Ninety-seven entries. Four years, zero missed. The streak is my longest-running production system.
2016’s THESIS, and it wasn’t subtle: every model broke. Leicester City won the Premier League at 5000-to-1 — the single least probable result in team sports history, and I never even blogged it because I didn’t BELIEVE it in May. Hamilton lost the title despite a rain-delayed heroic run (#094) as Rosberg took the crown and retired five days later. England fell to Iceland’s defensive block (#085). Brexit beat the polls; the election beat the polls; AlphaGo beat the species. If your priors survived 2016 intact, you weren’t paying attention or you weren’t betting. The out-of-distribution events are the only ones that matter (#085), and this year was ALL distribution tails, all the time.
MY year, senior edition: promoted (#074), rebuilt CI (40→14 min), designed an interview loop, prevented two features, shipped a dozen, and learned that the job is increasingly performed in MEETINGS, wielding DOCUMENTS, and I’ve made peace with that because the documents work. Proverbs file: 118 entries. Fantasy PL: CHAMPION. Null Pointer Exception hoists the trophy in year four. The group chat has demanded a recount. There will be no recount.
NEXT SPRINT (2017): the Switch arrives March 3 and I have preordered. Kubernetes is winning the orchestration war and I should stop pretending otherwise (“we don’t have Google’s problems” was true until our third availability zone; #061’s bookmark comes due). And this blog turns 100 entries old in February. Might buy it a cake. Error-page themed. You know the one.
The graphs are flat. Happy holidays from on-call, year four. The streak continues.