On September 29th, I turned 44 years old. I think this is the first birthday where I actually started feeling my age. My ankle was recovering from a sprain, I had developed tendentious in my elbow, and for some inexplicable reason my back was hurting. Being reminded of weakness in my body all at once […]
Archive for the ‘travel’ Category
Maine with the boys: light house and cryptozoology edition
August 7th, 2025 by pleia2
Our visit to Maine continued on Monday as the boys enjoyed the pool at the hotel with their cousin, and we got ready to head out to Cape Elizabeth for some sight-seeing. Unfortunately, after preparing lunch and snacks for everyone, I discovered when we arrived at Fort Williams that I had forgotten it all at […]
Maine with the boys: trains and baseball edition
August 2nd, 2025 by pleia2
I grew up in Maine, so it naturally holds a special place in my heart. I spent a lot of time sitting by the ocean when I was a teenager, and I’m charmed every time I go back to Portland and see what new restaurants and shops have opened up in the Old Port. But […]
A couple days in Boston
July 30th, 2025 by pleia2
“Weren’t you just in Boston?” Indeed, I was! But this time, it was the first major stop in a road trip up through New England with our family. I’d say this was our first proper Great American Road Trip with the kids. They’d done an hour or two here and there, and three hours when […]
Tourist in Boston: Lobstah! Baseball! Tea!
June 4th, 2025 by pleia2
I arrived in Boston a couple days before the Red Hat Summit so I could decompress a little and enjoy the city. Since I grew up in Maine, it’s a bit surreal to be in full tourist mode in Boston. On the one hand, I have New England woven into my soul, but on the […]
Our IBM LinuxONE AI Arcade & more at the Red Hat Summit 2025
May 29th, 2025 by pleia2
Back in 2019 I participated in my first Red Hat Summit. It was my second week working at IBM, and the whole thing was quite a whirlwind tour of exploring a vendor-specific event and getting to meet a whole bunch of people at IBM who I’d come to know a lot better in these past […]
Thanksgiving in Florida: Part 2
December 31st, 2024 by pleia2
We spent the first half of our Florida trip in the south, and on Tuesday we drove almost 3 hours north to visit my family in Melbourne. On the drive up I received a call from my Aunt Mary Ellen who we had planned on spending Thanksgiving dinner with, only to learn she had contracted […]
Thanksgiving in Florida: Part 1
December 27th, 2024 by pleia2
Back in July we had a plan to spend the 4th of July with family, and those plans fell apart when the whole household came down with COVID-19 just days before we were supposed to leave for our trip. But we still wanted to visit! MJ has a little cousin (now two years old!) who […]
SeaGL 2024
December 23rd, 2024 by pleia2
Back in 2018 I attended my last conference before we welcomed our first child, the Seattle GNU/Linux conference (SeaGL). I was about 5 months pregnant and gave one of the keynotes! It was a great final adventure before parenthood, and I’m grateful to have had the opportunity. I wrote about it more here: SeaGL 2018. […]
Lego, hardware, and a typewriter at IBM TechXchange 2024
November 21st, 2024 by pleia2
One of the things I’ve learned in my five years at IBM is that the enterprise nature of the company means that our IBM-branded events are incredibly important to our ecosystem, and people are really excited to attend them, me included. Brand events are something I’ve definitely seen in my two decades in the tech […]