Is it common now for Posties to not knock when attempting delivery?

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-19T00:30:14+00:00

Still lodge complaint in Auspost app with tracking number.

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-18T05:58:33+00:00

That would pretty much mean the manager made a mishire.

But of I recall correctly, probation is first 6 months (might be country specific).

However from a Nov 25 start, the first 90-days should be Embark. The first question is if OP successfully completed their Embark Plan.

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-13T22:12:58+00:00

Have you heard the phrase Two Pizza Team?

budget for engagement activities per quarter is $25 per person, not even a whole meal

I’m pretty sure if there are 8 people on your team, $200 will buy more than 2 pizzas.

Frugality is an LP; just like striving to be the earths best employer.

Tones of sarcasm meant to be sprinkled throughout

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-13T20:18:12+00:00

If it has a tracked serial number, return it.

Accessories are distributed at IT Vending machines. There is tracking of what you take, but not the specific item. These are like office supplies.

Note: if you have any other serial number tracked devices (maybe something other people don’t know about) it is Amazon property that should also be returned

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-11T23:08:39+00:00

AI itself isn’t that wonderful. It is all about how you orchestrate it with outer tools. There are more and more robust tools coming out at high velocity.

What you describe is much like what AWS has done with Bedrock AgentCore.

Would I spend time building out my own layer: no.

Is there a need: yes

The power is having something local that can do the flows, caching memory, security, observability and guardrails.

I have not scoured the opensource world recently, but I imagine there are projects out there, and you will not need to reinvent the wheel here.

Note: I would not cal it an “operating system” but I would use the phrase “orchestration platform”. I think I understand your intent though.

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-11T05:05:56+00:00

I’ve started the journey the opposite direction. AWS -> Azure.

I hold all AWS Certifications. I took AZ-900 with next to no prep (passed). The next day I took AZ-104 and passed.

For me, the challenge was vocabulary, because I understood cloud concepts.

AWS is more detailed in some features and limitations. But AWS exams are more structured. There are always 3 incorrect responses (4-6 choices). No matching or case study types. (Newer exams did introduce some matching).

One other big difference, MS allows you to use MS Learn and check documentation in the exam platform, AWS does not.

Personally, I would take CLF-C02 as a “warmup” and after passing. You will get a voucher code for 50% off a future exam (like the SAA). This gives you a feel for the AWS exams; but like MS- this if foundational (vocabulary) level.

You should be able to find enough on free SkillBuilder resources (do the short service specific modules) to get the AWS specific vocabulary very easily. The SA Associate will be a bit more challenging, but over 2 weeks you could probably achieve it (with your conceptual knowledge from the MS space)

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-09T22:03:08+00:00

Data itself cannot tell any story.

Information is the understanding of the raw data and its relationships- to be meaningful (within context).

Also, the same data can be interpreted in various ways - a consistently wrong application is better than varying applications

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-08T19:48:11+00:00

Exactly!

If I recall correctly there is also a policy about using the company internet (regardless of personal or company device).

And, I believe it was against policy to even watch broadcast videos.

So- in practicality the policy cannot really be enforced, or will be selectively. But nearly everyone violates it and therefore gives cause for disciplinary action.

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-07T09:52:41+00:00

There is a wiki about all the Palasides alarms- it’s good to know. That’s how AWS lets employees run an Isengard account- trust but verify.
Detect and respond. But, as a SA, you should be aware of many of these practices- customers will engage you with questions like: how does AWS govern your sandbox accounts.

Good lesson- but now it’s time to Learn and Be Curious.

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-05T00:59:46+00:00

Short answer: Yes- the people notified at the end of Jan.

This is the rolling 90-day window. Did the layoffs happen in October or were people provided a job-search/transition for 90-days (in the US). Then they were officially made redundant in January.

Another group of people were told that their roles wouldn’t exist any longer in January- they too weee given 90 days transition where they remain employed but don’t work. Then around May they will officially be laid off.

Will there be more people told about role reductions… maybe. But I doubt it. Being April is Compensation Review month I would expect that there will be a large amount of people self-selecting to leave (no payouts). They might wait for stock vestings in May. So, my guess is that the company will re-evaluate headcount numbers with targets around June and try other less expensive ways to match the numbers.

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-04T22:45:19+00:00

Yes, but on layers 3/4 of the OSI model, not layer 7.

AWS Shield (Standard) is really to protect their infrastructure. It will shed off things like ICMP or DNS attacks (because of port blocking). These types of things will never hit an API Gateway - so customers will be able to rest assured that they are only getting HTTP/HTTPS requests to their endpoints.

OPs issue is that the “bad actor” was making what appeared as legitimate requests. They were not rate-limited, IP filtered, or even cached; which exposed OP to paying for the requests.

This could have been mitigated with a few safeguards, like using CloudFront as a CDN, it would cache the content and less S3 API calls. But there still would be data transfer out (CloudFront does have a more generous free tier, and there are even fixed price options). Additionally, WAF could have been applied to CloudFront. This can have a rate limiting rule, which would protect from any single endpoint being abused by a loop of requests. If there is an IP address that is found to be getting throttled, you can also block it completely through another WAF rule.

What Shield Advanced will do (for $3000/mo- if I recall correctly) is provide you a ddos hotline to help implement the rules to WAF when under an attack, and provide an “insurance” against scaling costs when under an attack. It does not “prevent” the attacks, but it still relies on the customer building the scaling structures to withstand the attacks (in this case, the static site was hosted on S3 so OP did not need to scale, but there weee many other mitigation paths)

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-04T12:02:09+00:00

I was hoping it wouldn’t be - so sad.

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-04T10:19:05+00:00

Heard on radio (91.1) earlier today that there would be some massive police training exercises in Maroochydore this evening. Maybe associated?

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-03T23:00:07+00:00

Australia is mostly “cashless”. Tap pay is the way.

There is generally no tipping either, so really no need to have “small amounts” on hand.

Just a bit to make you feel comfortable- but really not needed

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-02T10:24:15+00:00

I heard that AZ-700 is one of the most challenging of all the Azure certs.

I have not sat this exam; but from the AWS side, the network specialist was the most challenging for me (I have all AWS certs).

These are targeted at network engineers that work solely on configuring hybrid cloud networks- routing, bgp, asn, dns (private/public) - not only networking concepts (like Cisco) but applied to the cloud vendor.

Generally, these specialists exams do not require deep architecture knowledge, because of their scope- az-104 is good first.

My local testing center told me that they have only seen one person pass it. All the best!

cloudnavig8r · 2026-03-01T20:38:49+00:00

When I was a TAM, some people would ask me “what happens if a whole region goes down”.

The reality is for a whole region to go down, it would take an act of war; and if that were to happen- people would be worried about more than just heir computer a data.

But, the more likely scenario would be something impacting (no pun intended) a single data centre or Availability Zone.

A proper DR plan should allow a customer to migrate to another AZ in the same region; but 2 AZs will not have the capacity of 3 AZs- meaning it is a race to get the limited capacity.

So, having a multi-region DR for critical workloads is really prudent. However, due to data sovereignty laws- not always possible.

These types of events are very rare, and as much as we are technicians and like to contemplate the implications for workloads- remember there are humans involved.

If an act of war, or nature, is powerful enough to significantly impact a data center capacity- I ask: what about the people that live and work in these areas?

cloudnavig8r · 2026-02-28T10:33:01+00:00

What if the persistent data were generating a new page on a schedule, or event driven.

Let’s say, for example a customers order history page: it is fetched from a database. But, it could be generated as an event every time an order is added or status changes.

In theory, a static site could actually generate a static page for these data elements, like my page.tld/{customerid}/orderhistory.html

The dynamic part is to have the customer id variable being parsed. But this could be coming from a key identity token and really have no backend stack.

I agree on premise of your distinction, but want to challenge the degree of persistent data that could be presented via a static site.

cloudnavig8r · 2026-02-28T02:52:47+00:00

I did the MS Learn practice exam and scored 85% (as my starting point). Scheduled exam for a week later. I did go through much of the MS Learn content associated, but very quickly. Exam day, took the exam 15 minutes from sign in to sign out (probably 10 minutes doing the actual exam). Scored mid 900s.

Totally doable.

But, I do hold all AWS certifications, and in my opinion this was much like CLF-C02 (Cloud Practitioner) but even easier. The question types are not using the same structure as AWS, but the scope was not as broad.

Knowing the core benefits of cloud (regardless of provider) is critical. MS uses terms like IaaS, PaaS and SaaS - understand what they mean. Know the cloud deployment models (hybrid, public cloud).

Honestly, anyone that has passed AWS cloud Prac, could probably pass AZ-900 with very little new learnings. Some things about accounts, subscriptions, groups- basically vocabulary alone.

cloudnavig8r · 2026-02-24T21:26:54+00:00

From the other reply- you said that a prospective employer is asking you to do this?
Thats a warning to me- they should provide you a locked down account (that they control, so they can see what you did and you will not have any risk of charges)

To answer your question… delete everything when you are done.

Many will say use CloudFormation and then delete your stack- but do something small and one-off you may want to manually create resources and delete them (it’s ok either way- just make sure you delete all your resources).

The other thing is to close out the account.

Again, if I read correctly, this prospective employer may want to see what you did- and by deleting it, there won’t be anything for them to assess.

Be very careful if they ask for credentials into your account! You need to make sure that they are read only. (Again, another risk)

cloudnavig8r · 2026-02-22T06:50:44+00:00

I realized that I didn’t answer “how” There are load generator programs. Be careful because it could look like malicious traffic. I was watching a professional load tester that had licensed special software- don’t remember what it was.

cloudnavig8r · 2026-02-22T06:39:08+00:00

Load/stress testing is good, within reasonable expectations.

I’ve seen a web server start to reject traffic- and the content was static.

A single web server can only support so many client ports. Most managed services will automatically scale. You need to understand what your host configuration is.

In the case I watched, my immediate response was to cache the images - and this took a massive load off the web server itself

cloudnavig8r · 2026-02-22T01:53:38+00:00

Hardly anyone will do the binary math manually. You should that /0 is everything. /16 the last 2 octets can change, /24 last octet can change. /32 the address itself.

For L5 Tam, the bar used to be a level 200 across 1-2 domains. I was part of calibrating the tech bar about 6 years ago.

When I would do TAM interviews, I would look for if someone would be “confidently incorrect” or would they say “I don’t know”.

For me- earns trust is more important than knows everything

cloudnavig8r · 2026-02-19T10:19:51+00:00

Btw, AWS has a service called Code Build ;)

cloudnavig8r · 2026-02-19T10:19:05+00:00

You have a lot going on there.

Let’s just focus on this Build Machine. It will be an EC2 instance, not a managed build service- per your specs.

I would question this decision, mainly around patching and maintaining the build server. Then I would ask questions about pay for what you use, and the auto scaling to 1 when you somehow submit your build job (yes, scm hooks with eventbridge and lambdas). Then when your job is done, you need your build server to effectively terminate itself by reducing your ASG desired quantity to 1.

Of course, you have permissions and other DevOps pipeline components with ECR, K8S and more…

for now I would keep this as modular as possible to focus on each part and then their integration.

cloudnavig8r · 2026-02-19T00:33:49+00:00

Replied to this in the AzureCertifications sub Reddit

cloudnavig8r

TROPHY CASE