Twenty years installing enterprise monitoring systems inside banks and utilities — and, just as often, being the man who had to explain them afterwards.
As an HP OpenView Certified Consultant I worked inside Goldman Sachs, Chase Manhattan, Bank of New York, Dow Jones, Bear Stearns, Mizuho, Verizon and the New York City Housing Police. My job was rarely only the installation. It was training the people who had to live with the thing once I left.
At Mizuho I was brought in as a technical writer during a large migration. Reading the plan, I saw that the design would strand every future branch in its own isolated domain forest and force a fresh start at each location later.
I said so. The implementation was stopped, the foundation was corrected, and the group avoided a cost well over a million dollars — several years before Microsoft shipped the feature that would have rescued them.
I did not write the code. I read the plan and asked the awkward question. That is the same job I am doing now, with different tools.
I had a stroke. It took most of my short-term memory. I cannot reliably recall what I read fifteen minutes ago.
In the year since, working four hours a morning and stopping at midday, I have built four websites, published two books, set up an online shop that takes card payments and calculates New York sales tax correctly, and installed and documented an enterprise security monitoring platform across five machines.
I did none of it from memory. I did all of it one written page at a time, with something patient sitting next to me. That method is what I teach, and it is why I teach it slowly and in writing — because that is the only way it works for me, and it turns out to work rather well for everybody else too.
I run MAAPAT Security, installing and explaining security monitoring for firms too small to employ an engineer, and MAAPAT for 3D, a custom 3D printing business in Middletown, New York.
I am the author of A Field Manual for Wazuh and If I Can Do It, So Can You.
I work four hours a morning and stop at midday. If you ring in the afternoon I will call you back tomorrow, and I would rather tell you that now than seem rude later.