Catching up in 2024

It’s a new year and a new newsletter platform! Here’s what’s been going on with us.

Work

I resigned my job at GlossGenius mid-November. During my ~18 months there, I grew from managing 2 teams with 3 people total, to ending up managing 3 teams (Platform Engineering, Data Engineering, Information Security) and 15 total people. That’s a lot of growth! Many of the challenges were interesting, but ultimately I feel I need to work on a product in an industry that resonates more with me. I was finding it tough to have opinions about the product and its direction, where I had that at previous places like LinkedIn, Jaunt VR, and Diamond IP. For now I’m using the free time to level up in several areas. I completed an Intro to Programming with Python offered by Harvard (to dust off my python and programming skills), and am now working my way through their AI with Python course. Otherwise, I’ve been going on hikes at Harris Lake and Bass Lake, and riding the Peloton, to keep active. Overall I have plenty to do, am learning things I can apply to my next role, and haven’t felt bored yet.

Sherri’s been a science teacher since mid-December, covering at Siena’s middle school for a teacher who is out on extended medical leave. Toward the end of last year she led a cow eye dissection exercise; I’m sure she’s glad to be back to “dryer” topics like the Earth’s crust.

Holiday

As many of you know, before we moved to California we lived in Celebration, Florida, the “Disney designed community”. The town is only a few miles away from Walt Disney World, so when we lived there we’d take advantage of our annual passes and take the kids there often. Problem is, they were 4 and 2 when we left Florida, so they don’t remember much. We decided it was time for a return visit with our now 14 and 12 year olds.

Since we’d be visiting several different places once we were in Florida, we decided to drive down. This was our longest drive as a family, coming in at around 12 hours total after factoring in charging. (Buc-ee’s is a post of its own). Driving down to Florida we broke it up and stopped in southern Georgia for the night. Driving back from Vero Beach, we went straight through. Pros and cons to both approaches.

For the Disney part of the trip, we stayed five nights in a one bedroom suite at Bay Lake Tower at the Contemporary. We really enjoyed our time here! The hotel is adjacent to the Magic Kingdom, so it’s an easy 10 minute walk over to the front of the park — and none of the TTC nonsense. We had passes for three days, and I’d added a Park Hopper option. We walked 10+ miles each of those days. We were exhausted but in a good way. Rowan has made riding roller coasters one of his top priorities in life now. Siena did ride a few roller coasters with me, including both of us being in the front row for the Tron ride!, but they aren’t her favorite.

For Christmas Eve we treated ourselves to all you can eat at ‘Ohana at the Polynesian, and then toured around the Magic Kingdom until around 11:30pm. Not a typical Christmas Eve, but surely a memorable one! Note for next time: do NOT arrive at the park just as the fireworks are starting.

After Disney we drove over to Spring Hill, a relatively short 2.5 hour trip, to visit with Sherri’s folks who are spending their winter in Florida. I was feeling pretty exhausted by this part of the trip, but the kids were able to take advantage of the time with their grandparents to play basketball, shuffleboard, and ping pong. We also had our Christmas gift exchange here with family, which was nice.

For the final part of the trip I booked us in to Disney’s Vero Beach Resort. These rooms aren’t easy to get, so when I happened to see someone renting points on a DVC points rental website I jumped on it. I’d been wanting to revisit this property since staying there in the late 90’s when working for Disney, and I’m glad we got the chance. It still lives up to expectations! The weather was cooler than we’d prefer, but not cold, and it was still warmer than Holly Springs!

Some highlight photos from the Disney trip are in this Google Photos album.

School

Rowan and Siena are both doing well in all their subjects.

Rowan will be glad when Math is done until next year; the beginning of the semester was a struggle, some days requiring 2 hours of homework time plus outside tutoring, just to stay above water. In hindsight this was a challenging course to take in the first semester of the first year of high school, but he’s doing much better now. He finds both of his electives, Astronomy and Psychology, very interesting!

Siena has A’s in all her subjects. Last quarter she took an Exploring Childcare elective, which paid off for us: when Rowan knocked out a few teeth on a trampoline in September, it was Siena who knew from her class to put the teeth in milk to preserve the roots. Oh and she also had her first paying babysitting gig last month.

End of semester exams are in a few weeks, and then on to second semester.

Thanks for reading! —brian