The Year That Was

Another year, another “where did the time go?” post…

• My daughter left home to start university. She had a wonderful first semester, but I miss her in all sorts of ways.

• I supervised some student projects at the University of Toronto for the first time in fifteen years. I really enjoyed working with them, and I hope they had fun as well, but it brought me face-to-face with how bad the job market is right now for newcomers in tech.

• I was laid off for the third time in eight years, which has brought me face-to-face with how bad the job market is right now for oldcomers in tech.

• The refugee that my spouse and I helped sponsor through Rainbow Railroad finally arrived in Canada, and has settled in well.

• I ran a workshop on organizational change at the European Molecular Biology Lab in Heidelberg and gave a talk on cocaine and Conway’s Law at the University of Zurich (video here).

• I contributed to a paper called “10 Quick Tips for Making Your Software Outlive Your Job”, which was motivated in large part by the Trump administration’s hack-and-slash attacks on science.

• I started building a tutorial on how to simulate software development processes.

• I played jazz in public for the first time in twenty-three years.

• One wedding, no funerals.

• I finally finished (first complete drafts of) three pieces of fiction that I’ve been working on for longer than I want to admit. I don’t know if there’s a market for any of them right now, but it felt pretty good to finally write “The End”.

Time for the day’s last cup of tea. If you came in peace, be welcome.