So the other night, I'm chilling with a beer when this cosplay enthusiast—like twenty years younger than me—comes up and asks:

"What do you do?"

Me: "Umm, I'm a DevOps engineer... whatever that means."

Her: "And what does that mean?"

Me: "You into steampunk?"

Her: "Yeah."

Me: "You use a computer at work?"

Her: "Yeah."

Me: "Well, imagine we're in a steampunk universe. I'm the dude down in the boiler room beneath your office building, shoveling coal into the steam-powered computers everyone uses upstairs."

Her: "Oh."

Me: "But wait—there's more! In this steampunk universe, your workplace is basically Howl's Moving Castle. It's self-propelled and can travel on roads or rails. We're also the folks who design and build the tracks WHILE the castle is moving. We choose the materials and hire the workforce (which in our case is actually software). So in the end, you can use your steam-powered PC while your company roams around the world."