The Year in Review

The end of the calendar year is a sort of a natural time for reflection… how did this year go?

From a personal perspective, I measure a lot of my “success” by how much time I spend outside. By most yardsticks, I think it was a good year. According to Strava, I turned in:

• ~2140 miles of cycling over ~195 hours (split somewhat between mountain and gravel bike, but mostly offroad)
• ~487 miles of running over ~86 hours
• ~103 miles of hiking over ~35 hours, including one 14er (Harvard)
• plus assorted walks, skiing, and other misc activities

So, not quite an hour a day, but I’m pretty happy with that overall. I also managed 4 camping trips (Medano Pass, Thunder Ridge, Mueller State Park, and Lake Isabel) and a couple 4×4 trips (Medano Pass and Paradise Divide). Hopefully next year will be similar or better.

It was also a big year professionally. After 7+ years at Clover I joined a startup in July and have been able to refresh/upgrade my skills as well as work in a new domain. The learning curves have been various grades of steep but very worth the effort. After many years working at places that used proprietary technology for a lot of things (up to and including persistence, web servers, etc), I’ve had the opportunity to realize the productivity that can come with using modern frameworks. Among other things I’ve learned a lot (more) about:

• Quarkus
• JPA
• JAX-RS
• Google Cloud Platform
• React (and related frameworks)
• Keycloak / OIDC
• Terraform
• etc.

So, we’ll call this year a win in that area as well.

Not a lot of travel out of state this year. A trip to MN and a trip to Atlanta I think was it. Hoping next year will have more, although since I live right in the middle of where I want to be, going other places doesn’t always have the appeal it might.

As far as other things… not a lot of note. I held my own in the Battle of the Weeds in my yard. My cars have been mostly maintained. My house has been mostly vacuumed on a weekly basis. My retirement accounts got added to, and clobbered by the same market we all suffered.

I don’t like setting goals, but hoping 2023 will provide a lot of opportunities to recreate and grow professionally, while maintaining what needs to be done day to day.

Happy New Year!

Note: I left family stuff out of this post on purpose.