OK. The domain name is a bad joke and the typography took longer than the writing will. Welcome.
I'm Chris. I run IT for a small university in Western Massachusetts, which is the legible way of saying I run infrastructure, security, applications, networking, and roughly six other functions the org chart doesn't admit are jobs. Twenty-something years in the work, mostly in higher ed but not always. CISSP, a CompTIA stack, a BSIT in progress because the modern hiring market wants the line on the resume, and a pile of legacy certifications older than some of my coworkers. First cert was MCP on Windows NT 4.0. None of which is the point of this site.
The point is: I have opinions about this work, and I'm tired of having them only at my desk.
A working theory of what this site is going to be
A place to put down the things I keep trying to explain in 1:1s, in incident reviews, in interview rooms, in conversations with peers trying to figure out the same shaped problems I've been trying to figure out. Some of those things are technical. Some are about leadership. Some are about the gap between the org chart and the actual work — which, in my experience, is where most of the interesting failures live.
What it isn't going to be
A thought-leader site. I'm not going to write listicles, I'm not going to tell you to "lean in," and I'm not going to claim to have figured anything out. Most of what I'll write about here is stuff I'm still figuring out, or stuff I've figured out the hard way and would prefer not to make you go through that version of the lesson.
It's also not going to be a vendor blog or a how-to-get-into-IT site. There are people doing both better than I would. If you came here looking for a 12-week career roadmap or a guide to your first home lab, godspeed and please go elsewhere.
What it probably is going to be: post-mortems, infrastructure writeups, the occasional opinion essay on what running IT actually looks like when you're the one doing it, and — yeah — sometimes the part where the work is funny because it has to be.
About the name
themisf.it is the kind of domain you find at 2:00 AM when you should be sleeping and are instead running variations through a TLD search. We've all been there (...Right?).
I picked it partly because every domain I actually wanted was either taken, parked at four-figure prices, or already a band. (Speaking of: Yes. I am a fan.) But mostly I picked it because "misfit" is more honest than the alternatives. Most of the IT careers I admire have not been straight lines. The people I learned from were not the ones with the cleanest LinkedIns. They were the ones who got pulled sideways into something they weren't supposed to be doing and got good at it before anyone noticed they weren't qualified. That's the through-line of this work, in my experience. The job title eventually catches up to the job.
Also, themisf.it was available for the low, low cost, of fifteen dollars.
Cadence: I'm aiming for roughly one post a week, plus or minus reality. I'm not building a newsletter — there's a subscribe button somewhere because Ghost includes one, but I'm not going to be sending the Tuesday Roundup or the Annual State of IT Address. Posts go up when they're ready. RSS works if that's how you live. You can find me elsewhere if you'd rather follow links than feeds.
The first real post is coming in the next week or so.
Welcome to themisf.it. Hope something here is useful eventually.
— Chris