Life on System Overlord

On Deep Work

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Sun, 24 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I recently stumbled upon Azeria’s blog post The Importance of Deep Work & The 30-hour Method For Learning a New Skill, and it seriously struck a chord with me. Over the past year or so, I’ve struggled with a lack of personal satisfaction in my life and my work. I tried various things to address the issue, but could not figure out a root cause until I read her article, and then it clicked with me.

Workflowy: Good for Keeping Organized?

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Sat, 10 May 2014 02:53:35 +0000

I’ve been using Workflowy for a while as an organizational tool. It self describes as thus:

WorkFlowy is an organizational tool that makes life easier. It can help you organize personal to-dos, collaborate on large team projects, take notes, write research papers, keep a journal, plan a wedding, and much more.

I’ve been using Workflowy for about 6 months now, and so I think I’ve developed a good feeling for what’s working for me and what’s not, but I think it’s important to recognize that everyone will have different needs and expectations out of an organizational tool.

2014 OKRs

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Sun, 05 Jan 2014 18:15:30 +0000

At work, we use the OKR system for managing our objectives. I’ve decided to set myself some annual objectives and list out their key results here. At the end of the year, I’ll grade myself on my OKRs and we’ll see how I’m doing.

Get better at reversing
- Complete OpenSecurityTraining.info x86 class
- Complete 3 reversing challenges from WeChall
Play CTFs
- Compete in at least 3 CTFs
- (Stretch Goal) Top 10% Finish
- Complete the challenges on OverTheWire.org
Blogging
- At least 1 Blog Post/week
Lose Weight & Exercise
- Lose 25 lbs.
- Get at least 60 minutes aerobic exercise a week
Become a more powerful vim/zsh user
- Use vim keybindings in zsh
- Read full zsh guide
- Learn 6 new vim commands

2 Weeks at Google

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 05:08:01 +0000

Two weeks at Google have been... amazing. There's a lot that I can't talk about, but I can feel comfortable in confirming some of the things you hear about Google:

The people are insanely smart.
The scale blows your mind as a Noogler (new Googler).
The food is great.
It has culture.

I'm a "Site Reliability Engineer" which is a job title that may not exist anywhere else. It's basically production-oriented operational engineering: keeping production systems running and making them run better.

Big Changes

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:54:46 +0000

Today I did one of the hardest things I have had to do: I turned in my notice that I would be leaving Kennesaw State University in February. It was hard because I consider my management and many of my coworkers to be friends and I genuinely do enjoy my job, but I now have the opportunity to start the next chapter of my life. At the end of February, I'll be moving to California and starting at Google as a Site Reliability Engineer!

Things I Wish Undergrad Had Taught Me

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:32:35 +0000

This is not an attempt to knock any particular program, professor, or course of study. It's just some things that I think should be included in an undergrad CS program that I don't feel like I got.

Serious study of data structures and algorithms. While I know how to implement a linked list, structs, classes, vectors, and other data structures, not a whole lot was said about the best use cases for each. That's something I've had to discover on my own. And the most complex tree we discussed was the Binary tree. We never talked about balanced binary trees, red-black trees, or generic n-ary trees. Although I was taught the general idea behind Djikstra's algorithm, and can tell you the big-O runtime for about a half-dozen sorts, practice implementing them and discussion of their comparative strengths and weaknesses is not something I remember from my undergrad. Also, there was NO discussion of time-memory tradeoffs involved in implementing some of the algorithms. In fact, (and I'm embarassed to admit this) I only recently found out about the in-place implementation of quicksort!
How to find your focus. If there's ever been a real-world example of an NP-complete problem, it's finding your niche. I'm still searching, and as I get into more things, I'm finding more interests than I am able to exclude. IT/Computers/Technology is a massive field and even narrowing it a little is hard. About the only things I've narrowed down are that I don't want to do end-user support, that I don't want to manage people, and that I want to work with/develop Open Source. Oh, and that I like not doing the same thing every day. (As it is, my current job is getting on the monotonous end of things.) I hope I'll find my focus before its too late.
How to develop with others. This is a skill I've developed over the past few years of the "real world", but I'm not sure everyone I've worked with has gotten it down. There were too few group projects in my undergrad, and those that I had were comparatively small. We never had the big software engineering problems, and never really had to develop good APIs for others to depend on. The division of work never seemed to be "you do the UI, I'll do the database components, and he'll do the business logic." It was always "you do the UML diagram, I'll do all the code, and you do the final report." That's not how it works in the real world (ok, well, sometimes it is, but it's not how its supposed to work).
How to effectively use source code management. Using SCM is critical to any serious development. Not once in my entire undergrad career was that discussed. No mention of any SCM. While my experience in open source had led to me using and understanding SCM, I can say that I've seen how well prepared others are to use it -- and it's pretty scary.
How to do requirements definitions and other software engineering tasks. When I started my undergrad, there weren't really any dedicated software engineering programs -- everyone did CS or IS. In the CS side of things, there was one software engineering class. You can't learn to estimate time, do requirements definitions, manage deliverables, and all the other tasks that go into a software lifecycle in one class. While I realize not every CS student will end up doing software engineering, the software engineering class should be early in the program (in my program, it was nearly at the end) and those concepts should be incorporated into every major project you do for the rest of your degree. You've gotta do things more than once to really understand it.
How to do dev/test/prod. Much like #5, the words "unit testing" never came up in my undergrad program. There also wasn't really any discussion of maintaining existing software, and of the different environments. I knew about them, but not from my undergrad, and I've had to learn a lot about them "on my feet." I'm still trying to get some of our practices at my job into this lifecycle in a sane manner, but it turns out: doing things the right way requires more work up front. It'll save you in the long run, but it's hard to get that initial investment when it looks cheaper to "fix things later." (It's not, by the way. Doing it right the first time is always cheaper.)

I'm still learning a lot -- but if you're not learning, you're stagnant. There are just some things that make you slap your forehead when you realize how nice it would have been to know those skills 5 years ago.

I have the coolest wife...

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:12:45 +0000

I have the coolest wife because, although today is our first anniversary, she not only allowed, but encouraged, me to attend DrupalCamp Atlanta. Hopefully I learn something useful. :)

I love her very much... and I'm not just saying that because she reads this blog.

(Oh, and don't worry, we'll be spending the evening together.)

Where My Goals Lie

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:21:59 +0000

Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my life goals. While I realize that 26 is still comparatively young, I really feel like I'm not making enough progress towards where I want to be. Rather than moping on about it, as I have for quite some time, I've been inspired by Sacha Chua to actually do something about it. Sacha is all about getting things done and making the most out of life, or, to quote her blog title, "Living an Awesome Life." Whining is not living an awesome life.

Needing more focus...

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 03:40:51 +0000

I've come to the conclusion that I need to become more focused in some areas of my life. I want to be able to contribute to open-source projects, including Ubuntu, but I realized that I don't know enough about any single project to really dive in and work on the code. I need to find a single project to contribute (codewise) to.

I sometimes feel that there's this technological void in my life, with a desire to work on a project of some sort. The big problem is that I have diverse interests: user experience, information security, embedded systems/robotics, etc. I know it's a ridiculous statement to make, but even at 25, I feel like I'm behind where I'd like to be in my life.

RHCE

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 06:33:57 +0000

Generally speaking, I try not to push my ego on here too much. It's big enough on its own. However, I feel like this is a pretty major accomplishment for myself, and I haven't posted in a while, so I thought I'd throw it up there. As of this past Friday, I am now a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)™! This is without a doubt the hardest test I've taken, as a "practical" (hands-on) exam. No multiple-choice guessing here.

Life Changes

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 02:23:14 +0000

A couple of updates, since it's been a while since I've posted anything meaningful.

On March 2nd, I will be starting a new job as an IT System Support Specialist III at Kennesaw State University. Typical of a government job, the title is rather meaningless. To be specific, I will be supporting a variety of Linux and Mac OS X servers for the university and the platforms running on them (Drupal, Moodle, and other technologies.) The production servers are RHEL and the development is on CentOS.

Of course, every good turn comes with a down turn.