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One of my favorite past times is to take existing technology and ask it to solve problems it was not meant to solve. This GitHub ReadMe is simply asking the question, can Markdown be used to visually tell a story? Can you use it to play a video game? Will it make you want to pull your hair out (yes)?

So, this is an attempt to use Markdown to tell the story of me as a developer in Markdown with a more visual and storytelling approach.

• How does this work?
• Lets get to the story already!
• Just take me to the info...

Pretty simple really, each “scene” is made individually then stitched together with a little bit of C#. Internal links are used for navigation. Code blocks are used because GitHub will then use a monospaced font and I try to use as little html as possible to make things work. ASCII art and pictures fill in for the graphics to add some color.

• Alright, fine. Lets get to the story
• Why would you do that? Just show me the normal ReadMe

The first code I ever wrote was the worlds loneliest web site. A small PHP page that was a simple chat room that I built following a guide. Without a way to host the site, nobody but me could ever see it.

After that I took some AP CS classes in high school and learned about OOP in Java. After a brief stint studying the wrong major at the wrong school, I went to Texas State University for a CS degree and got a BS.

• Did you work on anything interesting at school?
• Get on to Microsoft!

Before my last semester I got the chance to work with the brilliant Mina Guirguis to research how Control Theory could be used to run monitoring software on low powered devices without taking up all of the limited resources. I learned so much, including what control theory was. If you want to read the paper published by IEEE, you can find it at Control Theoretic Adaptive Monitoring Tools for the Android Platform.

I also did 2 senior projects my last semester, one to let me browse Reddit using a homemade eye tracker that worked but gave me a terrible headache. The second one used Markov decision trees to figure out what type of common Android application attacks were likely to net the best revenue. Between these 2 projects, grading a networking class, and working on the website for the school paper, I don’t think I left campus the entire time.

The same week of my graduation I flew to Seattle to interview with Microsoft, and flew home with an offer.

• What have you done at Microsoft?

I joined Microsoft as a Consultant in early 2013. With a developer background who primarily used Linux, my first project was to use SCCM to migrate a medium sized bank from Windows XP to Windows 7, a natural next step… In reality it was an amazing move. Due to this project and a few other Windows deployment projects, I learned a ton about Infrastructure.

With my dev background and new infra knowledge I combined the 2 and started working with PowerShell Desired State Configuration. I added the original SqlScript resource, which to date, is the highest number of issues ever opened for a commit I have made. It makes me proud.

Sometime around 2016 I said good bye to On-Prem servers and transcended to the clouds. I have migrated countless apps, I have built cloud native containerized micro-service applications, I have deployed SharePoint 2013 (🤮, it somehow was the best option for the customer), and I have built Data Estates with massive amounts of financial data all in Azure.

After writing miles of ARM templates and kilometers of Terraform, creating hundreds of deployment pipelines, workbooks, runbooks, and MVPs, receiving thousands of automated alert emails (and even responding to a few), I decided it was time to leave being a Consultant and start doing the exact same thing as an SRE.

And that is where I am now! I have joined an internal Microsoft team as an SRE keeping the services used by the business every day running happily.

• The normal ReadMe

Hi! 👋
I'm David

I am an SRE at Microsoft and I like tech, climbing and gardening.

• BS in CS from Texas State University

• Published research Control Theoretic Adaptive Monitoring Tools for the Android Platform

• Microsoft Consultant who worked on so so many projects

  • SCCM Windows Deployment
  • Desired State Configurations
  • Migrating Apps to Azure
  • Deploying Cloud Native Apps
  • Building Data Estates

• Senior SRE at Microsoft

  • SRE team lead
  • Using Terraform to support half a dozen applications
  • Keeping Microsoft safe

• Fun Projects

  • Fight anxiety with an AI Worry Jar
  • Published a charity Android app "Climbing Games"
  • Illustrated Dotties Goes to Space under a pseudonym. Get a free copy.
  • Made a metric clock
  • Predict when you can see the moon through a window with MoonWindow