Practical Technology

Update:   I would note that we ultimately abandoned this process in favour of running a copy task inside the VM.  To start we're using "robocopy dir1 dir2 /MIR /MT:8 /XD .vs" running every minute, but eventually we'll do something w. NTFS filesystem triggers. ------------------------------------ You might have ended up with an error like this: Filename: \\?\C:\path\web.config Error: Cannot read configuration file This is because IIS doesn't like the fact that it's attempting to access something that's been symlinked (IIRC, check google for specifics).  So, we need to trick it!! I do not take credit for this, just posting up a script that should help.  This guy pointed me/others in the right direction: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22636106/iis-application-using-shared-folder-in-virtualbox-vm I would note that we use an array for the IIS stuff because re-using code from other scripts is fun (bad practice, too!).  It was the fastest way for me...

There are lot of other blog posts out there detailing this (see end of post for links), but I wanted to share my experience. I started this project with the mandate as follows: Find a way to make onboarding new developers simple and easy, plus we'd like a way to ensure that development environments are kept up to date. Seems like a good first task to get familiar with the systems!  The old process involved a lot of guesswork & fiddling, and generally took a few days at minimum.  There's an obvious business case to be made - especially when they plan on hiring ~15 developers this year ( minimum 30 man-days of productivity lost, not counting the waste associated w. inconsistent environments ). I started with a few misconceptions, but eventually we had conversations around what should  we be doing, rather than what do you want me to do .  One of the senior developers mentioned how a VM would go a long way to bringing stability, and after a chat everyone agree...

I guarantee there is a better way to do this, but it took me a while to find the powershell syntax to do GET/POSTing, so hopefully this helps save someone some time.  And yeah, I'm aware that it's saving the password variable in plaintext.  Something to consider for v2. The idea behind this (partial) script is that you can get most of the pre-setup done automatically.  One of the issues I haven't resolved yet is automatically accepting the ssh prompts (tried pre-injecting stuff, bunch of other things, no luck).  Not a huge deal since the biggest issue is the POSTing of the ssh key to Bitbucket. This is a small piece of a project to automagically set up a dev workstation from a bare machine.  I think I'll try to post all of the code up when it's done - seems to be a common issue. Also, I am really starting to get annoyed w. Blogger's inability to do code snippets.  One of these days I'll fix it...or move to Github gists for everything... <#...

I have been shown a few new tools that are pretty neat... cmder - great replacement for the command prompt, integrations w. other tools MFA: DUO (pushes an accept/deny for JIRA/Confluence stuff) MFA: Authy (+ Chrome extension) for AWS MFA Boxstarter & Chocolatey & AWS S3 & Bitbucket AWS in general Greenshot (replacement for snip tool/snagIt - free) And because we like automating this sorta thing: @powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin cinst -y appName ... cinst -y lastappName And you have boxstarter do a lot of that for you, handle restarts, Win updates, etc.  This is all googleable and somewhat old hat now, but still really amazing to see for the first time.  Complete game-changer. One of my initial tasks is automating/streamlining the dev workstation config/setup.  At first...

Some of the great lessons I learned about leadership: When you get that feeling of ' Uh oh, I'm going to have to do something about this...and I really don't want to do that... ', that's a good sign you should do something about it - I need to learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable No matter where you go, relationships are the most important thing you can focus on When things go wrong, ask: " what did WE miss here? " Don't be afraid of the stick - it has a time and place Be humble - success is a team effort When a decision must be made, make it - indecision hurts the whole team Leadership roles are a balance of do-ing & leading.  So what is the "do-ing" of leading? Setting goals & objectives ( helping tie business goals to tech team goals ) Providing guidance & mentorship Measuring ( doing KPIs right ) Following up ( accountability ) Back-patting ( ensuring people feel appreciated, give credit where c...

This post is a minor update on the last Learning Opportunities entry.  I have learned SO MUCH over the last two years, it's been an amazing experience. Some of my new reading is: Operations Management textbook ( very surprised as to how enlightening it is to see perceived "IT" problems being highlighted in a completely different context/industry ) Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company The Innovator's Dilemma ( super interesting read so far ) =Everyone should check these out= DevOps Kaizen (be good at getting better): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT542sffJpM (this concept is huge) From Design Thinking to DevOps and Back Again: Unifying Design & Operations: https://vimeo.com/129939230 The Case for Continuous Delivery: http://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/case-continuous-delivery Stop Hiring DevOps Experts and Star...

The best way I can describe why I'm moving on is "Sometimes God opens doors, sometimes He closes them, and other times He kicks the door open and points."  This would be the latter. After 3ish years at SCI, I'm moving on to a new opportunity with the folks working on "SI Play".  My time at SCI was probably the most powerful period of growth in my entire career and I'm really grateful for that, and somewhat sad to be leaving behind a great team.  From what I know so far, I'll be working with a totally different stack, but doing essentially the same thing - software development.  They are also working toward the same ideals that I've been helping SCI work toward - namely CI/CD.  A lot of the interview conversations were about moving toward Continuous Delivery/Deployment, so this should be an educational experience for me.  Also a great chance to apply everything I've learned over the last few years. So for the attentive Google bots, expec...