Preparing for missions in difficult places
bitecode.dev
Preparing for missions in difficult places
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Re: Preparing for missions in difficult places
#2Small summary
Some devs are 10x. Some people are talented designers. I'm a regular dude.
But I have one little flex few of my colleagues have: I got specialized in dev and training missions in hard-to-reach places.
Those missions have different requirements that traditional ones. You can't assume you'll have anything at hand, so you need to pack all sorts of things, from a bar of soap to HDMI cables to protective gloves to a hunting knife.
You'll pack 2 laptops, 2 IDs, and assume one will get lost, stolen or destroyed.
And you'll set up a lot of software to be available to work offline.
Re: Preparing for missions in difficult places
#3Ok, forget the packing lists, advice, and all this survivalist stuff. All I want to know is what _kind of jobs_ requires preparation like this. This is not covered in the article, I have an impression - deliberately so.
Re: Preparing for missions in difficult places
#4This should be a TV show. Hire this person for a job in a remote place and after that hire another person to fuck him them and sabotage what they are trying to do. Film it -> Success
Re: Preparing for missions in difficult places
#5This should be a TV show. Hire this person for a job in a remote place and after that hire another person to fuck him them and sabotage what they are trying to do. Film it -> Success
It's not as exciting as it look: you spend a lot of time waiting. And then working in difficult conditions. Then waiting. Then something fail and you look for a hack. Then you work. And you wait. And you come back.
I did get into serious trouble once or twice, but over two decades, the average netflix factor is pretty low.
Corruption and nature owning you is surprising the first few times, but after the 50th occurrence, it's just the new normal.
So you'd have to make some talented editing.
Re: Preparing for missions in difficult places
#6Ok, forget the packing lists, advice, and all this survivalist stuff. All I want to know is what _kind of jobs_ requires preparation like this. This is not covered in the article, I have an impression - deliberately so.
“ I perform dev and training gigs in hard-to-reach places. In the desert, in the snow, in a remote Asian village or a jungle town in Africa.”
Re: Preparing for missions in difficult places
#7Ok, forget the packing lists, advice, and all this survivalist stuff. All I want to know is what _kind of jobs_ requires preparation like this. This is not covered in the article, I have an impression - deliberately so.
Yes, deliberately indeed.
But I as suspect you may believe, I didn't work for the military.
I worked for NGOs, governments bodies, the UN and WHO, and of course the private sector.
At home I have a fridge, hot water, heating, nobody is shooting guns except in the shows I can stream in HD thanks to fiber while eating an organic avocado.
So it's easy to forget a huge part of the world is not comfortable. But those areas do have a lot of human activity, and some need computers.
In the article I hint about a text message base system to control a cluster of computers. That was in 2000 something, and Uganda was trying to control a big tuberculosis epidemic. The goal was to synchronize all medical outposts. In this country, this meant dozens of very remote places, in the jungle, in the mud, etc.
It could take up to 3 months to gather enough data about all the cultures of each new batch to prescribe the proper treatment. Often too late.
One day the NGO Find decided to attempt to create a system that would link all them using GPRS. So they sent me there. Text messages was the only thing that would be semi-reliable, and locals would plug their nokias on the batteries on their Jakartas (a popular chinese bike that was everywhere) to have them always available, so we used that, and cheap laptops to host the software.
Another time I got hired at the last minute to help with a training to promote Microsoft products in remote places in the hope that once they become a market, they would chose them. When I arrived, the African MS representative gave a speech, a few t-shirts, pocketed the money, and left immediately.
Without the MS expert to take a lead, I didn't have much of a plan. So I trained the entire audience how to use Linux.
Good times.
Want to entertain a bunch of stranded scientists on an island? Give them a Python training, it's part of the budget anyway. Want to prove some legal issues? Lock the expert with an airgap system and let him figure it out.
I get all sorts of offers. Some are questionable, of course.
Once the parliament of Mali asked me to craft some very shady accounting system. I refused.
But I can only tell you about it only because this particular governing body have little power over me today.
Re: Preparing for missions in difficult places
#8Ok, forget the packing lists, advice, and all this survivalist stuff. All I want to know is what _kind of jobs_ requires preparation like this. This is not covered in the article, I have an impression - deliberately so.
I used to be an archeologist and had a checklist of similar preparations before I would head out to the field. However, unlike the article, I couldn't pack two of everything because I had to carry it myself alongside whatever gear, shovels, samples, sieves, survey equipment, etc I had.
A few things I learned though:
* FOSS software was consistently the most reliable stuff I used, as it wouldn't automatically lock itself if it couldn't see the Internet every 30 days.
* You need to be much more thoughtful about the code you write. Think twice, write once.
* Stick to a daily power budget, and cut it in half from what you can nominally afford.
* Prioritize properly. In many cases, the electronics are not the most important thing to be handled. Don't babysit them, go do camp chores and sieve dirt if it needs doing.
Re: Preparing for missions in difficult places
#9Ok, forget the packing lists, advice, and all this survivalist stuff. All I want to know is what _kind of jobs_ requires preparation like this. This is not covered in the article, I have an impression - deliberately so.
Yes, deliberately indeed. But I as suspect you may believe, I didn't work for the military. I worked for NGOs, governments bodies, the UN and WHO, and of course the private sector. At home I have a fridge, hot water, heating, nobody is shooting guns except in the shows I can stream in HD thanks to fiber while eating an organic avocado. So it's easy to forget a huge part of the world is not comfortable. But those area…
OMG, thank you so much for this comment! As interesting as the original post was, it pales I comparison with this. I can understand this prep from someone with MSF or rescue team member, but I was specifically interested about software development/tech ops in this context. Stay safe and I hope one day you can write a book or two with this material, this would be epic. Please keep your memos and records. On paper if needs be. And do and verify your backups, lol, PSA for everyone reading this.
Re: Preparing for missions in difficult places
#10This should be a TV show. Hire this person for a job in a remote place and after that hire another person to fuck him them and sabotage what they are trying to do. Film it -> Success
It's not as exciting as it look: you spend a lot of time waiting. And then working in difficult conditions. Then waiting. Then something fail and you look for a hack. Then you work. And you wait. And you come back. I did get into serious trouble once or twice, but over two decades, the average netflix factor is pretty low. Corruption and nature owning you is surprising the first few times, but after the 50th occurren…
That's normal for reality shows.
Cooking shows? You spend a lot of time waiting, who wants to sit and watch a pie bake for an hour?
Ever seen those "how it's made" shows? Editing can make anything interesting.
I'd watch the heck out of a techie version of Survivor (early years).