Technically, These Are Random Thoughts

By Leon Adato

Around September every year, Jews all over the world celebrate Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. However, it’s not – to put it in business terms – a year-end review. It’s a job interview. the month before Rosh Hashana (called “Elul” in Hebrew) is the time for getting one's balance sheet in order. To help with that, a bunch of folks from all walks of life participate in #BlogElul: A daily prompt provides the theme and people riff on that – sometimes a few hundred words, sometimes an image, sometimes a poem or just a single sentence. It’s something I’ve done for a few years now. I thought I’d add a twist and also do an I.T. Professional's version of #BlogElul and post the essays on my technology-specific blog: http://www.adatosystems.com. A reflection on each of the daily prompts and what they mean in an I.T. context. You’re probably thinking “Leon, this is a Jewish thing and completely outside the scope of my experience or interest as an I.T. Professional.” To which I emphatically reply: Yes and no. If you have worked in I.T. for more than 15 minutes, you’ve likely been involved in a large development project, system roll-out, or upgrade. And as the date for the big cut-over approaches, there are usually daily status updates. Consider this the notes from my status updates before the roll-out of “TheWorld v.5776”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leon Adato
• Release date: Jan 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463454336

Leon Adato

In a career spanning three decades and four countries, Leon Adato has been an actor, electrician, carpenter, stage combat instructor, pest control technician, Sunday school teacher, and ASL interpreter. He also occasionally worked on computers.Leon got his start teaching computer classes, worked his way up the IT food chain from desktop support to server support to desktop environment standardization engineer and onward, to systems monitoring, management, and automation. Along the way, he discovered a weird love for taking tests, and picked up an alphabet's worth of certifications, including WPCR, CNE, A+, MCP, MCSE, MCSE+I, CCNA, and SCP.Leon spent almost 20 years honing his monitoring skills at companies that ranged from big (National City Bank) to bigger (Cardinal Health®) to ludicrous (Nestlé®), becoming proficient with a variety of tools and solutions along the way.

Book preview

Acknowledgements

I cannot say it better than Fred Rogers did in 1997, as he accepted a lifetime achievement award:

All of us have special ones who have loved us into being...

Listing all the people who have loved me (and taught me, and in some cases dragged me against my will) to this point in my life would be impossible. Specific to this project, however, there are a few people who deserve mention:

The SolarWinds Head Geeks: (who each deserve the honorific The inimitable in front of their name). You set the bar very VERY high in all aspects of I.T. life. I'm humbled and honored to be part of this exclusive club.

Kimberly Deal, for the encouragement (some might call it abject whining) to publish this ebook. Thanks for the kick in the pants!

The SolarWinds editors for continuing to show me what good writing should look like.

Everyone I've worked with, ever.

Dedications

To Debbie:

As with anything I have ever done that mattered, this is dedicated to my best friend and my closest confidant. Even after more than a score of years, you still mean more to me than everything else.

Forward

Technically, this is a forward to a book about some random thoughts.

The collection of thoughts and post on the following pages represent not only Leon's thoughts but the thoughts of each and every system administrator. I have no doubt that anyone reading this book has had a majority of these same thoughts, if not all of them at one point or another in their career. Leon's willingness to share these thoughts through his writing is a gift for us all, as it helps everyone who has ever felt like they were alone against a flood of barbarians at the gates of IT.

I would encourage you to read this book one thought at a time. Then, take the time to reflect on how you would have communicated that same thought to those around you. Then, write your thoughts down.

Who knows, maybe you'll have the makings of your very own book, too. With the most important message you could deliver: yours.

Thanks,

Thomas LaRock

ZeroDay: Introducing #BlogElul

tl;dr version

A daily blog-athon happens every year, with hundreds of people writing a daily post on a specific theme. This was my month's-worth of contributions in 2015.

The Technical Details

Around September every year, Jews all over the world celebrate Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.

However, it’s not – to put it in business terms – a year-end review. It’s a job interview. It’s the time when you reflect on how the past year went so that you can commit to making adjustments in attitude and behavior so that we continue to improve as people. It’s high stakes stuff. Have a bad