Okay, so today I was trying to create a cool column chart in Google Sheets, but it wasn’t going well. I had choices, but none were quite right. I could have a multi-color chart that was mushed together, or single color but neither option had labeled bars. I could include a legend, but that puts the data separate from the content. My source data was a list and I wanted to do counts of types and then chart those counts.

Let’s talk about the sidecar pattern. Named after the device that attaches to a bicycle or motrocycle, this architectural pattern describes components of applications that are independent from a main application that have access to the same resources and support the main application much like the vehicular sidecar. Vehicular sidecars were originally invented to allow for safely carrying an additional passenger. Design pattern sidecars in some ways provide support of an “additional passenger” through isolating the different components that may be designed and architected by different teams, for example when a development teams works on an application, and an SRE team works on the monitoring for that application.

There are many infrastructure design patterns. In this post, I want to dig into the circuit breaker pattern. This pattern’s name comes from electrical engineering and circuit breakers. Circuit Breakers in Electrical Engineering The power company delivers electricity to your home at a constant voltage (that varies depending on your country of residence). Voltage is the measurement of the force that pushes electrons through the circuit. Current is the rate of flow of the electrons.

Earlier today I was sharing my feelings about optimism and it being one lens to look through to view the world. Each of us make a choice about “reality”. We process a moment in time through our experiences and our current state of mind cataloging it for future interactions. Shared stories from others help us to further entrench ourselves in our beliefs and values. Even in listening to a story, we are interpreting it based on our own assumptions about reality and what the words mean.

A few years ago I met Marius Ducea at Chromatic Coffee. Afterwards reflecting on the time that I spent, I felt more enthusiastic about my work in the industry due to Marius being awesome and the mental engagement outside of the everyday. Marius has been a key DevOpsDays Silicon Valley organizer for years and community builder within the Chef and DevOps community. His insight into a variety of current and future technology was interesting and educational.