As many of you know my primary machine for both work and fun is a Linux box. For most work related things I just use the VMWARE Horizon client to get what I need done in my normal work environment. The reality is that my life resembles a frantic split-brained set of efforts that require me to bounce between Slack and Teams and the native Linux guy (me) has gotten aggravated with the additional steps required by not having a native Teams client. Granted, its a small aggravation. But an aggravation nonetheless. Thankfully Microsoft released a native Teams client for both .Deb and .Rpm crowds. The elimination of small aggravations is like chocolate for the soul. You can find the …
A little art, a little science
When work, art, science, and heroes intersect.
Diwali 2019
Diwali came late to the Terrell Mill campus at Fiserv this year. For reasons too numerous to mention, our celebration slipped past the actual Diwali holiday into the following week. But that delay did nothing to dampen joy and celebration as we observed it at work. The Festival of lights is an Indian holiday that celebrates good over evil and usually lasts for five days. So we had to make up for a lot of time in the celebration. Organized by employees and our Asian Resource Group, the day featured an incredible catwalk of people dressed in traditional clothing, more food than you could possibly imagine, and of course…dancing! With Indian music videos playing on all the screens, crowds gathered …
A Game of Monster: One Technology nut’s 5 ways of dealing with Technology burn-out.
When your passion becomes work, you run the risk of dimming your fire just a little, then a little more, then you begin to fatigue. When your job also includes high amounts of stress – that fire is in danger of going out completely.
Inside Bill’s Brain : An infomercial chockful of tang
I finally had a chance this weekend to sit down and watch the three-part Netflix documentary “Inside Bill’s Brain” about Bill Gates. As someone who worked at Microsoft in the waning years of significant “Bill involvement” through his transition into his next chapter of life, I was really curious how he would be portrayed in the series. Would it be hit job or love fest? Have you ever flipped through the channels and landed on one of those five hour long Time-Life commercials that featured a musical collection of the greatest hits of the 70s and 80s? But if you order now, you will also get the 90’s Dance Party Mix CD as a free gift? Even though you know …
Leadership means taking an active interest in your people.
In my humble opinion, leadership means you absolutely must take an active and genuine interest in your people. People can smell a phony from far away. But sincerity is always heard at an emotional level even if the feedback is unwelcome, constructive, or challenging. This is especially true with technology-oriented organizations where pragmatism and cynicism are often conflated and trust must universally be earned. \Mm
September 18th : The Credit Card is 61 years old today
On September 18th, 1958 the modern day credit card was born in Fresno, California. It would take the small California bank a few years to turn a profit with the gimmick, but it eventually did…and boy did it take off! Driving trillions of dollars of commerce across the globe. Andreesen Horowitz has a fun little story posted today. Take a read HERE. \Mm
Merchants Advisory Group Annual Meeting Redux
Earlier this morning I had the pleasure of hosting a panel on the technology architecture, software development, and infrastructure stacks required across the payment landscape of today’s regulatory and business demand. Fintech (in all of its flavors and varieties) of course is a hot topic and the attendance in the room was a good indicator on the importance and focus on these issues. My panel consisted of some of the biggest brands in the merchant space with a wide diversity of go-to-market, technology, and business approaches. My panelists represented BestBuy, Etsy, McDonalds and Walmart and more than that, those panelists are the ones who are front and center for the technology revolution happening in those firms for the payments space. …
Running your own private Certificate Authority + RFC8555 delivery
In announcement today via blog by Mike Malone, Small Step announced version v0.13.0 which will allow you to essentially build and run your own ACME based Certificate Authority. While I have not played with this yet, I can tell you that this is a functionality I have been looking for across a couple of personal projects. and conceptually the ability to automate and centralize some of this functionality is exciting. I am super excited to take a crack at this and see how well it works. That is once I get some free time from normal work activities. Just wanted to give a thumbs up shout out to the folks at Smallstep For more information, check out to the post …
Keynote Event: Merchant Advisory Group Tech Forum
I will be hosting the Keynote event at the Merchant Advisory Group Annual Conference in Scottsdale Sept 17-19, 2019.