Using ectdctl to create a simple key-value store — What is ETCD? The technical definition is: “etcd is a consistent and highly-available key value store used as Kubernetes’ backing store for all cluster data.” What does that mean, though? Let’s see if we can take a look under the hood and start with the basics. What is a key-value store? We most often see databases in tabular…

A layperson’s analogy for my layperson brain — Even though I’ve been working with Kubernetes for the better part of a year, I’ve only recently come across a helpful analogy for understanding the control plane in a way that makes sense in every day (layperson) terms. It’s the Shipping Analogy. Perhaps more pertinent today with all the shipping…

Please stop saying this to creative people — You should be glad you don’t do what you love for a living. Let it be something you do on the side, otherwise you might grow to hate it. Has anyone ever said this to you? I’ve heard this countless times. Both directed at me and others. Sure. I get…

Getting to the heart of who we are — In Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth, he dedicates three chapters to defining the ego, and the different ways it manifests in life. In chapter 4, titled “Role-playing: The Many Faces of the Ego” he talks about pre-established roles we tend to identify with, such as “the middle-class housewife… the…

Understanding virtualization locally and in the cloud — Virtualization is a way of creating a virtual version of something. With regard to computers, that “something” could be CPU, RAM, storage, or networking, for example. Virtualization makes it possible to create “fake” (or virtual) versions of these things, which would then allow you to run a computer inside your…

Making sense of GNU, package managers, and graphical desktop environments — A distribution is another word for an operating system, or OS. There are a variety of distributions. However, all of them are essentially a collection of software based on the Linux kernel. (Remember: the kernel is the thing that communicates between the hardware and software.) …

The difference between bare metal & virtual machine boot processes — The Linux boot process differs depending on whether you’re booting directly from hardware (bare metal), or booting a virtualized machine. Bare metal This is a term used to indicate you have direct hardware access. In other words, your machine is not running in a virtualized environment. The boot process on bare metal…

How does information get from one location to another on the internet? — To understand networking, let’s first ask… What is a network? A network is simply collection of devices (e.g. — computers, printers, cell phones, TVs) that can communicate with one another. For these devices to communicate and share information, they need to be connected with each other through cables and/or wifi. The sender and receiver…