After delivering this talk in front of a couple of audiences, it has become abundantly clear that not only do LOTS of people have similar stories, EVERYONE could probably speak to this topic! Moreover, if you lined up any number of people to give this talk, each one would be completely unique and utterly compelling.
Which is why I've decided to take the bones of this talk and make it open source. The concept is now free and available for everyone to use, build upon, rif on, and generally play around with.
I've provided a PDF version just for viewing, plus a PPTX and ODP version that should at least get you started importing it into your slide tool of choice.
What should become obvious fairly quickly is that the slides I've provided are just the skeleton of the talk. It's up to each user to fill in with the details of their "poor choice", the lesson(s) they learned, and how it ultimately turned out to be not such a poor choice after all.
As I state at the top of the Abstracts document, you should free to use, modify, or ignore all, some, or none of what I've provided, as your personal style and tastes dictate.
That said, If you want to get a feel for how a fleshed out version of this talk might go, you can find the full slides I used at DevOpsDays Birmingham here: https://github.com/LeonAdato/Talks-n-Slides/tree/main/DoDBrum2023 and you can see my delivery of this talk during DevOpsDays Denver here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPzrdHNsvGE&list=PL3xK3UeH8dybSKLkbS8SXqkLIrJgYWVEY&index=9
- With haKarat haTov to Ribono Shel Olam for giving me the sechel to learn and keep growing throughout the 3+ decades of my career in IT.
- With an equal expression of gratitude to my wife for all her support, from late night deskside coffee delivery to patiently listening to me rant when something wasn't working.
- I could never have done it without this guy
- Made you look.
- this talk and all the materials in this repository are being published under a Creative Commons "CC-BY-SA" 4.0 license. Users are free to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon this work, even commercially, as long as they give credit for the original creation.
- If we find ourselves sitting at the bar one day, you also owe me a beer.
The images in this slide deck were created by other people and they deserve credit for their work as well. Those images are as follows:
- Slide 2: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-person-holding-a-bath-bomb-8926082/, Karolina Grabowska
- Slide 3: captured from https://archive.org/details/prodigydemo_SoftwareLibrary, Prodigy splash screen
- Slide 3: https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/a7a68d3855d3073c2221fe462c7f141b0d07746d46d6b3ada7d7ac3bde03909d.png, CompuServe menu, courtesy of winworldpc.com
- Slide 4: https://www.techspot.com/articles-info/752/images/iPhone_Dock_Toilet_Roll_Dispenser-j.webp, courtesy of Techspot.com
- Slide 4: https://www.oddee.com/wp-content/uploads/_media/imgs/articles2/a96943_a586_9-remote-wranger.jpg, Rodd Miller (c) 2007 Americaninventorspot.com
- Slide 4: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2e1f221d90f2e8f7cfff02e36a7a52b2_original1.jpg?w=990&crop=1, courtesy of Techcronch.com
- Slide 4: https://www.stereophile.com/images/Bose_SoundWearCompanion_Photo_BoneFone.jpg, courtesy of stereophile.com
- Slide 4: https://www.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/wearable_computer001.jpg, courtesy of cultofmac.com
- Slide 4: https://www.geekalerts.com/u/Humping-USB-Dog2.jpg, courtesy of geekalerts.com
- Slide 6: https://unsplash.com/photos/Aohf8gqa7Zc, Alexaner Schimmeck
- Slide 15: https://www.renderosity.com/gallery/items/366480/monty-python-tribute, "TJohn", 2003
- Slide 18: random cable picture, Leon Adato
Looking back at a lifetime of poor technical choices © 2023 by Leon Adato is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 
