On September 21st I headed to Philadelphia for my first in-person event since March 2020, the Open Mainframe Summit! The Linux Foundation kicked off this event in 2020, and it swiftly went virtual for two years. This means it was the first time this event had been in person too. Masks and either vaccination or […]
Archive for the ‘tech’ Category
Colds, parks, and holidays
May 21st, 2022 by pleia2
We’ve all been sick a lot. It seems we’re in the midst of what all families go through when their kids first go to (pre)school, a non-stop parade of colds that are annoying, but not severe enough to require anything beyond rest and cold medicine. We have the added fun of regular COVID-19 tests, both […]
A jellyfish and a mainframe
April 21st, 2022 by pleia2
Happy Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) release day! April has been an exciting month. On April 5th, the IBM z16 was released. For those of you who aren’t aware, this is the IBM zSystems class of mainframes that I’ve been working on at IBM for the past three years. As a Developer Advocate, I’ve been […]
Punch Card Wreath
October 29th, 2021 by pleia2
A few weeks ago I mentioned my punch card earrings, and someone on Twitter mentioned punch card wreaths. Wreaths? It turns out they really are a thing. In a little booklet called “Make It with Punched Cards” published in 1971 it goes through about a dozen things you can make with punch cards, and one […]
I 3D-printed an IBM LinuxONE!
September 21st, 2021 by pleia2
Several months ago I 3D printed an IBM z15 pencil holder. I used a design that had been floating around, so it wasn’t perfect, but it was a nice little model. I ended up following up with a design team inside of IBM and got a more perfect version that they were OK with me […]
I got my amateur radio license!
September 3rd, 2021 by pleia2
I have a memory of sitting at our family computer happily chatting away with some friends on IRC, when my father came in and started to talk about ham radio and how you could talk to people from all over the world! “Dad, I’m chatting with someone in Sweden RIGHT NOW.” As a teenager, it […]
Tired, Star Wars 5k, sours, and my SPARC
June 4th, 2021 by pleia2
Our new au pair is here! I’m beginning this post with that because welcoming a new person into our family is a big deal, and the help she’s already provided in just her first few weeks here has been an incredible relief. On May 5th I was chasing Adam at the playground and managed to […]
I 3D-printed an IBM z15 model!
May 17th, 2021 by pleia2
Back in April as I was catching up with work following my maternity leave, I discovered the existence of some internal IBM 3D printer files for IBM z15 pencil holders. I was immediately intrigued, and quickly found a 3D printer company that would print one for me. As a quick aside, I learned about 3D […]
The Big Iron Hippo
May 10th, 2021 by pleia2
It’s been about a year since I last wrote about an Ubuntu release on IBM Z (colloquially known as “mainframes” and nicknamed “Big Iron”). In my first year at IBM my focus really was Linux on Z, along with other open source software like KVM and how that provides support for common tools via libvirt […]
Four months of virtual events
July 22nd, 2020 by pleia2
It’s been over four months since I attended my last in-person conference, and last week marks the last conference I had on my schedule, but which was cancelled. In these four months I’ve seriously attended probably a dozen online meetups, seriously participated in four virtual conferences, and gave four talks. As a whole, I am […]