Tag: Vacation

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”

3 weeks in CO, Golden-Fort Collins-Breckenridge-Boulder, Colorado

As a higher elevation followup to our 3 weeks at the beach earlier in the year we planned a 3 week trip to Colorado for late fall this year, and we just got back.

My company has instituted a pilot program which officially allows remote work outside of your home state for 2 weeks per calendar year. Actually this was extended to 4 since planning the trip but I digress. When this was announced I jumped on it telling my group I’d be elsewhere for November before we had the trip planned. Most of the details came together pretty quickly and we booked stays in all our past locales. And with the expectation of a full week off for Thanksgiving from my job, we were able to stay for more than three weeks.

Continue reading “3 weeks in CO, Golden-Fort Collins-Breckenridge-Boulder, Colorado”

Time off, 11/23/2019 – 01/06/2020

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.

 

Continue reading “Time off, 11/23/2019 – 01/06/2020”