blog: tarot for hackers (#64)

* blog: tarot for hackers

* lol my markdown engine is broke

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+title: Tarot for Hackers
+date: 2019-07-24
+---
+
+# Tarot for Hackers
+
+"Oh no, she's finally lost it" were the words a very close friend of mine said 
+when I first told her I was experimenting with reading tarot cards. Tarot cards
+are a stereotypical staple of the occult/The Spoop™. Every card represents an 
+idea (or a meme) that can be expressed in a few ways. They act to your soul 
+like iron filings do to a magnet. When you shuffle the cards, the Universe (via 
+entropy) examines all of those myriad inputs and helpfully orders them so you 
+get exactly the message you need most.
+
+It's actually an extremely philosophical act to draw from a tarot deck and 
+interpret the results. Over the years there have been many interpretations and 
+frameworks of interpretations about tarot; but I would like to introduce a 
+meta-framework for using tarot cards as a debugging tool.
+
+As you work on computer systems, you put parts of yourself into them. You 
+create bonds between yourself and otherwise anonymous inner parts of machines you
+have never seen or touched. These bonds stick from idea to development to 
+testing to deployment phases and can even stay around after you stop working on
+something. Ever gotten a weird sense that you can recognize the author of some
+code while reading it? Same idea.
+
+To start, envision the product or service you are trying to understand more 
+about. Think of the plans that went into it, the users of the service, how this
+understanding will help them, and where the missing part of knowledge fits into
+the larger whole. Write this all out if it helps, the more detail the better. 
+Our transition to shared infrastructure and computing on others machines has 
+made it harder to see into individual parts of the whole, so every little bit 
+helps to focus things in.
+
+The first card is the Motive, so draw it and place it in the center off your 
+spread. Look up the meaning on a site like biddytarot.com (googling "[name of 
+card] tarot meaning" helps a lot here) and consider how it relates back to the 
+other factors at play.
+
+The second card is the Facet, or the part of the system that is failing. This 
+could refer to a machine, bit of code or even a human factor. Context with the
+future cards will help you determine what it is. Remember these are metaphors 
+and will need some interpretation to help you understand what is going on.
+
+The third card is the Immediate Past, or what changed to cause this problem. Use 
+this with the Motive to help you identify what component is broken. Again, this 
+is a metaphor. There are very rarely literal answers here, but the combination 
+of the Facet and Immediate Past helps you identify the systemic or 
+organizational faults at play. These faults are usually enough to help you 
+uniquely identify services or infrastructure.
+
+Next, draw The Action. This card will help you decide what action you need to 
+take. This could be restarting a server, fixing a communication pattern (or 
+lack thereof), or even just doing nothing and waiting a few minutes. Sometimes 
+it means that you need to stop what you are doing and try to do the read again 
+later. It's okay for that to happen, though that should only be a very rare 
+occurrence.
+
+The next card is The Result, or what the outcome of that would be given The 
+Action is executed in its entirety. This result isn't supposed to be taken super
+seriously (as the consequence of you reading these cards is a butterfly effect
+that makes the outcome in "reality" slightly different); but it usually helps 
+you get a general idea of where you will go and what it will be like when you 
+get there. 
+
+Finally, draw The Lesson. This card signifies what the theme of the postmortem 
+around The Action should be. This can help you guide future discussions about 
+what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future. This may result in charged 
+feelings, but it really is for the best to go through the entire postmortem 
+process to help you get the closure that you need. This postmortem will 
+usually help bring things to the surface that you have missed before. There 
+should be no blame or anger. This is a place of healing and growth, not of hate
+and strife.
+
+Optionally you can draw The Metaresult, or what will happen as a result of The 
+Lesson. This isn't strictly required but I find it can help for peeking into a 
+potential future where The Result is taken to heart.
+
+I hope this is able to help you in your debugging needs. I use this strategy 
+when I am trying to understand complicated computer systems and how they all 
+fit together. Be well.
+