Damian Karlson

User groups come, user groups go (R.I.P. VTUG 🥲) Tomorrow (noon ET) on @vbrownbag.com: "How to Build a Thriving Tech Community" Manvendra runs AWS Cloud Club JECRC and we're getting into: - Common mistakes - Lessons learned - Practical takeaways Join us LIVE! www.youtube.com/watch?v=RduJ...

Guardrails, RAG, and a Bedrock demo built for an exam @faye-ellis.bsky.social says is brutal Join us LIVE Wed on @vbrownbag.com (noon ET) "Responsible AI with Amazon Bedrock" + real talk on the AWS AI Dev Pro cert www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FKD...

New @vbrownbag.com episode is UP: "Getting into Local AI (2/3)" with Du'An Lightfoot! "GPU memory math, agent architectures, observability, token economics — the stuff nobody explains until your bill arrives." youtu.be/WSalm-rvG2E

Yelling at LLM Costs TONIGHT 8:30 PM ET Who's actually paying for all this AI? The @vbrownbag.com Gang talks about: 💸 Frontier model pricing 🖥️ Local models & hidden costs 🏢 What this means for enterprise budgets 🔗 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy_U... @sixfoot.dad @giftedlane.bsky.social

Watching @whitneylee.com deliver a talk about using an AI agent as a coding assistant for developing an internal platform. She’s genuinely a great teacher!

So awesome that @lookitup.baby came to Austin to speak at KCD Texas!

When I was a kid, I wanted to go to space. Instead I am a man that makes sad noises when I wake up.

How to tell when you’re done working for the day

I'm pretty sure this is how it works

Foster dog doing a thing

`winget upgrade --all` gives me joy. I'm a simple man.

I’m pretty sure that Purgatory is sitting outside a Kohl’s fitting room while “What I Like About You” plays overhead

“Why are there socks on the kitchen counter?” isn’t something I thought I’d ask my teenagers today

Join me on January 29 to discuss the top in-demand skills for 2026, what every organization should be doing right now to stay competitive, where the tech industry is going in 2026, and how engineering teams can successfully navigate so much change! www.pluralsight.com/resources/we...

I filled out the 2026 AWS survey. You should too! answersforaws.com/survey/

Give your senior engineer and devops team a heart attack with this one weird trick

Again,

The Second-Order Streisand Effect is a social phenomenon where if a party makes an effort to censor information, discussion and news about the censorship paradoxically leads to an increased awareness of Barbara Streisand, a musician whom most "Zoomers" would probably have otherwise never heard of

Average NFL TV experience: - Side effects include diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting - Consider betting right now! - Holiday car commercial - Kevin Hart selling phones or betting - May cause serious side effects, including cancer - Zoe Saldana selling booze or phones

It’s all fun and games until your youngest boy teenager randomly announces “my neck, my back…” Just to press buttons. That’s the only reason.

How your email finds me

“try water fox or ice weasel” try chill penguin. install flame mammoth. you just download bubble crab. literally just use boomer kuwanger. sting chameleon has a search bar, use it to find toxic seahorse.

Here's a fun project. One of my friends has written a Python wrapper for all of the Lionel TMCC/LCS command sets, which gives us the ability to build custom physical *and* digital controllers. Here's a RPi with a 10in touchscreen that can toggle the power to all of my blocks. So many possibilites!

For the train people who need landscape video. Let's go. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxM-...

The Doctor is right and correct

Finally, the self-licking ice cream cone

The fastest way to outgrow your role? Master the tools no one else bothers to. Most techs fear: • PowerShell • Active Directory permissions • Event Viewer logs You? Study them. Automate them. Explain them. That’s how juniors turn into seniors without waiting for permission

No matter how hard people try to convince us having empathy is wrong, it is right. No matter how hard people try to convince us that diversity is a weakness, it is a strength. No matter how hard people try to convince us that love is limited, it is unlimited.

What really makes IaC special is that it makes those bugs easily reproducible

Live right now, Calvin Hendryx-Parker is presenting "Battle of the Bots", comparing AI coding tools! This is incredible! #AIFD7 techfieldday.com/event/aifd7/

Guess who’s got 500 WS2811 5v pixels and some plans for Christmas decorations?

it's kinda weird that all the software i am expected to use for work are all written by distributed teams, go, python, postgres, linux, chrome, k8s etc and despite being told "the best teams work in an office together" i don't know of any software i use that's actually written that way

We're live! www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMIu...

Join M Abdullah Bin Aftab & the vBrownBag crew on Wednesday October 8 at 9am central to learn how to design, automate, and scale cloud-based ETL pipelines using AWS, Azure, and GCP! youtube.com/live/cMIuYKy...

shooting my shot 🏀 we’re hiring & here’s the lowdown. this would be a great role for someone beginning or mid career. pls apply or pass on to anyone u know who might fit! (it is my current position, i am moving to other projects within the same team & would be training this person)

tired: it's always DNS inspired: ICANN feel it coming in the air tonight

Percent-based canaries are just the beginning. Argo Rollouts + service meshes add routing superpowers like header rules and traffic mirroring. Nicholas Morey explains. Watch the full episode (~20 min) → youtu.be/ToF9fb2sjlE ( ＾◡＾)っ #ArgoRollouts #Kubernetes #ServiceMesh

I've never listened to chill/study/lofi videos in my life, yet YouTube insists on waterboarding me with them. WHYYYYYY

This is one of my favorite presentations ever. It’s incredibly informative while also being fun and light-hearted.

Every online seller should do this. Tariffs are just an extra tax on the consumer.

Last weeks @vbrownbag.com is UP: "Cannibalism (as a Metaphor for Love) in Open Source" with @kat.lol ! In this episode we got into a bunch of topics: Horror movies, cannibalism, contributing to open source, burnout, how we (sometimes) destroy the things we love😅 youtu.be/h7FGF3BaJ2I

Hey @snipe.lol just thought you’d want to see this graphic…just because www.anthropic.com/news/1m-cont...

*young me, developing a strong sense of justice* This is gonna be great, what an asset, this will never drive me insane

If you consider yourself an ethical, intelligent, & informed person & you insist on any version of, "We have to stop fighting for the rights of <vulnerable group> in order to achieve our other goals," I don't know what to tell you other than that you are not ethical, intelligent, or informed.

This week (8:30PM ET) on @vbrownbag.com: "Cannibalism (as a Metaphor for Love) in Open Source" with @kat.lol Listen in as we (maybe) talk about: - OSS contributions! - If we shouldn't eat people, why are they so darn tasty? - Wine pairings www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMh6...