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  • The Gauge and the Calendar

    The Gauge and the Calendar

    This episode explores the Twenty-four-inch Gauge — one of the earliest and most quietly profound symbols in Freemasonry — as a blueprint for surviving and thriving in modern system administration. The gauge’s ancient triad of vocation, refreshment, and service becomes a practical lens for navigating today’s impossible mix of project deadlines, user interruptions, enterprise timetables, automation demands, and mental load.

    We trace how the symbolic 8/8/8 division maps directly onto the SA’s world: focused work protected from interruption, rest defended as a prerequisite for cognitive reliability, and an ethical block of time reserved for strategy, documentation, personal growth, and helping others. Along the way, we connect the gauge to principles like conserving RAM, externalizing memory, automating repeated tasks, and carving out time for long-term improvement over perpetual tactical firefighting.

    In both Masonry and IT, time is a material you carve — not a stream you ride. This episode examines how the structure of the gauge can stabilize a chaotic profession and help every administrator build a life, and a system, that holds its shape.

    Source #1: Lecture of the First Degree of Freemasonry

    Source #2: Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas A. Limoncelli

    Check out this episode!

  • Happy Thanksgiving 2025!

    Happy Thanksgiving 2025!

    Corn, Wine, and Oil: Masonic Wages and the Spirit of Thanksgiving

    As we gather this Thanksgiving, we are called to reflect not only on material abundance but on the spiritual rewards we receive through labor, service, and fellowship. In Freemasonry, these spiritual rewards are known as the “Master’s Wages,” represented by three ancient symbols: corn, wine, and oil. These symbols offer a powerful lens for understanding the deeper meaning of thanksgiving and gratitude in our lives today.

    The Master’s Wages: Corn, Wine, and Oil

    In Masonic tradition, the Master’s Wages—corn, wine, and oil—represent the fruits of a life well-lived. Historically, these elements were actual payments to operative masons working on sacred projects like Solomon’s Temple. Over time, they evolved into spiritual symbols, each carrying lessons we can apply today, especially during Thanksgiving.

    • Corn (Grain): Symbolizes nourishment and abundance. It reminds us to be thankful for the sustenance in our lives—both physical and intellectual—and for the opportunities to grow and share with others.
    • Wine: Represents joy and inspiration. Wine encourages us to reflect on the moments of happiness, love, and celebration that have lifted our spirits throughout the year.
    • Oil: Embodies healing and peace. It teaches us to be grateful for comfort, health, and the support of those who have helped us through times of hardship.

    Together, these wages point to a life enriched not by wealth, but by meaningful work, strong relationships, and spiritual fulfillment.

    Thanksgiving and the Spirit of Gratitude

    The Thanksgiving holiday in the United States has long been a time to pause and reflect. Originating as a harvest celebration, it has become a national moment for giving thanks. This year, amid rapid changes and global challenges, the meaning of Thanksgiving feels especially poignant.

    We give thanks not only for the food on our tables but for the often-unseen blessings: the knowledge we’ve gained, the loved ones who stood by us, the resilience we’ve shown, and the kindness we’ve received. These are our modern Master’s Wages—gifts that sustain, uplift, and comfort.

    Bringing Masonic Values to Thanksgiving

    Freemasons are taught to labor with love and integrity, to seek truth, and to uplift others. These teachings align perfectly with the spirit of Thanksgiving. By applying the symbolism of corn, wine, and oil to our holiday reflections, we deepen our appreciation for what we have and renew our commitment to sharing it with others.

    • Give the corn of plenty by supporting those in need through acts of charity or service.
    • Pour the wine of joy by lifting the spirits of friends and family.
    • Offer the oil of peace by being a source of comfort and reconciliation in your community.

    A Thanksgiving Call to Reflection

    As you enjoy your Thanksgiving meal, take a moment to think beyond the table. What have been your wages this year? Not just in dollars, but in wisdom, joy, and peace? Who has helped you along the way, and who might need your support now?

    Let this Thanksgiving be more than a holiday—make it a tribute to the values we hold dear: gratitude, service, and unity. Like the cornerstone ceremonies where corn, wine, and oil are poured to sanctify new beginnings, let us consecrate this season with thanksgiving in our hearts.

    May your life be abundant with the corn of nourishment, the wine of gladness, and the oil of peace.

    Happy Thanksgiving.

    Sources:

  • From Rough Ashlar to Righteous Re-Engineer

    From Rough Ashlar to Righteous Re-Engineer

    This episode reflects on the journey from Rebellion to Responsibility, tracing how both individuals and systems evolve through disciplined self-correction. We explore the Masonic allegory of the Rough Ashlar—a person full of natural flaws—being refined into the Perfect Ashlar through the Common Gavel, symbolizing self-discipline and reflection.

    The 1980s punk scene serves as a living example of the unrefined Ashlar: a volatile system rejecting all authority. SLC Punk captures its collapse when chaos meets consequence—most tragically in Heroin Bob’s death. The Straight Edge movement emerged as a self-imposed reformation, a kind of ethical debugging through sobriety and restraint.

    Maturity, then, is Righteous Re-Engineering—transforming rebellion into mastery. When Stevo chooses law over anarchy, he embodies the truth that sustainable change requires structure. In both character and code, reliability is born not from chaos, but from conscious design.

    Source #1: Lecture of the First Degree of Freemasonry

    Source #2: The Lecture of the Second Degree of Freemasonry

    Source #3: SLC Punk! (1999)

    Source #4: Dischord Records: Ian MacKaye

    Check out this episode!

  • The Square and the Server

    The Square and the Server

    In this episode, Change Advisory Board draws a straight line from the lodge to the datacenter via the square, exploring how the symbolic working tools of Freemasonry — the gauge, gavel, square, level, plumb, compasses, and trowel — can be reinterpreted as instruments of modern Site Reliability Engineering.

    From the Entered Apprentice’s 24-inch gauge to the SRE’s time budgets and service-level objectives, each tool becomes a lens for understanding the moral and operational discipline behind reliable systems. The common gavel’s task of removing rough edges parallels how engineers refine noise from telemetry. The Fellow Craft’s square and level emerge as early templates for data integrity and fairness — the moral geometry of incident response. The plumb rule, once a test of uprightness, becomes the model for aligned observability: systems and people both measured against their true vertical.

    Finally, the Master Mason’s compasses and trowel remind us that every great system — like every enduring fraternity — is held together not by code alone but by the invisible cement of trust, accountability, and shared purpose. Observability, in this light, is not just about data; it is the moral act of ensuring that what we build is true, just, and aligned with the architecture of higher principles.

    It’s a conversation about craftsmanship in code and in character — an investigation into how the oldest working tools of humanity still guide the newest disciplines of reliability engineering.

    Source #1: The Lecture of the Second Degree of Freemasonry

    Source #2: Site Reliability Engineering edited by Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, and Niall Richard Murphy

  • The Watchtower and the Mirror

    The Watchtower and the Mirror

    This episode examines modern software maintenance practices, specifically Monitoring and Observability, through the lens of Masonic symbolism to illustrate principles of operational wisdom. Monitoring is aligned with the Watchtower, focusing on tracking real-time quantitative data about known system conditions, much like a Tiler guards a perimeter to detect anticipated problems. In contrast, Observability is compared to the All-Seeing Eye and the Mirror, representing the capacity to ask questions about a system’s inner workings to troubleshoot novel problems or “unknown unknowns.” Together, these concepts constitute the operational wisdom required by Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), which is further mapped onto the Masonic pillars of Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty to guide the pursuit of system reliability, efficiency, and continuous improvement.

    Source #1: The Lecture of the Second Degree of Freemasonry

    Source #2: Site Reliability Engineering edited by Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, and Niall Richard Murphy

  • The Trestle-board and the SLO

    The Trestle-board and the SLO

    Join us as we uncover how the timeless lessons of structure, planning, and meticulous refinement, taught within the degrees of the Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason, are utilized by modern Site Reliability Engineers (SREs). These lessons are crucial for designing, deploying, and maintaining reliable computing systems.

    What You Will Learn:
     – The Blueprint for Reliability: Adherence to Design. Discover how SREs apply the principles of the Trestle-board (used by the Master-workman to draw his designs) to their infrastructure. We discuss the foundational importance of explicit planning, focusing on translating business goals into measurable Service Level Objectives (SLOs). The goal is to build a “spiritual building” (the reliable service) that achieves figure, strength, and beauty.
     – Refining the Rough Ashlar: Eliminating Toil. Learn how the SRE mandate to eliminate toil directly mirrors the builders’ transition from the Rough Ashlar (representing a crude, imperfect state) to the Perfect Ashlar (a stone ready by the hands of the workmen). Toil is the manual, repetitive, automatable work that lacks enduring value and scales linearly with service growth. SREs dedicate their time to engineering work (at least 50% of their focus) to write software that replaces this manual labor, ensuring staff scales sublinearly with system size.
     – Searching for Truth: Mastery Through Failure. The diligent worker must search to the foundations of knowledge to find the Truth buried under error. We explore SRE’s commitment to rigorous self-assessment, particularly through blameless postmortems following significant incidents. This practice is essential for finding the root causes of failures, improving systems, and making the organization more resilient as a whole.
     – The Discipline of the Craft: Understand the emphasis SRE places on high standards for workmanship and conduct. Just as the craft requires “virtuous education”, SREs prioritize continuous learning and structured training, including studying the liberal ARTS AND SCIENCES, to master the complexity of distributed systems. We look at how practicing mental discipline, combined with preparation exercises like disaster role-playing, aids in maintaining rational, focused, and deliberate cognitive functions during emergencies.
    This episode demonstrates that whether erecting physical edifices or building the world’s largest cloud services, success hinges on meticulous execution, relentless refinement, and an unwavering commitment to quality and Fidelity.

    Source #1: Duncan’s Masonic Ritual & Monitor (1866) by Malcom C. Duncan

    Source #2: Site Reliability Engineering edited by Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, and Niall Richard Murphy