Posts by lennys (68)

lennys October 09, 2023

Working at HE

Working at HE is great. The atmosphere is laid-back, I have some autonomy as long as the work gets done and the customers are taken care of, we get decent benefits and the place is cat-and-dog-friendly. You might be able to get more money working elsewhere, but if you need stability and a place to grow your skill-set without a lot of BS you could do much worse. That's why I've been there 11 years. I get to do pretty much whatever I want during the down-time we have at work, so I try to spend my time learning new things and expanding my skill-set. Since I first started here I've studied Ruby, Python, shell scripting, Linux, R, routing and networking, backend stuff, a little bit of frontend stuff and a lot of smaller subjects here and there. For a guy who could barely code coming out of college, this place has been great. We don't do layoffs, we don't over-hire and/or expand too quickly, and it takes a lot to get fired from this job, you basically have to stop contributing almost entirely over a long period of time before they will let you go. Taking PTO time usually isn't a problem, as we have enough people on each shift that we can still function if one or two of us can't make it to work for some reason. Did I mention that our data centers are 24-7-365? When you take care of the Internet like we do, you can't ever close, not even for holidays or disasters.

lennys October 08, 2023

The "Mike Special" deal

The "Mike Special" was a promotion we had at my workplace. Basically, you could get a free (as in FREE!) cabinet with 20 amp power and a 1 gigabit connection to the Internet if you procured a router that was 10-gigabit-capable, registered an AS number at ARIN that came with an IPv6 /48 block, ran BGP on your router with the full table, connected your 10 gigabit link to one of the Internet exchanges we had available at the data center (thank you, FCIX!), and got your AS number setup and listed at peeringdb.com. As far As I know this special is still available to anyone who can fulfill the requirements. The total cost for the router, the AS number and a few other things was around $2000, with the router being the most expensive single item. So if you've got 2 grand you can spare and you want a cabinet of your own, hit up sales@he.net with your request and details and they can help you get set up.

lennys October 07, 2023

How it all started, sort of

So this all started back in 2021 when I first got a cabinet of my own at the data center where I work. Per the "Mike's Special" agreement, I got a cabinet with a redundant 20 amp power circuit and a fiber connection to the internet. I bought a router from Mikrotik, as they were the only affordable option that fit my needs. With a lot of help from my coworkers I got it installed and configured, and suddenly I was live on the Internet with a 10 gigabit connection! How exciting! Over time, I procured a couple of old e-wasted servers and some Cisco routers and switches. At the time I was studying for the CCNA exam, and having the actual hardware to work with was a big help. After I got my CCNA, I started re-learning Python with the intent of building a few websites of my own, hosted on my own hardware. During that process I taught myself how to use Django, worked my way through several tutorials both online and in book form, and eventually built up the website you're looking at now. I will be tinkering with this site and a few others going forward.

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