that we're all getting at
here is, I think we just need to just, I think we need to slow
things down just a bit for ourselves. You know, I don't
think we can slow down the pace of everything outside of us. But
I think we have to, I think we have to make it make it okay, to
go a little bit slower. And actually, Jamie, I like that,
you fact that the fact that you brought up the fact that you
brought up about individuals that you know, are getting into
this space, and don't have that luxury of time, right, I feel
like you know, a lot of what I've said is from a place of
privilege. And for folks that have that sense of financial
urgency, absolutely, you know, do what you have to do. And when
you get there and you will absolutely get there. I still
think it's important that you do take some time once you're in
the door to go back and and get down to those fundamentals.
Right. I think everyone owes it to owes it to themselves to do
that at some point, maybe not at the very beginning. But at some
point.
John Osborne: I think it's a really good point about you
know, it's okay to go slow because everyone's got Slower
right now. And if somebody calls you and expects you to go the
same speed, which that's happened to me a couple times in
past year, it's like, I feel like those people are just bots,
honestly. It's like, it's like, do you realize what's going on?
You know, have some, you know, show some emotion. Talk, I
Jamie Duncan: love the idea of telling people to slow down and
catch their breath and do what they need to do to be okay. How?
Like, none of this other stuff. None of these other buzz saws
that are flying in our head are slowing down
Tariq Islam: in the back to back meetings every day, certainly
aren't helping, because now we don't have to, you know, travel
to a meeting or even change meeting rooms. Right? It's
literally just clicking a button to end one call. And then five
and a half seconds later joining the next one.
John Osborne: I've been like, it's okay for me not to answer
the call. Like, just because I'm not another call doesn't mean
I'm going to answer everybody that just calls me out of the
blue, or I'm not going to text back people every right away and
all that stuff, because, or else I just sit here and just do
notifications on my phone for all day, which I totally could
do, because that's just how things go right now.
Jamie Duncan: I aspire to say no more often.
John Osborne: But how to play more the long game? No.
Jamie Duncan: Yeah, so so we have to figure out how to slow
down I our industry is moving at a pace that is approaching, you
know, approaching the speed of light. The world is falling is
ripping apart at the seams. We all need to catch our breath.
And I think I don't think there's like I know that sounds
simplistic, but I don't think there's anything else we can do.
Tariq Islam: Yeah, I would say we're about at the halfway point
as as depressing as that might sound right in this whole
pandemic. And with everything else going on, we're still we
still get, I would say at least by maybe, maybe the summer.
We'll we'll start to see normal again. And we can start catching
up on things.
Jamie Duncan: Yeah, I hope to be able to visit my friends in
September.
John Osborne: I hadn't even thought test today.
But yeah,
Jamie Duncan: yeah, it's just and I wish we had some sort of
piffy thing. I wish that we could do some headspace
meditation. Yeah, no, I'm
Tariq Islam: not about that. It is it a lot of that stuff that
we've been doing over the last year has felt a little forced.
You know, you kind of do it because everyone else is doing
it. But sometimes you just want to throw your hands up.
John Osborne: Were there anything, anything you guys did
over the pandemic to help you clear your head,
Jamie Duncan: I've tried 1000 things none of them have stuck.
Tariq Islam: I started working I started exercising outside,
especially after a cold, which sounds kind of crazy. But it's
been a pretty nice release. For me, at least it's you know, a
bit of a shock to the system to go outside when it's, you know,
2530 degrees and and be physically active. But that
that's it's been refreshing, right? And it works for me. But
it's not for everybody.
Jamie Duncan: The thing that that I've kind of realized and I
told this to my wife and she looked at me like Oh, you're
just now figuring this out the another line from a movie in
frozen too. And we all have kids I know that you too have watched
frozen to 1000 times but there's no doubt in my mind completing
the fifth on that. arc if you haven't watched frozen two you
have to tomorrow. Olaf the snowman like crazy stuff is
happening in the front of the movie. And all these little kids
are sticking icicles in Olaf. And they're making him look
funny and it's just a laugh line and they asked him if he's okay
and he looks around he's like you know, we're controlling when
things are out of control we do what we can to do something and
control I don't remember the exact line but I like Tarik is
going outside and working out like rocky in the I've gone like
I'm trying to turn my my backyard workshop into like the
new Yankee workshop. Like so I've got like I'm doing all
these ridiculous projects that are way over my head and ability
or scope. Grab what you can, I guess is the only thought that I
have. Grab onto something that gives you a little bit of a
smile, like tark targets working out. me making things out of
wood that isn't what you're maybe slowing down a little bit
by looking at something else and making that important to you.
Tariq Islam: Yeah, that's that's actually I think you just keyed
in on something right there right now it's not so much
distracting but it's it's it's a shift in focus. Right so you're
not feeling like you're always just constantly driving towards
you know that that competitive like I need to know more tech
Then the next person. And and it gives, it gives you a sense of
control that I think everybody kind of lost last year when the
pandemic hit. And I think that's really important. You know, and
that's also I think, why we did this episode like this, right,
because I think as much as we would love to regale you with
the intricacies of ci CD infrastructure, and all the
permutations they're in, I think it's, and we needed to pause
right, and communicate that it's okay to do that. And shift focus
a little bit acknowledge the pains that we've experienced
over the last year. And, and, you know, be real about, you
know, put a little bit of humanity in, in, in even a tech
podcast, I
Unknown: guess.
Jamie Duncan: I think that's a great spot to kind of close it
up on it's john, any closing thoughts, words of wisdom?
John Osborne: Now, what
Jamie Duncan: do you what do you do to stay sane, john,
Tariq Islam: he was oddly started there.
John Osborne: I watched a lot of the office. There you go. I
started working out a couple months ago. And during the
pandemic, towards the end, I started taking walks at night,
which was really helpful, because I wasn't really having
enough time to work out. And then at the start of the
pandemic, I was trying to keep the same speed. So it started, I
was sleeping like three or four hours a night and just totally
destroyed. My ability to focus on that stuff. So one thing I
realized is like, you know, if, if 2020 if there's ever a 2020,
again, hope there isn't, you know, I'm gonna prioritize
getting a certain amount of rest from from the start and just try
to live that every day because I totally just tried to keep the
same pace and just really, everything kind of fell apart
after about two months of four hours of sleep. So I think sleep
is just one of those things where you kind of take it for
granted, but it's, you know, you're paying it somewhere,
right? You can your neck, if your body wants eight hours, you
can't just get for continuously and expect things to be okay,
because they won't
Jamie Duncan: get you're gonna pay up at some point. Yes. Or
someone is, yeah, maybe your kids and maybe your wife and
maybe the guy, you know, not wearing a mask at the gas
station. Exactly. Which may have happened to me once about a
month ago.
John Osborne: You're putting it on a credit card, and some you
know, there's interest on that. So,
Jamie Duncan: all right, everyone, well, we appreciate
it. Next time, and we're gonna try one of the things that we
want to control is getting back on a good schedule in 2021. And
we'll pick up ci CD next time, and until then, take a deep
breath. The work will be there. When you after you've calmed
down and enjoyed something that's right.
Tariq Islam: And mask
Jamie Duncan: up. Yeah, and wear your damn mask or I'm gonna yell
at you.
John Osborne: Or a cover is supposed to cover your nose.
Okay. Yeah.
Tariq Islam: My God seriously.
John Osborne: covers you.
Jamie Duncan: Thanks a lot, everyone.