A Few Words Before We Start
Who I Am
My high school nickname was “Bear,” which is where the site gets its name. In college, my nickname was “Ah-Beh” (Uncle), which led to the pun “A-bear,” a homophone for “Ah-Beh” in Taiwanese.
After completing my military service, I spent several months studying abroad traveling in Germany, where I was deeply influenced by German pragmatism.
I am currently in my 40s, married, with no children.
What I Do
With 17 years in the IT industry, including 15 years at my current company, I have grown from an engineer and technical lead to my current role as an architect.
My technical expertise spans from networks, storage, and server hardware to software platforms, virtualization, backup, databases, containers, automation scripts, and Low Code / No Code platforms. Recently, with the AI boom, I’ve also entered this new battlefield.
My responsibilities have been quite unique. In my early years, with limited experience, I was an engineer who simply followed the manual. However, due to special circumstances, I was exposed to pre-sales and architectural planning very early on. I’ve juggled pre-sales and post-sales roles, sometimes acting as a PM, until I became a technical lead in 2017 and could finally delegate some of the foundational work.
Why I Write
It has been a long time since I’ve written an article to share technical knowledge. Looking back at my records, the last one was in 2010. I had just joined my current company, and due to NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) with upstream vendors, much of my personal experience was not suitable for public view. I had to change my habits and keep my notes confined to my personal OneNote.
However, with the recent expansion of the tech landscape, the current IT environment is no longer dictated by a few major vendors. In my own explorations, I have received immense help from many senior professionals online and from AI. On one hand, I want to preserve these insights for myself; on the other, I hope to share them with others facing similar problems, helping everyone avoid a few landmines in the IT field.
Why Now
At the end of May 2025, my wife and I went on a grand tour. This might seem commonplace to people abroad, but in our professional environment, taking such a long vacation is no easy feat. During the trip, we simply enjoyed the atmosphere without much thought for check-ins or travelogues. But after returning to daily life and facing new challenges every day, the beautiful memories of the trip began to fade. To prevent myself from forgetting that wonderful time, I started forcing myself to recall and write about our travels every day.
As I was about to finish writing about our three-week journey, I began to persuade myself: “Why not also share some insights on the technical innovations I’m currently trying to break through?”
So, with the superpowers of AI, I decided to see what new toys could replace my old WordPress setup, and thus, this blog was born.
This Blog’s Architecture
The architecture of this blog is quite interesting. It took about half an hour of discussion with an AI to decide on the system design. So far, it has cost $0. Whether it will incur costs in the future will likely depend on user traffic.
I’ll write a detailed post about the actual architecture later. Stay tuned!