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John Dee and Edward Kelley summoning.

This is Plucking the Eagle: My Misadventures in Government.

I started this on ̶S̶u̶b̶S̶t̶a̶c̶k̶, until a few friends who are better at computer mentioned the issues with it and suggested open source alternatives.

I've been a U.S. Federal government employee since August 2011, and became one of the many workforce casualties caused by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a hostile takeover of a former sister organization the United States Digital Service (USDS).

My career has been wide and varied, but almost exclusively focused on information technology (IT). It is the nervous system for the U.S. Government and its operations, and, without IT, the government cannot function. I'm going to be sharing stories, learnings, observations, prestidigitations, and personal opinions about the events I've been a part of or seen over that career.

This is part confessional, part storytelling, and hopefully valuable. Or at the very least amusing.

Subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is added.

The Agony and Ecstacy of the U.S. Government's Relationship with Apple's iPhone, Part 5 - the Conclusion

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your

Industry Knows Best, Anecdote 1: Mobile Vehicle Units

I recently told a small group of folks this story, quasi-publicly, for the first time. But I had to do it in 5 minutes. You lose a lot of the flair with that kind of time constraint. So here's the whole thing. All thoughts, opinions, and other words

The Agony and Ecstacy of the U.S. Government's Relationship with Apple's iPhone, Part 4

2013 was an amazing confluence of events that can best be described by a quote from Sebastian Junger's book A Perfect Storm: "Meteorologists see perfection in strange things, and the meshing of three completely independent weather systems to form a hundred-year event is one of them. My

The Agony and Ecstacy of the U.S. Government's Relationship with Apple's iPhone, Part 3

The Search for Apple Sellers and Buyers Gets Weird... All thoughts, opinions, and other words here are exclusively the personal opinions of the author and do not express any official position, statement, or other communication from or on the behalf of the U.S. government. This is a work of

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The Agony and Ecstacy of the U.S. Government's Relationship with Apple's iPhone, Part 5 - the Conclusion

Industry Knows Best, Anecdote 1: Mobile Vehicle Units

The Agony and Ecstacy of the U.S. Government's Relationship with Apple's iPhone, Part 4

The Agony and Ecstacy of the U.S. Government's Relationship with Apple's iPhone, Part 3