What I'm Up To Now

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This is my now page, inspired by Derek Sivers. Consider it a snapshot of my current adventures in engineering, life, and the whatever in between.

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Current Focus

Right now I’m hands-on with the AI-powered Observability pattern coming out of AWS re:Invent, pulling real signals (metrics, logs, events) from Kubernetes tooling, then letting an AI agent explain failures, correlate what matters, and recommend next steps with traceability.

I’m particularly interested in how this shifts SRE teams susceptible to reactive triage into proactive deployment safety — fewer noisy alerts, faster diagnosis, and clearer decisions before production gets hurt.

  • Post-deploy validation: run automated health checks after release and generate a concise AI summary of what changed and what to monitor.
  • Signal correlation across silos: stitch metrics, logs, traces, and events into one narrative — replacing ten dashboards and a 40-minute war room.
  • “Explain the failure” automation: convert raw errors into clear root-cause hypotheses and practical remediation steps for responders.
  • Predictive recommendations: move from “what happened?” to “what’s likely next?” with confidence levels and evidence attached.

Active Projects

  • 🚀 GenAI Incident Companion

    Investigating ways to turn raw metrics, logs and traces into a human-readable narrative to explain what is happening and why, and what to do next.

  • 📚 Unkubed — a Kubernetes Teaching Aide

    I'm building a Flask-powered app that mirrors every Kubernetes UI action with the exact kubectl command, YAML, and troubleshooting context so learners and beginners can safely explore a cluster.

Currently Learning or Reading

  • Golang (for when Python and Bash are failing me, or I am failing them)
  • System design patterns for distributed systems
  • Vibe Coding by Gene Kim & Steve Yegge — why intent and flow increasingly matter, and how to position yourself in an increasingly AI-driven world
  • The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin — challenging our strategic approaches with integrative thinking and looking past the 'either/or'

Life Outside the "Five Nines" of Reliability

When I manage to switch off from Engineering and Leadership (rare, but it happens), you'll find me:

  • Camping and Hiking — enjoying some of the wonderful scenery of California
  • I enjoy reading history novels, as close as we can get to time travel right now
  • Tinkering with home automation: spending 6 hours configuring things to save 15 seconds a day!