Robert Thoelen

High-performance computing isn’t just about speed. It changes how engineering work is structured and how complex decisions are explored. I write about computational systems, governance, and technical stewardship.

At a presbytery meeting this weekend, was able to plug into free EV chargers at the hotel. I shared this on PlugShare so others will know. Reminds me that good infrastructure and ops work is sharing stories and telling what works.

Most infrastructure work is invisible when it's going well. Very few notice the patch that prevents the outage or the config that works under heavy system load. What's the best piece of invisible work you've seen someone do?

Spoke at the Scaling Research Computing Education session at #HPEC2026. Main point: from a teaching perspective, HPC and Kubernetes have more in common than people assume. Conveying the fundamentals and reasoning in the docs is important! ieee-hpec.org/ieee-hpec-20... #HPC #ieee

can we bring Radio Shack back? #electronics #radioshack

Great to see some meshtastic radio enthusiasts at #sc25 this year!

Just wondering for those that follow me, do you use Google Gemini? I’m considering subscribing, but wondering what people use it for?

IEEE CT Section is a community partner at this event. Check out our table while you are there! For more information, go to bit.ly/yaleinnovati...

Happy New Year. May 2025 bring us all: a large amount of love, enough hard work to make us proud, full-throated joy, the ability to grow. And most of all, may it bring us the stamina to pause, or perchance to retreat for a bit, but never, ever to give up.

Happy New Year! Looking forward to another year of keeping HPC systems running and developing new strategies.

Chernobyl should be required viewing for SREa or anyone that deals with incidents in complex systems.

Voip.ms is a great provider if you want low-cost VOIP services, but it is very much DIY with all the settings. Getting Groundwire and other VOIP clients to work take a bit of adjusting to get SIP-TLS to work, as there are a bunch of advanced settings to configure in both places.

On Giving Tuesday made some donations and renewed USENIX membership. I noticed the ATC '25 meeting will be in Boston next year. Might be able to attend that one!

any experts on Bluesky know if I change my .bsky.social to a domain name, if I want to change the domain name in the future to another one or go back, does it mess up any links or references to the account?

Since I’m in industry, I haven’t used EDUroam. What is the advantage for academic users in signing into that network? Are you able to get back to your institution without using a VPN? Or if your device is already configured, you don’t have to sign in to the SC network? #hpc #sc24

Just finished volunteering at the SIGHPC booth. Always good to network with others and encourage students!

Looks like a good crowd at #SC24 today!

I’ve found that turning off bluetooth when in packed sessions on a MacBook may save on CPU / energy usage. Not sure how much battery savings it provides, but was surprised how much the bluetoothd process starts to work. #sc24

Heading out to #sc24 soon!

This was the first community I looked for when I got off X a year ago. Glad it’s coming together now!

It’s great to see many HPC practitioners here since I got off X last year!

80 degrees F in CT today! Nice day for a walk.

10meters seems to have been open most of the day today from the east to west coast. Lots of stations heard on VARAC. #hamradio

If you are local the to the northeastern United States, please consider the IEEE Women in Engineering USA Forum East conference! lnkd.in/eSGBz3gU #ieee #wie #ieeect

Another Supercomputing conference in the books! Great to reconnect with those in the industry in Denver!

Denver has such a nice view of the mountains. Got to get used to the thin air up here.

Surprising fact: no major professional scientific org has flipped from a paywalled publishing model to 100% Open Access. The ACM, the world's foremost professional computing org, is going to be the first on January 1, 2026, when its entire digital library will become freely available to the public.

IEEE HPEC (High Performance Extreme Computing) conference is next week. IA free registration option is available. This conference started out as an in-person conference in the Boston area. Now it is completely virtual. The keynotes look very interesting! ieee-hpec.org #ieee #ieeehpec #hpc