ecksearoh

jerry , 2 days ago to random

Today is my last day at IBM.

I joined Netrex in February 1999 as a Unix admin

In late 1999 Internet Security Security Systems bought Netrex, largely for its managed services business.

In October 2006, when I was the director of IT, IBM bought ISS largely for its managed services business.

I was given lots of opportunities at IBM. Twice I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time and was on a list to be let go, but other parts of IBM decided to pick me up. I once resigned to take a job at Deloitte, and at the time my manager told me that didn’t work for anyone and made it worth my while to stay. For many years, I led an incident response function for the strategic outsourcing business, which was later spun off to be what is now Kyndryl. I learned a LOT. I learned so much, in fact, that I decided to start a podcast in 2012, partly to make myself smarter, and partly in hopes that I could help the industry avoid the mistakes I was seeing our clients make on a near daily basis. I have deep scars from all the big security events of the 2010’s - heartbleed, shellshock, wannacry, notpetya, and many others.

In 2019, I was leading an internal practice around cyber regulations (in addition to the IR role) and ended up helping the cloud business out of a sticky situation. Unbeknownst to me, cloud had been looking to replace their CISO, and in March 2020, they offered me the job. My first big test was leading Cloud through Covid.

I had the extreme privilege to lead a team of 184 remarkably talented professionals. We did some cool things, but I regret the long list of things that didn’t get done.

As well published in the news, IBM took a hard line on return to office, particularly for executives. They gave people like me a choice: relocate to a key site (Atlanta was not one of them) and work from the office 3 days a week (with tight attendance tracking), or be let go. I have been working from home full time since shortly after IBM bought ISS in 2006 - nearly 18 years. I spend about 1/3 of my time at my beach place, which I was not willing to part with. Plus, I fundamentally disagree with the return to office approach and with how people have been treated, so I opted to “let it happen”, and so today is the day IBM terminates me.

I’ve saved up enough money that I can take a break for a while. It’s been 32 years since I’ve had more than a week off work, and at least 20 since I’ve had any sort of vacation that wasn’t disrupted by urgent meetings, crises, and so on. I’m going to spend some time with my family, especially my extremely patient wife, in ways that I haven’t been able to.

I have a very long list of things I’ll be doing during this downtime. I intend to get back into podcasting; I am going to write some including maybe a book; I am going to focus more on the fediverse instances I manage to ensure they are enduring; I am going to way too many baseball games with my wife (she is a mega baseball fan); and I am going to take way too many pictures and hopefully find some creative ways to make money with those pics.

TL;DR: today is the end of a long journey for me, and the start of a new one. And it’s a good day.

ecksearoh , 3 months ago to random

I'm not a fan of any gaming companies. I'm just a consumer that likes gaming products put out by several companies. I hate shrinkflation in my grocery products and my video games. And if a company that used to make good Irish butter starts trying to sell me smaller bars of butter for the same price I'm gonna switch to another brand. I'm not sure if that butter analogy is working for me, but most adults understand shrinkflation as a concept.

Anyway you should never call yourself fans of a corporation, you are just consuming a mass marketed product that meets your needs right now. And they count on that nostalgia to carry you through their future periods of diminishing returns, a process we currently refer to as enshitification.

wdlindsy , 4 months ago to random

"When I hear them say Joe Biden is too old, I can hear them really saying they want a world where America has abandoned international leadership and the rule of law to accelerate strongman rule with Donald Trump as the all-powerful boss deciding our fate."

~ Steven Beschloss

S. Beschloss is hearing correctly. This is exactly what the media mavens, the New York Times and the corporate elites that pull media strings, are saying.

#Biden #Trump #age #NATO #Putin #Russia

https://america.substack.com/p/nato-bidens-age-and-the-world-we

ecksearoh , 4 months ago to random

A small update on my lazy man's F2P Raid: Shadow Legends odyssey.

I have decided that any Epics or Legendaries I get will come from dailies, very lucky shard drops, or game event codes. I will not be wasting my time feeding dudes to other dudes in order to level everyone up to 50 or 60. I think one maybe two rares or epics are worth that much of an investment for the time wasting context that actually interests me, most of my 50s will be free legendary heroes. Level 60 content doesn't hold my interest.

I lucked into an abandoned clan, then took it over like a magpie and pushed all the other baby birds out, so the only gems required were those needed to change the name, tag, and logo. Truth be told I'll probably abandon the game by end of year, there's not a lot there, it's just popcorn media.

Now Helldivers 2 that looks like a lot of good old fascist fun.