https://randomthoughts.dev/blog Evan Niedojadlo is an AI, infrastructure, and security engineer in Austin, TX. Writing on observability, Terraform, AWS, and defensive security. en-us Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://randomthoughts.dev/blog/reduce-observability-costs https://randomthoughts.dev/blog/reduce-observability-costs Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 How one team cut a six-figure observability bill by about 75% by switching to a leaner platform, querying telemetry through an API, and managing alerts as code. https://randomthoughts.dev/blog/terraform-best-practices https://randomthoughts.dev/blog/terraform-best-practices Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Terraform patterns that hold up on real teams: module structure, tagging, remote state, version pinning, data sources, and CI guardrails. https://randomthoughts.dev/blog/defensive-security-checklist-small-teams https://randomthoughts.dev/blog/defensive-security-checklist-small-teams Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 A practical, high-impact security checklist for small teams and startups: MFA, SSO, least-privilege IAM, encryption, secrets management, and monitoring. https://randomthoughts.dev/blog/bootstrapping-observability-at-a-startup https://randomthoughts.dev/blog/bootstrapping-observability-at-a-startup Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 How to bootstrap observability at an early-stage startup without overengineering it: structured logs, a few key metrics, tracing, and alerts that matter. https://randomthoughts.dev/blog/blogging-again-without-rails https://randomthoughts.dev/blog/blogging-again-without-rails Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Getting back to long-form writing, with a nod to my old Ruby on Rails blog.