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 […]
Archive for the ‘travel’ Category
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 […]
Open Mainframe Project at IBM TechXchange 2024
November 19th, 2024 by pleia2
A few weeks ago I had the privilege of traveling to Las Vegas to participate in the IBM TechXchange 2024 conference. My big project there was as one of the leaders of the Open Mainframe Project event, which we’d been working on for months and took a bunch of my time (and stress!) during that […]
Library fun, critters, and a final Philly train ride
August 5th, 2024 by pleia2
Over all we had a good summer in Philadelphia, but a round of COVID, canceled Florida trip, a sunburn, and a few days of MJ coping with an injury definitely made for some challenges. I joked with a friend that “we had a phenomenal Instagram summer!” because of all the activities and fun we had […]
Bringing the boys to New York City
July 29th, 2024 by pleia2
One of the things on our list for this summer in Philadelphia was making a side trip up to New York City. I’ve always enjoyed my visits to NYC, and it’s become increasingly clear that the boys love cities, it was time to finally introduce them to one of the greatest ones! We parked in […]
Father’s Day weekend “down the shore”
June 21st, 2024 by pleia2
The boys love the beach. I’ve had this little fact tucked away in my head since we brought them to their first beach in San Francisco last year, but it’s tricky in northern California. Even during the summer, it can be quite cool on the California coast, and the water is not good for swimming. […]