What I am up to now. Check out my /now page for the latest update.
This is going to be a very brain-dumpy update. There’s a lot that has happened since my last update to my /now page!
Two weeks ago on July 1, my son was born! He and his mom are healthy and doing well. In fact, this postpartum period has felt much easier than our first kid, which has been a huge blessing. I’ve been enjoying my 4 weeks of parental leave to spend time with him and my family. Also, I am using this time to update my blog, purge our messy garage, and build a playset in our backyard.
My daughter also turned 3 recently. This is such a fun, chaotic age. She has a lot of energy and particularly loves singing and dancing. Right now, one of her favorite activites is cutting paper with scissors. It’s a little bit dangerous and requires lots fo fine motor skills, which I think makes it exciting for her.
I accepted a new job with Progressive Insurance as a Senior Software Developer. I actually accepted the offer from the hospital the day my son was born. I had already been working there as a contractor since October, but now I will be there as a direct employee. I’ll be on the same doing the same work. I am building software that uses machine learning models to estimate repair and replacement costs for cars that have been in accidents, based on photos of the damaged vehicle. Most of my time currently is going toward a greenfield application that will be used to generate data to train the models more rigorously in pursuit of improved model outputs.
I left NASA because I was commuting an hour to work in-person every day, and my job had shifted away from software engineering more toward product management. I really missed being hands-on in the code. I was waffling on whether I should stay or not, but then the deferred resignation program was offered a second time. The deal was that I would get 6 months of not working but still receiving bi-weekly pay and benefits as usual, AND on top of that I would get basically the government equivalent of severance, AND I could work elsewhere during that time, BUT at the end of the 6 months I would voluntarily resign my position. So I took it, along with around 4,000 other employees who opted into the second round of the deferred resignation.
That kicked off a fun season of life where I was hanging out with my wife and daighter all-day, everyday. I started to think about various business ideas I could start during this unique time, or whether I wanted to go back to work full-time as a software engineer. I ended up starting Cuyahoga Digital, a web design business. I worked with one client and that went great, but I’m not sure web design is where my passion is at, and I’m hesitant about how AI will impact the niche I was targeting (websites for small businesses). I’m thinking I will keep the business name but focus on a different aspect of software. My two front-runners write now are AI consulting or website rentals. But for now, I’m focusing on my full-time gig and family since there has been a lot of change in those areas.
While starting Cuyahoga Digital, I also applied to full-time software engineer jobs. And that process was so much harder than I expected! I must have sent out hundreds of applications, I got a handful of interviews, and I think 3 times I made it to the final round but was rejected at the end. And each time it was the same explanation, “We really like you and would love to have you join, but it was between you and someone else and they had more recent coding experience”. Not having recent coding experience really hurt me in my job hunt, but eventually I landed back at Progressive as a contractor on their Claims Payments team working on their invoicing and payments systems.
I’m writing this from an M2 Macbook Pro, so I begruglingly have at least a toe in the Apple ecosystem now. But honestly, I love this thing. It’s easily the best laptop I’ve ever owned. I get excited to use it each time I open it up. The build quality feels super premium, the keyboard is surprisingly pleasant to use (coming from Thinkpads, with extra-deep key travel), and the screen is gorgeous. Plus, it’s FAST.
I also bought an iPhone, but that was an intentional downgraded to an iPhone SE 3 after my Pixel 7 Pro started acting up. The iPhone SE is a 4 year old phone, with the smallest possible screen I could find while still having the usual smartphone features. It even has a physical home button! I have a love/hate relationship with it. I bought it so that I would spend less time on my phone, which I think has worked so far? I’m still on my phone more than I would like, but It’s very annoying to use. It seems like a lot of app developers no longer account for this small screen size when developing their apps, so I sometimes get weird behavior like things not showing up on screen. And overall, I liked the Android operating system more than iOS. So once this iPhone craps out, I’m going to switch back to Android.
My wife and I have been on a house project binge. A lot has changed around here since my last update:
- finished our basement
- fenced in our backyard
- poured a concrete patio in our backyard
- bought all new living room furniture
And currently, I am working on leveling out a section of our yard to build a playset for our kids.
We sold our 2012 Toyota Prius V. I was sad to see it go, but we traded it in for a 2024 Kia Carnival. After being accustomed to a 15 year old Prius, our new minivan feels like living in the future. And I am loving the amount of cargo space we have in the back while still accomodating two kids' car seats.
I should tell the story of buying the Carnival. It was used, so we had a pre-purchase inspection performed. That uncovered a few things, but it took weeks for the dealership to resolve, because they took it to another dealership for warranty work. Well, when they finally had it ready for us, we planned to go in that day at 6pm. This was June 30th. If you’ve paid from the beginning, you’ll rememeber my son was born July 1. My wife’s contractions started intensifying around 4pm, so we weren’t planning on going in to get the car. But then, about an hour before the dealership would close, it seemed like her contractions had stalled. So we decided I should go get the car while her parents stayed at our house with her. I had a lot of fun telling everyone at the dealership “My wife is literally in labor right now, so if we could speed this along, I would really appreciate it”. The poor finance guy was trying to sell me on all the extra packages and I was just jittering and repeating “please, can I just decline everything?”. Eventually, after making his appeal that these packages were “smart money” and “investments”, he relented and let me decline all the extras so I could walk out of there. But by then, my wife’s contractions were 4-5 minutes apart, so I drove to the hospital in the new van and met her there when her mom dropped her off. That was not exactly how we had planned for our trip to the hospital to go!
I got into running at the beginning of the year. I signed up for a half-marathon Spartan Beast race with some friends, so I started running since January to prepare. The race was in May, and although it was pretty difficult, we all ended up finishing it. Apparently our course here in Cleveland is the muddiest Spartan venue. We don’t have much else in the way of mountains or interesting terrain. The race started with a hundred yard walk through waste deep water, so my shoes were soaked from the get-go. And at one point, as I stepped into a puddle of water, my leg sunk down into a hole of mud clear up to my mid-thigh. And it was about as wide as my leg, so I couldn’t get my foot lose no matter how hard I tried. My friends had already crossed the water, so they looked back, said “you’ll be fine!”, and ran off. I must have been stuck there for a minute, exhausting myself trying to get out of the hole, when finally two other racers showed up and asked if I needed help. It took both of them grabbing under my armpits and me pushing with all my might to hoist me up out of my muddy hole. We collapsed on our backs together, laughed, caught our breath, and continued on with the race. Eventually, I caught back up with my friends who I had been running with. That event was a lot of fun, but I think the best thing was how I fell in love with running during the preparation for the race. I’m glad to have a fun new hobby that is keeping me healthy.
While this may seem minor, I changed my pocket journal setup recently. That’s a big deal for me. I had been rocking the same custom setup for a long time. I had a travelers notebook leather cover, with a paper folder insert, plastice zipper insert, one notebook insert, and then a leuchturmm pen loop that held a fisher space bullet pen at the top. The space pen was modified to take Zebra pen refills for smoother writing. It was both a wallet and journal combined, and it went with me everywhere. I had perfected it and built it uniquely for myself, but I’ve turned away from it now. Instead, I’ve been carrying a Field Notes journal with me everywhere and using a Ridge wallet for my cards. I like the journal being just a journal, so it is not as thick to hold and write on as when I had it combined with my wallet. I don’t love the Ridge wallet because it’s so heavy. I’ve dented and damaged multiple things in our house from accidentally dropping it, and it feels like a hazard to have around small children for that reason. So I’m planning to replace it with a Carhartt Nylon Duck Front Pocket Wallet. We’ll see if I like that better.
So in summary, a LOT has changed, and I’m too tired to organize or spell-check this update so I’m throwing it up as-is. I’m really loving life right now. I am so excited to watch my son and daughter grow, to start this new chapter of my career, and to do it all in style in a minivan. God has been good to me and my family. Since my last update we have had hard seasons and scary moments, but God has been faithful through it all and I’m excited to see where he takes us in the future.