Amsterdam for a RIPE-NCC Board Meeting

The June RIPE-NCC Board meeting was fixed on the calendar, which I confirmed with Daniella. In early March, due to Trump’s Operation Epstein Fury, air fares started to go up quickly. To save money, I did the search for fares for June. Almost all were $9-12,000. Luckily I found Condor for under $7,000 so grabbed it.

Thursday 2026.06.11

I had scheduled an extra day in Amsterdam after the board meeting so I could have dinner with Fergal and family and generally socialize. Then Cristel in Louvain-la-Neuve found out and begged me to visit. So I booked the train from Amsterdam Centraal to LnL returning to Schiphol the night before my early morning flight to Frankfurt, and asked Daniella to readjust my Amsterdam hotel stay. I booked a room at the Schiphol Citizen M.

Friday 2026.06.19, Juneteenth

I woke at five and could not bet back to sleep. So I made coffee, worked a bit, and had my normal breakfast. After coffee with Hans and Christine at Stumptown from 08:45 until noon, I cleaned up email, which was light as it was a US holiday and the start of midsommar in Sweden and Finland. I did the final pre-travel laundry and started packing. As it was only four or five days, I could make it into the smallest Rimowa even with the four boxes of shortbread cookies.

In the evening, I was bored and had time, so I very stupidly decided to upgrade two FreeBSD 14.4 systems to 15.1. Each blew chunks in a different way. psg.com broke dovecot. This turned out to be the new OpenSSL wanted a larger Diffie-Hellman than I had generated in 2019, so openssl dhparam -out /usr/local/etc/dovecot/dh.pem 2048 fixed it. raid0.sea.rg.net had to run the upgrade twice before it stuck.

Saturday 2026.06.20

I did not sleep much at all, and gave up about 06:30. My left knee was painful, but no visible swelling, so I decided to tough it out. I finished packing and did the usual email etc. I texted with Tom Hirsch who was at 22 of the planned 35 radiation treatments for the cancer on the back of his tongue. He was at the same facility that Lynn, his wife who died, was treated.

I called an Uber at one o’clock and an electric Toyota picked me up five minutes later; the fastest Uber I had ever experienced. It was 20c and sunny. Oddly, there was traffic on the Banfield. We arrived at the airport at 13:33. I was through security by 13:40 and in the lounge by 13:45, slowed by my knee. I had some tabbouleh and salad, and then laptopped. I watched the last half hour of Germany winning over Côte d’Ivoire 2-1. And realized it was three o’clock and I had better get going to the gate. I arrived limping at the gate at 3:15, so they boarded me around the side, so I was in my seat by 3:20.

Condor DE 2091 to Frankfurt was a three year old AirBus 330-900neo in spiffy shape. I think it was pretty full. The seats were hard even with a mattress. We pushed at 15:40 and wheels were up at 15:55. I watched Dune: Part Two and had the takeoff meal. Then I slept for about four hours.

Sunday 2026.06.21

I watched something junky, had the breakfast , and chilled until we landed in Frankfurt at 10:30, directly over a plane that was taking off on a cross runway. We taxied right past the main terminal, and then halfway to Wiesbaden to a remote stand, arriving at 10:42. We were unloaded in Terminal B at 11:03, so I had the long walk and then a train to Terminal A. There was a horrifying queue for passport control that I passed on my way. At 11:25 I got to the queue for business class security. It was relatively short. My gift cookies set off the machine, but the resulting inspection was very efficient. I was through by 11:35. I passed by a queue, 150 m long at the Lufthansa Service Center and knew I was doomed. I then entered the ridiculous queue for passport control for the A gates at 11:43. I was through by 13:15. So I missed my flight to Amsterdam. Instead of going to the ridiculous Service Center queue, I went to the Lufthansa lounge where there was no queue, and the agent rebooked me on like a 16:30 flight. I had a coffee with two espressos added and drank a lot of water.

I left the lounge at 15:50 and walked to the gate. I went through the boarding pass gate and then had to go downstairs and take a bus. It was 34c. The bus did not depart until 16:10. I hobbled up the stairs to the plane at 16:20, kind of pissed off because it was at an actual gate. I suspect the gate was on the wrong side of passport control so they needed to control who and how boarding happened.

Lufthansa flight 996 to Amsterdam was a 30 year old AirBus 319-100 and almost full. We pushed at 16:28 and wheels were up at 16:38. I slept the whole way until we landed Schiphol at 17:27. We were at a real gate by 17:32.

I made the 18:07 non-stop to Centraal, arriving at 18:20. It was a cool 28c. I was in my hotel room by 18:35. I showered and put on clean clothes and was back out of my room at 19:00. I caught the 19:17 ferry to Polly Goudvisch to meet Piotr, Liman, Raymond, and Mirjam for dinner on the shore of North Amsterdam.

I had ceviche and a frisée salad. We finished dinner about ten o’clock and walked back to the hotel. I was asleep by eleven.

Monday 2026.06.22

I woke at one and managed to sleep from five to 08:30. I dressed, went down to breakfast with Liman, Raymond, and Piotr, and then walked to the office. I hung out with Mirjam and Fergal, chatted with Athina, and generally socialised. At noon, we had lunch; I focused on salads. Then we started the Board meeting. First was the usual overhead of approval of minutes, agreeing on calendar, appointing Board Chair, Secretary, Treasurer etc. for the next year. There were no changes. Then the Employee Happiness report, various activity reports, etc. The first substance was the Infrastructure Project. We did not have enough detail to make any forward decision. Then on to the Office Improvement where, again, we did not have enough detail. And Simon-Jan, the CFO made a seriously misleading presentation on how both projects would affect the financials; including such wonderful features as counting expenses as assets. Basically, the Board was going to have to bite some sort of large bullet for which there was no cash without raiding the piggy bank. Then Milton Mueller took us through his ICP-2 Stress Testing report. It would have been good if he had not gotten the history so incorrectly. Then Athina took us through the ICANN Sevilla report. And that was the end of the day.

Thirteen of us had a large dinner at Cecconi’s Amsterdam. It was family style, good but not memorable.

I left at 22:30 and was asleep by eleven.

Tuesday 2026.06.23

I woke at one in the morning again, and was sick and vomiting a bit. I did not know why. I got back to sleep at about five and slept to the alarm at 07:30. I dressed, packed up completely, and headed to the NCC office. The rest of the crew slowly wandered in. We had pastry breakfast and started the meeting at nine. We spent an hour on the board structure yet again. It went on and on, twice the allotted time. I got email from Tim Griffin who seemed to be interested in IPv6 Segment Routing. I pointed him to Kireeti’s MPTE and Ratul’s RNG work. Hans Petter proposed to postpone Budget for a few weeks until he had better data. Then Fergal presented the plan for refactoring the Activity Plan and Budget. Next was the review of the planned five year Strategy. Then Simon-Jan led is through the Financial Report. Then Fergal gave a review of the May General Meeting in Edinburgh. There was much discussion of the process, voter turnout, the Charging Scheme vote, etc. Then Athina presented the problem of choosing six of the twelve applicants for the Arbiters’ Panel. We made a 45 minute rat hole of that.

We all had a nice lunch, and I focused on salad again. Athina took a sarcastic picture of me.

Then we went through Amendments to the LEA Requests Procedure, Amendments to the Due Diligence Procedure, Amendments to Management Regulations, Resolution to de-register the Dubai branch, the report of the RIPE NCC ME FZ LLC, and Adoption of the Financial Report 2025. We were ahead of schedule so took a 15 minute break so Ondrej could watch his son play football or something. Then Mirjam did the RIPE Chair report on RIPE 92 in Edinburgh.

We finished over an hour early. So we said slow goodbyes. I went down to the 3F and chatted with Fergal about Research. We were joined by Mirjam and then Hans Petter. At 15:30 I headed out for Centraal, and caught the 16:10 EuroStar to Brussels Midi. It was 18c. I had a 40 minute layover in Brussels Midi and then caught a StopTrain, i.e. local, to Louvain-la-Neuve, arriving at 20:00. It was 30c. Cristel, Lionel, and Justine met me and we went to the city center and had a light dinner. I had a tropical salad, citrus, pomegranate seeds, mango, lettuce, some unlabeled seeds. It was pretty good. They drove me to the [Ibis Hotel](https://all.accor.com/hotel/2200/index.en.shtml) and I checked in and disassembled at 22:15. There was no aircon. There was a fan. It was down to 24c and I had the door wide open. I pushed the edits to Cola’s IPv6 paper I had done on the train, and made it to sleep by eleven.

Wednesday 2026.06.23

I slept to two and then from five to the alarm at 07:30. It was 24c. I dressed, packed, and Cristel picked me up a 07:15. We drove to the University and grabbed coffee. We settled in Cristel’s office and various researchers came to chat, including Olivier. A lot of chat about transport, Multicast, BGP over TLS, etc. Camille joined us at noon, we walked 100m to a cafe, and I had a half a club sandwich. Back at the office, Justine and Lionel showed up, and Camille left with them. As Cristel was leaving to hear a Masters Presentation, Samuele and Abbas came in. They were doing interesting work with RPKI Manifests. And we also descended into BGP and other signals and instabilities and frequency analysis. I napped on the floor of Cristel’s office from 14:10 to 15:50. Then Cristel came back, and two more transport students came to talk. It was 34c and the sun was coming in the window. At 18:45 we headed down to town and stopped at a Le Pain Quotidien for a meat pie and some water, but also to indulge the air conditioning. Then we walked to the train so I could take the 19:41 StopTrain to Brussels Midi. It too was air conditioned.

The train arrived at Brussels Midi a couple of minutes late, and I had a ten minute connection time. Then, after I had gone down and up three flights of stairs, they changed the track on me, so I had to do the three flights of stairs all over again. I made a note to tell my cardiologist. The 20:49 InterCity was mostly empty and was air conditioned. I could associate with the WiFi, but the captive portal did not work, blank page.

We arrived at Schiphol at 22:49. I did the long walk to the Citizen M Hotel and did the fully computerised check in. I was in my room by 23:10. It was 24c, a big relief from Louvain-la-Neuve.

Thursday 2026.06.25

I managed to sleep ’til 04:30, packed out, and was walking back to Schiphol by 04:55. It was the long walk to the other end of the terminal, so I was not in the security queue until 05:15. I was out of security by 05:30 and in the lounge at 05:35. Except I had to walk up the stairs because the lift was broken. I had a piece of bread with ham and cheese and only one coffee. Katen texted to see if I had made it through Frankfurt yet. I caught up with priority email.

I left the lounge at 07:15 and headed for the gate. I sat there for 15 minutes and we boarded at 07:40. Lufthansa flight 1003 to Frankfurt was an AirBus 321–100 in good shape despite his age. We pushed at 08:04 and wheels were up at 08:19. I tried unsuccessfully to sleep. We landed at about nine o’clock, 10 minutes early. But once we landed and taxied almost to the terminal, we had to wait for fifteen minutes to get our gate. We finally docked at 09:15, but there was no jetway driver for another five minutes. Surprisingly, Passport Control was almost a walk-through, and I was on the correct Concourse by 09:28, and in the lounge by 9:35. They had good bread and geräuchertes shinken, but mediocre cheese. I progressed a bit more catching up with up email, and eventually left the lounge at 11:10. My watch said it was 32c out, another hot day in Northern Europe.

It was a bit of a walk to the gate, where I arrived at 11:15. And then a massive room in which to queue to get on a bus. I took a seat and waited for the crowds to die down. To minimize my exposure to the heat, I waited for the last bus. I made the mistake of getting on it too early because its air conditioning was not really blasting. But I survived without breaking into a sweat. We didn’t really get to the airplane until 12:10. And the plane was due to takeoff at 11:55.

I boarded at 11:20. Condor flight 2090 to Portland was a two year old AirBus 330-900neo in spiffy shape. Wheels were up at 12:06. they woke me up for the takeoff meal, but I only had the starters I went back to sleep for four or five hours, watched a 1997 Clint Eastwood movie, and napped a bit more.

We landed at 14:17. A long taxi and the jet bridge was a ten minute wait. Immigration was almost a walk through. I was in a Tesla by 14:52. Traffic was quite heavy. I was home at 15:30, hugged the cat, unpacked, and set up the computer.

Edinburgh for RIPE 92

RIPE 92 was in Edinburgh with OARC on the preceding weekend. The best fare I could find was KLM through Amsterdam, with the non-stop PDX-AMS both ways, which was nice. The few days before, as a Board member, I had to review the formal presentations by the NCC. I also did packing preliminaries such as meds.

Thursday 2026.05.14

I had done most of my packing Wednesday afternoon, but did the final meds, bathroom, etc. I cleaned up as much work as I could. I forgot to vote in the primary election. Ah well.

I said goodbye to Kaiby? and was in a robin’s egg blue Mustang electric Uber by 10:50. It was 12c and cloudy. We arrived PDX at 11:12, and I was through doc check, TSA, and in the lounge by 11:30. I had a glass of water and cleaned up email, then left the lounge at 12:20. It was a bit of a walk to the gate. We boarded at 12:30, and I was in my seat by 12:35.

KLM flight 616 to Amsterdam was a 787-10 DreamLiner in clean shape. Despite my choosing the language as English, the IFE gave me Chinese in half the menus, which I found amusing. The captain came on the PA to say a sick passenger had deboarded, so there would be a fifteen minute delay to find and remove their luggage. As the flight was going to be half an hour early anyway, this should not be a problem. We pushed at 13:20, fifteen minutes late as predicted, and took off to the West at 13:38. I slept until the mediocre meal, watched a silly movie, and slept for three or four hours

Friday 2026.05.15

I watched another silly movie, had the breakfast, and spaced out until we landed at Schiphol at 07:15, thirteen minutes early. We were at the gate by 07:20, and I was in the lounge by 07:45. Somehow being on net on my laptop and doing normal systems maintenance felt comforting; a taste of home. I had knakerbrodt with ham and oldish gouda, and another cup of coffee. About twenty minutes before I was going to leave the lounge a cougher comes and sits next to me, and then starts a very loud phone conversation. I moved. I closed down and left the lounge at 10:50, half an hour before my boarding time two concourses away. Gate D31 was quite a long walk. I got there ten minutes before boarding. It was the only boarding area I had ever seen where people weren’t queued up. We finally boarded at 11:25, but it was a little chaotic due to the smallish plane and a lot of people.

KLM flight 927 was a 25 year old 727-800 and it looked its age. The flight was completely full. I didn’t understand passengers boarding towards the tail of the queue with significant luggage; where the heck were they going to put it? But somehow they did. We pushed back at 12:01, rushing to make a narrow slot allowed by air traffic control. We taxied at 60 kph to get to the active on time, and took off at 12:18. Two flight attendants managed to do a box meal service on a one hour flight. On the other hand, the meal was a spicy corn and bean salad with plant based beef. I hoped I was not going to regret it. We landed at 12:25 and were at the gate by 12:30.

It was a stairway not a jet-bridge, and then up another stair. Then Passport Control which was fast moving because of working automatic gates. I was out by 12:45. It was a fair walk to Uberville, and the Uber took almost twenty minutes to arrive because I had asked for an EV. The Uber driver was interesting. Had been a Turkish grad student learning programming and part of EARN, back in the day, but burned out. Traffic was a bit of a pain as it was Friday afternoon. We arrived at the Moxy Edinburgh at 13:48. The Moxy was one of those funky hip places. The room was reasonable, but no real desk/chair setup. I unpacked and answered Katen’s text asking if I had arrived.

I cleaned up email etc., took a nap from three to five o’clock, showered, and went back to my laptop. Katen texted and was having me explore Scottish Textiles Showcase and started selecting yarn, a scarf, etc. At seven o’clock the fire alarm went off, so I evacuated. By the time I got the lobby, the alarm turned off. Someone had generated too much steam when ironing clothes. In the lobby, I ran into Hans Petter and his SO, Portia, and he suggested we go to dinner. So they put their suitcases in their room and we walked down Grove St. to end up at the quite mediocre Vietnam House Restaurant where we ordered too much. We talked to after nine, and walked back to the Moxy. I texted a bit more with Katen and went to bed by ten.

Saturday 2026.05.16

I managed to sleep to eight o’clock, ten hours of sleep! I dressed and went down to a pathetic breakfast, grabbed my kit, and went across the road to Not Just Coffee, grabbed an acceptable take-away Americano, and walked to the Edinburgh International Conference Centre and into the OARC entrance, intending just to say hi to old friends. At 09:30, I went next door to the nascent RIPE meeting set-up, planning to settle in the organisers’ room and attend OARC remotely. But the RIPE Meeting WiFi network was not yet up. So I went back to the OARC side to attend in person for a while. I sat with Liman and gossiped a bit.

I sat at lunch with Warren Kumary, Jen Linkova, and Peter Koch, and then we went across the street to Brekkie for acceptable but not great coffee. Then I went to the RIPE meeting staff room to hang out and listen to OARC online. It was not socially comfortable, but I survived. At 17:30 or so, I headed back to my hotel. In the lobby, I kind of got stuck with Raymond and a random Norwegian guy. I got a chance to talk with Peter Koch for half an hour. Over the next hours more folk accumulated, including Mirjam, Keira, Hans Petter, and more. I finally made it to bed sans supper by 22:30.

Sunday 2026.05.17

I did not get much sleep. The upstairs neighbor started thumping at 03:36 and kept going. I kept trying to pretend until I gave up at eight, dressed, and went down to breakfast with Mirjam and Peter Koch. At nine or so, Mirjam, Hans Petter, and I grabbed a coffee across the way and walked to the OARC side of the venue. We sat in the social area all day, chatting with various folk, procrastinating about work, etc. At 14:30, I was quite tired and went back to the hotel and napped until 19:00, showered, and met the Board crew in the lobby to Uber to dinner. We went to Montrose Restaurant for a really nice dinner.

Mirjam had gone with the OARC folk, so Athina and Daniella were stuck supervising me. We were back at the Moxy by eleven.

Monday 2026.05.18

I slept from eleven ’til two and then from five to eight. Having eaten a large dinner, I skipped the Roxy’s bad breakfast, picked up coffee at The Coffee Cave, which was better than Not Just Coffee, and walked to the RIPE meeting. I registered, got my badge, and went down to the Global Cyber Alliance meeting on Residential Proxies. It was not deep or exciting. As it went on, it turned out they wanted a brilliant new idea that could be rolled out in 6-9 months. I decided they were desperate to justify their existence. At Lunch it ended.

There was an NCC Board lunch up on 1F. But we had to go back down to -1F to get food.

Lunch was essentially reviewing and getting everybody on the sane page for the two Services WG meeting, the Infrastructure Build-out and starting the discussion of PI space, legacy, and multi-LIR. Then it was back down to -2F for the opening Plenary. There was the usual bumph and then Sasha Romin gave a brilliant presentation of the bugs she found to collect the bug bounties. I ended up in the hallway for break, and was cornered by various people. Then I was cornered for over half an hour by Michael Abuelo and John Sweeting of ARIN on the shocking state and behavior of the ARIN Board. This caused me to miss the two Plenary talks that actually interested me; but I went in for the last half of the post-break Plenary.

Then I stood around in the hallway for ran hour being an open and available Board member. This continued from seven to ten in the Meet the Board social, Daniella chased us out at nine, and I walked back to the Roxy and was in bed, without dinner, by about eleven o’clock.

Tuesday 2026.05.19

I could not sleep past two o’clock. I gave up at seven, dressed, and went down to breakfast where I ran into the NCC Senior Management. After breakfast, Geoff, Joao, and I went across to the Coffee Cave while Mirjam got her kit, and then we walked to the EICC RIPE venue. I settled in the back of the Plenary room, drank my coffee, and cleaned up email. Lunch was upstairs again with the boards of all RIRs. The focus was on AfriNIC and Lu Heng, which was better than ARIN governance. After lunch I spent a good while with my old friend Hank Kilmer, introducing him to various people as they walked by. The NCC Board had a group photograph. Then some time with Athina, and some with Desiree on the issue of EU relationships. Then the MAT Working Group, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion BoF, which started with slides on the problems of a toxic workplace. The starting slides were spot on for Arrcus.

It was Mirjam’s birthday, so she, Fergal, Anna, and I wet out to dinner at Barry Fish, which was informal but pretty good. Mir and I split a halibut crudo and asparagus on romesco, and I had a smoked Cod with celeriac, sapphire, parsley sauce. Mir and I split an excellent rice pudding with plumb and cardamom for dessert. We all made it back by 22:30 or so, and I tried to get to sleep by eleven.

Wednesday 2026.05.20

I managed to sleep until eight o’clock. I dressed, went to The Coffee Cave, walked to the EICC, and had my coffee in the back of the Open Source WG. It was actually interesting. Then the Board had to be photographed and NCC Comms wanted a new head-shot of me.

The Cooperating WG was not exciting. I had lunch with Warren, ran into Anne Johnson, etc. Joao scored me an Americano from Brekkie, but I was not impressed. Then was the NCC Services WG, followed by a short break, and then th Annual General Meeting. It was a mixed bag with one very embarrassing incident, AV cutting off Marco Hoenewig from the Dutch Government.

After the AGM, Mirjam, Hank, Patrycja (Hank’s +1), and I grabbed an Uber to Heron to meet Matthias, Thomas, and three students for dinner.

It was good but not great. At 23:30, we Ubered back to the Moxy, and I was asleep soon after midnight.

Thursday 2026.05.21

I slept in until nine, dressed, grabbed an Americano and a croissant from the Coffee Cave, and headed to the EICC for the meeting. First I settled in the general area and cleaned up backlog. The Address Policy WG was the normal updates from the NCC followed by Tony Li wanting an allocation for outer space. I kind of worked while politely pretending to listen to it all. I had lunch with Niall O’Reilly and discussed legacy space. He wanted examples of ancient allocation documents, so I dug RAINet and OreSoft up for him. I missed a bunch of the second Address Policy WG as I was talking with Hans Petter and with Desiree on how we relate to governments. Hans Petter did admit that he finally understood that the community was poorly positioned, and we started to talk about what to do about it going forward. At the Community Plenary, we had to listen to ICP-2 yet again, Athina on Anti-Competition Law, etc. Robert gave a talk on the issue of organising your data, credentials, authorisations, etc. for continuity on one’s demise. We closed on a stupid presentation by Remko on his plan to hang on to the Secret WG for some more years,

At six o’clock Athina and I walked back to the Roxy. She went to meet with important people, and I went up to clean up email etc. I worked a bit and then showered and dressed for the RIPE Dinner. I visited the Board in the rooftop bar for fifteen minutes and then went down to meet Mirjam to take the bus to the RIPE Dinner at Dynamic Earth.

I hung out with Daniel, Mirjam, and John Crain. The food was horrid. Patrycja took a picture of Hank and me so I could send it to Ed Kern.

Mirjam, Daniel, Julf, and I escaped and took the 22:30 bus back to the Moxy, arriving at eleven. It took me half an hour to sort and crash.

Friday 2026.05.22

I was awake from two to seven, and woke to the alarm at eight. I dressed, got coffee and a croissant at the Coffee Cave, and went to the EICC venue. I cleaned up email and then hung out until the final Plenary started. There was a somewhat interesting Happy Eyeballs measurement presentation and then meh. The voting results were announced. At least Maria stayed on the Board, and Liman replaced Harald. But the charging scheme chosen was the same old flat rate, which was a bit of a shock. Then a final bit of plenary followed by the Secret Working Group, followed by lunch. I chatted a bit more with Daniel, said goodbye to a lot of friends, and headed back to the hotel.

I dumped my stuff in my room and took an Uber to the Scottish Textiles Showcase to pick up Katen’s order. They did not have the jacket Katen thought I should wear in my size. I took a taxi back to the Moxy. Raymond was outside taking an Uber to a memorial for Feargas McKay, so I went along. It was at the [Royal Forth Yacht Club](https://www.royalforth.org/), and we go t there around three.. I sat with Merike and Cathy Almond.

There was deep fried finger food and a toast remembering Feargas. It was clear that Raymond was not going to be ready to leave for a while

so I snuck out at five and was back at the Moxy by 17:20. I tried to clean up email etc, but was nodding off. I gave up at 18:30 and went to sleep.

Saturday 2026.05.23

I woke up at three o’clock, after 8.5 hours of wonderful sleep. I dressed, packed, and was in the lobby by 03:45. Rapinder from APNIC was causing chaos at the checkout desk. The Uber was slow and picked me up at 03:55. It was sunny and 12c. We arrived at Edinburgh Airport at 04:15. The queues were massive and looked like chaos. I would’ve guessed at least an hour to get through security. But they really knew how to run them, and I was through by 04:30. I got a croissant and an Americano at Pret a Manger and went to the Aspire lounge to hang out. I had a banger and a little bit of egg. I left the lounge at 05:15 and did the bit of a walk to the gate. The flight was already boarding so I checked through. There was no explicit passport control. Three flights of stairs down and then up a stairway to the plane. I did not understand the stairs because there was a jet-way. I was on board by 05 27.

KLM flight 922 to Amsterdam was a brand new AirBus 321neo in clean shape. I think it was pretty full. There was a cougher right behind me. We pushed back at 05:48 and took off at 05:56. We landed at Schiphol at 07:58, and were at a distant D gate at 08:10. I did a bit of a walk to the KLM Lounge. I had too much apple pear juice and cleaned up daily email. I had another snack and spaced out until 09:55 and did the walk to gate D10, arriving after boarding had started. I was on board at 10:10, and settled in. I found that I had left my condom-USB-A-to-USB-C in the hotel room. I wondered if it would be easy to find and order a replacement. I did not seem to be able to get the free WiFi that I should have as a Flying Blue member.

KLM flight 615 was a 787-10 in good shape. We were told that American authorities asked us not to congregate in the aisles, and especially not around the toilets. We were also told that departure would be delayed due to the late arrival of the aircraft from LA. We pushed back at 10:43. I watched a really bad movie and had the take off meal. I then slept for five hours, waking two hours out of Portland. I had the landing meal and spaced out and watched the flight map. We landed at 11:17 and were at the gate by 11:20. But it took in another ten minutes to get the jet-way attached to the airplane. I was through Immigration and on the bus by 11:40, and in an Uber Tesla by 11:50. It was 16c and sunny. The driver was silent, which was fine with me, but did not help with my luggage. I arrived home at 12:20, properly greeted the cat, unpacked, set up the computer, showered, and the cat and I took a nap.

Bainbridge and Seattle for the Big Move from KOMO to Westin

The trip on the 15th-18th had surveyed the situation at NTT and installed two PDUs, two routers (for NTT and Cogent), and a temporary switch between the routers. It was a bit painful, but eventually successful. I had spent a lot of time and effort trying to get professional help for the rack and stack in the Westin, particularly the cable dress, but with no luck. So I convinced Latif to go up with me and CJ Collier and Brad Fitzpatrick would be the main help. I spent the previous week ordering Ethernet, Velcro, and all the other goodies I thought we would need.

Wednesday 2026.04.29

I packed in the morning and took Kaiby? to the vet for a checkup. I packed the car, left home at 11:50, picked Latif up, and headed for the freeway. Bridge traffic was not too bad and the highway was OK. We got to Chehalis charging at 13:30, and left Chehalis at 14:00. Traffic was reasonable. We got to the Poulsbo Electrocute America at 15:20 and left at 15:45. We were on Bainbridge at Bay Hay and Feed by 16:10 so Latif could get a tee shirt. It took him half an hour. Then we drove down to Town & Country plugged, into the charger there, and went shopping. I was back out with Latif not to be seen. He seemed to really like shopping. We finally got home on Bainbridge at 17:30. We unpacked, looked at the garden, and I caught up with email while Latif lay down for a bit. Latif watched football

I checked out the garden, and sent a pic of the lilac to Katen.

We cooked and ate the steak we bught at T&C. Turned out Latif did not eat broccoli. We crashed about ten

Thursday 2026.04.30

I woke at 05:45, dressed, and made coffee. Latif woke to at 06:15, and we headed out at 07:15 to make the 07:55 ferry. I got a ham and cheese croissant at Commuter Comforts. We were at KOMO before nine, and ran into CJ and collected Brad. We dismantled the KOMO rack.

We loaded it into CJ’s pickup, finishingby 11:15, and headed for the Westin. We started racking from the top. Some of the rails were messy. CJ and Brad were amazing, and Latif caught on and was quite helpful. At two o’clock, Latif and I went down to the poke shop and got mediocre poke for everyone. We managed to rack everything, and I even managed to get NTT BGP up, and could access the rack from outside.

We finished at seven, and headed for the ferry. We missed the 19:30 by a minute, so caught the 20:15, the sunset ride.

We got home shortly after nine. I did the receipts, poked at routers, and gave up shortly after ten.

Friday 2026.05.01

I woke at 05:45, before the alarm, dressed, made coffee, and tried to think through some of the issues at the Westin. In mounting the three switches cold side correctly, it meant their front panels were more distant from the servers’ back ends and I suspected we did not have the needed 2m DACs. We did the same as the previous day, caught the 07:55 sailing, and were at the Westin about nine. Brad showed up shortly thereafter. After some back and forth, we reversed two of the three switches. Brad started cabling power while I started cabling data. At maybe eleven, CJ showed up having totaled his truck. He was shaken, so we sent him home. Brad finished power and was starting to play with the serial cabling when he had to go deal with kids at about 14:30. It took me a while to clean up cabling issues, bad DACs, etc. I finally got the whole Ganeti cluster up. The two connections to the SIX were dead dead dead. I spent almost two hours on them.

At 18:45, Innocent Obi showed up to take the old Juniper m7i and Cisco 3750 off our hands and ship them off to East Africa. Latif and I cleaned up and packed everything away, and caught the 19:05 ferry. We had dinner at [Hitchcock’s Bar](https://www.cafehitchcock.com/bainbridgeisland), which I would prefer not to repeat. We were home by nine, and I did paperwork and some clean-up until 22:30. Chris Caputo of the SIX confessed to not turning up the circuits yet, so he did so. The USC 1G came up. The 10G to r2 did not, I suspected because I had rolled the fiber. So It would be back to the Westin the next day.

Saturday 2026.05.02

We woke around nine, did the normal coffee and dressing thing, and left the house at ten. We went to downtown Winslow, a major mistake, to go to [Blackbird Bakery](https://blackbirdbakery.com/) and got a quiche and some banana bread for breakfast. Blackbird was so crowded that we missed the 10:25 ferry so sat in the queue for an hour to wait for the 11:35. Once in Seattle, I dropped Latif off near the Pike Street market, and got to the Westin at 12:30. I rolled the fiber for the SIX 10G connection and it came up. I noticed a bit of network nostalgia, a cart labeled Verio.

I left the Westin at one o’clock and met Latif on the street. Then it was I5 Southbound in follow mode. We arrived at the Chehalis charging station at 14:35 with 10% charge, maybe the lowest I had ever let it go. We left Chehalis at 15:10 with 72% charge. Traffic was OK but definitely not clear. I dropped Latif off at his place, and I was home at 16:40.

Bainbridge and Seattle for the First Install in the Move from KOMO to Westin

I had spent weeks doing diagrams, spreadsheet, and a hundred emails setting up the move from KOMO back to the Westin.

Wednesday 2026.04.15

I packed from about eleven to twelve, loaded the car, said goodbye to the house and the cat and Zita, and drove up the road at 12:25. Traffic was relatively light. I was across the bridge by 12:40 and stopped at Les Schwab in Vancouver to have my tires checked. This was a wise move. The tires were about 26 instead of 41. Back on I5, I got in the left lane and just put it in follow mode. At 13:55 I arrived at Chehalis at 43% charge. I went to the Walmart to pee and see the real America. I ate my furikake ahi poke and seaweed salad while Kermit ate. I let Kermit eat to 70% and he predicted we would arrived at Poulsbo with 13%, which seemed OK. Back in the left lane and follow mode, things were more erratic. I took the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and arrived in the Poulsbo Electrocute America station at four o’clock. The battery level was 23%. There were patches of snow or hail on the ground on the Kitsap Peninsula. Not a lot, but clearly it had snowed. I ate my banana and went into the Walmart to pee and see if America was still there. It was but not as bad as Chehalis. Kermit reached 90% at 16:45, so I headed for Bainbridge. I arrived home at 17:20 with 85% battery. It was 5C and raining and there were patches of snow and hail on the ground.

I unpacked, set up an office, and worked until 19:15. Cogent finally came through with the LOA, and NTT ordered the cross-connect in the MMR. Then I drove to Sawadty Thai for dinner. I had Shrimp Pho which was a bit tasteless, and was back home by 20:30. Katen pointed out that I had ordered pho at a Thai restaurant; so I was clearly whacked. Lizzie reported on her doctor visit; eustachian tubes can take months to clear. I did some DNS work and headed for bed.

Thursday 2026.04.16

I could not really sleep past four o’clock. So at five o’clock I gave up, made coffee and dressed, cleaned up email, and did final organization and packing for the rack and stack. I left the house at 6:30 figuring I would make the 7:55 sailing. But nobody was going to Seattle, so I was early in the queue for the 7:05 boat. It was 4c with half blue and half low cumulus, definitely a PNW morning.

When we docked I went to the South Lake Union Google campus and parked in the underground garage. It was eight o’clock and they were not open to guests until 08:30. I was cold. Finally CJ Collier showed around 08:30 and we got me badged and went up and had breakfast. At 09:30 we headed back to the car and drove to KOMO Plaza and parked in their underground.

We we walked up to Evocative and were met by Sammy. Mike was not in. I suspected avoiding me. CJ and I un-racked the Cisco ASR1001 and then had fun getting out of the colo without badges. Eventually we got out and got Kermit and beaded to the Westin

Getting badges was quite easy; NTT had set it up well. We unloaded Kermit in two trips and started racking with the PDUs. CJ did all the hard work, including replacing the molded on plugs of the PDUs. I had left the Dell rails in Portland, so racking got a bit hokey. CJ was good at that but had zero sense of cable dress.

It was all racked by three o’clock. But nothing worked at the connectivity level. I debugged until 16:30 when I decided to let CJ go. He said let’s eat. So we drove to Umi and had decent but not great chirashi donbouris. I then drove him back to Goggle and I was back in the Westin Getting by six

I found a bad SFP but the rest was disappointing. At seven I packed out and headed for the ferry. I darned near drive straight on the 19:30 sailing. It was the sunset ride.

I got home recorded the day’s events and expenses and went to sleep by ten.

Friday 2026.04.17

I woke at 07:15, showered, made coffee, and cleared email. I left home at 09:05 to make the 09:40 sailing. I could’ve left 15 or 20 minutes later as the queue was negligible. I wondered if the ferry traffic pattern had significantly changed that I could get on ferries so easily. Once aboard, I went upstairs and got a ham egg and cheese bun for breakfast. It was really bad. I could see that the boat was only half full and again wondered why the ferry traffic was so different. Rosa texted that Kaiby? had suckered her into giving her a second breakfast.

I got to the Westin at 10:30, and the access ticket turned out to only be for the previous day, as I had suspected, but Brad from NTT had denied. So I texted and emailed Brad, and sat down to wait. Brad responded that there was some sort of mistake and to have the desk call him. So she did. It all took ten minutes to sort, so much better than Equinix in Dallas. I made it into the cage, and first wanted to debug the NTT circuit. So I figured out how to swap tx/rx on the fiber and it worked, even BGP came up. Joe gave me the recipe for breaking into the 3970 switch and resetting it. That fixed that problem of local LAN connectivity, and now the two routers were talking to each other. The only problem was that I could not get to the NTT router from the global Internet. I suspected NTT had a routing issue but more likely my bug. The rack looked embarrassing.

As there was nothing left I could do, I left the Westin at 13:10 and headed for the ferry. The next ferry was at 14:05, oops. And then it turned out the ferry was running 25 minutes late. The good news was that, of the four ferries I was taking, this was the one with the schedule I worried least about. I used my phone’s WiFi hot-spot to get on net and get some work done while waiting for the ferry, which turned out to be pretty full As I was working, CJ texted me to tell me they needed me on the SIX annual meeting call to make a quorum so I dialed in.

When we docked, I drove to Town & Country. I was still on the SIX call but wanted to charge Kermit. The chargers’ credit card readers were claiming a security violation. It took me half an hour, while I was still on the SIX call, to figure out that you had to scan a QR code and put your credit card in over the web using Safari. I really didn’t like this. While Kermit was eating, I went and grabbed some dinner in Town & Country, and got a small take-away salad which I ate while Kermit was eating. I then drove home getting there about 16:45.

I caught up with email and worked with Joe trying to understand the reachability problem of r0.sea. We didn’t understand it, so I was going to have to go in to Seattle on Saturday on my way back to Portland. I spent the rest of the evening looking at configs and preparing to debug r0.sea the next day. I skipped dinner; though I had bought makings at Town and Country. I headed for bed at nine o’clock.

Saturday 2026.04.18

I was up from one to four and then slept in to eight. So a total of eight hours of sleep, yay! I showered, dressed, made coffee, packed. and cleaned up email. Hans texted to ask if there were duckies. I said a goose.

I left home at 09:35 at 88% battery. It was 10c, bright sunny, with some very light high clouds. Jake’s Truck Stop was closed, so I went straight to the ferry and was first in the line in lane one, as I just missed the 09:45 sailing. Commuter Comforts was also closed. So even half decent breakfast was not in the cards. We finally boarded the 10:25 and I was in the front.

The boat turned out to be full, which was interesting as the weekday boats were not. I went upstairs and got a chorizo breakfast burrito, which I thought I might regret. But I had to eat something because I hadn’t really had dinner.

I was in the Westin shortly after 11:15. It took me 15 minutes to cable up, and CJ showed up to try to help, with a bunch of kit we really didn’t need. He played with it while I managed to find the bug with routing, so the NTT connection became useful and I could get into the rack from the outside world. I was through and packed out by one o’clock and heading to I5 Southbound. At 13:45 I took a 15 minute detour to go to Les Schwab to have my tires checked. Back on the road I got in the left lane and went into follow mode. I got to the Chehalis charging station at 14:40 but the one available charger didn’t work for me so I queued up. By 14:55 I had a working charger. I went into the Red Panda and got a half portion of fried rice with sesame chicken. It was survivable. When I got back to Kermit, he had eaten enough to be very safe making it home. So I left to Chehalis at 15:30. I got home at 16:55, unloaded the car, and fed the starving cat.

Amsterdam for a RIPE-NCC Board Meeting

I had to be in Amsterdam for a RIPE-NCC Board meeting Thursday the 26th and
Friday the 27th. Normally I would plan to fly the 24th, arrive the 25th and meet the next two days. The problem was that the PAM (Passive and Active Measurement) conference was going to be the 23-25 (online). And I had to present a keynote on the 23rd or 24th. And it would be rude not to be at the whole conference. So I asked Hans Petter’s permission to fly in the weekend before and use the RIPE-NCC offices. So I booked on the 5th of February after my Visa card rolled for the month.

I had been obsessing over my PAM presentation for a month. A keynote is much harder than presenting a paper; it is philosophy and vision, not results. I had trouble sleeping, and would dictate thoughts on it into my phone. And I learned that it was going to be over Microsoft Teams, not Zoom; and Teams is a major pain. I would never volunteer for such a thing again.

Saturday 2026.03.21

I woke at seven, dressed, finished packing, and had breakfast. I was still obsessing about my PAM talk, and had come up with some thoughts overnight. So I hacked on it a bit and cleaned up some email. The NOML told me that the TSA queue at PDX was short, so I did not summon an Uber until 08:45. For the first time ever, the Uber came before the app said it would, and we were on the way by 08:55. It was warm and sunny. The driver did not talk the whole way. We arrived at the airport at 09:20. The place was empty. I was through TSA by 09 25 and in the lounge by 09:30. They had finally opened up the direct path to the E gates. I worked a bit more on my presentation and cleaned up some email. I left the lounge at 10:20.

I boarded at 10:25. United flight 1641 to Chicago was a 737-900ER. The plane was full. They kept the doors open until eleven as they were late boarding the meal carts. We pushed back exactly on time at eleven o’clock, taxied to the East end of the runways, and took off at 11:10. The USB power was USB-C only, so I plugged my phone into my laptop. As I had not managed to get under 66kg in my month plus at home, I passed on the in-flight meal. I worked on my presentation a bit, texted Katen and Elaine, and pretended to doze. After a loop over the lake, we landed in Chicago at 16:22 and, after a long and complex taxi through a lot of construction, were at the gate by 16:39, 19 minutes early.

It was a short walk to the Polaris lounge, which was pretty, but not completely, full. I settled in and had two helpings of a mostly beet and quinoa salad; trying to be virtuous. I caught up with email, easily as it was Saturday. I felt ready to sleep the whole flight to Amsterdam, but suspected that was not going to happen. I left the lounge at 18:15 for a 18:20 boarding. Because the plane needed to be cooled, it bein 22c out, we did not board until 18:30.

United flight 909 to Amsterdam Schiphol was a recently refurbished 32 year old 767-300. It was completely full. They only had the #1 door open, and the 767 is pretty long, so boarding was messy. I ordered only the starter, so hummus, tuna, and a salad. We pushed back three minutes early at 19:07, but then taxied for over twenty minutes, taking off at 19:21. I had the take-off starters, which were about the worst United catering I had in recent years, and watched a random movie [Causeway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causeway_(film)), a calm story of an injured vet returning from Afghanistan. Then I napped fitfully until two hours before landing. The breakfast was also noticeably bad. I schmoozed with a nice flight attendant, Wendy, out of Chicago.

Sunday 2026.03.22

At 08:46 we landed at Amsterdam Schiphol, 25 minutes early, and were docked at a hard stand at 08:55. It took ten minutes to get thestairway and bus ready. It was 8c and bright at nine in the morning. We arrived at the terminal by nine o’clock. Of course the escalator was not working. The automated passport control didn’t like my fingerprints or something, so I ended up entering an enormous cueue at 9:20. I got through the queue and passport control at 10:15, 55 minutes. and made the 10:29 to Centraal. I was at my normal hotel, the [Kimpton De Witt](https://www.kimptondewitthotel.com/en/), at 10:55. The lobby was pretty full. I was checked in and in my room by 11:05.

I napped to 14:00, showered, and dressed. Then I worked on my PAM presentation some more, incorporated a hint or two from Cristel, and ran through it once more to smooth the reading. Maybe I would never be happy with it and it would be fine anyway. I kept tweaking it past six o’clock. At almost 18:30, I walked over to the usual Koepelcafé and had an entrecôte with a salad. I had forgotten that it was tough and tasteless. I wondered if I would remember next time. I was back in my room by eight o’clock. There was some back and forth with Rob on PDUs for Dallas, neither of us being expert in the area. I texted with Katen as she and Salma were boarding in Seattle for their Newark flight.

Monday 2026.03.23

I was awake from midnight until five in the morning, and then slept until just before the alarm at nine. I dressed, packed out of the hotel, and was in the office by 09:45 without breakfast. I did have a couple of Americanos, but singles not doubles. Senior staff were all hiding in a meeting about dealing with emergencies, ones in the physical sense, such as employees getting hurt. I did talk for a few minutes with Simon-Jan about the budget, and then with Luca about preparing for my presentation at three in the afternoon. I cleaned up email and worked some. Then Stephen Seuss from RIPE Atlas user interface came to talk for a while. We walked over to Centraal Station and got some healthy food bowls to bring back to the office for lunch. We sat and ate with Robert and talked about RIPE Atlas and the horrors of American and Hungarian politics.

I got a little more work done and then grabbed a tram to the outside rent-an-office that Daniella had arranged for me to give my presentation. I had to go out of the office because of a fire drill scheduled right in the middle of my presentation. Luca met me there, and we pre-tested. At 14:30 we tested with the official channel with the PAM people. At three o’clock PAM started, and at 15:30. I did my presentation Mind The Gap or Confessions of an Internet Microscopist. It went better than I expected, and a few people wrote to me to say it worked. The lunch disagreed with me, but luckily after my presentation. I took the tram back to the office and listened to the rest of PAM until 1900. Then I walked back to the hotel, deciding to skip dinner.

Back at the hotel, I chatted with Katen who was in a sweet hotel room in New York with Salma who was feeling a little wonky. I think both of us suspected that it was anxiety about visiting colleges. Heasley and I noodled about nftables, and he was quite helpful. I chatted with Cristel about PAM, how my talk went, and how PAM was struggling from being overshadowed by IMC. By then it was nine o’clock and I needed to try and get some sleep.

Tuesday 2026.03.24

I got very little sleep. I dressed, worked a bit, and went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, a veggie omelet. I was in the NCC offices by 10:30. Mirjam showed up shortly. I was able to chat for a bit with Fergal and Ties. I had lunch with Mirjam and Hans Petter, a nice salad. After lunch, I finally got to email, and there was too much mail about the Dallas power planning. I had no useful traction, mostly due to lack of sleep. I was clearly not helping so asked Joe, Hans, and Rob to run with it. Then PAM started at four o’clock. At six I left to take the metro to dinner at Capital Kitchen. I was really cold even though it was 12c out; probably because I was tired. I had a nice dinner with Mirjam and Kees, lamb and tomato salad with preserved lemon. We left the restaurant three hours later. I got back to the hotel just before ten and crashed.

Wednesday 2026.03.25

Up at seven, I did some email and bank work, and was in the office with a ham and cheese croissant by 08:45. It was 7c and raining after all the days of sun. Mirjam showed about 08:45 and we gossiped. I remembered to give her the book I had gotten in December. Fergal appeared and we worked on all the world’s problems for a while. He felt very gated by needing decisions from the Board before trying to build community consensus. I had in-office lunch with Mirjam and Fergal, and we continued solving the world’s problems. I worked a bunch on nftables again after lunch. At three, PAM started again, and I listened while finally sorting nftables. Mirjam left before four. I texted with Lizzie who was dealing with the flu; luckily she did not get it while on holiday in Spain. Katen texted that Salma liked NYU, so we being more positive.

At 19:15 I walked back to hotel wearing rain jacket from Kees. Then got the tram to diner with Mirjam, Hans Petter, Harald, and Raymond at Pesce, a quite good fish place. One had to choose the fish and sides in a market set-up by the door. They had a wide selection of fish and shellfish.

We had oysters, which were actually quite good, a salmon ceviche which was quite tasty, and some scallops, also good. For mains we had a smoked/baked sea bass which was simple and delicious, turbot, red snapper, and more. We finally got out at 10:45 and I was back in my room at eleven o’clock, while Harald and Raymond went on in search of beer.

Thursday 2026.03.26

I woke at two, got back to sleep at six, and woke to the alarm at eight. I dressed and was in the NCC by 08:45. I had breakfast with Harald and Raymond and settled into my laptop for a couple of hours. Mirjam showed at 09:45. I could not pay my garbage bill or the Bainbridge electricity bill online because I was not in the US. The Internet was Balkanizing. At eleven, I went up to the board meeting room.

We opened with Simon-Jan’s overview of the financial situation. This was with the Works Council present, so sort of directed at them. At noon we broke to go downstairs for lunch. At the end, I chatted with Hans Petter a bit about how we talked about things with the Works council, members, etc. After lunch we mumbled around some on agenda, conflict of interest checks, review of the next year’s board calendar, etc. HPH presented his overview report. We then discussed the technical infrastructure revamp at a high level. There seemed to be agreement that this had to be done and the Board would be kept informed frequently as the plans matured over the next months. Then the office improvement or redesign was a major discussion. Fergal presented the Strategy Overview. Then Athina led the discussion of the ICP-2 and ICANN.

Katen texted to say that she and Salma got to Bard College and Salma said it felt like Katen had dragged her to rehab. It was very quiet! Salma and a fellow college sniffer from LA canceled Sarah Lawrence and decided to see more schools in New York City.

We broke up about six o’clock. I walked back to the hotel with Ondrej and then took an Uber to dinner at SheepsKameel.

It was a nice dinner, starting with a purple potato salad, a bit of baked pollock with a nice sauce, a reasonably small bit of sliced pork, and finished with a cheese plate.

We left about ten o’clock and I was asleep by eleven.

Friday 2026.03.27

I woke at five and pretended to try to sleep to 07:40. I dressed and headed out, stopping at Centraal to pick up croissants with ham and kaas. It was 3c and sunny. We started the day with all financial reports and forward planning. There was a subset of the board whose thinking was stingy, saying the Ukrainians were cheating us, employees got too much, etc. Other board members were more thoughtful. We took a break and then went into the charging scheme. I discovered that the proposed charging schemes were not charging for legacy space and that this would set a precedent that would be difficult to change. This caused much discussion and, eventually, resulted in agreement to get data about legacy distribution and come back to this soon. This dominated lunch.

After lunch we did a quick review of the arbiter selection decision, and decided we needed more data on the candidates’ nationality, job type, company type, etc. in order to select a representative body. Then on to the eternal discussion of the reorganization of the Board. We agreed to go with the one tier board with the managing director being a member. I abstained and was then coerced into approving so it could be unanimous. We agreed to publish the Annual Report. Fergal led us through the General Meeting agenda for Edinburgh. Mirjam gave the community report, focusing on planning for the May Edinburgh meeting. Then Athina led us through the issue of data retention of meeting attendee information. Hisham led a discussion of Events Risk Assessment. Florian Obser described K Root Operations; though I was not sure why. Finally, Piotr wanted to tell us his talking to ARIN folk about their election bias issues. We finished about four o’clock and took a while to say our goodbyes. I was back in my hotel room by 16:35. It was 9c and overcast.

I checked in for my flights the next day, but planned on getting paper boarding passes any way so I would be able to go through American airports patrolled by ICE with all my devices powered off. I lay down for a nap at 17:30.

Saturday 2026.03.28

I woke from the nap at five o’clock in the morning after 11.5 hours of much needed sleep. I dressed, packed, and went down to have breakfast at seven. I wasted a Lactaid not realizing that this morning there was no cheese in my omelet. Upstairs, I finished packing and cleaned up more email. I left my room at 07:50, checked out, and made the 08:10 Sprinter to Schiphol, arriving at 08:20. It was 7c and the daffodils were out. I was through security by 08:35. The queue was a bit long. I was in the lounge by nine o’clock. I had a double Americano and a horrifying croissant. I left the lounge at 10:50 and was at the gate at 11:05, supposedly for an 11:10 boarding time. It was a bus out to a stand. We were finally on the bus at 11:28 and on the plane at 11:42.

Air Canada flight 809 to Toronto was a 787–9 DreamLiner in very spiffy shape in three shades of gray. After much delay, they finally closed the door at 12:18, 23 minutes late. We finally pushed at 12:25, half an hour late. Eight minutes later, we finally rolled off the stand. We took off at 12:50. I fell asleep instantly. They woke me up for the takeoff meal which was not very exciting. I skipped dessert and went right back to sleep until they woke me for the landing meal one hour out of Toronto. The flight map showed that they had flown Aberdeen, Keflavik, Nuuk, trying to stay near land.

We landed in Toronto at 15:25. I made some detours getting to security and US immigration. There was not much fuss getting through security and US Immigration. So I was in the Maple Leaf lounge by 16:20. I texted Katen that I had made it. I left the lounge at 16:50, walked to the gate, and boarded at 17:10.

United Express flight 5364 to Chicago was a recently refurbished Embraer 175. We pushed back five minutes early at 17:25 and took off at 17:43. I slept the entire route. We landed at 18:07. We were at the gate by 18:25, and I walked over to the C Concourse. I was in the lounge by 1845. I had a small sandwich. I left the lounge at 19:20 and wandered to gate C25 just in time to board. I was in my seat at 19:31. Katen texted that she and Salma were flying at the same time, but to Seattle not Portland.

United flight 1541 to Portland was a 27 year old 737-700 in pretty clean shape, but antique seats and IFE. We were scheduled to push back at 20:04, but it turned out we waited for some late passengers. The door closed at 20:05. At 20:15, the captain came on to move passengers from row 34 to 7 and 8. We finally pushed at 20:18. There were at least three coughers in the small three row business class section. We took off at 20:34. I had a chicken dinner that was survivable. We landed at 22:48 and were at the gate at 22:52. I was in an Uber by 23:15. Katen and Salma had landed in Seattle. I got home at 23:40 to a cat who wanted a lot of reassurance.

Jakarta for APRICOT and Joint Board Meetings

The RIPE/NCC Board was to meet with the APNIC Board in Jakarta during APRICOT. I was also on the APRICOT Program Committee, and had an accepted talk on using RIPE Atlas. So I decided to be there the whole week. Booking the flight to Jakarta was hell, taking three hours. I was in Tokyo, the ANA site kept erroring out, and I finally had to spend an hour plus on the phone with an agant. Then it was another hour to choose seats on the web site. A lesson in how good the United web site is.

Friday 2026.02.06

The day before departure I recovered from my Bay Area jaunt and packed during the day. The NCC Board Signal channel was full of social chatter of the rest of the crew arriving two days before I would.

Saturday 2026.02.07

I was taking the 05:35 flight to SFO because the more reasonable 07:45 flight would have been too risky, especially considering SFO”s common flight and gate delays. So I woke at 02:29, a minute before the alarm, dressed, finished packing, had coffee and breakfast, and was in an Uber Tesla at four o’clock. We we’re at the airport by 04:25. TSA was a small bit of queue but not bad. I was through by 04:30 and in the lounge by 04:40. There was a bit of confusion because ANA had not inserted my United number in the itinerary. I left the lounge at 05:05 to go to the gate and was in my seat by 05:10.

United flight 1407 was an AirBus 319 in OK shape. It was not full; which is why, I guess, they flew a 319. We pushed at 05:30, five minutes early, and wheels were up at 05:37. My seat would not recline as the arm rest was broken. I slept most of the way. Coming into the Bay there was a very low cloud layer, as if the bay had become milk or someone had filled the bay with milk.

We landed in San Francisco at seven o’clock, 27 minutes early . We waited out in the penalty area for 15 minutes as we did not have a gate; typical San Francisco. We were at the gate at 07:21. Given the massively long walk and construction, I was not in the international lounge until 07:40. And again, I had trouble with the lounge reader not liking my boarding pass’s QR code or whatever. I was in the downstairs quiet lounge, but went upstairs to have some scrambled eggs and sausage at about 08:30. I stopped by the United agent up there to see if she could sort my United number on my itinerary, and she could not get the information out of ANA; amusing. The ANA 11;00 flight was delayed as the inbound from Tokyo was late, predictions varying between 11:35 and 11:45. The gate was way at the end of the concourse, G13, so I left the lounge at eleven, figuring I would end up standing in the mob.

I arrived at the gate at 11:10 and even managed to find a seat. They said boarding would be at 11:30 for an 11:45 departure, which seemed more Japanese than American. They started boarding at 11:30. I was in my seat by 11:40.

ANA flight 7 to Narita was a 777–300 in immaculate shape and with luxurious seating . They managed to close the doors at 11:50. Unlike other lines, I was allowed to deploy the seat mattress before pushback. And I was not admonished to put my seat upright takeoff . We pushed back at 11:55. The passenger service video was all about good manners, starting with no up skirt photography. I also said the fuselage was coated with a special film for speed and emission reduction.

We took off at 12:13, making me realize my seat was facing backwards. I then fell instantly asleep. I had the Japanese meal, which was the best Japanese airplane meal I have ever had, and then I watched La venue de l’avenir which was quite good and very sweet.

Sunday 2026.02.08

We landed on Narita oldest runway at 16:02, about 40 minutes late. There was pretty solid snow on the ground and snow in the trees. It felt a bit like coming home.

My DoCoMo SIM did not work. We were at the gate by 16:15. My outbound gate was right next to my inbound gate and the lounge was 50m away. So I went to the lounge which was exceedingly crowded. At first, the Wi-Fi didn’t work but then they fixed it. I had a little kaarage and two siew mai. I opened my laptop and used the free WiFi to catch up; as it was Saturday, the mess was minimal. Flighty told me my Jakarta flight was delayed 20 minutes and I confirmed this on the display. So at 17:30 I headed down to the gate. Flighty said gate 57A. ANA said 55. ANA was right, of course. I grew less and less impressed by Flighty during the trip. We boarded at 17:35.

ANA flight 835 to Jakarta was a 787-9 DreamLiner in rather utilitarian livery but very clean shape. The door closed at 18:00, and then we took a big delay because a passenger had not boarded and their luggage had to be deboarded. We pushed back at 18:21, but did not take off until 18:55. I slept for three or four hours, watched some crap, and had a another nice washoku meal.

We landed in Jakarta at 00:34 and were at the gate in ten minutes. I had my APEC card so walked to immigration. But they rejected it because it didn’t have a country on the back, which they said was American and not usable. So I had to walk back to Visa on Arrival, buy the visa, and then go back to immigration. At least, with VoA, it was the automatic gates. It was a bit of queue for customs, but the QR code worked. Then I went out and had to haggle for a taxi because it was late and Sunday and they made it difficult. Finally at 01:30, I was in a taxi. It started raining cats and dogs. My seat belt did not work. We were at the hotel by 02:05. I unpacked, and was asleep before three.

Monday 2026.02.09

I could not sleep past 07:30, so dressed and cleaned up email a bit. TJ told me that Dave Farber had died; so sad. I went down to breakfast where I ran into a jillion people. At nine, I went up and got my badge and then went to the join the APNIC/NCC Board meeting. We spent the morning talking at an abstract level about the global environment; no protein. I tried not to be snarky. We broke at 11:30 to go to the APRICOT opening plenary, which was a classic PowerPoint blah. Then back down to the meeting room for a shared boards’ lunch until 14:00. Then finally a joint board meeting with a bit of protein.

At four o’clock we broke to prepare for the APRICOT dinner. Mirjam and I met in the lobby and took the five o’clock bus to the Kunstkring Art Gallery. Due to rush hour, the bus took 50 minutes; it could have been much worse. Mirjam, Hans Petter, Harald Summa and I shared a table. Dinner was not memorable.

We took a 21:30 bus back to the hotel, which took 30 minutes. I was asleep by 22:30.

Tuesday 2026.02.10

I managed to sleep to five, gave up, showered, dressed, and cleaned up email. At eight, I went to breakfast with Mirjam and Athina. At 09:30, I had to go to the APRICOT Plenary and present Debugging Routing & Forwarding Using RIPE Atlas. I was not in great shape, so was unhappy with my presentation. Then, after a break being accosted in the hallways, I went into an NCC Board meeting where we spent until one o’clock discussing the same old issue of a one or two tier board. Ondrej polarized it by calling for a straw vote, so we came to no conclusion. We ate lunch for an hour than back to layer nine. We broke about six. I dumped my stuff in my room and Raymond and Maria convinced me to join them in the bar. They left for a dinner at 19:45, and I was asleep by eight.

Wednesday 2026.02.11

I woke at six, dressed and worked. I made a mistake in the knot config file on rip.psg.com, so gave myself a major manic before coffee. I went down at eight and ate with Lea, Athina, Mirjam, etc. until ten. Then I attended a bit of the actual APRICOT conference until lunch. I worked with the RouteViews folk, Philip, Nina, etc. and Maz to try and get them agreeing on how to use IIJ transit over the exchange in Singapore. I kept being cornered by folk who either wanted to talk, take a selfie, or get emotional support.

At 15:00 I went up to my room to just clear my head. Then, at 15:30, I had a zoom with Ketan Talaulikar, IETF Routing AD, on why I was done with the IETF, kind of an exit interview. Then back to the APRICOT Plenary until six o’clock. T hen at 18:30 I went to the social, which was loud and bright. I hung out with Mirjam. And ran into Veriphan.

We bailed fairly soon and wandered the mall to find a light dinner, settling on a Japanese place where we ordered sparsely. We gossiped about the RIPE and IETF Boards until 20:45, and I was back in my room before nine.

Thursday 2026.02.12

I managed to sleep to seven, dressed and cleaned up email until I went to breakfast at eight. I sat with Raymond, Mirjam, and Piotr. John Curran Signaled back and forth as he was coning in from the airport. At 09:30 I went up to the APNIC Annual General Meeting. I gossiped with various folk, saw old friends such as Nishal, and so forth. At noon, I went out to meet John Curran with whom I talked for an hour up in the Club Lounge. Then down to the side meeting room to have lunch and meet with the other RIR Boards. Of course there had to be a joint photograph.

I turned on TSIG for the Jordanian domains. At 4:30 we broke to go back to the APNIC AGM. I grabbed a coffee first. Bland reports followed by a serious attack by Jonathan Brewer on lack of fiscal responsibility by the APNIC board. The Board’s Roopinder answered Jon so poorly and stupidly that I would believe Jon paid him.

I napped from 16:30 to 18:00 and went to the all-RIR Board dinner and sat with Jeremy, the APNIC lawyer, among others. In general, I tended to like the lawyers as they were focused and on track. After dinner I ended up in the bar with Hans Petter, Maz, Piotr, Raymond, and Jeremy. Maz and I took a selfie.

This lasted until 23:30 or so, and I went up and crashed.

Friday 2026.02.13

I could not sleep past 05:30, so dressed and worked until eight when I went down to breakfast and sat with Hans Petter. At nine we went to a meeting room for the NRO EC joint meeting where I was an observer. The first discussion, after introductions, was ICP-2, especially the unanimity / super-majority / conflict of interest issues. Then on to de-recognition and ad hoc audits. Next Emergency Operator, selection, and how it is invoked. HPH noted that escrow, on which the NCC is now working, is a much smaller task than emergency continuity. There was a sudden left turn into the ICP-2 process, whether the AC approved and then sent to NRO etc. There was a short coffee break during which John Curran, Athina, and I agreed that the RIRs are responsible to their members not the ICANN and the ICANN can get used to it. HPH said wait for the letter requested from Kurtis, ICANN CEO. Then the group discussed the NRO expenses report. A forward budget was approved. Then an AfriNIC update; that two engineers and the new Chair were with us drew applause. They are hoping to have a CEO and key policy etc. positions in place in June, and elections in June or, with court approval, September. Then a discussion of security incident response, information sharing, etc. and a schedule for documenting and agreeing on this, with a target of end of June. We broke for lunch about noon.

After lunch they discussed long range strategy review and planning. This degenerated into omphaloskepsis of whether the NRO should have and maintain a written strategy and plan. Next was a discussion of what the goal of the RPKI program was and should be. The RPKI users’ experience should be more consistent across RIRs, ease transfers, align documentation, etc. Suddenly John proposed a goal of having the Continuity aspect of the yet to be finished Internet Number Registry (ICP-2) document, with escrow and emergency operator, and periodic and ad hoc audits, by 2029. Discussion of who/what could be an emergency operator somehow forked into negotiating control of the process with ICANN. A long discussion ensued of the implications of the size, scope, and possibility of having emergency operations possible at all. There is a clear difference between having a recovered RIR be a static snapshot as opposed to an ongoing operation where members could join, maintain under policy, etc. Then a long discussion ensued of how the NRO & RIRs relate to governments.

We broke at six o’clock, and I went up to my room to dump my laptop and start organising for departure. At 18:15 I headed down to the dinner restaurant which turned out to be an Indonesian seafood restaurant. The food was good and I overate. After the meal, John Curran obsessed loudly and repeatedly at Athina, Jeremy Harrison, APNIC lawyer, and me that the separation of open policy making from board approval in the RIRs was crucial to the ability of the RIRs to claim an open multi-stakeholder process. Athina and Jeremy managed to convince him that this held well in RIPE and APNIC; but John said AfriNIC, LACNIC, and ARIN were not reasonably conformant and work must be done.

I made it back to my room by 22:15, cleaned things up for fifteen minutes, and went to sleep.

Saturday 2026.02.13

I woke at 02:45, dressed, packed, checked email, and headed down to check out of the hotel. At @3:30 i was in a Grab. Traffic was a very light. My phone complained that my laptop‘s AirTag had been left behind, but I could feel on the seat beside me. Light shows were starting to come out for the lunar new year. We arrived at the airport at 4:05. I was checked in by 04:10, through security by 04:15, through Immigration by 04:25, and in the lounge by 4:35. I wondered if things would have been that efficient at other than four in the morning. I cleaned up email, processed hotel and Grab receipts, and had an Americano

I left the lounge at 05:50 and headed to gate 8, as instructed by the check-in counter. It turned out that flight at gate 8 was to Haneda. Flighty did not have my gate number, so I looked it up on the sign and did the half a kilometer walk to get to gate A2 and boarded at 6:05. Even though I was still quite early, everybody else had boarded, and they closed the doors behind me.

ANA flight 836 was a 787 DreamLiner in new shape. The passenger service announcement was still fully full of Pokémon. I ordered the washoku. We pushed back at 06:18, two minutes early. We taxied very slowly, and then stalled for a few minutes as we entered the takeoff queue. The weather was foggy so they were being conservative in takeoff timing, and we were like fourth in the queue. At 06:39 we finally took off into the fog. I was asleep instantly. The flight attendant woke me for the meal which was mediocre. I slept for three or so hours. We landed Narita at 15:27, darned near at the gates, and we were at the gate by 15:31. I went to the ANA lounge which was actually being run by Turkish, and had some eggplant and rice. I left the lounge at 16:20 and went to the United lounge near my departure gate to check that my whole itinerary was on my United number. I accidentally forgot my mask in the Turkish lounge, sigh. I left the United lounge at 16:40, and boarded right next door at 16:45. I was sitting backwards again.

ANA flight 8 to San Francisco was a 777–300 in perfect shape, probably the same one I had flown out on. Associating my iPhone with the in-flight entertainment system did not work, I suspect because of lockdown mode. We pushed back at 17:08, eight minutes late. As they spun up the engines the whole cabin vibrated. We got the closest runway and took off at 17:28. I had to takeoff washokou and watched Relay and Now You See Me and slept for three or four hours. We landed in San Francisco at 09:28 and parked in the alley for 15 minutes while waiting for a gate. We finally got on at 09:47. I was through immigration at 10 o’clock. There was an early Portland flight so I called Global Services. They got me on it, but it was way at the other end of the terminal and I darned near had a heart attack getting there.

Flight 487 to Portland was a 737-900 in comfortable shape. We finally pushed at 11:05, 20 minutes late. We took off at 11:15. I slept the whole route. We landed at 12:38 and I was in an Uber Tesla by 13:15. I was home by 13:45, unpacked, and took a nap.

San Jose Just to Have Dinner with Moribayashi san

Arrcus CEO, Shekar, really really wanted me to show my face to the Fujitsu visitors, especially Moribayashi san. So I agreed to have dinner in San Jose the night of the fourth and fly back the next day. San Jose flights were more expensive and less convenient than San Francisco, so I reserved the latter. Overnight at the San Jose DoubleTree was $550, so I reserved at an SFO Holiday Inn for $250.

Wednesday 2026.02.04

I did not manage to sleep past 06:30. I packed in the morning , and cleaned up email etc., arranged remote hands on in Dallas for mid month, and dealt with a minor security incident at Arrcus colo . I took only a small computer bag as I was staying just one night. I was in Kermit by 11:35 and at the airport by noon. The lot was pretty full so I had to park on the very top level. Security was a walk-through, and I was in the United Club by 11:20. The attendant said there were seven Globals in the Club, which I guess was unusual. I had a small c turkey and cheese sandwich to hold me over. I kept checking Chase Visa, waiting for it to roll over for the month so I could book my March Amsterdam trip. At 12:55, my electronics told me to go to the gate, so I obeyed, albeit slowly. I walked to the gate and boarded.

United flight 776 was a 737-900 in new livery and seeming pretty full. The doors closed at 13:25, we pushed at 13:28, and wheels were up at 13:42. I pretty much slept the whole way to San Francisco until the flight attendant woke me up to put my seat upright. We landed at 15:20. I picked up some sushi and was in an Uber by 15:55. This was a mistake. HOV was now three people minimum and traffic was becoming a mess. The driver was from Kyrgyzstan, so we gossiped central Asia for a while.

We arrived at the office at 17:10. I said hello to Cori and a bunch of engineers, some of whom I had to introduce myself. I grabbed an empty desk and cleaned up email etc. I worked until 18:30.

I left the office at 18:35 and grabbed an Uber to Fleming’s Steak House, a chain suburban monster in a California outdoor monster shopping experience. The other folk were there when I arrived on time at seven o’clock. I made good manners with the Japanese crew from Fujitsu, led by Moribayashi san, who I knew from Verio. Takagi Maki, also ex-Verio was also there.

We gossiped a lot about old times, and tried to explain to Shekar and Keyur. I learned at dinner that the reason the San Jose hotels were so expensive was that SuperBowl was to be there that weekend. The food was mediocre at best, though trying to appear extravagant. Towers of not so tasty seafood and steaks they were heavily pepper seasoned to cover they they were poor quality. The braised brussels sprouts were good.

We kind of finished at 21:20 and milled around outside. I had picked up the backpack Keyur had forgotten. I was in an Uber at 21:30 and at the Holiday Inn Express San Francisco Airport South by 22:05 and checked in to my plebeian but cheap room. The WiFi was abysmal.

I woke to the alarm at 07:30, dressed, packed into my computer bag, and had a very bad cheap hotel breakfast at eight. I caught the courtesy bus at 08:30 and was at SFO United by 08:45, almost Katen timing. The bus dropped me off some distance from global services, but I was still through security by 08:50. On the other hand, the line at Peete’s coffee was 15 minutes. I was in the United Club by 09:05 and found a comfy corner, unfortunately with weak WiFi. Because of massive attachments, I was not sure my email would download before I had to go to the gate.

I had some scrambled egg with chorizo, which was actually edible. As Flighty said the flight was 16 minutes late, I waited until 10:10 to leave the club and do the short walk to the gate, only to find that the inbound was still deboarding. I texted Keyur and said that next time I get to choose the restaurant. We started boarding at 10:15, not bad considering. United flight 2363 to Portland was a totally full 737-900. The LineSpeed boyz were on the flight. A few people were masked. They closed the door at 10:37, managing to pretty much get back on time. Flighty said were were delayed 15. Then the captain confessed that they were still loading luggage. We pushed back at 10:52. and took off at 11:08. I mostly slept for the flight. It was a gusty landing at 12:20, and we were at the gate four minutes later.

The parking ticket machine would not accept my parking ticket. I tried three of the machines. So I was in Kermit by 12:40 and had to go to the cashier at the exit who had to hand enter the ticket because it wouldn’t read for her either. I got home at about 1310. Not bad.

Amsterdam for Executive Board Training

I had to fly to Amsterdam for a two day Board meeting at the Governance Academy. A lot of travel for a questionable amount of protein.

Friday 2026.01.16

The day before leaving, I started packing just to feel I was making progress. I went to check in to KLM, and their app was soooo broken. Though they had sent me a message telling me to check in, opening the app and trying to check in said you have to check in at the airport. But I could dive into my itinerary and then check in. But as KLM’s web is so screwed up, it did not have my TSA Pre info despite the fact that I had entered it online multiple times. So I was going to have to check in at the Counter.

At nine in the evening, I went to see Princess Mononoke with Gary, Elaine, and Lizzie at OMSI. Though I still think it’s Miyazaki’s best, I was put off by the continual violence. Also, they bragged about it being 4K; but while 4K is wonderful on a 27 inch monitor, not so much on a 27 meter screen.

Saturday 2026.01.17

I slept in to eight, dressed, worked a bit, and finished packing. I was still fighting with postfix. Katen picked me up, and we headed out at 11:30. I was at the airport, checked in, and through security by noon, and headed to the Delta Lounge which was quite empty. I had some Hawaiian macaroni salad and water, checked email, and slacked with Rob. At noon I headed to the gate and boarded at 12:10.

Delta flight 3802 to Seattle was an Embraer 175 in spiffy shape. it may have been the first time I had flown Delta since the 2002 panic run back to Seattle for Joanie’s illness. There were a lot of Amsterdam passengers on the flight. I wondered how many of them worked for Nike. The flight was completely full. There was some fuss getting everybody’s carry on stowed. We pushed back at 13:27, three exciting minutes early, and took off at 13:33. We landed at 14:03 and were at the gate at 14:15. I had to take the train to the A gates and walk all the way to the end. I boarded pretty immediately.

Delta flight 142 to Amsterdam was an AirBus 330–900 in very clean shape, but the seating was not really as comfortable as united, kind of cramped; though they did have a seat cover mattress. It looked as if it was a full flight. As we passed departure time, they kept fueling and loading baggage. And the flight deck said they were behind and had to load up the computers. I started watching Anatomy of a Fall. We were due to take off at 15:10, but did not push back until 15:43 and took off at 15:57. They made me take the seat cover mattress off while taxiing and the in-flight entertainment did not work. On the other hand, the Puget Sound was as pretty as ever. After takeoff they had to reset my IFE. The takeoff meal was edible. I slept for four hours and read a little. For the landing meal I had a quiche which was suspicious but caused no trouble.

Sunday 2026.01.18

We landed at 10:17 and were at the gate shortly thereafter, a half hour late. Those with connections were a little panicked. We were at the far end of the D gates. I was at passport control by 10:40 and waiting for the train by 10:55. I caught the 11:09 to Centraal. We arrived at 11:20 and I walked to the Kimpton De Witt. I was in my room by 11:45. It was an enormously large room, but unfortunately on the first floor over the noisy street.

I cleaned up some email and napped from 12:30 to 16:30. Then Mirjam said we should meet at 17:45 at Koepelcafé. Raymond kept Signaling about where to eat dinner. Mirjam and I talked in the Koepelcafé until we saw Raymond and Maria enter the Italian across the way Savini Ristorante Italiano and we wandered over to join them. We were joined by Hans Petter. I had the ravioli a funghi, which was good but not life changing. I got talked into ordering gelato, which came with a ton of fake whipped cream and strawberry sauce; not good. We broke up around 22:30, and I was asleep by eleven or so.

Monday 2026.01.19

I could did sleep past four, gave up at 05:30, showered, dressed, packed, and cleaned up email. I had a mediocre go at the in-room coffee machine. I texted a bit with Katen about cosmetics from Schiphol, and she and Carrie were talking about getting live-aboard canal barges here in Amsterdam. I worked in my room until 07:55, went down and checked out, and went to meet Raymond in the breakfast restaurant. I ate hurriedly and met Maria in the lobby at 08:30 as agreed. We walked to Centraal and caught the 08:54 to Driebergen.

We arrived at 09:35 or so and took a taxi for the twenty minute ride to the Governance Academy at Leersum and found a place to hang at Parc Broekhuizen. It was on the order of Schloss Dagstuhl, a conference center, a hotel, and a Bistro in a large park; very classy.

Our rooms were not ready, so we were escorted to a small lounge bar so Maria could do her conference call and I could suck packets over the WiFi. I wrote up a topology problem of Nordic cable cutting attack strategies and sent it to Matt Roughan.

By lunch time, most of the crew had arrived and we went to the Governance Academy next door. The Governance Academy folk led a long discussion of what strategy is and how we develop and execute.

We had lunch in the Bistro, open faced fresh fish on very crusty bread. Good but hard to deal with. Then back in the conference room where the secondary Governance Academy lecturer droned on repeatedly and boringly about the difference between the Board’s current structure and a one or to tier structure. He was amazingly repetitive, but missed major differences, e.g. the one tier had the CEO voting although the CEO was not elected by the members. I tried to ask two questions, but was blocked for half an hour, which really threw me.

At seven, we broke up to check into our rooms. Mine was stunning, in an old stables.

Then off to dinner in the Bistro, which was tasty, but I was wiped.

We were social until 22:30, when folk went to check in and I went back to my room and crashed. I could not be suckered into the WiFi as it was not working all night.

Tuesday 2026.01.20

I was pretty much up by 02:30 or three, but tried to get back to sleep until I gave up at seven, showered, dressed, packed, and made a cup of in-room coffee. At 07:50 I carried my bag down to the Bistro for breakfast. Turned out that the Bistro was closed and I was supposed to eat in the main/hotel building. It was elegant but not very exciting. At nine, I grabbed my luggage and we all headed over to the Governance Academy building and started the meeting.

A young CPA spent twenty minutes telling us his history and then fifteen more telling us basic Enterprise Risk Management. Hans Petter finally interrupted him to say the NCC had already been through all this, had SOC-2 certification, and the goal was how the Board interfaces to ERM. Then we did sub-group exercises to identify threats, how they are monitored, and how they might be mitigated.

At 12:30, we went to the Bistro for lunch, an open faced pumpkin and bufalo sandwich, celeriac soup, and pasta with pesto.

I spent some time talking with Hans Petter and Athina. Then the afternoon started with the non-stop talking Governance Association lawyer leading us in discussion of the role of the Supervisory Board. This lasted to 16:30 or so, and we then did our somewhat chaotic good byes.

Sander drove Maria, Raymond, and me to the train station and we caught the 17:22 to Amsterdam Centraal. We met Piotr and Ondrej, and the boys were going out for a beer. I declined, and was in the Kimpton De Witt and asleep by seven o’clock.

Wednesday 2026.01.21

I managed to sleep in until four, showered, dressed, packed, checked out, and left the hotel at 05:45. It was misty raining slightly. I caught the 06:03 to Schiphol. While waiting for the train to depart a conductor came around and actually scanned tickets, well, chip cards. I suspect a lot of homeless people try to sleep on the trains. I was through security by 06:45, but the passport line was 10-15 minutes long. Finally they opened the automatic machines. I picked up the cosmetics Katen had ordered, except for the Waleda, and was in the KLM lounge by seven o’clock. I had two ham and cheese on bread and cleaned up email. The lounge, which had been pretty empty, really filled up by eight o’clock. At 08:50, the WiFi went belly up. It recovered ten minutes later.

I left the lounge at 09:30 and walked all the way to the end of the concourse to gate E 21 where they wanted me to go through document check again, and then put us on a bus to a very far stand. I finally boarded at ten o’clock

KLM flight 615 was a 787-900 DreamLiner in quite clean shape. It was pretty cold; I kept my coat on. They came on the PA and announced that there were many open seats in economy so people could switch. The door closed at 10:20 but air traffic control put us on a short delay. We actually pushed back at 10:35, ten minutes late. I ate the takeoff meal and watched Guillermo dl Toro’s The Shape of Water which was quite good, slept for three hours. etc

We landed at 10:50 and taxied slowly to the gate. Then there was a long wait for the jetway driver to connect to the plane, but I finally made it through customs along to the bus by 11:10. I was in an Uber by 11:30 and home shortly after noon. I took a four hour nap.

Amsterdam for a RIPE/NCC Board Meeting

I had to fly to Amsterdam for an NCC Executive Board meeting with a follow-on NCC Winter party and then socializing with EC and whatever in Amsterdam for the weekend. I would have flown back immediately after the board meeting, but the fare would have been thousands more. December fares are very high. I did decide to try the KLM non-stop Portland to/from Amsterdam, as they had been so kind bailing me out of the flight cancellation in September.

Monday 2025.12.08

I was pretty much packed the day before. I received a text from KLM that WiFi would not be working on my PDX-AMS flight. This ws not a major concern, as I hoped to sleep. The KLM online boarding pass did not show TSA Pre, which meant I would have to stop at the counter to get a boarding pass. Between the funky web site and this stuff, I was not impressed with KLM infrastructure. Kaiby? knew i was packing so would not leave my lap.

I finished packing, said goodbye to Kaiby?, Katen picked me up at 11:30 and, despite traffic due to serious downpour, we were at PDX by noon. I went to the KLM counter to get a boarding pass with TSA Pre, and went through Security by 12:20. It took me a bit to find the Delta Lounge. Their WiFi sucked.

There was no boarding announcement, so I left the lounge at 13;50 and walked down to the gate to find most people had already boarded, and it was quite the queue. I was in my seat by 13:00. Oops! I was in the wrong seat, 7A as opposed to 6A. But the woman in 7A was accommodating.

KLM flight 616 was a 787-10 Dreamliner in pristine shape. I think the flight was fairly full. Indeed, the onboard Wi-Fi was not working; one could associate with it, but there was no connectivity. At 13:25, the scheduled departure time, the captain came on the PA to tell us some passengers had some security issue, and we were waiting for them, which was easier than offloading their luggage. At 13:35 they withdrew the jet bridge and the captain said they were mucking with the luggage and we might take off in 10 or 15 minutes. The purser welcomed us and asked us not to take photographs of other passengers without their consent. Indeed, we pushed at 13:50 and wheels were up at 14:01.

The cloud layer was so all the way up to cruising altitude. My in-flight entertainment didn’t work so they reset it. I had the takeoff meal. The salads were excellent. The chicken was horrifying. I then got about 2 1/2 to three hours of nap, but couldn’t get back to sleep. I watched junky movies.

Tuesday 2025.12.09

I had the breakfast crepe, meat plate, oatmeal, and drinkable coffee. We landed in Schiphol at 08:05 and we’re at the gate by 08:20. It was a fair walk to passport control where there was only one agent so a 15 minute queue I did not get through until 8:50. The SIM store had been disappeared. I caught the 09:09 Sprinter to Centraal, arriving at 09:25. I was in the NCC office by 09:40.

I chatted with Lea who had taken a three week holiday with her sister to tour China. Mirjam arrived and we dove into RIPE/NCC Board issues and IETF LLC Board issues. The parallels were interesting. At noon, we went to the in-house lunch and sat with Daniella and Hans Petter. Discussions got serious. Mirjam dropped out for a one o’clock call. Hans Petter and I kept going to two. I went back tot he work desk and cleaned up more email, read logs, and gossiped more with Mirjam.

Mirjam left at four o’clock. By 16:15 or so, the NCC offices thinned out. Hans Petter and found ourselves in the coffee area and chatted for an hour or more. At 18:30, I finished working and walked to my hotel, the Kimpton de Witt as usual, and checked in. I unpacked in my room and worked a bit and was asleep by 20:30.

Wednesday 2025.12.10

I did not sleep well after about two o’clock. At eight, I gave up and dressed. I walked to Centraal to get a croissant with ham and cheese, ans was in the NCC offices at nine. I had my croissant with half an Americano, left a box of Baker and Spice cookies on the counter, and went up to the board room to work while waiting for everybody. Mirjam showed up quite soon, and we got coffee and gossiped. By 10:30 others started to show.

The Board meeting opened with discussion with the Works Council, kind of like a proto-union. They were concerned with maintaining communication if the Board structure changed and about ongoing salaries. The day chugged on through the long agenda. Hans Peter did the Acting CTO presentation and was very direct. It was scary. The NCC technology had been swept under the carpet for years. Then back to boring but competent reports. Then all but Board and HPH left, and we discussed the Managing Director’s performance, both against goals agreed at beginning of year and new issues such as the deep engineering issues.

At 18:00 we broke up. Piotr and I walked back to the Kimpton talking about or differences on the issue of a possible NomCom. We actually converged. I went upstairs and dumped my bag etc. At 19:15 I did the 15 minute walk to the Restaurant-Café In de Waag on Nieuwmarkt, guided through heavy tourism and the red light district entirely by iPhone. The food was good, nothing special.

Mirjam and I talked seriously with Athina much of the eve. At ten o’clock Mirjam and I left, she to walk home and I to walk back to the de Witt. I was in bed by eleven.

Thursday 2025.12.10

I could not sleep past about 04:30. I gave up at seven, dressed, cleaned up some email, and left the hotel at 08:20. I got to the NCC offices in time for breakfast with the rest of the Board. At nine, we started the Board meeting with things running sloppily over time. We went down some fairly deep rabbit holes on Mirjam’s RIPE Meeting Report, Risk Appetite, and the Charging Scheme, We zipped right through the Activity Plan and Budget, which struk me as odd. Then Fergal presented the five year Strategy plan. Then I presented my The RIR System: A Longer Term Gedankenexperiment, which caused stunned silence and then chaotic brainstorming through lunch. After lunch we had a few hours of the Governance Academy organising Board omphaloskepsis. I found it mildly useful. Then we did an hour or so on ICANN and other RIRs, APNIC, AfriNIC, … And then at last it was a wrap!

I hung out in the board room to help Daniella clean up the dirty dishes. I looked up one of my fave restaurants, Slouizer, for Piotr, and found out it was permanently closed. I imagine it did not survive Covid. At seven, I met Mirjam, Kees, and Athina at Gió Cucina Italiana for a nice dinner. No work chat. I was back in my room by ten and crashed.

Friday 2025.12.12

I slept to eight!! It was wonderful. I went to the office, where I found Mirjam. Anna arrived around ten, as did Daniel. I worked the morning, and booked my train tickets to Louvain. Then the four of us ferried across the way to a soup and sandwich lunch. We talked openly and heavily of Board and senior management issues. Anna had to go back to get her partner, while Mirjam, Daniel, and I went back tot he office and continued the omphaloskeptic discussion until four o’clock or so. Then Daniel and I walked to the Kimpton, and I got a hour and a half nap, interrupted by Board folk Signaling each other and a text from Lizzie. At 18:15, I met Daniel in the lobby to walk to the party at NEMO. There was a fun Rube Goldberg reaction/dominos event,

a bad meal (burgers and fries), and some blah blah. I dressed as Pikachu

Then the live band of NCC staff, which was fun.

Then Hans Peter, Daniel, and I huddled for a long while while the dance floor did its thing to a DJ. We headed for the door around midnight to find that a Board member had insulted the DJ who was now sulking outside. I apologized for the Board and left Hans Petter to mollify his staff. The three of us walked back to the hotel, and I was asleep by one o’clock.

Saturday 2025.12.13

I woke at 06:30 and pretended I could sleep until I gave up at 07:30. I dressed and packed an overnight into my knapsack. I was out of the hotel by 08:15 and in Centraal by 08:30. I ate a ham and moz sandwich and a double at an Illy place, Julia’s. I caught the 09:11 Eurostar, 2nd class, to Brussel-Midi, found the free WiFi, sent a report of the ugly event of the last eve to the Board Chair, and tried to catch up with backlog. The Illy was pretty good. Past Rotterdam, the track improved and the Thalys moved right along. The WiFi remained usable. We got to Brussel-Midi at 11:06 and I managed to find track 14 to catch the 11:32 IC toward Luxembourg. Brussel definitely looked funkier than Amsterdam.

I arrived Ottignies at 12:15, and Cristel, Camile, and Justine met me on the platform and we walked to the car to meet Lionel. We drove a far bit to a nice restaurant where we all ate an excessive lunch. I had tuna tataki on a bed of stir fried veggies, and it was good. Then we drove to drop Camille off at a friend’s and then on to Cristel & Lionel’s home. It was still being renovated and had moving boxes galore. But it was really nice. We sat in the kitchen and talked shop, AI, etc. They made a fresh pumpkin soup for dinner

which we had with some smoked ham and sausage from Lionel’s home area. We played a fun game, No, Merci!, talked more shop, and went to bed about 22:20.

Sunday 2025.12.14

I woke a number of ties and gave up at seven o’clock. It turned out that Lionel and Cristel were up and in the kitchen. Two cups of coffee and two croissants later I took a shower and packed up. Once Justine woke, we went for a walk around the neighborhood and through the woods and a small field. Then a lunch of sauteed ground beef with onions over rice with steamed legumes. We talked a bunch. At 14:30, I slouched in a lounge chair until four o’clock when we packed out. Lionel drove Cristel and me to the Ottigenes train station. We caught the 17:44 to Brussel-Midi, an hour earlier than I scheduled because Cristel had to catch the train to Lyon. So, when we got to Brussel-Midi I said goodbye to Cristel and tried to get on an earlier train; no chance. So I went into the Cafe and had a salade aux chevre which was actually quite good. I then wandered the station ontil I could board my scheduled 19:55 IC to Amsterdam. Not the Eurostar/Thalys, but perfectly fine. I boarded it 20 minutes early because it was far warmer than the station. And it was mostly empty. We departed on time. We arrived in Amsterdam Centraal at 22:05. I walked to the De Witt, was in my room by 22:15, and asleep by eleven o’clock.

Monday 2025.12.15

I could not sleep past five o’clock, so dressed and started packing. I cleaned op email and organized my mess. I. checked out of the hotel at 06:50 and caught the 07:18 from Centraal. We arrived at Schiphol at 07:36 and I wandered up to security. The queue wasn’t bad for priority. I was through by 07:55 but then passport control was chaos, and took 15 minutes. Yet another escalator wasn’t working, that was two of three. I found a pharmacy and they had Katen’s cosmetics. The KLM lounge was right across the way, so I went up and had a mediocre coffee with a slice of bread with ham and cheese. I caught up on email, sent thank yous to Daniella and Hans Petter. I left the lounge at 09:40, as KLM said boarding had started at 09:35. It was a fair walk to the gate, but when I arrived at ten o’clock it was not yet boarding. I finally made it on board at 10:10 and found my seat.

KLM flight 615 to Portland was a 787-9 in rather funky shape. And I suspected it was full. They actually finished boarding at 10:25, but we were delayed 15 minutes by ground staff for unspecified reasons. We pushed at 10:45 and took off at eleven o’clock.

I had the takeoff meal which wasn’t bad. I read a little, then napped for 3 1/2 or four hours and then read until we landed at 11:25. It took five minutes to get to the gate and then another five minutes figure out how to get the jet bridge attached to the plane. I was through immigration by 11:40; but then I had to board a bus and wait for the bus to fill before I could get a ride to the main terminal. Only half a dozen people were on the bus so we left five minutes later. Uber took a while. So I was not in the Tesla X until noon. I was home at 12:30. I reassured Kaiby? and unpacked.

Tokyo to Work at IIJ Lab and Deal with SMBC

The previous trip to Tokyo had left the SMBC situation far from resolved, and they said that I needed to come back for seven contiguous business days. So at the RIPE meeting in Bucharest I worked with Maz to coordinate schedules between his travel and Thanksgiving, and found a narrow window.

There was a lot of sturm und drang in the national news about flight cancellations due to the US government shutdown over the fight with Trump over Medical Care. Flights looked OK a week before. And then two New England supposed Democrats sold their souls and the American people to Satan.

In all the craziness, on the tenth, five days out, I realized that I had forgotten to book a Tokyo hotel. I spent hours finding that almost all hotels were booked, except for a few expensive ones still two train stops from the office. Finally, Kitamura san figured out that I could ping pong between the two Iidabashi APA hotels, and booked for me.

Friday 2025.11.14

I checked in using my iPhone the day before the flight. But the web site on my computer showed not checked in. And then I got a text saying “We’re sorry about the changes to your travel plans …” and offering a free meal voucher. So I called Global Services. We concluded that United’s computer was having a bad day.

Saturday 2025.11.15

I woke at three o’clock, did the last touches of packing, had breakfast, called an Uber at 04:25, and the Tesla arrived at 04:35. We were at the airport at five o’clock. Security was a walk-through and then there was the long walk to the E gates. I got to the gate five minutes early and boarded.

United flight 1164 to San Francisco was a 737max-9. It looked pretty full. My seatmate had the sniffles. A s usual, I was one of the few with a mask. I texted a bit with Tom Hirsch. We pushed back five minutes early at 05:55 and took off at 06:10. We landed in SFO at 07:35. Our gate was still occupied, so we sat in a penalty box for a bit and docked at gate E13 at 07:45. The walk to the G Concourse took me 20 minutes. I settled in the Polaris lounge.

I left the lounge at 09:20 for the long walk to G12 and boarded by 09:35. United flight 875 to Haneda was a 777-200 in so-so shape. and the FAs said it was completely full. I filled out the automatic immigration form and got my QR code. The doors closed at 10:05, we pushed at 10:10 five minutes early, and the wheels were up at 10:25. It was a bumpy ride for the first 3/4 of an hour. I slept through it. Then they served to takeoff meal; I had the washoku which was OK.

Sunday 2025.11.15

I slept for four hours or so and then watched a Chinese movie called “The Wig“ which was pretty good and then had the landing meal. We landed in Haneda at 14:07 and were docked by 14:20. There was the long walk to Immigration as usual. But I was through Immigration by 14:35, and in an Uber by 14:45. It was mostly sunny and 14c. The Uber was a Tesla again. traffic was light, and the driver liked having a zoomy car. We were at the APA Iidabashi Ekiminami by 15:15 and I was in my room by 15:25.

The room was a bit bigger than the last time. It had a luggage rack, but I did not think there was really room. I unpacked the computer etc., and cleaned up some minimal email. To stay awake until a reasonable hour, I watched junk until eight o’clock.

Monday 2025.11.17

I did not really sleep past two o’clock. I obsessed about bank bureaucracy and that I had not brought a copy of the revised death certificate. So I prepped Katen to FedEx one. At 07:40, I walked across the street to the machine udon shop and had a ¥700 bowl of udon with an egg; pretty junky. Amusing noise from outside as the construction workers received their morning instructions and pap talk.

By nine o’clock, I was ready to go back to sleep. But, of course, Maz was soon to arrange to meet to go to SMBC. What I needed was coffee.

At 10:15, I went to Doutor because I did not remember just how bad their coffee was. It was a beautiful 22c day, as if it was early autumn. I hopped the Tozai Sen to SMBC and met Maz in the Lobby at 11:00. They gave us the papers to be notarized, I filled them out, and we grabbed a taxi to the Japanese notary over the other side of Marunouchi to catch them before they closed for lunch at 11:30. We did the signature dance quickly, and they said for us to come back at two o’clock to pick up the papers.

We went down to the basement and ate in a saba restaurant. I had saba with miso, which was actually good. Maz wanted to go shop for a Christmas present for Kaede, so I took the Yurakacho sen back to my hotel to get a half hour nap. Maz met me at 13:30, and we took the Yurakacho back to the notary in Marunouchi and picked up the papers. Then a taxi back to SMBC. They drowned us is an amazing mass of paperwork until four o’clock, and told us to come back the next day for more. Maz headed back to Mitaka to pick up Kaede, and I took the Tozai sen back to Iidabashi to the IIJ office.

Of course I had missed Cola’s presentation of our work.

I spent time with an American Waseda grad student intern Yoshi, from Westchester, whose research was trusted environments. Then I spent time with Cola on the v6 topology work, and gossiped with other folk about v6, RPKI, security etc. I worked some and cleaned up backlog. I left the office at 18:45, and picked up some konbini food on the way back to my hotel. I worked until eight and then went to sleep.

Tuesday 2025.11.18

I woke at 03:30 which sounds bad, but it was seven and half hours of sleep. I wondered if it was not drinking coffee all day except for the bad one in the morning. I lolled around trying to get more sleep, but gave up at 06:30. I dressed and packed, as I had a discontinuous hotel stay and would have to move to the other APA Iidabashi around the corner for one night. There was a com.lb zone file issue with rip.psg.com being out of date. I looked at it, was confused, and begged Rob to take a look.

At eight, I left my luggage at the front desk and walked to Café de Crié down the street and had a ham and tomato with gloop breakfast sandwich and an Americano with an extra shot that was drinkable. At 08:30 I took Tozai Sen to Otemachi and did the long walk to the SMBC main office. Maz was a few minutes ahead of me. We went in when they opened at nine and spent an hour doing more paperwork. I wrote my home address for the nineteenth and twentieth times and stamped a lot of papers. I even used their iPad to specify the details of the transfer. We were out by ten, which was amazing. They said they had what they needed to do the transfer. I should watch, and when it was received, come back, or go to any branch to finalize closing of the account. It was 15c and a clear day, but not the previous day’s warmth. I got on Tozai Sen back to the IIJ Lab, arriving a bit before 10:30. The place was pretty empty.

I chatted with Romain about the Lab in general and some ideas for getting graduates back to visit. A gang of us wet to lunch at Charcoal Grilled Dried Fish Restaurant Echigoya Kamemaru, and I had my favorite miso gindara as usual. Then some work on the com.lb zone problem, finally hacking around it. At 15:30, Pascal and Thomas presented on using City Community Tagging to detect anycast; it was muddy and not conclusive. I reviewed a few APRICOT submissions. I resisted checking whether CitiBank had received the transfer. In reality, my guess was Thursday. I chatted more with Romain and Yoshi.

I left the office shortly after seven. I grabbed two o-nigiri at the konbini, and got my bag from the APA Iidabashi Ekiminami, which had no room that night (big concert at Tokyo Dome), and went to check in at the APA Iidabashi Ekimae two blocks away. The check-in was a big computer thing, which was as difficult as paper. But I made it. It was 80% more than the Ekiminami, and was maybe 10% larger. But it was only one night, and not a lot of choice. I unpacked, ate my o-nigiri, cleaned up some email etc, and tried to get to bed by 20:30, as it had worked the previous night.

Wednesday 2025.11.19

I managed to sleep in, with breaks, until 07:30. I began to believe this no coffee after noon thing. I showered, dressed, and packed up. I ignored email, as I assumed I would have plenty of time to deal with it in the office. I checked out of APA Iidabashi Ekimae at 08:30, dropped my luggage off back at APA Iidabashi Ekiminami where I would check in that evening, picked up a katsu sandwich at the corner shop, got a great coffee at the little place next to IIJ’s building, and was in the office by nine. It was 8c and clear blue, a pretty Tokyo fall day.

I cleaned up email until ten. I removed the ProxMox backup server work from raid0.dfw.rg.net as Rob and Hans were pushing just staying on restic. Then Rob dragged me (and a silent Hans) down a couple of DNSSEC rabbit holes. I tried calling an eyeglasses place recommended by Kitamura san, Ogura, but they did not speak English. George Michaelson talked me into trying PhotoStructure.app. So I loaded it up and let it start finding photos on my laptop.

I had lunch with Kitamura san, which was really nice. We went to a real soba ya over in Kagurazaka, Kagurazaka Kuzuryu Soba, to which I had not gone since living in Tokyo. Very tasty. We talked about her twelve year old, Annie, who was very over-sensitive, noise, social, …, but bright. And I told of Salma’s difficulties. Of course we also talked about the Lab sociology.

Back at the Lab, Kitamura san called the recommended optical/glasses shop for me, and they said it would take a week to ten days. So much for that. I chatted for a while with Pascal, an Anja Feldman graduate who had been a visitor for a few months and was going to DE-CIX. The afternoon is a quiet email time in Tokyo as the States is going to sleep and Europe has yet to wake; and the Lab was pretty empty.

I tried to reserve my flights to Jakarta in February for APRICOT but the ANA web site let me get all the way to the end and then failed with an error code. I tried three times. And I could not call them, as the English language version of the web site assumed I was in the States.

I left the office at 18:30. It was down to 10c. I stopped at the konbini and got one o-nigiri, checked back in to the APA Iidabashi Ekiminami, and unpacked. I managed to get rid of the big stack of the ¥10,000 notes I had been carrying for six years or whatever. I worked, ate my o-nigiri, and was asleep before nine o’clock.

Thursday 2025.11.20

Though fitful, I managed to sleep until 06:30. I worked for a bit, dressed, walked to the sandwich store, up the hill to the little coffee shop, and to the office by nine. I ate my sandwich, drank my coffee, and cleared a bunch of backlog. Eventually, Malte, Pierre Luis, and Romain showed up and we chatted about various research work, IIJ Lab server infrastructure, and other fun stuff. Eventually Cola showed up and we worked with him on the IPv6 topology growth work. At one o’clock, everyone went to lunch while I joined the APRICOT PC call.

As I wanted to be sure to get a good fare to APRICOT, I spent an hour on the phone with an ANA agent and actually managed to get a reservation and pay for it. As I was calling from Japan, I had to pay in JPY. But it looked as if the base rate was cheaper than the USD quote on the web site; so maybe, with the exchange costs, it came out in the wash. It took me another hour to select seats on the web site from hell. I could not select the seat on my last leg, SFO to PDX, as the site would error out.

I chatted with Christof Visser for a while. He was doing a lot of infrastructure and redundancy work in the Pacific Islands. I Then chatted international politics with two interns, one from China and one India. It was a bit sophomoric. I Left the office at about 19:30, stopped at the Konbini for minimal food, I was back in my hotel by 19:45. I worked until after nine and went to sleep.

Friday 2025.11.21

Katen and Helen woke me at four o’clock with pictures of the Bainbridge septic field work. Great progress and looked horrifyingly professional. I went back to sleep until Katen woke me at seven to ask about the bank transfer; no visible progress. So I dressed,left the hotel, got my breakfast sandwich and my sole cup of coffee (snif!), and was in the office by 08:30. It was sunny and 8c.

In the office, I ate my katsu sandwich, had my one cup of coffee (snif), exchanged RIPE political email with Mirjam, reported on the result of moderating coffee intake to a bunch of friends, cleaned up email, and wrote to the septic guy to say thanks. I worked through the morning, and made lunch dates with Emiko and Kempei (Wednesday) and Zita’s friend Peggy (Monday).

At one, five of us went over the Kagurazaka hill to Tonkatsu Kenshin, regular but good. After, Romain, Cola, and I discussed the IPv6 growth research, with an eye to a possible presentation at APRICOT; though Mark and Philip had yet to encourage me. Kitamura stopped by to say goodbye; though we might meet Wednesday morning. Pascal showed me some new interesting results on his and Thomas’s measurements using city community tags to detect anycast prefixes. I suggested RIPE Atlas traceroutes to validate anycasted sources.

I left the lab at 19:45 and headed back to the hotel. There were a lot of folk out in the side streets, eating, walking, whatever. The konbini was out of o-nigiri. As I was still not hungry after a large lunch, I took it as a sign. I stopped at the shrine, but it was a bit busy so I was not comfortable. I got back to the hotel, worked to 21:45, and went to sleep.

Saturday 2025.11.22

I woke at 03:30 to find that the bank transfer had completed. I texted Katen and went back to sleep. By 07:30 I had decided to get the hell outta Dodge, and leave closing the bank account to another trip. So I rebooked United for the same flights but on Sunday, saving three days. I wrote to Emiko apologizing for cancelling lunch with her and Kempei; a bit of a bummer. I also wrote to Peggy telling her I was bailing early. I dressed and went down to the lobby and spent 15 minutes dealing with the early departure. They were kind. I grabbed my usual katsu sandwich at the corner and headed up the hill. The favorite coffee shop, Aomi Coffee, was closed until ten o’clock, so I had to settle for FourBucks; half as good, almost twice the price.

In the Lab, I emailed Kitamura san and Romain about my bailing early. A RIPE/NCC email conversation with Mirjam got pretty serious. At eleven, Peggy called on the phone and we agreed to meet for soba at 12:30. I kept working until 12:15 when I walked to Kagurazaka Kuzuryu Soba to meet Peggy, who was 20 minutes late as usual. I did not have to hold up my end of the conversation to say the least; nary a word in edgewise. We finally broke up at 15:15, and I was back at the office by 15:30. It was a gorgeous day, 17c and clear.

In Second Life, a neighbor offered to sell a piece of land we had always wanted. We started discussing price while I looked in all our accounts for land tier. When I went to look in Zita’s account, it was suspended!! I wrote to Aiyana to ask what the heck was up. Per Rob’s suggestion, I started to installing forgejo to migrate git.rg.net. That lasted until seven in the evening when I gave up and walked back to my hotel. There was a complex exchange where they had left a note asking if I would please return the original receipt as I was checking out early and it would change. It was in my room and the room key did not work. So it was a few elevator rides. I read until eleven and went to sleep.

Sunday 2025.11.23

I woke at seven, dressed, and started packing. Fergal had great comments on my long term view presentation. So I incorporated them and sent it off to Hans Petter. Fergal and I exchanged a bunch of email about the usual. I finished packing by 09:30, and went down to check out. I left my luggage as I did not want to haul it up the hill to the Lab. It was finally cloudy, and a warmish 10c. On the way up, I stopped at the konbini for an o-nigiri, and arrived at Aomi Coffee just as it opened at ten o’clock. I chatted once more with Fergal and hacked some more on the forgejo conversion. A co-researcher at the Lab, Thomas Krenc, pointed me to a podcast on Tokyo micro-scale, The Magic of Tokyo, which I found a good description and explanation.

At one o’clock, I headed out of the Lab and walked back to the APA Iidabashi Ekiminami to pick up my luggage. Having had no lunch, I was tempted to stop for another o-nigiri; but one may not eat while walking or in the train. The streets were full of people and the shrine was totally crowded for Thanksgiving. I wondered if this was the last time I would see Tokyo and missed Zita a lot.

I got my luggage from the hotel and walked the one block to the Tozai Sen which I took to Nihonbashi to change to the Asakuka Rapid Express for the thirty minute ride to Haneda Terminal 3. I got a seat on both trains. I arrived in Haneda just after two o’clock. I went to check-in for the doc check, and decided to not check my bag. I walked through security and Emigration, and was in the ANA lounge by 14:15. As I had eaten little, I had three pieces of spicy, for Japan, Korean karaage and some rice. I cleaned up some final email and pretended to work.

At 15:30, I waked down to the gate and played the Global card to cut through boarding. United flight 876 to San Francisco looked to be the same 777-200 as I flew in, and was in OK shape. I think it was full. Because I had booked late, I had a non-window; no big deal. We pushed back at 16:25, exactly on time, and took off at 16:45. The captain came on the PA and was a woman. I watched Rocky Horror Picture Show which I had never seen. I was impressed. Acting, choreography, music, production. No wonder it remains a classic. The washouku was OK and I indulged in a citrus cake and watched Goodfellas. Then I slept for maybe three to hours until the landing washouku, which was much better than that on the same flight in September.

We made the softest landing ever at 08:50, taxied for 15 minutes, and were then tugged to the gate. I was through Immigration by 09:15. but, due to the construction, to get to the domestic terminals, put us outside a long walk, and then a partial walk back to get to global services entry. then security claimed I was randomly selected and they wanted to wipe my cell phone. I powered it down and let them do it. I watched and all they did was wipe it with the Kleenex. I was done by 09:45. The United Club was standing room only, but the agent said Global flying business, go to the Maple Leaf Lounge which was roomy and comfortable. I worked with Rob and crew on forgejo and texted with Lucy. Without thinking, I had a small bit of chicken in a cream sauce; and this was 30 minutes before I needed to head to the gate. So I hung around the lounge for an extra twenty minutes and then headed to the gate. Despite their computer telling me that the plane was about to board, when I got to the gate the equipment wasn’t even there. At 12:35 I sat down and watched the plane arrive. We finally started boarding at 12:55.

United flight 1668 to Portland was a 737-900 in very new shape. The plane was full, but some standbys made it on. They closed the door at 13:20. Wheels were up at 13:37. I slept the entire way. We landed at 15:06. Then there was the long walk, and I was in an Uber by 15:33. The Uber came in one minute! It was very grey, foggy, with a misty drizzle, and 14c. I got home at four o’clock. There was much petting of the cat as I unpacked. She claimed Katen and Latif had not fed her the entire time I was gone.