Hi, I’m Kyle Risse, a Southern California native, father of three, and lucky enough to turn a lifelong passion for computers into a 25+ year career doing things I enjoy. My goal at 12 was to be a SysOp for my own BBS, which happened, and then the Internet became more accessible and turned my hobby into a promising future. These days, I lead a DevOps team by day and work on my home lab by night. Being a life long LA Kings fan, I’m no stranger to delayed gratification, and try to keep long term goals as the north start in all parts of life. My belief is that the strongest Developers and SysAdmins focus on craftsmanship by being hands on daily in addition to going deep on fundamentals and book knowledge.

I’m a huge fan of NixOS, trying to learn more and more every day, and Go, my favorite programming language. Linux is my home but I can find my way around a Mac and my past is littered with Solaris, FreeBSD, VMware, and begrudgingly a bit of Windows. My early years were focused on Unix and Cisco Networking. Perl scripts were of low quality but got the job done. I progressed to bigger networks and eventually went deep in the virtualization space because it was the “Jack of All Trades” path, allowing me to combine my love of operating systems and data center networking.

Eventually Cloud and Containers came along and it was clear that I wanted to become a modern version of the old school sysadmins we’d all grown up admiring. You know, those guys that could secure a Unix box, block spammers, fix a developer’s C code, reconfigure the DSLAMs on the network devices, tune BGP, and setup a cron job to page them a reminder to tell their kid to take out the trash… all without breaking a sweat. To my mind, that meant learning the discipline of Software Engineering, and not necessarily focusing on just one programming language or piecing together code from Google searches. Walking a blessed path has led me to working with some amazing folks throughout the years, and I have learned a lot along the way. These days I focus on helping those behind me on the ladder continue to climb while living daily in the trenches where I’m most comfortable.

I regularly attend DEF CON and SCaLE and try to make it to various other user groups (SNUG) and local conventions (BSides SD, LayerOne, Shellcon). Somehow I ended up working as volunteer with the SCaLE Tech Team and have been at it for nearly a decade. The friendships and bonds that have been forged there have had a huge impact on my life and I cannot fully express my gratitude for the opportunity. Most folks don’t realize just how amazing it is to build an ephemeral network that only lives for one week using IaC and DevOps principles to keep the entire process sane and dynamic. It scratches the itch of getting to work on physical hardware now that everything in daily life tends to be cloud or SaaS.

When I manage to unplug, you’ll usually find me trying to keep up with my busy family, out on a hiking trail, reading a book, or around a board game table. I believe every good game teaches you something, even if that lesson is “never trust your kids in a game of Cosmic Encounter.” Involvement in Dominion League is a staple for me, even though I’m not that good, and due to the difficulty of getting large blocks of time with others in person, I’m regularly in a few turn-based games on Board Game Arena.

This site is a place where I collect tutorials, notes, and thoughts on the tools and technologies I find interesting. I might even write about management, board games, and books. The goal is to hopefully entertain while passing along ideas, all while attempting to increase my reps writing. If you’re into DevOps, open-source systems, or just like watching someone over-engineer their home lab, you might feel right at home here.