Josh V

Today I've published the second edition of my book - Open Source Network Management. It has been updated here for 2026, with Nautobot 3.1 updates, and now configuration management - osnm.josh-v.com

A little bit of travel this week for work, but back in the saddle now. Anything good happen this week?

New post on what I learned recently about how AI models get loaded onto systems. I was thinking about it wrong. Instead of an instance per agent, it is an instance once, and then multiple agents use memory (high level here, not deep). josh-v.com/local-infere... #localAI #networkAutomation

My RSS feed broke after moving to Hugo. Instead of debugging it myself, I handed it to my AI agent (Harry/OpenClaw). He diagnosed it, drafted a PR, hit a snag, pivoted to Cloudflare Redirects, and verified the fix. I just reviewed and approved. josh-v.com/ai-rss-fix/

The more that I use AI tools throughout the day the more I'm convince that we are here. This is what I have been looking forward to for so long to be able to have available

Tried to migrate my OpenClaw Harry over to use Gemini pro preview 3.1 this morning. No dice.

I've put together some thoughts on where AI is exploding. It's gone from "it's there" to constant use — meeting transcriptions, tackling complex challenges — and it's only getting better. josh-v.com/welcome-ai-i... What novel ideas are you using AI for?

And the biggest thing is putting together all of the practices of having a good Planning time, then into mocks, to code reviews, security reviews, etc.

Spent hours failing to set up cloud-init VMs in my home lab. Gave #ClaudeCode a shot — working setup in ~20 minutes. Wrote up the whole experience 👇 josh-v.com/welcome-ai-01/ How are you using AI for infrastructure tasks?

I've got 20 minutes left before the weekly usage limits reset on my Claude plan. TIme to see what I can crunch in before then. A whole new world living in. Earlier I asked OpenClaw to complete some deeper research on a research effort/project that we were building...

All the hype happening these days with agents and such. I think I need to go back and watch The Matrix again...

I'm the latest into the whole OpenClaw environment. I got it to a point that I could actually talk to a local LLM, but that experience was a bit of bad quality. I moved back to the standard set up with Opus 4.5 and that is it. And just wow.

It’s been a good week of PTO so far. Going to be diving into AI and the MCP world.

Welcome to 2026! It's off with a bang already. I'm getting back into the social seen a little bit. I wrapped up 2026 by learning a few more tricks to have up my sleeve to be able to tackle the days ahead more efficiently. With a little help from YouTube.

I made the move back to Hugo Congo (github.com/jpanther/congo) this weekend with a little anti-gravity help. I think I like the polish of it a bit better versus the straight technical look.

Been diving into helping automate my day to day on my machine lately. Interestingly enough it is using Apple Shortcuts for this. The most recent automation is involving setting the default microphone. Using the external mic rather than the airpods once they reconnect.

Pretty awesome morning in Austin for #autocon4. Got a good run in seeing @drewcm.bsky.social on the path before getting things started with Nautocon!

Got rolling with @tailscale.com this week. What an awesome experience. And the best part is that it works properly with CarPlay as well! My new strong recommendation.

When chatbots ask you to verify your contact information after logging into the web interface, something is wrong.

A couple of moments that I don't like to put out there. I received an email from Apple Support about a call back (next post). It stated that I would get a callback at 7:15 CST. How are timezones that difficult to get right? We are in Daylight Saving Time. CDT....

Available now for only $9.99 now on Packt's site - Modern Network Observability. A great opportunity to get my book that I co-authored with David and Christian about the #observability pipelines using #opensource.

Getting things prepared for the trip to ONUG next week. If at the event come by the NTC booth and say hi.

How long is it going to take me to remember to use `-` for my list character rather than `*` while using Obsidian? I keep forgetting and the default for Obsidian is to assume that it will be an italic or bold fonted item. Still loving the choice!

I'm a person that iterates with my system a TON. I'm not sure what I can do to get myself to say that my system is working well and to stop messing with it. But I may be approaching that point. I started to put my calendar into an app window as an example. Why? I do fine getting to my mtgs already.

Just as I was about to build an airplane noise tracking system with MSP airport under construction it seems that the routes available have changed to lesson the noise. At least a much smaller number of planes are landing.

To the folks at MS Teams. When you create a calendar invite for Teams, the link that is most used should not be the 4th (or the 4th clickable) item. Please bring that up. And a location of MS Teams Meeting is not helpful. Maps do not know this.

Reminder, that anywhere in the northern hemisphere that observes Daylight Saving Time is now observing it. EST should not be used for another 7 months or so.

Definitely going to use the terminology "Premature Optimization" a lot more often @shannonbyrnes.bsky.social! It's very true. Too often.

YouTube TV is going to discount the service by $8 for subscribers to get Paramount+ on their own while the dispute is going on. Personally I would love to just leave it off. I am already on Paramount+. I wonder if I can get the discount permanently.

Decided to purge apps mirror notifications to my watch. What a peaceful feeling not having everything sent to my wrist.

Just saw an email come in from @ktbyers.bsky.social for the next "Learning Python for Network Engineers Course" that starts next week. Definitely recommending this course for getting started. pynet.twb-tech.com/network-auto... for the entire set of courses from Kirk.

After trying to make the migration over to the Apple Safari land of things, I think I have the feature that wins me over on Chrome - saved Tab Groups. Allowing me to close groupings of windows just to return later when I can focus on it. Awesomeness.

Having traveled a bit lately through #MSPairport, I am pretty impressed. The investment made over the years has been pretty awesome to see.

Still disappointed in how long it takes financial institutions to process year end tax forms. Nothing like procrastinating to the last minute to have the forms ready.

Trying to schedule a maintenance for the home network is quite challenging in the terms of the needs of the clients and coupled with timing to find available spares in case of upgrade failure... Oh the challenges. :D