Beautiful Autumn Weekend

This weekend we ended up with some beautiful fall weather. We had a bunch of errands to run in the city yesterday and had originally planned on taking the kids to the discovery centre as a way to break up the day. Since it was so nice out we instead decided to take a walk through Shubie Park instead. We made the right choice.

Today once Noah’s soccer was done we had some time before Jen and Ella were done fund raising for her dance troupe so we decided to go for a little drive and walk instead. There is a little spot that I’ve noticed just off the highway for years but have never known exactly how to get there, or stopped to enjoy it. Today we decided to check it out. We had to go down a few roads before we found the spot, but it was worth it. The colours of the leaves are stunning and with the river there as well it is going to become a favourite spot of mine I’d say.

Once home Jen and Ella joined us and they decided they wanted to go for a walk as well. I used the opportunity go for my first run since being home. Started out on the same route I used for a bike ride a couple days ago, but then instead of turning back home I continued on to meet up with the rest of the family for the walk and seeing pumpkin people again.

Always Thinking

Noah came home from school the other day while I was away all proud of himself. Their school gives out Bravos to students when they are caught being or doing something good. Positive reinforcement at it’s finest. They can then save up these bravos and trade them in for a reward.

Noah found that if he picks up garbage out side and someone sees him they will give him a bravo. At first this was good intention, but what he was proud of was because he found an easier way. He told Jen:

Today I took my own garbage from my lunch outside and showed the teacher before I put it in the garbage and I got a bravo. I didn’t even have to try to find any outside.

Jen had a bit of a talk about honestly with him after that.

Saving Money

Besides vacations it’s been years since I’ve purposely set aside money to save for something I’ve wanted. It’s always been much easier to somehow justify and throw it on a credit card and worry about paying it off afterwards. 

Luckily for the most part I don’t usually  spend much money on myself, but I do have my moments and when I do it’s usually something more expensive than a small treat.

Starting tonight I’m going to try an experiment and stop that. When I look at my life there is absolutely nothing I need, so I’m going to stop spending money on my wants and instead put money away for something specific. 

When we were in Park City one of the most enjoyable things I did was go for a bike tour. It had been years since I’d been on a bike, but in my younger years I did bike a lot. A number of years back now I purchased a bike again with the intent on using it to lose weight and excersise.

The bike was cheap and not even the right size for me. One of my very first rides on it had me over the handle bars because things weren’t tight enough and when I turned the wheel didn’t turn with me. That and being very overweight made it awkward and really hurt my rear so I almost never rode it. 

Yesterday I took it out for a spin and things are seized so the brakes don’t work well and I can’t switch into most of the gears. Even with that I still had fun though. Having lost weight it doesn’t hurt by butt nearly as much. 

While I was away though I got it in my head that I was going to buy myself a new half decent bike. The day before yesterday I went down to the local bike shop to talk to them about what I was looking for and price point. It looked like we found something they had in stock that would work but more expensive that I was looking for so I walked away. Turns out that was a good thing. 

Right before I left for the meetup I had taken the car into get an oil change and checked over but it needed more work. So I left it at my mechanics while I was gone so he could take care of it. Today I went to pick it up and found out how much I owed. There goes my bike for now. 

That and other conversations got me thinking. As an experiment I’m going to stop buying any of the extra things I want, or treats I might see and start actively putting that money away to save for a new bike. That way maybe in the spring I’ll have saved a fair amount to put towards it just in time to enjoy it. 

As there aren’t many things I treat myself on the one big thing I see is coffee. I drink a lot of coffee so after I run out here at home I’m going to give it up and start saving that money instead. But there are other times where I’ll randomly buy myself something I don’t really need as well, that will stop too. 

I figure this will do a couple things. One it will start getting me back into a more disaplined state with money, and when I do buy the bike I won’t feel guilty about it because it will be like I earned it. 

The Go-Giver

Recently I was recommended a short book to read called The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann. Seeing as I was going to be spending some time on a plane I thought it would likely make a good choice as something to get through quickly while traveling.

The book is written in the form of a parable explaining five laws to stratospheric success. The tag line for the book is “A Little Story About A Powerful Business Idea”, but as far as I’m concerned it can be applied to life in general. It’s not a hard read, but very engaging and it really explains the principles in an easy to grasp and fun way. I won’t give away all the laws but, the main idea is that giving to people without the expectation of anything in return, as the secret to be hugely successful.

Even though I’ve seen some of these things hold true in small ways in my own life I would have still been a little skeptical. However by looking at the concepts and comparing them to Open Source, and WordPress in particular, you can see how it can be true. The whole concept of open source is just that, people contribute to a project because the believe in it or think it is important. In the case of WordPress the project itself, and many people, have become very successful. There is a large number of people who make their living using, building on, or supporting, WordPress. The results of the 2014 WordPress survey had over 7500 people making their living with it.

There are are many other parts of the book that relate as well, but I’ll leave it for you to read, but think value, and influence as a couple others. Even without this I’d recommend the book, I can see me reading it a few more times to really try and absorb it all and trying to live closer to concepts in it.

Automattic Dance Party

This Grand Meetup which I just returned from has been a bit of a roller coaster for me. Really my emotions leading up to it, while I was there, then coming home have had me all over the place. Realistically I’m still processing a lot of what I learned, what I’m going to take away, and how I’m going to incorporate these things into my daily life. There was one particular event that after talking to others and reading more thoughts I think really sums up what kind of environment Grand Meetup and Automattic is. That is the Automattic 10th Anniversary Party on the final night.

Honestly after dinner I was really thinking that it was going to be the end of my night. Before the party though I went and had a nice quiet conversation and coffee with a couple of co-workers. After talking with them I gave in and said I’d at least go give it a chance, I am so glad I did.

The party started with different groups of Automatticians taking the stage and rocking it hard. They only played together for a week and kept switching people up after each song. It really blew my mind. We are made up of such talented people in so many ways and this was just one of them. It really turned my mood around listening and watching these folks get up and perform for us. So I grabbed a drink and turned to party mode.

What happened later on still surprises me and shocked my wife, but I actually was up and dancing to our special guests The Jane Doze who flew in to take care of music for us. For many people this isn’t a big deal and something they do all the time, for me I haven’t done it since elementary school. That’s because at my first dance, where I thought I was with friends, I was laughed at and made fun of enough that it caused me to run away crying and leave. Since that time I haven’t danced ever except for a few slow songs which was basically just me moving in circles with someone else.

It would be pretty easy to simply thank the whisky I had been drinking for my new found bravery, but that isn’t it, at least not completely. Over my teenage years there were plenty of times that I was in the position to get up and dance being fully lubricated with alcohol but still didn’t. It also wasn’t only me. There are at least two other accounts that I’ve heard of where people got up and danced and it wasn’t something they normally do. In fact it was one of them who helped convince me to give it a try.

The real reason that I felt comfortable enough to do this was because of the atmosphere of acceptance and friendship I felt from everyone I encountered. It really felt like a safe, fun place to let my guard down. Chances are my dancing skills were every much as bad or worse than that time in grade school, but I never heard anyone laughing or pointing at me. That said, I still hope there isn’t any video evidence, but there very well could be.

Readers of this blog are likely getting sick of hearing me say things like this, but I’m so happy and thankful for the opportunity that I have to work at Automattic and with all the people who make it such a special company. That really starts right from the top with CEO Matt Mullenweg, right down to one of the newest members on my team Alicia Henry and really everyone in between who I was able to meet. So thank you to everyone! I haven’t listed all the names, but that could take me a long time and I don’t want to leave anyone out by mistake.

I’ll end this post with this pitch, if this sounds like the kind of place you want to be a part of, go to our work with us page and contact our obviously super human hiring team.

Home Again

Not sure where to complain. I came out of my room this morning and there wasn’t a never ending supply of breakfast foods or buckets of coffee waiting for me. When I mentioned it to my wife she wasn’t very receptive to my problem. 

Although being in Park City Utah with my co-workers for a week was just a great experience, I’m very happy to be home in my own bed and getting tonnes of hugs this morning from my beautiful children before they were off to school. 

Now I just need to find the laundry service and house keeping to take care of this pile of dirty clothes I have. 

Park City Utah / Canyons Resort

Strange Feeling

Have you ever been in a crowded room and felt all alone? I’ve had that feeling a few times over the past week even though I’ve been surrounded by awesome people. 

The feelings came mostly in the beginning and now closer to the end of our company meetup. 

To me it means a few things. The first is that I’m more of an introvert than I even thought I was. Next, drinking and partying late into the night isn’t who I am anymore, I just don’t fit in, likely because of the introversion. Time to stop pretending that’s who I am I guess. 

The last and probably biggest reason is that I’m away from my family who I love and miss very much. As much as for the most part I’ve loved this week, I’m really looking forward to getting home to them soon. 

Support as a Career

When I get home and can really reflect I’ll post a better and more full recap of my first Grand Meetup with Automattic. For now I want to talk about something great that has happened for me here. I’ve had a bit of an epiphany thanks to two town hall sessions I’ve attended. One was company wide and one specific to our happiness or support section. Not sure if it is exactly an epiphany, because I really knew it already, I think I just forgot it a little. This allowed me to bring it back in to focus. Now I need to live it even better.

When I came to Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in the back of my head I kind of thought it would be fun to use it as an “entry” position and work my way into a development role. In the past I’ve had development roles, specifically web development roles, that I could likely put to use here. I’d never pretend that I’m anywhere near the calibre of the developers we do have, but I thought I could learn from them. The funny part is the jobs I’ve always been happiest at have been the ones where I’m providing support.

If I’m happiest in a support role, why do I want to move to something else? After the questions and answers in the town halls I think it is because of my biases coming from other companies where support really is an entry level position. It’s not something that the companies I worked at treated as a serious and important career option. It was usually seen as a necessary, yet evil, cost centre. Not at Automattic. Support is seen as an important bridge between everyone that uses our products and the products themselves. Every conversation we get to have with the people who use our products is an opportunity to learn and makes things better. This is exactly the career I’ve been looking for.

There are some things I need to work on though and personally need to get better at. Taking the conversations I have and helping find where things can be made better and communicating that is currently a weakness. There are many parts I already feel I do well though. When I find something that is broken either through testing or from a user I can work with our developers to let them know so they can get it fixed.

While I can read code and understand it, I could spend a lot of time trying to dig through the code to find exactly where the bug is, but really these developers know the code a lot better than I do. It would be a lot more efficient if I instead worked on my bug and deficiency reporting so that I made the reports as helpful as possible. If I do that, they’ll be able to find where the bug is a lot faster than I could and they also can it fixed. The time I would spend looking would take me away from having other conversations with people where I can have a much greater impact in the long run.

Coding is still fun, and I’m not going to stop. In fact while here I took a course on JavaScript as there is a feature I would like to see, so I’m going to try and build it. But that will be in my spare time, as the hobby it really is for me now.

There are so many things I will be taking away from this Grand Meetup, but I think this will be the most important thing. It has helped me refocus on my career here and will help me approach interactions from a different mindset. It will be a lot of work and I know I won’t be able to do it overnight, or be perfect at it, but I’m going to work at being better.

Family Weekend

So thankful for the weekend I was able to have with my family before I left for the week. We had a great time getting to play a lot outside and taking in all that autumn in the Annapolis Valley has to offer.

We went apple picking, to the pumpkin regatta parade, played on the mini trains, and toured around visiting more of the pumpkin people. Pretty sure the kids had just as much fun rolling and playing down the hills. It was a lot of fun and I even managed to run the 10k race as part of the Valley Harvest Marathon.

Here are a bunch of pictures from over the weekend.