iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 29/11/2025

I got a new kitten today!!! I'm so excited! He's 5 months old and was named Spirit. I like the name so I think we'll keep it but we'll see what my kid says when he gets home. 💖😁😹

A photo of a young gray and white kitten being petted while sitting on a black computer chair.

150

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 25/08/2025

I love this quote, "weird is a relative, not absolute term" in Robert Asprin's Myth Directions I've always found this to be so true...

A quote that says weird is a relative, not absolute term. The text is over an image of the character Megamind

010

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 14/08/2025

Not exactly a "cute" pic but it's the most recent one I have. The one on the left is Sunny and the right is Emma. Sorry you got bad news...

A photo of two dogs. One is yellow and one is white. Both are medium sized. They are both looking up at the camera.

110

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 05/08/2025

But once you're outside the Matrix you don't get real quality steaks!

A photo of Morpheus from the movie The Matrix who is a black man wearing a black trench coat and black sunglasses holding out his hands with a red pill and a blue pill in each hand.

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 03/07/2025

"Can you tell me how many times I’ll have to remind myself, or relearn what I can do, before I believe it without question?" Godz this resonates with me and my self-worth/imposter syndrome struggles. Suddenly my reading has turned into self introspection...

The quote Can you tell me how many times I’ll have to remind myself, or relearn what I can do, before I believe it without question? By C.E. Murphy written over a forest scene with the sun rising in the background

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 30/06/2025

I've been reading "Urban Shaman" by @cemurphy.bsky.social the last few days. I'm really excited to have a new series and author to read. Even though it's just the first book in the series I'm hooked.

An image of the book cover art for Urban Shaman by C. E. Murphy. It has a woman with dark hair in a white shirt with a blue jean jacket with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, leaning on a mystical sword in her right hand. She is wearing dark blue jean pants. She has a "bad ass" stare in her eyes. In the background appears to be a circlet of crystal shards above a Seattle cityscape. I'm not sure what the ground is but I think it is clouds. The scenery has a dream-like feel to it but unlike the rest, the woman is solid and looks more real than the rest.

2183

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 15/06/2025

Happy Father's Day. Miss you Dad.

An image of a rocky beach with the quote Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken? by Terry Pratchett

070

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 12/06/2025

When will Google let you disable their shitty AI search results they are firing people to fund?!? GenAI is not a fact sourcing system and never will be.

A Google search for "how many songs have ever bseen made?" with the AI results of "While there's no definitive count of al songs ever created, estimates suggest there are approximately 2 million songs throughout history. However, the number of songs available for listening is much"

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 02/06/2025

Happy Pride Month everyone!

A slightly blurry pride flag in the background of two hands, one white, one brown, making a heart shape. It is an actual photo.

031

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 21/05/2025

OMG this game is a nailbiter! Top of the 4th and the score is 3-3.

A photo of a highschool male baseball batter watching the baseball cross the plate (strike) with the ball in the strike zone, the catcher about to catch the ball and the umpire behind him.

100

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 18/05/2025

Woohoo! I can't believe it. The kid's high school baseball team (Concord High School) made the NCS baseball playoffs (Division V). He'll be the starting pitcher for the game. I'm so proud and excited! www.mercurynews.com/2025/05/18/n...

A teenage male pitching a baseball. He is wearing a green uniform shirt, green hat, and white baseball pants. The ball is mid air on the way to the plate. In the background are 2 other baseball players wearing the same uniform.

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 18/05/2025

When you accidentally hit "update" while on a crappy wifi connection instead of "play" and have to wait 23min to play a game when you only have 30 minutes until you need to leave... arg!

A screenshot of a Steam game download status showing the download speed is only 9.4Mbps and it will take 23 minutes to finish downloading the game update.

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 14/05/2025

Finally got a new BBQ today. I'm excited to be able to BBQ again; it's been about 9 months now. Going to do some ny steak, corn on the cob, sauteed mushrooms, and twice baked potatoes for dinner. Tomorrow will probably be some sort of chicken.

Photo of my new Weber Genesis II BBQ. It is chrome with a tray on the left, a side burner on the right, 4 main burners, and a closet beneath. It has black trim/molding. There is a temperature gauge in the middle of the lid.

120

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 11/04/2025

Never more true than when someone drops a PR that is both massively large & complicated but also fixes & cleans up something that has been bugging me for ages...

A screenshot shot of a tweet by @yeeeerika with the words "I have feelings for you but you have to guess which ones"

010

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 09/04/2025

Which photo is more realistic of my true feelings from the top of the London Eye?

A photo of me with a look of fear on my face like I'm screaming from the top of the London Eye

A photo of my smiling (sort of) from the top of the London Eye with Big Ben and Westminster Abbey below in the background

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 09/04/2025

Had a wonderful breakfast this morning at a place called De Vine (maps.app.goo.gl/ZVumWtQPJocW...). Best English breakfast I've had all trip. Way too much food but what I could eat was delicious.

A photo of my breakfast with 2 fried eggs, bacon, an English sausage, baked beans, sliced mushrooms, thick cut French fries, and white toast.

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 08/04/2025

OMG this panel resonates with me. Only thing missing is the US internment camps during WWII. Things have rushed even farther past the line (it was already crossed) way faster than I ever thought possible. I knew they were going to do this but I had hoped there would be more time to stop it.

A three-panel political cartoon by Gritty20202, titled "Gritty is the Way," compares historical and contemporary events. Each panel features an authority figure saying, "I'm just following orders." The first panel, labeled "1830s American West," shows a U.S. soldier in a cavalry uniform with a Native American man in traditional clothing looking distressed. The second panel, labeled "1940s Nazi Germany," depicts a Nazi officer with a prisoner in a striped concentration camp uniform. The third panel, labeled "Present-Day USA," shows an ICE officer in a tactical vest with a distressed woman and child clinging to each other.

062

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 08/04/2025

@sfotony.bsky.social So I couldn't help myself, I went back in and saw the floor tile for Stephen Hawking...

The grave tile for Stephen Hawking with the date 1942-2018

010

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 08/04/2025

I'm really geeking out at Westminster Abbey and seeing the final resting place of Sir Isaac Newton.

The memorial to Sir Isaac Newton. An apple above a marble statue of Newton next to 2 child angels. There's a plaque but the words are too small to read.

A black floor tile that says "Hic Depositum est Quod Mortale fuit Isaaci Newtoni"

120

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 07/04/2025

Had a nice time watching the changing of the guard ceremony in front of Buckingham Palace in London this morning with my family. Couldn't see the ceremony (my wife could though) but the parade was nice. Got some good up close videos of them leaving too.

A photo in from of Buckingham Palace facing the gold queen Victoria monument statue. The area in front of the statue is crowded with people watching the household guard marching. The household guard is dressed in a red uniform with large black furry hats. There was a band in black uniforms carrying flags marching in front. It was a clear day with a blue sky and trees in the background.

010

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 05/04/2025

You'd think with a name like "Floral Court" there would be flowers or at least a mural...

A photo of an empty courtyard surrounded by buildings with high wall. The buildings are painted a drab white or brick red color. It is very boring looking.

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 03/04/2025

Great panel by @cloudtaquero.bsky.social , @lizrice.com and #KatieGamanji (can't find Katie on bsky) on the history + future of @cncf.io and so much more. Loved it! #KubeCon

A photo of Joseph Sandoval (left), Liz Rice (middle), and Katie Gamanji (right) sitting on the stage at KubeCon during a panel.

020

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 03/04/2025

Wow, @heroku.com & #AWS are advertising their 0-days in advance as part of marketing emails. A new, modern day approach to reach the #KubeCon tech audience. 🤣🤪

A screenshot of an email from Heroku and AWS that has the subject line "Mike, Evening Social Hosted by Heroku + AWS is coming up in 0 days"

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 03/04/2025

Ya! Good morning #KubeCon! I made it early enough today to get a nice seat upfront for the keynotes. So happy and pumped up for another exciting day.

020

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 02/04/2025

My favorite #AI related slide at #KubeCon so far. It recognizes the extreme challenges of using AI for infra & SRE tools due to its lack of deterministic results. The more data it gets (and infra has a lot!) the less deterministic the output is. A lot of mid/upper management doesn't understand this.

A photo of a slide from kubecon EU 2025. On the top right is a man, the speaker, wearing a white shirt. On the bottom left is a man in a black shirt who was doing the sign language translation. In the middle is a photo of a man in glasses with his hands grasping his head screaming in frustration. On the left are the words in a bulleted list:
Al Problems!
Assume that Al is a silver bullet
Throw engineering out the window Bite off more than one can chew
Randomness guaranteed!
Fail... Fail... Fail some morell!

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 01/04/2025

In ~30 @santana.dev & I will teach how to tell when #ArgoCD is misleading you about Application deployment health & how to observe/monitor the details you _really_ care about without getting distracted by false positives. Can you spot the missing or false positives between the images? sched.co/1u5dy

An ArgoCD dashboard screenshot that is hard to read that is hard to tell which applications are successfully synced and which ones are not.

A grafana dashboard that easily shows unhealthy ArgoCD Application deployments in 4 panels. Top left, Clusters with deny sync windows, top right, Applications with deny sync windows, bottom left, applications that are failing, bottom right, applications that are healthy but running for an extremely long time.

021

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 31/03/2025

Loving the kubecon slogan "Mind the CrashLoop" this year!

A photo of the kubecon registration booth. It has tablets on top of it where you can print your badge. But the cool part is the banner on the side that has the CNCF cartoon characters on an English double Decker bus and the words "Mind the CrashLoop"

020

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 30/03/2025

Such a depressingly low representation of women and their important voice in the Cloud Native space... #KubeCon #Rejekts siliconangle.com/2023/05/17/r...

1. The Landscape of Women in Cloud Native
women in the AI workforce 32%
women in the engineering workforce 20 %
women in the cloud computing workforce 14 %
https://siliconangle.com/2023/05/17/redefining-cloudscape-rise-women-leaders-cloud-computing-womenofthecloud

050

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 29/03/2025

The view from The Sky Garden in London is pretty nice. I wish I could have gotten tickets for when my family was here after kubecon.

A skyline photo of the London Bridge from high up

A skyline view of The Shard from high up

010

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 29/03/2025

Not a fan of modern art but I'm exploring the Tate Museum and the Electric Dreams exhibit with @csanchez.org & @cloudtaquero.bsky.social anyway to expand my horizons. It has some interesting pieces but it just isn't my cup of tea.

A photo of the outside of the Tate Modern museum, a large building, with a wall in front that has the words "Tate Modern" on it.

010

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 29/03/2025

First fish & chips in London.

A photo of fried fish on top of French fries inside a box

020

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 03/03/2025

I know some of you out there can relate to this with me...

A cartoon image of a white male wearing glasses cheering with his arms raised sitting in front of two computer screens with a messy desk covered in energy drink cans and crumpled paper. He has a smile on his face, looks excited, and is saying "Wow, a different error message... Finally some progress!"

030

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 28/02/2025

I'm really upset that I forgot about this boycott when I went out for breakfast at 5am this morning. But at least for the rest of the day I'll be participating. My wife said she will be too!

AL SHARPTON'S DEI BOYCOTT PLAN
24 HOUR BLACKOUT on FRIDAY FEBRUARY 28, from 12 AM to 11:59 PM.
THIS IS THE FIRST STEP to counter the attack on DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) .Do not make any purchases. • Do not shop online, or in-store • No Amazon • No Walmart
• No Best Buy • No McDonalds and other fast-food stores .No Gas • No Major Retailers • Do not use Credit or Debit Cards for non-essential spending. Try to buy all you need before Friday, February 28, but IF NECESSARY:
• Only buy essentials of absolutely necessary items such as food, medicine, emergency supplies) • If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses. WHY THIS MATTERS! Corporations and banks only care about their bottom line. Disrupting the economy for even one day sends a powerful message. If they don't listen we make the next blackout longer. Our numbers are powerful. This is how we make history! SPREAD THE MESSAGE! Please share with all of your contacts. Talk about it, post about it, document your actions that day! We must use he power we do have and send an eco- nomic message with our numbers as did Dr. King!! FEBRUARY 28TH. The 24-Hour Economic Black Out Begins.

120

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 26/02/2025

This is my favorite headline in a long time. It really made me laugh! 🤣 arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025...

A screenshot of a news headline that has a header caption saying "I'm not dead yet" and a headline of "Pixel Watch 3 gets FDA approval to alert you if you're dying" and a sub caption of "But you'll have to wait a bit longer to turn the feature on.'

010

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 21/02/2025

My brain after today...

A clear window with a white piece of paper taped on it that has the words "closed for closure will reopen when open" printed on it

020

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 29/01/2025

"a new capability that would allow officials to email the entire federal government workforce from a single email address" I can't wait to see the massive amount of "stop hitting reply all to everyone" email chains that are going to start with this one... www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...

An image from the boss in the movie "Office Space", a man wearing a suit shirt with a tie and suspenders and glasses with the caption saying "yeah if you could stop hitting reply all that would be great"

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 22/01/2025

Sorry, I can't help myself, but I saw this meme a few minutes after I saw this post and had to add to the party. But you know I love you. 😂 😘 😇

an image of a building that has a banner on it (I can't tell if it is fake or not but it probably is fake) that says "Lord, take teams not tiktok"

020

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 16/01/2025

It's important to own up to your mistakes; especially when it results in creating stupid, conflicting standards...

A screen capture of a slack conversation between me and a co-worker that says:
coworker: "point of order: that folder name should be orgs (plural) right? since the other folders are plural?"
me: "it 'should' be but it isn't that way anywhere"
me: "and who's fault is that?"
me: "mine. that's whose... :disappointed:"

010

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 15/01/2025

This is a stupid headline. What person in their right mind after being accused of this would say "oh yeah, that was me. I totally did it." While I don't know any of the details of this situation (I haven't read the stories) it seems like this would be a statement in the story not the focus of it.

A screenshot of a news article with the headline "Neil Gaiman denies sexual assault allegations after multiple women come forward"

110

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 15/01/2025

That huge hole in the sewer drainage pipe from under my bathrooms would explain a lot...

A photo of a corroded & rusted pipe with a large hole in it

100

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 13/01/2025

The delay in not knowing if my talk was accepted or rejected is killing me... I know the odds are against it being accepted but there's always that glimmer of hope/optimism until I know for sure.

an image from the movie "The Sandlot" of a young boy with freckles wearing a baseball cap with the text from a famous quote from the movie that say s"You're killin' me smalls"

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 06/01/2025

Only 1 more month until Civilization7 comes out!!! I can't wait!!! (I also apparently can't add enough ! marks to show my excitement about this)

a screenshot from the video game civilization 7 showing a mountain in the foreground with a city in the background surrounded by a wall. the landscape in the background is covered in snow.

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 05/01/2025

Ooh!! A new Wallace and Gromit movie is out on Netflix! So excited!

Poster for a movie with the text "Wallace & Gromit Vengeance Most Fowl" with the claymation characters Wallace and Gromit looking surprised in the background

020

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 04/01/2025

My current mood is reflected nicely in the duplicity of this sign.

A square billboard viewed from a corner where one side has "just do nothing" and around the corner the other side has "it is impossible!" and a heart is wrapped around the corner at the bottom. Even though the sign's sides each look negative, the intention of the sign is to say "Just do it nothing is impossible!". The color of the words "just do it" are different from "nothing is impossible" but I'm colorblind so I don't know what color it is.

000

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 26/12/2024

I'm such a nerd. I just ordered this as my new license plate.

A California license plate that says "k8s 137"

140

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 25/12/2024

Spent the day on some tiny, random island off the coast of Belize today. It was wonderfully relaxing. My family did some snorkeling while I chilled with a few cocktails and a book. Truly a day in a Caribbean paradise.

A photo of a beach with a palm tree and an ocean stretching into the distance. There are some light clouds in the sky but it is mostly sunny. On the far left side there are two people (with unclear descriptions) standing with their feet in the water.

050

Mike Tougeron @touge.me · 21/12/2024

It has begun... So excited about this trip. A very needed break.

A photo of me, my wife, and teenage son in front of the sun princess cruise ship

110