You can also do that in AWS using CloudWatch Auto Recovery functionality. Of course it's still better to design for HA, but if it's not possible Auto Recovery should be able to add a bit of resiliency.
I do agree that the specs do not look enticing on paper, compared to say the Asus ones, but in my experience they last longer.
Whenever I visit my parents I usually bring replacement hardware for whatever is broken. When I first got them their Airport Extreme, I replaced it after 5 years. I got them an Asus router with a really impressive wifi range, but it broke after just 1 year. Now they're back with the latest Airport Extreme.
It's a bit pricey for the specs but it's very reliable. I use 2 at home, that are bridged via gigabit ethernet, and they're pretty good. My only complain is that they don't have VLAN support (IPTV) and their wifi range is really bad.
I love the AWS platform, I find the entire thing very elegant. I wanted to move away from software development and get into more high level stuff (hence the SA role), and I'd rather join a company where am passionate about their products.
I have friends working in AWS, and so far none of them have been complaining about work life balance, so am assuming that it's different from the retail side.
Been reading a lot of Amazon articles the past few weeks. I'll be joining AWS next month as an SA. I met the hiring manager during the interview loop, and he seems like a cool guy. Funny thing is when I told my family and friends that I'll be joining AWS they all emailed me the NYT expose.
Well I do hope it's not as bad as it's portrayed. I do want to see my son grow up (he is turning 2 years old).
I just do both. I have my regular 9 to 5 with a big enterprise software company, and when I get home I just work on my freelance projects.
As long as there's no conflict of interest (there's usually none since the scope and scale are totally different), then it shouldn't be a problem.
The only issue is getting newer clients, currently I get projects/clients from word of mouth or from former colleagues. Of course I would want to do this full time since my regular job is mind numbingly boring, but it pays the bills.
I've lived in Singapore for almost 5 years already and have recently switched citizenships (my son would have to serve in Singapore's military service once he reaches the appropriate age). I have come to appreciate Singapore's style of governance. The sheer efficiency and reliability of government service still surprises me to this day. Having come from the Philippines where bribing somebody in the government to get things done is part of normal life. I am all too willing to sacrifice a bit of freedom to gain stability, reliability, and peace. Not worrying about the safety of my wife and child when they come home late is a huge thing for me.
Yes Singapore has it's own set of societal problems, but I'd rather have that than the numerous problems that is deeply entrenched in Philippine society nowadays.
Rest in peace Mr LKY. Your accomplishments are legendary.
Are you guys supporting multiple regions? Let's say I start my day in Asia then fly to the US, would I be able to access my stuff using the nearest server?
My situation is getting bad enough that even my wife is complaining that I don't spend enough time with them (her and my son). I have a full time job with SAP, I also have regular consulting work on my own which I have been doing since I graduated from university, and lately I've started working on a number of products that I strongly believe in.
I've started applying a bit of scrum in my own work where in I have a Trello board with my backlog, my plan for the current sprint, what is done and what is deployed (for demo). This allows me to focus and not jump around developing endless streams of features. I set a side a chunk of time (w/ adequate negotiations with my wife) where in I blitz through my tasks for the current sprint. It also helps that my wife is a project manager in her day job so she understands my Trello board.
I find that this setup is the most effective for me, of course YMMV. For my consulting work I normally have 1 ongoing project at a time and usually a few in the RFP type of stage where in I'm still in discussions with clients.
My situation is very similar to yours, am employed in a big enterprise software company and the work is very demoralizing. I do 2 things in my spare time, work on a product of my own, and do my own consulting business (development and high scalability architecture design), these 2 keep me sane and it actually makes me look forward to going home so I can do my own thing.
In the office, I try to help out the junior folks as much as I can, might as well make the best of a bad situation and maybe earn a bit of reputation as the go to person for software architecture. Also don't let go of your health, even if you don't like your job, no sense dragging down other aspects of your life with it. I tend to exercise every other day (alternating between cardio and free weights), and don't forget to eat healthy, it makes a huge difference in terms of your overall mood and energy level.
I think it's even worst in my place since my boss doesn't listen to other people's opinions and is more of a dictator. The result is something similar to the Fizz Buzz Enterprise Edition.
Me and my wife still do print a select number of photos. Whenever we travel we purposely take a couple of shots from her Lumix (a non DSLR but with replaceable lens) for the purpose of printing and putting it up on our "travel" wall. Not sure how it would look like if we used our phones to take those shots.
After experiencing the awesomeness that is Continuity and Handoff, I wouldn't give up OSX for Windows/Linux. I do agree with some of his points about instability especially for .0 releases, better wait after a few patches before upgrading.
I do disagree about Yosemite's installation time, coincidentally I just updated my wife's 2011 MBA last night and it took around 40 mins. The funny thing is once Yosemite was installed everything works as expected, the only setup that I needed to do was relogin her Apple account.
Using Linux as your desktop entails doing a lot more setup and configuration, and it's very tedious to constantly searching for solutions to functionality that should've worked right out of the box.
This is spot on! While I don't have problems financially, but I feel very much unfulfilled with my day job working as an architect for a big enterprise software company.
Right now I do a lot of side jobs (architecture consulting) to get my creative juices flowing and keep me updated, and I always dreamed of starting my own boutique consulting company. I always say someday this someday that. It's hard to take that first step.
Unfortunately, I don't have the answer, and just last week I closed another side project (which made me happy because their problem was very interesting), on the other hand, office politics is really stressing me out.
I'm using a Thinkpad (T440) at work and whenever I have to undock from my desk I have to bring my mouse because I find myself always clicking the wrong things.
Now I use an rMBP at home, and more often than not I actually play Diablo 3 using just the trackpad, maybe I'm just used to it, but I haven't used a non-Apple laptop that has a usable trackpad.