Thread by @QuinnyPig

I'm tempted to do a Twitch livestream or something, but I feel old so instead this may be a very sad Twitter thread...

"Welcome to the island" says AWS Mustache. "On behalf of @awscloud, I mustache what you're doing here."

"As a new member of our IT staff, we invite you to do a speedrun through getting fired for making changes without management approval."

"We assume we own people rather than employ them. Here's your assignment, you fungible meat robot who cries."

"Ade is here to help you get started." As we walk over to where we begin, we take turns shit-talking AWS services, our manager, and the city mayor. Ade and I have instantly become work besties.

"Basic @awscloud solutions" says Ade, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

Later we'll bond further over googling "How to Start a Union."

"Search for solutions." Ah, the engineering siren song. We don't have a problem statement or definition yet, but enough boring stuff, THERE IS COMPUTERING TO DO!

This may be the first time in sixteen years that AWS outwardly gave a toss what anything looked like. See: their console, marketing pages, logo, the eyes of burned out employees, etc.

import {skin} from './CulturalAppropriation.js';

There appear to be squirrels on my face. I'll fit right in with the rest of City IT!

I'm trying and failing to imagine someone attempting to use their credit card number as a username here...

Yup, dead eyes. PERFECT!

"Here, I have inscrutable tasks for you." Sweet, I'm here for it.

I'm worried that this is how Amazon believes employees actually talk.

"Well I dunno, Dude With No Name; have you considered not buying servers from the lowest bidder eBay has to offer?"

I didn't realize I was working on sales commission here. Hey @awscloud, we should talk!

"Oh, it's very simple! You just hand your wallet to @awscloud. When the money runs out, tell them to start on the credit cards."

Behind him Ade motions for me to keep him talking as she stealthily cuts his brake cables.

"What about what I forget to turn off?" he replies.

"...I... don't have a talking point for that," I sweat.

Honest answer: depends upon the day.

"Imagine," I say, "if every yabbo in City IT could provision a server at a whim without asking for approval."

"Seems like I might have problems at the end of the month with the bill?" he responds.

"I assure you you will not" I say guilelessly as Ade finishes with his brakes.

"You... do get that you don't have to put the servers in a tide pool themselves, right?"

Pro Tip: When someone mentions a terrifying workflow, the correct answer is 'explain to me what you're trying to achieve.' It is NOT a deep dive into technical implementation details.

"What does that mean?"

"It means you're going to get a bunch of scary alerts in your AWS console and a steady stream of emails from @awscloud warning you about it for the rest of your life" I reply.

Given that his life expectancy at this point is "Tuesday" I think that's fair.

"They're avoiding-- Are you-- Look, just reassure me that there are no sharp objects allowed in this town, okay? I don't trust any of you people as far as I can comfortably spit a rat."

Ade is playing it straight. So am I, after she cuts her eyes over to the @awscloud Employee Surveillance Camera, now with Machine Learning®.

Ah, the @awscloud Learn --> Plan --> Practice --> GFY pipeline.

"Here's an @awscloud account for your use" says Ade, completely straightfaced.

I honestly don't know how she does it; both of us know damned well that what I'm about to do will be visible from orbit on the Amazon quarterly earnings report.

"Didn't you just tell that guy that AWS resources provisioned basically instantly?"

"Did he *really* strike you as someone you want to spend more time talking with, Ade?"

And suddenly there it is; one of the most beautiful things I've seen in ages.

Someone at @awscloud was clearly not born yesterday.

But neither was I.

This is about to be a testament to me that lasts into eternity if someone at @awscloud didn't get the permissions right.

Someone was paying attention.

...but not that much attention. Fails in regions that aren't us-east-1 because of course. And that's a veritable eyesore of @awscloud warnings.

Huzza, the website is (temporarily) working at …ss.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/waves.html

Dear god this chunderpony is "Mayor Jack."

Global warming can't come fast enough for this seaside community full of clueless luddites.

"You want me to... design the style for your lighthouse?"

"Yeah, @awscloud marketing took a stab at it and came out with something way, way, WAY too phallic."

Each one of these @awscloud lighthouses is chock-full of ways to run containers.

And I think that's enough Cloud Learning for me for one evening. Feedback welcome on how to make this more engaging / entertaining...