This article documents deploying the WordPress content management system (CMS) in Google Cloud as a fast, friendly, cheap (possibly free!) platform to blog from.
This is probably relevant for you if:
Youāre looking to start a blog
Youāve settled on WordPress, the top Open Source blogging engine
You have some Linux command line skills
Iām not going to discuss choosing WordPress over some other content management platform. Spending too much time worrying about the content management engine is a trap; Get to producing your content and donāt worry about the platform youāre using to publish it. Thatās something you can change later on, as most of the major CMS platforms have tools to migrate from the other major platforms.
In October 2019, I left my position as a VMware Solution Engineer and joined Google Cloud as a Customer Engineer. This post is a description of the process of onboarding and my early days at Google Cloud.
In October 2019, after almost four years as a VMware pre-sales technical engineer, I left and found a position as a Customer Engineer at Google Cloud. I left for mostly personal reasons, and still regard my team, management, and executive leadership in a very positive light. I just needed to make a change. Doing the same job at Google Cloud has been a big change. Though there have been ups and downs, the positives far outweigh the negatives. Iād like to deliver on my promises to blog more on what Iām learning, but no promises!
Itās been a year since Nick Korte and I published the 30-minute āPodcast Trailerā for the Nerd Journey podcast. Itās been a terrific year of hard work, interacting with fascinating people, and personal growth. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the past year of podcasting in the hopes that it might benefit someone else whoās thinking about getting involved in the extended community of technologists. You can read Nickās thoughts about this year in his Network Nerd blog post, āThe Journey Continues ā¦ A Year Laterā and listen to our first anniversary review podcast episode here. This inspired me to reflect on the origins of the podcast and talk a bit about the early days. Hopefully others can learn from some of what we did. Iād also like to reflect on the evolution of the podcast and myself. Itās been an interesting journey of introspection and self-discovery. Finally, Iād like to look forward to what I see for us on the horizon. I canāt say Iāve ever measured my guesses about the future, but maybe I can start with goals and progress to guesses as well.
I’m headed to Las Vegas for the show next week and am trying something new for my VMworld prep. I’ve got two a last-minute purchase, a goal, and an on-going action for my run-up to the show. By the way, if you’d like to meet up and chat, hit me up on twitter: @vJourneyman. I don’t know if you’re looking forward to anything specific at the show, but I was re-reading my post about VMware Validated Designs in 2016, and am looking forward to seeing what the Integrated Systems Business Unit announces for VVD and Cloud Foundation.
I’ve been watching several internal programs, non-product demos, and ideas-stage discussions on design at VMware for the past few years. Just recently, I noticed that we’re in the middle of a big hiring push for the UX/Design team, so I thought I put up a couple resources for those interested in exploring that career path.
And just as a reminder I maintain more lists of open VMware positions by type and recruitment campaigns: /vmware-jobs
Next, here’s an interview with Jehad Affoneh and Anna Marie Panlilio of the UX/Design team back in June of 2018. The spoke about their philosophy of design, how they conduct end-user research into the design process, and some ideas on the future direction of VMware product design. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at the recording session, but fortunately, there’s a recording!
It was interesting to hear they’re doing NDA design sessions at VMworld. I checked and they’re almost all full. If you can sign the agreement and sign up, it would be interesting to see that information-gathering first-hand.
Yesterday’s VMware Communities Roundtable podcast centered around the VMwareĀ Wavefront acquisition. Bill Roth (@BillRothVMware),Ā Director, Product Marketing at VMware’s Cloud Management Business Unit, was in studio to talk about what Wavefront’s product is and the thinking behind the acquisition. We (maybe just me) went down an interesting speculative path of what might be done with the product. Eric was especially interested in
Here areĀ some quick thoughts on the WannaCry ransomware threat that emerged this past Friday [L.A. Times,Ā Bloomberg, etc], as I get ready for the work week.
I wouldn’t want to be the person in the office of the CISO who wrote a security exception for Windows XP this week
The Shadow Brokers disclosure of this vulnerability isn’t what enabled this attack, it’s the lack of disclosure from everyone who knew about it but didn’t tell Microsoft.
It sure would be nice to have an easy way to see what computers are and aren’t patched against the vulnerabilities swiped from the NSA toolkit. Or to work for a software company that sold a solution that could give you that information (I don’t).
PAN discussed how the attack spreads after getting past a perimeter.Ā I’d encourage anyone with a micro-segmentation solution to make sure that they’re mitigating the methods of attack spread.
Angel Villar Garea, a VMware Systems Engineer, has a video out on how to block the spread using NSX.
How about physical machines? While platforms like NSX provide increased security via hardware VTEPs, I don’t think we yet have a mature way to push down security controls to the physical switch that the desktop is plugged into. Or the WiFi router. Again, in my view, the strength of aĀ platform like NSX is it’s ability to integrate with next generation physical firewalls from other vendors to extend security policies to the physical world.
WannaCry is only the latest ransomware to come along. It’s probably only the first to leverage to tools from the Shadow Brokers leak of stolen US Government zero-day attacks. What are you doing in your organization to block the next one?
This week in VMware job listings, I’ve changed formats slightly. I dropped market segment [EDIT: and seniority or role type] as that was taking a bunch of time to generate. I managed to automate things enough to post a refreshed version of every job category I’m monitoring: SE, Sales, Consulting, and TAM in the US/Canada and EMEA. Each of those has it’s own page with it’s weekly, refreshed,Ā completeĀ listing. In this post, I’m going to highlight the new jobs posted in each section. Those listings are in the single digits, so I’m not going to bother having them in a table with a sort/filter function. (more…)
UPDATE 2017-05-13:Ā I’ve added individual pages (wherever my navigation currently has menu structure, currently on the left) with a weekly refreshed, complete listing of all listed positions for SEs, Sales, TAMs, and Consultants in both USA/Canada and EMEA. Those tables will have filters and sortability. My weekly posts will have new listings without the complexity of sorts and filters.
This is my weekly Saturday update of new open positions at VMware. I’m hoping this helps anyone looking to start a VMware Career! There were no new Field Sales and TAM positions posted in the US, andĀ only a single SE and two Consulting positions posted. At readersĀ requests, I added the listings for EMEAĀ sales, EMEAĀ SEs, EMEAĀ consulting, and EMEAĀ TAMs. I must not know anyone in Canada, LATAM, APAC, or ANZ. There’s some Bay area local positions I want to highlight and a note about what the open position on Advisory Services is all about. (more…)
