Hello, World (Slowly)

Every blog starts with a “hello world” post. Mine is no different. But here’s the thing: I’ve been thinking about writing this for about eighteen months.

That’s on brand.

Why “Verbose Snail”?

The name came from a code review comment years ago. A colleague said my infrastructure runbooks were “verbose, but thorough — like a snail that writes documentation.”

I took it as a compliment. I still do.

The internet rewards speed. Hot takes, quick threads, real-time reactions. I’m not interested in competing on that axis. I’d rather write something once, carefully, and have it be worth reading six months later.

What you’ll find here

Mostly technical writing — infrastructure, cloud architecture, reliability engineering. Occasionally something about management or how teams actually work at scale.

I work at the intersection of infrastructure and leadership, which means I spend a lot of time translating between “how computers work” and “how organizations work.” I find both endlessly interesting and frequently maddening.

The technical stack (since you’re probably curious)

This blog is built with Astro 5 and Tailwind CSS 4, hosted on Firebase. The source is on GitHub. The content lives in MDX files — Markdown with the ability to embed custom components like those callout boxes above.

It’s fast, it’s static, and it requires zero JavaScript to read a post. I like those properties.

What comes next

I’ve got a queue of posts that have been sitting in draft form for too long. Here’s what I’m working toward:

• A deep-dive into GCP network topology and how to think about it
• Why “infrastructure as code” is only half the battle
• What I’ve learned managing engineers who know more than I do

No promises on timing. The snail moves at its own pace.

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Thanks for being here. Grab the RSS feed. I’ll be writing.