Family-Life

Amazon apparently has a mole. There’s a poster on TeamBlind who goes by the handle “QuickSuite” who’s been giving play-by-play since October on what’s going on with layoffs. The date’s moved from 1/26 -> 1/28 (per rumor) and numbers are up in the air. Feels like everyone below VP level is nervous. In any case, quarterly earnings come out 2/5, so it’ll certainly be this week. I was speaking with a colleague last week who’s barely a year into Amazon, and he said, “I mean…would it be so bad to get laid off?” That seems to be a common sentiment. I understand where he’s coming from…the place can be a pressure cooker, especially for affirmation-seaking Type-A personalities. The joke within is: “This is the place where smart people come to feel bad about themselves.” ...

Contrary to popular opinion, I do go on vacation. This is a narrative of what happened and what I liked and didn’t like. Introduction: Universal Orlando & TLDR I haven’t had a family vacation since June 2019. We haven’t taken a Florida vacation since 2016, two weeks before I joined Amazon. It’s telling I have blog entires about neither. Both were PM (Pre-meds) and I went kicking-and-screaming. With my wife and I finally on the same page about finances, we agreed to take a trip to Orlando before Maria was out of our house. ...

What happened in 2025? Family My Dad is still alive and doing well. My mother died December 8, 2024. The next 30 days were a complete blur, so one could consider all of 2025 the hangover. Dad has a girlfriend, is working every day, and continues his building projects on the 92-acre farm where I grew up. Yes, even at 73. Personally, I hear half the things he does and at 47, I need a nap. ...

Some people mark milestones of the “Christmas they got a bike,” or “Christmas I got an XBox.” That never mattered to me, particularly. My spoiled self often got those things too, but my real, burning desire was computers. As a member of GenX, I was fortunate enough to surf the tidal wave of personal computing. From my earliest memory in the mid 1980’s, we had a “keeping up with the Joneses” TI-99x in our household. I remember it having a super-clicky keyboard and playing games on cartridges. But that one wasn’t mine. ...

So, 20 years ago today, I got married. From three days in to the marriage I screwed things up, and have continued to do so since. My wife is honoring her commitment to me, but honestly she signed-up for none of this. In this post, I’d like to enumerate some things I’d do differently if I had a time machine. I’d still get married. It must be said: I love my wife, and I was head-over-heels in love with her when we married. I firmly believe I would be dead or in prison if not for my wife. And of course I love all our children. No regrets. ...

Our last bunny, Joe, died suddenly today. He was about 8 years old. As we were preparing to walk out the door, I went in to feed Joe his morning pellets as usual and he was sitting in his hutch flaring his nostrils and biting at the air. It seeme like he was struggling to breathe. Well, that’s not good, I thought. Grace came in and picked him up, taking him to Whitney but he seemed desperate to get out of her arms. Looking back on it, I suppose he was smothering. He bounded down onto the kitchen table and hopped a few times. Then Grace picked him up again. ...

Nine months is a long time–Plenty of time for a baby to be born, or for a cow to birth a calf. Enough time for a madman to be well on his way to dismantling the American Republic. In my case it took nine months for me to feel…anything about Mom dying. I couldn’t call her “Mom” even. Every discussion was “my mother,” or “my mom.” Somehow this arms-length feeling helped me not feel. I desperately needed to avoid feeling. ...

Poor sleep last night. So the Daylight Savings Time switch was this weekend, so everyone felt fully capable of staying up until midnight watching movies. This weekend we watched Raya and the Last Dragon on Friday, the final episode of Agent Carter and the first in the Hobbit trilogy on Sunday. I’m uneasy. I have my second (well, final) cataract surgery on Wednesday–as luck would have it St. Patrick’s Day. I went to bed before Whitney and Maria and when they went to bed I woke up with my mind swimming from flashbacks from the last cataract surgery: The immense anxiety. The claustrophobia of being draped with just your eye poking out. The general fear of the smells of a surgical center. ...

The world went to hell on 13 March 2020. We’d been watching a slow-motion tidal wave from China come our way since January. We’d hoped it’d stop like SARS in mainland China, and we’d get to say “Whew! Close one.” Nope. We saw it bloom in Europe, but hey–we’re still an ocean away from this thing, right? No. On March 13, I got the email saying “Work from Home until further notice.” Then a few weeks later, it became “We’ll evaluate but stay home until May 1st at least.” ...

If the “Great Lockdown” or whatever history calls this thing had sight, smell, sound, taste, and feel, what would they be? Feel is easy: Tired. The feel of a not-so-early morning after a long night of binge-watching whatever (Mandalorian, Picard, Friends). Being tired for no particular reason, like the tired of a long road trip or transcontinental flight: You haven’t exerted yourself, but you’re exhausted, disoriented, and cranky. CoVid19 tastes like bad breath, that cottonmouth you get from dehydration after too late a night or far too early a morning. It also tastes like the Diet Coke® I secret away in my gun safe so my kids won’t drink any. ...

So, phase one (shock/denial) appears to be over. Over 20 million people are out of work, roughly a 20% unemployment rate. There are almost 700k total cases, and 32k deaths. This is just from people we know had the disease. Whatever “rainy day funds” most people had are exhausting. Quickly. It seems clear, this is going to be somewhere between the “Great Recession” and the “Great Depression.” And honestly: There’s no end in sight. ...

So, it’s official as of today (Source. As an aside, this ‘worldometers.info’ site is a clinic on how to present and visualize data at scale.) Eight-three thousand cases, and no sign of let-up after 2 solid weeks of “shelter-in-place” or “stay-home-pretty-please” New York is simply exploding, especially The City. I’ve taken to following a former member of disaster preparedness for Obama, @JeremyKonyndyk. Here’s his take as of today: We’re not “flattening the curve.” We’re accelerating. We’re fighting our health care system. ...

Well, at least yesterday was good, right? The stock market went up by 2,000 points. The Congress seemed to agree on–depending how you count it–a SIX TRILLION DOLLAR (!) bailout package, that represents a quarter of the US annual GDP. This comprises: 2 Trillion in relief for businesses and regular Folksy 4 Trillion in authority for the Fed to buy….stuff. REITs, ETF, Bonds, etc. Today has been less rosy. Last night, I was up with grace in immense pain until 11 or so, then I just collapsed in my bed. I finally got to work by 9am…only to find that I had a mandatory 45-minute Mac OS Catalina upgrade (10.15.4, if you’r scoring at home) to do. ...

“You’re choosing to watch the news. You can choose not to.” Yesterday, made an excursion to Randall’s to get some supplies after I got my daughter’s medication in Cedar Park. The store had more than I expected, but the necessities had evaporated. Bottled water, paper goods, bread, milk. I saw a yuppie buying all the individual cereal containers, bragging about how he had “Fifteen Gallons of Milk” at home. For himself. ...

It continues today. Every day feels like a week. As of this writing, stocks are down 8%, just today. This a snapshot of the cnn.com headlines: Not good. There’s news the executive is invoking War Emergency provisions to get priority production for necessities. Per my recollection, the last time that happened was in World War 2. Yesterday was a better day; I was able to work a bit. Today has just been staring at headlines. I must stop. I must work.

And so it begins As I write this, it’s 5pm on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m not wearing green. I’m sitting at home in our spare bedroom, with a 24" monitor ahead of me, and Amazon Basics® Keyboard instead of my beloved CODE Keyboard, and the world aflame. I agree with this tweet: Basically, the news since last week has been Through-the-Looking-Glass bad. A Quick rundown for posterity: Starting mid February, the stock market is down a third from its highs. February 19th, the Dow closed at 29,386. Today, it closed 21,237. Earlier today, it was under 20,000, briefly. Trillions of dollars of market value have been erased in six weeks. Yeterday in particular, the Dow lost 12% of its value, or about 3000 points. In one day. ...

“It seems like I should write something about coronavirus,” I thought to myself. I’m sitting in a very empty Amazon office in Austin, Texas on a Saturday. I’m trying to make-up for a day I took off on Wednesday to shuttle Grace to a Primary Care doctor who promptly told me to take her to Dell Children’s Hospital for possible appendicitis. I knew it wasn’t appendicitis, but meh. I needed some time away from work. There’s been a swizzle of what Amazon calls “Product,” meaning two new “Managers” came on my project. Now we have: ...

Today is my daughter’s 13th birthday. Thirteen years ago, I watched my wife attempt to deliver our child naturally via the Bradley method, then I watched my daughter get stuck at -2 station, her head caught on my wife’s pelvis, and I watched a sex-addicted doctor cut her open and finally bring my daughter into the world. My account of that day What I left out, of course, was how utterly unprepared I was to be a father. Overwhelmed with emotion, between that 11pm and 11:30pm timestamp, I stood in the room where my wife had tried to push out our daughter, and I cried. I stood there and sobbed. I know now, those were sobs of crushing anxiety cresting into relief. They were both going to be okay. ...

What happened in 2019? I like to do year-in-review posts every year or after specific milestones, like changing jobs or having big projects finish. So, if 2018 was a triumph, 2019 was its hangover. Family Both my parents are still alive, and are ornery as ever. Throughout most of 2019, our relationship with our son was estranged, most acutely when we flew up to Kentucky in May to see him graduate Franklin County High School when he refused to see us before, during, or after graduation. ...

So, I made some rocks for my daughters’ rock ceremony last night. The left, JOY, is for Grace (all-caps intentional) and the right Perseverance is for Maria. Then today, I got the “memory” of the rocks last year. That was exactly 364 days ago (Understanding == Maria, Enthusiasm == Grace). As cliche as it sounds, it really seems like yesterday. I’m reminded of reading the Stephen King short story My Pretty Pony. The summary seems apt: ...