KFCblog - December 2020

Life

The last month of a crazy year! I hope people who celebrate US Thanksgiving had a great, socially-minimized Thanksgiving dinner. In most even years, we would be in NY celebrating with my family. Not in 2020. A much quieter, easier (no travel), but less rowdy and fun version happened this year as we stayed at home. We did get to do a full zoom-based dessert celebration with all 20+ across several states.

On Black Friday, I published my 2020 Techy Gift Guide here on LinkedIn. I hope you enjoy it.

Sports World

My New York Giants, who stink this year, are in first place as I write this with a 4-7 record. And after I declared the bears to be the worst 5-1 team in history, they now stand at 5-6. It's a crazy year in the NFL! Dustin Johnson crushed the field in the delayed 2020 Masters with a record 20 below par 268. In college football last weekend, Buffalo running back Jaret Patterson made some history rushing for 8 TDs and 409 rushing yards. Those measured tied (TDs) and were second-most (rushing yards) in FBS history. His coach pulled him for the last drive where his backup scored a rushing touchdown.

Hello, World!

Some big news on the work front - I am in the market for a new job. With many mixed emotions, I decided to leave DXC last month. It's a great company with lots of great people; however, I felt that while the strategy was great for DXC, it was not great for me and the things that I love to do. Free agency here I come.

I am extremely excited to see what I can find. I have not been without a job, or even actively hunted for one in a long, long, long time! In short, I am looking for an opportunity to help a company create new business capabilities through the use of the amazing technology we have at our disposal. I love technology and being around people who are passionate about what technology can do. I like solving big, hairy problems. There are several directions I could go in. It could be a consulting/services company, a technology company, or a traditional company looking to drive massive technology-fueled change. The context and the culture are probably more important than the role itself. So if you know me, and know of something, shoot me a message.

Lastly, don't forget that the totally online AWS re:Invent kicks off today with Andy Jassy's keynote. The sessions will be live and recorded and are free to attend. If you've never seen a Jassy keynote, I highly recommend it.

Puzzle Corner

If you were interested in last month's puzzle about a 10 digit number divisible by 2,3,4...9,10, The Guardian has a great explanation.

Caught My Eye

Amazon had a huge outage last week on the day before Thanksgiving. AWS has a pretty detailed review of what happened. TL;DR - mega-scale, highly available system design is hard.

A safe and very visual search engine built for kids. If you have kids younger than middle school, I suggest you have them take a look at Kiddle. Try a few search comparisons and I think you'll be impressed.

I've loved optical illusions since I was a kid. This webpage has a catalog of 141 of them. I wasted, I mean, spent, over two hours here when I discovered it.

I loved this graphic of the emotional journey of creating anything great.

This may be obvious to the more nerdy out there, but it does matter what charger you use with your phone, laptop, etc. TL;DR - watts.

Two great industry reports to read if you are in the IT field: 2020 State of DevOps Report and State of AI Report 2020.

Why do athletes choke?

If you're a frequent traveler like me (like I was before COVID), you are probably signed up for CLEAR as the TSA precheck lines can be longer than the regular lines. But CLEAR has signed up sporting stadiums as well and has plans to become your trusted identity provider.

The internet technology Flash will no longer be supported by most big technology companies at the end of December 2020. A few flash game hosting websites arguably set the stage for the app store. Here's a stroll down memory lane of Flash history.

A deep dive on the "hack" on Twitter from this summer where many famous people's IDs were compromised to scam bitcoin.

Speaking of hacks, my former teammate from DXC, Mark Hughes, authored a great lessons learned document in HBR about the security breach that one of DXC's subsidiaries had this summer.

One more hacking article about how hackers break into the most secure systems. Hint: weak humans.

As we approach the end of the year, we'll start seeing some predictions about technologies that are poised to change the world. Here's a good one on the tech that will be impactful in the 2022 to 2040 range.

Here's some analysis on 6.1 million miles of autonomous driving data from Waymo. 18 crashes and "most" caused by the human driver in the other car.

Especially at holiday time, my Mom starts talking about our "second cousin, once removed" and other relatives. Here's a good chart to explain how to name them.

Did you read the story about the 12-foot high silver monolith placed in a remote part of the Utah desert? You missed it. Literally. It's gone.

Are you familiar with the Gartner Hype Cycle? This guy has done some analysis on the 25 years of annual Hype Cycles. Pretty cool, IMO.

There is a lot of talk about the weaknesses in our election process, especially w.r.t. the electoral college. If you ignore the EC, the basic method of single-choice voting we usually use (called FPTP (first past the post) by voting nerds)) has many alternatives. While I'm not suggesting we should go with the Cordocet method, ranked-choice voting has been adopted by Alaska and Maine. This article explains many of the options along with some cool visualizations of the weaknesses.

It's not in my top 6 Christmas movies of all time, but National Lampoon's A Christmas Vacation is certainly a classic. Here's some of the backstory about creating the movie.

I Bought This: Configured. Hoping to see delivery in last 2021.

Closing Quote

“Christmas isn't just a day, it's a frame of mind” - Valentine Davies