02 / ABOUT ME
Mandeep,
for short.
I’ve been using Linux as my daily driver for over a decade, which must say quite a lot about me by this point.
I’m annoyingly inquisitive about how things work. I prefer open source, like keeping systems simple, and I’m usually inclined to try out a new tool or technology instead of just reading about it because I learn best by getting my hands on things, so there is always some experiment running somewhere. The KISS principle, Keep It Simple, Stupid, is a philosophy I actively try to apply both professionally and personally.
01 / Engineering Life
I’ve spent years consulting with small and medium-sized businesses across the globe, working across cloud, DevOps and SRE. Over the years, I’ve found myself gravitate towards deployment, infrastructure and security. I enjoy figuring out how systems should be designed, how they should be deployed and how they can be made simpler to operate and harder to break.
I also enjoy solving real-world problems, an interest which has naturally led me into the areas of system design, distributed systems and infrastructure optimization. Lately, I’ve been spending some time exploring serverless architectures.
Currently working on a Kairos-based immutable Kubernetes image pipeline, with a slightly ambitious goal of making cluster provisioning and lifecycle management easier to maintain.
02 / Outside the Terminal
Technology plays a fairly large role in my life, though not all of it.
I’ve been running for the last 7-8 years and have done multiple half marathons. About a year ago, I added strength training to the mix, because running long distances wasn’t enough suffering :p
I also enjoy solo traveling. A few countries, a backpack and nobody to blame when the plans don’t go my way. It genuinely helps me get out of my own head and has been a pretty good way of understanding myself and pushing my own limits.
And then there’s my homelab. This is also where my electronics hoarding problem gets hard to defend.
I have routers, cables, plugs, adapters and an assortment of weird devices that seemed absolutely necessary when I bought them. There is also 128 GB of RAM sitting around at home, which is obviously a perfectly reasonable amount for a homelab and not something we need to discuss further.
I’m quite serious about privacy too. Since I value having control over my own data, I have chosen to self-host and use services like Kagi, NextDNS, and have even set up my own mail server. At some point, you have to stop and ask yourself whether you’re protecting your privacy or if you’re creating more infrastructure to maintain and I’m yet to find my answer.
03 / Currently
04 / What to Expect
Technical experiments, things I’ve learned, (strong) opinionated pieces, unnecessary rabbit holes and plenty of rants, for sure. I’ll also write about life outside technology, personal experiences, random stories and anything I feel like writing about at the time.
Most of the writings will be raw, unfiltered, mildly feral and low-key unhinged.
If something here gives you a question or a different take, you can write to me.