Technically Religious

In Yeshiva - a system of advanced learning in the orthodox Jewish world, there’s a saying: “Shiv'im Panim laTorah” - which means “there are 70 faces of Torah”, but implies that there are many equally valid ways of getting to a certain point. That idea resonates with IT practitioners, because there are many paths that led us into our career in tech. In this episode, Leon speaks with guests Corey Adler, Rabbi Ben Greenberg, and returning guest Yechiel Kalmenson about how that made that literal pivot, from yeshiva into the world of IT, and what their experiences - both religious and technical taught them along the way. Listen or read the transcript below.

Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone, it's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of it with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it including where you can get a digital or print copy over on https://adatosystems.com. Thanks!

Josh: 00:24 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:48 In yeshiva, a system of a dance learning in the orthodox Jewish world, there's a saying: "Shiviim paanim laTorah,", which means "there are 70 faces of Torah". But it implies that there are many equally valid ways of getting to a certain point. That idea resonates with it folks, because there are many paths that led us to our career in tech. Today I'm going to speak to people who made that literal pivot - from yeshiva into the world of IT - and what their experiences, both religious and technical, taught them along the way. I'm Leon Adato, and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are returning guest Yechiel Kalmenson

Yechiel: 01:20 Hey, thanks for having me back.

Leon: 01:24 No problem. And also his partner in coding crime, Rabbi Ben Greenberg.

Ben: 01:29 It's great to be here.

Leon: 01:31 It is wonderful to have you. And sitting across from me, because he's also a Cleveland-based Orthodox Jewish Geek, is Corey Adler

Corey: 01:39 Live long and prosper, Papu.

New Speaker: 01:41 There we go. Okay. So before we dive into the actual topic at hand, I want to let you all do a little bit of shameless self promotion. Everyone, take a minute and tell the Technically Religious audience a little bit about who you are and how they can find you on the interwebs.

Corey: 01:58 So, hi, I am Corey Adler. I am a team lead engineer at Autosoft. You can find me on Twitter @CoreyAdler and I am the constant pain and Leon side,

Leon: 02:08 Literally and figuratively, yes!

Yechiel: 02:10 Well, uh, my name is Yechiel. I'm a software engineer at Pivotal. Um, on Twitter you can find me @YechielK. My blog is at RabbiOnRails.io, and I also co-author a weekly newsletter called "Torah & Tech" with Ben Greenberg.

Ben: 02:26 And I am that Ben Greenberg that Yechiel just mentioned. I'm a developer advocate at Nexmo, the Vonage API platform. And I also am that coauthor of "Torah & Tech" with Yechiel, and you can find me on the Twitter world @RabbiGreenberg, or on my website at BenGreenberg.dev.

Leon: 02:44 Great. And for those people who are wondering, we're going to have all of those links and everything in the show notes. And finally I should just to round out the four, uh, Orthodox people of the apocalypse, I guess? I don't know.

Corey: 02:56 You've been watching too much Good Omens.

Leon: 02:58 Right? I just finished binge watching it. Anyway. I am Leon Adato and you can find me on the twitters @LeonAdato, I did not

Religious communities sometimes have a fraught relationship with technology in general and the internet, smartphones, and "screens" in particular. On the one hand, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc see the power these technologies have to build, grow, and maintain contact with the community and "spread the word". On the other, technology is often perceived as a cesspool of evil inclinations and a scourge that is destroying families and minds. As IT professionals within our religious communities, we're often asked to address, and even "fix", those issues. Last week, Josh Biggley, Keith Townsend, and Leon Adato discussed what was good about being "geeks in the pew". In this week's installment, we'll explore the challenging side of this situation and look at some solutions. Listen or read the transcript below...

Destiny: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as it professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:24 This is a continuation of the discussion I started last week with Josh Biggley and Keith Townsend on the topic of being ambassadors of it within our religious community. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation.

Leon: 00:37 All right, so we've talked about some of the good, we've talked about some of the opportunities that being a technologist in our faith community presents us, but what can go wrong? What is wrong with being a person of technology in a land of faith?

Josh: 00:55 Really, I don't think there's anything wrong with being a person of technology in a land of faith. I think that it's the use of technology. So I like to tell people I'm a recovering video game addict and I love video games. I really struggle with the want to play video games. And by the way, most video games today are crap. It's just the way that it is. Sorry kids. They are. But the biggest innovations in video games - things like 3D and VR and augmented reality - they come from the porn industry.So Mormonism, they've embraced technology. So one of the earliest embraces of Technology was broadcasting what we call general conference, which is a biannual conference. It takes place in Salt Lake City in April and October. And so broadcasting that conference around the world, like when I grew up, our church had one of those monstrous satellite dishes outside, you know, the kind that you're, the kid in the neighborhood. His Dad used to, you know, get the free porn on. Well, we had one in our church's yard and we got broadcast from Salt Lake City sent to us. So I think that the challenge with technology isn't so much that it is technology, the challenge is: what are we willing to accept it being used for in our lives.

Leon: 02:26 Okay. So that's an interesting take. I guess what I was thinking about is the things that being the technology person, like what goes wrong with that scenario when we enter our church or synagogue or mosque or are our temple. And one of the first things, and this isn't the worst of it, but one of them is that sometimes we are asked to stand and answer for technology. So, people come up and say, "Twitter's just for, you know, porn and shit posting, that's all you ever do." And you know, I'm stuck there saying, "Well no it's not." But I'm also in my head saying, "Well yeah, it kinda is sometimes"

Josh: 03:08 I thought Instagram and Reddit were for porn. Right?

Leon: 03:12 Well, okay, everything could be, but you know, the point is, is that I'm being asked to stand and answer these challenges and that can be, you know, it's never fun to be on that kind of firing line.

Keith: 03:23 Well, you know, it's kind of like being a politician. There's no good politician. One politician has to answer for a

Religious communities sometimes have a fraught relationship with technology in general and the internet, smartphones, and "screens" in particular. On the one hand, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc see the power these technologies have to build, grow, and maintain contact with the community and "spread the word". On the other, technology is often perceived as a cesspool of evil inclinations and a scourge that is destroying families and minds. As IT professionals within our religious communities, we're often asked to address, and even "fix", those issues. In this episode, Josh Biggley, Keith Townsend, and Leon Adato explore what it means to be a tech expert in the pews. Listen or read the transcript below.

Kate:                                     00:00                     Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion (or lack thereof). We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon:                                     00:24                     Religious communities sometimes have a fraught relationship with technology in general, and the Internet, smart phones, and screens in particular. On the one hand, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc. see the power that these technologies have to build, grow, and maintain contact with the community and spread the word. On the other, technology is often perceived as a cesspool of evil inclinations and a scourge that is destroying families and minds. As IT professionals within our religious communities, we're often asked to address - and even fix those issues. In this episode, I'm joined in discussion by Josh Biggley.

Josh:                                      00:59                     Hello,

Leon:                                     01:00                     And also our returning guest, Keith Townsend, Aka CTO Advisor.

Keith:                                    01:04                     Hey there,

Leon:                                     01:05                     And we are going to tell a few of our stories in this. Right. Now before we dive into any of that, I need to right a past injustice and give Keith a chance to tell everyone a little bit about himself and CTO Adviser, and what you're all about. So shameless self promotion time, Keith.

Keith:                                    01:19                     Oh, you know what it is the Technically Religious podcast so we'll start with that. I am a Christian and I've been a Christian for almost as well... yeah, almost as long as I've been in IT. So I've been in IT a little bit over 21 years, and I've been a Christian for about 21 years. I blog and stuff, mainly talk to CTOs or infrastructure architects, and you can find all that goodness on http://theCTOadvisor.com.

Leon:                                     01:50                     Fantastic. Alright, and the next thing I'd like to do is point out for people who have been listening to this podcast for a while - this is actually episode number 15, if you're keeping track - that this episode is sort of counter to our normal style or story. Usually we talk about our life is an IT person who is recognizably or somehow visibly connected to a faith, moral or ethical worldview. And yet today we're going to turn that on its head. Today we're going to talk about our life within our community of faith, but being someone who is recognizably a geek. You know, somebody who is associated with technology in some way. And where I'd like to start the conversation is what is good about that? What is good about being a geek in the pews?

Josh:                                      02:35                     So I just want to point out that I thought you were going to say that today we wer

You know you want it. Fear of missing out. The ‘Me’ Generation. The messaging from the world around us is that we should want what others have and, in our modern capitalist thinking, it’s a driver for some to succeed and exceed. However, the Old Testament has a lot to say about wanting what someone else has. In this episode, Leon and Josh explore what is wrong with “covetousness” and how it might be possible to harness that powerful emotion. Listen to it or read the transcript below.

Leon:                                     00:00                     Hey everyone, it's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of it with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it including where you can get a digital or print copy over on https://adatosystems.com. Thanks!

Roddie:                                00:25                     Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our careers IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Josh:                                      00:44                     You know, you want it. Fear of missing out. The 'ME' generation. The messaging from the world around us is that we should want what others have, and in our modern capitalist thinking, it's a driver for some to succeed and exceed. However, the Old Testament has a lot to say about wanting what someone else has. And today we're going to explore how to harvest that powerful emotion. Joining in the discussion today are Leon Adato.

Leon:                                     01:08                     Hello again.

Josh:                                      01:10                     And I'm Josh. Biggley.

Leon:                                     01:12                     So I think where I'd like to start here is actually hit the religious side of this first because this is a really challenging commandment, made no less challenging by the fact that it's the last one you know, "you shall not covet" is commanding an emotion, which is already sort of a fraught concept. But on top of it, its commanding an emotion that you can't stop until you start having it. So you're really sort of commanding someone to "stand in a corner and not think about polar bears in the snow."

Josh:                                      01:42                     I mean, now I'm thinking about polar bears in the snow. Thanks Leon.

Leon:                                     01:44                     You can't stop it. You know, you want

Josh:                                      01:47                     Well, I am Canadian. So I mean, I feel like I'm predisposed for that.

Leon:                                     01:51                     Right, exactly. You, you, it's, it's practically part of the curriculum. So the, I think that's the first thing. And I think one of the points I want to make is whether this commandment is talking about the prohibition of a desire or the prohibition of an action, an actual action that arises out of that desire.

Josh:                                      02:11                     So I like to go back a little bit first. I feel like there are some of our listeners who maybe didn't pay attention in Sunday school

Leon:                                     02:21                     Guilty, guilty as charged.

Josh:                                      02:22                     Guilty as charged? All right. Yeah, I thought I was the only one who was going to be confessing here.

Leon:                                     02:2

Weeks ago, the world watched helplessly as he Notre Dame Cathedral, burned. While this event was notable for many reasons, one of the things that struck us here at Technically Religious was the protocol used by emergency responders: Save the people, save the art, save the altar, save what furniture you can, then focus on the structure, in that order. We know what can be rebuilt and what can't.” In this episode, Josh and Leon compare and contrast that disaster recovery process to the ones typically used in IT. Listen or read the transcript below.

Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone. It's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of IT with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it, including where you can get a digital or print copy over on adatosystems.com. Thanks!

Leon: 00:25 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Josh: 00:45 A few weeks ago, the world watched helplessly as one of the iconic buildings in Paris, the Notre Dame cathedral burned. While this event was notable for many reasons. One of the things that struck us here at Technically Religious was a response by one of the bystanders, who understood what was happening on the ground. He said,

Leon: 01:04 "The fire department in Paris followed a protocol. Save the people, save the art, save the altar, save what furniture you can, then focus on the structure. In that order. They know what can be rebuilt and what can't."

Josh: 01:17 Now that smacks of a disaster recovery policy to us. But I think we in IT might look at it differently. Which is what we're going to do in this episode. Joining in the discussion with me today is Leon Adato.

Leon: 01:31 Hi everyone. And of course, the other voice that you're hearing is Josh Biggley.

Josh: 01:35 Hello. Hello.

Leon: 01:36 Okay, so I think the first thing, because we're talking about disaster recovery, is let's get our terms. Let's define our data library and differentiate between redundancy, high availability, disaster recovery, risk mitigation, all those things. So do you wanna take a crack at it? Do you want to just collaboratively? Do this?

Josh: 01:58 I love redundancy. And in this world of cloud, I think redundancy is the thing that we do really well now because you know, you can set up a system that is in two regions and so if one of your regions fails here, the region will pickup, you can do a multisite region. Redundancy to me feels like a descriptor that actually bridges across HA and DR and risk mitigation. Um, yeah, redundancy feels like a catchall term, right? It's not something you can achieve. I don't know. What do you think, Leon?

Leon: 02:36 All right. All right. So I think redundancy at its simplest is "there's another one of them." There's another

Josh: 02:42 Oh, like RAID

Leon: 02:43 Yeah. Okay. Right. There's like RAID, you know, having multiple disks - RAID 0 - which is just having two discs, one backing up the other constantly. Or RAID 5... any of the other flavors of raid. So I think redundancy means "having more than one" and yes, redundancy can fit into a high availability plan. But high availability is more nuanced. High availability means that no matter what happens, the "thing" - the service, or the the network, or whatever, is going to be available. That can also be done by doing load balancing. It can also be done by, you know, in networking terms, channel bonding, so you can have those. So redundancy by itself

Acts of hatred in our most sacred spaces. Curable diseases going untreated. War tearing countries and families apart. Global climate change threatening our very species. It’s enough to make anyone feel that this world is broken beyond repair. As people with a strong religious, moral, or ethical point of view, we are sensitized to inequality and injustice, but these problems leave many of us feeling both frustrated and hopeless. However, our work as IT professionals has conditioned us to look at problems, breakdowns, and error messages in a very particular way. In this episode of our podcast, Leon, Josh, and special guest Yechiel Kalmenson will look at ways in which our IT mindset helps us approach secular, existential, and religious challenges in ways that non-IT folks ("civilians" or "muggles") typically don’t. Listen to the episode, or read the transcript below:

Doug: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Josh: 00:25 Today is May 6, 2019, and while we try to keep our podcasts as timeless as possible, in this case, current events matter.

Leon: 00:35 It hasn't been a good week, and that's putting it lightly. The US political system continues to be a slow motion train wreck. Measles cases in the US are at levels unseen since the disease was eradicated in the year 2000. A report on climate change shows over 1 million species are now at risk of extinction. And just over a week ago, a gunman stormed into a synagogue in Poway, California. This is the second attack in a synagogue in the last six months. and part of a horrifically growing list of attacks in sacred spaces nationwide.

Josh: 01:03 News like that leaves most people feeling hopeless and adrift. And even folks who are part of a strong religious, ethical, or moral tradition who are sensitive to injustice and seek to repair the world - we're also left uncertain on how to proceed.

Leon: 01:18 Which is why an article in the "Torah & Tech" newsletter caught my eye. In it, the author presented the idea that we as IT professionals may be predisposed to view these kinds of problems differently, and to address them the same way we deal with blue screens of death and abend messages. I'm Leon Adato and the voices you're going to hear on this episode are the always-effervescent Josh Biggley

Josh: 01:40 Hello.

Leon: 01:42 And also our special guest and the author of Torah & Tech, Yechiel Kalmenson, who provided the inspiration for this episode. Welcome to the show Yechiel.

Yechiel: 01:49 Hi. Thanks for having me.

Leon: 01:51 So before we go any further Yechiel, I want you to have a chance to tell all of the listeners about Torah & Tech. I think it's perfect for the Technically Religious crowd because it merges those two things - tech and religion. So where can we find it? How did it start? Just give us a little bit of background.

Yechiel: 02:09 Torah & Tech was an idea of a friend of mine, Rabbi Ben Greenberg, who's also like me, an Orthodox Jew now working as a developer in Israel. We came up with the idea to merge, you know like you spoke about in the first episode to have the synergy between these two worlds, which mean a lot to both of us. So we started this weekly newsletter, which features a Torah thought every single week that relates to tech and also tech news that relate to Judaism or to Torah values in general. You can find it, you can subscribe to it in the link which will be provided in the show notes. I also cross post a few weeks - those that I write - I cross post them on my blog, which you can find at http://rabbionrails.io

Leon: 02:51 Fantastic. I guess we'll dive into this. What is it about IT and working in IT

Imposter Syndrome is a well known condition in IT circles, but it exists in religious contexts too. On this episode, Leon, Josh, and Doug look at the ways in which imposter syndrome manifests in both spheres, and how our experiences combating in one area may help in the other. Listen or read the transcript below.

 

Imposter Syndrome is a well known condition in IT circles, but it exists in religious contexts too. On this episode, Leon, Josh, and Doug look at the ways in which imposter syndrome manifests in both spheres, and how our experiences combating in one area may help in the other. Listen or read the transcript below.

Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone. It's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of IT with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it, including where you can get a digital or print copy over on AdatoSystems.com. Thanks!

Kate: 00:25 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experience we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion (or lack thereof). We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life? This is technically religious.

Leon: 00:49 impostor Syndrome is a well known condition in IT circles, but it exists in religious contexts too. On this episode we're going to look at ways in which impostor syndrome manifests in both spheres and how our experiences combating in one area might help the other. I'm Leon Adato. And the other voices you're going to hear today are Doug Johnson.

Doug: 01:07 Hello,

Leon: 01:08 JAnd Josh Biggley.

Josh: 01:09 Hello.

Leon: 01:10 All right, so I think the first thing you probably ought to do is define impostor syndrome. So who wants to take a crack at that?

Josh: 01:18 Well I would, but I'm not qualified, so...

Doug: 01:22 All right. We're there!

Leon: 01:24 We just, we hit it and we hit the ground running. Doug, that means it's you.

Doug: 01:30 All right. I'm just reading a definition-definition from good old Wikipedia." A psychological...", uh, sorry. "Impostor Syndrome is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts his or her accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve all that they have achieved. Individuals with impostor-ism incorrectly attribute their success to luck, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent than they perceive themselves to be.

Leon: 02:09 Right. And again, this is something that IT folks, many IT folks struggle with quite a bit it is an aspect of the Dunning-Kruger effect. And I first heard about the Dunning-Kruger effect a long time ago, and my immediate thought was, "oh my God, that's me." Meaning that, you know the report that I was reading talked about people who thought they were really good at something. And in fact they were so bad that not only did they not know they were bad, but they looked at people who were good at something and they thought they were bad at it also. So they not only misunderstood their own skill, but they would rate other people lower at it who were demonstrably good. And I thought, "oh, what if that's..." It was my first thought was, "what if that's me?"

Doug: 03:03 And of course, there's your impostor syndrome, right? But the classic example of that is, I read a study somewhere that 80% of all people think they're above average drivers.

Leon: 03:14 Okay,

Josh: 03:14 I mean, I am.

Doug: 03:17 And that's the point. 80% can't be above average.

New Speaker:

Mom puts a filter on the router, and daughter Mary installs a VPN. Dad sets up cell phone monitoring software, and son Donny learns how to soft-boot Android to remove it. For households that strongly ascribe to a specific religious, moral, or ethical outlook, the standards for what is appropriate can be even more strict, and send those cat and mouse games spiraling to new levels. Unless Mom or Dad happen to work in tech. Then things get a whole lot more interesting. In this podcast, Leon, Josh, and guest Keith Townsend of CTO Advisor talk about parenting with a bible in one hand and a packet sniffer in the other. Listen or read the transcript below:

Leon: 00:25 Hey everyone. It's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of IT with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it including where you can get a digital or print copy over on adatosystems.com. Thanks!

Josh: 00:25 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experience we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:48 Mom puts a filter on the router, and daughter Mary installs a VPN. Dad sets up a cell phone monitoring software and Donnie learns how to soft boot android into safe mode to remove it.

Keith: 00:57 The game of parental cat and mouse seems never ending for households that strongly ascribe to specific religious, moral, or ethical outlook. The standards for what is appropriate, can be even more strict and send those cat and mouse game spiraling to new levels.

Josh: 01:15 Unless mom and dad happened to work in tech. Then things get all whole lot more interesting. In today's podcast we're going to talk about exactly that situation. IT professionals with a Bible in one hand at a packet sniffer in the other and what it means to the kids who have to live with us. Joining in the conversation today and telling us the age of the kids in their house are Leon Adato

Leon: 01:41 Hello everyone. Okay, so I have a 27 and 24 year old daughter and then I have a 19 year old and 16 year old son and we also have my 27 year old daughter's two kids, so my grandkids, who are three and two.

Josh: 01:55 All right, perfect. And Keith Townsend of CTO advisor.

Keith: 01:58 All right. I have a 31 year old daughter who has an 11 year old granddaughter that visits us every day after school. I have a 28 year old son, any 25 year old son,

Josh: 02:11 And I'm Josh Biggley, and in my house I've got kids ranging from the ages of 16 to 25 and everything in between, it feels like.

Leon: 02:19 All right. So the first thing in this podcast that I would like to clarify is that we're not talking about VPNs, or that you should have a good password manager, or any of that stuff. That that's all important, and we will definitely do a podcast episode about that later. But what we're talking about is the fact that we as religious, moral, ethical parents have already decided that there's things that we need to keep our kids away from. And that's part of our job as a parent. So this is all about how we as IT professionals keep our kids away from the "nasty stuff." So I think the first part of the conversation for the three of us is what's the nasty stuff?

Josh: 03:00 Okay, "warez"? Do we know what...? Oh, I'm old, aren't I. Warez? Pirated software? Sorry? Right? You know, I can't... "ware-ez"? Aw man, I might be only one.

Leon: 03:15 Yes. Yes. You're that old. We are all that old.

Keith: 03:17 Yeah. We're all that old that we, the seeing that we have all have grandki

In IT we know that the only constant is change. And for the most part, that's OK. What is difficult is when standards or processes are framed as immutable, and THEN they change. How do we adjust when the company spends $5million on a data center expansion, and then moves everything to the cloud 2 years later? Or when Windows abandons the GUI and goes to CLI, while Cisco moves away from IOS commands and on to GUI and API-driven interfaces? Does our religious/ethical/moral background help (or hinder) us from accepting and adapting to these moments in our work as IT pros? In this episode Kate, Josh, and Leon try to unpack the question and formulate some answers. Listen or read the transcript below.

Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone. It's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of IT with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it including where you can get a digital or print copy over on adatosystems.com. Thanks!

Kate: 00:25 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experience we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion (or lack thereof). We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:49 Last week, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints made an announcement which sent shock waves through the Mormon community and tremors throughout many other religious communities as well. We'll get into the details about that in a minute. But it caused us here at Technically Religious to think about how supposedly immutable truths, whether we're talking about replacing Latin with English during mass or Microsoft's adoption of open source, affect us and how we deal with those changes. Joining the conversation today is Kate Asaff

Kate: 01:17 Hello.

Leon: 01:18 And Josh Biggley.

Josh: 01:20 Yeah, it's still cold in Canada!

Leon: 01:23 and I'm Leon Adato and it's slightly warmer here in Cleveland. So Josh, do us a favor and run us down just the main points of the announcement from last week.

Josh: 01:34 Sure. So this announcement was made in early April, and in order to understand it, we have to go all the way back to November, 2015, and maybe even a little further. So the Organization of the Mormon Church, or the LDS church, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is such that it's a top down organization. So the President, or prophet, of the church, he makes a declaration, often he has to get his two counselors and the other 12 men that sit on the quorum of the 12 apostles. And then those 15 men make these proclamations. So in November of 2015, the church released a policy internally, that was leaked, and then they had to address it publicly, that said that any child who had parents who were of the same gender, so you're in a same sex-relationship or a same-gender relationship or if you are trans-gendered - first, they were now labeled apostates. And that's really heavy language within any religious community. There's one thing to have transgressed, but there's another thing to be considered an apostate. And then in addition to them being an apostate, they also said that no child whose primary residence was with those same sex couples could receive any ordinances within the church. So that spans the entire gamut of: You could not be blessed as an infant within the church; to: you couldn't be baptized; to: if you were in the church - there are certain things that you that you undertake within Mormonism, you know, if you're a boy at the age of 12 (and now the age of 11) you can receive the priesthood - just things that you can't do, ma

When you start “doing” monitoring, there are a few questions that you get asked over and over again. Technically Religious member Leon Adato came to think of them as “The Four Questions” (of monitoring), as a kind of inside joke reference to the Four Questions that are asked during the Passover. The joke became an epiphany, and the epiphany became a book. With Passover upon us, Doug, Kate and Destiny talk with Leon about the book, the process of creating it, and how it gave him a chance to link his religious and technical experiences together in a unique way. Listen or read the transcript below:

Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone. It's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of IT with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it, including where you can get a digital or print copy over on adatosystems.com. Thanks!

Destiny: 00:24 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Destiny: 00:48 Hey, I just got this great new ebook this week.

Doug: 00:51 No, no, no. I got this great new book.

Kate: 00:53 Wait a minute. Did Leon send you a copy of his book, too?

Leon: 00:58 Hey everyone!

Destiny: 00:59 Did you set up a whole podcast just to talk about your ebook?

Leon: 01:04 Maaaaaaaybe?

Doug: 01:06 Wow. That is both lame and kind of brilliant.

Kate: 01:09 aaaaand we're off!

Leon: 01:11 Okay. I admit it, I admit it. But it does fit, right? Technically Religious is a podcast about the merger between our religious lives and our technical lives and the book, you know, The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Going to Get Asked is kind of that right?

Destiny: 01:32 Definitely.

Doug: 01:33 Which came first, this podcast or the book cause it sounds, it's a real similar kind of a set up when you think about it.

Leon: 01:44 The answer is both. Uh, The Four Questions has been something that I've talked around and about for over two and a half years. And as a joke it's just sort of an inside joke I've been talking about since I've been doing monitoring. Um, because it is a thing, at least in my head, it's a thing. So the podcast really came out of conversations with Josh Biggley and myself about religious synergy and again about the overlap between our religious and and technical lives. And the decision to write the book probably started about two years ago. I've been working on it on and off. So they both sort of arose from the same desire to share that worldview, but they came out in slightly different ways.

Destiny: 02:32 and I think they came out because of in our work life. And you know, in general we write a lot and you've seen the questions and you've seen a lot of the user interaction and customer needs. And I feel like it's kind of a good thing because you've waited just long enough to understand those needs so that you can answer them.

Leon: 02:48 Right when I, yeah, I started to have like a full, a full story and some of the talking, honestly, some of the discussions I've had in synagogue, I'm trying to explain what do during the week to people. Um, that also sparked a lot of ideas. And so the four questions is really, like I said, this inside joke because during Passover, which is actually the holiday, we're in the middle of when this podcast is airing during the, the service or the, the meal, the youngest kid at the table asks these four questions, it starts off "why is tonight different from all other nights?" And, but there are these four s