{"id":610,"date":"2006-07-26T13:05:33","date_gmt":"2006-07-26T18:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/?p=610"},"modified":"2006-07-26T13:06:32","modified_gmt":"2006-07-26T18:06:32","slug":"that-voodoo-that-i-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/2006\/07\/26\/that-voodoo-that-i-do\/","title":{"rendered":"That Voodoo that I do"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was at DemoCamp 8<\/a> last night and as usual stayed later for the social networking. I got into a discussion with Pete Forde<\/a> and others about who does what.<\/p>\n

I have real trouble explaining to people what it is that I do. I often try to explain the nuance between being a scripter (which I am in spades) and a programmer (which I am not exactly) and the distinction falls short of conveying the gestalt<\/a> that is the technical side of me.<\/p>\n

I spend a lot of my time making a whole mess of things work together that were never meant to be integrated. It often takes a wide and deep range of knowledge to figure out the bits. I have variously called myself a technical spot-welder, a duct-taper, a spelunker, and a special-ops data diver, trained to get in under the wire and get out with the data.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example – at one of my clients, something we do is give realtime tests against devices in the field. A diagnostic page could tell you, for instance, the contents of the ARP resolution table on a remote router. There is a bunch of magic that goes on behind the scenes to do this (simplified here):<\/p>\n