Merlin

Espresso nerd. Tech Debt Geneologist. Lord of the Boardgames.

[Merlin @TheWizardTower]

Reminder that I'm looking for a new role.

I'm an experienced infrastructure engineer. I've worked with Kubernetes, Terraform, Postgres, AWS, with some Azure and GCP as well.

I've also done a lot of valuable work as a backend engineer, having worked primarily in Haskell and Rust, though I've also gotten my hands dirty with Python, some Go, C++, and a bit of TypeScript.

I've also had the privilege of being a public speaker, and have also lead training seminars for peers on how to use different tools, sharp edges to avoid, and getting them to a functional mental model of how things work quickly, so they can start to ask meaningful questions and debug problems on their own.

I take ownership quickly, care deeply about reliability, correctness, and delivering quality service to customers. I say this up-front because this comes with a number of downsides, including:

* I dislike shoddy work, buggy code, leaky abstractions, or flaky services. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" is fine and well, but tech debt brings an aggressive drag coefficient to your business, and that fact gets swept under the rug far too often.
* I don't optimize for shipping a ton of code quickly. I tend to be on the lower end of lines of code/sprint, and I'm not terribly keen on changing that. I write code to be maintainable, have clear invariants, be easy to refactor as business needs change, be easy to debug, and to quietly work while you're focus is elsewhere.

I'm also a quick study, and have a long history of getting spun up quickly on the new parts of a stack I encounter at the various roles I've filled over the years.

If this sounds like a good fit, please do drop me a line. I'd love to talk about how I can make your life better.

https://t.co/E09B5Chxhw

[AC @saveusculture]

My final solution to the software industry: lock developers in cages with an unlimited supply of pizza and coffee, and give them each one of these equipped with 4GB of RAM, a spinning HDD, and a 10mbps internet connection.

Leave them there until software is good.

[🌵 RC | The Nostalgia Pro🕹️📺 @NostalgiaPro]

Cox internet went out again last night. Third night in a row. I pay them to fail, apparently.

Fine. I'll just play something on my Xbox Series S I keep in the bedroom before bed.

Couldn't play a single game. Not one.

Everything downloaded, installed, paid for, sitting right there on a console I own. Locked. Because some server couldn't confirm it was my "home Xbox."

I have NES carts older than the internet. Blow on them, drop them in, they boot. No login. No permission. No begging a company to let me play what's mine.

Modern gaming isn't progress. It's a leash. And most of you are defending the hand that holds it.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

It's always amusing when socialists argue that capital has all the leverage over labor while also insisting that capital could never exist without labor.

If capital is truly dependent on labor for its existence, then labor possesses far more leverage than they're willing to admit.

The reality is that labor and capital need each other. That's why they negotiate.

But socialist rhetoric requires workers to be simultaneously indispensable and powerless, exploited yet holding all the productive power.

The contradiction is doing most of the heavy lifting.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Socialism is the idea that you should be forced to do the things that normally make people rich, while being forbidden from becoming rich yourself.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Fun fact: Stalin likely caused the deaths of more innocent Soviet citizens than Nazis killed in combat by his regime by a large margin.

The man celebrated for defeating Hitler spent much of his career imprisoning, deporting, starving, purging, and executing his own people.

Defeating one mass murderer doesn't absolve another.

[Adam Zivo @AdamZivo]

More data illustrating how the situation in Gaza is not, in any way, a “genocide.”

[Denise Wu @denisewu]

Free advice: Since this day (June 4, 1989) doesn’t exist in CCP’s eyes. Posting photos from the #TiananmenSquare8964 keeps the Little Pinks out of your business posts.

[Sidelock Holmes @SidelockHolmes]

If Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza this war would have been over on October 8th

[Merlin @TheWizardTower]

@tuuu28283 🎉🎉🎉

[Final Cut Tile 🇺🇸 @FinalCutTile]

Anyone know where I can get one of these ?? 😆😆 #KilldozerDay

[Merlin @TheWizardTower]

Same.

[𝙎𝘼𝙉-𝙈𝘼𝙉🕊️ @itssanman]

Domino's

[Dr. Drunken Kobold, Esq. @DrunkKobold]

The reason Indie games (real indies, not studios funded by Microsoft/Activision/Tencent) have been breaking through is because they usually have a creative with fairly unilateral control, or a small group with a shared vision.

No major studio would allow this today.

[Bridget Phetasy @BridgetPhetasy]

I don't know about you, but I get a little nervous when a drug-addicted painter starts insinuating the Jews are behind everything.

[Merlin @TheWizardTower]

@tuuu28283 I love both, but my heart will always belong to Chicago deep dish.

[Merlin @TheWizardTower]

@tuuu28283 Screw that loser.

[Merlin @TheWizardTower]

Is there a Winnie the Pooh emoji?

[Merlin @TheWizardTower]

Might as well drive my social credit score into the negatives!

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

Video of Chinese communist security forces killing hundreds of protesting students on the Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4th, 1989. 🇨🇳

[Nigel Byrum @Bayrunner87]

“Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things” - Marvin Heemeyer