I’ve been a SRE/PE for a long time, and I’ve always been a bit of a skeptic when it comes to AI. I’ve seen technology hype cycles come and go, and I’ve always believed that there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned coding. Even at Meta, where I worked, the AI agents weren’t always great, which only reinforced my skepticism. I have been told things are better now… but I disgress.

Revamping PXE boot stacks seems to be a recurring theme in my career, and my current workplace is no exception. I am part of a tiger team tasked with a significant overhaul of our pxeboot stack on our datacenters, but I am facing a common problem: no access to a dedicated hardware lab for safe testing. We are working on it but in the meantime I could not afford to get stuck. I needed a scalable and scriptable solution that would work on my MacBook and in our CI/CD pipelines.

I’ve launched a new article on my blog dedicated to tracking my experience and opinions with working outside of Meta: the purely technical things I love, the things I don’t, and what’s consistently similar across the industry. This is strictly about the tech, not the corporate drama! Follow along and comment there!

Alright: funemployment is done!

After a fantastic summer of cycling, delicious food, and quality time with family and friends, I’m excited to share some news: in about one week time I will be starting a new chapter at Crusoe.

Leaving Facebook/Meta after 14 years is a significant change for me, but I’m excited by the challenge.

I’m especially looking forward to the camaraderie and drive of a smaller, close-knit, collaborative environment, which brings back great memories from my Facebook’s early days.

London Edinburgh London (LEL) 2025 proved to be an unforgettable event, though perhaps not for the reasons anyone anticipated. My own journey ended prematurely on the first day, and the entire event was later called off due to severe winds sweeping across northern England and Scotland.

If you want to skip directly to the lessons learned, feel free to do so at the bottom.

For those unfamiliar, LEL is a prestigious 1500km audax challenge, a true test of endurance that takes riders from Writtle, Essex, all the way to Innerleithen near Edinburgh, Scotland, and back again. This year, around 2,500 cyclists from around the world gathered to tackle this epic adventure.

This is a report of my successful Celtic Knot brevet.

I was a bit nervous going into it for various reasons:

• My last big brevet was PBP in 2023.
• In 2024, I didn’t do any 200+ distance audax events, just a 200 each month to work on my RRTY. I think it’s normal for people to take it a bit easier after a PBP season.
• I got injured in February while riding the East Wicklow 200, with IT band issues. This probably deserves its own post, but I spent March recovering, doing gym sessions, and lost my RRTY.
• I was bringing the new Mason Aspect Integrale, and I only had a 200 on it. However, a professional bike fit was done, so I felt it was okay to bring it with me. Famous last words, right?

Anyway, my knee was feeling well, and on Friday the 30th of May, I drove to the start.