Seasoned systems engineers may remember the time when a cloud was something everyone ignored on a network diagram. It was a time when applications ran on electrified metal and we all knew where our machines lived. In a closet at the end of the corridor. We stopped ignoring the clouds when they brought us data centers on demand along with our bosses’ excitement for saving money.

I discovered an undocumented feature in my wifi-capable, portable document scanner: It can upload scanned documents, such as unsolicited love letters, via a webhook. Implementing the server side of the webhook was a nice afternoon project.

A few days ago my wife and I visited the Teide Observatory on the volcano island of Tenerife. We learned about the donkey’s belly cloud-blocking weather phenomenon that makes the Teide national park the perfect place for stargazing. Yesterday, after sunset, we jumped into our tiny rental car and drove into the Teide crater for some astrophotography.