jr conlin's ink stained banana

So, stemming from my departure from Twitter, i decided to go for the third phase of being on Mastodon, and set up my own server. Mastodon is interesting because it’s pretty much like email. This may become a problem in the future, but i also tend to post a lot and have a fair bit of media in my posts, so paying for a server instead of just dropping a few coins in someone else’s bucket seemed like a fairer option.

(Even though i said i would never set up a server because “who wants to deal with that nightmare”?)

## The failed attempt

The first try was… not successful. i still don’t quite know why. i got an instance, and tried doing a docker-compose style install. Everything mostly went correctly, except that i could never properly federate. Requests would go out, and remote hosts would sometimes get them, but no approval responses would return. There were many rabbit holes to be fallen into, and i’ve seem to have found most of them.

Realizing that my life should be more than debugging this one, particular instance, i decided to try again on a different service.

## The successful attempt.

DigitalOcean offers a “1-click” setup for Mastodon. It’s more than one click.

i won’t go into to the same detail as many of the step-by-step guides, but here are some bits of guidance for the things not covered in the tutorials. (These are also here for my benefit, if i need to do this again.)

• i probably over provisioned. My “free”-ish failed attempt was going to cost me about $20 a month to run. Using that as a guideline, i picked a config that has 2vCPUs, 2GB of memory and 60GB of drive space, which should run me about $18 a month. (i’ll update this later to show actual cost.) Rather nicely, DigitalOcean appears to automatically update packages on initial install, but looks like i’ll need to rig up an automatic package updater, or just add it to my list of machines to manually update.
• Since my image has 60GB of storage, i didn’t get any additional block storage. (Block storage is added as a disk to the image, so you’d need to do some work to wire it into your mastodon configuration.)
• i also made sure to load up my dev public SSH key so that no root password login was possible.
• i followed the getting started steps for the app. i was a bit surprised about you SSH in as “root”, but i’m sure they have their reasons.
• Once i verified that things are working, i copied the ~mastodon/.env.production file to my local machine for archiving purposes.
• After that, i set about updating the droplet’s Mastodon 3 version to Mastodon 4 using this very well written guide.
• That done and proofed, i set about looking at pre-banning the nazis. This page lists a number of bad actors as well as some moderation automation tooling. i’m currently looking at integrating the Hackyderm Admin Blocklist tool, but i just sorta cheated and added the initial batch by hand.

Hopefully things work. FWIW, i don’t really have any plans on letting folk join my instance, mostly because of the HUGE increase in work being an admin entails. Right now, it’s a toy for me to amuse myself with, and i might go back to using a proper server in the future (that’s why i generally maintain older accounts).

Right, just so this is official and trackable.

i’m no longer on Twitter.

i closed my account tonight and will have nothing more to do with that site.

i’m on Mastodon, currently. You can check my network page for how to reach me, or just go to https://jrconlin.com/mastodon

Hey Elon, i’d tell you to turn the lights off before you leave, but that might require you getting someone to tell you how they work.

i should probably spend a few minutes outlining what i think mentoring is.

Mentoring is the long term sharing knowledge and experience with the goal of making life easier for the recipient.

If you’re only doing it once, you’re not mentoring. That’s a lecture.
If you’re not invested in the improvements of the folks you’re helping, you’re not mentoring. You’re preaching.
If you’re just pointing out flaws or trying to make someone change, that’s not mentoring. That’s coaching.

Mentoring is work. Being mentored is also work. For what it’s worth, i consider mentoring to be a bit holistic. If someone is struggling, it’s important to recognize why they might be struggling. Perhaps it’s a language or context issue (not everyone has the same background or experiences, so it might require doing some research to find the right way to express an idea so that it’s understood). Perhaps it’s a non-technical issue (perhaps they’re stressed about a personal issue. These can be tricky, and you should never delve into those uninvited, but letting someone know what you can do to help can be a huge relief).

When i mentor someone my goal is to make their life better. i teach technical approaches because i’m an engineer, but i also advise things about career growth, office politics, and other hard lessons i suffered through. The last thing i want is for anyone i’m mentoring to hit the same walls and fall into the same traps as i did. Likewise, i’m actually interested in their experiences and thoughts. Everyone has a different background and expertise. i want to learn about it because it’s different and there might be valuable things i can learn.

Honestly, if i’m not learning as much as i’m teaching, there’s a problem.

So, how does one set up a mentoring relationship?

A colleague pointed out that a good relationship starts with a mutual objective. So, a senior engineer would want to mentor a junior one if they’re both working on a given project. This makes good sense, purely from a practical point of view. The faster you can turn someone into a peer, the less work you have on your plate. Likewise, you now have someone you’re comfortable reviewing your code so you can work faster. If you’re afraid that someone is “going to steal your job”, you’re thinking too small. Instead, you’re building your own tiny army of folk that will support each other.

That’s actually a really important side benefit to good mentorship, the trust relationship you establish via mentorship can easily outlast your immediate employment. One of you might get a better job, or get laid off, or any number of other things. Maintaining that relationship means that you will have a personal network that will be looking out for each other, and possibly lining up folks for good jobs (and future hiring bonuses). Likewise, you’ll have third party folk that can give you honest answer to “Hey, so i’ve been asked to XYZ, and i’m not sure it’s a good idea.” It’s a lot easier to be ethical if you’re not as worried about having food and shelter.

It’s also worth noting that having a good mentor can sometimes help correct bad management. A manager may be temporary and a mentor may well outlive a managers role. To that end, a mentor may be able to guide an employee in ways that a manager never would. A mentor may point out other, better opportunities, which might mean that the mentee leaves their current team. A mentor may pass along crucial information that a manager may not feel is important, or may be damaging to the manager’s ego.

A good mentoring relationship may continue for quite some time, spanning teams, divisions, or even companies. Honestly, one of the most damaging things i’ve seen in tech is treating other company employees as “The Enemy”. Sorry, no, they’re not. You may be competing against them, and there may be good reasons to be guarded about speaking with them about your work, but in a week, you might be working with them or they with you. In sports a player may be traded from one team to the next. That never diminishes the athletic prowess of a given player, just what clothes he has to regularly wear.

Your employer will never love you back. However, you can still build lasting networks among the people you worked with. Mentoring can be part of that. Ideally, every one i mentor eventually grows into becoming a mentor themselves.

And that’s part of my Evil Plan on how to make the tech industry better.