dinosaurs, programming, and parsnips
If you could not make it to PEARC26, the venue was beautiful! 🤩 I was the invited speaker for the Systems technical track , which was an absolute honor. I realized that they do not record the talks, and walked back to my room to record a second time in front of my couch. 🛋️ It is not on par with the venue version, but thinking about my “Just Give them the Sandwich” talk from 10 years ago, it…
You poured for him a bowl of liquid gold Rich with life, and stories untold It bubbled to the rim, a meniscus it formed Of course with growth, uncertainty adorned. The trickle was gentle, small enough to stop. Small enough to account for every drop. It rolled off of the table and you respond Your hands, cupped together, embracing bond. You look to him, surely for a cup. But inside his heart, panic…
I found a fake restaurant called the swan and mallard , and found the concept immensely beautiful. I appreciate the metaphor of darkness and light, and I also appreciate thoughtful design that creates identity with empty space. I made my own variant, and a small poem to accompany it that reflects the sentiment it gives me. Swan and Mallard Swan and mallard, an unlikely pair One a shadow, one light…
I tend to get obsessively interested in things, to the point my curiosity is insatiable. If I do not understand how everything works I will absolutely implode. That has recently started to happen with quantum computing. I will precede this with a warning that I have zero background in Physics beyond a class in high school that was terrible, and my background in everything else STEM is largely…
There were once a man and a woman, and they were in a big, beautiful, and deep sea. It was the color of nautical twilight – a deep purple that was stained with elegance, memory, and the softness of a heartbeat. They were treading water. It is unclear why the man was treading water, but the woman chose to stay with him. She could not touch him, and could not help. But she chose to tread water…
A good life is a balance of different kinds of thinking. We have our preferences for thinking style and content, and mine tend to vary between technical and behavioral, where often I am experiencing a gradient of both but leaning stronger in one direction. I have been leaning technical for over a month now – starting with the HPSF Conference in Chicago, and returning and becoming completely…
We are hard on ourselves. We can consistently push our bodies and minds, and put others first and strive for compassion and integrity in our lives. But we often forget ourselves. Or we are forced into hyper-independence that makes us long for the care or validation of someone else. We are often told by the very people we love that we are not enough. What do we do? We take responsibility for…
Happy 2026! Let’s start the year off with some dancing . 💃 This year I promise: To continue to live with authenticity and integrity. To be inspired, diving deeply into ideas and learning. To adventure, and look for beauty in unexpected places. To not make myself smaller to make others comfortable. To push myself physically and do things that are hard. To age with elegance, and appreciate myself…
Presents are interesting to think about. It’s an exchange of a physical item as to say, “I value you.” And don’t get me wrong - they can be fun, and informative about a person or relationship. I’ve historically been someone that puts time into thinking about the right gifts for specific people. That goes back to sewing pajama pants and blankets in high school to custom gifts for friends and family…
One of the most satisfying and learning-rich pieces of work from this year is represented in this white paper, “Agentic Orchestration of HPC Applications: A study using Google Gemini in Cloud.” First, I’ll provide a little bit of back-story. We were using simple models to convert JSON job specifications or batch jobs between formats. I had a sense that the agents (specifically, Gemini) could do…