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An electromechanical calculator

Friday, Apr 5th, 2024 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Back in August, Adam and I came across a mechanical calculator while picking up my freshly repaired IBM Selectric II from Berkeley Typewriter. I knew mechanical calculators existed, but I didn’t really know anything about them. Still, I filed it away in my “maybe some day” list, if I happened to come across one.

Fast forward to March 2024 and we’re sitting at the San Francisco airport waiting on a dreadfully delayed flight, and a fellow I know through the Philadelphia area Linux community reached out and mentioned he was helping with an estate sale, and came across some typewriters and asked if I’d be interested in any of them. I had less interest in the typewriters, but among the photos he shared was a mechanical calculator! I’m in. Bonus: I’m about to board a flight to Philadelphia! What timing!

It was a bit of a trek to get up to the estate, but I was greeted with what turned out to be an electromechanical calculator, meaning it has a small DC motor inside to move the mechanical components that were driven by a hand crank in other models. The trouble with this is that we’re looking at a motor that’s easily over 70 years old, and the power cable is cracked and unusable, so will need to be replaced for it to work as an electric device again. Thankfully, the mechanical components looked clean and intact, so I purchased it from the estate.

Once I got it home, the first step was to do a once-over cleaning-wise, starting with the case, which had been living in a barn and was too dirty for me to even be comfortable bringing it into the house. On a beautiful Sunday morning, the boys enthusiastically helped me with it.

From there, I could take a closer look at the machine, in all its glory!

It really is in nice shape, I’d argue even better than the one we saw at the typewriter shop. I still need to clean it up a bit more, but a once-over was good enough for now.

Sunday night I went into research mode to see what I could discover about it, especially when it came to getting it working. After doing enough web searching to know what to look for, I found a tip that told me to peek inside a slot on the bottom to find the model number and serial number. It took a flashlight and some wrangling, but I found it: Monroe Model LA5-200, serial number 437578.

The first things I learned were that the “A” stands for automatic, which means it has the motor in there. I also learned from John Wolff’s Web Museum: The Monroe Calculating Machine Company that the LA5-200 is “a later ten-column machine with … a few minor changes, but is otherwise identical to” the LA5-160, which is good for me, since the 160 is a lot more common.

Resource-wise, I’ve found:

Monroe Service Training Course Book 2: Models LA, LA-5, LA-6, LA-7, function, adjustment, nomenclature which has some excellent diagrams and things, which will be incredibly useful when I start working on it. These three images are from that guide, and were already helpful in my initial pass.

Additionally, there are a handful of LA5-160 YouTube videos showing some tear-downs and repairs, including this series from DJD Labs that I’m certain I will find useful!

Given how heavy it is, this will be staying at our townhouse in Philadelphia. So, it’ll be a project for when I’m here, which is good, because I already have plenty to keep me busy in California for the foreseeable future.

That’s a lot about the calculator, but I will admit that I didn’t leave the estate sale with just that one, I did bring home a typewriter too. It’s a 1967 Olympia SM9 (s/n: 3242067) and it was in great condition, aside from a very dirty case, that the boys helped me clean so I could bring it inside.

It’s a lovely typewriter, and it also came with a small pamphlet and cleaning kit!

I’ll also be keeping it here in Philadelphia. I’ll clean it up and get a new ribbon for it during our next visit. Amusingly, I now have two Olympias, and they’re both here. I’m thinking about ultimately giving it to Adam to use when he’s a little older, if his interest in mechanical typewriters holds.

The rest of our visit is pretty packed, including a couple work-related day trips, so I probably won’t get to work on these any more, but I did take some time the other day to finally set up a full Typewriter Hunter TypewriterDatabase account, which I’ve now populated with photos of my collection: 9 Typewriter Galleries » Hunter: Elizabeth Joseph

Filed under: typewriter

Hamantaschen and flight delays

Tuesday, Mar 26th, 2024 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Following my trip down to Pasadena for the Southern California Linux Expo, I had three days of work and then a couple days off which I spent with the kids while we prepared for a visit to Philadelphia.

Having worked through the weekend, taking a couple days off the following week was the most logical thing to do over all, but it really worked out this time. First, it was a huge help in preparing to fly to Philadelphia on Saturday morning. I can squeeze in all our prep on a couple of late nights, but having the daytime to do it was especially beneficial, no late nights for me!

I also finally found someone to help me with chores and organization projects around the house three times a week. We have a house cleaner come by every two weeks, which is a huge help, but working full time, caring for the kids in the evening, and doing all the daily chores meant I had very little other time in my week for either personal time or other projects we want to tackle. I know that a lot of folks live like this, and have much more physically demanding jobs, but it’s not the life I want for myself. Since we have the means to hire someone to help for a few hours a week, I was finally able to convince myself that it’s the right thing to do for our family right now.

My new helper came by on Tuesday to meet and make sure we were a good fit (both sides, personality and task-wise) and then I had her come by for a couple hours on Thursday and Friday. It was especially nice to have someone help me prep everything for the trip, that took a full two hours of chores off my list (or, more realistically, took and hour off and allowed me to finally have the stroller cleaned, which I always say I’ll do but never get around to).

The other thing of note last week was that Purim was coming up, and I wanted to make Hamantaschen with the boys. This is my third year doing it, and this year we had the added pressure of promising Adam’s teacher that we’d bring some by on Friday before we left to share with his class as a culture sharing activity. On Thursday morning after dropping Adam off at school, Aaron and I got to work on the dough, which needed to chill in the refrigerator for three hours.

After lunch, we got to work on the cookies! This year we went with two flavors, MJ picked up some cherry pie filling to try out, and I also thawed some of our home made plum jam. They both came out beautifully, this was definitely my best year yet. On Friday we brought several to Adam’s class, and then we were able to pack the rest of the ones we didn’t eat for our trip to Philadelphia (and actual Purim, which was on Sunday).


Speaking of plums, we also spent some time last week doing a bit of yard work. The plum tree really needed some pruning, and so did the apple tree. So I watched a YouTube video about pruning fruit trees and went to work chopping. I wanted to make sure I did enough so the trees aren’t weighed down (last year a branch on the plum tree snapped), but I also want to make sure I don’t inflict so much trauma on the tree that it fails to produce fruit for a couple years, the boys love those fruit trees! I won’t know for a couple months whether I succeeded, but they do look a lot better now. Plus, the boys were actually a big help, they helped haul the branches into the compost, and were hilarious little helpers as I also spent a bit of time pulling up weeds in the back yard.

Saturday we flew to Philadelphia, on a flight that was delayed by over 5 hours. Unfortunately the delay didn’t hit until just before boarding, so we were stuck at the airport for all that time trying to keep a three year old and a five year old entertained without relying too much on screens, which we’d have to do in the air. We began our adventure playing by the gate a bit, hoping for a quick departure, but as soon as it was clear that wasn’t possible, we made our way to a restaurant for a snack and change of scenery.

After some time there, it was off to another restaurant where the boys could get ice cream. The remaining time was spent at an airport lounge, which also wasn’t terribly exciting for them, but breaking up the 5 hour wait with multiple locations did help stave off a lot of the boredom. Honestly, the boys really handled themselves well, all things considered. The arrival into Newark was another challenge, it was 2AM by the time we got in, limited ground staff meant they sent the stroller to baggage claim rather than having it at the gate, so we had to encourage two sleepy kiddos all the way to baggage claim. Then the air train wasn’t running, so we had to rework our whole plan to pick up the rental car. And suffice to say, we didn’t plan on getting to the townhouse nearly 5AM. As a result, Sunday was a little rough.

We’re now in Philadelphia for a couple weeks. We have some plans to meet up with some folks, and I will be heading up to the Poughkeepsie office for an IBM System 360 celebration next week. I’m rounding out the trip by speaking at the Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference (CPOSC) on Saturday, April 6th. It’s nice to be here again.

Filed under: family, food, kids, life, travel

SCALE 21x

Thursday, Mar 21st, 2024 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

The last conference I went to before the COVID-19 pandemic began was the Southern California Linux Expo, which I wrote about here: SCALE 18x. Being on the cusp of the pandemic, it was a surreal experience. But it’s still one of my favorite conferences, so I thoroughly enjoyed our time there, and the ability to bring the whole family along, which at that time just included little Adam.

Coming back to SCALE this year was like a rite of passage in this new existence in a world with COVID-19 floating around. It was an absolute pleasure to see everyone who I only see at this conference, and generally to get back into the swing of things. Plus, the first day of SCALE landed on Pi Day, so I got to wear my new pi dress! Logistically, bringing the whole family along this time didn’t work out, but we’re definitely keeping it in mind for next year.

My first stop at SCALE was an Ubucon, which just like me, had returned to SCALE for the first time since the pandemic. I quickly caught up with several old friends from the community, and then was delighted to meet Cody Smith and Simon Quigley, who I’d only known through the Ubuntu community online. It was also nice meeting some of the folks who came to the event from Canonical and the various projects they’re working on around automation and tooling, a few of whom I had the pleasure of having dinner with when the first day of the event concluded on Thursday.

Ubucon itself kicked off with a talk from Jason Nucciarone, who was standing in for a colleague who couldn’t make it, where he discussed changes that have been made in recent years to revitalize the Ubuntu community. A big one was communication methods. When I was largely involved with Ubuntu, most of the communications took place over IRC, and like many communities, the Ubuntu community had been slowly drifting away from that. Some folks went to just using the Discourse forums, others had Telegram groups, some went off to pockets of Discord. I’ve remained on a rather silent IRC partially because I don’t have a lot of time to work on Ubuntu these days, so I hadn’t looked into where to go next. Turns out, they’ve started using Matrix and it has started picking up steam. Another thing they’ve done is started up in-person events again. There’s a new Ubuntu Summit that has now had two iterations in 2022 they met in Prague and in 2023 the event was held in Riga, Latvia. The Local Community (LoCo) communities have also received a bit of an injection of activity, which is nice to see. It’s definitely a different Ubuntu community from the one I stepped back from a few years ago, but that’s the nature of communities and I was swiftly reminded at the event that Ubuntu is turning 20 years old this year. There’d be something wrong if it was the same community I created a vBulletin account on all the way back in 2005.

I also enjoyed the talk from Simon on “Open Source is Not Just Code” where he spoke about his own journey. This is quite a bit different from the list-of-things talks I’ve seen (and given!) on this topic, and I think by sharing his story and journey we got a much more memorable talk. He spoke honestly about the challenges of starting contributing as a young age, and how his curiosity and willingness to give a variety of things a try paved the way for him to become a release manager for Lubuntu and hold several other roles while he was still a teenager. I can definitely speak to his enthusiasm as well, he was a big help when I was still running the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, and I’m so happy to see him still contributing and making such a big impact.

Perhaps my favorite talk on the second day of Ubucon came from my friend George Mulak. I’ve known George through the Ubuntu California team for years, but his talk was my first glimpse into some of the paid work he’s done over the years. His talk was on “Setting up an Ubuntu lab for seniors and the disadvantaged” where he shared details of the mobile computer lab that he ran for communities around the Los Angeles area to learn skills and help with technical literacy. It was a fascinating project, but also connected me with Ken VanDine who works at Canonical but also participates in a non-profit that does custom images (which can be used on USB sticks) for computers they install Ubuntu on and then provide to the community, to the tune of thousands per year. It’ll be an interesting thing to explore for Partimus, since our reduced scale these days means resurrecting our netboot imaging machine doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore.

The expo hall also opened Friday afternoon, and that’s where I had the pleasure of formally meeting Jon “maddog” Hall for the first time. He’s a hero of mine, but I never gathered up the courage to say hello. No more of that! We had a lovely chat about mainframes, and on Saturday morning I went to his talk, “How Is Linux Like a Player Piano?” I adored his talk. As a fellow vintage-mechanical-things enthusiast, his love for player pianos really resonated with me, and the tale he weaved around the role of open standards and patents in the shaping of what technologies succeed was a compelling one. I also appreciate that he concluded his talk with a nod to Hedy Lamarr, whose technical collaborators during her development of frequency hopping included George Antheil, who had used player pianos in some of his own work, which was another round about way for today’s technologies to be linked to those of the past. Unfortunately, now I kinda want to have a player piano, hah!

On the topic of meeting people I had the pleasure of meeting Tommy Chang, who is famous in the mainframe world for being a hobbyist who owns a couple of vintage mainframes. It’s always a pleasure to catch up with community members who share my passion for the platform, especially at an event like a Linux conference because we have this immediate kinship, and can geek out about various historic computing finds of late. We probably won’t found a computing museum together, but it’s fun to dream about.

My own talk was on Saturday afternoon, which was on building your open source project for various architecture and titled “Will your open source project run on a mainframe? And beyond!” I brought along my VisionFive 2 and my LEGO IBM z16, which I spread out on a mat I got from the arm developer program and allowed attendees to check out along with some stickers.

On Saturday I also went to a talk from Tyler Menezes on “Nurturing the Next Generation of Open Source Contributors” where he talked about CodeDay Labs where they provide successful mentorships between students and open source maintainers and projects. It’s a fascinating project that I’ll keep in mind once I can clear more time for volunteering again, but in the shorter term it was interesting learning what college students are struggling with today when it comes to contributing, and how project maintainers can help. He covered making sure you have a CONTRIBUTING.md and ARCHITECTURE.md files so students can find their way, which should also have a quick start for building a dev environment, including on Windows. He also shared how important it was to have properly functioning tests to help them avoid making simple mistakes that slow down the contribution process and ultimately lead to reduction in enthusiasm and drive. The final piece of advice was around criteria for good-first-issue bugs for newcomers, stating that they should be rather self-contained (one file to fix?), require minimal tracing through the code base, be clearly defined so you don’t need to ask questions, and make sure they’re still applicable, since it can be incredibly frustrating to fix a bug, only to discover later it had been fixed and not documented several months ago.

Part of my time this trip to Pasadena was also spent enjoying Pasadena itself. One evening I took a long walk around the downtown and to a park southwest of the venue where I got to enjoy a spectacular sunset before doing my only take-out meal of the weekend. On Saturday evening before meeting my friend Nathan Handler for dinner, I went on a quest to find a post card to send to the boys, and along the way found some rainbow abacus earrings (perfect for celebrating St. Patrick’s Day at a Linux conference!) and got to snag a couple green doughnuts from Randy’s Donuts.

Sunday began with a keynote from Casey Handmer on “Hacky solutions to real world problems: Applied Computing Past, Present, and Future” which I really enjoyed. I think like many of us we’ve slipped into a bit of a doom loop regarding the struggling middle class in the United States and promises of AI that have questioning deliverables so far. His talk was a breath of fresh air, positivity, and real world problems and solutions that are being worked on today. He began by talking about the recent deciphering of crushed, burned, scrolls from Herculaneum by students with the help of AI-assisted technologies (article). He also shared about his own company, Terraform Industries, that’s working to do “gigascale atmospheric hydrocarbon synthesis” with the intent of producing cheap energy while also cutting CO2. He also brought some statistics about how in just my own lifetime, global poverty has gone down significantly, and a big piece of the puzzle to going further is making sure all humans have access to energy. I found myself reflecting on how myopic my views have been by focusing on what feels so hopeless at home, and I was really inspired by not only his perspective, but the fact that his company is actually doing something real to change things.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Duane O’Brian at SCALE this year, and then attended his talk in the last slot of the day where he spoke on some analysis he’s been doing on where funding is coming from and going in the open source world. He scoured historical event and foundation websites going back 10 years to see where much of the funding had come from and assembled it in a series of spreadsheets and publicly available data. It was fascinating to see the information come together, though it wasn’t particularly surprising overall. He shared a handful of other efforts around both community-driven and more academic focused approaches to digging deeper into the data, but this was a nice beginning of a glimpse into where major events and organizations in the United States are getting their funding from.

With Pi Day on the first day of SCALE, we capped off the event with another holiday: St. Patrick’s Day! I was sad to miss a festival this year that MJ and our au pair attended with the boys, but I tried to make up with it by joining my friend Mickey Lyle for lunch and having a green beer.

The event concluded with a closing keynote from Bill Cheswick, which I only caught part of due to it going a bit long and me having a flight to catch. What I caught of it was a fun trip down memory lane, but by catching the flight I did I was able to be home in time to tuck Adam and Aaron in to bed Sunday night, which is precisely where I wanted to be.

Many thanks to all the volunteers who make SCALE happen, it was great to see so many of you!

Filed under: events, mainframes, tech, travel

Another refrigerator, the Exploratorium, and a movie

Wednesday, Mar 20th, 2024 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Valentine’s Day this year was pretty focused on the kids. MJ was traveling for work and the kids have really been getting into the idea of holidays lately, so it’s been fun to decorate with them and talk about what each holiday means and how we celebrate it. In the case of Valentine’s Day, that somehow meant hearts and chocolate, so we put heart decorations around the family room in the weeks prior, and then on the day of, in our matching t-shirts that Adam and I made a couple weeks before, I gave each of the boys a cardboard heart filled with chocolates. That evening I was surprised by a delivery of flowers and chocolates from MJ, which was a nice conclusion of the day.

In February we also gave up on our broken refrigerator. We bought it in 2019 to replace the old one that came with the house, so it was incredibly disappointing to have it stop functioning properly just four years after we bought it. A series of failed repair attempts by the warranty company over several months had really started adding up, until we were ultimately convinced that the repair was more trouble than it was worth, and likely more expensive than a whole new refrigerator. So, after about four months of basically living out of our chest freezer and a couple large mini-fridges (one which we already had, and a second that we bought), we bought a new full-size refrigerator. It turned out that Costco had the best deal on the best-fitting refrigerator for our budget and space, so we got got a Costco membership with the deal too and within a week we had a new refrigerator, hooray!

It’s been such a relief to have a functioning, full-size refrigerator. It’s absolutely something I took for granted, and there were a lot of things I wasn’t doing food and drink-wise due to how limited and unreliable our space was. It’s nice to have options again. And a few weeks in, the refrigerator seems to be doing fine. I’ve now cleaned out the small mini-fridges and unplugged them, so the next step will be taking them down to the garage.

I’m less convinced about the Costco membership. Even at this phase of our family-life, we simply don’t go through bulk amounts of food, so many of the options there just don’t make sense for us. I think we also just don’t eat a lot of the food they have at Costco on a regular enough basis. Still, we got a nice new set of pans at an excellent price, along with some new runner rugs for our downstairs that have needed to be replaced since we moved in six years ago. The store is also a bit overwhelming. We are bound by school/work schedules, so we end up there on the busiest day of the week, and the kids lose interest in shopping for bulk food rather quickly (or want to buy every non-food item we walk past). So it’s not a particularly enjoyable experience and I’m not sure it’s worth it.

Speaking of questionable worth, I replaced my Pixel Watch recently. There was nothing wrong with mine, but the opportunity arose for me to get the Pixel Watch 2 for free and it was too hard to pass up. Now that I’ve been using it for a couple weeks, I will concede that the battery life is better, which is nice, but I probably could have been perfectly happy with my old one for quite a bit longer.

Aside from visits to Costco, we’ve been keeping busy with little local jaunts and events. A local organization runs a series of “Comic Cons” throughout the region, and one came to Castro Valley recently. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was a nice day and even if it was a bust it was only $7 to get in and I thought Adam might enjoy it. They had a costume contest, but it seems like that was the only “event” and it was just a bunch of vendor tables selling art, toys, and various anime, science fiction, and game-focused merchandise. I’m not complaining, it was something that Adam enjoyed as he went through tables of toys, picked out some art from a local artist, and even saw a girl from his class at school. I’ll probably skip it next time, but it is nice to drop by these local type events from time to time.

The weekend before last we decided to head to San Francisco to visit the Exploratorium, a science museum on the Embarcadero in San Francisco. MJ and I had both been there a few times, but after the success of The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, we figured it was time to bring the boys to our own local hands-on science museum. We got our membership and grabbed some lunch at the cafe before doing a bit of exploring around the museum. The boys had fun, but it was getting to be mid-afternoon and we had planned on going to a free tulip event in Union Square. Thankfully, our au pair went to the tulip event first and warned us that it was very crowded with a long wait, so we decided to skip it.

Instead, we decided to fulfill a wish the boys had for a long time: taking a ferry! There are several commuter ferries that cross the bay, so we selected one that runs about every hour on weekends and would take us to Jack London station in Oakland. From there we could catch a short bus over to a BART station and go home. The ferry ride was a delight that we’ll definitely repeat, but the BART station was a bit of trouble as trains were expressing through while an “incident” was being handled by the police in another part of the station. We did manage to finally get a train and make it home.

Last week MJ and I took the rare chunk of time and went up to The Metreon in San Francisco and saw Dune 2 in 70mm IMAX together. We hadn’t seen a movie released in theaters together since before the pandemic, and even then I’d struggle to pinpoint the last time, maybe before we had kids? It was really nice to settle into a big theater and see a fun movie together, and Dune 2 was a perfect one for the IMAX. The worms and the explosions were very boom-y and made the most of the sound system there.

From there, I hopped on a flight to Pasadena for the Southern California Linux Expo, my first work trip of the year! And the beginning of several more to come in April.

Filed under: family, kids, life

Resurrecting an Oliver 9 Typewriter: Part 1

Tuesday, Mar 5th, 2024 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Back in November I got to type on my first Oliver 9 at a type-in, and I mused about it:

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.

In January, one popped up on Facebook Marketplace. I reached out to the seller and learned that it was sadly non-functional, and he had been using it as a decoration in his living room. I didn’t want to drop a couple hundred bucks on one that didn’t work, so I kind of let it go. But I had also shared the listing with MJ to share my excitement in finding one, and he reached out as well and got a few more details, and arranged a time for me to take a look at it in case it was salvagable. That is love.

In preparation for our meeting, I watched a few YouTube videos, including What to look for when buying an Oliver typewriter on The Vintage Type YouTube channel, which would soon become my go-to resource. And then felt relatively confident that I could do a once-over to determine if it was worth it.

I succeeded! We met the owner in the lobby of his apartment building, and while MJ wrangled the kids, I did a quick inspection of key parts, and even popped out the carriage, much to the surprise of the owner, “I didn’t know it did that!” Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to put the carriage back just yet, oops. Fortunately, I determined that it was salvageable but needed some work, so we were able to agree on $200 for it, and then MJ bought it for me.

At home, I learned how to get the carriage on, and the boys and I did a quick once over of it on the dining room table. It was incredibly dusty, and rust had taken over most of the surface. The original green paint is gone from most of it, and there’s only a hint of the stenciled Oliver writing, which is a bit of a shame since it’s really distinctive. As I was looking for the serial number to properly date it, I realized it also doesn’t have the patent plaques on the back. I wonder where those ended up.

I was quickly able to discover that even though it wasn’t installed, there was a crusty, old ribbon in there, which I found when I removed the spool covers.

A quick trip back over to The Vintage Type, we watched Installing a New Ribbon on an Oliver typewriter and I was able to glean enough of an understanding of installing the ribbon that I could get this old one installed again. As an aside, I learned later that this video from the same channel is better for me, since I have an Oliver 9 and he shows specifically installing one of those there. Notably, I missed the detail of making sure the ribbon was tucked inside the bottom of the clips to hold it in place, which you can notably see when I finally got to type something, but it worked!

I then ordered some little steel brushes and some Evapo-Rust, so I could really get to work on it. I set up a table in my home office and one evening I got to work removing all the worst of the easily accessible rust.

I used Evapo-Rust on the pencil holder arm and the bell, but I’ve held off for now on using it on anything else. It’s a mild remover, but it’s still pretty intense and I didn’t want to mess with any of the remaining green paint. It was at this stage that I found the serial number, which had been encased in rust.

It’s 863924 which means it’s from 1919. The oldest typewriter in my collection!

From there, I brought the typewriter back out to the dining room table so the boys could help me take some soap and water to it to remove all the rust dust and generally get it cleaned up. I will note that the bottom of it seemed to be in pretty good shape with only some minor spots needing attention.

Next up was ordering a ribbon! It was back to our friend at The Vintage Type, since he sells ribbons on eBay. Since I had both my original spools, I could get away with just ordering a single spooled ribbon, and a few days later I had the ribbon in-hand. And then it took me a couple weeks to finally carve out some evening time to install it, because life gets in the way.

With that, I had a much happier typewriter! But there was one last thing: alignment of letters it was chopping off the bottom of each letter.

Back to a video from The Vintage Type: Adjusting Upper Case Letters and Figures On An Oliver Typewriter. It’s still not perfect, but it’s good enough for now.

My greatest concern in the long run is that so much of the carriage and other fully exposed parts are functional, but quite rusty. I think addressing this will require a greater extent of dismantling that will cause it to be non-functional while I fix it. It’ll be a tedious project so I make sure I get everything put back together in the right way and kids don’t run off with random screws. I am feeling mixed about whether I want to do this right now. My time is extremely limited and it is working, I kind of want to pause and enjoy it. Plus, it’s over 100 years old, it can probably wait a couple years for a more complete restoration!

For now, it just lives in my home office, happily sitting on a little table where people can see it when I’m on video calls.

Filed under: typewriter

“Just ride around in buses and trains and cable cars”

Saturday, Feb 17th, 2024 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Aaron and I recently went to San Francisco to see an aunt who was in town visiting, and he was really disappointed about not being able to go on a cable car. Adam was at school at the time, but hew knew that we went and that planted a seed that made him beg to go to San Francisco over the weekend.

“What do you want to do in San Francisco?”
“Just ride around in buses and trains and cable cars.”

That’s my boy. He also wanted to go back to the Cable Car Museum and to the new Transbay Terminal park where they have a fountain that activates along a path whenever a bus passes beneath it. With all these things in mind we mapped out a plan.

First up, we decided not to take the stroller. It was the first time taking both boys into San Francisco without it, so we were a little nervous, but we managed to keep walking to a minimum and relied on public transit. We took BART into the city and got off at Embarcadero Station where we picked up the California Street cable car. Aaron and I rode on the outside of the car while MJ and Adam rode inside for the first half of our ride. Once some people got off, MJ and Adam joined us on the outside and then we hopped off at the stop just down the street from the Cable Car Museum.

From there, we walked over to the new Rose Pak MUNI Metro station in Chinatown, during which we got to wave to several cable cars coming by!

We took the Metro from Chinatown back downtown where we then walked over to Jeffery’s Toys, which was sadly going out of business. We picked up a couple trinkets and then got lunch at a nearby California Pizza Kitchen that we sometimes went to when MJ and I lived nearby.

Right after lunch we stopped at the Ghirardelli ice cream shop at the corner of Market and New Montgomery for a couple sundaes.

After lunch we hopped on a PCC street car for a couple stops down Market and then made our way to the Transbay Terminal where we spent some time playing and watching the bus fountain until it was time to take our last exciting type of transit: a bus! It would take longer, but the boys really wanted to take a bus, and MJ found an AC Transit Transbay bus that we could take across the bay, through Alameda, and concluding at an Oakland BART station, which we’d then take back home. The plan was a hit for all of us. It was a nice and comfortable bus which was enjoyable to take, and Aaron fell asleep on me during the journey, so clearly he was comfortable!

That Sunday was quite rainy, and our only journey was to a thrift store to pick up a small filing cabinet to try and contain some of Adam’s school papers which had been increasingly taking over our house. During Aaron’s nap, Adam and I made a trio of custom shirts for Valentine’s Day!

Later in the afternoon, we made some banana bread and then some popcorn to enjoy with our stuck-indoors, movie-driven afternoon.

Speaking of movie-driven, I went to see a movie! I realized recently that something that would help a lot with life balance and mental health would be taking some time for myself. It may seem obvious, but our life is just so busy and we’ve been very reserved about hiring babysitters, only really doing it when absolutely necessary. Part of this is just a holdover from the pandemic, we haven’t adjusted our habits or repopulated our babysitter pool. But taking some time for me to go out, meet with friends, or just go to the record store on my own is so important. So last week I walked over to The Chabot theater, our local, historical, single screen theater and saw Argylle. It was so much fun! I also made some time to stop by my local record shop, and then over to the library where I picked up a couple books.

Last weekend celebrations began for the Lunar New Year. Adam had some celebrations at school to observe it and he was pretty excited, so I searched for some local events and found a lion dance event and crafts right nearby at our local library! So the boys and I first made our regular stop at the local farmers market, and then continued on our journey to the library where we met up with our au pair and her friend, and made it just in time for the dance to begin.

When that concluded, we made our way over to the children’s section of the library where they had celebratory crafts. Predictably, Aaron loved the crafts and Adam wanted to explore the rest of the library and check out a couple books. Around 11:30 MJ picked us up so we could go to lunch.

Before the sun rose on Sunday MJ was off to the airport for a business trip. That morning the boys and I went to the local Japanese Gardens. The boys love the gardens, they’re beautiful, have rocks to climb, and they can see fish and turtles in the water features. From there, we were off to lunch at our favorite local restaurant. Unfortunately, Aaron turned out to be terribly annoyed that we did the gardens instead of a playground, so we rectified that later in the afternoon by going to another park, this time with a playground.

Once all park needs were satisfied for the day, it was time to go home for the Super Bowl! We don’t really watch football and I can barely follow along, but Super Bowl Sunday is basically a holiday in the United States, and it turns out I really enjoy celebrating things with the boys. So we turned on the game, had snacks, chicken tenders, and little bagel bites. And we made and decorated sugar cookies. I guess making cookies isn’t a traditional Super Bowl thing, but the boys weren’t really going to watch the game and we needed something fun and different that we could do with the TV on aside from the regular playroom activities.


Then the game went into overtime right when I was supposed to start getting the boys ready for bed – oops! As a result, I was actively putting Aaron to bed as 5 minutes were left on the clock, and returned just in time to see Kansas City triumph over San Francisco. Adam was adorably disappointed because he knew San Francisco is “his” team, but he got over it within about 30 seconds and the subsequent bedtime routine went smoothly.

The week ahead promised to be very sugar-filled with a little birthday celebration for a friend and Valentine’s Day! We also have a week off from school coming up.

Filed under: castro valley, events, family, food, kids, life, rails, san francisco

Health, trees, San Francisco, and the zoo!

Thursday, Feb 1st, 2024 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

A couple weeks ago I entered a period of depression. It’s something that I’ve written about before, I’ve had bouts of depression since I was a youth, and there doesn’t seem to be a pattern or rationale to when they strike. I do think these bouts are made worse by life circumstances and stress, mostly because it’s easier to believe what my lying depression brain is telling me about my situation and the hopelessness of everything when things are already going poorly. Thankfully, it’s usually not debilitating for me. I can work, care for my children, and do basic chores to keep our home running. What doesn’t happen are larger home projects, thoughtful and creative activities with the kids, and I seek TV instead of reading because I am extra tired during these times. Even when we do go out on adventures, I go through the motions, but I feel numb.

I once read that depression can feel like a part of your soul taking a vacation, and it really resonated with me. First, because I do feel quite empty when I’m depressed, like part of my self is gone and I lack the ability to enjoy things and feel hopeful. But also because it’s a comforting story to tell myself. Where is that bit of my soul? Is she having fun by the beach? Going on some glorious hikes? I hope she’s happy, and well-rested when she returns. When I stop being depressed, I wouldn’t say I’m refreshed and ready to take over the world, but compared to being depressed, it’s a very clear shift in everything. Soul vacations work! I hope she comes back soon though, it may not be strictly debilitating, but every single day, every single hour, is hard right now.

Now that I’ve got done sharing that I am not being thoughtful and creative, I’m going to share that the boys and I did something thoughtful and creative for the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat. The holiday celebrates trees, and these days it’s an ecological holiday that’s typically observed by planting trees. We’ve tended to do little tree-related crafts on this holiday, but when Adam saw it on the calendar he became fixated on planting a tree. Unfortunately our small yard can’t really take any more trees and we weren’t able to find a local tree-planting activity that worked with our schedules, but I knew I had to do something. So, as soon as I was done with work for the day, I took the boys to the local hardware store to pick up a large bag of soil. Once we got home, we grabbed a giant pot that we’d originally gotten to grow a baby watermelon, filled it with soil, and then the boys planted several clippings from one of our jade plants (succulent trees! I can’t kill them!). It was a simple and cute activity, and seemed satisfactory to Adam’s desire to plant a tree.

Last week I had the nice surprise of my Aunt Mary being in San Francisco for a work conference. She was incredibly busy, but made time for us the final morning she was in town before her flight. I hadn’t seen her in years so even though only Aaron and I could make it up (MJ and Adam were busy with work and school) it was a real treat to get to see her, and for her to meet little Aaron! I also hope we can either make it to Florida in the coming year, or see her more if work brings here this way again soon, she hasn’t met Adam either, and he just turned five years old.

I’m glad Aaron got to meet more of my family, but I think mostly he enjoyed going on a trip with me to the city on the train. He was disappointed that we couldn’t go on a cable car and didn’t stay in the city for longer because we needed to get back for lunch and nap time, but it was nice to spend a little quality time just the two of us.

Over the weekend we took the boys over to the Oakland Zoo. We’re members and it’s just 15 minutes from home, so it isn’t something we spend a lot of time in planning for, but Adam shared that he wanted to go on some of the rides and the gondola, so we decided to make a day of it.

We started with a kids ride and the zoo train, but it was then getting to be lunch time.

For lunch, we took the gondola up to the California Trail and had lunch at the cafe up there. The zoo itself is located on a big hill, and the California Trail is on the top of that large hill, so you can see the bay, Oakland, San Francisco, multiple bridges. It’s a beautiful spot, and we even managed to snag one of the few tables outside to enjoy that view. It was also the first really beautiful day of the year, with sun and temperatures reaching the low 70s. It did mean that the zoo was rather busy and the lines were long, but it was all quite tolerable. After playing on the playground and enjoying the rest of the California Trail, we went down on the gondola and got to see an elephant and the giraffes before concluding our zoo day by letting the kids go on one final ride.

It’s now February. I spent January observing “dry January” to cut out alcohol for a few weeks. Just like in 2023, it wasn’t a difficult thing for me, but it was a change. I wouldn’t say it was interesting or helpful in any way, but it did reduce the calories I consumed! Speaking of which, back in July I reflected on my diet and weight, and how I had put on 25 pounds and wasn’t happy about it. I identified some changes I thought I should make, but at the end I made clear that I’d prioritize my mental health, and ultimately didn’t commit to making any of the changes I identified. I’d like to try to do that now. Let’s see how I do this time, I’m at 219 pounds now.

Filed under: animals, family, health, kids, life, san francisco

An exquisite 1940 Smith-Corona Sterling

Sunday, Jan 28th, 2024 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Last year posted about the acquisition of an Olympia Traveller de Luxe. That’s when I received a message from my co-author of The Official Ubuntu Book and friend of mine that started out: “I have an old portable manual typewriter (1940s/50s, I think, offhand) in excellent condition…”

You know where this is going, right?

By the end of the week a beautiful, single-family, 1940 Smith-Corona Sterling (serial number 2A 66470) was in my possession, having been very carefully shipped. Aaron helped me with the unboxing and first test.

The typewriter had been owned by his grandfather, who bought it new, and it is in stunning condition. In fact, of my collection, it may be the one that’s in the best condition. I haven’t had to do any work to it in order to get it performing perfectly.

As a nice bonus, he included a hand-written note to explain the provenance.

The iconic round, glass keys are actually quite enjoyable to type on and it comes in this legendary case that kept the typewriter safe and in great condition for years, which is no small feat for a machine that’s 83 years old.

Of my three portables it’s probably the least portable, but it’s also the oldest portable I have, and it’s obvious even from the names that both the Skyriter and the Traveller de Luxe (which I keep in Philly) had a very specific intent. So I think my Skyriter will remain my hipster outdoor coffee shop typewriter, and this one will be the one I use in my deck and back yard.

What makes this one really special to me though is that I have a real personal connection to it.

Filed under: typewriter

Adam’s 5th birthday and a museum rainforest

Wednesday, Jan 24th, 2024 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

We concluded 2023 in Philadelphia and got back to California late on January 5th so we could celebrate Adam’s birthday over the weekend.

On Saturday we decorated and settled back into our usual routine, with an added bonus of a trip to Adam’s favorite restaurant to enjoy his favorite food and then some birthday ice cream.

On Sunday we held a little family party with our former au pairs. As requested by him, it was Paw Patrol themed. This was the first year he could clearly articulate what he wanted theme-wise, instead of me just following what I knew his interests was. I even made a Paw Patrol tower for his cake, even if he was disappointed that the cake itself wasn’t a tower – hah!

The following weekend we took the boys out to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Aaron had been asking to see more dinosaurs, and Adam kept asking to go to the jungle to try out his “jungle hat” which is actually and old hat from the Philadelphia Zoo, the provenance of which is unknown to me, but I’m pretty certain it is from when MJ was a kid and it happened to surface while we were going through some stuff in storage and now Adam has claimed it. Since the academy had a temporary dinosaur exhibit AND a rainforest, it was a perfect fit! Plus, the weekend of Adam’s birthday was pretty low-key due to everyone being tired from the trip, so I’m glad we got to go out on an adventure.

Our first stop was the The World’s Largest Dinosaurs temporary exhibit, there were a lot of sauropod fossils! And some partial re-creations of the Argentinosaurus and Mamenchisaurus. It wasn’t as exciting for them as the dinosaur hall we saw a few weeks ago in Philadelphia, but it’s as close as we were going to get to satisfying Aaron’s desire to see dinosaurs for now and he seemed happy with it.

From there we went to the rainforest exhibit, where Adam was very excited to wear his hat. The rainforest globe is filled with butterflies, which the boys have been talking about ever since, and we were all delighted when one of them landed on Adam’s hat!

Seeing Claude was definitely a highlight. We have Claude: The True Story of a White Alligator by Emma Bland Smith, a children’s book about him, but this was the first time the boys saw him in real life! Aaron told us he was scary but didn’t actually seem very afraid, Adam said he thought he’d be bigger.

We then went to get lunch, a little late, but we were right on track to finish making our way through the cafeteria line when the museum fire alarm sounded. It took a few minutes, but it was soon clear that the alarm was real and wasn’t going to stop, and we had to evacuate, without our food! What followed was about 30 minutes of standing outdoors waiting to hear if we’d be let back in. A single fire truck pulled up to the front of the museum which the boys enjoyed, what they did not enjoy was being hungry, so I had to pull out the snacks. Fortunately that didn’t seem to dampen their appetite for lunch, once we were able to return to the museum they both ate well.

Once we were happily fed, it was downstairs to the aquarium! Aaron loves aquariums, and I’ve been wanting to go to this one since I made this discovery about him. Unfortunately putting it at the end of the day meant that everyone was getting tired, and I suddenly wasn’t feeling well. Still, we got to enjoy the rays swimming beneath our feet, and the boys got to see a lot of fish, and the downstairs view of Claude.

Our last stop in the aquarium was to visit 93 year old Methuselah, an Australian lungfish that’s been with the aquarium for most of her very long life. They discovered for sure how old she was last year via some new DNA tests and shared it during their 100th anniversary celebrations. Cool.

It’s surprising to me how many new things we’ve been bringing the boys to. It is very unusual that we have a three year old and a five year old who haven’t seen so many traditional childhood things! And then I remember the pandemic. We would have been able to introduce them to all these places and things much earlier if we hadn’t been sequestered for two and a half years! So while it’s unusual, it is our reality. I’m very happy that we’re at least healthy and able to do it now.

That weekend we also went to a farmers’ market in Oakland after meeting with someone who had a non-functional Oliver 9 typewriter for sale. I’ve been on the lookout for an Oliver 9 since I got to use one at the type-in in Philadelphia in November, but I wasn’t going to move forward with this one since it wasn’t working. MJ encouraged me to check it out anyway to see if it could be repaired. I watched some YouTube videos before we left, and through a basic inspection in the lobby I discovered that it was in really solid shape with all the important parts intact. So MJ bought it for me! Along with some flowers at the market. I’ve been pretty overwhelmed with things lately, and he knows that, so it was really thoughtful and sweet.

One of the things that has added to feeling overwhelmed is our four year old refrigerator. It stopped keeping things frozen in the freezer back in September and we’ve gone through a half dozen visits from repair and warranty folks over the intervening months. The timeline has definitely been lengthened by all our travel over the holidays, but it’s still a ridiculous situation. We’ve been effectively living out of my beer fridge, a large mini-fridge that we brought up from the garage, and only keeping a few semi-perishable things in the larger refrigerator, which was barely managing to keep a temperature below 50F. After our latest repair visit it didn’t even manage that, and the temperature rose to be in the high 50s, making it useless even for semi-perishable food. It’s now just a monolith that dispenses purified water. After discovering one evening that a bunch of recently purchased fruit had gotten moldy and feeling absolutely defeated as the kids clamored for fruit, MJ rushed to Lowe’s and picked up another large mini-fridge. Sigh. I really hope the compressor replacement solves the problem, living out of two mini-fridges isn’t very fun either.

Filed under: animals, events, family, kids, life, san francisco

The adventures of 2023

Tuesday, Jan 23rd, 2024 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

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!

Filed under: EOY
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