Last update: August 2025. Welcome to the personal blog of Jeff Wilson. I’m a software developer, recreational golfer, aspiring writer, and accidental DevOps devotee. I’m currenly working full-time (and then some) in the financial services industry, trying to balance thinking big with AI and thinking small with cloud bills. I hope you enjoy your visit!
Amazing Grace
While reading Hugh Howey’s Shift I was jolted out of the novel by three thoughts in quick succession. The first was an awareness of mild discomfort in my eyes, typical in this ragweed season. The second was a rush of fear of imminent loss – will this crispness fade again? And the third was a response – no, these are my eyes now. This week I had my first cataract surgery; the next is early in September....
Turbulence
TL;WR If you’re moving your software development practices to Kubernetes, please don’t rush the packaging work (i.e. the charts, operators, and pipelines). It might seem that spending time here is a waste of effort, but rushing this part — or worse, working backwards from manually deployed customer environments — will cause expensive delays when you can least afford it. A Dubious Analogy In just about every business, the pressure to deliver can be immense....
TIL about LocalStack
Today I learned that LocalStack 🔗 was a thing. If you need to learn the AWS API on a budget, or if you have AWS in your CI/CD pipeline and you want to test your deployment code, this looks like an amazing resource. Note to self: this is the first “TIL” post, but I really should be making a habit of it. I come across amazing stuff several times a week....
Cloud Lab
I finally bought a single machine that lets me grow a little cloud at home. My intention is to use it to look into various DevOps tools, including some that don’t fit well on a typical PC. The banner image shows the 40 virtual cores I now see in htop. The image was taken a couple of seconds after simultaneously rebooting five VMs, each with 4 CPUs and 8GB RAM....
The Yak Came Back
TL;WR Hosting a Windows Remote Desktop in your home over the Internet is a risky business, particularly in this era of botnets and ransomware. My father used to invite other volunteers from church into his desktop to help with the books, and I finally convinced him to transition off his PC and into various commercial platforms. Each of those platforms had their pros and cons. Years have passed, and now I think I can bring the service partway back....