Notes

I recently gave a few mock interviews. Here’s some feedback I got from those. 1/29: “User flow/experience”. Non-functional requirements. Scale explicitly. Latency. Get easier part and finish it as well. Can help put more boxes on the diagram. Trade offs: focus on that. Proactively find issues and try to get things right in at most 2 passes. 2/3: Capacity planning good. Don’t assume database is a black box - dig deeper. Non-functional requirements. Latency. Availability. Keep updating the diagram as you speak. 2/16 (behavioral): Use examples to answer generic questions. Ask questions for behavioral too. (Gives you time to think too.) Ask questions early. (Very important, and maybe early so that you don’t run out of time at the end.) People like to hear their your own voice. Do some research about the company beforehand. Can help you ask good questions as well. Roughly finish an answer in ~2 mins. (3 mins is too long.) 2/16 (behavioral): About yourself: You can tell about your background etc. so that you can build curiosity. For projects, talk about impact. And what did you learn. Moving fast. Measurable business impact. Scalability. What you learnt: add to every answer. Collaboration important as well. We vs I. Need more direct conflict stories. Co-worker, manager, etc. didn’t agree with me. 2/17 (project retrospective): Dog feeding. Think of metrics. TPS. CSAT. Done better: Lack of expertise == lack of technical gap. “Better job in covering our technical gaps.” Architecture: More complex. Need to speak for 45 mins. Scalability in everything. Use PM, TPM in your stories. 2/19 (behavioral): Shoot for ~3 mins. Story: STAR-L format. L == learning. A -> bullet points.

Similar to earlier, I was looking at enterprise servers again. Primarily, R730 or R730XDs. Some notes from that: Don’t get hardware RAID controller as it has bugs. Don’t expect NVMe for booting OS. If you set it to ‘off’ by the ‘Fanspeed offset’, and you enable ‘Maximum exhaust temperature limit: Default (70c)’, it runs really quiet and you can use a fanscript to dail it back even more. Resources to manage fan speed/noise: ...

Scope (of my role at current organization). About me, as an individual: Strengths. Growth areas, in terms of technical skills. Growth areas, in terms of leadership skills. Feedback that surprised you. What inspires me. What drains me. Leadership skills: Conflict with teammate. (Could be an example where you changed your mind.) Conflict with cross-functional team. Conflict with a partner/cross-organization team. Engagement with a partner team that went well. Engagement with a partner team that didn’t go well. Gave feedback to a peer or junior. Handle shift in priorities from leadership. Best mentorship relationship. Situation where you needed crisp communication. Acted in a tense/ambiguous situation where you didn’t have enough data. Some cross-function partner or someone from another organization wasn’t performing well. Manager specific: What do you look for in your manager? Feedback to upper management. Conflict with manager == feedback to manager. Project retrospective (for one large project): What would you do differently if re-starting from scratch? Technical and organizational challenges. (Not the same as trade off.) Technical trade off. Business trade off. Biggest: Technical problem == road block. Risk that paid off == decision that went against popular opinion. Failure == risk that didn’t pay off as expected. Operational event. Operational process you setup. Short-term vs long-term trade off. Something you did for the team that you are proud of.

This time, we flew into and out of Delhi to save costs and that was tiring. Especially flying out because, 1st day, we left Ahmedabad at 8 am and, 2nd day, at 4 am for Seattle, so we couldn’t sleep properly for 2 consecutive nights. The Dubai to Seattle leg felt long, so maybe try flying to through another city. So, a flight that reaches Ahmedabad in a single hop but divides the two legs somewhat equally. Bring a meal or two for when we return home so that we can avoid cooking right away. Eat healthy in India: avoid eating fancy, oily or restaurant food all the time. It makes us lethargic and doesn’t feel good. Fly business class next time? Dry fruits (from Costco) make for great gifts.

Case: Mini or micro ATX for sure. Fractal Design or Jonsbo. https://www.wundertech.net/diy-nas-build-guide/#Selecting_Hardware_For_a_DIY_NAS_Build

Used https://www.airalo.com/ on our previous trip to Europe and it worked well. Recently found out about https://esimdb.com/ which seems to be an aggregator of prices across multiple providers. Might try that next time.

As usual, I spent quite some time on side-projects during my ongoing trip to India. Here’s a quick run down: I realized that the firewall I use at home, Opnsense, is a powerful piece of software and I could leverage it more than what I do today. First, I installed Wireguard on it and gradually switched from Tailscale to Wireguard for all self-hosted connections. Well, almost all, because I left Tailscale on one machine in my home, so that it can act as a fall back in case Wireguard has some issues and somehow the internet connection on Opnsense still works. The Opnsense setup was straightforward but I wasted quite some time trying to setup Wireguard through NixOS. I eventually dropped the idea because I decided that a VPN on the router was a better idea (instead of port forwarding and all) and because the Opnsense approach was just simpler. Second, I setup DNS blocklists on Unbound. (Again, pretty easy.) I’ll gradually removed AdGuard Home. IPv6 through Tunnelbroker.

I recently got a (free!) IPv6 tunnel from he.net and I set it up on my Opnsense firewall. Here are some links that I found helpful: Official documentation. https://scribe.rip/swlh/ipv6-on-opnsense-router-599a9198aaed https://subnettingpractice.com/ipv6-subnet-calculator.html https://www.niksa.dev/posts/he-ipv6-tunnel/

I was traveling to Goa for 4 days with my sister and I am now at the airport heading to my next destination. I was excited about the trip before I got here and it turned out good enough. A few things on my mind: Like last time, we headed straight to the northern part of Goa. We stayed in Seolim but it wasn’t north enough. Next time, I should try to stay near, say, near Morjim or Ashwem. Morjim and Vagator were beautiful, maybe even Anjuna but I forget. I had high hopes from Arambol but we found a lot of crowd and sun there. The beauty of the beaches was punctuated by trash. The beaches weren’t exactly filthy but a stray plastic waste here and there often marred the experience for me. A few times, I just wanted to dispose off some trash myself but then there were no trash cans etc. anywhere close. It was hot and dusty (thankfully, not too humid), so driving a 2-wheeler was unpleasant. Next time, I should try to hire a cab, maybe with a driver. I ate a lot of authentic Goan food and it was fantastic, probably one of the high points from the trip. The curries were hot, most probably because of green chillies, and I loved it!

Today, I run Opnsense in a VM on my Proxmox node. That creates issues once in awhile when my fiddling with the Proxmox server brings down internet for the whole home. So, I was looking online on what dedicated machine I could purchase to run Opnsense. Here’s what I found: Qotom looks like a good choice, kind of like a cheaper yet similar version of Protectli. I found 2 nice versions. Both were priced pretty similar on AliExpress. Q335G4. i3 but probably 1G ports. I have 1 Gbps fiber connection today, so 1G ports might be fine today, but things may change in future. 15W TDP. Q750G5 This has J4125, which is better than N4000. 2.5G ports. Also, 5 and likely overkill for me, since I’ll anyway use a switch. 10W TDP == lower. Can also get rack-mountable versions of these. I saw a bunch of Reddit posts on how people have repurposed used 1 liter or mini PCs. So, probably no need to buy new hardware. Lenovo ThinkCentre M710Q: can be extended with dual NIC. 1G vs 2.5G probably only matters for the WAN side. LAN traffic only goes through switches and wouldn’t hit the Opnsense box.