Similar to previous years, here are my goals for 2021.
There is no update for 2020. Between buying our house last year in January and February and then covid I’m calling it a total loss in terms of goal achivement.
Maybe a total loss is a bit harsh, but very little was achieved: very little reading, too much eating, muscle atrophy…. it goes on.
It is hard to put this into words…
Year end update…
Two weeks into my planned company shutdown / paternaty / sick leave I started to really feel checked out from work. The first week off was company shutdown for the week of Thanksgiving and between the holiday and some other activites it still felt busy. The second week when everyone else was back at work I was still checking in daily and getting a few texts and calls for support. After this though, work communication slowed down and I really got into the swing of being away from work.
A colleague of mine (Foo Hooi Lee) reguallary takes all of his vacation between Thankgiving and the New Year in order to travel back to Malasia for a few weeks each year. In years past I haven’t had the nessesary time banked to pull this off but thanks to Jane and Apple’s paternaty leave policy this year I had the hours. I talked to Behnam about my plan for this back in July and he agreeded provided the AS platform was stable and I had a good software release process established which Hesam or Dan could take over while I was out. The big 2019 demos were planned in mid Decemeber and early January so it would be hard to justify leaving if we still had a fragile software platform. So over the course of the fall I worked a lot with this in mind and in early Novemeber we agreeded things were in a good enough place for me to take the whole block of time.
8/24/2019 – 9/1/2019
For summer vacation this year we planned a local trip to San Francisco and Bodega Bay. Leading up to the trip we considered a few other options including Hawaii, Yosemite, and a more involved Northern California roadtrip but decided on the simplest itinerary:
By the time we made up our mind the trip was only about a month away and we nearly missed getting our desired locations due to their occupancy getting booked. Luckily it worked out though. Continue reading “S is for San Francisco, Bay Area, CA”
This year while reading online about improving data graphics I kept coming across the name Edward Tufte. He is a professor interested in the topic and from what I gather has written 3 of the most influential books on the topic. Since I make a lot of plots and data graphics at work as a way to help understand system interactions and describe problems or system performance to others, I decided to buy two of the most well regarded:
Reading these led to me spending a few evenings (over 3 weeks!) making a modern version of one of my favorite graphics seen in the books.
Continue reading “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”
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Saturday July 20th, I competed in a 10k run in the Oakland Redwood Regional Park. The race was put on by Urban Coyote, the same organizers I ran with in January’s Pacifica 10k as part of my 2018 goal list.
At the moment I’m not in great running shape, but have been going out once or twice a week at lunch with a coworker named Scott. We usually run on the bay trails for 2-4 miles which is good training during the week. I’ve also been weight training twice a week and biking to work still, so I felt resonably prepared in terms of fitness.
Saturday morning, Megan, Jane and I made the hour drive up to Oakland on a warm but clear morning. Continue reading “10k, Oakland Redwood Regional Park, CA”
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Jane’s first camping trip!
The three of us went on a two night trip to nearby Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz mountains for Jane’s introduction to sleeping outdoors. Overall it went great and Megan and I think Jane really was amazed by all the lush vibrant greenery we saw walking around the park over the course of our three day trip.
I selected Big Basin specifically because Continue reading “Camping, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, CA”
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It has been a while since I’ve published on the blog. Today I updated the CA Tick List and thought I’d post some brief comments for each new mark. SF Symphony Sea to sky hike Napa wine drinking Anchor overnight at Angel Island SF Symphony This past July we attended the SF Ballet at Stern Continue reading “Catchup!”
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I’ve updated my 2018: Goals post with final results. Similar to last year, here is a list of my goals for 2019. I plan to update this post throughout the year with progress reports. Complete 1 piece of wooden furniture Complete 1 Kickstarter project Earn 1 dollar of self employment income from an online business Continue reading “2019: Goals”
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“Stab it! Stab it! Did you get it? Stab it!” *
“Ahh… I’m trying”
“Alright! Nice! Now pull it back and cleat it.”
This was the end of the scene that played out in Ayala Cove on Angel Island this Labor Day as we were hooking up to the mooring balls to spend the night on our sailboat for the first time outside of a marina. I was driving trying to get the boat into position and Megan was hanging off the bow, attempting to use our boat hook to feed the line through the loop on top of the floating mooring ball.
Just before the actual mooring, we had docked at the day use slips in order to flake out the ropes and go over the sequence of tasks needed to moor the boat. The state park service expects all boaters to connect to bow and stern balls and after a failed attempt at bow first, we made a mid operation change in order to tie off the stern first which ended up being a better sequence.
Since the motion of the boat is restricted once attached at one end, it makes sense to back up to one ball while keeping the bow pointed toward the second forward ball. Then, once the stern line is passed through, you can simply motor forward and pick up the bow connection. The currents from Raccoon Straight tend to swirl through the cove which makes this difficult for many, but we had planned ahead and arrived at slack tide when the currents would be minimal.
We managed to get both lines attached on the second try and shut off the engine. Megan did a great job with our boat hook to feed the lines and I managed to keep the boat pointed in the right direction. This was the culmination of about 6 months of solid effort to get here. Continue reading “Sailing Trip, San Francisco Bay, CA”