Recent news about the CrowdStrike Falcon agent that essentially bricked millions of computers worldwide, affecting airlines, hospitals, TV news stations, and countless other businesses, has been chaotic. As a former desktop support technician, I can only imagine the stress and countless hours of cleanup it will take to recover from this mess. Hearing the stories from some of my former coworkers working on the front lines of desktop support has been truly eye-opening.

One of the best pieces of advice I was given early in my career was to “never stop learning.” This is something I speak about with my engineers regularly in our 1:1s. In software, and truly in every industry, the day you think you have it all figured out and stop desiring to learn new things, you start your journey towards being left behind.

I have been a loyal Apple guy for the past few years. As a recovering Windows user, I spend almost all my time using systems either running Linux or MacOS. Almost all my systems at home are either running Linux (all my servers and my Raspberry Pi devices) and the rest are running MacOS. The one exception is my desktop used for doing my ham radio projects, but I’m migrating those applications to Linux when there’s time (with two kids on Christmas break, does this even exist?).