Tag: Birthdays

Carpe Diem, Spring in CA

Adventures in the Past Few Months

Our calendar has been packed the past few months with short adventures and weekend trips, all flavored with a strong dose of short notice spontaneity and disorganization. With the project shutdown and layoff I felt the need to take advantage of every single day between the announcement of the project shutdown and the end of my notice period when I would be officially unemployed. It was such a whirlwind of last minute plans we even packed for trips that never happened!

Tahoe Northstar

Our adventures began with a last-minute trip to Tahoe Northstar. We booked our stay at 10 PM the night before leaving  yet still managed to travel in style. I rented a Tesla Model Y to try out self-driving during the long (for us) trip up to the mountains. The car added some fun for me, though I’m not sure the kids noticed much difference. Continue reading “Carpe Diem, Spring in CA”

Max, with help from gpt-2

This post is written with the assistance of GPT-2. Sections written by me are used as model prompts, and the model output is then modified or curated and able to be used again in following prompts.

Beginning of post

August 23, 2021:

[P1] Megan woke me early in the morning around 3am and said it was time to go have a baby, her water had broken an hour earlier. We sprung into action, though with a tiny bit less apprehension than the first time with Jane. After a long day but mostly typical delivery Max Thomas Cosgrove was born. Birth specifications are as follows:

Length: 50.8 cm (1′ 8”)

Weight: 3.15 kg (6 lb 15.1 oz)

Head Circumference: 36 cm (14.17”)

Apgar One: 9.0

Apgar Five: 9.0

Gestation Age: 39 2/7 wks

[S1] Having another baby was the goal, so that we could round out the family and give Jane a sibling. There are a lot of factors that go into any pregnancy. Luckily for us Megan didn’t have any issues getting pregnant. Recently I’ve noticed that it’s really hard for many to get pregnant. This one was a little different than Jane, mostly because we are so busy keeping up with Jane already. The pregnancy passed quickly and even since Max has been here life just keeps rushing on by. Continue reading “Max, with help from gpt-2”

3 weeks at the beach, Capitola, CA

Since the pandemic began, I watched my coworkers’ locations change throughout the year. Some moved permanently out of state to places like Montana, Michigan, New York and Texas. Others have moved within the state but out of the Bay Area, also for the long term. And most seem to have done some extended traveling. It was nice this past summer to have some routine going to work in the labs and having a normal workday again, but after talking to another engineer on the project who doesn’t do lab work and who spent three months working from Hawaii it’s hard not to get a bit jealous. He told me because of the time zone he was off work by 3:30 PM every day and spent the afternoons surfing.

My current job will never be fully remote, although I can do much of it from anywhere, and Megan’s clinic days mean that for now at least, we can’t easily move to Hawaii. But I’ve been feeling all along during this pandemic that I don’t want the opportunities it presents to pass by  unnoticed since it is (hopefully) a very unique situation and time. So with this as context, when Megan asked for some input on a weekend beach rental for my birthday this year, I asked why not go for a month instead.

 

Continue reading “3 weeks at the beach, Capitola, CA”

31st Birthday Weekend, San Francisco, CA

February 28th came around and Megan planned a great weekend for us up in San Francisco. During our training for the Santa Cruz Half Marathon, I had identified a few ‘destination runs’ I wanted to travel to for our long runs with SF and the Golden Gate Bridge being one of them. Based on this, we made the plan.

    • Ride the train up to SF
    • Check into a fancy hotel, The Palace
    • Run for 10 miles, with the halfway point at the Northern edge of the bridge
    • Go to dinner at a nice restaurant
    • Stay at fancy hotel
    • Return to Sunnyvale

       

    We had a great weekend. The hotel was awesome, Continue reading “31st Birthday Weekend, San Francisco, CA”