Getting Close

Sometime this week I will be hitting my goal of 500km in running. I’m really excited and even though it isn’t really a lot compared to many runners, some weeks it has been a battle to get my 25km in that I needed.

This past week was one of them. I had started out with great intentions to get ahead for the week by running 10km but that didn’t work out. Shortly after starting I had to turn around because I wasn’t feeling well. Self inflicted by eating to much bad food. That caused me to pretty much get all my running in from Wednesday onward. I ran two 10k’s and a 5k with a rest day on Thursday. I much prefer to spread thing a out more but it felt good doing two 10k’s in a week.

Because of that, and the new FitBit, I’ve been doing much better at eating well this week, especially these last two days. It’s been motivation for me to track what I’m eating again. As much as I dislike doing that, with FitBit it is easy and it really keeps me accountable.

Christmas Shopping with Noah

Today I was able to get out on my first shopping date with one of the kids for the year. We’ve started drawing names so each Jen and I take out two kids individually to pick out small gifts for their siblings and have a treat with Mom or Dad. 

We had some ideas before we went on what he wanted to get them and as luck would have it we could get all three at the same store!

We timed it around lunch time because for his treat Noah wanted a cheese burger. Trying to be good I packed a wrap and apple for myself to eat right before we pulled in so I wouldn’t be tempted by McDonalds food. 

Once I had Noah all setup with his happy meal I tried opening his toy for him and knocked over my full hot coffee all over my foot and floor. Just the kind of scene I wanted in a busy restaurant. Noah thought it was kind of amusing and we were both impressed the have me a new one when I went to tell them what I had done. 

Besides that mishaps we had a fun time. Looking forward to getting out with Alexandria very soon as well. 

 

Stepping It Up With FitBit

Today I jumped on the FitBit band wagon. Only I won’t actually be on the wagon because that won’t up my step count 🙂

This is either going to be a real good thing for me or a bad one. This could be the push and the motivator for me to get back on track. It could also make me a bit obsessive. It put it on around 4:00pm today and was at times walking laps around the main floor of the house just to make it to 5000 steps. 

I also started tracking my food and water intake as well. At least I drink enough water. I tried eating well today and still ended up way over the calories. Tomorrow I’ll do better and I’ll also burn more calories. 

The FitBit is one of the newest benefits from Automattic which is amazing. We have a group setup and I know there is no way that I’ll keep up with some of my coworker leaders but it will be good motivation to try. 

I’m looking forward to trying out the run tracking on it tomorrow and seeing how many steps I get on a regular full day. 

  

Zeus, Me, and the Christmas Tree

For most of the afternoon I suffered from a headache. After school the house was pretty hectic for a while which didn’t make it any better.

After dinner everyone went Christmas Caroling at a local nursing home. It was too late for Noah though and Alexandria had riding lessons. They were only there for a bit and I went to pick them up. After dropping Alex off at riding I brought Noah home and got him to bed. I went strait back into my jammy pants that I had only taken off for the short time going to get them.

That left just Zeus and I to hang out on the couch enjoying the quiet. Nice and peaceful and to top it off my headache is gone.

I’ve Created a Monster

JK model (30)Pretty sure I’ve helped create a monster, a leggings monster. For sometime now the ladies in our house have become very enthusiastic about leggings. It’s become one of the primary pieces of clothing in each of their wardrobes.

A few weeks ago Jen even hosted a leggings party at our house. An independent representative from JK Apparel brought her inventory of leggings over and Jen invited a bunch of people over to try them on and buy them. It was a successful party I’d say.

Last week I had the opportunity to work a bit answering some support questions for WooCommerce. I setup a few test sites so I could play and while digging in and learning things I really wanted to learn more. To motivate me I wanted to find something I could actually sell in a live store so I could set it up and maintain it a bit. It also could be anything that would take any real time and that’s when it hit me.

It took very little convincing to have Jen sign up to be a rep for JK Apparel as well. Her first shipment of leggings and other things are on their way. Since I put the idea in her head it’s taken up a lot of the conversations in the house. Jens been calculating, planning, and organizing getting ready to hit he ground running. There is no doubt in my mind that she’s going to do awesome in this venture and I love seeing her so excited about it.

It also makes me happy that I’ll get to play more with WooCommerce but not have to do any of the actual work involved with processing orders 🙂

Morning Walk at the Marsh

Jen had the day off today, well at least until after school, so we took a bit of time this morning and went for a walk around the marsh.

The water had a skim of ice on the top in some places. The grass and cat tails were shimmering with a bit of frost. Our faces were a little cold when we were done, but it was a really nice way to spend time together.

Car == Fixed

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how my car wouldn’t start, and since then it has been sitting in the drive way not going anywhere. We made out fairly well on one car, although it was challenging at times and we burned a lot more gas driving just the big SUV. Today that came to a change though. It is once again alive!

It took a couple weeks due to time, weather, and lack of tools. Weather has been cold and wet and I don’t have anywhere to do any work to the car except in the drive way. About a week ago after I had tried checking all the things I could with the tools I had I was pretty sure it was the starter itself on the car that as gone. Luckily all I needed was a new socket set and found one on sale for only $20. It’s a good set and I really should have had one ages ago.

After many YouTube videos for research and a pretty big scare one night I was ready to get to work. After the car had sat about a week I though it would be wise to take it for a drive so it wasn’t just sitting and things getting ceased up. So I went out and tried to push it and get it going by myself with a bump start. The only problem is our driveway is on a hill and I had to push up the hill. Didn’t quite have it in me by myself and so I ended up calling from my cell phone in a panic for Jen to come out and put the break on because I was just barely able to hold the car from rolling down the hill, across the yard, and into our shed.

Yesterday came and the weather was beautiful, so when everyone else was out in the morning I went out and took apart the car a bit so I could get to the starter. Pulled it out and right away saw what the problem was. There was a braided wire from one part of the starter to the other that had broken. Jen was thrilled with the picture I sent her with the starter on the kitchen counter.

2002 Honda Civic Starter
2002 Honda Civic Starter

After considering just trying to repair the connection a friend reminded me that there is lots of current that flows there and if it broke it could be because something else in the starter is not working right. Found a used one at a local salvage yard but they weren’t open until today. They have all their parts catalogued and organized so when I stopped by they went right to it and brought it to me, all tested and ready to go.

Today on a lunch break I went out and put the new starter on and everything else back together and it started the first turn of the key. This makes me a mechanic now right? I’m very excited that I was able to get this fixed for about $100 when the part itself was quoted at almost $300 not including labour.

Running Progress

In early November I set a new goal to hit 500km in running before the end of the year. That meant that I have to run 25km per week to get there. In the beginning I was doing very well, lately I seem to be making it to the end of the week and having to put in a longer run to make the 25km.

Even though I’m pushing it to close to the end, I’m still getting it done. Today I ran 10km and with the three other 5km runs I had this week I just barely hit my 25km. November I made it to 103km, which took me to just over 400km since July. That means just under 100km again for December and I’m there.

running-goal

I’ve quite enjoyed this goal as there’s no set number of runs or pace that I’ve given myself, just get in the distance. For the most part I’ve been enjoying the runs. I just need to get back ahead of things so I’m not feeling the pressure at the end of each week.

One Year Automattic Anniversary

Today marks my one year anniversary at Automattic! For most people that probably doesn’t seem like a very big deal but for someone like me it really is. My first “real” job was when I was 16 years old which was 20 years ago. Before that I had summer jobs, things like my paper route, and odd jobs around the neighbourhood. In that time I’ve worked for quite a few different companies. The longest time I’ve stayed in one position was fourteen months. Even though I really enjoyed that position and the people I worked with I was already looking for my next move about halfway through.

Automattic is different, at the year mark I’m not checking job banks every day or searching online for that next opportunity. In fact I really feel like I’m just getting started here. So much more to learn, so much further to grow, and so much more to contribute.

The year I’ve been here has been an exciting for Automattic as well. Building, launching, and just recently releasing, as open source, Calypso. It’s a whole new interface to work with your sites. When I started a year ago there were under 300 employees and now today we are over 400. That included the acquisition of Woo!

Automattic has given me so much. My first trip outside of North America to a team meetup in Barcelona. My home office setup is pretty amazing. My new wardrobe full of clothing with the WordPress logo on it. A trip to the Grand Meetup in Utah to spend a week with our entire company. This was an incredible experience. Freedom and flexibilty, being able to schedule my time off and days around the rest of my life has helped provide a great work / life balance. Endless learning, I’m still learning new things all the time and I’ve just barely scratched the surface of the different teams that I can rotate to and spend time learning and helping on. Confidence, it took a while to feel like I actually belonged with all the other smart, amazing co-workers and that I might be able to offer the support and help others had given me.

In this year I’ve started to give back as well. Since starting I’ve had thousands of interactions with the people who directly use our products. Helping them use and learn our products while also getting their feedback to help make things better. Watching Calypso being developed and being able to help test and troubleshoot features as they were being built was very rewarding. Probably the most rewarding though, as much as I never thought I’d get to this point, is the fact that I’ve been able to be a buddy to new employees starting out including helping with their training.

Fairly early on when I was doing a lot of live chat I built a tool that I could use to track my productivity. I found it useful so I made it available for others to use. It doesn’t get a lot of use, but there are still people who do use it. Along the code route I, with a lot of help, added a very small addition to an internal tool that was helps us communicate a bit better.

Currently I’m working on organizing a series of hang outs where developers can answer questions about key features or products so us Happiness Engineers can better support them and better understand how they work. We’ve had one so far with more to come.

There are still many things I have to improve and get better at, but I’m looking forward to it. With my co-workers and team mates there is so much I can take away from each one of them to make myself better and more productive. In this past year, and only spending very little time in person with them, I already consider many of them friends. Even though it is just here in my house I look forward to going to work and interacting with them.

Thank you to everyone that has made this past year one of the best of my life all around. To those who took a chance on hiring me, training me, mentoring me, and just being there for me in general, my hope is that you’re not disapointed in your decision and that I’ve been worthy of your efforts. If I have it my way, and if Automattic agrees, this will just the first of many anniversaries as I know there is still so much that I can learn and in return also contribute.

Christmas Tree

Our Christmas Tree from lot to decorated.