Walk Before You Run a Server

Hello, hello, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless.

If this is your first time listening, welcome. I’m glad you’re here. If you’ve joined me before, welcome back.

What’s something you’ve learned recently? Did you feel confident when you started, or did you spend a while wondering what you were doing?

A lot can change in a short amount of time, especially when you’re raising a child. A few weeks ago, Eliana was taking her first unassisted steps. Now she walks around the house with considerably more confidence. She still loses her balance occasionally, but that doesn’t seem to discourage her for long. She falls, gets back up, and continues toward whichever object she’s decided she urgently needs to touch. Far too often, it’s something that I urgently need to keep her from touching.

Watching her learn to walk has made me think about how difficult simple things can be when you’ve never done them before. Walking feels automatic to me. I don’t need to study the floor, carefully shift my weight, or celebrate every successful trip across the living room. Eliana does.

That brings me to the expression for today: baby steps. Baby steps.

The image is rather obvious. It’s what I just described with Eliana. She can’t travel very far, and she may fall after only a few seconds. Even so, every step helps her develop the balance and strength she’ll eventually need to walk with confidence.

In English, when we talk about taking baby steps, we mean making small, manageable amounts of progress toward a larger goal. Instead of trying to accomplish everything immediately, you begin with something simple and move forward gradually.

Someone who wants to exercise regularly might begin by walking for ten minutes each morning. Someone learning English might practice one short conversation instead of trying to speak perfectly for an hour. Someone trying to understand computers might begin with one practical project only to discover that, of course, the project requires learning approximately four hundred other things.

Here’s a quick example: I want to become more comfortable with technology, but I can’t learn everything about computers at once. For now, I’m taking baby steps by learning how to build a small home server.

Keep that expression in mind. Eliana isn’t the only person in our house learning how to walk through unfamiliar territory.

Watching Eliana take her first steps has been exciting. It’s also reminded me of something adults tend to forget.

Being a beginner is uncomfortable.

Children seem to understand that naturally. Eliana doesn’t appear embarrassed when she falls. She doesn’t sit on the floor and worry that the rest of us might question her walking ability. She certainly doesn’t compare herself with adults who’ve been walking for decades.

She gets up and tries again.

We’re not always as patient with ourselves as adults. We often want to be competent immediately. We want to understand the instructions, know the terminology, and avoid looking foolish. If we can’t do those things, we may decide that we’re simply not good at whatever we’re attempting.

Until recently, that was largely how I felt about technology. I knew how to use my phone and computer for the things I did every day, but I wouldn’t have described myself as tech savvy. If something stopped working, I could try turning it off and turning it back on again. Beyond that, my technical expertise became considerably less impressive.

At the beginning of last month, Emma and I attended her family reunion. While we were there, I had several interesting conversations with relatives who know much more about technology than I do. Our brother-in-law and a couple of Emma’s cousins are particularly comfortable with computers.

Talking with them opened my eyes to how much I could do if I better understood the devices that are already part of my life. I didn’t leave the reunion as a computer expert. That would’ve been an amazingly efficient family reunion. I did, however, leave with more curiosity and a willingness to start learning.

Artificial intelligence is one area I want to understand better. AI’s become a controversial subject, and people have strong opinions about whether it’ll ultimately help or harm society. I don’t expect to resolve that debate myself. I do want enough practical and theoretical knowledge to recognize how the technology can be useful, where it can cause harm, and what guardrails make sense for me and my family.

But technology is an enormous subject. I could spend decades studying it and still have more to learn. Beginning with “understand computers” would be a little like Eliana beginning with “walk across Texas.” We both needed a smaller first step.

Fortunately, I already had a practical project in mind.

Emma and I own a collection of movies and television shows on DVD and Blu-ray. For most of our marriage, we didn’t own a television. We finally bought one secondhand through Facebook Marketplace last year, which meant we once again had a screen large enough to enjoy our collection.

There was only one problem. We still needed something that could play the discs.

After visiting my family for Christmas, we brought an old Blu-ray player back to Texas with us. We hoped we could connect it to the television and begin watching everything again. Unfortunately, the player and the television didn’t work well together. We couldn’t get our discs to play cleanly.

We considered buying a new Blu-ray player, but a good one could cost a hundred dollars or more. Emma and I both have busy schedules, so we weren’t convinced that the player would receive enough use to justify its price.

As a result, the collection sat there. We owned the movies. We owned the television. We theoretically had everything necessary to watch them. But of course, reality didn’t care much about our theoretical capabilities.

For a while, I’d been thinking about digitizing our collection and storing it somewhere more convenient. If the files were kept in one central location, we could access them from our television, phones, or computers. We’d also be less dependent on one particular disc player continuing to work.

I knew that creating a system like that would be a project, so I kept putting it off. Every time I thought about beginning, I imagined all the things I didn’t know. What kind of computer would I need? How much storage would it require? How would the other devices connect to it? What exactly was a server?

The conversations at the family reunion gave me the push I needed to stop imagining the entire project and identify the first step.

I began researching used equipment. That led me to eBay, a website I’d somehow managed never to buy anything from before. After comparing several options, I found the basic equipment I needed for less than one hundred dollars.

Then the boxes began arriving, and my education became considerably less theoretical.

I’m now learning how to create a home server. A server is a computer that provides information or services to other devices. In my case, the goal is to store our media files in one location and make them available to devices connected to our home network.

Eventually, I hope Emma and I will be able to watch our collection on the television, access it from either of our laptops, and possibly use our phones as well. I’ve also discovered several other projects a home server might support, although I’m trying not to begin all of them simultaneously.

Baby steps.

This project has already introduced me to subjects I never expected to study. I’ve had to learn about operating systems, storage drives, computer hardware, networking, and the technical requirements of the software I want to use. I’ve encountered an impressive number of abbreviations. It’s really wreaking havoc on my dyslexia.

Each question seems to produce several more questions. I’ll look up one unfamiliar term, discover three additional terms in the explanation, and open three more browser tabs. Eventually, I have fifteen tabs open and only a vague memory of the original question.

Someone with more experience could probably complete many of these tasks without thinking about them. In the same way, I can walk across a room without thinking about balance, weight, or where to place my feet.

The task feels simple after you’ve learned how to do it. That doesn’t mean it was always simple.

All of this brings me to a second expression: a learning curve.

A learning curve describes how someone develops knowledge or skill through experience. When a task has a steep learning curve, it usually means that the beginning is particularly difficult. You must learn a great deal before you can use the skill or system comfortably.

Imagine starting a new job that uses several programs you’ve never seen before. During your first week, even simple tasks may require instructions and help from your coworkers. After a few months, those same tasks may feel routine. You’ve moved along the learning curve.

My home-server project has a fairly steep learning curve. I can’t rely entirely on skills I already possess. I first have to learn the language of the subject, understand how the pieces work together, and become comfortable solving problems when something doesn’t behave as expected.

The difficult part isn’t only the amount of information. It’s also the feeling of being inexperienced.

As adults, we often have a lower tolerance for feeling like children. We don’t like looking confused. We don’t enjoy asking questions that seem obvious to everyone else. We may worry that making mistakes means we’re incapable rather than inexperienced.

That fear can prevent us from trying at all.

But there’s no way to skip the beginning. We can’t become comfortable without first being uncomfortable. We can’t learn to solve problems without encountering problems, and we can’t walk confidently into a new field without taking a few unsteady steps through it first.

That’s why taking baby steps can help with a steep learning curve. You don’t need to understand the entire subject before you begin. You only need to identify the next manageable action.

For me, one step was deciding on a practical goal. Another was researching the equipment. Another was placing my first eBay order. Now I’m learning how to assemble and configure the system. None of those steps makes me an expert, but each one moves me a little farther than I was before.

So here’s something to think about: what have you wanted to learn but avoided because you didn’t want to feel like a beginner? Maybe it’s a language, a musical instrument, a practical skill, or a new kind of technology. What’s one baby step you could take?

You don’t need to complete the entire journey today. Just begin learning how to stand.

Pretty soon, Eliana will be running, climbing, and exploring places that she can’t reach now. When that happens, it’ll probably become my responsibility to stop her from exploring several of them.

For the moment, though, she’s still practicing. She stands up, takes a few steps, loses her balance, and tries again.

I’m doing much the same thing. My destination happens to involve used computer equipment, storage drives, and far too many browser tabs. Hers is usually the other side of the living room.

The destinations are different, but the process is the same. Neither of us can skip the unsteady part.

We take one small step, then another. Eventually, we look back and realize that we’ve learned how to walk.

And with that, my cup is empty. Thanks for joining me for T.E.A. Time. Until the next pot.