Category Archives: Career

Career, DevOps, Home Office, Technology

The Cost of running an Enterprise-Class Home Office

7.22 kWh (3.666kg of CO2) in a single week

I’ve run datacenters and enterprise-class servers out of our house before. Using my earlier metrics, I figured a single HP Proliant, Dell PowerEdge, SunFire T1000, or an Apple XServe cost about $35/mo in electricity alone… and this was back in 2005-2006.

Running an enterprise-class home office with bonded gigabit ethernet, fiber, several servers (Apple, Ubuntu, Windows), two NAS, and a 49″ 5K monitor is soaking up 7kWh/week and producing 3.666 kg of CO2.
I’m going to have to budget for electrical bills now, hopefully I can either expense it or write it off as business expenses?
I’ll need to seriously investigate solar panels, a Tesla PowerWall, or buying “carbon credits” to offset my footprint.
Solar as an option is growing in Sterling, Loudoun County, and in Northern Virginia. I know I’ve seen several Solar City installs where our HOA installed panels and PowerWalls on the roof and in the garage.
Since the house is nearly paid off, getting a Line-of-Credit to replace the 22yo 2.5T HVAC with a new 3T HVAC and going solar will very quickly pay for itself.
Bucket List, Career, DevOps, Gaming

Latest: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080

1 Comment

So this is my new 4.7Ghz 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 3950X with Nvidia RTX 3080 that is going to be my office workstation and gaming rig driving the Samsung CRG9 49″ curved 5K DQHD 120Hz HDR10 monitor, Samsung Odyssey+ 3K VR/HMD, and Dolby Atmos sound.

  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Sixteen Core Processor (64MB Cache, 3.5GHz-4.7GHz) 105W (Liquid Cooled)
  • RAM: 64GB DDR4 3200MHz
  • Hard Drive: 2TB NVMe Solid State Drive + 12TB 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB GDDR6X
  • Motherboard: X570 Chipset
  • Power Supply: 750W Platinum PSU
  • Operating System: Windows 10 Professional x64
  • Features: Dual Side Panel Doors, Addressable RGB Control via Remote
  • Accessories: Wired LED Backlit USB Gaming Keyboard and Mouse Included
  • 3-Year CUK Limited Warranty

I’m hoping to run all my VMs for hosting Ubuntu, Docker, SaltStack, and Ansible for my daytime/weekday development while playing games during the evenings and weekends.

As much as I like the RGB keyboard and mouse that comes from Computer Upgrade King (CUK), I like my Razer BlackWidow V3 Pro and Razer Gaming Mouse better.

My view as I’m working from home…
Cancer, Career, DevOps

Why A Unicorn?

Plush “The Last Unicorn” (Peter S. Beagle)

Hiring managers, recruiters, and “possible co-workers” have all been asking about the unicorn on my desk.

The unicorn kept me company at Johns Hopkins and Seattle during my cancer treatment and bone marrow transplant, so it’s sticking with me. 💕 It’s “The Last Unicorn” from Peter S. Beagle’s novel and film. 😆🦄

Cancer, Career, DevOps, Everyday Life

Adjusting to New Realities (and Working from Home)

My new view as I’m working from home…

Since being diagnosed with cancer in January 2018, my reality has been “Wear an N95 mask when outside-the-house, and work-from-home whenever possible.”

It took some time to get used to this new reality. When Sophos laid off ~3% of their workforce, my reality got thrown for another loop. Using our savings and severance, I’ve been cleaning up, re-arranging, and turning part of our master bedroom into an organized home office.

Now two weeks into serious job hunting, daily technical interviews, and initial discussions with a couple of possible employers, I’m back into a routine and feeling more comfortable again. Having a routine and a sense of security certainly cuts down significantly on my anxiety.

With the bleat of continuous bad news about the pandemic, the economy, unemployment, social unrest, social change, and world events… it’s nice to find some comfort and respite.

Ken Foreman (Working from Home)
As an Aside, Career, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

As an Aside, My Thoughts on Technical Interviews

Scenes from a Technical Interview

Sometimes technical interviews are “fun”, other times they are grueling and punishing. I meet all types of systems engineers during my long career in both the corporate and government space.

Yesterday was truly nice. I enjoy meeting with IT Directors, Site Reliability Engineers (SRE), and DevOps Engineers who are not out to either grill you or prove their superiority over you, but to genuinely probe your knowledge, logic, experience, and temperament to see if you will be a good fit for their team (and vice-versa).

There may be “safety” in large corporations and government agencies, but there is a sense of comfort, comradery, and technical brilliance in startups. Working for a 50-person company might take me out of my traditional comfort zone, but I enjoy working alongside engineers who possess a clear sense of quality, ethics, conscience, and comradery.

Career, DevOps, Edge Routers, Firewalls, Security Gateways

Edge Firewalls and Security from Sophos and ZyXEL

ZyXEL ZyWall USG110 Dashboard

I continue to be VERY impressed by the speed, performance, and security of the ZyXEL ZyWall USG110 as an edge firewall and security gateway.

Victoria and I have been hitting it hard with multiple 4K video streams, multiple HTTPS secure sessions, videoconferencing (Facetime, Zoom), manga/anime, 4K gaming/streaming, work, and education.

It’s consistently allowing 860-920Mbps on our gigabit fiber connection despite running five services (Intrusion Detection & Prevention [IDP], Antivirus, Antispam, Content Filters, Anomaly Protection & Protection [ADP], and Security Policies) with an IPsec VPN and SSL VPN both available to allow secure virtual private networks to our home network.

ZyXEL ZyWall USG110 with MicroPC and 8TB SSD

With heavy filtering and traffic inspection, I’m still seeing sustained 860-880Mbps throughput, which is about 4-6x better than what we had with Sophos UTM and the Sophos SG firewall.

It’s impressive how much junk there is out there between trackers, malware, adware, spam, and botnets scanning for open ports and known vulnerabilities. Reading the logs and seeing the graphs has been fun each day, but it’s earned my trust and I don’t think I’ll be reading them unless a CRITICAL or ERROR screams for my attention.

Even Facebook ads raise WARNINGS as Facebook attempts to track users across their site and across other sites that use Facebook for authentication, sharing, or advertising.

Career, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

End of an Era: Invincea and Sophos

1 Comment

THE END OF AN ERA – Invincea and Sophos

In January 2018, I was hired by Invincea in Fairfax, VA, just as they were being bought by Sophos. Later that same year, they moved from Fairfax to Reston, VA.

In October 2019, Thoma Bravo made an offer to acquire Sophos which was accepted by the management team and approved by the EU.

On Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020, Thoma Bravo and Sophos made the joint management decision to reduce costs and expenses by severing engineering and management at several locations… one of which was our engineering team.

This morning feels surreal as I clean up, box up, update my resume, and prep for job hunting again. I am extremely thankful and honored for the wonderful team members I met while at Invincea/Sophos, and our friendships that endure.