道
The Way of Maintenance
When TPM beats replacement; the discipline of the operator.
- 道 The operator's pre-change checklist 4 min · published 2026-09-21 Most outages are self-inflicted — a change that went in without the five minutes of thought that would have caught the problem. The discipline that separates operators who sleep well from those who don't isn't talent. It's a short, boring list, run every single time, especially when you're sure you don't need it.
- 動 The 12-month window when TPM libraries can't fix their own records 5 min · published 2026-07-06 When two large third-party-maintenance databases consolidate — merger, acquisition, portfolio rollup — their public EOSL libraries usually go stale for a year or more while the URL structure gets rebuilt. Buyers who rely on those libraries during the window see out-of-date dates, dead links, and empty rows. Here is how consolidations happen, why fresh-content dates are the signal to watch, and how to hedge.
- 空 Why TPM libraries show "Date Not Published" — and how to read past it 6 min · published 2026-07-06 Open any major third-party-maintenance library and you'll hit rows that just say "Date Not Published" or a bare dash where the EOSL date should be. The reason isn't laziness; it's the shape of the vendor-disclosure market. Here is what that empty cell actually means, how to triangulate the answer yourself, and why Bushido shows a confidence-scored estimate instead.
- 審 How to vet a third-party maintenance provider without getting burned 6 min · published 2026-07-06 A buyer's checklist. Six honesty markers that separate a real TPM shop from a fresh-domain lead generator. Bushido doesn't sell contracts, so we have no dog in the fight — but we've watched enough procurement cycles to know exactly where the surface cracks first.
- 道 The case for keeping it 5 min · published 2026-05-31 Sometimes the right answer is to maintain. A discipline for recognizing when replacement is the lazy choice, not the wise one.