Yesterday, Digi announced it plans to acquire Disruptive Technologies. It is the second time in a little over a year that SmartSense has grown this way, and the first time I have watched it happen knowing what the last one did to my job.

The last one was Jolt, in August 2025. I have been at SmartSense for almost five years, and Jolt changed more of my work than anything before it. Team members shuffled. People picked up new responsibilities. We got a new director, who came from Jolt. And I moved into a manager position. All of it happened while two companies were still learning each other’s names.

Shortly after the deal closed, I drove to Boston for a meet and greet with the Jolt team. I expected a day of introductions and polite small talk. In less than a day, we were off planning and building together, and sharing meals and a few laughs in between. We felt like a team from day one.

Looking back, I do not think that was luck. The teams did a lot of work to find a good fit, and it kept going long after Boston. We did not merge codebases. Instead, we looked at how they had built some of their apps and how we had built ours, and kept the best of both. That kind of learning only happens when both sides assume the other one knows something they do not.

That work is a big part of what is driving SmartSense ONE, the platform we are still building on top of both products. It started with two groups of people deciding to learn from each other.

It also changed how I read the news this week. A year ago, I would have seen an acquisition announcement and thought mostly about the disruption. I have lived through that part now, and it came with a new role. This time I am anticipating it, and wondering how we will stretch and grow. I do not know yet what the Disruptive Technologies team will teach us. I do know the fit will not be something we find. It will be something both teams build.

Culture fit after an acquisition is not discovered. It is made.

Rachel and I will have been married twenty-five years this November. November in Ohio is not beach weather, so Rachel asked to celebrate in a warmer part of the year. A family member has a beach house on Oak Island, North Carolina, and we turned that into a week-long road trip with a night in West Virginia at each end.

The first surprise came on I-77 south of Dover, when a semi appeared to be driving straight at us in our lane. It was being towed backward. Rachel took its picture anyway.

Our first real stop was Salt Fork State Park, because Salt Fork takes Bigfoot seriously. There is a life-size one inside the visitor center and a crouching statue outside. Rachel posed with both. The lake beach was mostly a construction zone, but the walk out to it had pumpkin vines and a butterfly the size of a card table. Lunch was at the Cracker Barrel in Cambridge, which turned out to be the first of two.

We crossed the Ohio River at Marietta under a Welcome to West Virginia sign and stopped at the welcome center, which has a bronze statue of a highway flagger. Somewhere past Charleston, the Turnpike travel plaza sold us a pint of pumpkin butter. We picked hotels in West Virginia for one reason: they had a pool. The Holiday Inn & Suites in Beckley came through, along with a Bigfoot pedestrian crossing sign nearby. Two Bigfoots in one day.

The next morning we spent a while at Tamarack Marketplace in Beckley, a showcase for West Virginia art and craft with a roofline that looks like a row of paper party hats. Outside there is an Almost Heaven swing, so of course we sat in it. The art walk included a steel tree called Bentwood, priced at $22,000. We left it there. Rachel did get a pressed penny, which is the real reason we stop anywhere.

The West Virginia tourist center in Princeton had a shop where we bought a fused-glass Christmas tree ornament. Then came the East River Mountain Tunnel, Virginia’s welcome center with its giant LOVE letters, and the Big Walker Mountain Tunnel.

I-77 drops off the Blue Ridge at Fancy Gap, and the view opens up all at once. At the North Carolina visitor center near Randleman, a Richard Petty No. 43 panel hangs under a sign that says Yes, It’s Real!, so Rachel pointed at it for proof. After Subway in Lumberton and a long run down Green Swamp Road, we reached Oak Island around seven and had The Pepperoni Grill delivered.

The beach house week settled into a rhythm fast. Breakfast at Eggs Up Grill in Southport (twice). Walmart runs for supplies. Dinner delivered each night, from places like Bar-B-Que House, Southport Smoke House, and Burrito Shak. We also found a Hobby Lobby in Southport that felt twice the size of ours at home. It is a newer 52,000-square-foot store, so we were not imagining it. A surf shop with a giant octopus on the porch and a marsh walkway on Oak Island rounded out the first couple of days.

One day was for South Carolina, mostly so we could check another state off our list. We made it official around the Tanger Outlets in Myrtle Beach: the Beef Jerky Experience, the Candy Barrel, and a LEGO resale shop called Bricks & Minifigs, where we looked at everything and bought nothing. The Welcome to North Carolina sign on the way back was more of a welcome back. Lunch was at Duffer’s Bar & Grill.

For the Oak Island Lighthouse, we wore matching shirts that read “America Turns 250, Our Love Turns 25, 1776-2001-2026.” It seemed like the right place for them. The lighthouse is a plain concrete tower in three bands of color, and it was closed, so there was no climb. We settled for selfies at the base, a Happy Birthday America banner about North Carolina’s lighthouses, and prickly pear cactus growing in the dunes, which I did not expect on a North Carolina beach. A gazebo in the dunes flew a flag that said “Pro American, Anti-Trump.” It was one of the few political messages we saw all week, and one we both agree with.

The beach below the lighthouse was dotted with taped-off sea turtle nests. Later that day, a sign on a pier explained what to do if you hook a sea turtle.

The same afternoon we drove down to Holden Beach for The Beach Mart, whose sign reads “Happy as a Seagull with a French Fry! I Must Be at The Beach Mart.” It had a penny machine, so Rachel was happy too. Pelicans flew in formation over the Holden Beach pier while we took a windblown selfie underneath it.

That evening we paid to walk the Ocean Crest Pier on Oak Island. Rachel went partway out, playing Pokémon GO, and decided that was far enough. I walked to the end and back. The sky was dark and dramatic, dozens of pelicans flew past in long lines, and a willet and a sandpiper worked the edge of the surf. The warm weather Rachel asked for came with a lot of clouds, but they made for better pictures.

On Thursday we drove up through Wilmington to Fort Fisher State Historic Site, where the Civil War earthworks are still there as a row of grass-covered mounds. There is a reproduction cannon named Loud Paul with its own fundraising thermometer. The Friends of Fort Fisher shop sold Rachel a book for her pressed pennies.

Back on the beach that evening, I spent several tries lining up a picture of Rachel pinching a seagull. The first one missed. The second one worked.

We headed home Friday. Rachel spotted that Andre the Giant’s historical marker was near Ellerbe. We stopped at a rest area that was a surprising distance from the freeway and was the only rest area all trip with posted operating hours. The sign at the Pilot Mountain overlook had a doodle on it that looked a lot like the Mothman. After Bigfoot twice, a third cryptid felt right. We stayed in Beckley again, at a Microtel chosen, again, for the pool.

On the last day we drove over Charleston’s blue and gold bridges, and Rachel looked up why they are painted that way. We had lunch at the Cracker Barrel in Mineral Wells, bookending the trip with Cracker Barrels. Near Canton, the power lines are held up by structures shaped like football goal posts, which is about as Canton as it gets.

We came home with jerky, candy, pumpkin butter, a book of pressed pennies, and two Christmas ornaments that will remind us of this trip every December. Twenty-five years is a long time. I would take another twenty-five if they look like this.

At fifty, I had earned at least one trip whose itinerary was “look at things I think are cool.” For my birthday, Rachel and I planned a few days at COSI. Last June we went down for the Star Wars exhibit; this time the draw was The Science Behind Pixar.

We drove down on Monday afternoon. We stopped at a travel center along I-71, partly for the bathroom and partly so Rachel could check the pressed-penny machine.

The room at The Junto had the same view of downtown that we remembered from last summer.

I went to bed Monday night not thinking much of anything. While I slept, Rachel turned the room into a Bluey-themed birthday surprise.

Tuesday morning, before breakfast, I unwrapped a small mountain of presents. Most of them were Bluey-adjacent. My family knows my weaknesses.

After breakfast we walked across the river to COSI. New since our last visit: a Moon Tree, a sweetgum sapling grown from seeds that flew on Artemis I, planted on the lawn last May.

The Pixar exhibit opens with a five-minute theater piece narrated by Mr. Ray (Finding Nemo) and Roz (Monsters, Inc.), with cameos from Russell and Carl on the seat-courtesy slide. Roz closes by reminding everyone that she’ll miss each and every one of us.

Inside, the exhibit is built around life-sized character figures (Buzz Lightyear, Sulley and Mike, Wall-E), each anchoring a station that explains a piece of how a Pixar film actually gets made.

The hands-on stations were the best part. Wrap fabric around a Wall-E shape to see how Surfaces work. Light a Ratatouille kitchen and balance image quality against render time. There is, somewhere, a kid who will become a TD because they pushed those sliders.

The pipeline panels themselves (Story and Art, Modeling, Rigging, Surfaces, Sets and Cameras, Animation, Simulation, Lighting, Rendering) are the closest I’ve seen to an honest explanation of how a Pixar film comes together. Each step builds on the previous one and feeds into the next.

The simulation and lighting sections were my favorites. Merida’s hair gets its own model: every curl is a spring. The Lighting Challenge had a Dory sculpture lit four different ways to show what light alone can do to a scene.

Naturally, the exit was a gift shop. We resisted, mostly.

In the atrium they had a set of butterfly sculptures made from recycled materials: piano keys, license plates, bottle caps, telephone insulators. I would not have guessed at the source materials without the labels.

We also walked through Mythic Creatures, a temporary exhibit of dragons, unicorns, krakens, and a chupacabra.

After a few hours we walked back outside to look at the building, the bridge, and the river. COSI lives in the old Central High School building, which has a much prettier facade than I had remembered.

We also did the green-screen souvenir photo on the way out. The result is exactly the level of cheesy you’d want from a museum gift shop.

Wednesday morning we packed up and headed home. The detour we wanted was Grandpa’s Cheesebarn in Ashland: a converted barn that’s part cheese shop, part chocolate shop, part roadside attraction, complete with a 1950 Chevy pickup out front and a giant mouse named Colby.

Inside, the place is wall-to-wall samples and themed displays. Cheeses, jams, jerky, chocolate-covered everything, and toddler onesies that read “I Cut the Cheese at Grandpa’s Cheesebarn.” We left with a paper bag heavier than I expected.

Rachel made friends with Colby.

We made one more travel-center stop on the way home. The penny machine on this side of the Turnpike was out of service, which Rachel noted with appropriate disappointment. The wall did, however, have a small Ohio Turnpike history exhibit, which made up for it a bit.

Pulling into the driveway, I found Rachel’s next surprise: the giant “HAPPY 50th BIRTHDAY” yard sign at the top of this post, plus another sign with my name. School had just let out, so a half-dozen neighbor kids yelled it at me as we unloaded the car. The Cheesebarn haul ended up arrayed on the stovetop like a tiny grocery store.

A final surprise: Rachel had quietly ordered an assortment from a local butcher, picked it up, and dropped it next door, where the neighbors had agreed to cook everything for me. I can’t think of a better way to start fifty.

Last month I took the Southwest Chief out to Las Vegas and back for SmartSense’s company summit. Flying would have taken five hours and zero stories. The train took roughly forty hours each way, which gave me a lot of time to write and to read a couple of books cover to cover. I also shared mutliple meals with different and interesting people.

The eastern leg from Elyria to Chicago is just an overnight handoff. The real run is the Southwest Chief out of Chicago Union Station, across Illinois farmland, into Kansas, up over Raton Pass on the Colorado/New Mexico line. There is a tunnel right at the summit, which is the highest point on the route. From there the Chief drops down through Lamy, Albuquerque, Gallup, and Flagstaff. It does not actually stop in Las Vegas; the closest it gets is Kingman, AZ, where Amtrak runs a Thruway shuttle the rest of the way. It’s a passenger van, not a bus, but it gets the job done.

The Chief itself rolls out of Chicago in the afternoon and turns the rest of the day into farmland and river crossings.

By the second morning we were on the high plains of eastern Colorado, climbing toward Raton Pass and the New Mexico line.

After the pass, the train threads down through Las Vegas NM, Lamy (the stop for Santa Fe), and Albuquerque, then runs west into Arizona and into Flagstaff before the late-night handoff at Kingman.

Arrival was rougher than I had planned. The shuttle dropped me at the Flamingo around 2:30 AM local time, and the front desk politely informed me that check-in was not until 4 PM. They were sold out for the night. The hotel they called for me was sold out too. So I sat in the lobby, watched the sun come up, walked outside to see the Sphere in person for the first time, and waited.

I finally got into a room around 11:30 AM and immediately slept for thirteen hours.

Monday and Tuesday were summit days. Most of my Asset Monitoring team was there. It was great to see everyone in person; that was almost reason enough for the trip. SmartSense’s employee band, CYA: Cover Your Assets, played on Tuesday nights.

Wednesday was my one free day, and I made the most of it: more than 25,000 steps. I started at the Flamingo and made the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens my first stop. The seasonal display was up, and the giant goldfinches over yellow tulips were the highlight.

Later in the afternoon, on the walk back, the Bellagio Fountains caught me mid-show.

From the Flamingo, the Strip walks itself. I worked south past Caesars and the Paris Eiffel Tower replica, past the bowed yellow Bellagio facade.

A little farther down, MGM Grand’s bronze lion sits at the corner.

Across the boulevard, New York-New York’s Statue of Liberty replica and the red Big Apple Coaster wrap the skyline-shaped facade.

Then Excalibur’s white castle towers, the black Luxor pyramid with its sphinx, and the gold Mandalay Bay tower beyond.

Walking back north, I cut through Park MGM and across the Miracle Mile entrance at Planet Hollywood.

Some of these places I just photographed from the sidewalk. Others got me to come inside. The Strip Target is essentially a regular Target with a giant Bullseye dog statue keeping an eye on the produce.

The Coca-Cola bottle store next door is exactly the gimmick you think it is.

M&M’s World is somehow four full stories of branded chocolate. You can smell the store from the outside.

Hershey’s Chocolate World has the same idea, plus an 800-pound chocolate Statue of Liberty on display, which I am not making up. The Reese’s-scented wax melts came home with me.

The Strip is also lined with candy stores that all blur together a bit. Sour Patch statues, life-size Elvis and Marilyn made of sugar, walls of bulk Jelly Belly.

Between the named places are the in-between places: vending awnings, sidewalk flyers, novelty kiosks, the visual textures of the Strip when no single landmark is in frame.

I was looking for a stereotypical shot of Vegas. A pair of showgirls outside Caramella happily obliged (at a cost, of course).

One picture I wasn’t expecting, but became my target once my team gave the heads-up, was Bluey and Bingo. Both of them gave me hugs while your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man did his Peter Parker routine. This time, I was more than happy to pay for the memories, pictures, and video.

Rachel didn’t ask for any specific souvenirs, beyond pressed pennies. So a quiet side mission of the day was tracking down souvenir-penny machines around the Strip. I came back with more than twenty. Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. turned out to have one of the machines I had been hunting, which is why a Forrest Gump-themed restaurant gets its own gallery on a Las Vegas trip post.

The trip home started at 9 PM with a taxi to the shuttle station, then the van back to Kingman, where I sat outside the locked depot and waited for the eastbound Chief at 2 AM.

Northern Arizona at sunrise, then the Gallup escarpment along Route 66.

The Albuquerque break was long enough to walk past the vendor tables, where I picked up a double-sized blanket that turned out to be the most welcome purchase of the whole trip for the long ride home. Then Lamy again, and by late afternoon a rainstorm was streaking the windows over the high plains.

The next morning’s surprise was Fort Madison: a long stop, a preserved caboose to walk past, and then the Mississippi River crossing on the swing bridge out of town. That bridge was the photographic highlight of the way home.

Then Illinois, a four-hour Chicago layover, and the Floridian east. The roomette on the Floridian has both a sink and a toilet. Actually, the train on the way to Chicago only had a sink. The last few hours through Indiana and Ohio were dark, ending with the Toledo platform sign at some hour I’d rather not name.

Forty hours each way is a lot of train. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

A teammate texted me about an escape room on Sunday night, the Sunday night before our work summit started. My first instinct was to figure out how to politely decline.

I was on a train somewhere west of Chicago at the time, two days into a slow trip from Ohio to Las Vegas. The slow approach felt like the right way to enter a week I had been quietly dreading. I was reading The First 90 Days between dining car meals, trying to make peace with the fact that I had not done a great job of those first 90 days myself. And I was watching myself reach, one more time, for the comfortable answer.

I caught it. Skipping the escape room would cost me at most a few dollars and an awkward two hours. Going might give me a few hours with people I do not see in person often. I was about to choose the worst option for no reason except that I usually do.

A few days later, our summit had a session by Shawn Willis on what he calls Radical Adaptability. The framing that stuck with me was simple. To start something better, you have to end something. A small amount of discomfort now buys a different tomorrow. Listening to him, I thought about how often I get hung up on my own processes at work. I have a way I like to do things. The way I like to do things slows the team down. Knowing that has not, on its own, been enough to make me stop.

The pattern is the same. The escape room. The process. The quiet evening at home instead of the new thing. Each one is a small case of holding on too tightly to a known shape, even when the known shape is not serving anyone, including me.

The version of this I want to write is the heroic one where I went to the escape room, had a great time, and came back changed. I never made it. By the time I checked into the hotel, I had been awake for a day and a half, and I slept for thirteen hours straight. The honest version is that I have a list of small choices in front of me that I can practice loosening my grip on. Sometimes I do. I went to the cocktail party I had been planning to skip, and stayed long enough to count. Sometimes I do not. The process I keep running my way is still mine.

For me, the work is not a single grand pivot. It is noticing the pull toward the comfortable answer often enough that I can sometimes choose the other one before the moment passes.

Where are you holding on too tight?

One thing I wasn’t expecting to use AI for was call-in support. Several weeks ago, I could hear one of my PC fans starting to die. My computer is at least seven years old, so a failing component isn’t unexpected. After opening up the case, I located the whining fan on one of my GPUs.

I started searching for replacement fans when I realized that it would be easier to swap out the GPU. The age of my motherboard limited my upgrade options. I used Claude Code to query my system and recommend used GPU options.

Finding a compatible GPU model was relatively straightforward. Then I started wondering whether I should swap out the still-working GPU. Claude correctly pointed out that my PSU was a bit underpowered for two new GPUs and recommended upgrading it.

New PSUs are quite easy to find. But Claude also flagged another issue that hadn’t crossed my mind: my motherboard has a proprietary pin-out, and a standard cable could fry it. That sent me on the hunt for an adapter cable.

As I was searching for things, or rather, as Claude was searching eBay listings, I wondered if there were other practical upgrades. I was curious about running a local AI model. While I knew my computer wouldn’t be quick, it would give me a way to test models without limits and without worrying about how my conversations might be used. A side conversation with Claude confirmed that it was possible, but also recommended a CPU upgrade.

Once I had most of the parts in hand, I started with the PSU swap. I removed the old one and started to put in the new one. The PSU I picked was modular, a first for me, if that tells you about how long it’s been since I’ve done any major upgrades.

I connected the PSU to the adapter, then to the motherboard. So far, so good. Then, I found a port that I didn’t have a cable for. Not wanting to put the old one back in to do some additional research, I fired up the mobile app. While I prefer typing, it was convenient to talk to the AI and describe what I was trying to do. I was today years old when I learned that some modular cables are meant to split. Mind blown! When I ran into a similar issue trying to plug in an 8-pin cable into one of the GPU’s 6-pin ports, I wasn’t stymied this time.

I had similar questions as I was swapping out the CPU. The last one I had done required me to pry it out and didn’t require thermal paste or a heatsink. (Did I mention how long it’s been since I’ve had to swap out hardware?) But, rather than having to call a support line, I kept my voice conversation open.

A few things crossed my mind as I was going through this process. First, components are easier to swap out now than I remembered.

Second, there are always new things to learn. Some modular cables can split. Who knew? As an educator, I should expect to be surprised, and it’s still fun when I am.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, AI won’t replace everyone. Sure, it may require jobs to change. But my upgrade venture was only successful because a person (multiple people, likely) captured that information somewhere. AI didn’t create the information; it just facilitated my access to it. It was like the first time I connected online (on a BBS); it opened new avenues for education and exploration.

I have been using AI in my work for a while now. But some of the most practical wins have been personal.

I have a Health Savings Account that I intentionally do not spend down. Instead, I pay medical expenses out of pocket and let the HSA grow as an investment account. The idea is to withdraw it in retirement with no penalty. Triple tax advantage. It is a solid strategy; it also means I need to track every eligible expense in case the IRS ever asks.

I had started a spreadsheet and a folder structure to manage this. After a while, it became tedious enough that I kept putting it off.

So I handed it to Claude Code. I gave it a folder of receipts and documents, along with a set of instructions. It organized the files, built a ledger of eligible expenses by year, and generated documentation that future me (or future AI) can use to keep it up to date.

It also found roughly $5,000 in eligible expenses I had missed.

That is the part that stuck with me. Not just the time saved, but the fact that it caught something I would not have. That is AI as a practical tool. Not a demo. Not a gimmick. Something that quietly does useful work.

I am curious what unglamorous problems you have handed off to AI lately.

I recently started reading “The First 90 Days” by Michael Watkins. I am only through Chapter 2, so this is not a review.

Chapter 2 is titled “Accelerate Your Learning.” The premise is straightforward: when transitioning into a new role, learning should be deliberate, structured, and intentional. Not passive. Not assumed.

That landed differently than I expected.

I have spent much of my career in both technology and higher education. Learning is supposed to be something I am good at. But Chapter 2 reminded me that knowing how to learn and actually doing it deliberately are two different things. It is easy to assume that experience fills the gaps. It does not always.

Transitioning into engineering management has reinforced that for me. There is a lot I do not know yet, and the only way through it is to be an active, humble participant in my own development.

A structured learning plan is not just a tool for new employees or career changers. It is a habit worth building at every stage.

I am curious how others approach this. Do you have a deliberate learning practice during transitions? Or does it tend to happen more organically? How do you handle learning more broadly?

We recently introduced an AI-powered developer metrics system across all of our engineering teams.

Ten weeks in, and it is already changing how I think about performance visibility. For better and for worse.

The system tracks the usual signals: PRs, commits, reviews, merges, ticket activity, documentation, etc. Each week, everyone gets an individual summary with AI commentary. What went well, and one actionable step to improve. As a manager, I also get a team-wide view. I am included in that too; I get the same metrics everyone else does.

When scores are high, people feel seen. When scores are low, people feel judged.

That second part matters. Because the system does not know about the engineer who spent three days tracking down a flaky test pipeline. It does not see the manual testing or the cross-team dependencies that quietly ate a sprint. And when tickets are blocked or poorly ordered, that is not always the engineer. Correctly ordering tickets and flagging dependencies are my responsibility, along with my principal engineers. The metrics will reflect that, and right now, they are telling me I have work to do there.

AI commentary can surface patterns. It cannot supply context.

That is not an argument against the system. It is genuinely useful. But ten weeks in, my biggest takeaway is this: the metrics are a starting point for a conversation, not a conclusion. I am still learning how to use them well.

Measure what you can. Stay curious about what you cannot.

Seeing this in your org too? I would love to hear how other engineering leaders are thinking about it.

This has happened enough times now that it’s worth talking about.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve received multiple emails pitching the same “opportunity”: someone finds my GitHub or LinkedIn, notes I’m US-based, and proposes a partnership where I’d be the face, they’d do the technical work from overseas, and we’d split the revenue. They frame it as legitimate. It isn’t. It’s identity and contract fraud.

What’s notable is the outreach itself. It’s polished, personalized, and well-structured. It had the kind of writing that used to signal a real professional had made an effort. Now it signals something different. The em dashes in the email are a recurring tell (though not absolute proof—I like using them when I write).

I’m a genuine AI advocate. I use it to improve my work, and I regularly look for new ways to apply it. But this is the other edge of that technology: convincing fraud outreach at scale, cheap to produce, easy to personalize.

The bar for “this looks legitimate” just got a lot lower. Adjust accordingly.

Seeing this too? I’m curious how widespread it is.