Posts in Category "personal"

After more than 10 years of avoiding it, I've finally rejoined the ranks of the private-car-owning bourgeois. $SPOUSE and I spent the past few weeks doing research and reading reviews, spent Saturday and Sunday test-driving a bunch of vehicles, and ended up buying a brand new Cosmic Blue¹ 2020 Honda Insight yesterday afternoon.

Went to Austin, Texas this weekend for a work event¹; it was my first time in Austin so I figured I'd write up some notes:

• Cities are so indistinguishable now. Downtown Austin has the same restaurant and store chains as San Francisco, Boston, Miami, or any other American city.
• Its is weird how much Confederate stuff there still is for the supposedly-liberal Texas city. Until '96, the Capitol Visitors Center was administered by the Daughters of the Confederacy; lots of Confederate flags.
• Live music everywhere, even at the broiest bars near the hotels — even at the hotel bars! This …

Well, here it is, the end of 2019, the end of the decade¹. 🎉 The end of the decade of my twenties, so probably the most eventful decade I'll experience². Ten years ago, I was at my parents' house in Fall River, a senior in college on my last Christmas break of all time. I'd just accepted an offer from Yelp to start as a Software Engineer in June, 2010, reporting to Neil Kumar³. The world was uncertain before me. Today, I am sitting in my own house⁵, married, working for my third employer, sitting pretty in …

I went to the DMV today to get a REAL ID upgrade for my license, and to get it reprinted with my correct address so I don't need to carry the paper change-of-address confirmation any more. The DMV is always a fascinating microcosm of human behavior, and a unique experience to simultaneously see the best and worst in people.

For those of you who haven't been in a California DMV, the process follows several stages:

1. (optional) Make an appointment. The North Oakland DMV doesn't have any appointments available in the next six months, and then next DMV available anywhere in …

Today we got a nasty surprise in the form of an email from my next-door neighbor informing me that somebody had attempted to break into our home¹! An hour later (while I was on my way home from work), we got another email indicating that the suspect had been arrested.

Apparently, someone was messing around with the lock on the gate to our backyard and my next-door neighbor yelled at them. They hopped the fence, so he called the police and yelled at them some more. They fled. The police came² , patrolled the neighborhood, and caught the guy …

I went up yesterday with my wife's family to hike around on some Sonoma Land Trust property up in the North Bay and brought my camera. It's amazing to see the hills green and growing after so many years of drought! You can see a smattering of photos in this flickr album, but here are some of my favorites:

If you're in Northern California and are physically-able, you should try to get out and enjoy this; it's gorgeous!