1 / xxx the path to senior sysadmin adam moskowitz copyright 2011; adam moskowitz. all rights...
TRANSCRIPT
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The Path toSenior Sysadmin
Adam Moskowitz<[email protected]>
Copyright 2011; Adam Moskowitz.All rights reserved.
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BBLISA Only
• Talk geared to different (larger?) audience
• You probably have better attitudes than intended audience
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BBLISA Only
• Hopefully there will still be some good ideas and suggestions
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Purpose
Some suggestions for professional and personal growth, and to help you
advance your career
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Bad News
• This section: 1 topic
• This section: 13 slides
• Slides completed: #
• Slides remaining: #•(%age)
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Agenda
• “Hard” technical skills
• “Squishy” technical skills
• “Soft” (non-technical) skills
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Bad News
• I have some bad news …
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Bad News
• You won’t like a lot of what I’m going to say tonight
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Bad News
• You Want to Hear:•“Expert with puppet”
•“Deep internals of Xen”
•“TCP 3-way Handshake”
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Bad News
• I’ll Say All That, But …
• You could figure it out for yourself
• Only 5 – 10 minutes
• Least important part of this talk
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Bad News
• You will probably like “Squishy Skills”
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Bad News
• But you’re really going to hate “soft skills”
• Unfortunately (for you), they’re the most important
• And the hardest to learn
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Bad News
• Because becoming a senior sysadmin is only a little bit about this
• (picture of two sysadmins)
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Bad News
• And a lot about this
• (picture of my AARP card)
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Bad News
• Well, not so much age as maturity
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Bad News
• Most common manifestations of a lack of maturity:
• Bad attitude
• Lack of respect for your co-workers
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Let’s Start Over
• Let’s pretend to get off on the right foot
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Agenda
• Hard technical skills
• “Squishy” technical skills
• “Soft” (non-technical) skills
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Hard Skills
• This section: 1 topic
• This section: 8 slides
• Slides completed: #
• Slides remaining: #•(%age)
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Hard Skills• User commands (1)• Admin commands (7)• Boot process
• /etc/init.d• SMF, launchd, etc.
• Back-ups• RAID• NIS / LDAP / AD
• sh / awk / sed• Perl
• Ruby?• Some C• Bonus: Assembler
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Hard Skills
• For (1) and (7), spend an hour a day trying commands on a test machine
• Start at beginning, move on after you understand each command
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Hard Skills• Basic S/W Eng:• Version control
• RCS, svn• git? Hg? p4?
ClearCase?• Variables, params in
scripts
• SysConfig Tools • The Big Four:
• bcfg2• chef• cfengine• puppet
• Also:• lcfg, pan, quattor,
radmind
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Hard Skills• Networking• Common protocols:
• IP, TCP, UDP• Set-up, tear-down,
ARP, basic routing• “App” protocols:
• DHCP, DNS, HTTP, IMAP, LDAP, NIS, SSH, SMTP
• Routers, firewalls, load balancers, caches, (WAN) accelerators
• Protocol analyzer• wireshark, NetScout
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Hard Skills
• Double Word Score
• Having experience on two or more different platforms is a great “hard” skill to have
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Hard Skills
• Different == Linux + Solaris•Not Debian + RedHat
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Hard skills
• One last hard skill:
• Triple-bonus: the *nix kernel
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Hard skills
• “Hard skills: Done”
• Should be obvious why you need to learn this stuff
• Now on to bigger & better things
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Squishy Skills
• This section: 7 topics
• This section: 39 slides
• Slides completed: #
• Slides remaining: #•(%age)
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Agenda
• Hard technical skills
• “Squishy” technical skills
• “Soft” (non-technical) skills
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“Squishy”
• Huh?
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“Squishy”
• These are very clearly technical skills•But not based on specific
technologies (or commands or whatever)
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“Squishy”
• Some “face out”•Planning & analysis
• Others “face in”•Career growth
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(ADPE)
• This section: 6 slides
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“Squishy”
• “Out”
• Analysis
• Planning
• Design
• Evaluation
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“Squishy”
• Ability to look at “big picture” for a project
• Figure out requirements
• Make a plan based on analysis
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“Squishy”
• Evaluate results
• Includes things like roll-back, decision trees, scheduling
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“Squishy”
• “Big Picture”
• Need to be able to figure out how all the pieces fit together
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“Squishy”
• And how pieces affect each other
• Like:•System throughput/response time
•Security
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“Squishy”
• Must be able to apply this to new systems during design/planning
• And to existing projects for systemic trouble-shooting
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(process)
• This section: 3 slides
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“Squishy”
• “Rules” and systems for how things get done
• Change management, disaster plans, security breaches, releases, etc.
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“Squishy”
• Need to be able to figure out how much process is appropriate
• Manual or automatic?
• For what tasks?
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“Squishy”
• Also need to be able to evaluate existing process, recommend changes/improvements
• And that brings us to …
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(about business)
• This section: 6 slides
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“Squishy”
• Understanding (the) business
• Ahem …
• Unless your business is sysadmin consulting services …
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“Squishy”
• Sysadmin is about supporting the business!
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“Squishy”
• Everything sysadmin does must have a business reason behind it
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“Squishy”
• Meet an SLA, meet a defined risk level, conform to a regulation, build a product, enable an employee to perform his/her job, etc.
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“Squishy”
• The gear isn’t there for you to do “cool stuff” with
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“Squishy”
• “Good enough”
• Meet the requirements and no more
• Because any extra time/money is wasted
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(YAGNI)
• This section: 4 slides
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YouAin’tGonnaNeed It
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“Squishy”
• From Agile / Extreme Programming
• Or, don’t add a feature unless there’s a defined requirement
• Again, wasted time/money
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“Squishy”
• Yes, some “economy of scale” and “planning for future growth”
• But that should be part of the business plan, too
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“Squishy”
• Some people call this BDIM: “Business-Driven IT Management”
• I say there’s no other kind!
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(bottom line)
• This section: 3 slides
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“Squishy”
• You also need to think about “the bottom line”
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“Squishy”
• When asked, if you can’t provide the business case for a particular task (machine, whatever), management probably can’t provide it either
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“Squishy”
• In which case, don’t do that task•Spend that money
•Add that feature
•Etc.
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(boss, learning)
• This section: 8 slides
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“Squishy”
• Skills that “face in” …
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“Squishy”
• You are likely to know more about the technical side of IT than your manager
• This is OK!
• Learn to accept it!
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“Squishy”
• Managers manage people
• Senior sysadmins manage technology
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“Squishy”
• Managers may never have been sysadmins
• Because so many sysadmins have bad people skills and thus make lousy managers
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“Squishy”
• Again, it’s not the manager’s job to be the technology expert
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“Squishy”
• This means you can’t ask your manager for technical help
• You have to learn how to learn new things on your own
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“Squishy”
• Quickly
• With limited resources
• From incomplete or incorrect documentation
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“Squishy”
• The best way to do this is to develop a network of people you can ask for help
• (the usual suspects)
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Soft Skills
• This section: 8 topics
• This section: 58 slides
• Slides completed: #
• Slides remaining: #•(%age)
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Agenda
• Hard technical skills
• “Squishy” technical skills
• “Soft” (non-technical) skills
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Pay Attention
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Pay Attention
• I want you to please pay attention to your reaction when I’m talking about soft skills
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Pay Attention
• Most likely, the more you don’t like what I’m saying, the more you need to hear it
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Pay Attention
• Some sysadmins place high value on these bad attitudes and lack of respect
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Pay Attention
• They couldn’t be any more wrong
• And they need to hear this more than anyone else
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“Soft” Skills
• Attitude
• Attitude
• Attitude
• A few “people skills”
• Attitude
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“Soft” Skills
• This is the stuff that’s probably going to be the hardest for you to learn
• Because sysadmin is about people (and business) not technology!
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“Soft” Skills
• Yes, people and business, not technology
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“Soft” Skills
• I said this in “squishy”: Machines exist to perform business functions
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“Soft” Skills
• Sysadmin is about keeping those machines running
• And about helping people use those machines
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(helpful, friendly)
• This section: 6 slides
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“Soft” Skills
• If people don’t ask for help because sysadmins make them uncomfortable, those people won’t be effective when there are problems, then you have failed to perform your job
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“Soft” Skills
• That is, your job of helping those people
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“Soft” Skills
• This is worth repeating
• Your job is to help the business•Keep machines running
•Help people use the machines
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“Soft” Skills
• Yes, you have to stay within security policy, PCI, etc.
• But the goal is to “get to yes” and not “just say no”
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“Soft” Skills
• Part of this is giving the answer most helpful to the person asking
• In terms they will understand
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“Soft” Skills
• Being pedantic doesn’t help
• Being snide doesn’t help
• Saying “don’t do that” doesn’t help
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(respect)
• This section: 2 slides
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“Soft” Skills
• Attitude #2: Respect other people in the company
• They know less about computers than you do
• Probably a lot less
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“Soft” Skills
• It’s not their job to know a lot about computers
• If it was their job, the company wouldn’t need to hire you!
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(not stupid)
• This section: 15 slides
• Slides completed: #
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“Soft” Skills
• Attitude #3: More respect
• Your users are not stupid!
• Many of them are experts in their own fields
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“Soft” Skills
• They can’t solve computer problems
• You can’t solve nuclear physics problems
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“Soft” Skills
• This doesn’t make either of you stupid!
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“Soft” Skills
• For example …
• I use an IBM ThinkPad X-61
• My wife uses a Mac iBook
• They’re different in ways most of us don’t even realize
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“Soft” Skills
• While on vacation last year, she tried to use my X61 . . .
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“Soft” Skills
• First she asked me “how do I open it?”
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“Soft” Skills
• Thirty seconds later, “how do I turn it on?”
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“Soft” Skills
• Another 30 seconds and it was “which button clicks the mouse?”
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“Soft” Skills
• “Boy, is she dumb!”
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“Soft” Skills
• Um, no …
• She has an MS in biomedical engineering•And at least one patent
• She’s also an MD
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“Soft” Skills
• In some ways, she’s smarter than I am
• I just happen to know more about computers than she does
• How much more?
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“Soft” Skills
• She has ~7,500 hours
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“Soft” Skills
• I have ~120,000 hours!
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“Soft” Skills
• That’s ~16x
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“Soft” Skills
• Most sysadmins forget how big this experience gap is
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(Windows)
• This section: 5 slides
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“Soft” Skills
• Stop whining about Windows!
• It’s pretty much the standard in the business world
• Get over it
• Better yet, accept it
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“Soft” Skills
• Whining does nothing except annoy your boss
• And reinforce his/her belief that you have a bad attitude
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“Soft” Skills
• Even if you don’t think you’re whining, that’s probably how it sounds to your boss
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“Soft” Skills
• While you’re at it …
• Learn Windows (desktop)
• Learn common Office apps
• Learn Outlook or Lotus Notes
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“Soft” Skills
• Learn to do basic config
• Again, because it’s the standard
• And you need to “play nice” with managers, executives, etc.
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(PCI et al.)
• This section: 7 slides
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“Soft” Skills
• Stop whining about•PCI
•HIPAA
•SOX
•FERPA
•etc.
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“Soft” Skills
• These regulations often don’t make sense
• They may not increase security
• The point is neither effectiveness nor security
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“Soft” Skills
• The point is about compliance as a legal requirement
• Or about compliance as part of a legal defense if something goes wrong
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“Soft” Skills
• The meta-point is about staying in business!
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“Soft” Skills
• You don’t have to like it
• As senior sysadmin you do have to help implement it
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“Soft” Skills
• If possible, you have to improve things above and beyond the regulations
• And you have to do it all without whining
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“Soft” Skills
• Remember: Your attitude counts almost as much as your actions
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(developers)
• This section: 5 slides
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“Soft” Skills
• When the developers you work with give you bad software, rather than bash them, go work with them to help them fix the problem
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“Soft” Skills
• Go help them understand the problem
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“Soft” Skills
• Developers are not dumb
• Usually they’re just not familiar with ops requirements
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“Soft” Skills
• Or, more likely, ops stuff never made it into the design, so it’s not on the devs’ schedule
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“Soft” Skills
• In which case, work with the designers
• Because this isn’t the devs’ fault
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Summary
• Stop whining • Attitude counts as much as
technical performance
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Wrapping Up
• This section: 1 + 1 topics
• This section: 3 + 3 slides
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Answers
• For soft skills, find a mentor
• A good manager
• Probably NOT a techie
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Answers
• Might find someone through the LOPSA Mentorship program
• But someone you work with might be easier
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Answers
• Again, your “soft mentor” doesn’t have to be technical
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That’s All, Folks
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Credits
• Thanks to:•John Dalton
•Steven Ellis
•Andrew McMillan
• Shirt by KOG
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After Today …
• Copies of my speaking notes:•(on the web site)
• Questions:•<[email protected]>
• Thank you!