About Me
I’d like to be able to say this blog draws its name from the ancient beliefs that the horse is an all knowing messenger from powerful beings. However, that simply isn’t true. It was inspired by a Dilbert Cartoon from 2015 and now no longer online. In the cartoon Dilbert’s boss tell’s Dilbert to “stop being such a pessimist,” to which Dilbert replies, “said General Custer to his horse.” When pressed for an explanation as to, “why would he talk to his horse,” Dilbert points out that “even the horse knew something was wrong.” It’s funny, at least to me. I am not sure why.
That first paragraph probably told you more about me than you will ever otherwise find out. Beyond my weird sense of humor and bad taste in music the rest is pretty standard. I wear a bunch of hats professionally and semi-professionally, including:
- Product Manager with a focus on communities and upstream Linux
- American living in Europe
- “Student” of International Taxation
These days I am working for Microsoft as a Product Manager in the Azure Core Upstream Linux Engineering Team. I focus on helping Microsoft’s contributions have meaning and impact on Community OS projects such as Fedora and Debian.
I’ve written some code and contributed to other code bases. A lot of this work has been done on GitHub.
Talks and presentations that I’ve given are collected on my talks page.
More details can be found in my LinkedIn profile, amongst other places.
If anyone actually reads this page and sends me a question, I’ll make this description better.
bex
I tend to use the nickname bex. It is written with no capital letters. So far, I am the only male bex I have ever met. Most other bexes are becks and it is usually short for Becky. The world is an interesting place.
I tend to use the username bexelbie at most places where bex is not an option.
Barbarism
I engage in one habit that a friend has described as “barbarism.” I put two spaces after periods. *gasp* I also tend to hardwrap non-email text. *shock* Finally, I have currently set my tab to be 4 spaces and not 8. *fainting noise*
GPG Key / Encrypted Communications
For those of you who need to send me something super sekrit, please think carefully. While I used to have a GPG key, I no longer do. I believe that email is effectively not reasonable to secure with GPG. Therefore I encourage you to consider alternative methods, such as Signal.
Rarely Quotable
I’ve had the privilege of being quoted a few times. For vanity reasons, I maintain a list.
Bios and Headshots
Bios are hard to write and terrible to have to come up with on short notice. I keep a few here for use.
Short Bio
Brian Exelbierd is a Product Manager at Microsoft for the Azure Core Upstream Linux Engineering team and has a background in Higher Education and IT/Engineering. Read his sporadic blog posts at www.winglemeyer.org.
Medium Bio
Brian “bex” Exelbierd is a Product Manager at Microsoft for the Azure Core Upstream Linux Engineering team. bex has also worked as a technical writer, software engineer, content strategist, and community architect. When not working in the technology sector, Brian was the Director of Graduate and Executive Programs in the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics and as a Budget Analyst at the University of Delaware. Read his sporadic blog posts at www.winglemeyer.org.
Long Bio
Brian “bex” Exelbierd is a Product Manager at Microsoft for the Azure Core Upstream Linux Engineering team. He focuses on helping Microsoft’s contributions have meaning and impact on Community OS projects such as Fedora and Debian. bex has also worked as a technical writer, software engineer, content strategist, and community architect giving him a broad appreciate of how products are built and get to market. Brian’s background in software engineering stretches back years before his university work and includes stints in both business and government. Many of his projects are the “glue code” or interstitial pieces that fill the spaces between systems, providing continuity and ease of use. When not working in the technology sector, Brian was the Director of Graduate and Executive Programs in the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics and as a Budget Analyst at the University of Delaware. Read his sporadic blog posts at www.winglemeyer.org.
Quirky Bio
Brian “bex” Exelbierd enjoys a good beer, a nice coffee, and a rousing conversation about taxation. Born in the USA, he now lives with his partner and daughter in Brno, Czech Republic. When he has freetime, he tends to tinker with home automation, try to find the elusive double-chili/garlic bread from a local baker, and tinker with his thousands of spreadsheets. He even still occasionally works on projects that are often “glue code” or the interstitial pieces that fill the spaces between systems. By day he is a Product Manager at Microsoft for the Azure Core Upstream Linux Engineering team. Read his sporadic blog posts at www.winglemeyer.org.
Headshots
My sister-in-law, who is a great photographer, agreed to risk her reputation and take a new headshot for me. I remain a terrible model, so be kind. Here is me, circa July 2022.
Full Size Image: 
About This Site
This web site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages from my bexelbie.github.io repository.
The site is authored in a combination of HTML and Markdown which is built by Jekyll.
The theme is Minimal Mistakes.
Comments are rarely enabled. I think that most of my writing deserve a response via your own blog/social media and I encourage you to do so. In a few situations I’ve enabled comments because they make sense for that particular article. When enabled, comments are powered by Staticman.