I don’t know who turned me on to it, but when I was in high school, I learned about kalos kagathos. It was a philosophy about being a complete person. It isn’t enough to just be physically fit or to just be smart. It wants development of the whole person: mind, body, and character, all working together. As they say, a warrior who can’t reason is just a brute. A philosopher who can’t act is just a dreamer. I always loved the idea, and I have always failed miserably! Until recently…
I run a homelab out of my office. It’s a modest one: an old mini-pc, a couple of raspberries, an old storage node, and a soon-to-be NAS. As I was learning about persistent volumes and PVCs, I was kinda thankful for all the Computer Science classes I didn’t want to take. Architecture? Boring. Networking? What? Security? More math!
Funny thing is when I took those courses, I learned I enjoyed hardware. With Networking, I saw how it all connected. (yeah, I went there.) Let’s not forget about Security. I have all of this on a public repo. I once had to solve by hand two rounds of stream ciphering. Not to mention learning about rejection rules and authorizing specific devices.
I want to be a complete engineer. It’s not enough to just know code. I like understanding what the code runs on. For me, playing with Kubernetes hasn’t just been about orchestration, it’s allowed me to look at my lab as networking topology, resource concentration, security matters, and failure plans. It’s the realization that all those “useless fundamental” courses have been fundamental all along. I’m here for it.
I’m also here for my dumbbells. When I said earlier that I fail miserably, it’s usually on the physical fit part. I got a plan to address that too.
