Bo - 2025

Chevre, this week’s parsha is Bo (בֹּ֖א). This week we have the final 3 plagues. Locusts, Darkness, and the Death of the First Born. There are many ideas around the plague of Darkness. That it did not affect the Jews and that it was inside and outside and anywhere the folks went. I really connect with this plague and the ideas around it.

I’ve been using computers since before my bar mitzvah and I’ve been using Linux since 1995ish. I have a lot of understanding and intuition about how things work or why things may break. And more importantly, I know how to ask the computer (or network) for metrics to get a clearer picture. To pull back the darkness of what is happening.

Recently, I’ve been learning and playing with 2 new techlogies. Kubernetes (EKS) and Proxmox. Kubernetes is more to understand how it works, the challenges, and basic troubleshooting because my customers are using it. Therefore, to support them better, I need to understand it more thoroughly. And proxmox as a replacement for my final stand-alone home server so I can continue the “cloud idea” of 1 task or system per machine/container/vm.

Learning both of these have been humbling. There are complexities and I’ve run into problems with both of them that I didn’t understand. I needed the patience to explore, play, and research the problems until I had a better understanding and could overcome them. And then run into the next problem.

This is a constant struggle when working with computers, but for me, this is what makes working with computers interesting and fun. Always some new technology to learn about and explore. And you can never be the expert in everything. I need to get enough understanding to feel comfortable so that when a problem arises, I have enough understanding and background to research further and explore what the system is telling me.

May we all learn positive attributes from the plagues and turn every interaction into a Mitzvah. Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov.