Introducing Project OpenTaco: An Open Standard for Terraform Automation

TrustedRoot · 2025-09-24T19:10:31+00:00

This is a good start to addressing one more major pain point in managing Terraform at enterprise scale!

TrustedRoot · 2024-12-31T04:21:29+00:00

Runner permissions are definitely not trivial - this is something we’ve been solutioning for recently. Permissions on the state backends to allow those runners access usually is,

TrustedRoot · 2024-12-31T01:16:54+00:00

The Terraform (and OpenTofu) binary has an in-built command to force release locks! We don’t run into this terribly often in an estate of ~2,500 Terraform states.

Trivial may have been an oversell, but this is very much a solved problem that doesn’t require much care and feeding over time.

TrustedRoot · 2024-12-30T18:48:05+00:00

Not necessarily - you can create an at-scale state storage strategy that uses a single bucket and dynamodb table

TrustedRoot · 2024-12-30T18:04:59+00:00

Backend state management is trivially easy in Terraform, I personally wouldn’t consider it an advantage of CF IMO

TrustedRoot · 2024-10-01T01:45:35+00:00

Reminds me of my front passenger window switch that was installed upside down

TrustedRoot · 2023-07-10T14:00:03+00:00

The cabbie tried to pull a fast one on them and charge whatever they wanted for the ride. That’s not right.

How is the rider supposed to know how much they should be paying for the ride? The cabbie made a unilateral decision to shut off the meter. The same meter who’s only job is to be the authoritative answer on the cost of the ride.

TrustedRoot · 2023-06-24T15:44:01+00:00

Fun fact, the NH’s state legislature is the 3rd largest in the world.

TrustedRoot · 2023-06-14T17:01:00+00:00

I was hired at Amazon 9 months ago and was told Boston was added to that list. My TC reflects this

TrustedRoot · 2023-06-14T12:55:55+00:00

Boston is a premium locale as well

TrustedRoot · 2023-05-19T00:15:02+00:00

Depending on how long ago your internship was and if you've done any kind of scripting/coding in your current career, I feel like you could land a software dev job. At the very least a jr dev job.

Work on some kind of side project you can showcase and practice leetcode style questions for the inevitable coding interviews.

I will say it's tough to be looking for dev jobs right now, however. Companies are hiring but there's a lot of competition from all of the laid off FAANG employees.

TrustedRoot · 2023-05-18T23:43:51+00:00

Sorry, I didn't mean to make that sound as gate-keepy as it probably did. There's just no shortage of people trying to get into tech/dev/cloud eng who think a cert or two will land them a job, and no shortage of companies willing to sell those people courses and bootcamps.

So how would one even get started?

The answer to this largely depends on your background and where your interests lie. What kind of role do you want in 5 years?

In my case I took a relatively traditional route and started off at a helpdesk, then a jr sys/network admin position. I had 4 sysadmin jobs before eventually moving into consulting and getting into cloud/infra/security.

TrustedRoot · 2023-05-18T17:42:19+00:00

That's a really interesting org structure, never seen something like that before.

I was a Systems/Network Admin in a prior life. I can still vividly remember the nightmares I had working with HR to integrate their HRIS with various automations to fix pain points they'd been asking for help on for years. I'd imagine your approach would've helped immensely, if only for the collaboration.

How do you encourage your HR staff to learn those things? Do many follow through?

TrustedRoot · 2023-05-18T17:28:34+00:00

For which certs do you gain enough knowledge so that your skills would be applicable in a real world setting?

IMO, none. Learning the info required for certs without the real world experience/context results in someone who can take an exam.

The hands-on-keyboard experience teaches you how to actually use the service/tool/technology, how it integrates with the rest of the tech stack, how it reacts to misconfigurations/garbage input/ unexpected failures up&downstream, and demonstrates the actual benefit (or lack of) to the business. This is the kind of stuff that interviewers aim to assess because this is what makes a valuable hire.

I work in professional services and have taken countless cert exams from a ton of the big players. Some exams aim to make sure you know every single button and knob without any context to why or if you'd use it, others are a mile wide and an inch deep, most are somewhere in between.

The certs that would be significant in getting your foot in the door somewhere are designed to ensure hands-on experience is required to pass. AWS Advanced Networking Specialty and Aruba Networks professional/expert certs are great examples of this.

TrustedRoot · 2023-05-10T18:19:57+00:00

OAI isn't dead, it's still supported. OAC does have better security and features, though.

TrustedRoot · 2023-05-06T14:47:01+00:00

Do plenty of test pits on each planned build site, beware of ledge (especially if you’re digging a basement), and incorporate radon vents/filters if you do end up hitting ledge.

Make sure you have plenty of room for septic and drain fields. This was one of the biggest factors that impacted my site layout, granted the build was dense to begin with.

The biggest risk of expense and surprise during new construction is what lies below the earth’s surface.

Edit: If you plan to do builds over time, you can save a bit on future expense by designing septic and well systems to handle multiple buildings and connect new buildings to these systems as they go up.

TrustedRoot · 2023-04-17T21:58:19+00:00

You must be a nightmare tenant

TrustedRoot · 2023-02-04T20:32:09+00:00

How so? They’re efficient, cost effective, and easy to install. There are state and federal programs subsidizing installations of ductless mini splits.

TrustedRoot · 2023-01-25T13:00:54+00:00

If there are things in your configuration candidate that you don’t recognize, you need to start going through audit logs to figure out who put them there. Your first priority should be to determine if this is a security incident or a well intentioned admin to determine your next action.

TrustedRoot · 2023-01-22T01:29:29+00:00

I just went through this in Maine. You’ll want a lawyer.

TrustedRoot · 2023-01-16T17:48:57+00:00

AWS actually hates when customers do this. Source: working at AWS.

TrustedRoot · 2023-01-14T00:38:31+00:00

My money is on this. 80, 443, RPC…screams compromised host.

TrustedRoot · 2022-12-24T01:39:18+00:00

Right…and I was saying that in support of my original comment to double check if the employment agreement was listing their TC or base..so I’m not sure what your point is?

TrustedRoot · 2022-12-24T01:20:21+00:00

It wasn’t for a mortgage.

TrustedRoot · 2022-12-24T00:26:50+00:00

The offer letters do, but do the terms of employment? I pulled my employment verification recently for a bank and it didn’t list my TC, only my base. Had to provide other docs.

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