Thankfully we were clear by week two, and finally got to see people! Irina and little Sammy came over several evenings, and in spite of some squabbles between our pair of three year olds, it was really nice to just have chill family time at home.

I also decided I wanted to organize the toys a bit better, so one evening Adam helped me assemble a small, metal shelving unit.

Along with a new basket we picked up at Ross for their stuffed animals, the play area of the living room is looking a bit less chaotic now.

We got to hit all our favorite restaurants in the area and visit with our friends Danita and David before they left on their move to Portugal. Unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate, and we had a bunch of rainy days, and it ended up being quite chilly out. Still, they are my little California boys and they long for the outdoors, so when it wasn’t raining we put on jackets and rode bikes.

The solar eclipse was on Monday, and so was our flight home. It was only partial for Philadelphia, so I didn’t feel that bad about being in the airport when it happened, and it was still a cool experience. It got a little dark outside, and I think it made our flight delayed a little, but that gave Aaron and Adam a little time to check out the cockpit of our plane.

I was only home for a couple of chaotic days before my next trip. I wish I could have planned it better, since Aaron started preschool the same morning I left, so I was scrambling to get everything ready for him. It worked out OK though, and we all made it to our respective places on Thursday. Unfortunately we were also hit with some unfortunate news right before I left, so MJ will need to book some travel very soon, which we’re hoping won’t overlap with my own travels this week.

First, they tend to mostly attract locals, so you meet folks you won’t see at other conferences and allow you to get an idea for what’s popular and how they’re using technology in their region. Secondly, they tend to be inexpensive, most are under $100. This is in vast contrast to some of the larger events put on by major tech players, where a ticket can easily run into the thousands. Plus, even if you can’t afford that, all the events I’ve gone to also have generously granted free passes to folks from various demographics, ensuring that the attendees are a diverse crowd. They also often happen on weekends (CPOSC is on a Saturday), which means folks who can’t get off from work to attend events can participate.

I also feel like these conferences get me closer to what most folks are doing with open source software at their organizations now. They aren’t all showing off the newest things, but they are showing off things that are incredibly popular and broadly used, and that gives a more genuine snapshot of where the industry is, rather than where it may be going. But I think the most important thing for me though is discovering pockets of innovation that I wouldn’t have otherwise encountered. From the individuals developing new ideas to the small companies that sponsor these events having innovative business models, these events are always remarkable for learning fascinating new things that may be overlooked elsewhere.

AI has been a big topic at a lot of events, and it was interesting to see how it unfolded at CPOSC. One talk centered around the idea of creating a digital self using the AI technology of today, including voice synthesis services and LLM prompts that are fed a lot of personal data. It was an interesting talk, but definitely keeps us in uncanny valley. The next talk that included an AI focus was a panel made up of a family unit, a pair of married professors whose work is both in computing, and a son who works in the tech industry but doesn’t code. The son demonstrated using ChatGPT to create code from a library for a device he was testing, and with English he was able to explain what he wanted the code to do, and have it spit out the code to do it. The resulting discussion was around how we teach software development. How much of the fundamentals of coding do we teach now? Should we also be teaching LLM prompt engineering? It was an interesting discussion that compared this transition to the one to higher level languages beyond Assembly (a parallel I’ve made myself as well) and doubling down on the fact that we will need some folks whose job is software engineering, even if some of the coding can now be done by AI.

I think for me the more interesting question for me was how many doors this opens for folks who don’t know how to code, but for whom having code written for them would transform their ability to succeed. I’ve known so many people over the years who needed to learn how to code, but don’t enjoy it and wish they could have stayed on their original path in arts, sciences, or where ever. How many ideas in the sciences have we lost because the experts in their respective fields are too busy doing basic coding work to make their breakthroughs? Or worse, just gave up? Or wasted their time doing things manually, forsaking computers entirely? There is a need for fast, high quality code, but I think for most people the ability to further streamline their interactions with computers on their own terms with code developed by LLMs is an exciting prospect. I’ve spent a lot of time feeling a bit apprehensive about use of AI in technology, but I’ve definitely turned a corner to be my more hopeful self again.

My own talk at the event happened just before lunch, where I was talking about building your open source project for various architectures. It was similar to the talk I gave a few weeks before at SCALE, but with a few localized tweaks and improvements from the last time I gave it, slides are here: Will_your_open_source_project_run_on_a_mainframe_Or_on_a_smartwatch_-_CPOSC_2024.pdf.

I’ve had some good feedback, and more to respond to post-event via email. Overall, I’m thrilled to see how much interest there is in software testing these days, and that people are thinking beyond the defaults in order to bring in more advanced testing techniques and tooling.

Naturally, I also brought along my props. This time it was an IBM Power Systems tux penguin, the VisionFive 2 SBC, and the 3d-printed IBM z16 I keep at our townhouse in Philadelphia, except for special outings like this one.

The final talk I went to before the closing lightning talks was on “How to get your ideas implemented at your organization” and it gave me a lot to think about. Career development-wise I’ve been advised to get more methodical about stakeholder buy-in, especially as I pursue ideas that are not universally popular. The speaker outlined the strategies he’s come up with for being successful here, partially based on the time he spent as a Chief Innovation Officer. A huge part of this is just sitting down with people to listen to how your idea impacts them, incorporate feedback, and develop a sense of shared ownership for the idea. It gave me a lot to think about and helped solidify my own natural tendency to just reach out to people and ask. I think for me what would help the most is some training on how to be more tactful and polished when I approach people, since I can be very technical and direct by nature.

Of course, I also know people at CPOSC. I was able to meet up with several folks I know, including my long-time events-all-over pal Jason Plum of GitLab. CPOSC or the Philly Linux Users Group are where I get to catch up with most people I see there, so I always look forward to this opportunity to catch up.

I went to the after party for a bit to grab pizza and a beer while continuing chats with folks, including a few people I randomly ended up with as we walked over to the venue. I think we all have a natural tendency not to end up alone at events, so we latch on to a few people, which I absolutely do, but I also have grown comfortable with walking around alone and coming up with things to talk about with strangers. It’s a little anxiety-inducing, but it pays off in spades over time. Many long-time relationships have been forged after chance meetups in hallways.

My friend Will walked me halfway to the train station at the conclusion of my stay in Lancaster, which was a lovely time to catch up. The train ride home was uneventful, though it was a long day and I was tired, so I curled up with some podcasts for most of the journey home. We’ll see where this event lands next year and whether I’m close enough to attend, but it certainly was a delight to stop by two years in a row!

The first full week we were in town was nice for settling in. Our little California boys were clamoring to go outside, and one morning it was barely warm enough for me to take them out to a nearby playground. While playing, I noticed that there was a library nearby, so after they got done playing outside we made our way over to the library. It just happened to be at the same time as an open play with a bunch of other little kids at the library, so while Adam helped me get a library card, Aaron went with our au pair over to play with the other kids. Then Adam and I explored the rest of the library. It was at that visit that we learned that they do regular events for kids and one of the upcoming ones was a magician, which we went to on a rainy day later in the trip and Aaron really seemed to enjoy.

That week we also had our friends Danita and David over to visit and then went out with them to dinner. They’re moving away soon, so it was one of our last opportunities to catch up before their departure, and I was keen on learning more about the progress of their move. Plus, Aaron wanted to see them because Danita brought along her little dog Blackie the last time we saw them, and this time she did again! He’s slowly warming up to dogs, and meeting a little friendly one helps a lot.

We have a tradition of celebrating winter birthdays when we’re in Philly over the winter holidays. It gives us the opportunity to celebrate Aaron’s birthday at home in California before the trip, Adam’s after, and celebrate with family in Philadelphia in between – plus a few birthdays for adults that occur then! Unfortunately, winter also means cold season, so this year it fizzled out a bit. We enjoyed the company of my father-in-law and his wife, which was nice, but others couldn’t make it for cake and presents, and we had to meet up with them later in the trip.

This trip was colder than the one in November, and it was a longer trip, so I think the boys felt a little cooped up. But we tried to do a lot of meals out, and we had little at-home highlights like fire trucks driving by on December 24th for Christmas Eve, and family members dropping by later in the trip once everyone was over their colds (as much as kids ever get over colds, hah!).

We also had some adventures on the long weekends. Little Aaron has been really fascinated with dinosaurs lately, so once I told him that he could see real dinosaur fossils in museums he’s been fixated on seeing “a dinosaur museum.” I was disappointed to learn that the options were slim in the bay area. Instead, we decided to visit The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philly! Our original plan had been to take the train down since the boys had also been clamoring for a train ride, but sparse weekend schedules and a cold, rainy forecast put a damper on those plans and we ended up driving down and were fortunate to find very close metered street parking.

I’d only been to the museum once before, back in 2008, and I noted at the time that it was small, but also blessedly not crowded like a lot of the major dinosaur halls are. Unfortunately Aaron was immediately scared, and clung tightly to MJ through our whole dinosaur hall visit. I guess he didn’t manage to extrapolate from what he’d seen on TV just how big dinosaurs are, so you walk in to see a giant T-Rex with it’s 6 inch sharp teeth and I can see how that would be a little startling to a three year old. Adam had a delightful time in the dinosaur hall though, asking a lot of questions before making a bee line to the elevators, because he likes elevators.

The Big Dig exhibit was a hit with both of them though, kids are equipped with a large paintbrush and get to climb on and sweep their way through “fossils” covered in cork bits over a long span of play area. It was adorable and I’m grateful that they got some real playtime in. Upstairs, the Outside In exhibit also gave them an opportunity for some play, and crafting, which always keeps Adam quite enthralled, even if the activity seemed to be winding down when we arrived.

It wasn’t all family stuff though, one evening MJ and I managed to sneak out for a date night at The Continental Mid-town. It’s one of our favorite restaurants in the city, and it had been several months since MJ and I had gotten and evening out alone together. Given various factors, it’s difficult for us to do regularly, and instead we opt for opportunistic lunches together when we can carve out time. I discovered just how rare it was when I dressed up and came downstairs to an incredulous Adam asking, “Mom, WHY are you dressed like that?!”

It was a wonderful evening. I had the best company, our favorite foods were still on the menu, and we got to try several interesting cocktails. The rain picked up while we were eating, so we had a soggy walk/run back to the car, but I’d say that was the only thing putting a damper on the evening, and even that was a little fun.

During the four days I took off between Christmas and New Years, I spent one day catching up with my friend Stephen who also happened to be in town Pennsylvania visiting family. But before talking about that, I’ll pause to share that it’s unusual for me to take off this week. My family is Jewish and even prior to that my observance of Christmas was purely secular and rather solitary, so I’d often work this week, and even offer to be on-call on Christmas itself so my colleagues who celebrated the holiday could do so with family, in peace. Thanksgiving was always my family holiday! This has changed now that we’re bound to a school district calendar. Most people in the US celebrate Christmas, so the “winter” holiday naturally lands there, and it makes more sense for me to take off when everyone is at home, and in our case, cooped up at the townhouse in Philly in winter. Some of my week was spent catching up on chores, some was spent enjoying leisurely meals, a library visit, and playtime with the boys, and Thursday I spent the afternoon with a friend.

Our plan was to meet up and wander around the lovely town of New Hope, home to lots of delightful boutique shops and dining opportunities. But it rained. Thankfully there are a couple things that you can do when it’s raining, like enjoy a ride on New Hope Railroad! Purely a tourist and train enthusiast experience, the standard railway trip take you on a 45 minute ride through the woods of eastern Pennsylvania, so we were able to snag a couple first class tickets and enjoy some wine on our little journey while catching up, and listening to periodic tales about the historic railroad line and the area. We also enjoyed lunch (and beers!) right across the tracks at Triumph Brewing. It was fun to catch up, and I always enjoy a good train ride. Just don’t tell my kids I went on a train without them.

The next day was Friday and MJ had off from work, so we met up with our friends Mike and Jess and their two boys who are a little older than Adam and Aaron for a trip to Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ. I hadn’t seen them since before the pandemic! Like so many people, they’d never met Aaron! And their own boys have grown so much since I last saw them. So I wanted to make sure we finally made time to get together, and Aaron’s love for fish made an aquarium an obvious choice. Unfortunately I planned poorly, and upon arrival discovered that they only had tickets for 90 minutes in the future, oops! I snagged the tickets and we found a nearby sandwich shop to sit down together and have lunch before our aquarium visit. Even then, we had a little time to kill, so the boys got to enjoy the waterfront and nice views of the Philadelphia skyline.

Since there were timed tickets, it should have been obvious that they were at capacity and it would be crowded, but it didn’t quite prepare me for how crowded it would be – wow! It was PACKED! I’m sure it being a holiday week with kids off from school contributed to this too. Fortunately, things actually went really well. All four boys were generally in good moods and listened, and we had some really nice moments. Adam got to pet a ray and take a bunch of pictures, and Aaron got to enjoy seeing lots of swimming critters and I think he enjoyed having other kids to hang out with.

The final partial week we were in Philly was pretty chill. We didn’t have plans for New Years Eve, so as soon as the fireworks wound down we went to bed. We were then back to work Tuesday through Thursday, but made time to meet up with family a bunch more in the evenings and a enjoyed lovely child-free lunch with my sister in law. I finally had my beloved buffalo chicken cheesesteak (I can get decent chicken cheesesteaks in California, but not buffalo chicken). Our flight home was blessedly uneventful, and the boys are definitely getting better about traveling, and we’re getting more streamlined in our approach to traveling with kids. It was a good trip.

The last big thing to “fix” was taking down the play pen that MJ built all the way back in 2019. It took up nearly half the living room, but the pandemic rendered most of it’s useful life irrelevant. I’m not sure it was age-appropriate for even Aaron when we visited for the first time in 2022, but they had both definitely outgrown it now. It’s disappointing that we got so little use out of it, but we couldn’t have anticipated that a global pandemic would keep us away for over two and a half years.

Work-wise, it’s the time of year where we’re all putting a lot of work into finishing major milestones in our projects and looking forward to the next year, but I was able to squeeze in some time to present at a Philadelphia area Linux Users Group (PLUG) meeting. I hadn’t been to an in-person meeting since before the pandemic, indeed, they’ve only started resuming them a few months ago. It felt like a wonderful opportunity to see some old friends and meet some of the new folks that have since joined the group, or would come out of the woodwork for a talk about open source on the mainframe. Nearly 20 people attended, and I was able to put together some fun, historical Renaissance-themed slides with my topic, “The Open Source Renaissance in Mainframe Technology” (slides here). Since I had some familiarity with the group, I was able to shift into a very casual mode for the presentation, which lasted longer than the hour I had allotted. Following the meeting, several of us went to a nearby restaurant to continue discussions, including my close friends Danita and David who I was delighted to see had come to the meeting.

I took off from work on the first Friday we were in town since we had shuffled up our au pair’s schedule a bit for travel and she was entitled to a three-day weekend. It worked out well, since the day was unseasonably warm and gave me to opportunity to take the boys out to the Philadelphia Zoo! I drove them down in the morning so we’d have a chance at making it back for lunch and Aaron’s nap – which we did! We only shift the schedule by one hour while we’re in Philly, so that helps with a lot of things that open later and we usually can’t squeeze in before nap time. Aaron got out of the stroller as soon as we entered the zoo and got to exploring. For half the visit, Adam was in the stroller, glued to the map and hoping for a zoo train that I was 90% sure wasn’t running. Once he accepted that it wasn’t running, I was able to coax him out by suggesting that he could take pictures of animals with his phone. It worked like a charm! He delightfully spent the rest of the visit taking pictures, while Aaron and I enjoyed the animals and found things to climb on.

That night, Danita and David came by to visit and have dinner. Danita brought her tiny dog Blackie, to give the boys an opportunity to visit with a dog in a safe, controlled environment. They haven’t really been exposed much to dogs and tend to be a little fearful of them, so it was a nice experiment. By the end of the evening Aaron was giving him treats without hesitation, and after they left he told us, “I want a dog, that dog.” Later in the trip when we drove past the steakhouse we had dinner at, he mentioned the dog again. He left quite the impression! Before dinner, we also got to use MJ’s old telescope a little. I had brought it out for the boys a few nights before, but my own inexperience shone through and I couldn’t get it adjusted right to see anything. David had a go at it and got us pointed at the moon, unfortunately it’s missing some pieces and won’t stay in place, so every time the boys barreled toward it, it got knocked away from the moon again. I’ll have to see about getting more familiar with it myself and see what I need to do to fix it up.

I already wrote about the type-in we went to on Saturday. On Sunday we drove out to New Jersey to meet up with MJ’s cousins Phyllis and Jack. It was their first time getting to meet littler Aaron! We met them at their apartment and visited for a while, while Aaron got to feed his second dog of the trip. We had dinner at a nearby diner that we quite like and has some pretty delicious desserts. A dinner social visit was also made to a couple of MJ’s friends from back in his school days who I hadn’t seen in over a year.

For this trip we decided that we should host Thanksgiving for the extended family at our place for the first time. This made us finally buy a proper dining room table, since we’d long since outgrown the 4-person Ikea folding table that I bought for my apartment in Pottstown years ago. I knew I wanted to get one and we’d discussed furniture shopping, but it wasn’t until I had a few minutes before an appointment to get the car serviced and a popped into a furniture shop that we made a decision. The table was delivered on the Monday before Thanksgiving.

On Tuesday evening my mother, sister Annette, and nephew Xavier drove down from Maine to visit. Annette and Xavier came down for the winter holidays last year, but my mother had never met Aaron before, and the last time she saw Adam he was only a baby! Unfortunately, it was raining and they had to contend with holiday traffic, so the drive down the east coast ended up being longer than it should have been, but they made it and we had a pizza delivery timed for their arrival so they quickly got nourishment as well.

On Wednesday I took the day off from work to spend the time with my family. We enjoyed lunch at a Jewish deli where we were picking up some brisket and gravy, stuffing, green beans, pumpkin pie, and a loaf of challah. It was a pretty chill day though, I went to the mall with my sister and Adam, and then we all went out to dinner at Toscana 52, our favorite local Italian place.

On Thanksgiving we picked up the rest of our catered Thanksgiving meal from a nearby diner, so we could complete our meal with turkey, mashed potatoes, macaroni & cheese, corn, and dinner rolls. We also totally rearranged the living room to make room for a couple 6′ tables we rented. We pondered buying a couple folding tables, but chairs were the real problem, so MJ looked into rental options and came upon Karley’s Rentals which worked out beautifully. Their prices were quite reasonable, their facility was clean, and their staff was incredibly friendly, helpful, and efficient. MJ and I drove down to the northeast to pick them up, and then drop them off again on Friday morning, which ended up being better than waiting for uncertain delivery/pick-up times. Bonus, everything fit in our SUV with a single trip!

Around 4PM folks started to arrive and I began heating up all the food. In addition to my family, MJ’s father and his partner, and her adult children with their own children who we’ve grown close to. It was a loud, chaotic Thanksgiving with all the kids, but isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? I also discovered that I love hosting. It should come as no surprise, it’s the kind of defined role with tasks to keep me busy and kept me away from awkward social interactions that arise when I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing (yes, even with family!). I didn’t even mind all the setup and cleanup, I like staying busy.

We had so much food. It’s what you want from Thanksgiving, but we were flying home just a day after Thanksgiving, so it wasn’t optimal to be left with a ton of leftovers. We ate some of it, and made sandwiches for the plane, but barely put a dent in what was left. Thankfully our family has keys and promised to clear out the refrigerator after we left to make sure as little as possible went to waste.

Friday was our last full day in town, and with my family, so we decided to spend the afternoon down at The Franklin Institute. After returning aforementioned tables and chairs, we loaded the boys in the car and my mother, sister, and nephew followed us in their car and made our way to the parking garage. We skipped the stroller, which was quite the gamble! But I had a feeling the boys could handle it. Still, the whole outing was kind of a gamble. We hadn’t really taken the boys to a place like that before, and with crowds and noise and unfamiliar settings, I’m never quite sure how things will go. Thankfully, it was great. Our first stop was the giant heart.

We were there for HOURS. They happily ate at the museum cafe, engaged with loads of exhibits, and didn’t show any signs of tiring until they both fell asleep in the car on the drive home. It was the first time I’d ever gone with kids, so I saw the whole place through a totally new lens. It’s also different than how MJ experienced it, because he grew up with this museum, he WAS a kid there at one point! I only ever saw it as an adult, with other adults. It was absolutely delightful to explain so much science stuff to the boys, even if they can’t quite appreciate it yet. And I loved seeing them have so much fun with their cousin, who was happily helping Adam through the neuro network “Neuro climb” and so much more. They’d enjoyed playing with Xavier the whole visit, but my hope is that this science museum trip is one that he could honestly enjoy too.

Saturday was spent packing and closing up the house, and it was a stressful one for me. I don’t know how it takes us so many hours to do this, but there always seems to be a huge list of things to do on our last day, even when we’ll be back in a few weeks. But we were ready when our ride for the airport arrived at 3:30PM. We didn’t get back home in California until 1AM Pacific, which we may have to re-think in future visits. The boys suffered from quite the sleep disruption that lasted several days due to that late flight. At the very least, we’ll have to see about making sure they eat enough in-transit so we’re also not trying to feed them dinner before we tuck them in to bed at 2AM.

We weren’t sure we’d do this trip at all due to how much it takes out of us to make the trip, and knowing we’d be back again for three weeks at the end of the year, but I’m so glad we did. Timing worked out for so many visits with friends and family that would have been impossible over the winter holidays, and it decreases the stress we’ll have on that second visit about getting all our social visits squeezed in. It was a wonderful trip.

So it’s fitting that my first type-in was in Philadelphia! On November 18th I went to Legend of the Type-In at Cartesian Brewing, put on by Philly Typewriter.

I knew I wanted to go to this when I learned that our November trip back east would overlap and confirmed it was kid-friendly, but I wasn’t sure about logistics. Would I just bring Adam? He is my typewriter buddy, after all. Or would all of us come down? Should we invite some friends?

I did invite several folks and a local group I’ve been involved with, but in the end it did just end up being our own little nuclear family. MJ dropped Adam, Aaron, and I off at the entrance and then went to find parking (South Philly, oof!) while I wheeled the stroller in, along with my Olympia Traveller de Luxe. Side note: I’m so glad I had MJ bring the Olympia to Philly on his last visit! I don’t need a bunch of portables in California, and there was no way I was bringing my Remington KMC out for an adventure.

Right as we walked in, we were greeted by an Oliver #9. I don’t think it’s a particularly rare typewriter, but it is legendary due to the “batwing” design that makes it type unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and I’d never tried one before. It was lovely and fascinating, and given how much I’ve thought about it since meeting that one, I’m quite certain that one will eventually enter my collection. The boys seemed to really like it too.

My first 15 minutes were spent repeating “be gentle” and “only one key at a time” over and over as the boys explored the typewriters on display.

When MJ arrived, he whisked Adam off to enjoy a few more typewriters, while Aaron stayed glued to me, as he has been doing lately.

It was also then that I also had the opportunity to set up my Olympia. Admittedly, shyness had prevented me from making it a priority and it had been sitting alone in the stroller, but MJ encouraged me to take it out, and the fact that everyone was kind and friendly helped me get there eventually. Please ignore that I was too anxious to type properly. Embrace the typo!

Once that was set up, Aaron settled on the Selectric II.

There were only a couple electrics there, but I think the familiarity with the near identical one I have at home, plus the ease of use, is what made him gravitate toward it. He happily inserted paper, typed, took the paper out, re-inserted it, and then typed some more. He was absolutely delighted by it, and it turns out I have quite the little typewriter artist!

Sadly, a type-in only has limited interest to a couple kids under 5. Plus, I couldn’t leave them unsupervised for even a moment, since these typewriters are owned by other people and I couldn’t risk them being misused or something knocked over. Aside from Aaron’s art, Adam typed his name on several and I dictated a few more letters to him, but I wasn’t able to do much myself. I also didn’t have any beer! But the weather was nice and I did pay the $15 entrance fee so I could walk out with a Philly Typewriter pint glass and a few stickers. I was able to have a few conversations with fellow typewriter lovers, so over all it was a lovely time for all of us.

Mid-event I left my typewriter behind and we did a quick side-quest to a small playground nearby where the boys had a lot of fun burning off some energy. On the way back I got a ridiculous cannoli and admired the tourist spots that are Pat’s and Geno’s.

As the event wrapped up and I returned to collect my typewriter as MJ got the kids back to the car, I had the pleasure of meeting Philly Typewriter founder Bryan Kravitz. Turns out, he lived in the bay area for quite some time, and was intimately familiar with the typewriter shop that Adam and I frequent, Berkeley Typewriter. It was nice to chat about his bay area time, and the shop we have in common.

I’m glad we all went, but I may have to think about how I’d want to do another one if the opportunity arises. It’s fun to pick up my Skyriter and sit on my own at an outdoor cafe as I let my mind wander on paper, but I imagine that having some like-minded company at a type-in where I actually type would be nice.

I moved to California just a few months later, during one of the snowiest winters Philadelphia had seen in years. I was aware of CPOSC continuing over the years, but I could never sync up my visits back with the conference. This year serendipity stepped in. I just happened to discover via a chat in #plug a week and a half prior that CPOSC was happening during our visit to Philadelphia. Even better, they were still accepting applications for lightning talks. I swiftly submitted something (which was accepted!) and started making arrangements to attend. It was on a Saturday, but thankfully MJ had a friend in town who wanted time with the boys, so it wasn’t a big deal for me to sneak out for a day.

Friday night I attended a musical with some friends downtown, stayed the night in a hotel in Philadelphia, and then was up bright and early the next morning to catch my Amtrak train to Lancaster, where CPOSC was now based. Unfortunately it was a little rainy that day, so I got a little damp on my walk to the station, and then had to take an Uber from the station in Lancaster to the venue, but it all worked out. I was at CPOSC in time to catch the tail end of the provided breakfast refreshments and to say hello to some friends before the opening remarks.

The first talk was on “MAME – The Future of the Past (Open-Source Retro Computing and Gaming Emulation)” by Gregory Ember. This was one of my favorite talks of the event. While I may not have a lot of time for games these days, I do love them, and I really love geeking out about retro emulation tech. His talk gave a bit of a history of the project, which provided glimpses into some of the fascinating problems they’ve encountered and overcome. Fortuitously, he made an off-hand comment about mainframes, which gave me an opening to chat with him later and we were able to connect on social media post-event. Cool! I’m totally going to carve out some time to play with MAME.

Then I joined a packed room for a talk by my friend Walt Mankowski on “Remedial Math for Programmers” which I remember cheering him on for when he submitted his talk. In my case, about half the “remedial math” he was talking about was stuff I never actually learned because I didn’t go to school for computer science (I didn’t go to college or university at all). So it was a refresher for a few things, but some of the concepts were entirely new to me. I loved his style of presenting it with examples though, since it made it so much easier for me to understand.

The final talk before lunch was from Deanna Bledsoe on “8-Year-Olds are Learning to Code!” and she gave a great tour of the landscape today for younger folks learning how to code. I had been passingly familiar with Scratch and code.org, but it had been a while since I’d looked at any of it, and that was all before I became a parent. I didn’t really need an excuse to strike up a conversation with her, so it was a real delight when I saw her in the hallway later and we were able to talk about our shared interest in getting kids into STEM for a few minutes. I also used my time in the “hallway track” to chime into a conversation about package management, which folks came and went from and then ended up talking about amateur radio. It was during this discussion that I remembered what I missed so much about in-person conferences: those random, geeky personal connections. I’m shy, and half the people I was talking to I’d just met, but in that moment we were all just geeking out over topics we either had expertise or interest in. It’s so nice to be back to doing events. Just prior all that, I attended a talk by Tom Swartz on “Open Source Home Automation” where he focused on Home Assistant, and I was really glad to hear (and see!) that they’ve made some really great advances in the past couple years, it may be time for me to play around with it again.

If I had to say there was a them to my afternoon, it was AI. The first talk after lunch was “An AI Wrote This Talk” by Tom Swartz and it was an incredibly entertaining romp through the power, and shortcomings of ChatGPT and other LLM technologies out there, for now. We still need human intervention to truly make something engaging that connects to people, but how far are we away from a world where it’s not? This dovetailed nicely with the final talk of the day, from Richard Everts, on “What is Really Happening Right Now With AI”. Want to be scared a bit? I joked that it wouldn’t be an open source conference without a scary AI talk, and while he did have some bright spots, the general tone of the talk was a bit dystopian. There are some real concerns out there about the rapid progression of machine learning technologies. We may not have to worry about robots for a while, but deep fakes are already altering our perception of the world, and there really is no closing Pandora’s Box. In more localized concerns, routine programming tasks may be very well suited to AI, so our expertise in the technology realm may be going up a rung on the ladder. But I thought about this a lot on my train ride home, hasn’t this always been the case? As our tools and hardware advance, so do we. None of us are swapping out vacuum tubes or writing code for punched cards anymore. Plus, with every advance in technology, we’re able to do so much more! The folks breaking codes with early computers in WWII couldn’t dream of what would be happening in the world of computing just half a century later, let alone now. When we free up the humans from doing tedious tasks and offload that to computers, that allows us to focus on more interesting, complex problems. I wouldn’t say I’m an eternal optimist, but at the same time it’s nice for talks like this to knock some perspective into me every once in a while. Still, I’m going to cling to the positive in this case, because doing otherwise leads to a dark future that I’d struggle to live with.

The last part of the actual conference was the round of lightning talks, it was my time to hop up on stage! Admittedly, I’d been talking about mainframes to anyone who would listen all day, but the big stage was a nice chance to get spiel out to everyone who stayed long enough for them. Plus, I got to use a few moments of my talk time to gush about coming back to CPOSC after over a decade.

Sadly, I had to rush out as soon as I finished my talk, since I had a train to catch back to Philadelphia. I lucked out on timing though, since it started drizzling just as I got to the station, and the thunderstorm began while I was standing on the platform waiting for the train.

The thunderstorm really picked up steam while I was riding back, and it was glorious. I had a paper book in hand and listening to a storm while on a train is pure bliss. Unfortunately the storm also caused some power outages, which got us stuck for a bit in downtown Philadelphia, and so I was over an hour late coming into the next station, which should have been about 20 minutes from there. Plus, Uber had surge pricing due to lots of people being stuck in the rain, so my ride home from the station was quite a bit more pricey than I had anticipated. Still, I arrived back in time to scoop the boys out of the bath and help put them to bed. It was a long day, but worth it.

It’ll be several months before my next generalist open source conference. The pandemic is not over, and I doubt my travel schedule will go back to what it was pre-pandemic any time soon. A lot has changed with the world and the work I do in the past three years.

As an aside, since I was working through all of this, if you hear any recordings of me made in late March, I sound like a bit like a frog!

Eventually we started trending upwards and were able to meet up with MJ’s father, at a park and masked up when we were close to each other talking.

By the end of the second week we were doing well enough to rejoin society, and by then the antibiotics that half the family were on would have done their job and we were pretty confident we were no longer contagious.

Adventures began with Aaron and I visiting a new toy shop that had opened up nearby. I picked up some loose and inexpensive Star Wars toys for him, as he’s really enamored with droids. I also got a few collectible toys for me, and an epic new pint glass.

We didn’t see nearly as many people as we had planned, but we met up with my friend Crissi and her new husband for dinner one night. Then on the final weekend we were able to welcome MJ’s best friend and her husband for a visit to get some quality time with us and the boys. We spent the final Sunday we were in town with them, and took the boys to a little local hobby farm where the boys could see and pet some animals, and Aaron even got a pony ride! It was a great find, we’ll have to go back with some of their cousins, but we got lucky that day since it was by appointment only and they happened to have a cancellation that freed up a spot for us.

I did also get some time away by myself. On the Friday before we left I met up with a couple friends at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia to see SIX. It was clever and funny, and a refreshing change of pace, since I haven’t seen a musical since before the boys were born, due to both a mix of new parenthood time constraints and the pandemic.

From there, I ended up getting a hotel room downtown for the night so I could hop on a 7:20AM train the next morning to head out to the Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference, which I’ll write about later. It’s only my second conference since everything shut down in 2020, and my first time back at a generalist open source conference. It felt so good.

A soggy morning at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia

Our trip wound down over the next couple of days with lunch with a friend on Monday and then our trip home on Tuesday. We took a later flight than we usually do just because of flight costs and availability, which unfortunately led to Aaron being a bit more grumpy than I would have liked due to a missed nap, but we all made it through. As a bonus, we missed all the terribly rainy weather in northern California while we were gone, so we’ve come back to beautiful, sunny days.

When we arrived at our vacation home in Philadelphia last week and I found myself without a typewriter at all, I felt a bit of sadness. But then I thought about it, surely there are typewriter stores in Philadelphia! Yep, there are two of them.

I decided to make plans to go to W.P.M. Typewriter Shop because I was charmed by their website and intrigued by their typewriter garden (which isn’t open until spring time, so we’ll have to go back when it’s warmer). Adam has been enjoying this typewriter journey with me, so the first Saturday we were in town I called ahead to make an appointment so we could explore the shop and get some help selecting a typewriter.

Shop owner Pamela Rogow was a delight to explore with. I admit my guidance to her was rather limited, but she knew where I was starting from and that I wanted something sturdy that Adam could type on. With that in mind we made our way through probably a dozen typewriters. I had my reservations about an electric typewriter, but we decided to try one since they are a lot easier to type on. She showed Adam around some of the keys and functions and then let him type away.

I actually would have liked this one a lot, and it would fit in with my crew of Smith-Corona typewriters. Alas, even though it was easy for Adam to use, the dull electronic buzz of it just being turned on annoyed him. Back to trying manuals!

She was incredibly patient as we made our way through the collection. We tried portables and standards, newer ones and older ones.

At one point, Adam decided it was his mission to locate and try every bell she had floating around the shop, which was pretty amusing. I’m glad he was having fun between typewriter demos.

I really wanted to be happier with one of the portables, but they were on the harder side for Adam to type on. He ended up being drawn to a wide-carriage 1946 Remington KMC with a ten-key tabulator, and once he decided upon this one, there was no dissuading him. This was our typewriter!

It’s really quite stunning, and a lot of fun to type on. As a reference point, it did set me back about $420 once we were all said and done with taxes, but this is what you’re going to have to expect for a professionally tended to manual typewriter. It was nice to learn that they also have a rent-to-own program that’s designed to allow people to try out a typewriter to see if they’ll use it, and bring it back if they decide it’s not for them. But this one is part of our life now, and I’ve quickly gotten the hang of it with the help of the Remington KMC Instructions, it’s great.

As soon as we got into town it was clear that the kids had caught some kind of cold. A few days later MJ ended up on antibiotics, and the kids had full blown colds. Somehow, I managed to get out unscathed, but that meant I was taking care of everyone and doing sleeping shifts on the couch so I could more easily run downstairs to care for Aaron, or upstairs to check on Adam, all while letting MJ get rest so he could recover. I was also working to get my end of year tasks done at work and generally getting things squared off so I could depart for the rest of the year with as much done as possible. It was exhausting, and I kept having to pause and remind myself how lucky I was that I wasn’t sick too.

The first Saturday we were in town I also went to a Celebration of Life for CJ Fearnley, whose sudden passing I already wrote about. I wasn’t sick, but I was sure to mask up the whole time in case I was contagious. The grief I was feeling over that weighed heavy on me, and I was grateful that MJ was still feeling well enough at that point to watch the boys for the afternoon so I could go to the service. I said a few words, connected with some folks who I hadn’t seen in years, and in one case someone I knew through my work at CJ’s company years ago but never got around to meeting in person. Seeing how he touched so many lives and was soothing, and attending was a good step in my path to heal from this loss. In the time since his passing, I find myself constantly reminded at how many small ways he touched my life, he really was a wonderful person and mentor.

In more uplifting news, it snowed! Neither of the boys had experienced snow in person since we’ve been hunkered down in snow-free coastal California for the past three winters. The snow was brief, and the rest of the trip ended up being warmer and rainy, but it was enough for us to get outside for a few minutes to run around and take some pictures.

Everyone was on the mend by the time my little sister Annette and my nephew Xavier came into town to visit on December 24th. The last time we saw them was the summer of 2019 when they came out to California to meet baby Adam and spend a week with us. The pandemic sure threw a wrench in our ability to connect, and I’m really happy that the trio of cousins got to meet and spend time together, it ended up being the highlight of our trip for me. The cousins enjoyed a bunch of outings together, and some staying home playing video games (Adam played Mario Kart for the first time!) and doing things like decorating gingerbread men. It was also really nice to catch up with my sister.

With Hanukkah landing late in the year and at the same time as Christmas, we also had the treat of spending all of Hanukkah in Philadelphia. My sister and nephew got to experience the final two nights of it with us too.

The boys and I set up the model train I always bring out for the season, and I piled presents on the table. I enjoyed the train long before I had kids, but it’s nice to get to share that joy with kids who are happy to just spend a half hour watching the train go in circles as they move models around and see how much they can speed it up without a derailment.

We also met up with some folks from the Philadelphia Linux Users Group who I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic and we did a little outing to the Mercer Museum in Doylestown. Adam thoroughly enjoyed exploring the labyrinthine museum and all the curious items to look at, while Aaron seemed content to spend most of the time in the children’s room, which is a new addition since I was last there over a decade ago, and one of the only rooms with heating. Afterwards we all ended up at a Hibachi place for lunch, which was also a whole new experience for the boys.

Speaking of new experiences, we quickly discovered that the change of scenery of the townhouse caused Adam to explore his surroundings a bit more, which included hopping out of his crib and running around the house in the morning. Since this isn’t really safe for him, we started evaluating our options. We hadn’t moved to a toddler bed in California yet, but it swiftly became clear that we’d have to do something. Unfortunately the way the room and door are set up, there isn’t actually a place to put a bed against a wall that doesn’t collide with a window, closet, or door. Infuriatingly, the spot where his crib lived was about 2 inches too small to put a twin bed in the same position, so some creativity was required. We ended up going to Ikea and getting a MINNEN extendable bed frame and associated spring mattress which takes twin sheets and in the medium state fits perfectly in his room. The boys enjoyed helping us assemble it, and as a bonus, I was able to move the crib down to Aaron’s little room so he could take that instead of the Pack N Play with mattress that he had been using, and rapidly outgrowing. The first few nights were a little rough, but I think they were both much happier with the final result.

There are a lot of birthdays in our family in December, so while my family was in town we invited MJ’s extended family over for a big five-person birthday party. We also got to spend time with MJ’s family on New Years Eve in a little house party that had kids everywhere! It’s so funny reflecting on how our extended family was child-free until Adam came along, and now it’s all so lively and chaotic at family gatherings, quite the change.

At the end of our trip the weather warmed and dried up quite a bit, allowing us to go to a local park with MJ’s step-sister and her son. It was nice to get a little more time in with them and somewhat make up for the first ten days of our trip when we were all sick.

The flight home was uneventful, though we did have concerns about storms hitting the bay area upon our return. Thankfully there were no delays, and while it’s still challenging, we are getting better at traveling with two young kids. A big backpack full of snacks and activities, plus their own headphones and phones loaded with downloaded content were all lifesavers.

If I’m honest, the trip had bright spots but it wasn’t the reset I was hoping for. I came home feeling more exhausted and worn out than before, and I was already quite tired coming off of Thanksgiving. But it was pretty much on track for 2022, with our oldest starting preschool it felt like we were sick with something or other all year. Plus, with the addition of a “bed project” it meant that are already disrupted plans for house projects while we were in town were further shifted, which was also disappointing.

Here’s to 2023 being healthier, or our least our immune systems being better a fighting off whatever comes along!

The day before the event I also had the pleasure of meeting with our VP, Meredith Stowell, who was in town for an Open Mainframe Project board meeting prior to the event. One of the things that I’ve found so valuable about my role and the teams that I’m on is not only how accessible our leadership chain is, but that they go out of their way to check in with individual contributors. I’ve worked on a lot of great teams, but it’s really transformational to work for an organization where you feel directly supported from the top down.

My participation in this event took several forms. Early on, I was part of the program committee that helped select the talks. I was also managing IBM’s sponsor presence for the third year in a row. While I always had a nice cohort of folks helping me put together materials and things for the virtual booth, it took a lot more logistical work to get everything there in-person. Finally, I gave a talk on the Linux Distributions Working Group with my group co-creator Sarah Julia Kriesch and also participated in a mentorship keynote panel.

As we led up to the event, I helped get a booth schedule put together for IBMers who I knew would be on-site to help, and made sure I had my Raspberry Pi 400 all loaded up with our sustainability demo to show off at the booth.

The morning of the event I loaded everything up into my backpack, a small suitcase, and the monitor tucked away in its box, and took the train down to the city. The background banner for the booth was all set up when I arrived and came out beautifully, and with a few extra pairs of hands helping out, we had the booth set up in no time.

And then the event kicked off! I won’t dive deep into technology here, since this is a more personal reflection, except to say that the technical sessions I was able to attend were top-notch and I think we did a really nice job selecting a diverse set of speakers, across various metrics. The keynotes felt approachable by everyone in the audience, which is hard to pull off for a technical conference, but the Linux Foundation does a really good job making sure various perspectives are captured in the community. Perhaps the most personally valuable one to me came from Cynthia Coupé who spoke on “Neurodivergency and the Mainframe: A Parallel Universe”. I have a loved one who recently received a neurodivergent diagnosis, and as I learn to support them I’ve learned a considerable amount about myself, and my own peculiarities. What I loved about her message though was that we need to be building inclusive spaces where we accept and celebrate our differences because of the different types of value we all can bring. I know I have a tendency to get hyper focused and excited about things, but it turns out that it has served me quite well in my career, as long as I had a team to support me and a community that’s forgiving of quirkiness.

The biggest take-away for me at this event was meeting people. This has always been true of in-person conferences, if all we went for was learning, we could arguably do that by viewing a carefully curated playlist of talks from YouTube. It was particularly important this time though. I joined IBM less than a year before the pandemic, which means most of my time spent in the mainframe space has been online. There are more people I hadn’t met in my immediate sphere than those I had, and it was a tremendous opportunity to connect on a personal level, and have some candid conversations that I otherwise have not had the opportunity for.

There were a lot of selfies.

A lot!

It was of course a pleasure meeting and doing a talk with Sarah. Her passion for openSUSE on IBM zSystems and LinuxONE inspires everyone around her, and she’s being doing a lot of great advocacy to our broader Linux and open source communities. I think our talk together went quite well, and it was nice to sync up with people there at the summit to discuss what some of our future plans should be.

With Sarah!

I also had a lovely time on the keynote mentorship panel on day 2. I have worked with Michael Friesenegger of SUSE extensively over the years, so it was a pleasure to finally meet in person and doubly-so to be on a panel with him. It was also nice hearing from people after the panel, so thanks to everyone who paused to chat with me about it.

In all, great event, and it’s invigorated me in a way that I forgot in-persons had the power to do. I have new ideas for the projects and working groups I’m part of, and excited about improvements we can make to create an even more exciting event next year.