Episodes

  • MTAR T3D Sessions: Why Wellness is Key to Performance in Tech
    Jan 13 2026

    JD sits down with Amanda Nystrom to explore an often-overlooked reality in the tech industry: wellness is not a personal side concern—it’s a performance issue.Drawing parallels between system audits, Postgres health checks, and human behavior, Amanda explains why teams can’t expect long-term reliability, scalability, or high performance if they ignore the health of the people behind the systems. Just as neglected infrastructure leads to outages and technical debt, ignored habits and burnout eventually undermine human performance.This conversation reframes wellness in terms engineers understand: sustainability, performance, and future readiness. If you care about building resilient systems, this episode makes the case for building resilient people, too.

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    12 mins
  • MTAR T3D Sessions: Why Code Generation Still Matters
    Jan 8 2026

    In this episode, Command Prompt Founder Joshua “JD” Drake talks with Andrew Smith, Senior Developer/DBA, about a foundational concept in software engineering that quietly powers modern systems: code generation and single sources of truth.Andrew walks through the evolution of code generation—from early macros and assembly language to modern model-driven architectures—and explains why generating code from a centralized definition is one of the most effective ways to build scalable, maintainable systems. Using practical examples from C, PostgreSQL, and modern frameworks, he breaks down how code generation reduces duplication, prevents drift, and keeps complex systems aligned over time.

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    10 mins
  • MTAR T3D Sessions: Why Monitoring Isn’t Enough: The Case for Full Postgres Logging
    Dec 19 2025

    Welcome back to More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions.In this episode, Command Prompt Founder Joshua “JD” Drake talks with Justin Graf, Senior DBA & Engineer at Command Prompt, about a topic every Postgres team needs to understand: why monitoring alone isn’t enough—and why full logging is essential for diagnosing database problems. Justin explains how organizations often rely solely on monitoring tools like PGStatStatements, CloudWatch, or Datadog, without realizing that these tools can’t show query parameters, historical performance shifts, or the root cause behind sudden CPU spikes. Without full logging, teams end up blind during outages, wasting hours trying to detect issues that proper logs would have revealed immediately.

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    10 mins
  • MTAR T3D Sessions: How your AWS decisions today shape your flexibility, cost, and vendor dependencies
    Dec 4 2025

    In this special AWS-focused T3D segment, Command Prompt Founder Joshua “JD” Drake sits down with Greg Dostatni, Senior DBA at Command Prompt, to unpack a topic that every team running PostgreSQL in the cloud eventually needs to face: how your AWS decisions today shape your flexibility, cost, and vendor dependencies tomorrow.


    Drawing on years of experience with platform migrations, cloud transitions, and large-scale infrastructure projects, Greg explains why AWS is powerful and convenient—but not something you should treat as permanent. Whether the trigger is pricing, features, licensing, mergers, or internal strategy shifts, every organization eventually reaches a point where moving away from a vendor becomes necessary.


    If you’re building on AWS, evaluating cloud Postgres options, or planning long-term infrastructure strategy, this AWS special segment provides a clear, grounded perspective on navigating cloud choice—and exit—responsibly.


    Have a conversation with our guest and his AWS expertise by contacting Command Prompt.

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    12 mins
  • MTAR T3D Sessions: Implementing real-world security and compliance
    Nov 20 2025

    James breaks down the difference between checking the box for compliance and implementing meaningful, real-world security. From encryption-at-rest misunderstandings to SQL injection vulnerabilities that still plague organizations today, he explains why companies often miss the point — and how to approach security controls in a way that actually protects your data.If you’ve ever felt stuck in endless compliance meetings, wrestled with vague requirements like “encryption at rest,” or questioned whether your MFA strategy makes sense, this short talk is for you.

    Learn more about Command Prompt

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    13 mins
  • MTAR T3D Sessions: Stepping away from AWS, Google and databases to explore machine learning
    Nov 13 2025

    Welcome to Episode 13 of More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions!

    In this session, Command Prompt Founder Joshua “JD” Drake sits down with Kevin Jernigan, Chief Product Officer at J4 Capital LLC, whose career spans decades across the world’s biggest database and cloud companies.Kevin walks us through his journey from Oracle, AWS (Aurora PostgreSQL), MongoDB (Atlas Serverless), and Google Cloud, reflecting on what it meant to “reinvent the wheel” in database engineering — and why he ultimately stepped away from the database world.

    If you’re interested in databases, AI efficiency, brain-scale compute, or the future of machine learning, this short talk is for you.

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    14 mins
  • MTAR T3D Sessions: Experiencing the benefits of Cython to increase Python performance
    Oct 30 2025

    Welcome to Episode 14 of More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D SessionsCommand Prompt Founder Joshua "JD" Drake chats with Valerii Herman, Python Developer at Command Prompt, about Cython — a superset of Python that combines Python’s simplicity with C’s performance.Valerii explains how Cython lets developers keep the readability of Python while selectively compiling performance-heavy sections into C extensions. Beyond speed, he shares how Cython can also be used for code obfuscation, making it harder to reverse engineer intellectual property.


    Reach out to Command Prompt to discuss further.

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    11 mins
  • MTAR T3D Sessions: Beyond CAPTCHA and honeypots, simplified layered defenses against website spam
    Oct 23 2025

    Welcome to Episode 11 of More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D SessionsCommand Prompt Founder Joshua "JD" Drake chats with Eugene Dubinin, Senior Developer & Project Lead at Command Prompt, about strategies for fighting web application registration spam — a problem they faced firsthand while maintaining the Postgres Conference website.Eugene explains why simple measures like CAPTCHAs and honeypots aren’t enough on their own, and how a pipeline of layered defenses can drastically reduce spam accounts.


    Dive deeper into this conversation, contact Command Prompt today.

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    12 mins