FlyByNightTravel – Maunderings of the meanderings of too frequent fliers

Lisbon for RIPE 90

As I was running for the NCC Executive Board, I had booked going to the RIPE meeting in Lisbon back in March. I was happy to be seeing friends in the last comfortable home of Internet operations; though I was not anxious to travel and to leave home.

Saturday 2025.05.10

I woke at seven, dressed, did the last bits of packing, had breakfast, organized the computer bits to pack out, and worried about what I had forgotten. I could not find my pouch of Euros, which was annoying. At nine o’clock I summoned a Lyft, and was at the airport by 09:35. TSA Pre was a long line, but at least I did not have to take my shoes and take stuff off. I headed to the United Club where Hans was serendipitously waiting; though we had not arranged to meet. He was on the same flights as I, with Christine going a different route later. At 10:15, we headed for the gate and boarded.

United 534 to Chicago was an uncomfortable 737-900 and completely full. It was old enough to have ashtrays in the arm rests; though they were screwed shut. I was glad I had taken Aleve before leaving home. Hans and I did not make the fuss to sit together, as we would probably see each other too much during the week. We departed on time. An 18 month old boy in the front row shrieked pretty much the whole flight, probably embarrassing his Chicago parents more then annoying other passengers. I managed to mark up the stultifying Governance Document for the Recognition, Maintenance, and Derecognition of Regional Internet Registries and napped. Then I watched most of No Direction Home, the recent Dylan movie.

We landed in Chicago early at 16:40. Hans and I went to the lounge right across the way for half an hour and then headed to the gate. United 265 boarded at 17:40. It was a completely full spiffy new 737-900. I realized that i did not have a boarding pass for the air Canada flight from Toronto to Lisbon. We landed in Toronto at 20:55. It was a major walk to the central transit point, and then back and forth from passport control because they demanded my boarding pass. So it was a walk back to Central where some nice agents printed my pass. So we made it through passport control and security, and then made it to the Air Canada lounge by 21:45 and decided to eat there instead of the plane. It was really good. I had a beet carpaccio salad and some fish with muscles and crab. That was also quite good. We had a sorbet for dessert, and headed for the plane. We stopped to pick up some maple cookies on the way as gifts.

Air Canada flight 810 was a 777ER in very fancy shape. I had problems storing all the fancy crap they gave me. We took off on time, I passed on the dinner, and I watched the conclusion of No Direction Home and then napped until about an hour and a half hour out of Lisbon. I ate the breakfast aside from the crunchy melon.

Sunday 2025.05.11

We landed early at 10:30, but were out at a stand not a gate. It took 20 minutes for the bus to pull up so we could get to the terminal. The computers are out at passport control and the queue was at least three hours. Very polite chaos.

Electronic Passport Control finally opened and we were out, bought SIMs, and into an Uber by 1335. We arrived at the hotel by 14:05.

Hans and I hung out in the lobby bar with Mirjam until sixish. Then we each headed to our rooms, Hans across to an AirBnB, unpacked, and showered. Then we met in the lobby, picked up Liman, and walked ten minuted to A Valenciana, an open family style market and churrascoria restaurant. I had a fish and shrimp rice stew which was pretty good. We were back at the hotel and asleep by 21:30.

Monday 2025.05.12

I woke at 07:30, dressed, and went down to breakfast, sitting with Marco and Theodoros from the NCC. The barista was open, so I managed some coffee before the first plenary. The NCC graphic designer had done a bang up job of the whole meeting space, but the stairs was the touch.

The opening talk was How to Rewild the Internet by Maria Farrell. It was absolutely brilliant; watch it. I spent the morning and lunch talking with whomever. At 18:00, I went to the BoF on Updating ICP-2. I tried to be constructive and polite; but Daniel was aggressively negative, a role reversal.

Mirjam and I joined Christine and Hans for dinner in the hotel’s outside restaurant.

Tuesday 2025.05.13

I Woke at 7:30, dressed and went to breakfast, followed by a boring plenary. It was too much BGP. Then more plenary and lunch with Anna and Carla and a bunch of folk I didn’t know. Then the CoC session, which was quick and painless and pretty content free. At 13:45 I went back to my room, napped from two o’clock to 15:30, showered, and went down for the break and then the MAT WG. I don’t know if it was just that I was tired or the content was not my cup of tea. After MAT i chatted with Cristel, Eric Vynce, and other researchers. Then we wandered up to the NREN/RACI session which was not particularly exciting, mostly pre-IMC presentations. Niall and Mirjam were wondering if RACI was worth continuing in its current form.

At 19:30, Mirjam, Cristel, Niall, and I took an Uber to dinner at Pap’açorda in Mercado da Ribeira which Niall had arranged from Katen’s list.

It was good, though not memorable. I had fish soup, a veal shank, and raspberry sorbet. At close to ten o’clock, we took a taxi to the social in Jardim Botânico in the Estufa Fria de Lisboa. The big event was that Jim Reid had fallen into the pond. Mirjam and I stayed for half an hour or so and then walked back to the hotel. I was asleep by eleven or so.

Wednesday 2025.05.14

I got some sleep, though nothing great. At 07:30, I dressed and went down to breakfast and then the Address Policy WG meeting. It started with the darned ASO Updating ICP-2 PowerPoint all over again. I wandered out talked RouteViews and RIS with Ties and Nina. Then I spent time gossiping with Warren. I had lunch with Ole and Jen Linkova and discussed why we were at RIPE and how to find safe spaces in our careers. At 13:30 I spent half an hour with the CoC Team and moved on to the NCC Services WG which started with the usual NCC PowerPoint storm. I had to enable my AT&T SIM to get a call from FreeStone to approve a payment verbally.

The General meeting started at four o’clock. First was a massive PowerPoint series recapping the Annual Report, the Financial Report, etc. etc. Then Lu Heng went to the mic threatening a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Then he threatened anti-trust action for the NCC rejecting his offering to sponsor the meeting. The PowerPoint resumed its drone. There were valiant efforts to design a new charging scheme on the fly by a dozen people. Then they did the same with the proposed amendments to the Arbitration Committee. The GM finally finished with the Executive Board candidates’ movies and the instructions on how to vote. We had fun because the AV folk borked showing my movie, it had a French singer, etc.

After the GM, Hans Peter and I went out on the patio and had dinner until eleven; talking family history, careers, and, of course RIPE NCC management gossip. On the way back to my room, I ran into Fergal and friends, and we chatted a bit. I made it to bed just after midnight.

Thursday 2025.05.15

I was up from two o’clock until five and then woke at eight. I dressed, had breakfast with Ole, coffee with Christine, and went into the Cooperation WG to sit in the back of the room and work. I could not resist going to the mic to whine about the proposal to use only RIR RPSL databases by AmsIX and DE-CIX. During the break I talked finding ROV-enabled routing with Q Lone, a researcher at the NCC. Then Ed Shrayne dragged me into he Database WG to talk about the PrefixLen Internet Draft.

I had lunch with Andrew McConachie and friends. Then I had to go to the Routing WG to hear Tim present on NCC’s ASPA and Router Key implementations. At the break I was cornered by Salam trying to drag me to Beirut. Then, at 15:30, I had a Code of Conduct Team meeting to draft the presentation for Friday’s Plenary. At 16:45 I napped until 18:45, dressed, and went down to catch the bus to the RIPE dinner. I was in a very mod place on the waterfront. But a beautiful setting.

Very pretty but loud. I sat with Mirjam and Greg and Stephanie from IETF. Greg had caught on to the major difference from IETF, ARIN, ,.. in the cooperative nature of the RIPE community. So there was much discussion as to why this was. Mirjam, Greg, and I bailed at 22:30 and took an Uber back to the hotel. I was in bed by 23:30.

Friday 2025.05.16

I woke at 08:15, dressed, and went down to breakfast. I sat with Mirjam and Niall. Then I went to the Closing Plenary. Email’s talk on the power outage was interesting, especially the topological difference between Portugal and Spain. Then Emil and his student presented on the Baltic cable cuts. During the coffee break election results were presented and I had been elected to the NCC Executive Board. There was much resulting social interaction which I survived. Then back for the Closing Plenary for the Code of Conduct report, the meeting network report, etc. Mirjam closed the meeting and then on to the Secret Working Group which is sadder and sadder as the years go by.

The last lunch had one really tasty thing, a ravioli with maybe bleu cheese filling. I talked with Constanze Buerger and Franziska Lichtblau, and then back to Greg Wood, Stephanie, and Jonathan Black from NANOG. I then took off my badge, went up to my room, and cleaned up email etc. At 14:40, I lay down for a nap until 18:00. At 18:30, I met Hans and Christine to walk down the street for a ramen dinner at a small place on a noisy road. By 20:30, I was back at the hotel. I packed and went to sleep by 21:30.

Saturday 2025.05.17

I woke at 06:30, dressed, finished packing, and went down to breakfast where I ran into Niall. We ate calmly, and then met in the lobby to share an Uber to the airport, where we arrived at 08:15. The airport was chaotic but moving along somewhat. The security queue was a dozen long zig-zags and then chaos, and it took 40 minutes. Passport control was only a mild queue as the electronic passport gates were mostly working. I made it to the gate by 09:15, one hour to traverse the airport.

They started to board at 9:35. But we queued at the jet-way for 15 minutes. so I was on board by 9:55. United flight 65 to Newark was a completely full 787 in drab shape. We pushed back exactly on time at 10:25, but didn’t get much further. At 10:40 the Captain came on the PA and said that the airport was closed because there was a drone overhead. She came back on 10 minutes later to say 15 to 20 minutes. We got in motion again at 11:05 and finally took off at 11:20. I had the takeoff meal and then slept most of the way to Newark.

Before landing, I disabled all biometrics on my phone, laptop, watch, etc. We landed Newark at 13:15, deboarded fairly quickly, and I walked to the Global Entry Kiosks. Passport control was trivial, and we were dumped ground-side. We were in Terminal B and I asked where a Polaris Lounge was and they sent me to Terminal C, so I took the AirTrain. TSA Pre was easy, but Security was chaotic. And they decided to inspect my bag as Joanie’s ashes had set off the x-ray. I was in the lounge by 14:45.

The lounge was enormous and very crowded. I managed to find a soft armchair, got a bit of lounge food and an Americano, and helped Amol sort out a restic restore problem back in Arrcus San Jose. I tried to get to the most urgent email, but did not have the focus to sort through the mass. I did get details for the Oslo meeting at the end of June from Raymond.

At 17:30 I walked to the shuttle bus to Terminal A and walked down to Gate A14. I decided that I was insufficiently impolite and aggressive to deal with Newark or New York in general. I boarded at 17:55 and found my seat. United 1184 to Portland was a pretty new AirBus 319, and seemed quite full. We pushed and took off on time at 18:30. The meal was inedible. I cleaned up more backlog and then watched The Godfather, which I had never seen. We landed at 21:11. I did the long walk to grab a Lyft at 21:35 and was home at ten o’clock. I comforted Kaiby?, unpacked, and went to sleep.

San Jose to Visit the Arrcus Mothership

Tuesday 2025.04.22

Nalin Pi convinced me to sneak into the Arrcus San Jose mothership to hang out with him, learn a bit about the developments in networking for the AI datacenter world, and to just be sociable. So I booked a day trip for Thursday of the following week.

Wednesday 2025.04.30

I used my iPhone to check in for my outbound flight the next day to San Jose. Easy peasy. But that evening, when I tried to check in for the return flight, the app would not let me. It showed the check-in button, but gave an error. I obsessed about this for many hours.

Thursday 2025.05.01

I woke at 03:30, dressed, made coffee and fed Kaiby?, packed my computer bag, and headed out by 04:40. I arrived at 5 o’clock and left Kermit in short term parking. I queued up at Alaska check-in because of being unable to check in for the return flight. I told the agent that the meeting in San Jose was optional but being back that night was not. She did magic and gave me a paper boarding pass for the evening flight. I saw only one other masked person.

I was in the TSA queue by 05:20. I had forgotten to leave my pocket knife at home, but it made it through security. After security, I went to Oven and Shaker and had a bad omelette with potatoes too disgusting to eat for breakfast. As opposed to the United Airlines space, the C concourse was new and open and airy, quite nice. On the other hand, after breakfast, to get to the B gates one walked through United-like ugly, temporary, tunnels. I was at the gate by 6 o’clock, for a 06:30 boarding. I Slacked with Rob about the DNS servers in San Jose.

At 06:30 i scanned through the gate and did a five minute walk to the farthest outdoor boarding gate where I re-scanned. Alaska 2210 was a Horizon Embraer 175 in spiffy shape and completely full. We took off at 7 o’clock on the dot. We landed at 8:30 and I walked to the office arriving about 910. It was pretty empty. I grabbed an empty desk and verified that the espresso machine still produced an acceptable brew.

At 09:30 Keyur appeared exactly on time. We talked Arrcus customers, prospects, bugs, engineering etc., and then some strategy for IETF/LSVR/L3DL for the meeting the following week. At 10:40 we wandered out and I got grabbed by Sandy who gossiped family stories for twenty minutes.

Nalin and I talked Bluefield and squashed VDR from eleven to 12:30, went over to Gateway to grab cheap lunch and continue, and then came back to the office. Back at the office I chatted up a few people, saw old friends, and met with Nalin and Nithyesh over the two node flattened VDR hack. I shared some RPKI clue with Sonal and Larry. Then contacted Hery to see if he would be willing to come back to Arrcus if we could protect him.

At 17:30 Nalin gave me a ride to the airport. I got off at the start of terminal A because I did not remember where the sushi place was. TSA let me through with my pocket knife again, and a helpful shopkeeper told me the sushi stand was all the way at the other end of the terminal down almost to my gate. So a 15 minute walk; i needed the exercise. I got a rainbow roll, ate it there, Slacked with Rob about a getty problem, and headed to my gate.

Alaska 3002 was an Embraer 175 in SkyWest livery and completely full. I could not sleep, but spaced out the whole ride. We landed at 20:45 most of the way down the distant B Concourse. I walked to Kermit and headed out. Traffic was rather bad considering the time of the evening. I got home at 21:30, and immediately fed Kaiby?.

A Short Visit to Bainbridge Island

I had been wanting to go up to Bainbridge for some weeks, so just plugged it into my calendar; leaving Wednesday and returning Friday. I invited Liz along for the company, and arranged to go via Seattle to see Aaron, Sam, and Marshie, as Aaron planned to leave for Shaw Island on Thursday.

Wednesday 2025.04.25

I spent the morning dealing with normal work and then at 10:30 started packing and headed out by 11:30. I had to pick up Liz, where I arrived at 11:45, and we’re on the road by 12:15. We took the I 205 bridge, and traffic was quite easy. We stopped at Chehalis at 13:35 to feed Kermit who was at 45%, and arrived at Aaron‘s at about 15:45. I gave a banana to Marshie. Aaron and Sam were home. Aaron and Lizzie took a walk and Sam and I got to talk some. Then the three of us went to dinner at Taurus Ox, mediocre Lao food, but it was close. We left at about seven and Lizzie and I made the 7:30 ferry, the sunset ride.

We arrived home about 8:30. We unpacked. Lizzie had to make her upstairs bed. And I think we were both in bed by 9:15.

Thursday 2025.04.24

The noise of the gardening hose woke me at 7 o’clock. I made coffee, but Lizzie beat me to the shower. So I cleaned up some email and eventually showered and dressed. I had forgotten the laptop charger in Portland, which was a bit of a pain. Soon after ten we headed to town to try and feed Kermit and get breakfast at Streamliner Diner. There was quite the fiasco trying to feed Kermit because employees were parked in the charging spots. Town & Country management said park next to them, but that would’ve stressed the cables. So I gave up. We had an omelet at Streamliner Diner, and then drove up to Poulsbo. I dropped Lizzie off to cruise town and went to Walmart to the Electrify America station and fed Kermit

I picked Lizzie up a the Kitsap Library, and we headed back to Bainbridge to shop at T&C and then go back home. I walked the garden, took more pictures, sat in the Adirondack chair in which Joanie used to sit, etc. At sevenish, we wet to Heyday Farm for dinner. I had a spinach salad and crab cakes, pretty good but not life changing. We were home and asleep by ten.

Friday 2025.04.25

I woke at 06:30, made coffee and dressed, and cleaned up email. Lizzie woke at 7:30 or so. I ate breakfast and went up the hill to see if I could meet the new neighbors. No luck, but I talked with the electrician and did warn of the septic field. Liz and I washed our sheets and towels and packed slowly.

We left home at noon, drove to the Electrify America in Poulsbo, and fed Kermit to 69%. Traffic was amazingly heavy. Then it was on down Route 3 to below Shelton to Taylor Shellfish Farms where we had bad clam chowder and bought some mussels for Katen. The next stop was Chehalis to feed Kermit up to 69% again so he could make it home. We took I 205 down to Division St. and stopped for Vietnamese Noodles at Ch? Em Mekha Grill so neither of us had to scrounge at home. I dropped Lizzie off at about 18:15, went home, fed Kaiby?, unpacked, and settled in. About eight, Katen came by to pick up the muscles, some bread, etc.

Bangkok for IETF 122

Wednesday 2025.03.12

I had decided, against many inner feelings about leaving our home, to go to the Bangkok IETF. So I started packing. United wanted me to check in for the flight, which I did. But I could not seem to coax boarding passes out of the bleeping app.

Thursday 2025.03.13

I woke at 05:30, dressed, and finished packing. I had breakfast and double checked my travel checklist. At 07:40, I summoned an Uber as it was $20 cheaper than a Lyft. It arrived at 08:07, and we were at the airport by 08:30, traffic being non-existent for some reason. TSA was a bit crowded, but not too bad. Navigating the new terminal was a bit messy as it was still under construction, so there was a quite long walk to United gates. I was in the lounge by 08:45, an hour before boarding.

I went down to the gate and boarded at 09:40. Being Global meant I could get my carry-on in the overhead, otherwise no chance. I got out my laptop and realized I had removed my YubiKey in the Lounge and left it there. This might cause significant pain. To add insult to injury, neither of the small GaN wall warts I had in my bag to charge the laptop were sufficient, and I suspected I was not going o find USB-C power on the Pacific segments.

United 5463 was an Embraer CRJ175 in spiffy shape. We pushed back at 10:05 exactly on time. I slept the whole way to San Francisco. We landed at 11:45, and were at the gate exactly on time at 11:55. Things were under construction, so there was a sort of long corridor into the F gates. My flight was boarding when I got there so I walked right on, and was in my seat by 12:15.

United flight 869 to Hong Kong was a DreamLiner 767 in very clean shape. I think it was pretty full. We pushed back at one o’clock, exactly on time. The flight WiFi was not working, which put a serious dent in my plans. I tried to stay awake and watched the number of junky movies

Mid-flight, I wanted to deal with email etc. I could associate with the WiFi, but the captive portal did not work on phone or laptop. It seemed others complained, so they reset the entire infotainment system to no useful avail.

Saturday 2025.03.14

We landed in Hong Kong on time at about 19:20. It was the usual long walk to passport control and security. I almost had a crying jag when I realized I wasn’t going to buy a present for Zita from Hong Kong. I took the train over to the 200 gates to get to the Hong Kong Airlines lounge, arriving about 1945. The food had gotten crappier in the year since I had been there. I had some noodles and made the mistake of trying a ham and cheese sandwich. At 21:40 I headed out for the long walk to the gate. Boarding was scheduled for 21:55 and actually started at 22:10. I texted Katen that all was OK.

Hong Kong Air flight 779 to Bangkok was an AirBus 330 in red and gray and quite spiffy. We pushed back at 22:50, which woke me for a moment. I went back to sleep.

We landed at 00:30 and taxied for 10 minutes. There was a long walk to the APEC line, but it was a zip through when I got there. I picked up a TRUE eSIM in baggage claim and summoned a Grab. I was in the grab by 01:25 and arrived at the hotel by 01:55. I had to queue the register at two in the morning.

I managed to get to sleep by about 02:45. The damned air conditioning was way to strong. I tried to turn it up to 25c, but that did not help. I finally shut it off and managed to get sleep.

I woke at 07:45, showered and dressed, and went down to join Christine for breakfast. She had to rush off to see important people and things. In a novel attempt to deal with jet lag, I had only one cup of coffee. I went back to my room, cleaned up the basic email flood, and then went down to the Code Sprint to meet with Russ Housley. IEEE had filed a “Do not do L3DL,” which we would have to decide if it is serious. As I was not coding, I left the Code Sprint and tried to find a place to sit. The Terminal Room had been renamed Shared Workspace, but did not exist on Saturday. And the WiFi failed in the 7th floor lobby; so I went back to my room to work and finally cleared the email backlog.

Russ emailed me that there was a lot of extra food in the Code Sprint area and to come down; so I did, We talked L3DL some more. But I was unable to find Paul Congdon’s amazingly complex LLDP service discovery picture which I really needed to make the point. I took a nap from 14:30 to four o’clock.

At 18:00 i accepted Christine Runnegar’s invitation to walk across the back park to the enormous gl!tzich Gourmet Food Court.

It was interesting to walk through an enormous bright and flashy emporium following a picky vegetarian trying to find an acceptable dinner. We all have styles of how we survey and select. She eventually chose Indian, and I had an OK mutton masala plate with nan. We finished by 19:30 and walked back to the hotel and headed to our rooms to crash. I was asleep by eight, expecting trouble sleeping as it was the second night.

Sunday 2025.03.16

I slept exceedingly poorly. Second night. I gave up at 06:30, dressed, and went down for breakfast where I ran into Christine. I ate excessively, not sure why, but mostly healthily, scrambled eggs, siew mae, and a decent bread. And I had a second cup of coffee. I worked in my room for a bit and then went to the IEPG meeting which was only mildly interesting, the best being Geoff Huston’s talk on ECN adoption. At noon, I went back to my room and napped until two o’clock.

I hung out in the Shared Workspace, née Terminal Room. Adrian Farrel came and chatted about L3DL. Some folk were setting up a demo as they had actually implemented 8+8 20 years ater. It five, I went to the IESG area and had a meeting on RPKI-Rtr and L3DL with Russ, John Scudder, Warren Kumari, and Med Boucadair to bring the latter up to speed as the new Ops AD replacing Warren. Then I wandered to the reception, grazed a pretty good field of Thai food, chatted lightly with a few people, etc. At seven o’clock I was overloaded and went back to my room and worked a bit.

Monday 2025.03.17

I slept from nine o’clock to 01:30, and then small snatches until 06:30 when I gave up. Christine texted to go to breakfast, so I showered and went down. Being an Ozzie, she sat outside where it is 29c and 200% humidity. I had scrambled eggs, siew mae, and toast. We were joined by Ole Jacobsen, and he and I talked for a long time after Christine headed off to be a diligent worker. At 08:30, I went back to my room, cleaned up email, and did some hacking on the 8210bis RPKI-Rtr Protocol draft.

At 09:00 I went down to the Security Dispatch meeting and spent the time starting a presentation for Thursday’s LSVR meeting. It ended early, so I went to the Terminal Room and sat with Pensri and Patama. Then John Scudder grabbed me for lunch in the in-hotel Thai place to discuss the 8210bis issues and sidrops in general.

After lunch I went to the start of the OpsAreaWG meeting as Oliver Gasser’s Prefix Length draft of which I was co-author, was first up. It went well, almost ready for WGLC. I then went to the IDR WG which did not really interest me, so i went over to CFRG which did. And then I slacked with Rob, who had stayed home but was dealing with meeting NOC chaos remotely. The break had mango with sticky rice in which I seriously overindulged.

I went into DNSOPS to avoid GROW. I realized that I was burning out and just went up to my room. I napped from 16:30 to 20:00, worked a bit, and went back to sleep without dinner.

Tuesday 2025.03.18

I woke at five o’clock, having finally caught up on sleep. I texted with Katen and cleaned up email until breakfast opened at six. I was just finished when Christine came down. So I went outside to keep her company. At 07:30, I went back up to my room with an Americano to go.

At 08:30, Ketan asked to meet; so I went back down to the restaurant and we talked for much of an hour. Essentially he was the new Routing AD and was worried about L3DL/LSVR and then fished for getting clearer vision for IDR. At 09:30 I grabbed my laptop and went to the NASR BoF, which was a nuts SION culture joke. The BoF actually decided not to go forward, yay!

At 11:30, John Scudder, Job Snijders, Ben Macdison, and I met in the lobby and came to a compromise agreement on the 8210bis draft issues. Then was the SIDROPS WG meeting, which was pretty much filled with nothing consequential. I then went to SUIT, Software Updates for Internet of Things, which i had tracked because it is a technically interesting problem. What was even more interesting was that the room was exactly 50% women attendees, and two of the three chairs were women. I would love to understand why.

I then went up to my room, napped for an hour, showered and re-dressed, and went down to meet Derek, Mahesh and wife, Ebisawa, and Keyur to walk a km or so to an Arrcus dinner. The restaurant, Baan Kanitha, was mediocre Thai tourist food. The hotel Thai restaurant was better for Monday lunch. After the walk back, I had to take another shower. I worked a bit and was in bed by 21:30.

Wednesday 2025.03.19

I woke at 05:00, dressed, and worked until breakfast at 06:15. Katen texted pictures the architect had sent of the Paris apartment; it looked really good. On the way back from breakfast, I stopped at the front desk to ask for a tech to come fix the air-con which was always on. He appeared ten minutes later and spent 20 minutes working on it successfully. A significant life improvement.

For the morning session, I went to the SKEX, symmetric Key Establishment and Exchange, BoF, which was a bit brutal a la NASR. Then I got dragged into another Acee/Keyur drama when Acee pushed an LLDP discovery draft for adoption in IDR. I took a nap instead of lunch, and then went to PRIVACYPASS, which was proceeding along in its quiet way with some interesting use cases.

At three, I had a meeting with Russ and Keyur to explain to Russ why L3DL did wonderful things LLDP could never do. Then I hung out with Bill Fenner talking about how we were feeling about and dealing with the death of our partners/wives. Not well; though maybe as well as one reasonably can. Then we grabbed snack food and went to the Plenary. The big deal was about the inappropriateness of the scheduled San Francisco meeting. Afterward, Karen O’Donoghue and I walked over to the big food court and had wonton and noodles. I was back and in bed by ten o’clock.

Thursday 2025.03.20

I woke at 06:30, dressed, and went to breakfast. I had an eight o’clock meeting with Ketan to discuss how to finish L3DL. My impression was that he was a bit over his head as a new AD. Before the first session I ran into Erik Klein, who was heavy into satellite and space delay tolerant and SDN control networking; fun stuff. I tried to watch IRTF ANRP talks, but I had already read the papers. At 10:15, I had a small meeting with the new Ops AD, Med, to discuss SIDROPS dysfunction. Unlike Ketan, he seemed very clueful, had a plan, and would execute. It turned out he is Berber from Maroc; so we gossiped a bunch about Marseilles, Latif, … I then went up to the RTGAREA meeting to see some silliness and some satellite routing.

For lunch I went to hear the Host Talk by Kireeti Kompella who tried to merge ECMP and TE. I ran into Pensri, Padama, and Nan and we gossiped for a bit. Then I met with Alexander and Rüdiger to try and resolve Rüdiger’s issues with the ASPA Validation draft. I attended TIPTOP, Taking IP To Other Planets. It was not credible, ideas based on zero actual experience or even solid emulation.

Then the LSVR meeting, the main reason I came to the meeting, There was a bunch of confused talk about the IEEE liaison statement. Then I did my L3DL presentation with an accent on layer 3 and routing. It drove the nail half way home; but we expected the IEEE would be stubborn. I dashed out at 17:45 so I could change before meeting for dinner.

At 18:00, Bill Fenner, Matthias, Thomas, and I took a 40 minute taxi ride to Small Dinner Club in the center of the old part of Bangkok. The place was counter seating for maybe twelve in modernist black. The meal was many courses of deconstructed Thai food, but nothing one would recognize as Thai food. It was quite an adventure, delicious, and well presented. We had fun and a great meal. We made it back to the hotel by ten o’clock, and I was asleep by eleven.

Friday 2025.03.21

I woke at seven, dressed, and had breakfast. At nine, I went to the NOC’s explanation of the IPv6-mostly network experiment and then the 6man WG. I hung in the IETF Reception area for a bit, and had a make up talk with Stephanie with whom I had been estranged since the 2019 Prag meeting. I then went to SSHM, SSH Maintenance, where they were reviewing the Terrapin Attack and future mitigations and changes to the protocol. Then reinventing certificates, with no ASN.1 X.509.

I had tom ka gai and satay at the break. Bangkok IETFs raise a high bar for break food, as I pointed out to Jordi for Madrid. Then I wandered into IDR. IDR ended early at four o’clock. I went up to my room to leave my laptop and try and get a bit refreshed.

I had a mediocre Chinese dinner with Kanchana, Pensri, Nan, Padama, and crew.

At 19:45 I went up to my room and napped. I woke at ten, showered, dressed, packed, and checked out in the lobby at 22:45. At eleven o’clock I was in a Grab heading for the airport, well trying to head for the airport. The traffic in Sukomvit was more insane than usual; Friday night. It rook over 15 minutes just to get out of Sukomvit 22. At 23:35 we finally hit the freeway. The driver was watching videos on his phone at 120kph. We finally arrived at 23:55.

I was through check-in, security, and passport control by 23:15 but the long walk to the lounge took until 23:30.

Saturday 2025.03.22

I Left the lounge at 01:10, and was on board by 01:20. Hong Kong Air 780 was an AirBus 330 in grey and red livery. Mark Kosters turned out to be two seats in front of me. We pushed back exactly on time at two o’clock, and I slept until we were approaching Hong Kong. We landed at 05:40, and were at the gate 05:55. I caught the train to the right Hong Kong airport sub-city, and went through passport control and security. I could not find the United Lounge. This was because it was closed. I walked back to the core of the concourse, went into the Sapphire Lounge to ask directions and they said come on in and so I did. I had a bit to eat and then found a back corner. It was pretty empty with comfortable chairs and it had a power with an American plug. I cleaned up email etc.; but what I really wanted was to be in the airplane seat and asleep.

I left the lounge at 8:30 and did the long walk down to gate 28. Boarding looked chaotic, but I think they were just making many separate queues. I got the express line and was in my seat by 8:45. But then there was chaos because one of the seats wasn’t working and the person to whom it was assigned was not happy about that. But they eventually sorted it somehow.

United flight 862 was a 777 DreamLiner in pretty good shape. The captain was a woman; first time I have seen a woman in the left seat on a 777. Yay! We pushed back exactly at 9:30 and wheels up was at 9:50. I went to sleep, but then woke up to watch Oppenheimer and have a fish dinner. Then I went back to sleep. I woke for the landing meal, which was kind of shrimp and grits. It was actually pretty good.

We landed in San Francisco 06:15. As it was San Francisco, of course our gate was not ready. And then we got the worst possible gate, all the way at the end of the G Concourse. The Global Entry line was easy. I exited International and walked to the Global Services entry to go through TSA pre and was in the lounge by seven o’clock. I had some scrambled eggs and a black eye, cleaned up email, chatted with Katen, Hans, and Rob, etc. A four hour layover after a trans-pac flight is tiring and disorienting.

At 09:50 I left the lounge and headed to the gate. Boarding was delayed five minutes, but I made it to my seat and settled in. United flight 2115 was a Boeing 737 max and completely full. They were begging people to gate check luggage. We pushed at 10:35. I slept the whole way. We landed at 12;10 but had a ten minute delay deboarding due to a (not serious looking) medical evacuation. Then the ridiculous 15 minute walk to the Lyft pick-up. I was in the Lyft at 12:40 and was home by 13:15. Kaiby? and I took a nap.

Bainbridge and Seattle for Dr Marsh and ICANN

Friday 2025.03.07

With Zita’s absence, her rabbit, Dr. Marsh, was even more lonely than before. I negotiated re-homing him with Aaron’s also single rabbit, Sophie, a Dutch Flop, in Seattle. I timed the trip to coincide with my spending part of a day at the ICANN 82 meeting in Seattle. I planned to drive up Saturday, deliver Dr. Marsh, spend that night and Sunday night on Bainbridge, and drive back to Portland on Monday afternoon or evening.

I had not traveled in a long while, so spent time organizing and doing a preliminary pack. My travel accoutrements were scattered hither and yon.

I realized that I was not that comfortable, let alone excited, to be traveling again. So I started to consider canceling the trip to Bangkok for IETF 122 the following week.

Saturday 2025.03.08

I left home at 11:30. Traffic was light, even over the bridge. I stopped in Lacey to charge at a Walmart, and reached Aaron’s at 15:00. We introduced Dr. Marsh to Sophie. They were friendly, and Marsh explored the pen and house, but they weren’t cuddly or anything. We kept checking on them.

I hung with Aaron until 17:30 when I headed for the Hyatt to pick up Russ Housley to go to Tamarind Tree for dinner. It was nice having time with him. It had been a long while. We finished at about 19:30, and I dropped him off at the Hyatt, and headed for the ferry, arriving at 20:00. There was supposed to be a 20:10 sailing, but the queue was almost empty, so ferries were running late. We actually sailed about 20:30. It was not one of the big ferries, but a smaller one the Chimacum. Later Helen told me they were alternating large and small; no one knows why.

On the boat and on the drive home, I was quite nauseous. And on the drive I had a serious sneezing fit with like twelve or more sneezes in a row. It quickly went away, whew!

I arrived home at 21:30, plugged Kermit in, unpacked, and set up my laptop. I checked in with Aaron on the condition of Dr. Marsh, and was asleep by 22:30. I kept worrying about the poor guy because he had never been outside before.

Sunday 2025.03.09

I woke at 08:00 thinking it was 07:00; welcome to daylight savings. I made coffee and worked a bit. At 09:30, I met Helen at Coquette Bakery and had a quiche and gossiped. We ran into Toby, the architect who had interviewed Al. At 11:30, I grabbed a downtowner at Blackbird Bakery, shopped at Town and Country, and went home. I loaded Kermit with all the junk mail and, for $13, got rid of it all at the Dump. Aaron reported that Dr. Marsh must have hidden in the burrow to escape landscapers. I took a nap from 13:30 to 15:00 and became more and more worried about Dr. Marsh. At 18:00, Aaron reported that Marshie had come out of the burrow. I was greatly relieved.

I spent an hour cleaning up the itinerary for my Bangkok trip, returning a day earlier, and trying to fix the hotel reservation. Marriott had completely hidden their email and phone number, and their web site did not recognize my confirmation number.

At six o’clock i drove into town and got a bowl of poke at Hi Life. Eating early was smart; I did not remember that they closed at seven. I tried to fix the RIPE Atlas probe, 25909, by redoing the USB hack, It seemed to work; though how long it would last is anybody’s guess. I went to sleep at nine o’clock.

Monday 2025.03.10

I set the alarm for 5 o’clock, made coffee, dressed, packed, said my goodbyes and was up the driveway at 5:50. I expected to join a big queue on route 305, and miss getting the 6:20, and catch the next boat. But 305 was empty and the ferry terminal was just starting to fill up. So I made the 6:20 easily. I kept thinking about Marshie, and about picking him up and taking him home to Portland. But I decided I was thinking more about myself than his happiness.

I texted with Aaron and Katen, docked in Seattle, and drove to the Hyatt. I walked a couple blocks to the Spruce Cafe and had a mediocre mushroom omelette. I made it back to the Hyatt and started running into people: Wes Hardacker, Hans-Petter Holen, … It went on and on. I had not expected to know so many people at ICANN, where I had not been for over 20 years. I found a seat next to Karen Rose and Maria Hall for the 09:00 opening and pretended to be friendly to Theresa Sweinhart. Kurtis came over and did a very friendly greeting.

Kurtis’s opening talk was honoring Zita, and he reminded me of things I had forgotten, e.g. that she was the first ICANN Secretary and Treasurer, etc. Things went on to the 10:30 break where I was cornered by a gang from Guinea, chatted with Steve and Wendy Crocker, ran into Liman, etc.

I left the meeting by eleven, and headed south on I5. I arrived at the Chehalis charging station at noon, plugged in, and walked to the Panda Express to try to have something that was not too poisonous. I left Chehalis at 12:40 and arrived home at 14:00.

Bangkok for APRICOT

My RIPE 87 talk was sufficiently well taken that I was invited to give a similar talk as a keynote at APRICOT in Bangkok the at end of February. I probably should have booked it with a stop in Tokyo to clean up the bank mess. But APRICOT was big in Maz’s world and he would not be in Tokyo to help clean up the mess. So I booked a six day round trip, and Molly booked the hotel in Bangkok.

Thursday 2024.02.22

I took Zita to Trader Joe’s to shop for some frozen food in the hope that she might provide for herself while I was gone for seven days. I also started packing.

Friday 2024.02.23

I woke at 04:00, dressed, and finished packing. I worked a bit, had breakfast, set things up for Zita, kissed the sleeping woman goodbye, petted the cat, and called a Lyft. The driver arrived at 06:10, and we were at the airport by 06:30. TSA and security were essentially no queue, and I was on the concourse by 06:40 and headed to the lounge. The bad news was that SFO was down one runway, and we were going to be late. Global services and the lounge agent were optimistic i would still make my connection. But predictions out of SFO are wobbly. It was not by accident that I had a spare day of slack in my schedule. I could go to the Arrcus mothership for a day if I did not make the connection.

We boarded at 08:30 which made me optimistic. United 1999 was an AirBus 319 and quite full. Boarding finished by 08:50 but we stayed with the door open until 08:55. But i thought i heard the captain say 09:30 which would put my connection in perilous condition. But we pushed at 09:00. Then we parked in a penalty box until 09:25 and we took off at 09:30. I read SciFi for the run to SFO.

We landed at 11:10 and were at F1 as close as one can get to International. I walked calmly to G5 and checked in at 11:20 just as they did last call. They has everyone look into a camera for ID check. I asked if it was mandatory and the agent just waved me through. I unpacked into my seat and went back to the SciFi. United 869 to Hong King was a B777-300 due to folk missing connections due to the SFO mess, there was a sprinkling of empty seats. We pushed at 11:40 but the SFO runway chaos had us in two long holds out at the active runway area. We finally took off at 12:12. They are in the middle of the dinner service when we hit very serious turbulence; the crew had to sit down for 15 minutes, and we bounced quite a bit. I finished dinner, read some more, the iPad battery was running low so I slept for three hours. I read some more, slept a little more read some more, and then have a congee breakfast ran until we landed at 18:45 and de-boarded at 7 o’clock.

Saturday 2024.02.24

It was a 10 minute walk to passport control, which is automated passport scanning face recognition. But the queue to have your bags inspected was over 20 minutes. I had asked where the lounge for my flight was and they said to go upstairs I got there and they sent me to gate five which was 10 minute walk and was Singapore Airlines. It turned out my ongoing flight on Hong Kong air was not star alliance. They redirected me out to gate 201, which was a set of escalators to the bowels of the Earth, a train ride to the end and then up the escalators to gate 201. I made it to the Hong Kong lounge by 8 o’clock I settled in I had some noodles with chicken and black bean sauce, and waited for my next flight.

As we were due to board at 10:05 I left the lounge at 10 o’clock and walked to the gate. We didn’t actually board till 1015 but I managed to find my seat and settle in. Hong Kong Air 779 was a AirBus 330 in good but used shape. Business was maybe e 1/3 full but the back looked pretty full. We pushed at 2300 and were airborne seven minutes later.

We landed at 00:40 it was a 2km walk to immigration But then i go the fast lane, so was in the limo by 01:10. It was 25 minutes to the Athenee Hotel. I checked in and was given a fancy room. The thermostat was at 19c; i turned it up to 22c, and unpacked. I checked in with Zita and Katen, and was asleep by 02:30.

Sunday 2024.02.25

I woke at 07:30, dressed, and went down to breakfast. I had a brown rich congee, some har gao, and a not too bad croissant with some fruit. I had worn a jacket in case there was aggressive air conditioning, but it was not needed. I went over the the APRICOT area and ran into George and we spent some time. Then up to the Secretariat room, and hung out with Maz, Brian Candler, and a bunch of folk. I texted a bit with Zita,a and she seemed OK. Then Phil Regnauld, Hervey, … arrived. In the meantime, the APRICOT network was severely broken. Maz had insufficient access, so we were poking with traceroute and ping while waiting for Nan. No one was wearing a mask. I became socially overloaded. I went across the way to get coffee at Blue Chéri; it was OK but not great. By the time I got back, Nan had showed up and he and Maz had found the bug.

We all had lunch in the lobby and nearby room. Then it was back to the Secretariat. I could not decide between getting more coffee and going to take a nap. Of course, I did neither. We worked on debugging the network until seven o’clock. Then Maz, Patama, Nan, and I walked across the way to an up-scale Thai bistro and had a quite tasty dinner. I made it back to my room before nine, and was soon asleep;

Monday 2024.02.26

I could not sleep past seven. I worked and then dressed and went down to breakfast when I ran into Khun Kanchana. After brekkie, she went to her meeting. I went to the Secretariat to hide and work. I soon went across the way to Blue Chéri to get am Americano; with an extra shot it was better than that of the previous day. Zita texted me that she had whacked herself contesting right of way into a stall with the horse. She was not seriously damaged, but sure could have been. I kept working on my presentation for Tuesday and debugging a pfSense upgrade in Ashburn.

At one o’clock I went to the mass lunch. I know more folk here than I do at NANOG. I had to listen to Barry Greene blather on at the table, trying to impress TWNIC folk. Phil and I went to Guss Damn Good Coffee, which I thought a bit better than Blue Chéri. Back at the venue, I ran into Nishal. Aside from being great to see him, he reported that Sara and her family were safe in the UAE. So I went back to the Secretariat texted a bit more with Zita, and gave her my famous yuzu recipe. She did not report the results. The Puget Sound Electric bill was due, but they blocked access from Thailand so I had to use a VPN to pay it.

At 15:30 I headed to my room to try for a nap. I did get some rest, but not a nap per se. So at 17:00 I was back in the Secretariat. At seven o’clock Molly herded Philip, me, and a few others to the Vendor Social in a nice venue next to the sixth floor garden. Good light food was served, including mango and sticky rice. A very grown Maya Huter was there as a tag-along with Steve. I ran into a lot of friends, some I had not seen for over five years. As things thinned out, Philip and I chatted A/P and APNIC politics for a while. Then we drifted out at the end. Back in my room Zita texted with pictures of a light snowfall, as did Katen.

Tuesday 2024.02.27

Mad Slacking by Hery and Rob woke me up at seven o’clock with a stupid mess in San Jose. I dressed, went down for breakfast, and came back to my room to work for a bit before facing the crowds. I FaceTimed with Zita. At ten I went down to a special seating and coffee tasting with Khun Kanchana, Philip, and Steve Huter for the Thai Barista Champion. It was a bit over the top, but quite good. Then I hung out with George and spoke with a bunch of old friends, Xing, Akinori, … Then back to the Secretariat.

I had lunch with Thacorn, Patama, and Thomas Wirtgen from UniStra who showed up. We researched the various ripeness of mango with sticky rice; go for the darker. Than a bit of coffee and on to the opening plenary which started with somewhat cheesy dancing; not the quality we had seen in formal performances. Rona Jaber of QMUL opened describing IOT technology to monitor vehicular traffic. I gave my Social Contract talk, but I did not flow it as well as I did in RIPE. I saw some friends in the break. Then there was an Ops meeting, opening with Geoff Huston on the serious progress in transport encryption. Massimo Candela presented BGPalerter and the RPKI monitoring. Lastly, Lia Histina described RIPE Atlas and RIS.

I went up to my room to get a break. At 18:30 I went down to the Social. It was crowded and screamingly noisy. There was a puppet show with Hanuman and Sita, but the noise and flashing lights made it unwatchable. I ate from the buffet, chatted Rona Jaber, who turned out to be Lebanese, obviously smart, and interesting. I hung out a bit with George and Massimo, went upstairs at eight o’clock, and was asleep by nine.

Wednesday 2024.02.28

I woke at 07:30. Breakfast was a bust; the congee was cold, there was no har gow, and so forth. I went to the APOps meeting and heard Geoff, Doug Madory, and Thomas Holterbach. I texted with Zita, who said she was a bit out of it was was going to sleep early (for her). I was then cornered by a German social researcher, Knoblauch, from TUM who wanted my view of the social physics of the various regions etc. At 12:30, Molly led the way for some of us to start an early lunch. At one, I went upstairs to try to nap but did not succeed.

At six o’clock I went up to the sixth floor to the BKNIX 10th Anniversary celebration. There were a fair number of folk from the years I had spent in Thailand. In one sense, it was yet another hotel function, in another a feeling of continuity and accomplishment. I had saved the cheap table napkin drawings of the BKNIX design from a decade ago, and Khun Pensri had them framed. And they seemed to be a big hit when I presented the frame to Khun Kanchana.

At eight o’clock, Khun Kanchana, Khun Pensri, Nan, Patama, Viraphan, Philip, and I went to Nahm, a fancy Michelin Thai restaurant and had a very nice meal. Sadly the acoustics made it hard to hear folk. We were back at the hotel by ten, and I managed to beg Nan to organize sending the various gifts I received by post so I did not have to carry them. I was asleep by eleven.

Thursday 2024.02.29

I woke at 03:30, dressed, checked mail, and packed. I was in the car at 4:30 and we were at Suvarnabhumi by five o’clock. I was fast tracked, so I was in the Thai lounge by 05:30. I had some baked rice and chestnut, and an Americano. And a second Americano. Zita was not answering texts which was worrisome.

At 06:35 I headed to the gate and queued to board. I was in my seat by 06:50. ANA 806 to Narita was a 787 DreamLiner in very spiffy shape. I think it was pretty full. We pushed exactly on time at 07:10 and were airborne at 07:27. I had the washoku meal which was quite good and, like the orderliness of the plane, made me realize how much i missed Japan. I read trashy SciFi and tried to stay awake; planning to sleep the transpac leg.

We landed at 14:25 on the back runway, so it was the long taxi. We docked next to transfer security. But I got hung there for 15 minutes while they found my pocket knife in my luggage. I need to remember that Narita Security costs me a pocket knife. The United Lounge was not crowded, but the upstairs Global/First was closed, it looked pretty permanently. Zita finally answered texts, and was feeling better.

I headed for the gate at 16:10. The lounge was right next to it and they were boarding Global, so I walked right on and took my seat and settled in. United 838 to San Francisco was a slightly used 777. We pushed at 17:00 and took off at 17:10. I read science fiction, and had the Japanese meal. After the AMA version, United was pretty pathetic. The mango mousse was good, so i had a second. I slept until they woke us an hour and a half out. The landing meal was no better than that of departure.

We landed pretty much on time, but had the typical San Francisco delay of 20 minutes. I zoomed through global entry. It’s a passport scan and picture ID now. They did not even have a baggage queue for declaring or not. I made it over to the global services entry through TSA pretty easily. I grabbed some sushi and headed for my departure gate, arriving on time for the schedule boarding. Then the captain came out to the gate area and said one of the lavs was broken and maintenance would fix it. Ten minutes later he came out and said they were deferring the maintenance and we could board. I was on board at 10:25, the scheduled departure time.

United 2669 was a funky and completely full 737-800. We pushed at 12:05, 30 minutes late. We taxied for a while. SFO was a mess we finally took off at 11:35. W landed at 12:50 and were at the gate at 12:55. I grabbed an Americano at the stand and summoned a Lyft. I waited at C and he texted from D, so I walked over. We were on the road by 13:20 and arrived home at 13:45.

A Road Trip to Bainbridge Island

The network had gone out on Bainbridge, so I went up to fix it.

Friday 2024.02.16

Zita left for piano, I packed. I took dirty laundry, as I was out of clean clothes and I could wash on Bainbridge. I said goodbye to Kaiby?, and left at 11:45. The car was 95% charged. I went into Northwest Portland to Tactics, and picked up the snowboard that Aaron had ordered. I left there at noon and headed North on I5.

I got to Chehalis at 13:15 with 45% charge and plugged into EVgo. I went into the Walmart to buy a cable modem, as my guess was the modem was the issue on Bainbridge. I had never seriously walked into a Walmart. It was as if one was in Amazon, infinite and with an endless array of things. And it was very real America, overweight people and all. I was happy to escape with my modem. Back at the car, at 75% the charging rate had dropped to 61 kW per hour; so I bailed at 80% which it hit 13:45; the cost was $14. And I was back on the road.

On Salma‘s recommendation I stopped at Burgerville, and saw a little bit more of America. I was back on the road at 14:10. There was was snow covered ground north of Chahalis most of the way to Olympia. I took the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I tried to charge in Poulsbo, but it was EA, half the chargers were out of commission, and the one available rejected me. I got an Americano at FourBucks and drove to Bainbridge. I stopped at HiLife to get a poke bowl, and got home by 16:40. 330km and the battery was at 26%. I plugged it in to 110v, started laundry, and went up to debug the internet.

The new modem I bought at Walmart while charging the car in Chehalis claimed to have all happy signals, and the router got a DHCP address from Comcast, in fact the same old one it had before the outage. But I could not ping the gateway address Comcast gave me or anywhere outside. From when I activated the Portland circuit, I had a phone number for Comcast Activation stashed, so called. The agent tried hard for almost an hour to activate the circuit and failed. Round and round. So I went back to the phone app. It wanted me to do the whole activation dance. I did it. It said bad modem. I told it to retry and went to fold laundry etc. I came back and I had internet!!! This was 21:15; four and a half hours.

I made it to bed by eleven. The bed was cold all night.

Saturday 2024.02.17

I woke at 08:30, dressed, and made coffee (I had brought beans with). We still had Internet! The Volvo was at 50%. Helen came over for coffee from ten to eleven. We gossiped about the Island, some things needing done on the house, and navigating bureaucracies. I had breakfast; having difficulty finding familiar things in the kitchen. I worked all afternoon, and gathered some books for Gus. I had “The American Practical Navigator” for Sam. I upgraded MacOS on my laptop!!

Left home at 4 o’clock to make the 16:40 ferry. The battery was at 56%. The ferry queue was backed up all the way on route 305; a major holiday queue. So I cheated did U-turn and jumped the queue. So I was up front for the 16:40 sailing, but the boat was running 15 to 20 minutes late.

We docked 20 minutes late and I drove to the restaurant. Turns out I should’ve left an extra 15 minutes for parking. But I still got there five minutes before Aaron, cat and Gus. We ate at Kilig a Philippine place that was good, but not highly repeatable. We were there from 6 o’clock till 19:45, then I gave them the snowboard, a bunch of books for Gus and a copy of the American Practical Navigator for Sam. I would’ve made the 8 o’clock ferry, except ferries were running late. I texted with Zita a bit. The eight o’clock ferry sailed at 20:45. We landed at nine o’clock and I was home by 21:20 with 42% charge.

Sunday 2024.02.18

I woke at 8:30, dressed, had breakfast and slowly packed up. At 10:45 I said goodbye to my home and left. The battery was at 62%. At noon I arrived at South Tacoma EVgo, with the battery at 27%. I had a difficult discussion with the charger, but eventually we worked it out. There was nothing useful in the area; Round Table Pizza was the most upscale offering. I wanted to make it all the way to Portland with spare so the computer told me to charge it to 86%.

At 13:40 I stopped at Chehalis to grab a FourBucks Americano and top off the charge at EVgo. It was at 61% but I wanted headroom when I got to Portland because Zita wanted to go to the ballet pretty immediately. I left at 1400: at battery level 77%. I arrived at our Portland Home at 15:30 with 25% battery, exactly as the car had predicted.

Rome for RIPE87

Saturday 2023.11.25

I really needed to go to the RIPE 87 meeting in Rome. So, despite serious qualms leaving Zita, I took my second trip in almost four years. I had pretty much packed the previous afternoon, and just had small details. I said goodbye to Zita who was asleep.

The Lyft picked me up at 06:10. It was just freezing, and the road was not great. We made it to the airport by 06:35, and I was through to the United Lounge by 06:50. I was also trying to deal with the mess in Seattle, vm4.sea.rg.net had reported memory errors, so I was evacuating it. I headed to the gate at 07:10, and boarded. United 163 to Newark was a completely full 737max. We took a delay at our scheduled departure time, and actually pushed after 08:20 an took off at 08:30. During the delay, the CO2 meter climbed to over 5,000! Once in the air, I could not sign in to the WiFi!

I had the breakfast, slept for a couple of hours, and then worked a bit. But it was hard without WiFi. What was weird is that I received a Signal chat or two. We landed at Dulles about 15:50. I went to the D lounge as my next flight was on D and it was a long walk to the Polaris Lounge. The CO2 was 1,700; not bad. And I could get a bit of WiFi. People were still on holiday, I guess; not much traffic. I texted Katen, and Zita was not answering her texts. I asked her to go over and check physically. I was sitting near a bunch of immunologists en route a conference in Cape Town. After one left, the woman to my left whispered that he had a Nobel.

At 17:20 I left the lounge and headed to the gate. This time I wanted to board last to minimize my time in high CO2. They were waiting for me, and it was ten minutes before United app told me boarding would end. I was embarrassed. And, to top it off, the CO2 on board was 994; good ventilation. United 884 to Roma Fiumicino was a 767-400. They closed the door at 17:40, pushed at 17:50, and wheels up was at 18:10. The WiFi worked! Katen had woken Zita and fed her some oatmeal. Zita texted me a bit. I had the dinner, almost a Japanese fish, sauteed mushrooms, asparagus, salad, and carrot cake. The WiFi was extremely sluggish and would drop ssh tunnels.

Sunday 2023.11.27

I had the fritata breakfast. We landed at 08:25, walked to immigration, which was a computer gate. It wanted to argue with me, but we both survived. I was out and in a local taxi to the Sheraton Roma Parco de’ Medici in 20 minutes. The taxi tried to rip me off for €50 and I gave him €20. I could not check in, and they wanted to put me in the 1km distant secondary anyway. So I went to the lounge where Sandra found me and said she would fix it. I hung out talking with, well listening to, Hisham until 13:30 when I checked in. When I went to shower, I found out that the hot water did not make it all the way down to my room. I had cold showers the entire time.

I cleaned up some email and then went down and played social. At maybe 18:30, Mirjam and I went to the Cinema Mall 200m down the road and has mediocre paste and pizza. Then back to the hotel. I made it to bed by ten.

Monday 2023.11.27

I was awake from 04:00 to 06:00 and then woke to the alarm at 08:00. I was cold, and the shower was tepid at best. I went down to breakfast at 09:00 and sat with Mirjam, Daniel, and other old dogs. Cristel showed at ten. After breakfast, we tried to work, but I was fried with jet lag and too much espresso. I napped from eleven to 12:30 and then went down for lunch. I realized that I was being overwhelmed by the number of people and the feeling that they all wanted something from me. This was bit ego-centric. At 13:30 I headed to the plenary hall to get some good seats up front at a table. Maz found me and we hugged a lot. I really missed him and Iz.

At 02:30, I had to give my presentation on the RIR Social Contract. It seemed to be well received. I spent the break saying hi to Maz and chatting with Mirjam and fending off folk who wanted to talk politics after my talk. Then was awarded the Rob Blokzjil Award, run my Jan and Franziska. And I gave a short talk about Rob and wanting to grow up like he. Then we hung out for the rest of the final plenary session. Hung out and chatted in the break, and I worked through the BoF and BCOP session.

Maz, Cristel, her post-doc Thomas and I found the evening social, but it was way too loud to talk. We tried to go to the hotel restaurant, but it was not open. So we walked to the Cinema complex and ate at the same pizzaria at which Mirjam and I had eaten the previous eve. I had the carbonara. The food was no better than the previous eve; at least it was cheap. We were back at the hotel by 21:30. I requested a blanket be sent to my room, and went up to check Slack, email, and journal the day. I was asleep by 22:15.

Tuesday 2023.11.28

I woke at two AM to read of the Dallas cluster being hosed. I dealt with that and then called United to move my flight up to Thursday. I chatted with Katen a bit. I finally made it back to sleep at five, and slept to the alarm at 07:45. I had breakfast with some NCC friends and Cristel. I spent half an hour trying to get flowers delivered to Sandra Gisen of the NCC who had the meeting organization dumped on her and had been very helpful. I went to the Plenary Session. At about 09:45, the network went wonky. When the NOCcers are on their phones, it is not a good sign. The day was all Plenary presentations of varying quality.

At 15:30, the Code of Conduct team met for half an hour. The only issue was an informal whine that a large Eastern European male had been rude to event staff. I had a chat with him, likely only marginally successful. Then the Measurement WG met, and it had useful content.

Mirjam, Cristel, and I escaped for a real dinner. We took a taxi into Rome and ate at Ristorante Babette, a quite and semi fancy place for which we were under-dressed. But they treated us very well and we had a really tasty meal. I had a seafood soup that was wonderful, and lamb chops which were quite good. We shared a plate of cut fruits for dessert. Food is quite affordable in Roma; and we escaped for about €50 each. They called a taxi for our return to the burbs, which turned out to be a bit complex as a major football match was ending. We got back to the hotel quite late, and I was asleep by around 23:00.

Wednesday 2023.11.29

I woke at 02:30, worked a bit, finally made it to sleep at 06:30, and woke to the alarm at 07:45. The morning was the Address Policy WG, and I wandered in and out of it. Cristel, Thomas, and I had a walk and talk through the olive trees and grass and sun, and talked BGP signaling.

Lunch was the usual somewhat organised chaos followed by a chat with Arnold Nipper to fish for a job, but he did not bite. Then more BGP research discussions, the CoC break meeting, which was quite boring which is good, and then the General Meeting. I complained that the voting email had a one pixel tracker.

I said goodbye to folk, chatted with Hans Peter a bit, and went up to my room and ordered room service. I was fried. Zita chatted me up and said she had to catch Marsh for a vet appointment the next day. I packed mostly, and was asleep by ten.

Thursday 2023.11.30

I woke at 02:30, worked until four, and slept until the alarm at 06:15. There was hot water for the shower!! I finished packing and cleared the room by 06:50. Zita reported she was fine and was amazed how much rabbit poop there was every day. Check out was easy, and the taxi arrived in four minutes as seemed to be mandated. Check-in, security, and passport control were almost walk through. Finding the lounge was a major issue. I could not find it before the train, and the one out on the concourse was closed. So I took the train back and went through another baggage security. I ate too much honeydew melon because it was ripe and tasty. At 09:05 I took the train back out to the gate and waited to board pretty much last.

United 41 to Newark was a 777-200, which felt slightly less roomy then the 767 on the way out. I settled in and watched “The Matrix” which I had never seen. It seemed overly violent and a bit dated; the latter a bit odd for a 1999 film. I then slept until awakened for the landing meal, probably six hours later. We landed about 13:45. The Global Entry line was messy. I took the train to Terminal C and went through Security, though TSA Pre was a bit of a line. I was settled in the Polaris lounge by 14:40, got an Americano and a glass of water, and decided to get on WiFi. Katen was thinking of cat sitting in London for Christmas, and was worried that Salma’s passport only had six months on it.

At 15:00 i headed for the gate, and boarded at 15:10. The jetway was full and uncomfortable due to lack of ventilation. But I made it and settled into my seat. United 2107 was a 737max and completely full. We pushed at 17:30 and I fell asleep to waken for the landing which was half an hour early. As I only had carry-on, I managed a quick exit to the new transit area to meet Lyft, and was home by 21:00. I unpacked and then slept the whole night.

A Dagstuhl Seminar on 40 Years of the Internet

Sumday 2023.04.30

I was invited to a Dagstuhl on 40 Years of the Internet. Zita felt well enough to go to LA to hang with her friend Joan, go to Disneyland, and maybe Joshua Tree. So I felt comfortable leaving home; though it was very strange after over three years. Katen agreed to take care of Kaiby? and Dr. Marsh.

I ate breakfast, finished packing, said my goodbyes, and caught a Lyft at 009:00 for a 10:47 flight. There was a non-trivial toileting adventure as I arrived at the airport and found the closest bathrooms closed. TSA was trivial and I went directly to my flight.

United 478 to Denver was a somewhat used A320 and looked totally full. The doors closed at 10:30 and we took off at 10:50. My seat laptop power did not work, but luckily my neighbor’s did. The in-flight WiFi was a pain, but finally worked. The lunch was not hot enough, but not worth reheating because it was distastefully salty. So I ate mostly salad and bread. It was not as if I lacked food.

We landed at 14:00, 20 minutes early. I had to take the train to the A Concourse and walk down to Gate A25. The WiFi was excellent. I sat around and cleared backlog until we boarded at 14:15. It took me ten minutes to nest and put everything away. I jacked my phone into power using a USB condom and plugged my laptop into power. At 14:45, they closed the doors.

United 182 to Frankfurt was a 787 DreamLiner and looked full. I had a beef dinner, hoping it would sit well. The WiFi was OK and I got some stuff done. I managed maybe an hour of sleep and tried to watch crappy movies and failed, watching bits of three. Eventually I had the egg breakfast and two cups of coffee. I had not heard from Zita since she was soon to land in Los Angeles. But it was late there.

Monday 2023.05.02

We landed at 09:00. But despite promises of a Z gate, we were dumped at a remote stand and bussed to A. The walk to the Z hall was quite long and then there was a 15 minute Zoll queue. Then the long walk to the Bahnhof ticket queue. I bought my tickets and was down at the track by 10:00 for the 10:23. I guess an hour from touchdown to the train platform was pretty good actually.

The 10:23 was on time, I grabbed my seat, and we were off. The train had no WiFi but it was 01:30 back in the States anyway. A text from Zita came through and she was at Joan’s, OK, but with a delicate tummy.

The train was fast. Two hours and 15 minutes. We got to Skt Wendel at 12:35. But I just missed the next bus. And I forgot that it was 1 May, a national holiday. So the next bus was in two hours. I called four different taxi companies, and finally got one that would come in 20 minutes . He was right on time and charged a lot. But we got to Schloss Dagstuhl by 13:50. But they would not open until 3 o’clock, so I grabbed some tonic water, sat outside for a bit, and then went in and found a bunch of the gang hanging out having cake. So I stayed there until 3 o’clock. I checked into my room, did my laundry, and napped while doing it. 18:00 I went to dinner which was dominated by John Crowcroft, which could have been worse. At 20:00 I crashed out.

Tuesday 2023.05.02

I mostly slept until 07:30!! Zita seemed to have done really well at Disneyland. I had breakfast and coffee. The meeting started at 09:00 with half an hour of administrivia. Then all the important people introduced themselves and their prejudices. This occupied the entire day. Somehow they dropped my deck into the Saar, so I did not get my turn. All day it was the same old same old. I was appalled. So, after dinner, I went and hung out with the parallel Seminar, which was on Secure Software Development.

Wednesday 2023.05.03

I did not hear from Zita all night, and she did not respond to texts. So I started to worry. I woke early and got out of bed at 06:15, showered, got coffee, and cleaned up email. I texted the friend Zita was visiting, Joan Levine, also no response. Finally, at eleven, Zita texted and she was fine.

The seminar spent the morning listening to Geoff expounding of where we failed and a bit of the lessons we could extract. At 11:00 we broke into sub-groups, but I took a 3/4 hour nap and joined the Security break-out group. At 12:15 we all met at the chapel for the formal picture and moved to lunch.

Somehow serious lactose must have sneaked in the lunch, as the result was a theme of my afternoon. After lunch, the Security team could no longer stand the construction next to the meeting room so moved to the main building. The whole group followed st 14:30. We met through the afternoon. Olaf did a stand-up on the governance and government funding history, and Henning the economic and governance aspects of running a network today.

At 18:45 we bundled into cars and taxis to go to dinner. I was in Erik Huizer’s Tesla, which was interesting to compare to my new Volvo. We went to a really nice but local and not pretentious place, Landgasthof Paulus, in Nonnweiler. Evidently it had quite the cellar, but I did not indulge.

The dinner, on the other hand, was not pretentious but delicious. We made it back to Dagstuhl by 21:45 and I was asleep by 22:15.

Thursday 2023.05.04

Zita woke me with a text at 01:00. She was bailing LA early and was on a plane home. This worried me, so I asked if she was OK. No answer until she woke me again at 06:20. She seemed OK. I gave up sleeping, dressed, got coffee, cleared email, and went over to breakfast at 07:30. At 09:00, we began the final half day with Henning on how we develop protocols until 10:45. Then coffee and then trying to summarize. Zita chatted me and sent selfies. There was an exercise with half a dozen subjects: Principles, Blockers, … and people pinned cards on the boards.

Then we went to lunch. The usual last comments and goodbyes. I went to my room and took a nap. Then, when things had calmed down, I went to the front desk, arranged a taxi for the morning, checked out, and grabbed a covid test. I tested negative, and then chatted with Mirjam about RIPE 86 and other RIPE stuff. I managed to clear a bit of the backlog. At 18:00 I went over for dinner and was seated with young folk who were at a seminar about machine learning in chemical engineering and chemical plant processes. Dinner was spargel, shinken, kartoffelen, and a pumpkin/coffee ice. For me it was a quite nice final meal. I worked until ten and went to sleep worrying about the 10c cold waiting for the train in Türkismühle the next morning at 07:30.

Friday 2023.05.05

I woke at 5:45 dressed, and packed. I checked email, and the damn circuit in Seattle, was flaky again. I went over to the kitchen and got the lunch they had packed for me. It looked pretty serious. I texted with Zita a bit, and she was ready to go back to LA. At 6:45 taxi ride to take me to Türkismühle. We were quite early, so I got to sit in the 10° cold for half an hour. It was not as bad as I feared it would be.

I caught 07:33 direct train to Frankfurt, flughafen. It was pretty empty at the start, but people kept boarding as we proceeded along. I ate my two sandwiches, one schinken, and one cheese, ate the apple, and even ate the bad candy bar. I stayed awake for the whole ride. We arrived Frankfurt at 9:45. I was through passport control and security and in the Lufthansa lounge by 10:05 and trying to look at the Seattle fiber issue.

The network in the Lufthansa lounge sucked badly. On the other hand, they still had shinken out. So I had a roll with shinken and kaas and a small diluted espresso.

Though we landed 35 minute early, we spent those 35 minutes waiting for a gate. Classic SFO. I walked through Global Entry and to the Global Services entry to domestic. They could not squeeze me on the earlier flight. So I walked over to the classic lounge by F1 and settled in a chair by the empty entry area which felt saner than the crowded main part of the club. The club WiFi sucked, but i managed to confirm that Chris and Matthew had really cleaned up the SIX fiber into r2.sea.

A Drive Up to Seattle for the Westin to KOMO Plaza Move

Friday 2023.04.21

I left home reluctantly at 10:20. I got straight on the freeway Northbound, and pretty much drove at 70 miles an hour all the way to Federal Way, where there was a big Electrify America five charger station. I was at 26%, but I had to wait 35 minutes for a charger to clear. There was a repair guy fixing one of the chargers. The chargers had two cables each, but only one could be used at a time. I went to the store nearby to use the toilet. I don’t think I had ever been in a Walmart before. It was gigantic and basic feeling. The charging station repairman wanted to work on my charger. so I did not take a full charge, leaving at at 66%. It was charging at 70 kW/h. For some reason it was free?!!

Katen went to see Zita, and reported geting oatmeal and tea down her. And Z woke and came down. For me, I5 got slow to stopped as we hit the curves South of Seattle. At a sudden stop, someone tried to read-end me, but they swerved into another lane. I reached KOMO Plaza at 14:15. There was parking out front; oh, I think for the Space Needle across the street.

It took a few minutes to find the right building, and to get Matthew and Sammy to come let me in. I got badged and learned to work all the doors. Then I got the tour and saw the new rack. I was back out by 1500, and drove to the ferry. Construction on Alaska way was crazy. I queued up at 15:15 for the 15:50 sailing. While on the boat I ordered gindara from Hi Life and picked it up as I drove off.

I arrived home before five, on 52% battery. I ate the gindara but didn’t much like it, too much fermented brown sauce. I found Salma’s disappearing jacket and texted a picture of it to her, unpacked a bit. and cleaned the easiest up email. The old NetGear router for Bainbridge had been failing intermittently. I had brought a new Ubiquity ERX router and Access Point, so I installed them. I had forgotten I needed a switch, so the printer was left unconnected. In the process, I had to power cycle the modem, so Comcast gave us a new IP address, resulting in a couple of hours of reconfiguring all the RGnet devices that had Bainbridge in their filters.

Saturday 2023.04.22

The rack and stack crew wanted to start at 10 o’clock. So I figured he 08:45 boat, which meant I got up at seven. I made coffee, dressed, cleaned up the morning email, and was out of the house by 7:45. The car had charged to 75%. I made it up the driveway without spilling my of coffee. I went to Blackbird Bakery and got a veggie pie, and a downtowner, of course. I sat in the ferry queue, and made the 8:45 easily. I was early in the queue, but the boat filled up.

I arrived at the Westin rack by 09:40, and jacked in. I took pictures of the rack just in case. Then I started turning down the Ganeti cluster while waiting for Mike and Shaun. They did not show until 10:20, and i shut psg.com down. The rack was empty by 11:30. We loaded Shaun’s car and I followed him over to KOMO but he lost me in the garage. Then we had a half hour of badges not opening external doors and Shaun being locked in the freight elevator. So, at 12:50 we decided to have lunch. Rack and stack guys do not have the most discriminating taste. We had bad gyros at the place in front of the plaza. The coffee next door was not great but it helped.

Finally, at 13:40 we went up and started racking. The lack of labeling as we un-racked was a pain. They had to remove the vertical power bars to get in at least one of the 2RU switches. This did not bode well for getting things out. The whole afternoon I was praying that all the antique spinning rust would not break with all the physical whacking as well as just being powered off and then back on. The rolling table I was using as a desk was labeled INAP. Abha used to work for INAP. Made me sad.

We finished racking all devices by 16:15, they took a 15 minute break, and then did the power cabling which took an hour. We had a bit of a chat with Matthew from Evocative on the issue that both power bars were on the same primary, so if one fell over the other would overload. It would take major electrical work, switching to 208VAC, new power bars and cords, etc.

Then on to serial console cables to the o0.sea.rg.net terminal server. We managed to get a couple of servers connected that had been missing consoles. But we could not get serial control of the free donated by Evocative power bars because they were so old they had RJ11 serials instead of RJ45. This meant that I could not configure the power bars for TCP remote access. Mike and Shaun said that had some back at the Westin and would put them in some time in the future.

They moved on to ether cabling.

The fiber runs from the SIX to r1.sea and r2.sea did not come up. They worked until about eight o’clock and left me to try and debug the SIX connections. Chris, the SIX engineer was off for the evening. Neither the ArcOS nor the Juniper would come up. I debugged for an hour with some help from Vijay at Arrcus, but no love.

At 21:15, I gave up and sprinted for the 21:40 sailing. The sprint was quite unnecessary, as the boat was running 30 minutes late. I was second car from the front, and the spray was pretty serious although the water seemed calm. I had not eaten since the half of the bad lunch, so went to the Safeway when we landed and got a tolerable tuna salad sandwich. I was home by 23:10, plugged in the car which was at 63%, and ate my sandwich.

At that point, r1.sea connectivity came up. Chris from the SIX had hacked. But r2.sea fiber was bad. psg.com was dead in the water, as was vm2.sea, which Mike had replaced a disk without coordinating with me. So, i headed for bed with r2.sea fiber bad, and psg.com and vm2.sea both needing to be dealt with via crash cart in the morning.

Sunday 2023.04.23

I woke at 05:30 because I could not sleep. I left home at 10:30 to make the 11:35 ferry. The car was at 80%. I stopped at Blackbird’s for a veggie pie, and was in the ferry queue by 10:55. While I was in the queue, Rob found the problem with psg.com, the CMOS battery was dead. He rebooted through it, and the system came up. In the meantime Hans found at least one wiring problem. So I would’ve had to go to the city anyway.

I got to KOMO at like 12:30 and went up and jacked in. Rob had gotten psg.com up. So I dragged a crash cart to vm2. It turned out it just needed some friend on the console so it would boot. That was in my notes but I forgotten it. Mike had not checked the DRDB cables all the way to vm1, so I fixed that problem. About two o’clock, Matthew showed up and thought we should work on the fiber. He was painstakingly slow and talkative. He took detailed notes that I can not imagine he will ever use. So I was stuck there for almost two more hours. On the other hand, we figured out that the r2.sea port and the SFP we’re both bad. So we put the 10G SIX fiber on a different port, and things kind of worked. I ordered a new SFP and finally made it out at about 15:45.

About a kilometer away was supposed to be and EVgo charging at Whole Foods, so I went there, taking three turns around the block to find it, and went down to the basement, parked and jacked in. It didn’t look to be that fast. But I had it at 72% and wanted to get above 90. I got some bad food at Whole Foods, a two not entirely bad samosas, two hard boiled eggs, some asparagus, and a little barbecue chicken. I ate them in the car while it was eating its dinner. I got out of charging and Whole Foods at 5 o’clock 95% charged took five minutes to get to the freeway Southbound.

I negotiated with the car’s Google-based app to charge in Chehalis. There was a row of empty EVgo fast chargers and a row of Tesla chargers, all empty. I charged so that the car’s app told me that we would arrive home over 20%, and I headed back South. I got home at 20:10, unpacked, did some mandatory chores, and crashed shortly after nine o’clock.