Before AI: chop wood, carry water. After AI: chop wood, carry water.

I always swore that I would never buy a minivan, but I gave in and bought an Urban Arrow Family this weekend. I've wanted a front-loader for a decade - they always seemed prohibitively expensive, but came across this one for 50% off and had to do it. 24 miles so far with both kids, we LOVE it.

Changed my handle from @me.nzen.ski to @menzen.ski - the @me subdomain was fun for a while, but I think it makes more sense to use my actual website as my handle here.

Very happy that #KansasCity took away a traffic lane on Gregory Blvd between Troost and the Paseo and added a wide sidewalk where there hadn't been one at all before. Yay for traffic calming and yay for all the new walking and scootering routes it opens up for me and my kidns.

The most important skillset you can bring to platform engineering work is neither "dev" nor "ops". It is "talking to your users".

I have one! menzen.ski (and I’m actually working on a new post right now, I promise!)

If you see this, post your getaway vehicle

I HAD VISIONS I WAS IN THEM 🎶 I WAS LOOKING INTO THE MIRROR 🎶

Parenting is one big, years-long, lesson in letting go. That thing you think is important is actually not important, and you learn this over and over and over again for years.

Zuck: the average American has three friends

Tired of reading productivity advice from single people with no kids.

I know everyone says "change tech jobs every two years" but let me tell you, getting to do the end-of-life for things that you built eight years ago is incredibly satisfying work. If you change jobs often you miss out on a lot of learning opportunities that only come with time.

New blog post menzen.ski/posts/2025/0... This one is for the Content Club organized by @bryanross.me in the CNCF Slack. Our February 2025 theme is "Team Topologies in the Real World". (Bryan and @stevefenton.co.uk have also written posts for this, I've linked theirs at the end of mine here).

Reverse Conway Manoeuvres In The Dark

I was led to believe by R.E.M. that I would feel a lot better about this.

omg omg omg omg

The intersection of Kustomize and Helm is an amazingly frustrating place to do work. Each of these tools, on their own, is fine, but I'm not having any fun at all when they're used together.

TIL that while I can exclude my kids' music choices from my Spotify profile, they still get included in my last.fm scrobbles 😫

All I'm asking for is rich metadata applied consistently to every resource in every piece of software I interact with, ever, the ability to query those resources by that metadata easily, and the ability to add my own metadata. Is that so much to ask?

indentation issues in helm values.yaml files are going to be the death of me

I don’t know what a Zoom Room is and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.

I really want a Dvorak typewriter

Post a picture of yourself from a different era (me in fall 2010 after a 120 mile fixed gear ride)

T-Pain’s “War Pigs”

When you receive one of your favorite books in the mail to your home address, but you don't remember ordering it (and can't find any order in your email), and you don't think any of the people who know it's a favorite of yours have your home address... hmm.

where does the new york times even find these people

And the LAUNCHPAD 😍😍😍

@dagster.io really is just awesome. Especially loving all the metadata/visibility it provides above and beyond actually running jobs and materializing assets.

New blog post menzen.ski/posts/2024/1...

FWIW @matthewskelton.bsky.social is an imposter, please do not follow or engage. I've reported this account for impersonation. (Matthew Skelton's real account is @matthewskelton.com )

I see your “camel-cased column names” and raise you “column names beginning with a $”

Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume? Programmer: that’s not a gap, it’s a tab Other programmer: no, it’s four spaces

Anyone know when the 2024 Jira Wrapped drops? Looking forward to seeing what my top projects were this year.

Meet our new-to-us third cat. Her name is Tomato Cat.

Cats are so weird.

die-hard | adjective | strongly or fanatically determined or devoted Die Hard | noun | a Christmas movie

Took my kids (5 and 3) to the trampoline park and swimming at the Y yesterday, and to a different trampoline park today, by myself. I am bushed.

Where are my fellow Lego nerds at? #lego

Usinge AI to learne to wryte ys lyke having a robot go to the gym for you

When you update an open-source tool that you use and it has a new feature that you had requested 🤩

I will not write my own Kubernetes operator. I will not write my own Kubernetes operator. I will not write my own Kubernetes operator. I will not write my own Kubernetes operator. I will not write my own Kubernetes operator. I will not write my own Kubernetes operator. I will not write my own Kubern

Sometimes, if I'm having a bad day, I remember that Kubernetes 1.30 is officially named Uwubernetes, and I cheer right up. kubernetes.io/blog/2024/04...

It’s the most wonderful time of the year (making lots of cookies time)

RFC, ISO, IaC, PaC, SaaS, CI/CD, PaaP

Can’t find my flat-bar pogies :(

Very happy to report that my Spotify wrapped does not include the paw patrol theme song or the blaze theme song

Masha

As a trained linguist and as someone who is team kubecuddle I want to point out that language change is natural and version 1.9 was a long time ago. The community of speakers was much smaller then; it’s natural that as the community has grown, communication norms have shifted.

I am excited to share that I’ve been selected to serve as a program co-chair for the Platform Engineering Day conference, co-located with KubeCon EU 2025 in London!