Welcome to AlanOps 👋
A home for practical notes on building products, making sound technical decisions, and keeping ambitious systems reliable.
Field notes
What I’m learning while building AI products.
Practical notes on AI products, CTO decisions, and the platforms that keep them reliable.
🧰 The DevOps Engineer’s 80/20 Golang Cheat Sheet
As a DevOps engineer, I’m always looking for tools that help automate, integrate, or just get out of the way. Go (Golang) is one…
Tracking Token Usage in Azure OpenAI (PAYG vs. PTU)
How Azure OpenAI Tracks Token Usage Azure OpenAI measures usage in terms of tokens processed – counting both prompt tokens (input) and completion tokens…
Why We Need to Slow Down When AI Speeds Us Up
AI coding assistants are here, and they’re changing the way we build software fast. Tools like GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, and Replit’s Ghostwriter can generate…
How to Identify Your Blind Spots (Without Losing Your Mind)
Let’s be real: we all have blind spots. Those invisible patterns, habits, or beliefs that quietly trip us up again and again. They’re the…
🧠 Mindful Communication for DevOps Engineers: We’re Not Google, and That’s Okay
✍️ Why I’m Writing This Lately, I’ve been navigating some difficult conversations — in Slack, in meetings, and in code reviews.And if I’m honest,…
What If No One Will Hire Me? A Letter to the Developer Who Feels Left Behind
Let’s be real. You’re sitting at your desk. Maybe your IDE hasn’t been opened in days. The LinkedIn feed is a blur of “I’m…
GitHub Actions Supply Chain Attack: What DevOps Teams Need to Know
In March 2025, Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 revealed a clever and concerning supply chain attack exploiting GitHub Actions—a wake-up call for DevOps teams…
Sneakers (1992): The Hacker-Heist Classic That Sparked My Curiosity
I was around 13 when I first saw Sneakers. It was the early ’90s, and I had just gotten my first serious computer—a second-hand…
How to Balance Deep Work and Operational Awareness in DevOps
One of the biggest challenges for DevOps engineers and technical professionals is balancing deep, focused work with real-time operational awareness. I’ve personally struggled with…
Working on something difficult?