iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 30/09/2025

I always think about it in terms of that Jedi bell curve meme - there are two kinds of Simple. Simplicity on the left of the diagram is naive - it hasn't yet reckoned with the domain's true complexity. Simplicity on the right side is elegant - it acknowledges the complexity, but has distilled it.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 08/09/2025

Before AI: chop wood, carry water. After AI: chop wood, carry water.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 23/06/2025

I always swore that I would never buy a minivan, but I gave in and bought an Urban Arrow Family this weekend. I've wanted a front-loader for a decade - they always seemed prohibitively expensive, but came across this one for 50% off and had to do it. 24 miles so far with both kids, we LOVE it.

A cargo bike inside a bike shop. The bike is a white Urban Arrow Family electric-assist front-loading model, with front of bike to left of image.

A bike rack outside the Nelson-Atkins art museum. A white cargo bike is locked to the bike rack. Two children are sitting in the bike's cargo box, with helmets on and backs to the camera. Blue sky in the background with a few clouds.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 27/05/2025

Changed my handle from @me.nzen.ski to @menzen.ski - the @me subdomain was fun for a while, but I think it makes more sense to use my actual website as my handle here.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 16/05/2025

Very happy that #KansasCity took away a traffic lane on Gregory Blvd between Troost and the Paseo and added a wide sidewalk where there hadn't been one at all before. Yay for traffic calming and yay for all the new walking and scootering routes it opens up for me and my kidns.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 12/05/2025

The most important skillset you can bring to platform engineering work is neither "dev" nor "ops". It is "talking to your users".

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 06/05/2025

I have one! menzen.ski (and I’m actually working on a new post right now, I promise!)

menzen.ski

Rarefied Err

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 03/05/2025

If you see this, post your getaway vehicle

A bicycle leaning against a tree in a forest next to a gentle singletrack trail. The bike is facing to the right and has front and rear racks and several bags on it. It also has headlights and fenders, and a water bottle.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 03/05/2025

I HAD VISIONS I WAS IN THEM 🎶 I WAS LOOKING INTO THE MIRROR 🎶

Julie Andrews with an acoustic guitar singing to a group of children on the mountainside in SOUND OF MUSIC

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 03/05/2025

Parenting is one big, years-long, lesson in letting go. That thing you think is important is actually not important, and you learn this over and over and over again for years.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 02/05/2025

Zuck: the average American has three friends

Still frame from the movie The Big Lebowski. The Dude (left), Walter (right), and Donny (middle, background) are seated in a bowling alley and are looking incredulously to something to the left of the scene.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 25/04/2025

The thing about productivity in a family context is that it has to be in service of the family, not of the individual. If one partner works and one partner doesn’t, but they approach productivity in that kind of shared sense, I have no issue with it.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 25/04/2025

Tired of reading productivity advice from single people with no kids.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 07/03/2025

I know everyone says "change tech jobs every two years" but let me tell you, getting to do the end-of-life for things that you built eight years ago is incredibly satisfying work. If you change jobs often you miss out on a lot of learning opportunities that only come with time.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 18/02/2025

New blog post menzen.ski/posts/2025/0... This one is for the Content Club organized by @bryanross.me in the CNCF Slack. Our February 2025 theme is "Team Topologies in the Real World". (Bryan and @stevefenton.co.uk have also written posts for this, I've linked theirs at the end of mine here).

menzen.ski

On Team Topologies and Deep Work: Delivering Value at Large Scale and Small Scale

This post is part of the Content Club, organized by Bryan Ross. The theme for February 2025 is “Team Topologies in the Real World”. Links to other posts in this group are at the end of this post. I co...

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 18/02/2025

Reverse Conway Manoeuvres In The Dark

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Reposted by Matt Menzenski

Salena @salena.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

I was led to believe by R.E.M. that I would feel a lot better about this.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 31/01/2025

I think I’ve been using it for like 17 years or something at this point 😳

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 30/01/2025

Yeah it’s awful. All my 3yo wants to listen to are the theme songs to “paw patrol” and “blaze and the monster machines”. Those aren’t on Spotify kids but are on regular Spotify. It doesn’t make any sense.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 30/01/2025

We have Spotify family and the kids have kid accounts, but Spotify Kids doesn’t have all the songs they like 😔

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 29/01/2025

I keep having to move helmCharts blocks out of a base and into an overlay and that feels like such a bad thing to do 😫

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 29/01/2025

The intersection of Kustomize and Helm is an amazingly frustrating place to do work. Each of these tools, on their own, is fine, but I'm not having any fun at all when they're used together.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 27/01/2025

TIL that while I can exclude my kids' music choices from my Spotify profile, they still get included in my last.fm scrobbles 😫

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 24/01/2025

All I'm asking for is rich metadata applied consistently to every resource in every piece of software I interact with, ever, the ability to query those resources by that metadata easily, and the ability to add my own metadata. Is that so much to ask?

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 17/01/2025

Also zero points, and I’m not even that old! oh… oh no…

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 17/01/2025

We use ArgoCD with kustomize but once in a while I have to reference a helm chart

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 17/01/2025

indentation issues in helm values.yaml files are going to be the death of me

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 16/01/2025

I don’t know what a Zoom Room is and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 16/01/2025

Whoa, I had no idea that conversions were a thing. Unsurprising, though, in hindsight - thank you!

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 16/01/2025

Originally yes, but I believe typewriters have solved that problem by now

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 16/01/2025

I really want a Dvorak typewriter

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 15/01/2025

Post a picture of yourself from a different era (me in fall 2010 after a 120 mile fixed gear ride)

A man standing next to a bicycle. He is leaning and sort of sitting on the top tube of it. He is wearing a black cycling cap with cycling sunglasses on the brim, a black and red cycling jersey unzipped to show a white t-shirt undeneath, and grey cycling pants which are longer than shorts but shorter than pants. The bike is a brown Surly Cross-Check fixed gear, with a large front disk brake, a rear rack with panniers, and bullhorn bars with a headlight on them. He is in a residential neighborhood on a nice day - a house and garden are visible in the background. He looks kind of tired, like he just did a long ride on the bike.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 15/01/2025

Turtle guy just walking back and forth

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 14/01/2025

When you receive one of your favorite books in the mail to your home address, but you don't remember ordering it (and can't find any order in your email), and you don't think any of the people who know it's a favorite of yours have your home address... hmm.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 10/01/2025

I know exactly what you mean

A young girl in winter clothing (purple hat, pink mittens, black coat, black snow pants, boots) jumping on a small trampoline that is covered in a dusting of snow.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 09/01/2025

Fair! I went back to IC from Sr EM so am not a good example 😅

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 09/01/2025

Classic L David Marquet, “push authority to information”

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 08/01/2025

As a data engineer working downstream of a mostly-Java platform, I love this

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Reposted by Matt Menzenski

leon @leyawn.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

where does the new york times even find these people

A screenshot of a New York Times update that says: In Grand Central Terminal, Leon Chang, 26, of Brooklyn, said he had not heard of congestion pricing and asked what it was. When explained it was a toll for cars entering Manhattan, he then asked “What do you mean? What is a car?” Walking outside, we showed him a vehicle parked on the street. He gently touched the hood of the car. “You wish to forbid these majestic beasts from entering the city,” he said in a wistful tone. “It is a folly of man. The desire to tame the world around us.”

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 05/01/2025

Love the term “data exhaust”, haven’t heard that before. It makes a nice analogy with global warming…

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 02/01/2025

And the LAUNCHPAD 😍😍😍

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 02/01/2025

@dagster.io really is just awesome. Especially loving all the metadata/visibility it provides above and beyond actually running jobs and materializing assets.

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 30/12/2024

Looks great! I did our kitchen two years ago with the same cabinets (in blue).

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 30/12/2024

FWIW @matthewskelton.bsky.social is an imposter, please do not follow or engage. I've reported this account for impersonation. (Matthew Skelton's real account is @matthewskelton.com )

bsky.app

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Matt Menzenski @menzen.ski · 29/12/2024

Encounter with Tiber by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes. Hard sci-fi set in the recent past/near future, coauthored by a real Apollo astronaut! It’s awesome and I think it’s criminally under-known.

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