I have been riding audax events for a few years now. If you are not familiar with the sport, audax (also called randonneuring) is long-distance unsupported cycling. Rides are called brevets and they come in standard distances: 200, 300, 400, and 600 km. You ride within a time limit, collect stamps at checkpoints, and that is it. No racing, no prizes, just you and the road.

Like most randonneurs, I got hooked on chasing awards. The most well-known is the Super Randonneur (SR): complete a 200, 300, 400, and 600 km brevet in a single season (which runs November to October). From there, the rabbit hole goes deep: lifetime awards, international qualifications, round-the-year challenges, and more.

I’m excited to share a new project I’ve been working on: pvmlab.

pvmlab is a CLI tool designed to automate the setup of a simple, reproducible virtual pxeboot provisioning lab directly on macOS. It leverages the power of QEMU, socket_vmnet (a daemon from the Lima VM project that exposes Apple’s vmnet.framework for rootless virtual networking), cloud-init, and Docker to create a contained environment where you can experiment with network booting and bare-metal provisioning simulations without needing actual hardware.

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.