Jet Mariano

Tag: Systems Thinking

  • Built in Motion, Seeing Afar Off

    Organizing legacy cables while holding a squat—order through motion, clarity under pressure.

    Excerpt

    I don’t stay ready because I fear failure. I stay ready because experience taught me that motion reveals what stillness hides.

    Intro

    I am not a static person. I never have been. Sitting still has never helped me think clearly—especially in infrastructure work, where systems fail without warning and clarity often arrives too late. Movement keeps me alert, adaptive, and aware.

    Notes from the Moment

    While organizing a tangled pile of legacy cables, I wasn’t standing still. I was holding a squat—time under tension—sorting chaos into order. At the same time, my feet were subtly moving: slips, pivots, pendulum steps. The same habits I use at my standing workstation. The same habits I use in boxing.

    This is how I work. Motion keeps my mind open.

    Perspective

    “Keep moving your feet.” — Elder David A. Bednar
    “If something can go wrong, it will.” — Murphy’s Law
    “Be water, my friend.” — Bruce Lee

    Practice

    I don’t wait for problems to announce themselves. I anticipate them.

    Murphy’s Law isn’t pessimism—it’s preparation. If something can fail, it eventually will. That reality shaped how I think and move, starting in the mid-90s during the dot-com era, when uptime was survival and mistakes were unforgiving.

    In boxing, moving your feet doesn’t give you x-ray vision like Superman. It gives you new angles. You see openings sooner. You avoid danger without panic. You’re no longer where the punch was.

    In IT, it’s the same. I don’t “see afar off” because I’m gifted with foresight. I see because I move—physically and mentally. I change angles. I scan. I test assumptions. I stay proactive instead of reactive.

    Health follows the same law. Circulation improves when the body moves. Stagnation invites breakdown. Motion sustains clarity, resilience, and longevity.

    Final Reflection

    Infrastructure professionals don’t get the luxury of being static. Thinking under pressure requires circulation—of blood, of ideas, of perspective. Standing still narrows vision. Motion expands it.

    Water that moves stays clear. Water that stagnates decays.

    Whether in boxing, IT, or life itself, the advantage isn’t supernatural vision.
    It’s movement.

    Pocket I’m Keeping

    Stay proactive. Stay moving. New angles reveal what stillness hides.

    What I Hear Now

    “You saw that coming.”
    “Good catch.”
    “How did you anticipate that?”

    © 2012–2026 Jet Mariano. All rights reserved.
    For usage terms, please see the Legal Disclaimer.

  • Windows 11 Is Not the Problem

    Most Windows 11 instability doesn’t live in the OS itself, but at the edges where hardware, drivers, and applications meet.

    Understanding Failure at the Boundaries

    Why this post exists

    When something breaks after a Windows 11 update, the operating system is usually the first thing blamed.

    That reaction is understandable.
    It is also often wrong.

    Most Windows 11 issues I’ve seen in production environments were not caused by Windows itself, but by interactions at the boundaries — drivers, firmware, graphics acceleration, and modern hardware pipelines colliding under load.

    This post is about recognizing that pattern before making changes you can’t easily undo.

    Windows 11 changed the execution model

    Windows 11 didn’t just refresh the UI.
    It tightened and modernized how the system interacts with hardware.

    Notable shifts include:

    • heavier GPU offloading
    • deeper integration with modern drivers
    • stricter timing and power management
    • increased reliance on hardware acceleration

    These changes improved performance and security — but they also exposed weaknesses that were previously hidden.

    Where failures actually occur

    Most Windows 11 instability I’ve seen does not originate in the OS core.

    It shows up at the edges:

    • camera pipelines invoking GPU acceleration
    • browsers rendering complex content
    • collaboration tools engaging media stacks
    • document editors interacting with graphics layers

    When these systems overlap, failure is rarely clean.

    The result can look dramatic:

    • sudden reboots
    • frozen screens
    • applications triggering system instability

    But the OS is often just the messenger.

    Why blaming the OS is tempting

    Blaming Windows feels productive because it is visible and recent.

    But doing so can lead to:

    • unnecessary registry changes
    • disabling core protections
    • rolling back updates prematurely
    • introducing instability elsewhere

    Experienced engineers pause here.

    They ask a different question:
    “What interaction just occurred?”

    A real-world pattern

    In several recent incidents, systems rebooted only when:

    • the camera was enabled
    • a browser rendered media-heavy pages
    • a document triggered graphics rendering

    The same machines were otherwise stable.

    That pattern points away from Windows itself and toward:

    • GPU drivers
    • hardware acceleration paths
    • firmware timing
    • vendor-specific optimizations

    The fix is rarely global.
    It is almost always surgical.

    Why restraint matters

    Windows 11 gives us many levers:

    • registry overrides
    • advanced graphics settings
    • feature toggles

    Just because a lever exists does not mean it should be pulled.

    Sometimes the most correct decision is:

    • identify the root cause
    • mitigate user impact
    • document the behavior
    • wait for vendor correction

    Stability is not always achieved by action.
    Sometimes it is preserved by restraint.

    What Windows 11 is actually doing well

    Despite the noise, Windows 11 has proven to be:

    • more secure by default
    • more consistent under load
    • better integrated with modern hardware
    • less tolerant of outdated assumptions

    Those are strengths, not weaknesses.

    They require us to think more holistically about the stack.

    The lesson Windows 11 keeps teaching

    Modern systems fail at the seams.

    Operating systems, drivers, firmware, and applications now behave as a single organism.

    When one part misbehaves, symptoms surface elsewhere.

    The job is not to assign blame quickly.
    The job is to understand interaction.

    Final reflection

    Windows 11 didn’t break our environments.

    It revealed where we were already fragile.

    Once you see that pattern, troubleshooting becomes calmer, more precise, and far less reactive.

    © 2012–2026 Jet Mariano. All rights reserved.
    For usage terms, please see the Legal Disclaimer.

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