Michael Stanclifthttps://vmstan.com/https://vmstan.com/cashflow-positive/https://vmstan.com/cashflow-positive/August was the first month in over three years I didn't get a massive Digital Ocean invoice for Mastodon hosting.Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/format-change/https://vmstan.com/format-change/Virtually Benevolent has moved from Ghost to Astro, trading ActivityPub and a database-backed system for Markdown, static files, and simpler publishing.Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/winding-down/https://vmstan.com/winding-down/The final days of the vmst.io Mastodon instance, including what happens when it enters federation self-destruct mode on June 30, 2026.Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:58:55 GMThttps://vmstan.com/deprecation-notice/https://vmstan.com/deprecation-notice/After nearly four years, the vmst.io Mastodon instance will shut down on June 30, 2026. What is changing, and what users need to do.Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:03:39 GMThttps://vmstan.com/3pap/https://vmstan.com/3pap/A short, self-incriminating dialogue with my wife about why one person could possibly need three CPAP machines.Mon, 07 Jul 2025 21:11:37 GMThttps://vmstan.com/ecobee/https://vmstan.com/ecobee/My new Ecobee's air quality sensor insists I live inside a volcano. Comparing its wild VOC readings against my Eve sensors and the raw API.Thu, 22 May 2025 14:34:44 GMThttps://vmstan.com/sleep-apnea/https://vmstan.com/sleep-apnea/A visit to the ENT for tonsil stones turned into a snoring complaint, an at-home sleep study, and a sleep apnea diagnosis.Mon, 22 May 2023 14:58:27 GMThttps://vmstan.com/classic-ordering/https://vmstan.com/classic-ordering/A curated starter list of classic Star Trek episodes for getting up to speed without watching every Original Series installment.Tue, 18 Apr 2023 14:37:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/gravity-sync/https://vmstan.com/gravity-sync/How a quick hack to keep two Pi-hole instances in sync grew into Gravity Sync, a small tool for high-availability Pi-hole setups.Wed, 20 May 2020 19:01:22 GMThttps://vmstan.com/resume-deletions/https://vmstan.com/resume-deletions/Some jobs are not worth a line on your resume, like the woodworking-tool company that announced it was out of money on my first day.Mon, 13 Jan 2020 16:24:06 GMThttps://vmstan.com/skip-day/https://vmstan.com/skip-day/It turns out finding something to write every day is genuinely hard. A few honest words about breaking a daily posting streak.Mon, 06 Jan 2020 23:03:12 GMThttps://vmstan.com/nonsense-awareness/https://vmstan.com/nonsense-awareness/Borrowing a lesson from Jessica Joy Kerr: stop trying to make sense of an organization's culture, and learn to observe and work within it.Sat, 04 Jan 2020 01:18:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/thirty-eight-k/https://vmstan.com/thirty-eight-k/A story about impostor syndrome, negotiating salaries badly, and the $38k university job where I had no concept of my own worth.Thu, 02 Jan 2020 21:05:07 GMThttps://vmstan.com/resolution-delusion/https://vmstan.com/resolution-delusion/Not a fan of New Year's resolutions, but Brent Simmons' goal of getting angry only when it is truly worth it is one worth borrowing.Wed, 01 Jan 2020 22:52:10 GMThttps://vmstan.com/feeling-helpless/https://vmstan.com/feeling-helpless/A personal account of the workplace meeting where six years of service, and my mental health, were met with disbelief and a door pointed toward the exit.Tue, 28 May 2019 18:42:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/kernel-panic/https://vmstan.com/kernel-panic/A personal essay, two years in the making, about the day my mind ran out of resources and threw a kernel panic.Fri, 19 Apr 2019 21:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/excess-battery/https://vmstan.com/excess-battery/Using the iPhone XS Smart Battery Case on an iPhone X: what fits, what does not, and whether the cosmetic compromises actually matter.Tue, 22 Jan 2019 16:44:19 GMThttps://vmstan.com/certified-expert/https://vmstan.com/certified-expert/Passing the VMware VCAP6.5-DCD at last, and how the 6.5 exam improved on the 6.0 beta I first attempted years earlier.Fri, 27 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/vmware-tam/https://vmstan.com/vmware-tam/Accepting a role at VMware as a Technical Account Manager, joining the company I had spent most of my career focused on.Tue, 01 May 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/blueberry-lover/https://vmstan.com/blueberry-lover/What wearing my blue VMware certification shirt says about me at work, and the conversations it tends to start.Sun, 22 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/define-essential/https://vmstan.com/define-essential/Rolling back from an unstable iOS 11 beta meant a fresh install and lost Apple Watch data, and rethinking what is essential to back up.Sat, 22 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/reasonable-salary/https://vmstan.com/reasonable-salary/On the peculiar, secret-agent stress of job hunting while still employed, and finally accepting a position I was genuinely excited about.Sat, 10 Jun 2017 15:28:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/beginnings-end/https://vmstan.com/beginnings-end/Giving notice after six years as a VAR data center engineer, and looking back on the 242 customers I helped along the way.Mon, 22 May 2017 16:19:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/choosing-electives/https://vmstan.com/choosing-electives/After two draining months, a hard look at how much social media was fueling the stress, and what stepping back from Twitter taught me.Thu, 30 Mar 2017 22:59:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/emc-elected/https://vmstan.com/emc-elected/The surprise of finding my name on the EMC Elect list, and some thoughts on what these vendor influencer programs are really for.Thu, 30 Mar 2017 17:30:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/neowin-retrospective/https://vmstan.com/neowin-retrospective/Before 'vmstan' there was 'Marshalus': looking back on being hired as a teenage gaming news reporter covering Microsoft at Neowin.Mon, 13 Feb 2017 17:58:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/leather-wrapped/https://vmstan.com/leather-wrapped/An on-again, off-again relationship with iPhone cases, and why Apple's own leather case is the only one I keep coming back to.Thu, 08 Dec 2016 19:57:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/pant-lover/https://vmstan.com/pant-lover/A very specific quest for work pants that look sharp in a morning meeting and survive crawling under a raised floor that afternoon.Wed, 07 Dec 2016 19:40:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/securely-obscure/https://vmstan.com/securely-obscure/A network security architect once told me the cloud would soon put me out of a job. Years later, a look back at that prediction.Mon, 05 Dec 2016 15:17:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/vcsa-migration/https://vmstan.com/vcsa-migration/My first Windows-to-appliance vCenter migration using the 6.0 U2M tool, including the step upgrades needed to get there from 5.1 GA.Fri, 02 Dec 2016 20:21:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/raid-crash/https://vmstan.com/raid-crash/Designing an all-in-one Cisco UCS C240 M4 full of SSD and spindles for a VMware Horizon View proof of concept, and the RAID layout behind it.Wed, 30 Nov 2016 16:34:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/16gb-problems/https://vmstan.com/16gb-problems/Apple finally killed the 16GB storage floor, then shipped a new MacBook Pro capped at 16GB of memory. A look at why Skylake forced that tradeoff.Fri, 28 Oct 2016 15:58:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/mobile-advantaged/https://vmstan.com/mobile-advantaged/AT&T's improved data plans, examined line by line, and why the new pricing tiers left me paying more rather than less.Thu, 18 Aug 2016 19:44:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/apple-tv/https://vmstan.com/apple-tv/Second-guessing, then buying, the fourth-generation Apple TV, and what I still want from Apple as a cord-cutter.Tue, 01 Dec 2015 19:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/size-matters/https://vmstan.com/size-matters/After insisting Apple should never build a phone bigger than four inches, here is what finally converted me to the iPhone 6 Plus.Tue, 01 Dec 2015 16:36:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/neil-mcneill/https://vmstan.com/neil-mcneill/A tribute to Neil McNeill, the most interesting man I knew, who could discuss corporate taxation and lithium batteries in the same breath.Thu, 08 Oct 2015 17:07:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/rash-judgement/https://vmstan.com/rash-judgement/A worsening rash under my Apple Watch turned out to be a nickel allergy. What I learned about the stainless steel sport band clasp.Tue, 22 Sep 2015 15:20:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/java-jive/https://vmstan.com/java-jive/Checking out a new neighborhood coffee shop that promised organic, fair-trade coffee at some of the lowest prices around.Fri, 31 Jul 2015 19:17:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/apple-watch/https://vmstan.com/apple-watch/Working through which original Apple Watch to buy, weighing steel against aluminum and which band survives life in a datacenter.Mon, 09 Mar 2015 19:37:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/fewer-fucks/https://vmstan.com/fewer-fucks/On Mark Manson's essay about caring about fewer things, and learning to spend a limited supply of caring on what actually matters.Sun, 01 Feb 2015 16:28:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/bird-bath/https://vmstan.com/bird-bath/The turkey brine recipe I keep coming back to, adapted from Traeger and boiled down to the essentials.Wed, 26 Nov 2014 22:20:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/desktop-tested/https://vmstan.com/desktop-tested/A Monday-morning VCAP Desktop Administration exam I walked into unprepared, and the honest post-mortem on why I will sit it again.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 20:10:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/facebooked-out/https://vmstan.com/facebooked-out/Another attempt at quitting Facebook, why the last one only lasted a few weeks, and what 24 hours away feels like at thirty.Mon, 30 Jun 2014 00:55:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/guided-powers/https://vmstan.com/guided-powers/The part of datacenter design nobody mentions until it bites you: power. A crash course in connectors, voltages, and amperage for admins.Fri, 16 May 2014 04:08:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/advanced-administrator/https://vmstan.com/advanced-administrator/Reflections on sitting the VMware VCAP5-DCA, an entirely lab-based exam unlike any other in the VMware certification portfolio.Thu, 13 Feb 2014 16:21:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/upgrade-lottery/https://vmstan.com/upgrade-lottery/A weekend of stacked vCenter, ESXi, and Horizon View upgrades that all went off without a single support call.Mon, 13 Jan 2014 18:01:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/objective-complete/https://vmstan.com/objective-complete/Finishing the Cisco Data Center certification track, and setting my sights on the CCNP Data Center and VCAP-DCA next.Sat, 04 Jan 2014 23:59:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/associated-objectives/https://vmstan.com/associated-objectives/Spending a two-week holiday break heads-down studying for the Cisco CCNA Data Center exams instead of finishing CCNA Routing and Switching.Fri, 20 Dec 2013 19:31:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/new-recruit-er/https://vmstan.com/new-recruit-er/Having never needed a technical recruiter to find work, some candid thoughts on what they do and the mixed results I have watched.Thu, 19 Dec 2013 03:22:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/solutions-specialist/https://vmstan.com/solutions-specialist/Finally sitting the EMC Isilon Solutions Specialist exam months after the training, back when the certification barely existed yet.Mon, 14 Oct 2013 16:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/longer-titles/https://vmstan.com/longer-titles/A little shameless self-promotion: a new Sr. Systems Engineer title and passing the first exam on the way to my CCNA.Fri, 05 Jul 2013 16:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/fearful-coaching/https://vmstan.com/fearful-coaching/A reflection on watching my wife endure birth trauma and postpartum depression, and the unspoken toll it takes on partners too.Sun, 30 Jun 2013 02:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/round-robin/https://vmstan.com/round-robin/A quick PowerCLI script to switch every datastore on every host in a vSphere cluster to Round Robin multipathing.Wed, 26 Jun 2013 16:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/vexpert-2013/https://vmstan.com/vexpert-2013/Being named a 2013 VMware vExpert came as a genuine surprise, so much so that I had pre-written the opposite blog post just in case.Tue, 28 May 2013 16:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/changing-things/https://vmstan.com/changing-things/VMware reshuffles its certification names and logos again, turning the VCP-DV into the VCP-DCV just as I was ready to reprint business cards.Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/using-cdp/https://vmstan.com/using-cdp/Adding a VLAN to a customer's vSphere cluster, and using CDP to map exactly which physical switch ports each host connects to.Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/host-memory/https://vmstan.com/host-memory/Three ways to find out exactly how a VMware host's memory is laid out on the motherboard before you spend money upgrading it.Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/little-megabits/https://vmstan.com/little-megabits/A field example of what not to do with VMware networking, from 100mb links to single-vNIC vSwitches sharing management and VM traffic.Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/view-borked/https://vmstan.com/view-borked/A baffling '32-bit application' error while installing the vCenter Operations Manager adapter for View, on a 64-bit app and OS.Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/vmug-conference/https://vmstan.com/vmug-conference/A full-day Kansas City VMUG event headlined by Steve Wozniak, and why it earned its VMworld-like reputation.Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/steve-jobs/https://vmstan.com/steve-jobs/Remembering Steve Jobs as the rare inventor and salesman whose name, a century from now, will sit alongside Edison and the Wright brothers.Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/at-amp-t-fun/https://vmstan.com/at-amp-t-fun/Six months of broken DVRs, frozen TV, and dropping internet on AT&T U-verse, and the late-night failure that finally broke my patience.Wed, 27 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/phone-stress/https://vmstan.com/phone-stress/Why I am rooting for the rumored Verizon iPhone even though I am a satisfied AT&T customer with no plans to switch.Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/commitment-issues/https://vmstan.com/commitment-issues/One month after switching to the Nexus One and praising it, I sold it and went back to the iPhone 4. Here is what changed my mind.Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/after-ios/https://vmstan.com/after-ios/Why years of iPhone loyalty ended with the iPhone 4's antenna troubles, and what pushed me to try Android on the Nexus One.Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/switch-hitter/https://vmstan.com/switch-hitter/Two years an iPhone evangelist, and why the iPhone 4 finally has me seriously considering a switch away from iOS.Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/lazy-explorers/https://vmstan.com/lazy-explorers/A blunt take on the administrators still running Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP, and why 'it breaks our apps' is not good enough.Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMThttps://vmstan.com/local-admin/https://vmstan.com/local-admin/The perennial IT debate over giving users local administrator rights, and the two schools of thought that never quite agree.Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT