SARS-COV2: COVID

COVID-19 Theory & Thoughts

I’ll start by saying that this is a conspiracy theory and there is no claim of proof

I was thinking about the COVID-19 pandemic today and I started to wonder -

• If this can deteriorate your heart or lung function, can it do further damage with each subsequent infection? If it can, then over time, will it kill off those people and families who experience this effect; will they be erased; will those gene pools cease to exist? If they will, then is this a form of genocide?
• If this was developed by a country, then I can only come up with a couple of reasons to develop it; to defend against other countries deploying something similar, or to be the country that releases it into the world.
• If the goal was to release it someday, then was the goal also to target certain people?
• If it was developed by China, and the goal was to target certain people, then was it developed as a form of population control?
• If it was developed as a form of population control, to weed out certain people, then is it a new attempt at an old goal of another country?

As I said, these were just a few thoughts that came to mind while thinking about COVID-19.

What I want to know

What I want to know when I start a new Role

Vision & Roadmap -

• What’s the current vision for the IS department?
• Approximately where is the department in the delivery of that vision; on schedule, behind?
• What are a couple early objectives of the role that I might fill?
• Are there any points of specific concern that I should be aware of and prepared to address?
• How is success currently measured for the department?

Infrastructure -

• Is there a current inventory?
• What primary architectures do you leverage?
• What is the mix and count of current infrastructure?

Applications -

• What is the application architecture?
• How well is it documented?

Critical Services -

• What are your critical services?
• What applications and infrastructure deliver those services?

Monitoring -

• What is used to monitor the environment?
• What the current noise ratio?
• Are there issues where IS isn’t first to know?
• Can I get a list of the top 3-5?
• What’s Uptime for IT this Month and last Quarter?
• Is that an improvement or a reduction from last year?

On-Call -

• How does the IS department manage on-call?

ITSM -

• What system is used for Incident / Request / Change?
• How well established is ITIL?

Projects -

• What project style is currently in use; Waterfall, Agile?
• If Agile, then is there a particular flavor of agile being used?
• What tools are used to support project delivery?
• What projects are slated for the year / PI, and are they prioritized?

Vendors & Contractors -

• How many vendors are engaged?
• Are there any that I would need to give special attention?
• How many direct contractors are engaged?
• Is there a plan around flipping the good ones and top-leveling the less impressive ones?

Team -

• What’s the budgeted versus current head-count for my department?
• What system is used for performance management?
• Are there any individuals that are in the top/bottom 5-10%?
• Is there a feeder-org?

Culture -

• Tell me about the culture.

CapEx / OpEx -

• What is my overall versus current OpEx and where are we for the quarter?
• Are we on target for the year?
• What is the overall versus current CapEx, and are we on target?
• Are there opportunities for consolidation or removal of OpEx items?

CI/CD -

• Are you using any continuous integration / continuous deployment methods?

Automation -

• Does the department currently leverage any automation frameworks?

Documentation -

• How are you currently managing documentation?

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Two Thousand Twenty

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The Modern Change Jar

Acorns

Acorns convinced me to toss out my old change jar and upkill to a modern way to save my spare change.

In the Before-Time

We used to keep a jar in the house for our spare change, to save it for something down the road. However, the move to a paperless currency (debit cards) has really put a dent in the change jar.

The Modern Change-Jar

Recently, I found out about an investment medium called Acorns… It links to your cards and invests the remainders. A paperless change jar / piggy bank… boggle

I researched it a bit and setup an account last month. I must say, I’m pretty darn satisfied with it so far. Acorns has deals with a lot of different vendors, who’ll put money into your account for shopping with them. For instance, how many of you shop at Walmart? Walmart will put 1% of your purchase into your Acorns account… It’s not huge, but, umm, it’s a kickback for shopping there and using a card linked to Acorns… In other words, it’s free money, for buying the things you were already going to buy.

Let’s see… What other things are on there currently, that I use?

• Hotels.com – 6%
• Enterprise.com – 2%
• Bed Bath & Beyond – 2%
• Birchbox.com - $10
• Discount Tire – 3%

Lyft, Uber, Forever 21, ScentBird, Sperry, Nordstrom, Sam’s, Macy’s, GNC, … and the list goes on and on. They have over 350 different vendor investment offers!

1 Year Update

2019-01-26
My change-jar just funded my tickets to Guam…

Check it out!
Acorns

Personal Cloud - A Silver Lining

Personal Cloud - A Silver Lining

Into every life, a little rain must fall

Queue the Thunder Storms… and Action!

So, my computer crashed a few weeks ago, and initially, I lost “everything;” OS Drive and Parity drive in RAID, both dead. Most of us have experienced that tragic feeling at one time or another. I believe mine went something like…. OMG! What the?! No!!
Followed by a slew of Q*bert symbols as reality sunk in.

After a lot of work scanning my drives and rebuilding the RAID with special tools ranging from other OSs to direct copiers, I recovered all but a few weeks of information.

Like many, I know that several paid services are secure (if your credentials are) and reasonable. While I have no qualm storing information in the “ambiguous cloud,” I really prefer the ability to “see and touch” the places where I store more sensitive data for safe keeping.

This prompted me to setup MY own cloud…

Private / Personal Cloud

Cluster

I took 3 old computers and wiped them clean. After reviewing several products, Proxmox seemed to fit my needs quite well. So, I installed Proxmox as a hypervisor, and clustered the computers together. BAM, instant, cheap high availability virtual cluster.

Firewall

Then, I reviewed a ton of different firewalls. While I wouldn’t necessarily call m0n0wall the “best,” I loved how small, quick, and easy to configure it was. Oh yeah, and I know BSD… I really liked a few of the Linux firewalls, but they were so bloated in comparison. So, I installed and configured m0n0wall.

Ubuntu

OS, OS, which OS? While I do love Windows, it’s definitely the furthest thing from my mind when I think light and quick. That coupled with my Ubuntu history made the decision easy. Linux it is.

Install, configure, google, configure, google, reconfigure, google, google, head scratch, boggle, boggle, patch, install, patch, & run! Whew! When Company A decided to relieve company B of code, why couldn’t they just keep the same syntax?

OwnCloud

Perhaps I should have researched the cloud solution a little more, but I’ve been dying for an excuse to setup OwnCloud for a while now. Therefore, “sudo apt-get install owncloud” and a little while later, I was logging in a configuring the admin account, groups, and users. If I’m going to make it, then why not let family use it too?

FreeNAS

I built a NAS and connected it to the cluster.

I redirected OwnCloud to pull from the NAS.

And finally, l published the cloud through a domain that I own.

A Silver Lining

Now I have my own cloud service that my family and I can backup our computers, phones and tablets to from anywhere, or access to store and retrieve data, pictures, etc…

Links:

Proxmox
Ubuntu
M0n0wall
FreeNAS
OwnCloud