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Atlantic City Waves

Thursday, Aug 6th, 2026 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

While we’re spending our summers in Philadelphia, we try to do one east coast adventure where we take some time off from work. Last year we took a road trip up to Boston and southern Maine. This year we went back to Atlantic City! The last time we went was a couple years ago over Father’s Day weekend. Now I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not my favorite place, I find a lot of it to be loud and overstimulating. But MJ has a lot of good childhood memories there, and it’s a great place for the kids because the beach is easily accessible, the rides are a lot of fun for them, and there’s plenty of kid-friendly food that’s easy to walk to. Plus, since we can just drive there in two hours, it’s not an overly expensive vacation.

This time we stayed at Showboat because we wanted to go to the on-site water park, and it was nice for the kids that they had an arcade rather than a casino. Unfortunately, the room situation wasn’t spectacular. They offer a “Ocean View King Family Room” which is ultimately just guaranteed adjoining rooms, that you pay a much higher rate for the privilege of, and it’s only hinted at in the listing as “king bed in one room and an adjoining space with two queen beds.” Sneaky. The rooms were OK, but ours smelled vaguely of cigarette smoke, and with a half-inch gap at the bottom of the door there was no sound isolation from a very noisy hallway, or the folks across the hall making a lot of noise late into the night. The hallways were also quite musty. It worked out fine for three nights, but we won’t be back. It was also quickly clear that the discount for the water park you get for staying there was just as easily bought via GroupOn, and since the water park was quite far from the rooms, staying at a nicer hotel nearby wouldn’t have been much of a burden.

I’m complaining a lot. Let’s tone that down, on to the good stuff! The first night there we spent the evening at the Steel Pier where the boys got to go on bumper cars, swing, a small roller-coaster and more! We played a couple games and then went off to the Hard Rock for dinner.

Our second day there was beach and arcade day! But we started off the day with a Target run to pick up a few supplies so I could feed the boys an early, somewhat-nutritious breakfast in the hotel room, and also pick up some beach toys and extra towels for the beach and water park. Then we headed over to Ocean’s for a leisurely brunch at Harper’s. They had a Reuben eggs Benedict that I thoroughly enjoyed. After brunch, it was off to the beach!

It was a beautiful day for it. It was sunny, but not overwhelmingly hot. It made for a good contrast for the cool water, and for an enjoyable stay under some shade on the beach. MJ got delayed in the room for a while taking care of some logistical things, but Ana was able to join me on the beach to take turns with the boys in the water. They also tried out their new metal detector, but the ocean is quite loud when the tide is high, like it was that afternoon, so they quickly lost interest as they didn’t find anything and struggled to hear the detector beep. They did have fun in the sand with their new toys though. When MJ joined us, he was able to take the boys out in the water too.

The evening was spent at the arcade at our hotel. We made the rounds of a bunch of games, with Adam and MJ going one direction and Aaron and I in the other. It turns out that Aaron and I share a love for Space Invaders!

After the games, we did a round of minigolf. I learned a few years ago that I’m pretty good at minigolf, for about 9 holes. Halfway through my scores tank as I get careless and distracted. But now that I know that, I can do something about it! This time I recognized the pattern and took more time with each hole, and I won. Ha ha! Against my husband and two little kids. Ok, fine. It was nice to not see my score tank during the second half at least.

Dinner was at Sugar Factory. I thought it was a good idea because it looked fun and bright and that the kids would find things they liked on the menu. It was not. The service was bad, it was incredibly loud, and while the food looked very pretty, it was over-priced and under-flavored. The kids didn’t even seem to like the food much, hah! But ultimately it got the job done, even if I was happy when we left and got some fresh air outside on the boardwalk.

Thursday was water park day at Island Waterpark! It’s an indoor waterpark that’s attached to our hotel, and I was pleasantly surprised at how clean and well-staffed it was all day. Going on a Thursday meant that while it was busy, it wasn’t overwhelmingly so. The only lines we had to wait in were for the huge water slides on each end of the park. The boys loved the lazy river, and with their newfound swimming skills I didn’t feel bad about letting Adam run off on his own for a little bit here and there. I kept an eye on little Aaron though, only separating from him when we had to go down a big water slide separately. I went down a few seconds before him and was mildly nervous going down because of how intense it was, but when he popped out at the bottom he was laughing and asking to go again. I guess it was fine then! The tube waterslide on the other side of the park I did with MJ and Adam too, with me and Adam going on one double-tube and MJ and Aaron going on the other.

As the day wound down, Aaron wanted to go to the boardwalk for pizza and cotton candy, but Adam was having the time of his life, so Aaron and I departed for food while MJ and Adam stayed at the park until it closed at 8PM. Aaron and I enjoyed our boardwalk adventure, with our slices of Jersey pizza beating out anything we ever find in California, and enjoying giant bites of cotton candy together.

Our journey concluded on Friday as we checked out and had one final meal at an Italian place down the boardwalk a bit. There was very little traffic on the drive home which was nice, and it was good to get home before it got too late in the evening, giving us some time to unpack a few things and unwind before it was time to get to bed.

I still think Atlantic City vacations are an every other year thing for us, at most. We have so much more of the east coast to explore! The boys haven’t even been to Washington DC! And I’d love to do a few days up in New York City with them some time. But it was the right vacation for us this year, and I’m glad we could give the kids that experience.

Filed under: family, food, kids, life, travel

Cars, camp, and celebrating the 4th of July with Big Boy and where it all happened

Wednesday, Jul 22nd, 2026 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

The 4th of July weekend sort of began on Friday, July 3rd when I had the day off from work. Aaron was concluding his Nature-based day camp, and MJ and I had a rare Adam-only day on our hands. Unfortunately, the weather had been scorchingly hot, with temperatures reaching 100F and the heat index soaring far above that. What would Adam like to do, indoors, and Aaron wouldn’t be too bummed about missing? The last requirement was tricky, they share a lot of interests, so we settled for something high on Adam’s interest list that we tactfully would just not mention to Aaron: visiting a race car museum in the southwest of Philadelphia, the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum.

It was really cool. Down by the airport in a nondescript warehouse, they house over 75 “historically significant” racing sports cars, spanning eras and brands. The exhibits take you through a number of the famous race tracks, which Adam has been learning about via YouTube, watching F1, and playing Gran Turismo 7. And then had various exhibits of cars over time.

At ever car placard Adam had questions about horsepower and top speeds, and seemed surprised that the history of cars is relatively short. He was curious about the pace at which car speeds increased. I enjoyed seeing the 1956 Maserati 300S.

While there, we learned that most of the cars actually run, and they do regular Demo Days where the cars are taken out for a drive, either inside the warehouse or out in their back lot. So cool. Unfortunately there was only one while we were here for the summer and we already had plans that day, but it’s definitely something to look forward to on another visit.

From there, we headed back toward home to pick up Aaron at his last day of camp at the Churchville Nature Center. It was very unfortunate that his summer camp at a nature center overlapped with the hottest week of the summer, so they had to keep most activities indoors. Still, they did seem to get outside some and the theme of this week was Nature Art, so the core of the camp was satisfied by taking items the found in nature and making them into art, which was completely doable indoors. This conclusion day featured a Family Art Show were we could browse everything the kids made throughout the week and take it home.

As usual when our kids disappear for hours in the day, Aaron had very little to say when he got home each day, so it was nice to see his classroom, interactions with other campers, and all his artistic results. I’m glad we all could attend, this camp is definitely on our list for next year for him.

The 4th of July itself landed on a Saturday, and it was still hot. I don’t do well in the heat, so I was apprehensive about any plans that took us outdoors. But as MJ pointed out, celebrating the 250th anniversary of The United States of America in the city where the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776 was ultimately too good of an opportunity to pass up. Then MJ learned that Union Pacific Big Boy was spending the weekend in town for the celebration. Cool!

After breakfast, I prepared the boys by putting on the
Union Pacific’s Big Boy Locomotive episode of Jay Leno’s Garage so they could have some context as to what we’d be seeing. And then it was off to the Naval Yard where Big Boy was parked, and we finally got to see “the largest and most powerful operational steam locomotive in the world” for ourselves! Parking was decently organized and then it was just a bit of a walk from our car over to the area of track where it was parked, along with several other engines and cars.

It was an outdoor affair, with free water and popsicles being given out, along with a gift shop (the line was long, we skipped it) and a couple organizations that were helping to sponsor the event giving out free hats, handkerchiefs and coins to commemorate the day.

Union Pacific had a museum passenger car that walked you through some railroad history, facts about modern railroads in the United States in general, and also Union Pacific itself. It was interesting, but also blissfully air-conditioned. Once we completed the walk through that Aaron and I began wilting due to the heat, so I stayed with him in some shade while MJ and Adam walked the rest of the way down to the end of the train and back. Aaron and I also stopped at a hydration station on our way out, we were both pretty worn out by the time we got back to the car.

The drive from the Naval Yard to downtown Philadelphia offered up some nice recharging time for Aaron and I, and we parked in a garage near Independence Mall and grabbed lunch at P. J. Clarke’s. We’d never been before, but it was a nice place and I could see us going back. Lunch consumed, it was time to venture back out into the heat to enjoy some Philadelphia-style 250th anniversary celebrations!

The first thing I’ll note was that it wasn’t as busy as I had expected, probably because the temperatures were flirting with 100F and the humidity piling on to that. Independence Hall was blocked off, and the line for the Liberty Bell seemed pretty standard for a summer weekend (long, but moving swiftly). We walked along the mall a bit and then ducked into the Independence Hall Visitor Center to get some air conditioning – and free cupcakes.

From there we were on our way over to The Constitution Center where we had 2PM tickets. On the way, we walked through the outdoor President’s House Site, which shows some of the original foundations of the house used by the first two presidents of the United States, along with plaques talking about the history. This is an important historical site, but also one that has attracted a lot of attention lately because of the documentation provided of another home at that location: one where people who were enslaved lived. It’s an extremely moving part of the site, especially given the juxtaposition with all the symbols of freedom and liberty that surround it. Predictably, the recent attention has been from the Trump Administration and their allies who are uncomfortable with this dark part of our history, and insisted that all references to the presence of and horrors these people were subjected to it be taken down. The legal battle has been going on for months, with the plaques being taken down and removed a couple of times now. Just days before the 4th of July they were removed again, but citizens took it upon themselves to make large print-outs of them and duct taped them to the wall. Throughout the site there were hand written and printed signs, in various languages, explaining the on-going legal battle and what Philadelphia has done to protect the site. Resist!

By the time we got to The Constitution Center, Aaron and I were quite melty again. Air-conditioning helped, but ultimately I could only really cope with a limited amount of time visiting exhibits, even with a nice interlude to sit and listen to a short lecture about the US flag. On the bright side, this does mean I didn’t have the energy to waste money at the gift shops! Man, I love gift shops.

Our journey back to the car included a final stroll through the visitor center and then out to the mall where some tents were set up, one of which had copies of the Declaration of Independence that you could sign. Proudly! The boys did too.

It’s a shame the heat cut our day shorter than planned, but we still had a good time and made some good memories. MJ was right about taking time to observe the 250th anniversary of our country downtown, it was worth being there for.

Filed under: events, family, kids, life, philadelphia, rails

Cleaning up the 1967 Olympia SM9

Wednesday, Jul 15th, 2026 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

A couple years ago, a friend was clearing out an estate for a relative, and reached out to me because he had found a typewriter and mechanical calculator that he thought I might be interested in. Indeed! I wrote about the calculator here and briefly mentioned the typewriter, a 1967 Olympia SM9. We did some basic cleaning on the typewriter then so I would be comfortable bringing it indoors (it had been sitting in a barn for decades), and concluded my words about it with “I’ll clean it up and get a new ribbon for it during our next visit.” Well, since it’s now two years later, that didn’t happen then, but it has happened now!

I’m actually glad I waited until I was ready. I’ve learned a lot about cleaning and mechanical typewriter care since then, so it allowed me to tackle it with more expertise under my belt.

The first thing you should know about the SM9 is that it frequently has a place on “top 10” typewriters lists. They aren’t rare though, so it wasn’t a total shock to find it in a barn in northeastern Pennsylvania. It’s also a portable typewriter (though at 25lbs with the case, you may argue with that definition) so it’s designed to be stored in a case, which I also have and is decent condition, just dirty. But my first goal was to clean the typewriter.

Adam helped me out with that, we took an old soft-bristled toothbrush and q-tips with a little water to wipe down the surfaces and keys, and get random bits of fluff, dust, and cobwebs out of it. Then we used Simple Green, an all-purpose cleaner recommended by the typewriter community, to get some of the more difficult spots, like the keys. It was gleaming! I was actually quite impressed with the great condition it was in.

We patted it down and then took it outside, where the boys played in the front yard, and we all took turns typing on it. Even though the black ribbon it had was quite worn out, it still worked!


I did order a new ribbon though, and I decided to go with a blue and red one. Once that arrived from my usual vendor on Etsy, I put on some gloves to install it (one of those lessons I learned if I don’t want days of ink-stained hands) and Adam had a lot of fun seeing if he could make the resulting text on the paper purple with strategic text placement. I love how comfortable he’s become operating mechanical things.

The case took some more work. I started by gently wiping the dust and debris out of the inside of the case, which is lined with a soft sort of fabric, and left it at that. As for the outside, I’ve read mixed things about using Scrubbing Bubbles on typewriters, since there is risk of damage on certain textured surfaces. But after some close inspection and starting with a test spot, it looked like it wouldn’t do damage to this case if I used it carefully. And that test spot looked pristine!

I then got to work on the rest of the case. Essentially, you wipe the whole outside down gently with a cloth and water to get any of the easy to remove surface dirt off, and then you spend quite a bit of time cleaning it with rounds of: Scrubbing bubbles, let sit for 2 minutes, scrub with soft-bristled toothbrush, gently wipe the bubbles off with a damp towel. I did this in two phases, about 30 minutes during lunch on the deck one afternoon, and concluding with about another 45 minutes one evening at a table on the driveway while Aaron was outside riding his bike with his friends in the neighborhood.

And for clarity sake, there wasn’t a cleaning-related reason I did it outdoors. These cleaners are quite safe and don’t give off strong odors. It was just a string of nice days, and it’s nice being outside.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that this cleaning job is not perfect. And I didn’t remove the metal hardware, which is often recommended for a full case cleaning. But it’s a lot of work, and at some point I determined that there were spots of actual stains that wouldn’t get clean with this process, and I had gotten enough dirt off for me to be comfortable with its current state. And it does look pretty good!

With it all clean and a new ribbon, it’s an absolute pleasure to type on. I can see why it lands at the top of these lists. I’m still a Smith-Corona enthusiast (the Skyriter and the Sterling are tops for me!), but this Olympia SM9 is definitely in the running as one of my favorites. Welcome to the family.

Filed under: typewriter

Philly Typewriter and a Minecraft museum crawl before Father’s Day

Tuesday, Jul 7th, 2026 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Our Philly summer began on Monday, June 15th with our cross-country flight. We brought Zara long, since six weeks was much too long to leave her with a pet sitter, but I was really nervous about how she’d handle the flight. Most cats do just fine, Caligula even made the journey when he was quite old, but during one of our drives out to Mountain View during her tail injury period, she peed in the carrier. My hope was that incident was a one-off and just do to being injured and the stress of prolonged time in a cone. Still, I lined the carrier with pee pads and carried on paper towels and extra blankets just in case we needed to do some in-flight clean-up.

Thankfully, everything worked out fine. No accidents! She was pretty quiet too, I think she slept for most of the flight. I’ll also take a moment to mention that I had hoped to bring along a spare Sherpa cat carrier liner, but I couldn’t find the Medium size we needed anywhere. Once we arrived in Philly, I contacted PetWise and they shared that they aren’t currently available, but that they could ship me one for free until they came back on the market. Hooray! We now have a spare liner for our journey home, should we need it.

But on to our visit. I wish our first week in town had been quieter. We discovered some ants had started coming in via the second floor deck door (same thing happened last year) so immediately had to call the pest service to come out. The microwave we had fixed on our way out last time also started acting up again, so we had to call in a warranty claim, thankfully they came out the next day and there were no problems. Then on Thursday I got into a minor car accident, fortunately no one was hurt. I’ll talk about that once everything is settled, but it was all an incredibly jarring way to begin our stay here. I ended up taking the afternoon off from work on Friday so I could calm my nerves post-accident.

And then we could spend our weekend making the most of our time here.

Saturday morning we drove downtown and had pizza at a small pizzeria near the Penn Museum, where we had tickets for “Adventure Mode Activated,” a Minecraft-inspired workshop that afternoon. We ended up at Carters Pizza and Beer, where they had the Brazil World Cup game from the night before playing, and a bunch of board games! We played Sorry! while we waited for our beef pepperoni pizza to be prepared, and then enjoyed watching some of the game while we ate. It was a fun place.

After lunch I had planned to spend a little time at the museum before the workshop, but then started having second thoughts because I was worried the boys would get bored of museum-ing before the workshop began. Instead, we had 90 minutes to kill. You know… we’ve never been to Philly Typewriter!

Back in 2023, we all headed downtown to attend a type-in arranged by Philly Typewriter, and I’ve been a fan of them for some time. At the end of that event I had the pleasure of briefly speaking with the owner, Bryan Kravitz, and about his bay area connection. This time we finally got to see the shop! It started out as a regular visit, but then MJ got talking with Bryan while the boys and I poked around the shop, and once I joined the conversation he could see that I was a typewriter enthusiast, and offered us a tour of the basement!

The shop has an upstairs where some of the work is performed by the typewriter specialists in full view from the street, but downstairs is where they do some of the messier or more complicated work, and keep tools and hundreds of typewriters in various states of repair (or to be used as parts). Seeing this part of the shop was a real honor, and inspired Adam and I to clean up an Olympia I picked up at an estate sale a couple years ago. We managed to not buy any typewriters while we were there, but I was extremely pleased to hear that business is great, and they expected the blue IBM Selectric I was eyeing to be sold rather quickly.

From there we went to the Penn Museum, into the worst parking garage I’ve ever experienced, but thankfully we still made it in time for the workshop to begin. They had 2 hours booked for it, and it started in a classroom where the education guide set some expectations, and then it was time for her to bring a bunch of Minecraft kids around the museum to see how real life exhibits map to the experience we have in Minecraft.

The last time I was at this museum was in 2009, so I didn’t remember much, and it does seem like they’ve made some big changes. It all felt new to me! The guide first brought us all to see some gold weights and talk about gold and minerals used in ancient societies, and asked the kids about use of gold in Minecraft. From there it was over to an exhibit that had some obsidian, a very important material in Minecraft and the boys always ask a lot of questions to about it (especially because of it’s connection to lava, and lava is cool), it was nice to have someone else answering all their questions.

All the kids were getting a bit bouncy from sitting still at this point, so I was glad when we moved on to see the spectacular funerary ensemble of Queen Puabi, which has lapis lazuli! Lapis lazuli is used for enchanting items in Minecraft, so another important one there. I loved the story she told about Queen Puabi, so that was probably the most enjoyable stop for me. Our last stop was to see some armor from Etruscan Italy around 700 BCE. Minecraft characters use armor for a variety of things!

Back at the classroom, the kids got to learn a bit more about ancient civilizations and they looped in Mosaics as a topic because Minecraft has a very pixelated look to it and Mosaics are a bit like ancient pixels. So the craft that concluded the workshop had the kids armed with glue sticks and little squares of construction paper to make their own mosaic. We each left with a custom pin that said “I creeped around the Penn Museum” with a Minecraft-looking Sphynx. Love it. We spent a little time walking around the museum after the event concluded.

Our weekend continued with Father’s Day on Sunday. It started out with a really nice lunch with Grandpa, and then we drove out to Microcenter. MJ has been shopping for a monitor for the downstairs den/office area, so it was a nice opportunity for him to peruse some of the options. I managed to pick up of the official Raspberry Pi monitors that I’ve been eyeing for a while, and will come in quite handy if I manage to squeeze in some time to get the SBCs I keep here going again (one of the Raspberry Pis, and my RISC-V). The boys enjoyed playing on some of the computers they had on display, which is how they discovered some free online games that Adam later got going on the laptop we’re sharing here.

We also picked up a movie theater gift card as a Father’s Day gift so all of us can go out and see Toy Story 5 while we’re here.

It was definitely a mixed arrival week, but I’m glad we could end on some fun activities.

Filed under: family, kids, life, philadelphia, typewriter

Cherries and a Northern California Safari

Tuesday, Jun 30th, 2026 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

The final weeks we were in California before heading to Philadelphia for the rest of the summer was spent cherry picking, going on a safari, and checking out a local beach!

But first we had a visit to the vet with Zara. She’s been doing great! But hadn’t been to the vet since concluding her tail wound ordeal, so she hadn’t really gotten a proper physical with us. We wanted to get that in, plus get her rabies vaccine before bringing her to Philly for the summer. Since Adam was out of school, he was happy to join me on the vet visit to help keep Zara calm while the vet took a look at her. And she’s still great! We were all set to bring her as a carry on for our flight.

The weekend kicked off with a visit up to Brentwood for cherry picking. It was late in the season overall, but especially late because cherry season actually began early this year. The place we usually go to was closed for the season, which meant we had to look up another, and that’s how we came across Three Nuuns Farm, and I’m so glad we did! In addition to cherries, they had strawberry and peach picking! We skipped the peaches since the boys aren’t into them, but we began our journey with a tractor ride out to the strawberry patch.

We all enjoyed the tractor ride, and there was a cute spinning strawberry ride that the boys thought was hilarious to spin us in because I don’t like spinning rides (thanks, kids). After the ride, MJ presented me with a dairy-free “Farmpop” – a cherry fruit juice popsicle that was one of the highlights of my day. It was so good. The strawberry patch was a little picked over, but we found enough to make the adventure worth it.

The tractor then took us back to the entrance where dropped off the strawberries in the cooler in the car and walked to the other side of the parking lot to begin cherry picking. It looked a bit dismal at first, almost all the red cherries we encountered were shriveled up, and a few too high up in the trees to pick. We then went much deeper into orchard until we found yellow cherries that were ripe and perfect for us to pick!

Four pounds of cherries later we were ready to head to downtown Brentwood for lunch, and a stop by an antiques shop where I picked up a record and some [not antique] cherry earrings.

On Sunday we drove north again, but this time to the west. We booked a glamping night at Safari West, and our tent with comfy beds awaited!

I’ve wanted to go to Safari West since I first heard about it years ago, long before we had kids. It’s a safari! Within driving distance! Situated on a 400-acre plot of land near Santa Rosa, they have all kinds of animals, mostly from the African savanna, and they do safari-style tours throughout the week to see them up close. I’ve followed them on Instagram for years, and held my breath as the fires in Santa Rosa threatened the facility several years back (thankfully, everything turned out OK).

I was so happy that everything aligned properly for us to finally go, we booked a Sunday night stay and a midday Monday tour. Our evening there began with dinner at their on-site Savannah Cafe, which I think I’d skip next time. It was expensive for what it was, which was a very limited buffet where they were overly stingy with the brisket, and the boys struggled to find things they would eat. Our waitress was nice though, and it was enjoyable to sit outside for a meal there at least once. Once we finished dinner we explored the animals they kept in a series of zoo-like enclosures around the central part of the facility.

Aaron immediately fell in love with the cheetahs, while Adam was quite taken with the lemurs and birds.

Around 8PM they put out supplies for s’mores back at the Cafe, which we all enjoyed.

The “tent” was a lot of fun. It was canvas-sided, but they were little house-like structures. They each have a large private bathroom, and the bed configuration was a King and a bunk bed all squished into the room. It was cozy, and the first time all four of us shared a room together! The boys were pretty excited to sleep in the bunk bed, with Adam (the oldest) on top. It got surprisingly cold overnight, so MJ ended up closing everything up and turning the heater on when he went to bed.

The next morning we got up to enjoy the continental breakfast that came with our overnight stay. They had pretty standard fare and everyone found things they could eat. It was then back to our tent for a little while so we could enjoy our final time there before check-out at 11AM, and our tour at noon. Once we were checked out, the boys had some snacks and MJ and I had planned on grabbing a sandwich at the on-site snack bar, Delilah’s Delights, but they were closed while staff was on a break until almost tour time! Thankfully we were able to grab a couple small things and eat them quickly before the tour began. It was also good to learn that food was allowed on the safari, which was good for Aaron who got hungry halfway through.

We had a fantastic tour guide who was not only knowledgeable and funny, but indulged all of Adam’s questions about the truck we rode in. I loved that the tour was unscripted and went along with where the animals appeared, how interesting they were being, and how engaged the guests were. At one of our first stops, we got to see a baby rhinoceros nursing! Eventually. He was clearly hungry but he’d grown almost too big to nurse comfortably, so was making frustrated sounds about this fact before he found the right position.

I loved seeing the big herd of Ankole-Watusi (African Longhorn). They have HUGE horns! And apparently they keep the grass on the sprawling property nice and tidy.

I think my favorite part of the tour was the zebras. I’m not normally a big zebra fan, but they had a baby who was only a couple months old and she was lovely, and I’m always entranced by how sharp the stripes are on adults, it was nice to get to see them up close. So beautiful.

Part of the way through the tour we were able to move from the main part of the truck to our turn up on the top, and that’s how we got to see the water buffalo, wildebeest, and so many antelopes.

The tour concluded by going past the giraffes, which were all closer to the main camp area of the safari, instead of being out in the broader property. I know sometimes they are (our first au pair has gone on this tour too, and she got to see roaming giraffes!), but maybe it was because there was a new baby? The baby was pretty cute. Once the safari part of the tour was over, we had a short break, during which our guide was kind enough to talk to the boys about the different configurations of trucks they had, and to pop open the hood of one of her favorites. Epic. Remember to tip your tour guides generously.

Once the break concluded, she took us on a walking tour of the facility we’d seen on our own the evening before, plus the aviary that you can only get into with a guide. Aviaries aren’t really my thing, since I’m a bit scared of birds, but I turned up the bravery and joined everyone on the bird adventure. It was also nice to see some of the enclosures with the benefit of a guide who we could ask questions of, and Aaron liked seeing the cheetahs again.

Our day concluded with a drive home and a dinner stop along the way.

The final few days before our trip included a walk over to the BART station in Castro Valley one evening for their “BART Mart” Anime Artist Alley Pop-Up, which was super cute. None of us are really into anime though, so the highlight there was the Railgood shop where I picked up some t-shirts for the boys and the new BARTy plushie keychain for myself. I also brought my laptop to the Don Castro Regional Recreation Area one afternoon with our au pair and the boys so they could go swimming.

Finally, I looked into our refrigerator and saw that we still had too many cherries – hah! At the edge of going bad, they weren’t something I could give away, but we could make cherry jam! So we did.

And we brought a small jar with us to Philly, which I froze but still triggered TSA to stop us on our way through security. Oops. At least they let us keep it. Onward to Philly Summer!

Filed under: animals, family, food, kids, life, zara

Kicking off California Summer

Monday, Jun 22nd, 2026 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

I returned from the Open Source Summit just in time for Memorial Day weekend, which was also the beginning of the last week of school for the boys before summer break.

Saturday of Memorial Day weekend was spent doing errands, but one of those errands was going to REI and buying a couple cots that Adam and I could use for camping. Our first attempt at back yard camping last year was a bit rough, the small blow-up mats weren’t the best on my back, and we weren’t quite prepared for how chilly it got at night or how annoying the air conditioner would be. This time we brought lots of blankets, and MJ agreed to keep the air-conditioning in the house off for the night. Also, Aaron joined us. But the evening started once again with s’mores!

Inside the tent, Adam and I got the cots while Aaron happily plunked down between us on one of the small blow-up mats. It was a much better night than our previous attempt, but it was also a late night for all of us, and the boys didn’t get as much sleep as they usually would. Still, I think we’re ready to level up from backyard camping. Next stop: Camping at our local campground.

The next day we got to enjoy my belated Mother’s Day celebration by taking BART up to San Francisco to see a Giants game during Star Wars Day! We got there when the gates opened, partially to make sure we got our Grogu bobble heads, but we also just wanted to take in the whole stadium experience for our day out. Aside from a plethora of food, the Coca-Cola bottle in the stadium is actually a series of slides for kids, and the boys had a lot of fun with that, before and during the game. The Star Wars stuff was naturally a lot of fun, especially as we got to see Daniel Logan (little Boba Fett from Episode II) throw out a ceremonial first pitch. Having just been to Minneapolis for Star Wars night, it was fun to compare the two, and see that it was not a uniform experience, the teams really have a lot of flexibility in what they choose to do. No cookie-cutter entertainment here!

Now it’s time for me to make an aside about the use of AI in the stadium. They no longer publish a food directory, instead depending on a chatbot that you query to get information about where specific things are. It’s very, very bad. Like, I don’t know how they could have made it this bad. Looking for chicken tenders? They’re everywhere, but the chatbot will tell you about just the specialty spicy ones. Cotton candy? Everywhere. But it’ll tell you it’s just in an exclusive part of the stadium. Helmet nachos? Not great results. Asking where the Ghirardelli ice cream spot is? It tells you the wrong stall number. It felt like a tiny bit of RAG could have saved the whole thing, why didn’t they just train it on the directory and menus? The other place it was used was with scanning items you place on a platform designed for it. There was still a human standing there to make sure it got it right and check for any alcohol purchases. It did fine with our food, it missed an item when we were at the fan shop. In all, it was pretty much a disaster. We still found everything, but when things are this bad, forcing people to be beta testers for an experience we paid a lot of money for is not cool. Just publish a food directory, please.

The game was a lot of fun though, we got to watch the Giants win! And since it was a Sunday, the boys got to run the bases after the game! It was a long day though, and though no one fell asleep on the BART ride home this time, they did fall asleep pretty quickly when bedtime came around.

I told myself that Monday (Memorial Day) would be a much more chill day, but I rarely am effective at executing on that. The morning was spent with the boys helping me do some chores and projects around the house and making banana bread, before heading out to the park to toss around a baseball. Aaron’s t-ball season was coming to a close the next weekend, and we were trying to get some final practice in before that, since Memorial Day meant that practice with his team was cancelled.

Lunch was at a nearby all-you-can-eat sushi place we’d never tried before, and I was very pleased to see that the boys actually ate a reasonable lunch there. From there, it was over to our local go-kart place so Adam could do a race and both of them got to play some arcade games. At seven years old, Adam is one of the youngest kids there, but I’m really impressed with how quickly he’s gotten the hang of it, this was only the third time he’s been, and the first time I got to see him race.

With Memorial Day weekend behind us, the boys began their final week of school. For Adam we learned that the transition from 1st to 2nd grade will be a little easier than expected, since the large size of his graduating class means his 1st grade teacher will be teaching 2nd grade next year, and Adam will have him again! As for Aaron, they did a little graduation for the Transitional Kindergartners as they move up to Kindergarten, and that was the first time I got to confront the fact that he’s in the graduating class of 2039. That’s 40 years after I graduated high school. Oof. It was a cute graduation ceremony though, and I’m glad we could all be there, and to say goodbye to their classmates on that last day of school together.

Our weekend began Friday night with a leaky kitchen faucet. Because houses suck. We had to shut off the water immediately because it was leaking under the sink and Adam helped make me a sign to remind everyone not to use it. Thankfully, it hadn’t caused any serious damage that needed to be address, we just had to let the cabinet dry out. It did require an emergency trip to the hardware store so we could look at new faucets and pick one out, which MJ was able to install that night. Phew!

On Saturday Aaron said goodbye to his T-Ball teammates for the season. I’m hoping we can convince him to sign up again next year to re-join his team, but we’ll see where his interest and skill level lands. We’ll be practicing with him until then to try to help with both. Plus, playing catch is just fun.

After lunch we loaded up the car to spend a couple hours at the Cull Canyon beach lagoon in town. It was our first visit of the summer, and it wasn’t the warmest day to go, but I wanted to make sure we squeezed in a visit before leaving for Philadelphia for the summer. We still had a lot of fun, the boys played in the sand more than they usually do (it was warm) and as the afternoon progressed the water did warm up a little bit so we could properly enjoy it.

That evening we followed-up on those local-camping plans, kind of. We drove up to the Anthony Chabot Family Campground on the edge of Lake Chabot for a public Campfire Program. I learned about it last year, but circumstances arose that made it so we couldn’t go to any of the events then. It was nice to finally visit, since it allowed us to see the campground before we reserve a spot for the night in the near future. It was also a nice opportunity to explore a new part of the town. The program about animals was fun too, they talked about some of the local wildlife, how nocturnal animals operate, and they concluded the night with s’mores around the campfire!

The next day MJ left for a conference, so I decided to take the boys down to Ardenwood Historic Farm for their regular Wake Up The Farm event. That gave the boys a chance to use historic tools to grind up corn, and then feed it to the chickens, goats, and sheep around the farm. They had a lot of fun, especially feeding the chickens, much to my chagrin (I’m not a fan of chickens). Naturally, we also took a ride on the train while we were there.

Reading back through this blog post, wow, we do a lot! It’s true. But the boys are five and seven, and we all love adventures. As exhausting as it can get, having us all get out of the house to spend time outdoors and experience new things is really important for them, and us. They have plenty of time to ride bikes at home and play video games too.

Filed under: animals, baseball, castro valley, events, family, kids, life

The 3D printed Index Typewriter: Part 2

Friday, Jun 12th, 2026 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Back in March I wrote The 3D printed Index Typewriter: Part 1 where I covered our experience printing and beginning to assemble the Index Typewriter – AEG Mignon by Keenan Finucan. That blog post basically got to the end of Stage 1: Baseplate Assembly and I got started on Stage 2: Carriage Assembly.

So that’s where I pick things up! Carriage assembly was the easiest part of this whole thing. The only thing that tripped me up were the instructions to insert a wire into some of the long, thin pieces. Insert? Where? Oh! There’s a little hole that spans the whole part! Got it.

Stage 3: Type Arm Components Assembly is where things got interesting again. I had to take some sandpaper to thin a few parts (yes, I could have also just reprinted them a couple percent smaller). The first of which was the Type Arm and I actually broke my first Alignment Wheel because I really tried to wedge it on there, oops.

The other parts I brought sandpaper to were the Pivot Lever Axle and the Actuator Rod.

As I came to the end of assembly, I was testing out the Space and Typing levers and remembered what I had mentioned in my first blog post: “I have a couple springs that won’t quite stay put” with regard to the springs in Stage 1, Step 22. Indeed, in the couple of months this spent getting moved around the house between active work those springs were very gone and I had to replace them. I would not suggest addressing this after you get the Type Arm assembly installed! It’s tricky to get in there, but some patience and a pair of needle nose pliers, I managed to get all three springs replaced.

And with that, assembly was basically complete!

When I shared my photo on Thingverse (here), Keenan noted that I had ribbon threaded slightly wrong (oops), but I fixed that and it now clears the carriage a lot better.

Then I got to work on type alignment with regard to matching up with the Index. This has been tough, but I think I almost got it. I covered a whole paper with characters, but I managed to intentionally type the word “The”! Kind of :)

While trying to figure this out, I also discovered I have to fix a few other things (some of which are covered in the Troubleshooting conclusion to the assembly instructions, hooray!):

Ribbon not advancing: I really struggled with this mechanism during assembly, so I’m not surprised it needs a lot of love.

The stylus meets resistance on the right: When I navigate to the last 2 columns of the index, the stylus gets stuck and I have to gently force it over (and back). Could just be a wheel that’s not quite smooth enough or something, I’ll have to take a closer look.

Backspace does not work: I haven’t even looked at this.

Once these are sorted, I’ll have to see how general carriage advancement is working, since it’s been somewhat inconsistent as I’m testing my typing.

But I wanted to publish this blog post because we’re traveling over the summer and it’s going to be a couple months before I can finish this, I don’t want to forget anything and wanted to record my status so I’m ready to tackle the issues when I get back.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey thus far, I have!

Filed under: 3d printer, typewriter

Open Source Summit 2026

Friday, Jun 5th, 2026 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Last month I had the pleasure of attending the Open Source Summit in Minneapolis. For the first time, I didn’t have a speaking slot or booth duty, I was there as an attendee with a list of people and projects I wanted to meet up with, and sessions I wanted to see.

On Sunday I met up with my friend and former OpenStack/HPE colleague Sean Dague who now also works on IBM Quantum. We’ve kept loosely in touch over social media, but it had been a few years since we’d actually connected in person, so it was really nice to have some time to catch up. That afternoon I also had the pleasure of finally meeting my colleague Rishi Misra in person, who I’ve worked closely with for years on s390x porting work. A nice start to a great week!

Monday kicked off with a series of opening keynotes. The other day I wrote a long, rambling blog post about open source and AI, so I won’t talk too much about the AI-heavy keynotes, except to say that there were some hopeful observations alongside the concerning ones around data and security. It was nice to see where the Linux Foundation was taking action to make sure we continue having an open source driven future. My favorite keynote of the morning was from Sean who talked about, you guessed it, IBM Quantum! Not only was I personally delighted to see Sean up on stage, I’ve always been fascinated by Quantum computing and have enjoyed seeing the progression over the past several years. His talk gave a whirlwind tour of the ecosystem and presented opportunities for developers that are still being offered by IBM. Also, it was a nice break from AI talks. Google and Microsoft also spoke on AI-related topics, with Microsoft also happening to mention an update around Azure Linux, which Steven Vaughan-Nichols helpfully covered here: Microsoft surprises with its first server Linux distribution: Azure Linux 4.0.

The next few talks I attended were around Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs), the first was a panel around scaling them, where I was happy to see a wide range of experiences presented from across industries, including Ford, Geico, and CISCO, with a moderator from GitHub. There’s definitely a trend of using AI tooling to help the work in OSPOs, especially as the work and importance of these organizations grow. I also enjoyed Dawn Foster’s talk on “Strategic Approach To Demonstrating the Value of OSS Efforts” where she presented the highlights of the Demonstrating Organizational Value Practitioner’s Guide that she co-wrote.

From there I dipped into a couple of MCP talks, starting with Automating MCP Server Testing from Neethu Elizabeth Simon of Arm. It was an interesting talk overall, but my big takeaway was the server she demonstrated with: the Arm MCP Server, which is “An MCP server providing AI assistants with tools and knowledge for Arm architecture development, migration, and optimization.” Cool. I took notes and was texting with Rishi about how we might be able to leverage something similar in the s390x world. From there I went to a talk on ContextForge in the context of managing MCP sprawl. It was also a timely talk for me since we had just on-boarded the project to our GitHub Actions runner a few weeks before and I’d been meaning to learn more about it. Done! It was also nice seeing Dave Neary and his What Developers Should Know About Hardware Architecture talk, where he throws out lots of interesting facts about things that matter in architectures, along with other topics like just how slow spinning disks are, especially compared to CPU caches.

Monday evening was the conference reception at the Mill City Museum. It’s a museum I had wanted to go to anyway, so I was happy to learn that was the reception venue. It was a nice museum about the history of flour milling in the city, and the elevator they converted into a “ride” that takes you up and down several floors through a history of the mill was an absolute delight. The views from the top where you’re let out were beautiful, especially since the rain hadn’t rolled in yet! Unfortunately, the rain did eventually come in, just as the scheduled drone show for the 35th anniversary of Linux was to start. The drone show still happened, but it wasn’t really dark enough and drizzle quickly turned into a thunderstorm.

Tuesday’s keynotes got us back in the realm of AI, with talks on Strands Agents from AWS and AI used in robotics. They also had a panel on the value of open source software foundations for projects, which surprised me as a keynote topic for an open source conference, because most of what was covered struck me as pretty basic, and I think a lot of folks in the audience had experience engaging with projects within foundations.

From there I went to a talk on Package Testing Across Distributions and Architectures at Scale where the presenter walked through a move away from dozens of servers and consolidated on x86 and arm64-based cloud servers, using Ansible Molecule. Alas, not immediately applicable in our s390x porting work, but it was an interesting tour of what they had done and how much disk speed impacts package building performance. An afternoon session from the OpenSSF that gave a whirlwind tour of their projects was also interesting, since it can be a little tricky to keep up if your day to day work is unrelated to security.

That evening was the Tux Trek in the expo hall, and in addition to some great conversations, including one where I got to nerd out about mainframe stuff to someone who was curious, I got a tux cotton candy! I then got to have dinner with Rishi and a colleague who I didn’t expect to see there: Cheryl Fillekes! She’s worked on various OpenShift products for Linux on IBM Z, and we’ve connected on various topics over the past several months (mostly when I needed something, hah!). It was really nice to meet her in person. I was also pleasantly surprised when she suggested our dinner adventure should include finding some Guinness 0 (non-alcoholic). You see, I’m a beer fan, but I got a bit sick back in March and have been taking a break from drinking until I feel better. Guinness 0 was a nice treat, and surprisingly good!

Day three began with the obligatory keynote discussion with Linus Torvalds, followed by another keynote about AI agents, but this time with a focus on specifically how they can help open source software maintainers. I really enjoyed Kate Stewart’s keynote on the Zephyr project though. Zephyr has been on my radar for a while, but playing with it is another one of those projects I am not sure I’ll get around to anytime soon. But hey, it turns out my RISC-V board is supported by Zephyr! That gets me one step closer!

The final keynote on Free to Use, Not Free to Run: Reinventing Package Registries is one that stuck with me. Basically, open source communities are running registries (PyPI, RubyGems, crates.io, etc) that companies using the ecosystem depend upon, but they’re becoming expensive to run, and projects are now hyper-aware of security and supply chain concerns that they need to take very seriously. So they’ve launched a Sustaining Package Registries Working Group to discuss concerns, and develop solutions together, up to and including starting to charge for industrial scale traffic. I’ve seen the thankless work that goes into things like PyPI. Helpfully, Stephen wrote about this too: 10 trillion downloads are crushing open-source repositories – here’s what they’re doing about it.

Most of the rest of my day was spent meeting up with people, but I also happy to make it to Rob Landley’s Building the Simplest Possible Linux System talk. I’ve seen Rob speak a few times over the years, and I love the enthusiasm for the work that he brings to it. He’s also been friendly in the realm of s390x porting, and I was delighted to see on his screen as he was preparing to begin that the emulated build he had up on the screen was s390x.

I talked a lot about sessions in this blog post, but ultimately what makes these events is the people. Connecting in person make a huge difference, and there were a lot of people I saw there who I hadn’t seen in a couple years. And this time I made sure to take lots of pictures!

With that, the summit came to an end. To close things out, I went out to enjoy another round of Guinness 0s with Cheryl before it was time to call it an early night before my 7AM flight home the next morning.

Filed under: computers, events, mainframes, tech, travel, work

Open Source and AI brain dump

Thursday, Jun 4th, 2026 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

I hadn’t been to the Open Source Summit in a couple years, and boy was I in for a shift. It was a shift I expected, because AI/ML has taken over tech a big way, but experiencing it was a whole different thing.

I also don’t think I’ve every heard the word “human” said so many times in a week. It’s weird to talk like that.

This blog post isn’t meant to be anything shocking or insightful in the realm of AI. It’s more a brain dump checkpoint for me personally to share what working through the shift to AI tooling is like from where I’m sitting. The value you can get from this post may vary ;)

The first thing I’ll say that I’ve never seen a tech industry shift happen this fast, and having been in the industry for nearly 25 years I’ve worked through some major transformations. In the past 9 months I’ve seen multiple cases where a conference CFP being 6+ months before the conference causes a considerable change in the resulting presentation material, I’ve seen two talks change their titles from what was listed because tools and companies rose and fell in that time. Tech has always been an industry of continuous learning, and I love that, but today if you haven’t spent some time learning about AI in the past 6 months, you’re going to be blindsided by a whole slew of terms and concepts. You’ll likely find it hard to learn at conferences because there’s so much new foundational AI knowledge that’s assumed. Indeed, I like to think I’ve stayed fairly well-informed, and even I had to go back to my room in the evening and do some learning so I could properly absorb what I had been exposed to throughout the day, and be ready for the next day. My conference notes have a lot more “learn more about this” notes than usual.

Career-wise, this has already proven to be a difficult time for people in tech. Huge layoffs have hit major tech companies with AI given as a reason. Obviously, this is incredibly painful for folks who have a mortgage to pay, health care costs, and mouths to feed; suddenly the market has become unrecognizable and they can’t find a new job. That sucks. The core programming skills that coding boot camps were founded on as being a golden ticket to a high paying job in tech are rapidly being replaced by AI tools. We’re not there yet, I’ve been reviewing some very bad AI-generated code in the past few months as I touched upon in my blog post about CPOSC, but there is a fast-paced trend of improvements. If the rise of AI in programming turns out to be sustainable (capacity can be expanded and that it continues to be cost-effective), the need for straight up entry level programmers will continue to decrease, and we’ll need more folks with more advanced skills related to computer science and architecture. How do you get more advanced skills without learning programming basics first? I don’t know the answer to that, but there are a lot of smart people trying to figure it out.

I’m also aware of the fact that adoption of things like AI agents will actually take a while in most companies. I think back to the rise of configuration management, and in spite of all the benefits, the amount of work it would take to rebuild their systems with configuration management in place was simply not a priority (indeed, in most shops I saw it implemented slowly, and only with new systems that were brought up). Will this be the case for AI agents as well? I had more than a few conversations where developers were using AI-assisted coding tools, but having an infrastructure that supported using agents to automatically carry out tasks was nowhere close to their reality. There’s also the question of economies of scale. A massive tech company like Google may see the value of heavily investing in AI, but for a company with a tech department of a half dozen folks? Maybe it doesn’t sense any time soon. After all, using that Perl script we’ve always used is still faster than re-writing everything in Puppet, since our ten servers are unique pets (no cattle here!).

Coming back to open source, I’ve also been thinking a lot about the reason companies invest in open source software. At the core, it’s because… of the core. Core technology is what everyone uses and there’s no business advantage to it, so it makes sense to invest in them collectively. Kubernetes is not what makes money, Red Hat OpenShift and the ecosystem built on top of it is, so SUSE can also play that game with Rancher. Is there a future where that core technology is created by AI, and it’s good and cheap, so the need for open source collaboration is no longer “worth the trouble”? I hope not. And not just because my livelihood depends upon it. I’ve always believed that open collaboration on tooling across the tech industry has literally made the world better.

At the Open Source Summit the keynotes were AI-heavy, as was to be expected. Jim Zemlin had a lot of positive things to say about the role of open source software today at every layer of the AI stack, but acknowledged that the final layer is what is missing: data.

The open data community will always lag behind here, because those who hold private data will always have the open data plus their own. It seems like the question that’s being asked is whether a vast pool of open data can be “enough”, even if it’s not “better” than the private data. This is already being seen with AI models, the best ones are proprietary, but the open ones? Pretty good! Probably good enough for most of us! The statistic Jim shared was that open source models only lag proprietary ones by 3-6 months, whereas the gap was measured in years back in 2022. The concern with data is that the desire for open data is arguably in direct competition with privacy and the ability for us to keep our servers running. What happens when you’re running a webserver and 80% of the traffic is bots collecting data rather than serving your customers? You get that bill, and that bill is getting larger. This leads to an inclination for organizations to pull back what they share, and put more and more behind paywalls and proxy services, or in apps that aren’t on the web. Still, the Linux Foundation still believes we’re in a world where the problem is not lack of data, but lack of coordination to collect and curate these data sources. Maybe.

Open source contributions were also a big topic. Speaking personally from a tiny, niche project I run, things have clearly changed. Until 2026, every contribution was from someone we personally engaged with in some way. This year we’ve received multiple small patches that have zero contextual awareness of the project, but fix common errors in code (cool, thanks!). My current core developer has pulled back on self-assigning issues when he creates them because we’ve started to see new contributors just show up and start working on them. That has never happened before. And are they AI-assisted? Definitely. In some ways this is great. A major change landed this week that would have taken us months to do without it. We’ve gotten lucky so far, that particular change had a clever developer behind it who was willing to engage with us through a month of back and forth with fixes and improvements, and he actually understood the code that was submitted. We can’t always bet on that, and that erodes trust. My default reaction to new contributors used to be elation, now it’s turning to apprehension. I hate that. We have drive-by contributors who will never use or care about the project, so their motivations aren’t driven by usage or focused on holistic improvements, but done in order to fill up their GitHub contributions graph. Some of this has always been this way, not everyone who contributes becomes part of a project in a real way, and some of these are changes that can improve the project! But it feels like the community element that drives lifelong open source contributors like myself to maintaining a project is slipping away. As someone whose closest and longest friendships have predominantly come from shared involvement and values related to open source, this is very sad for me.

See? I told you this blog post was personal. I’m getting all mushy when you expect me to only care about the code and what’s technically best for the project. But I’m human and me caring about community is what’s best for the project. That thrill of welcoming a new contributor and the connection we build as they move up through their career is what gets me through long nights, difficult decisions, and burnout, so I can continue being an effective contributor.

Another major topic of discussion at the summit related to AI was security. There have always been solid security teams for major open source projects, but the levels to which they were funded at and the tooling available have been less impressive. And smaller projects? Honestly, very little attention paid to security. This has started changing, but we’re not where we need to be, because the vulnerability landscape is changing much, much faster. By most estimates, the number of CVEs in 2026 is expected to exceed 50,000 for the first time. With AI-assisted scanning, it’s simple and cheap to find vulnerabilities in every single piece of open source code out there. So that little project on GitHub that had security through obscurity before? Not anymore. My little tool doesn’t just have bugs being identified and reported by AI tooling, it has security problems that are being identified and reported (or just exploited!).

There’s good work happening here though. The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) is leading the way on the foundation side, and continuously coming out with new tools to help projects (now they just need to adopt them, me included!). One of the talks I went to at the Open Source Summit was a really helpful project overview of projects within the OpenSSF. I took notes to look into incorporating Allstar and to revisit SLSA tooling (it’s been a while).

Projects like OSS-CRS are also great to see, even if I expect the industry to play a much bigger role in this kind of vulnerability scanning and remediation. For my employer’s part, IBM joined Project Glasswing, but more importantly announced a $5B investment in our own Project Lightwell. I’m really proud this, it’s what industry should be doing.

So, overall, how am I feeling?

Unsettled. Scared. AI has the power to be an existential threat, and at the very least it will transform computer-based work over the next decade, and people will lose their livelihood over it. A lot of them. I can’t stress enough how serious this is in the United States where we are seeing support structures being dismantled when they should be built up to prepare for this future. I am deeply concerned about what this means for our society, and my own family.

I’m also excited. Remember how I like technology? I do, I do! I have dozens of projects in my head that I’ve never done because I don’t have that much hobby time. AI-assisted tooling has already helped me start tackling some of that. I had several very fun conversations with folks at the summit around personal projects that ranged from useful to ridiculous that we’re having fun with because we can suddenly cut out six weeks of coding time from the equation and knock out a prototype in a weekend. It’s probably a bad prototype, but maybe it’s functional enough for personal use, and it simply wouldn’t exist otherwise. It’s also an exciting time for non-programmers who can now get computers to do innovative and new things they want them to do by simply speaking to them, a goal which has been worked on at least since Grace Hopper wrote FLOW-MATIC in 1955. AI is removing the barriers that have kept the full potential of computing in the realm of technologists, and that’s a good thing.

At the end of the day, we’re not going back. Even if the recent push-back of building data centers succeeds in a big way and capacity is limited, we’ll write better models and find ways to squeeze more computing power out of reduced resources. Things probably won’t continue to grow exponentially, but AI is here, and I see no benefit in fundamentally resisting it. Let’s keep an eye on privacy and safety though, shall we?

Filed under: computers, events, reflection, tech

Work travel side quests

Monday, Jun 1st, 2026 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

A little over a week ago I returned from two back-to-back work trips. With one of them ending on a Thursday and the next not until Sunday, I considered flying from Atlanta back home to San Francisco, and then back out again to Minneapolis, but timing and cost-wise, even with additional nights in hotels, that didn’t make sense. So I spent a final night in Atlanta and then flew to Minneapolis on Friday.

Thursday I was able to spend time after the conference going to World of Coca-Cola, a Coca-Cola museum located just blocks from the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta. I have mixed feelings about paying for a museum dedicated to a brand. And felt even worse about it when the introductory video to the museum was a montage of sweet human stories that make you cry, oh, and all these people have a Coke, because Coke is part of life. Wow, big ick. Couldn’t you just give me something informational instead of making me feel like I’m being manipulated?

Anyway, I do appreciate the historical aspect of Coca-Cola as part of Atlanta and American history and I like history. And even though I’ve joined the bandwagon of eschewing soda consumption these days for health reasons, I do really, really like Coca-Cola. Sigh. So I enjoyed walking through history a bit and learning about the company and the “secret formula” story was amusing. Worth the time and $25? No. I probably should have looked for a more interesting way to spend my afternoon. But at least I can answer in the affirmative next time someone asks if I’ve been!

Still, I got the $5 cup which allows you to take a full cup of whatever region soda you want to-go. Royal watermelon soda from the Philippines is pretty great and I enjoyed it as a treat as I sat in the Centennial Olympic Park for a little while to read.

That evening I hopped on MARTA to meet some family for dinner at Fox Bros Bar-B-Q. I was actually born near Atlanta because that’s where my father was working for a few years, and it’s not too far from where my uncle (father’s brother) and his family lived, and still live. I was able to reach out to them and gather my aunt and uncle, as well as my three cousins. It’s been a very long time since we’ve all gotten together, so I was grateful they were able to make the time. Plus, we’re basically a whole crew of liberal tech nerds (my uncle retired from IBM), so I truly enjoy spending time with them.

I woke up around 3AM the next morning to catch the first of two flights that would take me to Minneapolis. It was an easy journey, even with a connection, and I was in Minneapolis by noon. That gave me time to check into my hotel, walk over to Target for some breakfast food to have during my stay, and then hop right back on the Metro for my first adventure: The Mall of America.

It’s an unusual destination for me because I don’t really like malls, but it’s the biggest mall the country so it’s also a bit of a tourist attraction too. The big draws for me were the M&M store and the Lego store, both on behalf of my kiddos. Aaron’s favorite clothes over the past couple years have been his LOTS OF M&Ms hoodie and pants, and he was pretty sad when he grew out of his M&M hoodie (twice, I bought a second when he outgrew the first). I bought him pants when he outgrew the hoodie, but he was also outgrowing the pants! I was thrilled to find everything at the mall.

The Lego store was honestly a bit underwhelming. They had some big Lego builds on top of the store, but inside? Just a Lego store. It would be fun if stores in interesting places did exclusive things, but the only thing they had was custom mini-figs which had the city on it, which was fine. I made a couple of those for the boys.

I think a big draw of the mall is that it basically has a small amusement park inside it, complete with indoor roller coasters. That’s fun, but I’ve also been to the West Edmonton Mall which also has a lot of this and I did ride a roller coaster there, so I didn’t feel compelled to partake this time. I 100% would have done Moose Mountain Adventure Golf if I wasn’t there alone though, that looked like fun.

On Saturday I decided to go to the Minnesota Zoo. It’s a large zoo and I was able to pretty easily take public transit there (train + bus), even if it took a while. I realized as I was plotting out my route that I wasn’t actually crunched for time for the first time in a while, so I brought along my ebook reader and enjoyed reading during my journey through the Minneapolis suburbs. It was nice. The weather was nice too, it was sunny and in the 70s, making it perfect weather for walking around. I only spent a couple hours there, and started by checking out the penguins. From there, I decided to walk the 1.25 mile loop on the Treetop Trail, which gives you a pretty good glimpse of several of the exhibits from above. I was delighted to be able to see a tiger taking a swim with my lofty view!

It’s also just a nice nature walk, and Minnesota has some really nice nature to enjoy. From there I walked down to Grizzly Coast where I got pretty close to a big bear. Very cute. I concluded my day by having lunch at the zoo cafe and got my first round of fried cheese curds and local root beer. Yum. And then it was back on the bus to make the journey back.

Saturday night I had tickets to a Twins game. I enjoy baseball games, and I have gone to them on my own, but I wasn’t sure about this one because I also enjoy resting and it had been a busy couple of days! Then I learned it was Star Wars night. Well, now I have to go! I’m glad I did, it was a beautiful evening for baseball.

And I might not have gotten the Star Wars night Grogu bobble-head (those tickets were long sold out), but I did get a cool Luke and Leia Twins t-shirt (you see, they’re TWINS!).

And with that, my side quests came to a conclusion. Sunday I started meeting with folks who were in town for the Open Source Summit, which is how I spent the rest of a great week.

Filed under: animals, baseball, family, travel
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