People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

–Dale Carnegie

When I penned the immortal words ‘Give me an API or give me death…’ and gifted the meatcloud manifesto to the world while admonishing applications that don’t provide APIs, I was perhaps too focused on GUI installers. That was an artificial limitation which I hope to now rectify.

The automation of repetitive tasks presents an insurmountable opportunity.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

–Theodore Roosevelt

DRY should be a familiar principle familiar to anyone writing code and not living in a cave — Don’t Repeat Yourself. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s a lot easier to see the replication in files with code than it is in other aspects of our work, but search your shell history and look for the obvious. The real opportunity is to pop up a level and observe the workflows.

How much of what your organization does with emails and phone calls could be accomplished with a chain of automation?

That’s not so say we don’t want humans to make decisions, but do we really need to have someone push that button or fill out that form? As it turns out, machines are really really good at doing exactly the same thing over and over.

How much of what your organization does is replicated across an industry? industries?

Sometimes the benefits are not in what we can add, but what we can take away…

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

–Thomas Alva Edison

As I said… insurmountable opportunity…

viva la meatcloud!

GUI installers are evil…

Period.

You might need to have a little wizard to walk through setting stuff up the first time for the uninitiated, but if you think you are doing the poor hack who has to install your stuff on hundreds of machines any favors, you got another thing coming.

If you don’t provide some way to install your software fully unattended, please do not sell it to schools, businesses, non-profits or religious organizations with more than one person.

You might as well be killing kittens.

Actually, that goes for the interface to running applications as well.

I think we need the Open Meatcloud Manifesto… (because the world needs more manifestos and this is the perfect date to start a movement)

Let me see what I can work up…

• scribble* *scribble* *erase* *scribble* *crumple* *scribble*

I’ll keep it short and simple:

We hold these truths to be self-evident

Show your support for this movement by making your own copy of the manifesto and posting the pictures.

(Special privileges will be bestowed on those willing to tattoo the manifesto… on their forehead.)

No meatclouds were harmed in the making of this manifesto.

Viva La Revolución

Imitation is the highest form of flattery…

Things are getting really interesting in the configuration management space.  The confluence of clouds, web 2.0, dev-ministration and chocolate sauce.

Chef is upping the ante, one way or another. I’m a little saddened that the majority of the ideas in Chef were discussed in the context of Puppet and implemented by someone who has made a living off of Puppet… but I’m not totally surprised.

I understand why Adam would do this, and on many levels it parallels Luke’s relationship with cfengine.  Adam has probably used Puppet to solve more real problems and build more infrastructure than anyone else, just like Luke had done consulting with cfengine for years before Puppet was born. In a sense, Adam is the embodiment of the future of system administration that Luke had envisioned and hoped to create.

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle… and so it goes.

Adam is a smart guy who thinks clearly about solving problems, had Puppet as an example and data from the front line. He strikes me as a genuine fellow and while we aren’t best friends, I have enjoyed his conversation and insights on more than one occasion.  Chef adds some nice functionality that was obvious and some pieces that are differences in philosophy.  I’ve done my best to absorb both Luke and Adam’s expressed positions, and paradoxically, in my estimation they are both right, in their context. One way or another, there are still a lot of machines out there being managed by meatclouds, so there is plenty of work to do.

Puppet was first released in 2005 and has grown in functionality and adoption since that time. Puppet is revolutionizing system administration, similarly to how Rails revolutionized web development, and Chef can only accelerate that process, by its own merits and by driving innovations in Puppet. At the heart of the story are many questions about progress, open source, community, technology, obligations and the attributions.  The storyline already has mystery, intrigue, tragic heroes, and double agents. There is bound to be some drama, just because there are humans involved, but sometimes nothing motivates like a nice punch in the mouth.

Remember when Nintendo was king of the world then couldn’t sell anything, and now they pwn Playstation and Xbox… Or when apple was awesome and then wasn’t and now we all have iPhones… Innovators innovate, ebb and flow, ebb and flow.

And rails is merb is rails, and you never know what the future holds.  Buckle up… I’m just sayin’…

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

–George Bernard Shaw

The problem with communication … is the illusion that it has been accomplished.

- George Bernard Shaw

One of the topics arising frequently in my conversations is the need for clear vocabulary to describe emerging concepts forced by technical evolution and how those concepts fit into to a personal understanding of the world.

Dialects arise, but until we have shared symbols and metaphors these discussions must always be clumsy. (after we have shared vocabulary, it will still mostly be clumsy)

This is a feeble (and misguided) attempt to share some metaphor.

Gnomes: Some of you might know of venture funded technical start ups that are going to change the world. Some of those start ups might have ridiculous valuations and little or no revenue. Some just have no revenue. . . at least they have a business plan, good luck with that.

Clouds: Everyone knows about ‘the clouds‘ Or maybe they don’t? Or maybe the whole point is that they don’t? Or something? Some anonymous thing over there does something like this other thing I once knew and could touch. . .

Meat: Every organization probably has some hardware and some software, but even in sophisticated technical endeavors there are niggling little tasks that probably should have been automated a long time ago. How are those tasks accomplished? Meatware. . . but of course.

Le Patisserie: This might be less common for some, but I fear those of you in software might have lived it in one form or another. This might also be referred to as ‘dessert tray‘ Agile, or euphemistically as frAgile development. You take one part flailing development organization, two parts buzzword compliance, cut in some shortening or lard, and then bake until golden brown, top with whipped cream and viola! Sprinkle with legacy code if you want a real treat!!

Now comes the fun part. . . mix and match. I haven’t found a permutation that isn’t relevant, informative and amusing. (Ok, so I might be easily amused)

Cloud Gnomes – a virtualization startup

Meat Pastries – developers doing mind numbing repetitive work with Agile razzle dazzle fairy dust.

Meat Clouds – Uhm, like. . . built the pyramids and make your shoes

I leave the rest as an exercise for the reader:

Gnome Meat Pastry Clouds

Cloud Pastry Gnome Meats

Pastry Meat Cloud Gnomes

. . .

Pardon me, I have to get back to playing with puppets . . . and gathering underpants.