At this year’s Women in Tech (WIT) panel at NetApp Insight, CEO George Kurian cautioned the audience not to focus solely on STEM as the only way to bring more women to tech. This point hit home for me. I didn’t come to tech through STEM. I grew up poor. Both of my parents dropped…
Lose Some Complexity with Zerto at #SFD16
If you’ve ever attended a Tech Field Day or watched any of the presentations online, you know that a lot of really cool tech gets covered. Unfortunately, depending on your job, you may see solutions that you can’t take straight back to your 9-5 job and implement. Let’s fast track to Storage Field Day 16…
Retrospective on Why I’m Learning to Reverse My Risk-Aversion
Six months ago, I wrote this unpublished and slightly unfinished post about how my life was missing growth, adventure, and challenges. It was kind of my a-ha moment that I needed to do something different and that I needed to start taking risks. Leaving a well-paying job in which you are valued and treated very…
Why I Stopped Treading Water
An old boss used to say “If you aren’t moving forward, you are just treading water.” When I submitted my resignation a few weeks ago, I had these words close to my heart. Since 2011, I’ve gone to work at the same place. During this time, I’ve seen countless people come and go. And I’ve…
Multi-Factor Authentication, FTW!
I was super excited when ONTAP 9.3 came out with multi-factor authentication support. I tweeted about it and even went on a Tech ONTAP recap podcast for NetApp Insight 2017 and talked about it. Usually, there is a trade-off with convenience when it comes to security. Security is typically inconvenient. Multi-factor authentication is the exception…
How working in DoD makes patching ‘yo sh*t’ an imperative
In the world of ops, it’s natural not to want to patch/update a finicky application. What sys admin wants to break sh*t?! Interestingly, Equifax’s former CEO blamed the entire data breach on the sys admin that didn’t patch Apache Struts. Fortunately, working in the Department of Defense, we have systems in place that alert us to…
The Thrill of Working at a Place Knee-deep in Technical Debt
I’m fortunate to work in an environment where we’ve been able to pay down some technical debt and stabilize our IT environment. With the hard work of an excellent team, a supportive manager, and some personnel stability, we’ve made significant progress. Working late nights, weekends, and the occasional holiday is now the exception. It…
TFDx and SFD14 Delegate Thoughts: Pre-Attendance
In the past year, I’ve made a concerted effort to go outside of my comfort zone. When the opportunity to attend both Commvault Go Tech Field Day Exclusive and Storage Field Day in the same week came up, I leapt for it. This event will be both my first Storage Field Day and also my first…
Mandalay Bay Exodus
I recognize now that, although, I was terrified that I was never actually in danger. Also, I realize that unlike the 58 victims of the shooting at a concert at Mandalay Bay, I went home to my family. With these feelings comes a sense of guilt for struggling to process the evening. Sunday night…
Highlights from My First VMworld
On Monday, September 4th, I did my first podcast interview. The podcast was the Tech Interviews with Paul Stringfellow, a fellow NetApp A-Teamer. If you never had the pleasure of listening to Paul’s podcast or met him firsthand, you may not know that he is one charming guy. Seriously, he’s “Hugh Grant” charming. The…