EOY – pleia2's blog https://princessleia.com/journal Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph's public journal about open source, mainframes, beer, travel, pink gadgets and her life near the city where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars. Tue, 23 Jan 2024 22:23:47 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.2 The adventures of 2023 https://princessleia.com/journal/2024/01/the-adventures-of-2023/ Wed, 24 Jan 2024 04:20:37 +0000 https://princessleia.com/journal/?p=17168 2023 was an interesting year. Our oldest started Transitional Kindergarten and came home having learned a bunch of new things. Our youngest matured in leaps and bounds, turning into a talking, opinionated, member of our family. We had a bit of a rocky summer with an au pair who didn’t work out, but following that we welcomed an amazing au pair into our family who immediately clicked with both kids and whose presence in our family I’m grateful for daily. I had a good year work-wise with several goals met this year and the launch of a little Open Source Program Office within our organization. I had the opportunity to attend a few conferences in-person, which has opened the door for more travel coming up in 2024. Travel in general is still quite limited, but we also had three great trips to our place in Philadelphia and enjoyed visits with family, including hosting Thanksgiving at our place for the family for the first time.

In 2023 I had to deal with some pretty big losses. The first was the loss of our cat, Caligula, in February. He was 19 years old and ultimately the care for his age-related ailments stopped being effective, and he declined rapidly within a couple days, to the point of being on oxygen at the emergency vet. He was my companion for most of my adult life, so it took months for me to start feeling normal again. In August I lost my friend and mentor Jim Fisher to an unexpected heart attack. His sudden death was shocking to an entire community of amateur radio enthusiasts who benefited from his enthusiasm and encouragement, and I’m still working my way through the loss.

I stepped up my typewriter hobby a little with my first minor repair, that of a marginally functional Smith-Corona Skyriter. I spent a couple weeks fiddling with various components to get it into a state I was happy with, and it’s become my go-to portable typewriter, and definitely one of my favorites. I always had a fascination with mechanical things, but I have discovered a real solid satisfaction from doing these repairs. Adam and I also started going to typewriter shops, and he has a lot of fun with them. The first was actually when we were in Philadelphia in April and he was fascinated by the eclectic shop we visited there, over the summer I brought him with me to Berkeley Typewriter when I needed work done on an IBM Selectric II that I picked up. In November the whole family came to a type-in in south Philadelphia. I’m glad I can share this hobby with my kids to some degree, otherwise I think I’d struggle to find time for it. I also bought a record player, which has taught me a lot of lessons about intentionally slowing down.

With the pandemic winding down, I had the opportunity to meet up with a few friends and have half day outings to myself. Becoming a parent requires a huge shift in priorities and presents massive changes to your identity, all of which I’m still adjusting to five years in. Taking time for myself, and to connect with MJ without spending the whole time talking about chores and kids, turns out to be incredibly important, and I don’t do it enough.

My first conference of the year was in April CPOSC in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which I discovered while we were in Philadelphia for a visit, so I was able to book a train ticket and make it a day trip. In September I spoke at the Open Mainframe Summit at IBM TechXchange in Las Vegas, and then in October at All Things Open in Raleigh. My final in-person event was a little PLUG meeting north of Philadelphia in November.

This year we finally had the opportunity to open the doors wide open to public settings again, so we brought the boys all kinds of places. The beach, a baseball game, adventures in San Francisco, local festivals, cherry picking, antique and model train fairs, museums, aquariums, zoos, and more. I joke that we’re a bit of a circus when we leave the house, but honestly I’m really happy to finally be able to share my favorite activities and places with our little ones.

Work has been going well, in October I went to the recording studio at IBM RTP to record a video about Linux on the Mainframe that went up on YouTube via the IBM Technology channel and I’m really proud of it. I launched an Open Source Program Office within our organization and have managed to do a lot of cross-organization and external work that I’m very happy with. The following is a rundown of talks I gave throughout the year:

In 2024 I’m hoping to find some balance between work, family, and taking care of myself. Health-wise I’m doing OK, but I’d like to find a way to sleep better, and it would be nice to make improvements to my diet and activity level so I feel more equipped to keep up with my kids as we go out on all these adventures. Here’s to the new year!

]]> The adventures of 2022 https://princessleia.com/journal/2023/01/the-adventures-of-2022/ Wed, 25 Jan 2023 04:16:17 +0000 https://princessleia.com/journal/?p=16600 2022 was a mixed bag. On the one hand, our three year old started preschool and ended up bringing every sickness he came across home, and we were essentially sick for half the year. We also finally succumbed to COVID-19 in July.

On the flip side, the boys finally got vaccinated! And we finally got to go back to Philadelphia, twice! I went to my first in-person conference since March of 2020, and generally things began opening up again. We’re still not back to where we were before the pandemic, but I’m not sure we’ll ever be, or if that’s a desirable state. Folks in the United States have really played fast and loose with illness for decades, and now the thought of going out without a mask when I have a cold just feels rude.

I’ve also had a bit of a reckoning with myself that’s still in progress. I’m a mother now, and in charge of a single family home. As a result, these two things consume almost all of my free time, most of the rest of which goes to attempting to get enough sleep. I keep setting milestones after which I think I’ll feel better (conclusion of breastfeeding, my youngest sleeping through the night, not being sick) but I keep being disappointed. So in 2022 I worked with my doctor to start a low dose of antidepressants, and started talking to a therapist. I also spent a day away on my own at a local resort, which was a brief respite but one that I really needed. Most days I can tell that the medication and small changes here and there are helping, but I definitely have work to do and am in need of more support.

MJ and I got to connect a bit more in 2022. It’s so difficult finding time to spend together with a baby at home, so as the boys slowly eased out of baby-hood this year, we were able to go out on a couple big date evenings (anniversary and my birthday) and have started leaving the house on weekdays as we can to do lunch together. In October we even got to go out for a quickly little day trip to a BART maintenance facility, which may not be the most romantic thing, but it was nice to get out together and enjoy something together that we totally would have done before we had kids.

I love a lot about being a parent though. I have always been happy about the fact that I never grew up too much and still know how to play and be silly, but it’s really kicked up a notch when you have kids around. Being thoughtful and creative with them comes so naturally not because I have experience with kids (I don’t), but because we share so many of the same interests and the so many of the same things bring us joy. As my boys continue to get bigger, I’m enjoying sharing my interests with them, from riding a train to looking at the stars and identifying planets (we’re big fans of Jupiter over here).

Work was quite fulfilling in 2022. We had some major product launches that I worked hard on supporting, several major events, and I was thrilled that the work I put in to preparing my promotion resulted in said promotion. I’ve become more focused with what learning I want to do each quarter, which has had the unintended consequence of strengthening my bonds with the mainframe community as I find I’m able to connect even more. In all, I’m still loving my job, and everything I’m continuing to learn.

The only trips we took in 2022 were two to Philadelphia, the first in September and the second in December, but I did still give some talks! Mostly virtual, but I did give a couple in-person at the Open Mainframe Summit while I was in Philadelphia in September. The following is my talk rundown.

As we ease into 2023, I’m hopeful that this year will bring some of the changes to my life that I need to take. I’m aiming for some more milestones at work, and I’m going to continue pursue taking better care of my self, both with regard to my physical and my mental health.

]]> At home adventures of 2021 https://princessleia.com/journal/2022/01/at-home-adventures-of-2021/ Thu, 27 Jan 2022 03:30:49 +0000 https://princessleia.com/journal/?p=16290 Here we are again, my End of Year blog post, even if I’m writing it pretty late.

In 2020 we squeezed in a handful of trips early in the year before the pandemic hit, but we did not have that opportunity this year. We didn’t travel at all. We never even left the San Francisco Bay Area. But with what approaches our second year at home all together, the year was still eventful.

As 2021 began, we had baby Aaron at home and I was on maternity leave. The startup MJ was with had shuttered and he decided to take some time to spend with the family this year instead of jumping right back in to the job market. I’m grateful for this, the kids won’t be little forever and this time together is so precious. Plus, it helped me hit the ground running upon my return to work in April so I could continue working toward a promotion that I’ll be going for in 2022.

It’s hard to stress how much the pandemic has really altered our lives. In the past, MJ had a long commute and worked quite late. He would see Adam in the morning, but it would be pretty rare for him to be around on weekday evenings with us, let alone putting them to bed every night. We developed a lovely routine in 2021, and I’ll be quite sad when things shift back. I suspect when we look back on our pandemic time, we’ll really treasure the opportunity it presented with us with, even if it is hard to be so isolated. But 2021 brought the vaccines for adults! And then for kids over five!

I read more in 2021, concluding the year having read 21 books. It took very conscious effort in the last few months of the year, and I gave up most of my television watching to accomplish it, but I’m glad I did. Curling up with a book is truly one of my favorite things, and I ultimately get more satisfaction from it than I do from watching television or playing video games. I wasn’t totally without screen time though, in April for our anniversary, we rented out the independent movie theater in town and watched Star Wars.

We got several home projects done. We coordinated with all our neighbors to get the fence replaced (no small task!) and also got a deck box to store toys outside, instead of having a bunch of toys we haul out back every time we go out there. I also snagged a plastic slide structure that someone was selling via a local mom group, and a little BBQ-themed play set with a tent over it where Adam can play with water and food toys.


Old fence, new fence!

In the house, we got some new furniture, including a couple kitchen hutches that have expanded our storage and counter space somewhat. I went to a plastics shop and got custom-cut shelves for a metal shelving unit that we inherited from MJ’s grandparents and is now in our downstairs bathroom. We got a big freezer in the garage, which feels like a rite of passage now that we have two kids, we suddenly have so much frozen food!

I took the kids out to lots of parks, playgrounds, and on other adventures outdoors. We spent the summer going to garage and yard sales, outdoor book sales at the library, and the farmer’s market. I took the kids out on a few virtual 5K runs, which were a lot of fun for all of us since we tended to “theme up” during these walks (penguin theme! Star Wars themes!).

Adam and I started doing a lot of “toddler art” together and hanging it around the house. We went to the zoo a couple times, and also made our way over to the A’s stadium twice, where we rented a suite and our immediate family and some close friends could enjoy the game safely.

I lost a bunch of weight (about 50 pounds) and then promptly gained half of it back. It’s a frustrating situation, but I understand how it can happen. Weight management is tricky and managing a healthy diet for myself while I’m working a lot and have two little ones at home is difficult. I also turned 40, which is quite the decade milestone and your body just doesn’t bounce back from having two kids as it may have when I was younger.

Speaking of whom, my life does strongly revolve around my kids right now. Adam turned two in January, and Aaron turned one at the end of the year, in December. Kids change quickly at these ages, at every rapidly approaching milestone their care needs change and so does my schedule and coping mechanisms to manage it all along with everything. It’s been a tough year, especially as our ability to hire external help has been limited and we dealt with the baby’s sleep issues. But in the spring we were able to bring a new au pair into our home, so safe, reliable care for the kids is at least handled while I’m at work, for which I’m grateful for and realize a lot of parents don’t have the luxury of right now.

Still, I’ve managed a few minutes here and there for myself. I got my HAM radio license in August, say hello to KN6QGG! Unfortunately, in spite of the kindness of an acquaintance who gave me a radio, I haven’t made time to begin operating. I also picked up a vintage (1938) typewriter, and then paid to have it fully refurbished at a shop in Berkeley. It’s a beautiful machine and I’ve been using it here and there for artwork with Adam, and most recently to address envelopes for holiday cards. I also started resurrecting my SPARC Ultra10, beginning with replacing its NVRAM chip.

I’ve also done a few crafts of my own. I got some IBM Z models 3D-printed through a service I found online, and got permission to release the 3D-printer files. I also made my own Automan autocar, after falling in love with the silly show from the early 1980s. I concluded the year by making my own punch card wreath, which now decorates my home office door, and I swap out decorations each holiday.

As the year wound down, there was enough of a pause in COVID-19 infections that we felt it was safe enough for my father-in-law and and his wife to visit. This was just before omicron arrived, so things were looking quite hopeful and we went to the zoo and also held a small birthday party for the boys in a nearby park, to which we invited some friends we hadn’t seen in nearly two years.

Finally, I’ve had to get creative at work to meet the needs of the communities I work with as we couldn’t see each other in person for yet another year. I stepped away from some of the general online open source events, because I simply wasn’t getting much value out of them, and it was better to find ways to connect and socialize in non-conference ways. That means my talk schedule, in addition to being virtual, was more focused on IBM events and those with partners, with a handful of notable exceptions. It’s actually been very interesting, because we can craft each presentation more specifically than I might have at a more generalist in-person event. Many of my decks did away with introduction to mainframes text entirely because I was either honed in on just doing my own part of the event (someone else would cover the basics) or I was speaking to an audience that didn’t need a primer. Still, I look forward to getting back out there to see my open source pals again, and to meet my new mainframe friends I’ve bonded with virtually.

So without further ado, my talk rundown! It starts in May because I was on maternity leave until April.

As I said, having another pandemic year was tough, and it definitely caused us to take different paths and try new things, some for the better, others less so. As we dive into 2022, the omicron variant surges and vaccines for the youngest among us are still just outside of our grasp. I’m hopeful that 2022 brings the vaccinations, health, and reunions that we’re all so desperate for. But I’ll continue to look back fondly on the bright side of 2021, and for the closeness it’s brought to our little family.

]]> The adventures of 2020, or lack thereof? https://princessleia.com/journal/2021/01/the-adventures-of-2020-or-lack-thereof/ Fri, 01 Jan 2021 17:59:30 +0000 http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=15811 For the past decade, every year I’ve written an End of Year blog post. I list the places I’ve traveled, my talks, and then generally reflect upon other milestones in the year.

2020 was a very different year for all of us due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amusingly, at the beginning of 2020 I made a decision to really own my travel schedule, and not lie to myself about how I’d stay home more. I had my first international trip since Adam was born, to Australia, and penciled in trips to Singapore and Amsterdam. I had lined up trips across the country for events during the first six months of the year, and we even had flights booked for an early spring trip to our place in Philadelphia.

So to begin my post like I usually do for these year wrap up posts, we did get some adventures in!

The January trip to Australia was one I’d longed for. I spent a long weekend in Brisbane doing some tourist stuff, and then took the train down to Gold Coast for the annual Linux Conf AU event where I gave a couple talks. COVID-19 was not even on my radar.


Tourist in Brisbane!

IBM pals at Linux Conf AU

As we entered February, we took our first agenda-free (no wedding, funeral, visit to Philly, etc) family vacation with Adam! It was to Las Vegas, which we figured would be an easy way to start vacation-wise. We were able to get a large suite so Adam could have a place to sleep separate from us, and we were able to take advantage of a bunch of perks we had accrued over the years and our previous trips to Las Vegas. A few murmurs here and there had begun about COVID-19, but it felt more like the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s: a serious outbreak, but not something we factored into our lives.


On a walk down the Las Vegas strip, Adam enjoys the fountains at the Bellagio

As March approached international travel started tightening up for work. My trip to speak at a conference in Singapore in mid-March was canceled by management, and all other travel started getting looked at with more scrutiny. Still, we had a trip to Pasadena planned for SCALE18x the first week of March which MJ, Adam, and I were all going to. As I boarded the plane with the family on March 4th I still had the green light to attend.

I’ll be honest, I still wasn’t taking COVID-19 entirely seriously at this stage. At the conference the hugs were limited, though many still happened. Several companies had pulled out at the last minute, leaving the expo hall a bit more sparse and the conference scrambling to fill slots left by missing speakers. The conference venue was filled with hand sanitizer, and as one of the track leads I dutifully wiped down microphones and surfaces between speakers, but there were no masks in sight.


Adam’s first conference!

It was only by the end of the conference as we saw cancellations for upcoming events piling up and the number of COVID-19 cases climbing in coastal hotspots that I fully came to the realization that this was really serious, and this may be my last conference for a while.

Everything really changed for us on March 16th when the entire bay area fell under Shelter in Place orders and all but essential businesses closed. Suddenly, both MJ and I were 100% work from home, and all of our travel plans were canceled.

And then we learned I was pregnant!

I’ve written a fair amount over the year about how COVID-19 has impacted our life and family, for good and bad, so I won’t repeat that here, but it has been quite a different year.

“Big things” this year began straight away, with Adam’s first birthday on January 6th!

We also started on a few major projects on the house. We unexpectedly needed the dishwasher replaced after a major failure caused it to leak and soak through the floor into the garage (also prompting some immediate remediation and eventually drywall work, too). We finally got almost all the closet doors hung, and they look fantastic! Our solar was completed and finally went on-line in December, with an array of 48 panels on our roof and four Tesla Powerwalls in our garage. The fence project is going a bit slower, but after several quotes and chats with the four neighbors we share a fence with, we finally have a path forward, so the materials will be ordered soon should be available for installation in the first quarter of 2021. The family room upstairs is constantly evolving with new configurations and storage solutions for toys as we cater to the needs of a playful child who spends most of his time at home due to the pandemic.

The year concluded with the birth of our second son, Aaron! He was born on December 2nd and aside from his parents suffering from a bit of sleep deprivation, everything is going very well and he’s very healthy.

Finally, on the work front I had a really exciting year with several work projects and events coming together with impressive results. I briefly mentioned my ability to do talks all year with events having gone virtual. I ended up with a pretty standard schedule of talks as a result, and some new opportunities in the mainframe space, which was a lot of fun. I’m still learning a lot in the realm of IBM Z, but this year I finally feel like I’m making the connections I really need to succeed long-term. IBM has been very good for me, I’m looking forward to my return when my maternity leave concludes in early April.

Talk roundup for the year:

2020 has certainly been a difficult year, but it’s also been rewarding as the family got more time together and my work is thriving in spite of changes we’ve had to make. I miss traveling, I miss my friends and family. I am deeply saddened that we couldn’t make it back to Philadelphia this year, especially with Adam growing so quickly we would have loved to have him spend more time with our loved ones back east. It’s been hard to welcome Aaron into our lives with so few people around to welcome him, but we’ll just have to make up for lost time in the years to come.

Stay healthy, my friends, we’ll see each other again soon.

]]> The adventures of 2019 https://princessleia.com/journal/2020/01/the-adventures-of-2019/ Tue, 07 Jan 2020 04:36:48 +0000 http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=15114 The biggest thing of 2019 was welcoming our little Adam Stanley Joseph into our lives!

Throughout the year we’ve got to experience piles of the joys of new parenthood. The newborn snuggle time, reading our childhood favorites with him, adorable baby giggles, the look of happiness when he sees me after work, the on-going process of watching him discover everything in the world, and generally being able to bring him on all kinds of new adventures. My heart-melting reaction to some of these things was surprising to me. Having a child truly does change you, especially those of us who wouldn’t have classified ourselves as “kid people” prior to having one of our own.

Being a new parent is also difficult and exhausting, so this year has been really challenging. I met my goal of breastfeeding for a year, but it was hard, especially with my travel schedule. My daily schedule has completely changed. My priorities are very different. Even relationships that I never expected being influenced by parenthood have changed, and conversely some that I thought would have not. I’ve gotten very good at prioritizing things, especially when it comes to tasks around the house. I’ve definitely leveled up when it comes to multi-tasking too. I bring little Adam on errands most evenings, and all around the house with me as I do laundry, sort mail, and all the other little tasks one does to keep a household flowing.

I also started a new job this year. After almost four months of maternity leave, I started at IBM at the end of April. I’m still doing Developer Advocacy, but I’ve made a major change by getting into IBM Z (mainframes). I can use a lot of my existing infrastructure experience, but it’s also been a year of learning a lot, starting with what a mainframe is. It’s been a fascinating eight months with an extraordinary community of people. I dove into events immediately, but I took some time to start doing talks again as I grew into my role and learned what I needed to, but I was back up to my usual pace of talks and conferences by October and I’m in a great spot for 2020.


Photo courtesy of the Linux Foundation source

I’ve spent more time with family this year, mostly due to everyone wanting to meet and spend time with Adam, but also because we had both a funeral and two weddings to attend this year. Socially, I’ve really struggled. I’ve never been a social butterfly, but I’m constantly juggling precious little time and energy, and I haven’t been reserving any to make plans with friends. I don’t know if that will change soon, but I am mindful of the effort not being expended there and I don’t want things to be like this forever.

Travel-wise, I had my slowest travel year in recent memory, with just 54k miles, and since I decided to wait until Adam was a year old for any international travel, it was all domestic.

  • March: Philadelphia to visit
  • April: Hollywood, FL for a funeral
  • May: Atlanta for TechU conference, and visiting some family
  • May: Boston for the Red Hat Summit conference, and visiting some family
  • July: Philadelphia to visit
  • July: Poughkeepsie, NY for an office visit
  • July: Hollywood, FL for a wedding
  • July: Portland, OR for OSCON conference
  • August: San Diego for the Open Source Summit conference
  • September: Philadelphia & Rochester, NY for a visit and a wedding
  • October: Portland, OR for LISA19 conference
  • November: San Diego for KubeCon NA conference
  • November: Philadelphia to visit for Thanksgiving
  • December: New York City for the Open FinTech Forum conference
  • December: Philadelphia to visit for the holidays

Talks were similarly on the lean side, but I’m building a nice base of talks and a narrative that seems to resonate. I was really happy with the events I participated in.

As I look at 2020, I don’t see a huge change in store for us. We’re slightly more confident parents, but my priorities are still going to be family and work.

]]> The adventures of 2018 https://princessleia.com/journal/2019/01/the-adventures-of-2018/ Tue, 01 Jan 2019 20:53:52 +0000 http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=14531 On the face of it, 2018 was a great year for “big ticket” milestones and life changes.

We moved to our new home in Castro Valley!

We learned we were expecting our first child!

I gave three keynotes! Along with speaking at or participating in over a dozen conferences, four of which I was on the selection committee for.

We’ve had several visits with both sides of family!

I had wonderful travel adventures with friends!

…including my first ride in a helicopter AND my first ride in a sea plane!

More quietly, I struggled quite a bit. Complications arising during the pregnancy have been difficult to cope with, I saw two long-term friendships falter, leaving the city has been a hard adjustment, and in October I was caught up in a layoff. The stress of all of this and the upcoming changes in our life caused me to see out a therapist in October to help work through some of it.

Still, even with each of these struggles, there is much to be grateful for. In spite of complications, the pregnancy has progressed, and with an early induction to avoid some of the risk we are expecting a healthy birth. I have gotten out of my comfort zone relationship-wise to start strengthening some friendships with people I’ve known for years. The proximity to a walkable downtown even here in the suburbs and a quick, easy ride on BART into San Francisco has eased some of my homesickness for my beloved city by the bay. My job search is going well, with plenty of exciting opportunities available to me when I’m ready to return to work in the spring. We have built a wonderful life for ourselves here and we continue to live comfortably.

With MJ starting a new job and the pregnancy, there were no grand getaways together overseas this year, but MJ and I spent a long weekend in NYC over the spring to finally see the famous, now unused, City Hall Station. We also spent a long weekend in Las Vegas for my 37th birthday. Our house is slowly coming together, including the guest and baby rooms both here and in Philadelphia.

Travel-wise, I did less international travel than I have in the past. Part of this was due to the team I was on having coverage in Europe, which meant I could focus more on North America, and then with the pregnancy I also decided to stop travel outside of the US and Canada a few months in. That means for the first time in several years, I didn’t break 100k miles, coming in this year with 88,716 miles, and only two overseas trips (Australia and Denmark).

Even without lots of long flights I did make reading more of a priority this year. In 2017 I admitted to watching a lot of TV, and in 2018 I was eager to change that, and did. I read 32 books in 2018 and continued my commitment to reading paper magazines to keep my long-format article brain working properly and tear myself away from my phone more. Health-wise I didn’t lose weight like I wanted to, but the difficult pregnancy made that a more challenging endeavor and I’m happy in the fact that I’ve at least been able to keep the pregnancy-related weight gain within a range that my doctor is happy with.

Now, onto the more list-y part of this post. The places I’ve been!

And the talks I’ve given!

As I look on to 2019, we have quite the adventure ahead of us. The arrival of our first child will change our lives significantly for the foreseeable future. Whatever I end up with job-wise I’m committed to doing something that challenges me to both dig deeper on a technical level and spur further career growth. Between these two things, I have plenty to adjust to, so there are no grand New Year’s resolutions or changes I want to commit to. Though I do hope I am gentle and forgiving to myself and MJ as we seek out this new balance together.

]]> The adventures of 2017 https://princessleia.com/journal/2018/01/the-adventures-of-2017/ Fri, 05 Jan 2018 17:40:09 +0000 http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=13725 In 2017, I spent a lot of my free time at home watching TV. I also put on about 15 pounds. In so many ways, 2017 was a terrible year.

I watched our country be torn apart by “us vs. them” rhetoric and leadership that has begun dismantling hard-won protections for the most vulnerable members of our society. Racism and religion-based hatred became more normalized. The dull roar of misogyny of our society has been made a move to the forefront of our minds (which is good, but it’s painful and brings up a lot of stuff). Federal support for science and technology research that have helped our country stay a leader in innovation has been marginalized. California itself was enveloped in devastating fires that impacted us through smoke that came all the way to San Francisco and neighbors in wine country who had significant losses. There’s a lot of hopelessness out there, and that wore on me.

This year was also characterized by recovering from the burnout I suffered in 2016. I’m incredibly proud to have published a book and helped with a revision on another, but with everything else that I was doing, it was too much. Over the past 18 months I’ve shed most of the open source projects I was working on outside of work, and even in the ones I didn’t leave outright, I wasn’t as active as I should have been. Personal side-projects were almost non-existent. I had to do a lot of self-reflection this year to figure out what I wanted to be doing and what was important in my life. This blog is pretty much the only thing that survived.

On February 6th we unexpectedly lost my mother-in-law to complications surrounding cancer she was being treated for.

In early April Simcoe’s decline in health from renal failure became too much to bear and we let her go on April 9th.

In September I sprained my ankle so badly that the first doctor who looked at it thought it was broken. In early November I got incredibly sick in Cuba and then had a reaction to antibiotics I was given to treat it and ended up in the ER in San Francisco. In December I contracted a sinus infection and am once again working my way through a bout of bronchitis. Just before the new year, we discovered moisture in our attic here in at the townhouse in Philadelphia that has required immediate remediation and caused me to extend my stay out here to deal with it.

At the same time, 2017 was an amazing year, which is why this wrap-up post was such a struggle to write. If you read through this blog over the past year, the impression would not be of a sad or difficult year, but of an incredible one with a new job and adventures around the world. That story is true too. MJ and I are successful and we have the financial flexibility to enjoy the fruits of our labors. We’ve enjoyed spectacular meals, trips to Napa and Sonoma, a night out to see Hamilton and so much more this year.

And I love San Francisco, it’s a beautiful place to live, and as a tourist destination it’s one that people visit so I get to do my own local touristing when friends and family are in town.

At the beginning of the year I started a job that not only exposes me to the latest open source technologies in operations and data analysis, but gives me the opportunity to share everything I’m learning with others at conferences and events around the world.

In 2017 traveled 103,128 miles by air and I’ve still taken time everywhere I go to spend a day or two as a tourist.

The townhouse in Philadelphia has also allowed me to spend more time with loved ones out here who I’ve enjoyed reconnecting with. Family-wise I met an uncle of MJs who I had never met. I got to go to a family reunion in Florida to visit with a bunch of my family, and had a cousin visit San Francisco who I hadn’t seen in years. I did a road trip with my mother and my aunt from Florida to Philadelphia, and just a couple days later hosted an aunt and cousin at the townhouse in Philadelphia.

I also learned that people care about me even when I’m not spending all my time working. For the past ten years I’ve buried myself in work, from open source projects I work on casually to those I’m paid to spend time on. It’s so much a part of my identity now that there’s an incredible fear that I’ll end up alone and disappoint people if I struggle or scale back. I’m grateful that I was wrong. Not everyone has stayed with me, but I do have wonderful people in my life who not only stuck around, but who support me and offer compassion and kindness when I am struggling.

It was also a year of trains. In my effort to recover from tech-induced burnout, I spent more time geeking out over model trains and actual trains. For four days over Memorial Day weekend, MJ and I traveled across the country by train, taking the California Zephyr the whole length before going on to the Capitol Limited. We also finally got to take the Coast Starlight from Oakland to Los Angeles, which was a beautiful journey and I got to spend time in the Pacific Parlour Car. In October I took The Carolinian with David from Philadelphia to Raleigh for a conference.

As my interest in model trains grew, I was able to pick up a starter O-scale train set from a toy fair and get it going over Thanksgiving. In the spring MJ and I went out to the Golden State Model Railroad Museum. In October I was in Hamburg, Germany where they have the largest series of model layouts in the world, at Miniatur Wunderland.

The year concluded with a long stay in Philadelphia for the holidays and a surprising purchase: a house in Castro Valley, California. We’d been looking for a while, and finally the time, location and price were right for us. We closed remotely from Pennsylvania at the end of December and MJ picked up the keys this week. This isn’t something I’ve shared publicly until now, so if it’s a surprise to you, don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything, we’ve only told a few people. Over the next couple months we’ll be moving from the condo in San Francisco down to Castro Valley and getting the condo prepped to rent out. I’ll write about this all in more detail later, but it’s exciting times!

This was a very wordy wrap-up post, so I’ll pull back to the more list-based stuff now. Where did I travel in 2017?

With the new job, I spent more time doing public speaking in 2017. The first few talks were ones I had on my schedule already before my job started, but as soon as April rolled around I was up to speed enough to start giving talks specific to DC/OS clusters and some of the technologies that would run on top of them.


Thanks to Nithya Ruff for the photos of my presentation (source)

Talks concluded with a couple private ones within companies, which are rare for me but both were convenient for me and I have a great deal of respect for the women who invited me to both. In all, it was a super busy year for talks, this is more than I’ve ever done in a year. My goal for 2018 is to dive in deeper on a few technologies that run particularly well on DC/OS and Apache Mesos and start doing some more heavily technical talks beyond my comfort zone of CI/CD and Day 2 Operations.

Looking back now, it turns out 2017 was a mixed bag for me. Terrible. Amazing. I should cut myself some slack for watching so much TV when I have down time and putting on a bit of weight. Sure, I’d love to get back to building big, exciting projects during my precious nights and weekends so I feel more like myself, but we all go through busy, complicated times. I’ll come out the other end eventually, and the people in my life who I care about will be right there with me.

]]> The adventures of 2016 https://princessleia.com/journal/2017/01/the-adventures-of-2016/ https://princessleia.com/journal/2017/01/the-adventures-of-2016/#comments Mon, 02 Jan 2017 15:19:47 +0000 http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=12329 2016 was filled with professional successes and exciting adventures, but also various personal struggles. I exhausted myself finishing two books, navigated some complicated parts of my marriage, experienced my whole team getting laid off from a job we loved, handled an uptick in migraines and a continuing bout of bronchitis, and am still coming to terms with the recent loss.

It’s been difficult to maintain perspective, but it actually was an incredible year. I succeeded in having two books come out, my travels took me to some new, amazing places, we bought a vacation house, all my blood work shows that I’m healthier than I was at this time last year.


Lots more running in 2016 led to a healthier me!

Some of the tough stuff has even been good. I have succeeded in strengthening bonds with my husband and several people in my life who I care about. I’ve worked hard to worry less and enjoy time with friends and family, which may explain why this year ended up being the one of the group selfie. I paused to capture happy moments with my loved ones a lot more often.

So without further ado, the more quantitative year roundup!

The 9th edition of the The Official Ubuntu Book came out in July. This is the second edition I’ve been part of preparing. The book has updates to bring us up to the 16.04 release and features a whole new chapter covering “Ubuntu, Convergence, and Devices of the Future” which I was really thrilled about adding. My work with Matthew Helmke and José Antonio Rey was also very enjoyable. I wrote about the release here.

I also finished the first book I was the lead author on, Common OpenStack Deployments. Writing a book takes a considerable amount of time and effort, I spent many long nights and weekends testing and tweaking configurations largely written by my contributing author, Matt Fischer, writing copy for the book and integrating feedback from our excellent fleet of reviewers and other contributors. In the end, we released a book that takes the reader from knowing nothing about OpenStack to doing sample deployments using the same Puppet-driven tooling that enterprises use in their environments. The book came out in September, I wrote about it on my own blog here and maintain a blog about the book at DeploymentsBook.com.


Book adventures at the Ocata OpenStack Summit in Barcelona! Thanks to Nithya Ruff for taking a picture of me with my book at the Women of OpenStack area of the expo hall (source) and Brent Haley for getting the picture of Lisa-Marie and I (source).

This year also brought a new investment to our lives, we bought a vacation home in Pennsylvania! It’s a new construction townhouse, so we spent a fair amount of time on the east coast the second half of this year searching for a place, picking out the details and closing. We then spent the winter holidays here, spending a full two weeks away from home to really settle in. I wrote more about our new place here.

I keep saying I won’t travel as much, but 2016 turned out to have more travel than ever, taking over 100,000 miles of flights again.


Feeding a kangaroo, just outside of Melbourne, Australia

At the Jain Temple in Mumbai, India

We had lots of beers in Germany! Photo in the center by Chris Hoge (source)

Barcelona is now one of my favorite places, and it’s Sagrada Familia Basilica was breathtaking

Most of these conferences and events had a speaking component for me, but I also did a fair number of local talks and at some conferences I spoke more than once. The following is a rundown of all these talks I did in 2016, along with slides.


Photo by Masayuki Igawa (source) from Linux Conf AU in Geelong

Photo by Johanna Koester (source) from my keynote at the Ocata OpenStack Summit

MJ and I have also continued to enjoy our beloved home city of San Francisco, both with just the two of us and with various friends and family. We saw a couple Giants baseball games, along with one of the Sharks playoff games! Sampled a variety of local drinks and foods, visited lots of local animals and took in some amazing local sights. We went to the San Francisco Symphony for the first time, enjoyed a wonderful time together over over Labor Day weekend and I’ve skipped out at times to visit museum exhibits and the zoo.


Dinner at Luce in San Francisco, celebrating MJ’s new job

This year I also geeked out over trains – in four states and five countries! In May MJ and I traveled to Maine to spend some time with family, and a couple days of that trip were spent visiting the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport and the Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum in Portland, I wrote about it here. I also enjoyed MUNI Heritage Weekend with my friend Mark at the end of September, where we got to see some of the special street cars and ride several vintage buses, read about that here. I also went up to New York City to finally visit the famous New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn and accompanying holiday exhibit at the Central Station with my friend David, details here. In Philadelphia I enjoyed the entire Girard Street line (15) which is populated by historic PCC streetcars (trolleys), including one decorated for the holidays, I have a pile of pictures here. I also got a glimpse of a car on the historic streetcar/trolley line in Melbourne and my buddy Devdas convinced me to take a train in Mumbai, and I visited the amazing Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus there too. MJ also helped me plan some train adventures in the Netherlands and Germany as I traveled from airports for events.


From the Seashore Trolley Museum barn

As I enter into 2017 I’m thrilled to report that I’ll be starting a new job. Travel continues as I have trips to Australia and Los Angeles already on my schedule. I’ll also be spending time getting settled back into my life on the west coast, as I have spent 75% of my time these past couple months elsewhere.

]]> https://princessleia.com/journal/2017/01/the-adventures-of-2016/feed/ 1 The adventures of 2015 https://princessleia.com/journal/2016/01/the-adventures-of-2015/ Fri, 01 Jan 2016 19:40:54 +0000 http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=11179 I wasn’t sure what to expect from 2015. Life circumstances meant that I wanted to travel a bit less, which meant being more selective about the conferences I would speak at. At the same time, some amazing opportunities for conferences came up that I couldn’t bring myself to turn down. Meeting new people, visiting countries very foreign to me, plus a new continent (South America!), there was much to be excited about this year! Work has gone exceptionally well. I hit some major milestones with my career, particularly with regards to my technical level, all thanks to support from those around me, dedication to some important projects and hard work on the day to day stuff.

There were also struggles this year. Early in the year I learned of the passing of a friend and local open source advocate. MJ and I navigated our way through the frailness and loss of a couple family members. I was forced to pause, reflect upon and ultimately step away from some of my open source involvement as it was causing me incredible emotional pain and stress. I also learned a lot about my work habits and what it takes to put out a solid technical book. The book continues to be a real struggle, but I am thankful for support from those around me.

I’ve been diligent in continuing to enjoy this beautiful city we live in. We went on a streetcar tour, MJ took me to a Star Wars Giants game for my birthday and we went to various Panama-Pacific International Exhibit commemorative events. I finally made it down the bay to the Winchester House and to see a 49ers game. As friends and family come into town, I jumped at every opportunity to explore the new and familiar. I also spoke at a few local conferences and events which I wrote about: San Francisco Ubuntu Global Jam, Elastic{ON} 2015, Puppet Camp San Francisco 2015 and an OpenStack Meetup.


Enjoying San Francisco with a special tour on the Blackpool Boat Tram

At the Bay Bridge with visiting friend Crissi

Star Wars day at AT&T Park

At a 49ers game with visiting friend Danita

Visiting one of several PPIE15 exhibits

Health-wise, I had to go in for several diagnostic tests post-gallbladder to see why some of my liver levels are off. After a bit of stress, it all looks ok, but I do need to exercise on a more regular basis. The beautiful blue sky beckons me to make a return to running, so I plan on doing that while incorporating things I learned with the trainer I worked with this past year. We’ve also been tracking Simcoe’s health with her renal failure, it’s been 4 years since her diagnosis and while her health isn’t what it was, our little Siamese continuing to hang in there.

And then there was all my travel!


Manneken Pis in Brussels, Belgium

In front of the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, Muscat, Oman

Beautiful views from the OpenStack Summit in Vancouver, Canada

With MJ in obligatory tourist photo at Machu Picchu, Peru

Kinkaku-ji (golden temple), Kyoto, Japan

Space Shuttle Discovery near Washington D.C.

I didn’t give as many talks as I did in 2014, but I felt I took a stronger aim at quality this year. Speaking at conferences like FOSSC Oman and Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing exposed me to some amazing, diverse audiences that led to some fantastic conversations after my talks. Exploring new places and meeting people who enrich my life and technical expertise are why I do all of this, so it was important that I found so much value in both this year.


Speaking at FOSSC Oman in Muscat

As I kick off 2016, my book is front and center. I have an amazing contributing author working with me. A Rough Cuts version went up on Safari at the end of 2015 and I’ve launched the book website. As I push through final technical challenges I’m hopeful that the pieces will soon fall into place so I can push through to completion.

Most of all, as I reflect upon 2015, I see a lot of cheer and sorrow. High highs and low lows. I’m aiming at a more balanced 2016.

]]> The adventures of 2014 https://princessleia.com/journal/2014/12/the-adventures-of-2014/ Wed, 31 Dec 2014 16:24:35 +0000 http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=10000 I had a great year in 2013, highlighted by getting married to MJ and starting a new job that I continue to be really happy with. 2014 ended up being characterized by how much travel I’ve done, and a side trip down having the first surgery of my life.

Travel-wise I broke the 100k in-flight miles barrier, with a total of 101,170 in air miles. I traveled at least once a month and was able to add Australia to my continents list this year. The beaches in Perth were beautiful, and with January in the middle of their summer, it was certainly beach weather when I went!

Visiting family didn’t take a back seat this year, I spent a week up in Maine staying with my sister Annette, my nephew Xavier and visiting with my mother and her kitties. Plus, got a nice dose of snow along with it! Very enjoyable when I’m in a warm home and don’t have to drive.

I also was able to stick family visits onto a couple Florida trips and we went to the weddings of MJ’s cousin and sister in the fall. But much of my travel was for work, with a variety of conferences this year, all travel:


Really enjoyed walking the streets of friendly Zagreb, Croatia

First time out of an airport in Germany during my visit to Darmstadt!

My first time in Paris, need I say more?

Jamaica was beautiful and relaxing

But it wasn’t all traveling to conferences, I did HP booth duty at the Open Business Conference in May (wrap-up post) and presented at PuppetConf in September (wrap-up post), both here in San Francisco. I also did some personal conference geekery with my friend Danita Fries by attending Google I/O for the first time in June (wrap-up post).

I also gave a number of talks, sometimes double or tripling up during a conference. I learned that doing 3 talks at a conference is 1-2 talks too many.


Thanks to Vedran Papeš for this photo from DORS/CLUC in Croatia, source

Plus, I had my first book published over the summer! Working with Matthew Helmke and José Antonio Rey, the Official Ubuntu Book, 8th Edition was released in July.


The Official Ubuntu Book, 8th Edition, July 2014

2014 also made me one organ lighter as of July with the removal of my gallbladder after a few months of diagnostics and pain. It certainly complicated some of my travel, making me spend the shortest amount of time possible in both Croatia and Germany, both countries I wish I could have explored more during my trips.

So far for 2015 I believe I’ll have a slightly less busy year travel-wise, but my first two trips are international, the first to Brussels for my first FOSDEM and then in February off to Oman for FOSSC Oman. Looking for a great, and healthier year in 2015!

]]>