1 00:00:00,133 --> 00:00:02,352 I think honestly I love hiking. 2 00:00:02,413 --> 00:00:04,173 Um, I've been section hiking the Appalachian 3 00:00:04,233 --> 00:00:06,093 Trail and Corey joined me on this current leg. 4 00:00:06,533 --> 00:00:09,732 And I think what I love most about it is the community 5 00:00:15,601 --> 00:00:17,061 Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. 6 00:00:17,561 --> 00:00:22,801 I'm Corey Quinn, and today's guest has had just about enough of me. 7 00:00:23,281 --> 00:00:25,161 Caleb Hurd is many things. 8 00:00:25,401 --> 00:00:29,801 He's periodically a cloud economist here at Duckbill, but he was also 9 00:00:29,842 --> 00:00:33,801 my hiking buddy for a 60-mile section hike of the Appalachian Trail. 10 00:00:33,961 --> 00:00:36,182 Caleb, thank you for continuing to speak with me. 11 00:00:37,342 --> 00:00:38,221 You're welcome, Corey. 12 00:00:38,641 --> 00:00:39,021 You're welcome. 13 00:00:39,081 --> 00:00:42,821 It's a pleasure to be here, and, uh, I would say six days on the trail 14 00:00:42,861 --> 00:00:46,581 with you is very much like s- Screaming in the Cloud and Last Week 15 00:00:46,601 --> 00:00:50,401 in AWS, in that you don't really know why you do it, but then at the 16 00:00:50,461 --> 00:00:53,641 end of it you feel like you should have done it and you appreciate it 17 00:00:54,718 --> 00:00:58,378 This episode is sponsored in part by my day job, Duckbill. 18 00:00:58,437 --> 00:01:01,358 Do you have a horrifying AWS bill? 19 00:01:01,418 --> 00:01:03,388 That can mean a lot of things. 20 00:01:03,418 --> 00:01:08,438 Predicting what it's going to be, determining what it should be, negotiating 21 00:01:08,478 --> 00:01:13,878 your next long-term contract with AWS, or just figuring out why it increasingly 22 00:01:13,918 --> 00:01:18,308 resembles a phone number, but nobody seems to quite know why that is. 23 00:01:18,738 --> 00:01:22,578 To learn more, visit duckbillhq.com. 24 00:01:22,678 --> 00:01:26,598 Remember, you can't duck the Duckbill bill, which my 25 00:01:26,658 --> 00:01:30,878 CEO reliably informs me is absolutely not our slogan. 26 00:01:31,518 --> 00:01:31,717 Thank you. 27 00:01:31,758 --> 00:01:33,997 I, I still remember a few of the things you said along the way. 28 00:01:34,178 --> 00:01:37,318 Uh, for example, y- you confessed that you thought that a lot of 29 00:01:37,338 --> 00:01:40,437 my jokes on Twitter were AI-driven until you started talking to 30 00:01:40,458 --> 00:01:43,838 me and realized, no, I talk exactly like my Twitter account does. 31 00:01:44,418 --> 00:01:45,158 Yeah, pretty much. 32 00:01:45,198 --> 00:01:47,777 Sarcasm remains my first language spoken at home. 33 00:01:48,298 --> 00:01:50,018 Yeah, we wound up doing, uh, what was it? 34 00:01:50,178 --> 00:01:54,038 10 miles a day on average for six days, uh, at the end of which everything hurt. 35 00:01:54,818 --> 00:01:55,558 It was fun. 36 00:01:55,678 --> 00:01:58,918 Uh, carrying, carrying obsessively about how much everything 37 00:01:58,958 --> 00:02:02,978 we carried weighed was certainly a new experience. 38 00:02:03,157 --> 00:02:05,277 And, and then talking to folks who were doing three, 39 00:02:05,377 --> 00:02:08,437 four times our mileage, good for them, good for them. 40 00:02:08,638 --> 00:02:10,678 I, I, I choose happiness in life. 41 00:02:11,398 --> 00:02:14,578 Yeah, I don't think managing ounces that you carry in your pack is a new 42 00:02:14,618 --> 00:02:20,138 experience for you at all because that's exactly what you do tuning AWS bills. 43 00:02:21,097 --> 00:02:25,938 Um, I feel like managing weight is like you load everything in you need, and 44 00:02:25,978 --> 00:02:29,218 then halfway through the trip you start throwing it off the trail, not that we 45 00:02:29,238 --> 00:02:32,958 would ever litter, and you end up at the end of it with what you exactly needed. 46 00:02:33,878 --> 00:02:34,758 Oh, it was… It's great too. 47 00:02:34,818 --> 00:02:37,958 My back is super strong from carrying AWS marketing all these years. 48 00:02:38,138 --> 00:02:41,738 So I don't know why I was so focused on being ultra-lightweight. 49 00:02:41,998 --> 00:02:45,418 Y- you had a knack, though, for finding very expensive things along the trail. 50 00:02:45,597 --> 00:02:47,638 Just people had littered, and you, well, you picked 51 00:02:47,658 --> 00:02:49,878 them up, and one, for, to be a, a good citizen. 52 00:02:49,898 --> 00:02:53,078 Like, you found a headlamp that was not inexpensive and also 53 00:02:53,138 --> 00:02:55,798 a pound and a half just because someone hated themselves. 54 00:02:56,198 --> 00:02:58,078 I can see why they wanted to leave that behind. 55 00:02:58,198 --> 00:02:59,278 Please don't litter in the woods. 56 00:02:59,938 --> 00:03:03,378 But yeah, you, you had a knack for being very lucky around things like that. 57 00:03:03,938 --> 00:03:04,238 Yeah. 58 00:03:04,318 --> 00:03:04,738 It's true. 59 00:03:04,778 --> 00:03:05,038 It's true. 60 00:03:05,138 --> 00:03:11,198 And for the listeners, uh, for the podcast, day one, I was convinced 61 00:03:11,218 --> 00:03:16,178 that Corey had memorized all of his jokes and AI-generated content. 62 00:03:16,958 --> 00:03:19,158 Uh, day two, I started to suspect it might 63 00:03:19,238 --> 00:03:20,818 actually be coming out of him naturally. 64 00:03:21,278 --> 00:03:24,098 Day three through six, I realized this is actually just 65 00:03:24,138 --> 00:03:27,298 how Corey talks, and in fact, AI is the one catching 66 00:03:27,378 --> 00:03:29,538 up, and he probably doesn't generate any of his content 67 00:03:30,481 --> 00:03:30,942 Not really. 68 00:03:30,981 --> 00:03:33,581 Sometimes I'll workshop titles, and that's, that's about enough. 69 00:03:33,721 --> 00:03:35,342 Honestly, in this case, I don't even need to. 70 00:03:35,401 --> 00:03:36,401 The title writes itself. 71 00:03:36,621 --> 00:03:37,741 Appalachian Cloud Trail. 72 00:03:38,481 --> 00:03:39,222 It's beautiful. 73 00:03:39,741 --> 00:03:41,101 A wonderful podcast title. 74 00:03:41,682 --> 00:03:42,762 I mean, the best part of it was we didn't have 75 00:03:42,781 --> 00:03:45,781 to think about clouds for the entire trip. 76 00:03:45,842 --> 00:03:50,882 The internet can't find us there, and y- you learn a lot about yourself 77 00:03:50,941 --> 00:03:54,982 when you're, you know, huddled in a tent in a rainstorm, or in your case, 78 00:03:55,081 --> 00:03:58,261 trying fruitlessly to convince me to switch to a hammock all the time, 79 00:03:58,701 --> 00:04:02,341 or, you know, when my sleeping pad exploded under me at 10:30 at night. 80 00:04:02,801 --> 00:04:06,101 Uh, then as I'm lying there in the cold, dark rocks, I get 81 00:04:06,141 --> 00:04:09,281 to hear the American singing retrievers 100 yards away. 82 00:04:09,321 --> 00:04:11,742 Uh, the only difference between them and coyotes is my 83 00:04:11,801 --> 00:04:13,841 unwillingness to admit when I've made a terrible mistake. 84 00:04:14,242 --> 00:04:16,902 And it, it was just a, a series of fun things that at the 85 00:04:16,961 --> 00:04:19,441 time didn't seem like fun, but now I'm nostalgic about 86 00:04:19,461 --> 00:04:22,641 them because anything's better than dealing with AWS bills. 87 00:04:23,421 --> 00:04:26,201 I don't disagree, and what, what really the highlight of the 88 00:04:26,281 --> 00:04:28,781 trip, and you probably should take a step back, and we should, 89 00:04:28,821 --> 00:04:31,062 we should walk them through it in chronological order, but, 90 00:04:31,141 --> 00:04:35,701 uh, was being saved by Shepherd, our, uh, our shuttle driver. 91 00:04:36,301 --> 00:04:36,782 Yeah. 92 00:04:37,181 --> 00:04:38,581 Why don't you begin that story? 93 00:04:38,621 --> 00:04:40,321 'Cause otherwise it looks like I'm dunking on 94 00:04:40,361 --> 00:04:42,901 you, and it's more fun if you dunk on yourself. 95 00:04:42,981 --> 00:04:44,221 Please, take it away. 96 00:04:44,721 --> 00:04:45,661 We'll get to the cloud stuff. 97 00:04:45,701 --> 00:04:46,101 Don't worry. 98 00:04:46,141 --> 00:04:48,201 But I want… I… This is the story worth telling. 99 00:04:49,081 --> 00:04:49,981 It's, it's phenomenal. 100 00:04:50,121 --> 00:04:52,221 It's, there's the three part, and so I'll try to go through 101 00:04:52,242 --> 00:04:55,121 it rapidly, and you, uh, jump in when I miss a detail. 102 00:04:55,201 --> 00:04:59,681 But we started off parking my vehicle at the bottom, and then we 103 00:04:59,701 --> 00:05:02,501 had a shuttle driver drive us to the top, and his name was Tom. 104 00:05:02,541 --> 00:05:03,241 The bottom, top. 105 00:05:03,282 --> 00:05:06,621 There was a lot of uphill in, in a lot of our hiking. 106 00:05:06,641 --> 00:05:08,661 It was… There… We, we had what? 107 00:05:08,701 --> 00:05:10,141 Something like a mile in elevation? 108 00:05:10,950 --> 00:05:12,390 Oh, it was, it was something crazy. 109 00:05:12,450 --> 00:05:13,090 I don't even remember. 110 00:05:13,169 --> 00:05:15,609 It was, it was, it was significant, and every day was hard. 111 00:05:15,650 --> 00:05:17,710 It… There m- we might've had one flat day out of the six. 112 00:05:17,810 --> 00:05:19,070 Like, it was pretty wild. 113 00:05:19,130 --> 00:05:21,590 Or one flat night when my sleeping pad exploded, but we'll get there. 114 00:05:21,789 --> 00:05:22,409 Please continue. 115 00:05:22,440 --> 00:05:23,609 We definitely had a flat night. 116 00:05:24,289 --> 00:05:28,030 So, uh, a couple days in, I don't know, night two, 117 00:05:28,229 --> 00:05:31,110 I can't remember which exact night, I slept great. 118 00:05:31,229 --> 00:05:33,840 I heard nothing other than the, the coyotes, 119 00:05:33,909 --> 00:05:36,270 which apparently are, uh, not coyotes. 120 00:05:36,830 --> 00:05:38,370 But apparently in the middle of the night, Corey's 121 00:05:38,390 --> 00:05:40,990 sleeping pad blew up, and early in the night, too. 122 00:05:41,010 --> 00:05:42,900 It was, like, 11:00 PM or something like that. 123 00:05:43,289 --> 00:05:44,310 Eight-inch blowout. 124 00:05:44,330 --> 00:05:46,539 We're not talking a slow leak that you get to find. 125 00:05:46,549 --> 00:05:49,159 We're talking all the air left in about a second and a half. 126 00:05:49,229 --> 00:05:50,549 Uh, in fact, the next morning you asked 127 00:05:50,590 --> 00:05:52,110 if I had gone to sleep with ice skates on. 128 00:05:53,610 --> 00:05:54,409 That's right. 129 00:05:55,710 --> 00:05:56,469 It was pretty wild. 130 00:05:56,530 --> 00:05:58,830 It was an unrepairable, uh, thing. 131 00:05:58,909 --> 00:06:00,909 So of course Corey, uh, he had a great night. 132 00:06:00,990 --> 00:06:03,770 He managed to turn his backpack into a, a sleeping bag. 133 00:06:04,169 --> 00:06:06,890 Oh, I s- I left a review on the Durston subreddit. 134 00:06:06,990 --> 00:06:11,229 Uh, it was the Kwaka, uh, 55, and I said this is a solid 8 135 00:06:11,270 --> 00:06:14,710 out of 10 as a backpack, uh, 2 out of 10 as a sleeping pad. 136 00:06:15,568 --> 00:06:16,870 That's exactly right. 137 00:06:16,950 --> 00:06:19,360 So we were trying to figure out the next day how to not 138 00:06:19,390 --> 00:06:21,440 have Corey sleeping on the ground, and I was like, "You 139 00:06:21,469 --> 00:06:23,760 know what? I should text Tom, our shuttle driver," 'cause- 140 00:06:23,770 --> 00:06:24,820 And oh, I wanna be clear. 141 00:06:24,849 --> 00:06:27,700 Before, before this point, you were extraordinarily kind. 142 00:06:27,750 --> 00:06:29,070 You're like, "Well, you should've woken me up." 143 00:06:29,169 --> 00:06:29,710 Like, why? 144 00:06:29,789 --> 00:06:31,530 Like, like my… One of our… Like, we both have young kids. 145 00:06:31,610 --> 00:06:33,089 Part of the reason we wanted to go get lost in the woods. 146 00:06:33,390 --> 00:06:35,610 It's like I… Like, they're, like, standing by the side of your hammock. 147 00:06:35,799 --> 00:06:40,870 "My blanket fell on the floor. I had a bad dream. I want some water." Like, no. 148 00:06:40,969 --> 00:06:42,429 I… There's nothing you can do. 149 00:06:42,490 --> 00:06:43,030 I'm just gonna… 150 00:06:43,090 --> 00:06:45,000 Like, I'm already not getting a great night's sleep. 151 00:06:45,390 --> 00:06:46,570 Why do I make it both of us? 152 00:06:46,710 --> 00:06:47,549 Because I'm not a jerk. 153 00:06:48,490 --> 00:06:49,150 That's true. 154 00:06:49,289 --> 00:06:52,669 He did let me sleep, but, um, that's, that's accurate. 155 00:06:52,950 --> 00:06:56,610 So the next day, me with my full night's rest in a beautiful 156 00:06:56,669 --> 00:06:59,570 hammock, by the way, which you should switch to sometime, Corey. 157 00:06:59,630 --> 00:07:00,700 We woke up and… 158 00:07:00,750 --> 00:07:01,960 Well, he- Corey didn't wake up. 159 00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:02,669 He was already awake. 160 00:07:02,710 --> 00:07:05,450 We texted Tom, and basically we're like, "Hey, could you shuttle 161 00:07:05,510 --> 00:07:10,522 us into this town nearby, Hot Springs?" And we can buy a sleeping 162 00:07:10,842 --> 00:07:13,022 pad at, you know, wherever- 'Cause we were shooting two nights 163 00:07:13,162 --> 00:07:15,002 out, and I wasn't gonna do that to my back 164 00:07:15,342 --> 00:07:15,542 … right. 165 00:07:15,762 --> 00:07:15,902 No. 166 00:07:16,102 --> 00:07:17,482 That's, that's not, that's not how… 167 00:07:18,262 --> 00:07:20,102 Nobody wants to do that for multiple nights in a row. 168 00:07:20,862 --> 00:07:24,822 And, uh, Tom is like, "Hey, um, why don't I just run you one out?" 169 00:07:24,962 --> 00:07:28,522 And so next thing you know, we hike to a road, and our shuttle driver 170 00:07:28,582 --> 00:07:32,242 runs us a sleeping pad out that Corey, uh, uses the rest of the trip. 171 00:07:32,382 --> 00:07:33,102 It was phenomenal. 172 00:07:33,642 --> 00:07:37,022 So that was, tha- those are the first two parts of the story that involved Tom. 173 00:07:37,122 --> 00:07:41,122 I liked it because it d- it wasn't as lightweight, but it also didn't explode. 174 00:07:41,262 --> 00:07:42,562 Uh, w- we'll get there. 175 00:07:43,062 --> 00:07:45,742 There is an advantage to a sleeping pad that functions. 176 00:07:46,122 --> 00:07:49,882 And then after we rolled into Hot Springs, slightly before we 177 00:07:49,902 --> 00:07:53,482 rolled into Hot Springs, I realized that I had left my phone at the 178 00:07:53,562 --> 00:07:58,002 campsite where we had just walked out of, and there was no way that 179 00:07:58,042 --> 00:08:02,002 I was gonna hike, you know, multiple miles back to go retrieve it. 180 00:08:02,182 --> 00:08:04,642 I started doing the math in my head of, like, "How much do phones 181 00:08:04,682 --> 00:08:07,561 cost these days?" So we ended up at a hostel to do laundry. 182 00:08:07,561 --> 00:08:08,022 It's a VM 183 00:08:08,122 --> 00:08:08,442 iron. 184 00:08:08,542 --> 00:08:11,302 What's, that doesn't sound like a bad thing to litter in the woods. 185 00:08:11,702 --> 00:08:14,032 And maybe we're uplifting the technological 186 00:08:14,122 --> 00:08:16,222 development of the local squirrel population. 187 00:08:16,342 --> 00:08:16,662 Why not? 188 00:08:16,942 --> 00:08:17,382 That's right. 189 00:08:17,622 --> 00:08:18,062 That's right. 190 00:08:18,182 --> 00:08:22,322 No, I was leaving a relic to be discovered by future generations up there. 191 00:08:22,362 --> 00:08:26,182 But anyway, so we mention it to Tom, who was at the hostel. 192 00:08:26,302 --> 00:08:29,342 He happened to be one of the people running the hostel, and, uh, his 193 00:08:29,362 --> 00:08:32,642 trail name is Shepherd, which we quickly discovered why it was Shepherd. 194 00:08:33,422 --> 00:08:34,592 Uh, and he's like, "You know what? 195 00:08:34,702 --> 00:08:35,962 Let me just trail run back. 196 00:08:36,022 --> 00:08:39,542 I can just trail run back and get your phone for you." And next thing you 197 00:08:39,602 --> 00:08:45,422 know, this guy, who's an absolute legend, trail runs back to, uh, where 198 00:08:45,482 --> 00:08:51,182 we camped at, retrieves my phone, and runs back before the sun even sets. 199 00:08:51,242 --> 00:08:51,922 It was wild. 200 00:08:52,242 --> 00:08:55,812 It's super easy to picture this guy because picture a guy that can 201 00:08:55,882 --> 00:08:59,622 just run up the side of a mountain like that to find a phone with 202 00:08:59,822 --> 00:09:03,402 weak-ass directions for where this is, find it, and come back. 203 00:09:03,822 --> 00:09:05,282 That's exactly what he looks like. 204 00:09:05,722 --> 00:09:06,642 Um, but it was great. 205 00:09:06,722 --> 00:09:08,952 He's like, "So how will I know what's your campsite?" "Well, 206 00:09:08,952 --> 00:09:10,842 there's a tree that looks like it's about to give out at 207 00:09:10,862 --> 00:09:13,982 any moment and obliterate the fire pit," which, okay, great. 208 00:09:14,022 --> 00:09:15,842 He knows nothing about us, whether we know what we're talking 209 00:09:15,882 --> 00:09:18,002 about in the woods, and he's, he's walking around the area. 210 00:09:18,032 --> 00:09:20,651 And then he sees that giant tree about to obliterate a fire. 211 00:09:20,742 --> 00:09:23,002 He's like, "Yep, this is definitely the site. Holy 212 00:09:23,122 --> 00:09:25,662 crap." Yeah, like, we, you started setting up. 213 00:09:25,762 --> 00:09:28,802 You saw it from the other side, and you said, "Yeah, well, let's 214 00:09:28,822 --> 00:09:32,542 move about 20 feet that way. Uh, choose life. Fine." A- and he 215 00:09:32,602 --> 00:09:35,742 just did th- he, he was, he pulled a rabbit out of a hat for us. 216 00:09:35,782 --> 00:09:38,969 It was the, it was the weirdest thing And you could, like for us 217 00:09:39,009 --> 00:09:41,809 it's this legendary story, and for him it was any given Tuesday. 218 00:09:42,630 --> 00:09:42,769 Yeah. 219 00:09:43,209 --> 00:09:45,469 I think honestly I love hiking. 220 00:09:45,589 --> 00:09:47,289 Um, I've been section hiking the Appalachian 221 00:09:47,369 --> 00:09:49,229 Trail, and Corey joined me on this current leg. 222 00:09:49,669 --> 00:09:52,849 And I think what I love most about it is the community. 223 00:09:53,029 --> 00:09:55,749 Like, just people are willing to just jump in and help. 224 00:09:56,249 --> 00:09:58,489 If you need something out on the trail, you can't just 225 00:09:58,549 --> 00:10:01,309 go to a city, you know, to a town casually and grab it. 226 00:10:01,669 --> 00:10:06,169 People, you know, I… For example, um, there was a guy passing us whose water 227 00:10:06,229 --> 00:10:09,809 filter gave out, and so Corey and I, Corey and I both have water filters. 228 00:10:09,849 --> 00:10:10,949 His is better than mine. 229 00:10:11,409 --> 00:10:12,129 I won't admit that. 230 00:10:12,210 --> 00:10:12,949 Don't tell Corey that. 231 00:10:12,969 --> 00:10:13,710 It'll get to his head. 232 00:10:13,949 --> 00:10:16,209 And so it was like, "You know what? I can use that water filter. 233 00:10:16,269 --> 00:10:18,210 I'll give you my water filter." But, and it's not just me. 234 00:10:18,249 --> 00:10:21,429 Like, the whole trail has that communal feeling to it, 235 00:10:21,809 --> 00:10:24,370 which makes the whole experience even that much better. 236 00:10:24,890 --> 00:10:28,069 Yeah, we ran to an old guy with a dog who was, uh, three miles from water. 237 00:10:28,109 --> 00:10:30,329 We gave him the last of ours, 'cause we're, we're young enough 238 00:10:30,370 --> 00:10:33,649 that we could, we could still deal with getting there, getting 239 00:10:33,690 --> 00:10:35,829 a little dehydrated, and then just drinking three gallons of it. 240 00:10:35,909 --> 00:10:38,329 Um, we want… Yeah, it's, it's the thing you do. 241 00:10:38,429 --> 00:10:39,309 Like, who needs it more? 242 00:10:40,574 --> 00:10:41,094 Exactly. 243 00:10:41,134 --> 00:10:41,534 Exactly. 244 00:10:42,014 --> 00:10:46,474 I have a similar feeling doing, uh, cloud economy work in that there's so 245 00:10:46,514 --> 00:10:49,514 few people in this space, especially ones that have heavy duty engineering 246 00:10:49,574 --> 00:10:53,314 backgrounds, and it's a similar community where everybody just jumps in. 247 00:10:53,354 --> 00:10:55,444 Like, there's a lot, uh, there's a lot of sharing of knowledge, 248 00:10:55,474 --> 00:10:57,894 there's a lot of opinions, there's a lot of esoteric information 249 00:10:57,934 --> 00:11:01,594 that's out there, and every time I come across somebody in my space 250 00:11:01,634 --> 00:11:04,494 that works in this field, they just freely give that knowledge. 251 00:11:04,534 --> 00:11:06,934 It's one of the things I enjoy about working in this space. 252 00:11:07,274 --> 00:11:07,413 Yeah. 253 00:11:07,714 --> 00:11:11,154 Uh, uh, one thing that I found, the, the reason I like doing stuff like this 254 00:11:11,214 --> 00:11:14,934 is it's been a month since we got back, and I'm sti- it's weird how quickly you 255 00:11:14,974 --> 00:11:19,093 get accustomed to it, but y- but I'm also making it a point to notice it now. 256 00:11:19,134 --> 00:11:21,634 I dunno if you're listening to this, uh, you're just hearing my 257 00:11:21,674 --> 00:11:24,654 voi- my dulcet tones in a mic, but if you're watching this on the 258 00:11:24,734 --> 00:11:28,854 YouTubes, uh, this is my first recording from our new Duckbill office 259 00:11:29,094 --> 00:11:33,094 in downtown, and I'm sitting in a comfy chair at a desk with a sparkle 260 00:11:33,214 --> 00:11:38,134 water in my hand, and everything is comfortable, everything is clean. 261 00:11:38,254 --> 00:11:41,054 Uh, I don't have to dig a hole if I wanna poop. 262 00:11:41,094 --> 00:11:45,334 I mean, I can, but that's generally frowned upon in the office environment. 263 00:11:45,754 --> 00:11:49,474 Uh, uh, yeah, it… And I don't have to care how much something weighs. 264 00:11:49,514 --> 00:11:52,374 It's if I'm gonna… Am I gonna take this home tonight or not? 265 00:11:52,894 --> 00:11:55,454 Well, weight isn't really a factor on that. 266 00:11:56,394 --> 00:11:59,314 So it, it's just, it's a different way of living on some point. 267 00:11:59,554 --> 00:12:01,814 At some point it's, it makes you more thankful for what you've got. 268 00:12:01,854 --> 00:12:06,374 Like, I, I still wander the grocery store in awe compared to how p- 269 00:12:06,384 --> 00:12:08,554 how much of a pain in the neck it is to feed yourself in the woods. 270 00:12:09,254 --> 00:12:11,214 Yeah, no, I think that's a great… Like, perspective's 271 00:12:11,274 --> 00:12:15,074 everything, and there sh- it's so easy to go through life fast. 272 00:12:15,154 --> 00:12:18,294 I think the, the best way I can describe coming off the trail, and it 273 00:12:18,334 --> 00:12:22,054 being a month in, this is probably, this feeling's already passed for me. 274 00:12:22,134 --> 00:12:25,264 Um, but the first probably solid week, uh, when I 275 00:12:25,294 --> 00:12:28,094 come back from a long hike, everything feels fast. 276 00:12:28,314 --> 00:12:31,514 Meetings feel fast, conversations feel fast, cars feel fast. 277 00:12:32,034 --> 00:12:35,314 You know, even schedule, like even my calendar, everything just feels fast. 278 00:12:35,354 --> 00:12:39,374 And when you, when you're out on the trail, you, everything's serial. 279 00:12:39,554 --> 00:12:44,069 You have, like, one task to do There's no multitasking and, and 280 00:12:44,169 --> 00:12:47,349 everything happens in order, and your brain can follow it in order. 281 00:12:48,010 --> 00:12:50,930 And it's a real reminder that, like, cognitive 282 00:12:51,049 --> 00:12:53,209 overload in your day-to-day, it's a real thing. 283 00:12:53,350 --> 00:12:57,289 Like, simplifying what you have in front of you, uh, and, 284 00:12:57,390 --> 00:13:00,809 and doing it serially really is an effective strategy. 285 00:13:01,229 --> 00:13:01,348 Yeah. 286 00:13:01,389 --> 00:13:04,369 What, what's also wild is I, I then got to spend a whole bunch of time harassing 287 00:13:04,409 --> 00:13:08,669 you after the fact with, uh, references to the callback jokes we had on it. 288 00:13:08,869 --> 00:13:10,569 Like, we, we decided that everything was heavy. 289 00:13:10,649 --> 00:13:14,829 Why don't we just build gear full of helium, uh, so that it actually 290 00:13:14,890 --> 00:13:17,870 has a negative weight, and that means you could take a lot more with it. 291 00:13:18,169 --> 00:13:21,629 And like three days later, I'm at home and I sit bolt upright and text you. 292 00:13:21,649 --> 00:13:22,949 It's, "I figured it out. 293 00:13:22,989 --> 00:13:25,409 We're gonna sell this, and we're gonna brand it, and here's how. 294 00:13:25,850 --> 00:13:28,189 Most sleeping bags are filled with down. 295 00:13:28,329 --> 00:13:31,689 These are the only ones that are filled with up." And you had 296 00:13:31,710 --> 00:13:34,509 the courtesy of not responding to that, and that was great. 297 00:13:35,109 --> 00:13:38,829 Uh, uh, thanks to the magic of AI image editing, I wound up finding, 298 00:13:38,889 --> 00:13:42,289 uh, like I did some rain gear that looked like Rudolph, and I 299 00:13:42,329 --> 00:13:45,249 called it Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and that was awesome. 300 00:13:45,530 --> 00:13:47,529 I wound up with a blister on my heel when I switched away 301 00:13:47,569 --> 00:13:50,889 from toe socks because it turns out I am lactose intolerant. 302 00:13:51,129 --> 00:13:52,069 Ah. 303 00:13:52,109 --> 00:13:54,329 That was, that was one of my favorites. 304 00:13:54,449 --> 00:13:55,089 It was great. 305 00:13:55,169 --> 00:13:57,769 It was just great being able to throw the dumb jokes 306 00:13:57,809 --> 00:13:59,989 at someone who will absolutely smack them back. 307 00:14:01,628 --> 00:14:03,787 No, it was, it was… We had a phenomenal time. 308 00:14:03,978 --> 00:14:07,118 It was, uh, it really was… It's something I wish I could do more 309 00:14:07,178 --> 00:14:10,298 of, like, and not just me, I wish, I wish everybody, I wish there 310 00:14:10,318 --> 00:14:12,798 was, like, a public holiday where everybody went and spent a week 311 00:14:12,838 --> 00:14:15,818 on the trail, 'cause I think we would all view life differently. 312 00:14:16,318 --> 00:14:17,398 Right, and what do you do when you're trying to 313 00:14:17,458 --> 00:14:19,518 climb up a mountain that never seems to freaking end? 314 00:14:19,558 --> 00:14:21,778 Well, you come up with trail facts about Tom. 315 00:14:22,378 --> 00:14:25,668 For example, that, like, he doesn't use GPS positioning himself, 316 00:14:25,718 --> 00:14:29,258 the satellites just realign to match his trail out of respect. 317 00:14:29,778 --> 00:14:33,058 Uh, he passes the white blaze, they repaint themselves. 318 00:14:33,198 --> 00:14:36,058 You know, usual stuff, one would expect, Chuck Norris fact 319 00:14:36,138 --> 00:14:39,058 style, only Tom is still alive, 'cause that man will never die. 320 00:14:39,658 --> 00:14:41,098 Well, and that's true. 321 00:14:41,278 --> 00:14:43,038 I re- I refuse to believe those headlines. 322 00:14:43,858 --> 00:14:48,718 Um, another example of having time is we were headed up one particularly 323 00:14:48,758 --> 00:14:52,118 bad, uh, climb at the end of the day, so we were both exhausted, and this was 324 00:14:52,138 --> 00:14:56,028 towards the end of the hike, so we were even more exhausted, and I think I 325 00:14:56,038 --> 00:14:58,418 turned to Corey, and it was like, "I think we've got about an hour of climbing. 326 00:14:58,438 --> 00:15:00,078 You should tell me a joke," and he proceeded 327 00:15:00,098 --> 00:15:01,958 to tell me the world's longest joke. 328 00:15:02,748 --> 00:15:04,868 And it, I think it is titled The World's Longest 329 00:15:04,938 --> 00:15:08,178 Joke, and I kid you not, it was at least, what? 330 00:15:08,238 --> 00:15:09,498 An hour in the telling, Corey? 331 00:15:10,138 --> 00:15:10,718 Oh, yeah, it had to be. 332 00:15:11,278 --> 00:15:13,498 Yeah, and I didn't feel one single step. 333 00:15:13,638 --> 00:15:17,878 Uh, like, time just basically teleported me to the top, uh, when he 334 00:15:17,918 --> 00:15:20,458 finally got to the punchline, which was very much worth it, by the way. 335 00:15:21,218 --> 00:15:21,938 Exactly. 336 00:15:21,998 --> 00:15:23,398 Maybe one of these days when I have nothing better to 337 00:15:23,418 --> 00:15:25,828 do, I'll record an hour-long podcast of just that joke. 338 00:15:26,338 --> 00:15:28,637 I, you know, I'm here for it, 100%. 339 00:15:28,818 --> 00:15:30,798 I would, uh, I would be your audience member. 340 00:15:30,938 --> 00:15:34,438 I could hop on, and, uh, laugh and interject appropriately. 341 00:15:35,058 --> 00:15:35,198 Yeah. 342 00:15:35,358 --> 00:15:40,018 It, it was an awful lot of fun, just doing something completely different. 343 00:15:40,298 --> 00:15:43,418 And then we went back to work and worried about cloud finance and the rest. 344 00:15:43,498 --> 00:15:45,378 And one of the reasons I love working with you is 345 00:15:45,418 --> 00:15:47,798 that you've been doing this almost as long as I have. 346 00:15:47,918 --> 00:15:52,098 Uh, you were the guy that went on stage a while back and talked 347 00:15:52,158 --> 00:15:56,298 about putting Kubernetes clusters in every Chick-fil-A restaurant. 348 00:15:56,438 --> 00:15:57,878 I don't know if that's the secret ingredient 349 00:15:57,898 --> 00:15:59,658 in their sandwiches or not, but good job. 350 00:15:59,758 --> 00:16:03,118 That's, uh, sort of everything tastes better with Kubernetes. 351 00:16:03,158 --> 00:16:05,218 Like, maybe it's like trail hunger, where you're, 352 00:16:05,398 --> 00:16:07,838 uh, you're hungry, so everything tastes better. 353 00:16:08,318 --> 00:16:11,258 Uh, with Kubernetes, it's the, it's the suffering that 354 00:16:11,298 --> 00:16:14,918 infuses the sandwich that makes everyone just enjoy it more. 355 00:16:15,458 --> 00:16:16,397 Maybe that's the knack. 356 00:16:16,958 --> 00:16:17,378 That's right. 357 00:16:17,498 --> 00:16:20,358 It's like, uh, lab-grown diamonds versus real diamonds. 358 00:16:20,378 --> 00:16:23,618 It is the suffering that makes the, uh, that makes the diamond. 359 00:16:25,518 --> 00:16:26,038 Jesus. 360 00:16:26,318 --> 00:16:27,858 Is there a con- is that a conflict diamond? 361 00:16:27,898 --> 00:16:29,098 Well, not until I fight you for it. 362 00:16:29,378 --> 00:16:30,018 Yeah, exactly. 363 00:16:31,262 --> 00:16:31,762 That's funny. 364 00:16:32,042 --> 00:16:34,482 No, so, uh, yeah, it's… I've been doing this for a long time. 365 00:16:34,582 --> 00:16:38,121 I think I, I really enjoy doing cloud economy work. 366 00:16:38,282 --> 00:16:40,082 Uh, I, I do consulting for Duckbill. 367 00:16:40,182 --> 00:16:42,662 Um, I also have a full-time job, keeps me busy too. 368 00:16:43,522 --> 00:16:49,202 And o- one of the reasons I enjoy it so much is because, um, in 369 00:16:49,262 --> 00:16:53,682 order to be really good at it, you have to have walked the gauntlet 370 00:16:53,922 --> 00:16:58,242 of racking and stacking as an engineer so you know op-prem pieces. 371 00:16:58,282 --> 00:17:01,302 You have to walk the gauntlet of operational work, keeping systems 372 00:17:01,362 --> 00:17:05,781 alive, because cost is only one element of consideration for an 373 00:17:05,801 --> 00:17:08,602 organization, and if you bust through the door and you're like, "Hey, 374 00:17:08,702 --> 00:17:11,521 these are the f- you know, you could, you could save a ton of money 375 00:17:11,541 --> 00:17:14,810 if you could just turn production off between the hours of 11:00 376 00:17:14,842 --> 00:17:17,382 and 6:00 AM," people are gonna look like at you like you're crazy. 377 00:17:17,402 --> 00:17:17,582 Like- 378 00:17:17,982 --> 00:17:19,762 The United States Social Security Administration 379 00:17:19,842 --> 00:17:22,402 basically does, but that's neither here nor there. 380 00:17:22,451 --> 00:17:24,281 It's some sort of mainframe backup job that means that they 381 00:17:24,301 --> 00:17:27,102 have actual, I'm not kidding, business hours for their website. 382 00:17:28,082 --> 00:17:30,982 I don't doubt that in the least. 383 00:17:31,262 --> 00:17:31,842 I mean, you know what? 384 00:17:31,962 --> 00:17:33,642 Maybe they're actually ahead of the curve. 385 00:17:33,722 --> 00:17:35,322 Maybe everybody should take their example. 386 00:17:35,462 --> 00:17:37,402 Maybe it's not them needing to come- The 387 00:17:37,422 --> 00:17:39,002 computers are tired, Caleb. 388 00:17:39,062 --> 00:17:39,782 Let them sleep. 389 00:17:40,152 --> 00:17:41,902 Yeah, you know, everything comes back around, right? 390 00:17:42,002 --> 00:17:44,562 Maybe we should all regress to 1980s models. 391 00:17:44,662 --> 00:17:47,242 That's, that's one of the things I've been helping people 392 00:17:47,282 --> 00:17:50,702 with recently is convincing them not to go back to on-prem. 393 00:17:51,422 --> 00:17:52,062 Oh, it's funny. 394 00:17:52,102 --> 00:17:54,272 We've had a number of clients approach us to this, and 395 00:17:54,402 --> 00:17:55,952 I, I swear every one of them is gonna think that we're 396 00:17:55,982 --> 00:17:58,302 calling them out, but no, no, this is a larger trend. 397 00:17:58,322 --> 00:18:01,212 And one of the fun things that you and I got to do because we're 398 00:18:01,442 --> 00:18:03,782 hiking through the woods with not much else to talk about at one 399 00:18:03,862 --> 00:18:07,462 point, was try to out trauma each other with what's gonna suck the 400 00:18:07,502 --> 00:18:12,062 most that people don't see coming about building out a, a data center. 401 00:18:12,352 --> 00:18:15,632 And we talked about things like rack nuts, and bad batches 402 00:18:15,682 --> 00:18:19,822 of cables, and Dell screwing things up, as is their 403 00:18:19,862 --> 00:18:22,392 nature, and Cisco doing the same, as is their nature. 404 00:18:22,802 --> 00:18:26,642 And then you have remote hands, which are great, and you have smart hands, which 405 00:18:26,682 --> 00:18:30,762 says something really insulting about remote hands by a juxtaposition there. 406 00:18:30,842 --> 00:18:33,782 And, and all the, the trauma and the rest, and we mo- and, like, the 407 00:18:33,862 --> 00:18:37,992 speed of Jason, Jason APIs, uh, which is when you have a guy named Jason 408 00:18:38,022 --> 00:18:42,342 who opens a ServiceNow ticket via fax and eventually implements it. 409 00:18:42,662 --> 00:18:46,842 And I'm not saying that, that on-prem is always a bad idea, but the companies 410 00:18:46,882 --> 00:18:51,362 that have never done it before are opening up a bag of pain that the clouds 411 00:18:51,382 --> 00:18:55,682 have done such a good job abstracting away that people don't realize it's 412 00:18:55,742 --> 00:18:58,982 there or believe that it exists to the degree that we're talking about it. 413 00:18:59,422 --> 00:19:01,922 You and I collectively have damn near 30 years of 414 00:19:01,942 --> 00:19:04,002 experience working in data centers and the like. 415 00:19:04,462 --> 00:19:07,682 Uh, the fact that we do not work there anymore is not because we are stupid 416 00:19:08,737 --> 00:19:12,117 This episode is sponsored by my own company, Duckbill. 417 00:19:12,538 --> 00:19:14,497 Having trouble with your AWS bill? 418 00:19:14,797 --> 00:19:18,077 Perhaps it's time to renegotiate a contract with them. 419 00:19:18,577 --> 00:19:20,518 Maybe you're just wondering how to predict 420 00:19:20,558 --> 00:19:23,717 what's going on in the wide world of AWS. 421 00:19:23,938 --> 00:19:26,478 Well, that's where Duckbill comes in to help. 422 00:19:26,797 --> 00:19:31,217 Remember, you can't duck the Duckbill bill, which I am reliably 423 00:19:31,277 --> 00:19:35,637 informed by my business partner is absolutely not our motto. 424 00:19:35,937 --> 00:19:39,077 To learn more, visit duckbillhq.com. 425 00:19:40,401 --> 00:19:43,002 Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, like at least your cloud 426 00:19:43,081 --> 00:19:46,141 bill edges up over time, and you get to investigate it and 427 00:19:46,182 --> 00:19:49,002 figure out why, and then troubleshoot it and lower that bill. 428 00:19:49,601 --> 00:19:53,381 But with data centers, like you can wake up tomorrow and, you 429 00:19:53,421 --> 00:19:58,861 know, it can be a, a catastrophic issue or outage and or a- 430 00:19:59,202 --> 00:20:00,262 Through no fault of your own. 431 00:20:00,562 --> 00:20:02,581 Well, well clouds take outages too. 432 00:20:02,861 --> 00:20:06,242 Yeah, but the difference there is, one, everyone is gonna be down at the same 433 00:20:06,302 --> 00:20:09,972 time, and two, if it's a foundational infrastructure issue, they have a team of 434 00:20:09,972 --> 00:20:14,161 the best people in the world that are working to fix that faster than you will. 435 00:20:14,222 --> 00:20:16,921 It's… There, there's no if, ands, or but around that. 436 00:20:17,042 --> 00:20:18,702 It's a different universe. 437 00:20:19,182 --> 00:20:19,522 Yeah. 438 00:20:19,562 --> 00:20:19,702 Yeah. 439 00:20:19,861 --> 00:20:25,712 My DR strategy if us-east-1 goes down is I'm gonna go, uh, grab Corey, 440 00:20:25,942 --> 00:20:29,502 and we're gonna shelter it out in the Appalachian Mountains in a cabin. 441 00:20:29,581 --> 00:20:32,161 And or depending on whether the world is still survivable at that 442 00:20:32,202 --> 00:20:35,762 point, we will also make all the money consulting people with very 443 00:20:35,802 --> 00:20:39,401 expensive problems all of a sudden because people generally don't plan… 444 00:20:39,421 --> 00:20:41,742 Well, like we've seen the regional outages in the Middle East. 445 00:20:41,802 --> 00:20:43,062 Yeah, geopolitics matter. 446 00:20:43,101 --> 00:20:48,322 If, if we see a us-east-1, uh, regional outage, uh, that says something 447 00:20:48,341 --> 00:20:51,062 concerning from a physical infrastructure layer after it goes about a week 448 00:20:51,141 --> 00:20:54,962 'cause this is about 100 square miles in northern Virginia we're talking about. 449 00:20:55,022 --> 00:20:55,202 Yeah. 450 00:20:55,422 --> 00:20:56,742 Actually, you got a good point. 451 00:20:57,022 --> 00:20:59,121 If us-east-1 was down for more than a week, 452 00:20:59,181 --> 00:21:00,121 you would see Duckbill become- Pacific 453 00:21:00,181 --> 00:21:00,621 Coast Trail. 454 00:21:00,742 --> 00:21:01,581 Pacific Coast Trail. 455 00:21:01,702 --> 00:21:03,522 Yeah, we don't wanna be on the Appalachian at that point. 456 00:21:04,322 --> 00:21:05,062 Yeah, exactly. 457 00:21:05,361 --> 00:21:09,062 Or and or once we come back from the trail, we'll, we'll retool 458 00:21:09,081 --> 00:21:12,581 Duckbill to focus on migrating people out of the cloud onto on-prem. 459 00:21:13,222 --> 00:21:14,121 Ducks are migratory. 460 00:21:14,161 --> 00:21:16,361 I mean, you know, arguably we could make that argument. 461 00:21:17,161 --> 00:21:18,482 But, uh, more duck less bill now. 462 00:21:18,992 --> 00:21:20,341 More duck less bill. 463 00:21:20,901 --> 00:21:21,361 Amazing. 464 00:21:22,442 --> 00:21:24,502 So what was your, uh, what was your favorite 465 00:21:24,562 --> 00:21:26,911 part of, uh, of hiking with me, Corey? 466 00:21:27,522 --> 00:21:30,881 It's weird because at the time, the thing you look forward to the most is 467 00:21:31,222 --> 00:21:34,841 we hit the halfway point and managed to eat like 5,000 calories in a meal. 468 00:21:35,282 --> 00:21:36,042 That was awesome. 469 00:21:36,462 --> 00:21:39,452 Uh, there was one, uh, place in Hot Springs that was dialing in their 470 00:21:39,522 --> 00:21:42,822 pizza oven, and it was… They were so good at… They… There was a 471 00:21:42,901 --> 00:21:47,222 sign that said, uh, "Best pizza in town." Uh, that was a fucking lie. 472 00:21:47,581 --> 00:21:50,482 Uh, I love the fact that both of us were starving and 473 00:21:50,522 --> 00:21:52,482 still wouldn't eat that piece of crap, and then we went 474 00:21:52,522 --> 00:21:55,562 to the actual pizzeria, and it was freaking incredible. 475 00:21:55,841 --> 00:21:57,302 Everything else at that place was amazing, 476 00:21:57,522 --> 00:22:00,601 but it was, uh, but it was very much a eh. 477 00:22:01,502 --> 00:22:05,401 Curiously, the two of us got to meet up with Chris, uh, my podcast producer. 478 00:22:05,762 --> 00:22:08,262 So it was, it was fun being able to sit down 479 00:22:08,282 --> 00:22:10,161 and talk a little bit of shop about this. 480 00:22:10,422 --> 00:22:13,641 We tried to convince him to use Kubernetes for something, mostly as a prank, 481 00:22:14,042 --> 00:22:20,538 and yeah, it was fun just being able to let go of a lot of the work stuff. 482 00:22:21,077 --> 00:22:25,177 It, it was also nice to not have to worry about the complex things and instead 483 00:22:25,238 --> 00:22:29,017 worry about the simple things that are a little bit more survival-oriented. 484 00:22:29,618 --> 00:22:31,377 Like, "Okay, I don't like the look of those clouds. 485 00:22:31,456 --> 00:22:33,198 We should probably find a decent camping spot so 486 00:22:33,216 --> 00:22:35,158 we're not surprised off the side of the mountain. 487 00:22:35,738 --> 00:22:38,057 Uh, uh, wow, we're getting a little low on water. 488 00:22:38,257 --> 00:22:41,297 How do we believe that, uh, that next water source ahead is gonna 489 00:22:41,357 --> 00:22:43,817 be sufficient, or should we use this crappy one while we've got 490 00:22:43,837 --> 00:22:47,277 it?" Uh, there's, it's… These are decisions that are great. 491 00:22:47,578 --> 00:22:49,517 Frankly, you also sleep like the dead after your 492 00:22:49,578 --> 00:22:52,097 second night out there just because you're bone tired. 493 00:22:52,637 --> 00:22:55,017 Yeah, even, even if it is on a backpack. 494 00:22:55,537 --> 00:22:57,157 Yeah, you know, we take what we can get. 495 00:22:57,237 --> 00:23:01,097 Uh, I, I did send… To their credit, uh, it was a NEMO Tensor Elite. 496 00:23:01,318 --> 00:23:04,377 This thing's about a $250 sleeping pad that weighs about as much 497 00:23:04,437 --> 00:23:08,897 as a postage stamp, and it's, it's a great pad, but it's delicate. 498 00:23:09,217 --> 00:23:12,917 And to their credit, they replaced the entire thing with a, uh, 499 00:23:12,998 --> 00:23:15,437 position of just write the RMA number on it in permanent ink. 500 00:23:15,537 --> 00:23:16,897 Great, we're mailing you a new one. 501 00:23:17,557 --> 00:23:20,277 Sorry for the trouble, which was super appreciated. 502 00:23:20,797 --> 00:23:25,057 But also now the problem I've got is one of these already failed me once. 503 00:23:25,117 --> 00:23:28,437 Would I trust it as my only sleeping option going forward? 504 00:23:28,697 --> 00:23:29,277 I don't know. 505 00:23:29,818 --> 00:23:31,737 It's a, there's a question of faith. 506 00:23:31,797 --> 00:23:34,577 Uh, and this of course is similar to cloud providers. 507 00:23:34,917 --> 00:23:38,597 When, uh, you know how a cloud provider fails and how 508 00:23:38,637 --> 00:23:40,597 they handle that failure from a business perspective. 509 00:23:41,038 --> 00:23:44,037 Um, when you're dealing with a new provider, well, you don't know 510 00:23:44,077 --> 00:23:46,937 how that's going to break, and furthermore, there's a terrific 511 00:23:47,017 --> 00:23:49,956 opportunity for them to either gain or lose you as a customer forever. 512 00:23:50,038 --> 00:23:51,797 Uh, I'm saying nice things about NEMO. 513 00:23:51,858 --> 00:23:54,277 Like, their Tensor product line is pretty great. 514 00:23:54,456 --> 00:23:56,718 It's delicate, but it worked super well. 515 00:23:56,777 --> 00:23:59,357 If they'd been a jerk to me, oh, that would be the headline instead, 516 00:23:59,397 --> 00:24:01,858 and I would've been tearing into them, but they did the right thing 517 00:24:02,746 --> 00:24:05,846 There's a… People, I think cloud providers forget the human component. 518 00:24:05,905 --> 00:24:09,004 Like, Google can't wait to not talk to humans as fast as humanly possible 519 00:24:09,606 --> 00:24:13,365 Do I get, uh, do I get to split the, uh, product placement fee for Nemo there? 520 00:24:13,785 --> 00:24:16,486 You know, I, I miss the days when I used to sponsor this with 521 00:24:16,526 --> 00:24:20,005 something other than Duckbill itself, uh, just because it's great. 522 00:24:20,085 --> 00:24:20,786 Hey, why not? 523 00:24:20,866 --> 00:24:22,626 It's… At some point you start to wonder, 524 00:24:22,706 --> 00:24:25,305 like, whether the audience is no longer aligned. 525 00:24:25,545 --> 00:24:28,026 But well, you, you went from ad- advertising enterprise 526 00:24:28,085 --> 00:24:30,765 SaaS and observability products to camping gear. 527 00:24:30,786 --> 00:24:33,565 Do… Bad business or do you know something we don't? 528 00:24:33,625 --> 00:24:35,525 Like, eh, you never know. 529 00:24:36,325 --> 00:24:38,446 No, but it's nice not to have to be Cloud Billy Mays, 530 00:24:38,505 --> 00:24:40,225 uh, pitching for something different every week. 531 00:24:40,905 --> 00:24:41,125 Yeah. 532 00:24:41,365 --> 00:24:45,606 No, it was a great time, and there's so many parallels between, um, you know, 533 00:24:45,765 --> 00:24:52,325 camping and doing cloud economist work from, you know, planning and managing 534 00:24:52,365 --> 00:24:55,786 the load you're gonna carry to, you know, going through AWS bills and trying 535 00:24:55,786 --> 00:24:59,786 to understand services and how that impacts organizations, and the communal 536 00:24:59,865 --> 00:25:03,225 aspect of the trail versus the communal aspect of helping these organizations. 537 00:25:03,565 --> 00:25:04,905 You know, everybody piling and helping. 538 00:25:05,005 --> 00:25:07,045 Some people being resistant to, you know, some people 539 00:25:07,106 --> 00:25:09,705 being like, "You're here to just to make me look bad." 540 00:25:09,745 --> 00:25:12,125 It's like, "No, no, I'm not here to make you look bad. 541 00:25:12,165 --> 00:25:14,305 I really am here to try to help the organization." 542 00:25:14,925 --> 00:25:16,425 Well, you have to be careful how far you 543 00:25:16,485 --> 00:25:18,186 stretch that analogy to the breaking point. 544 00:25:18,286 --> 00:25:22,506 Otherwise, it starts to sound like a really bad long form LinkedIn post. 545 00:25:22,545 --> 00:25:26,665 Uh, what being brutally surprised by a raccoon taught me about B2B sales. 546 00:25:28,245 --> 00:25:30,705 Like, I- Uh, I mean, I… You know, I could see that. 547 00:25:30,745 --> 00:25:34,525 I could see being brutally surprised by a raccoon helping me with B2B sales. 548 00:25:34,625 --> 00:25:37,865 I think I would hate both things just as equally much. 549 00:25:38,405 --> 00:25:40,305 No, raccoons are great, except by surprise. 550 00:25:41,006 --> 00:25:42,985 That's right. 551 00:25:43,025 --> 00:25:43,685 Oh, man. 552 00:25:43,765 --> 00:25:46,345 But, um, but yeah, it was, it was, it was a good time 553 00:25:47,428 --> 00:25:50,569 So I, I guess my question now is since we're, we're back and ostensibly 554 00:25:50,609 --> 00:25:53,408 having to think about work again, what do you see that's exciting coming 555 00:25:53,428 --> 00:25:56,969 down the pike right now as far as the wide world of cloud economics? 556 00:25:57,070 --> 00:25:59,589 I, I have a list of my own, but, uh, this is 557 00:25:59,649 --> 00:26:01,208 not one of those areas that's right or wrong. 558 00:26:01,948 --> 00:26:03,129 Yeah, it's a great question. 559 00:26:03,409 --> 00:26:07,649 One of the things that I've seen emerging that I have mixed 560 00:26:07,708 --> 00:26:10,830 feelings about, I used to have stronger feelings about it, but 561 00:26:10,869 --> 00:26:13,570 now I think there's arguments that could be made for both sides, 562 00:26:14,009 --> 00:26:18,489 is I'm starting to see serverless, uh, within the AWS ecosystem. 563 00:26:18,509 --> 00:26:22,769 And when I say the word serverless, I'm referring to, uh, Lambda, I'm referring 564 00:26:22,850 --> 00:26:27,749 to Mongo or, uh, DynamoDB and other serverless functions that don't require 565 00:26:27,830 --> 00:26:32,029 constant loads being run, even like Aurora Serverless to a certain extent. 566 00:26:32,629 --> 00:26:34,708 I'm starting to see these functions start to become 567 00:26:34,789 --> 00:26:39,349 more part of the main production systems that I find. 568 00:26:39,869 --> 00:26:40,029 Yeah. 569 00:26:40,109 --> 00:26:41,349 This, this is gonna sound weird. 570 00:26:41,509 --> 00:26:43,310 I, I wanna, I wanna flag this out because companies 571 00:26:43,349 --> 00:26:46,729 have been using these things for 10 years at this point. 572 00:26:46,749 --> 00:26:49,889 We are not late to, we are not late to the adoption curve, but 573 00:26:49,928 --> 00:26:53,729 what we're seeing is this, say, being a significant part of the 574 00:26:53,829 --> 00:26:57,769 core production application line, a significant driver of spend. 575 00:26:58,249 --> 00:27:01,849 Uh, yes, it was replacing batch jobs a long time ago. 576 00:27:02,530 --> 00:27:04,269 Now it's in the critical path in a way that 577 00:27:04,310 --> 00:27:06,489 it wasn't previously in large enterprises. 578 00:27:06,710 --> 00:27:08,629 Yeah, small companies have been doing this forever, but 579 00:27:08,669 --> 00:27:11,549 that's, that's the beautiful part of being a small company. 580 00:27:11,589 --> 00:27:13,669 Uh, you can put a funny animal on your website, "Oops, 581 00:27:13,729 --> 00:27:15,869 we're down," and there's the raccoon looking embarrassed. 582 00:27:16,350 --> 00:27:20,149 And great, it comes back up an hour later, things are generally okay. 583 00:27:20,710 --> 00:27:22,389 Enterprises don't have that luxury. 584 00:27:22,850 --> 00:27:24,569 Which I'm a big fan of. 585 00:27:24,589 --> 00:27:27,529 Like, the small projects that I built for myself, for example, I built 586 00:27:27,549 --> 00:27:29,989 them all serverless 'cause I don't know what kind of load I'm gonna get. 587 00:27:30,049 --> 00:27:32,469 I wanna be able to scale up if it, whatever I'm working on goes 588 00:27:32,530 --> 00:27:34,649 bananas, and I wanna be able to not pay a bunch of money if it 589 00:27:34,649 --> 00:27:38,553 doesn't So it's kind of an ideal solution for a lot of things I build. 590 00:27:38,654 --> 00:27:41,713 Um, I think for the first time about a month ago, I came across 591 00:27:41,753 --> 00:27:46,633 a customer who probably 90% of their bill, and they were a fairly 592 00:27:46,733 --> 00:27:50,713 significant spend per year, annual spend per year, but probably 593 00:27:50,873 --> 00:27:53,993 80 to 90% of their services were all serverless technologies. 594 00:27:54,033 --> 00:27:56,592 They didn't… Uh, I think ECS was probably the 595 00:27:56,653 --> 00:27:59,653 closest thing that I would say was, like, constant. 596 00:27:59,673 --> 00:28:01,874 They had, like, a minimum number of ECS jobs that they had 597 00:28:02,433 --> 00:28:04,853 kind of tuned their application down to for some things. 598 00:28:05,312 --> 00:28:08,214 It was interesting 'cause evaluating that customer, there were 599 00:28:08,253 --> 00:28:10,113 areas that I could give advice on, you know, how they were 600 00:28:10,133 --> 00:28:13,694 doing CloudTrail and CloudWatch and some CSP pieces, et cetera. 601 00:28:13,714 --> 00:28:20,072 But, uh, I couldn't really tune down their CPU and memory loads, 602 00:28:20,194 --> 00:28:24,194 um, because, because they were so s- heavy on serverless, they 603 00:28:24,253 --> 00:28:27,013 were already using pretty much exactly what they needed to. 604 00:28:27,633 --> 00:28:33,653 Now, the negative downside of that is, um, because people aren't, 605 00:28:33,733 --> 00:28:36,953 haven't historically been running most of their loads in these particular 606 00:28:37,013 --> 00:28:41,293 technologies, A, the one-to-one ratio of serverless is more expensive. 607 00:28:41,332 --> 00:28:45,473 Like, if you took the per call cost for, you know, Lambda or the 608 00:28:45,533 --> 00:28:49,914 per call cost for, um, DynamoDB, and you compared it to running your 609 00:28:50,013 --> 00:28:53,273 own large cluster doing that thing, y- it's always gonna be a two 610 00:28:53,293 --> 00:28:57,273 to three, sometimes four to one ratio as far as dollars to dollars 611 00:28:58,398 --> 00:29:01,598 Where that's a little deceptive is that people don't run perfectly 612 00:29:01,638 --> 00:29:04,098 efficient solutions when they manage themselves If you have perfect 613 00:29:04,158 --> 00:29:07,138 foreknowledge and can run it exactly 100% with no overhead, 614 00:29:07,358 --> 00:29:10,178 and your people's time to manage that cluster is free, 615 00:29:10,458 --> 00:29:13,937 yeah, sure, maybe, but we're talking math, not reality. 616 00:29:14,377 --> 00:29:17,578 Yeah, so what was really interesting was, like, where I started, 617 00:29:18,018 --> 00:29:20,668 started to see it break down a little bit is the tooling isn't 618 00:29:20,668 --> 00:29:24,598 there yet to really manage serverless technology at scale. 619 00:29:24,678 --> 00:29:28,218 So if you've got thousands and thousands of Lambdas, tuning that, 620 00:29:28,278 --> 00:29:32,378 managing it, controlling it, you kinda destroy the 80/20 rule, right? 621 00:29:32,458 --> 00:29:36,888 So the nice thing about traditional ways of solving cloud problems is 622 00:29:36,918 --> 00:29:39,978 the top 20% of your services are the heavy hitters, they're expensive. 623 00:29:40,658 --> 00:29:44,348 Um, you… If you tune those top 20%, you're gonna get 80% of 624 00:29:44,398 --> 00:29:47,378 your bill impacted, so that's- that's sort of the 80/20 rule. 625 00:29:47,488 --> 00:29:49,898 Don't optimize the tiny thing that gets fired once a month. 626 00:29:49,978 --> 00:29:54,358 Maybe optimize the thing that gets fired 18 times per user request. 627 00:29:54,437 --> 00:29:56,338 And also question your architecture if that's what it's doing. 628 00:29:57,718 --> 00:29:58,278 Also true. 629 00:29:58,958 --> 00:30:04,058 But the, um, but the serverless approach tends to kind of 630 00:30:04,118 --> 00:30:09,858 peanut butter your code, repos, services, et cetera, and stretch 631 00:30:09,878 --> 00:30:12,428 it out, and so you no longer really have that 80/20 rule. 632 00:30:12,478 --> 00:30:14,978 If you wanna go tune something, you really have to go 633 00:30:15,038 --> 00:30:18,758 and revisit 1,000 Lambdas or 1,000 different services to 634 00:30:18,798 --> 00:30:21,658 go, you know, change how you're doing a particular thing. 635 00:30:22,197 --> 00:30:25,918 So I think there's a sprawl problem that a lot of people experienced 636 00:30:25,938 --> 00:30:28,898 when containers first hit the market, that people are finally figuring 637 00:30:28,958 --> 00:30:33,197 out, like, that sprawl and making things too easy and too e- easy to 638 00:30:33,238 --> 00:30:38,298 manage will translate into making more services, which creates sprawl. 639 00:30:38,348 --> 00:30:42,178 So I think my opinion with this trend, I really like it. 640 00:30:42,238 --> 00:30:45,608 As a cloud economist, I love the idea that people are choosing a technology 641 00:30:45,638 --> 00:30:51,138 that is efficient and cost-effective, but I also think, as a technologist 642 00:30:51,158 --> 00:30:54,658 that's run these systems before, I think you're gonna see people start 643 00:30:54,738 --> 00:30:57,668 hitting a very similar sprawl problem that they hit with containers. 644 00:30:57,798 --> 00:30:58,018 All 645 00:30:58,058 --> 00:31:01,038 this has happened before, and it, it doesn't… The, the rise 646 00:31:01,078 --> 00:31:03,088 of vibe coding is gonna make this worse instead of better. 647 00:31:03,158 --> 00:31:05,418 Like, "Oh, you have some bad code? We have a solution to that. 648 00:31:05,458 --> 00:31:08,577 It's called a lot more code." And it builds on top of everything. 649 00:31:08,618 --> 00:31:09,558 It doesn't get additive. 650 00:31:09,598 --> 00:31:11,378 It doesn't refactor on its own. 651 00:31:11,478 --> 00:31:14,158 It's let's continue to build, build, build, build, build. 652 00:31:14,898 --> 00:31:16,058 The foundation could be rotten. 653 00:31:16,838 --> 00:31:17,058 Yeah. 654 00:31:17,118 --> 00:31:21,618 Observability, uh, in those sorts of environments becomes a lot harder, too. 655 00:31:21,697 --> 00:31:25,658 I mean, one of the upsides of a monolith is that, you know, you instrument 656 00:31:25,697 --> 00:31:30,858 it to write to logs in a opinionated way, and it doesn't matter what 657 00:31:30,878 --> 00:31:33,438 somebody does in the future, for the most part, you're gonna be able to 658 00:31:33,478 --> 00:31:36,958 go get that information, that observability, and go drill down into it. 659 00:31:37,018 --> 00:31:39,898 But when you've got 2,000 Lambdas that were written over 660 00:31:39,918 --> 00:31:42,418 a period of five years by, you know, 15 different people- 661 00:31:42,958 --> 00:31:43,898 Coverage is uneven. 662 00:31:44,197 --> 00:31:46,068 It's weird that the, some of the best environments you see are the 663 00:31:46,098 --> 00:31:48,238 most… Some of the best environments you see architecturally are 664 00:31:48,278 --> 00:31:50,878 some of the newest just because people have, people have gotten into 665 00:31:50,918 --> 00:31:53,748 it, uh, not having to learn the early mistakes the rest of us did 666 00:31:54,877 --> 00:31:56,978 Yeah, again, I, I strongly agree with that. 667 00:31:57,117 --> 00:32:00,258 But I think there's… Every new trend, every new technology, 668 00:32:00,457 --> 00:32:02,877 there is some downside that we just don't see yet. 669 00:32:02,977 --> 00:32:08,138 I, I haven't seen, in the last 10 years in this field, I haven't seen any trend 670 00:32:08,258 --> 00:32:12,277 emerge that doesn't have some sort of payoff later that you just don't know yet. 671 00:32:12,558 --> 00:32:16,997 So me personally, if I was at the helm of a very large enterprise 672 00:32:17,058 --> 00:32:21,957 organization, I, I would be fine being m- maybe not a late adopter, but I 673 00:32:21,997 --> 00:32:24,797 wouldn't wanna be the tip of the spear on a lot of these new technologies. 674 00:32:25,097 --> 00:32:26,578 No, spend your innovation tokens where it 675 00:32:26,597 --> 00:32:28,697 matters, on the thing your company actually does. 676 00:32:29,057 --> 00:32:31,717 Uh, Caleb, I, I wanna thank you for taking the time to speak with me. 677 00:32:31,998 --> 00:32:34,577 If people wanna learn more, where's the best place for them to find you? 678 00:32:35,697 --> 00:32:37,537 Yeah, you can hit me up on LinkedIn. 679 00:32:37,617 --> 00:32:40,537 Um, I think it's… Let me actually look up my LinkedIn. 680 00:32:40,557 --> 00:32:42,217 I should have this memorized here. 681 00:32:42,498 --> 00:32:44,798 It's Caleb R Hird, H-I-R-D. 682 00:32:45,298 --> 00:32:47,017 Um, but yeah, they can hit me up on LinkedIn. 683 00:32:47,818 --> 00:32:48,057 Awesome. 684 00:32:48,097 --> 00:32:48,997 Or find you on the trail. 685 00:32:49,497 --> 00:32:50,937 Caleb, thank you for putting up with me as long as you 686 00:32:51,057 --> 00:32:53,497 have and not murdering me out in the middle of the woods. 687 00:32:53,517 --> 00:32:54,997 It's been, it's an absolute pleasure. 688 00:32:55,857 --> 00:32:56,017 Yeah. 689 00:32:56,138 --> 00:32:56,737 You too, Corey. 690 00:32:56,777 --> 00:32:57,437 It's always fun. 691 00:32:58,037 --> 00:33:00,357 Caleb Hird, cloud economist here at Duckbill. 692 00:33:00,558 --> 00:33:03,037 I am Corey Quinn, chief cloud economist here at 693 00:33:03,077 --> 00:33:05,337 Duckbill, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. 694 00:33:05,637 --> 00:33:07,377 If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a 695 00:33:07,478 --> 00:33:10,097 five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. 696 00:33:10,137 --> 00:33:13,637 Whereas if you hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your 697 00:33:13,698 --> 00:33:17,637 podcast platform of choice, along with an angry, insulting comment that then 698 00:33:17,677 --> 00:33:21,777 will be gathered, printed out, and hand-delivered to us on the trail by Tom.