John Willis

And now for something completely different.

Anybody seen this movie? Yeah. The old fat guy that goes back to school, right? And he causes all sorts of chaos and hijinks and comedy, and he's pretty funny, and all that good stuff.

So here's the thing. In Georgia, at 62, you can go to any state school for free. So my goal is to go to Georgia Tech in about three more years. Now, it's going to be hard, and I'm going to need your help, but it's really cool.

Now my son goes there, and so my wife is going to be really pissed, so we got to sell more handbooks, because it's free, but I need dorm and drinking beers. So triple down. Community, right? I need community help here.

I took the SAT in 1975. It sucked. So I'm going to take the ACT this time, and I'm told I got to get a 34 on the math. So I need your help here too, because I haven't touched calculus in like, I don't know, 35, 40 years. So again, community.

They say you might need references to get into college. So John's already in, right, John? He's here. Topo, if you're out there, I need you. Dominica, no problem. And Paul, yes, no problem there. And then worst case, I'll get Gene.

And then my essay's going to be awesome. Isn't my essay going to be cool? I'm going to blow away those other freshmen. Like, "I was at Ubuntu in the first private cloud. I was the first in on Docker. And then I did this DevOps thing too, by the way."

The dorm is going to be an issue. So I'm going Dangerfield on this one. I'm going to just knock down non-load-bearing walls, create a stage, music. It's going to be fun. It's going to be crazy stuff. Music, all sorts of crazy.

Now there's this thing they call FAFSA. When my son went there, all I remember is every hour I got yelled at because I couldn't remember what the acronym was. Like, "Okay, everybody, what's the acronym?" Like, "Shit." I asked my wife, "Did you know it?" So this time I'm going to know it, and I'm going to be on the other side.

Here's the other thing. Georgia Tech, everybody makes the marching band. And their marching band is crazy. My son's in there. It's jalopies. The tuba guys are crazy. I think there's cool partying.

But here's the thing: I need an instrument, because they won't take guitar. Now my go-to would be a sax, but here's the thing: my wife's not digging this whole thing, and me practicing the sax for the next three years is not going to be cool. So I'm going flute. I think I'll be all right here. All right?

They say Physics 2211 is the Grim Reaper for freshmen, and I don't know a goddamn thing about physics. So again, I know a lot of you guys and gals have physics degrees. I'm going to need your help. Community effort.

Now this one, I'm going to get an A. I'm totally getting an A in this class. Right? Come on now. Theory of constraints. And worst case, Gene will come and do a guest lecture and I'll at least get an extra grade point, right? So that one's good.

Now this guy's in deep trouble, because my first question to class is, "Why in the hell didn't you use Python?" And it's going to go right down from there, right? And then when I argue about arrays and buffers and buffer overflows, like F.

Now here's the other problem. My younger son is a freshman, and he wants to go to Georgia Tech, so he can't figure out whether I'm serious or not. So he's panicking, "Dad, come on." I'm like, "Son, we could do it together. We could be roommates."

And then I'm going to have to get an internship. Jason, where you at, bud? Disney. I am going to be the coolest kid. I'm going to intern at Disney. I'm going to be awesome. Jason's going to hook me up. I'm almost positive.

Now the fraternity stuff, I don't know. There's a lot of bad press on fraternities. I might rush. They do some crappy stuff there. You got to go pick up all the cups after the football game. These young kids are going to be yelling at me, and I'm like, "I could be older than your grandfather."

Now I did learn something. Plan, do, check, act. So Damon helped me with this one. Because I'm going to plan, don't study, cram, and then ace the test, and just keep that in a virtuous cycle. I think I'll be all right. I don't know. I'm going for a gentleman's C here, so I'm okay.

Clubs. I don't know. The clubs, maybe the boxing club, the scuba club, the hunting club, the computer club. I'm definitely going to do a club, I think. You guys have been to college, right? I haven't, so I don't know.

But you know what? Probably because my wife is going to be so furious, I'm going to do the ballroom dancing, because she's always complaining I never dance with her at weddings. So this will be the, "Hey, honey, I learned how to dance." We'll see what happens.

One thing I definitely know for sure is that if I get through this gauntlet, we are going to party like there's no tomorrow at DevOps Summit 2024. Drinks are on me.