Yeah, I know. Before a few weeks ago, I hadn’t heard of it, either. I was poking around VRBO, looking for a place that’d be either near snow, or near a river, and this was a place that happened to have both. So I booked the place for a weekend, and away we went.

There was some anxiety about taking the S up, because if there wasn’t a place to charge, our options would be pretty limited. As is, we managed to find a regular plug, which gave us enough charge to get around a bit, though not entirely without some range anxiety. 😀

It was K’s first time in the snow. I think this picture is from literally moments after he stepped in it for the first time. J’s 2nd time – we haven’t gone up to Tahoe in the winter in ages – mostly (for me) because I hate the drive up when the drive up sucks, and I’m not super confident driving in the snow, particularly in an RWD car. But we figured the roads would be clear, and the other day, J saw a picture of something snowing, and said, “That’s my favorite season!” – no wonder why, the last time he was in the snow was up in Ottawa, surrounded by relatives and having the time of his life.

But K hasn’t had anything like that, so we figured it’d be good to show him what it’s like. And we’d been to Sunol the last few weeks, and had been poking around a river down there, and really loved spending time by it, tossing rocks and sticks in, and just watching/listening to the water. So spending a few days riverside was high on my list of “things to do.”

We drove up on Friday evening, and on Saturday, decided to go try sledding. Unfortunately, the place (Adventure Mountain) was at capacity, and they weren’t letting anyone in. So we drove around a bit until we found something that looked like a place to play around, and we found a completely random little secluded spot where the snow was about 6′ tall.

Funny – while we played around, a handful of other families that were *clearly* doing the same thing we were drove by, then eventually drove back, and came to play in the same area – just a random snowbank across from a closed, for-sale restaurant building and some sort of weather station. By the time we left, the place we’d parked was full of other cars, and there were another four or five families messing around in the same area we were.

I think Ei-Nyung’s mom is happy with the snowman we made.

After an hour or so of poking around, it was time for K’s nap, so we went back to the cabin & put him to bed. J and I decided to poke around the river, which was fun. I actually don’t think I’ve been to a river that was that … loud. All the time. I thought a fan was running or something, but nope – just the river. That realization happened probably 10+ times a day.

Really pretty, though. Air was really crisp, and it felt in some ways like the cabin we went to when I’d visit my aunt & cousin when I was a kid. More modern, sure – but some things felt the same.

Today (Sunday) we hit out for Adventure Mountain a lot earlier, so we’d get there when there was still space. Great place. $28 for admission for an entire car all day. Sled (and helmet) rentals were reasonable, we bought some gloves that actually fit our kids, and had a good time J went down the run a few times, but then just wanted to play in the snow, but K wanted to keep going.

So we sledded, but mostly just played in this awesome area for another hour and a half. We ended up on a really “easy” hill off to the far left, but the advantage was that it was a really secluded area, so while most of the other runs had lines, there were only maybe 10 other people here total, and the kids had this area all to themselves.

We ate lunch, headed back, packed up, and drove home. Got waylaid by  some massive traffic in Sacramento, but made it home in one piece, having had a really great weekend.

Generally speaking, so far 2016’s been off to a rollicking start. Work’s chugging along at a brisk pace, and the kids are a delight every day. I’ve managed to actively try to address most of my health issues – saw an allergist, have been chasing down potential sources for what’s causing the eczema (latest hypothesis is memory foam), and overall, feeling better. Got a bit sick last week, but whatever.

Kids are good. K’s foot issue has come back a bit, but it’s on the mend again, and both kids are pretty reliably sleeping through the night. K gets up on the early side and sneaks into bed, but it’s literally like night and day from a few months ago.

Diet’s been pretty bad, and exercise has been pretty bad – mostly because the two are tied up in the whole eczema thing. Trying to do a bunch of dietary changes to find a potential trigger for eczema doesn’t lend itself to eating well consistently, since everything’s constantly a crapshoot.

Bought a front lip spoiler for the M3 – will probably install it some evening over the weekend. Need to get the installation hardware – just a couple self-tapping screws & some industrial-strength double-sided tape. A few months ago the underside of the bumper got a bit trashed anyway, so figure for a cosmetic mod, it has the benefit of “fixing” some previous damage. Scheduled another track day for March 16th at Sonoma.

Before it started raining fairly regularly, was starting to teach J how to ride a bike. Slow going – might have been easier if we’d started him earlier, but whatever – as long as he’s enjoying the process (he doesn’t like to start, but once he’s started, he likes giving it some effort), that’s fine. He’ll get it eventually. Got K a balance bike to play with, and he hasn’t quite gotten used to it either, but the weather took a downturn before we could invest too much time with it.

Looking forward to it getting warmer in a few months & getting the kids back to the pool. I think this year, J’s gonna take off, and K might start to figure the whole swimming thing out. 🙂

Trips? We’re heading to San Diego when the brother-in-law graduates, and heading to Hawaii for a few days in March. Trying to schedule some sort of group trip for a few days with the high school gang for the 40th year, and also something to mark Ei-Nyung & my wedding anniversary. Whee!

This year, I’ve got four resolutions:

• More sleep. On average a minimum of one extra hour a night, moving my “bedtime” forward from about midnight, usually, to about 11pm. This means sacrificing whatever leisure activities I used to squeeze in in that hour, but it was usually games or TV, and feeling better via more sleep is more important to me, and I’ve got to make that commitment. I also know that the rest of my health will improve with more sleep, so “fitness” is also rolled into this.
• Wonderspark break-even. We’re going to be launching our first game early this year, and while I’ve got no illusions that it’s going to be a hit out of the gate, I think it’s got the potential to drive us to break-even in the next 12 months, and that’s our immediate goal. Profitable would be a great side-effect of getting tho this point, but let’s focus on what’s in front of us first.
• Be present. Whether this means for my kids, or for Ei-Nyung, or whatever, my goal is to be less distracted by trivial things (phone games, etc.) and be more present in the moment. It’s not to say that I’m “quitting” social media – far from it – I think it’s a great way to stay in touch with people I can’t otherwise interact with on a day-to-day basis. It just means that it’s prioritized below the present moment, actively.
• Resolve health issues. I’ve got a number of things, from figuring out this whole soy/milk/whatever allergy that’s giving me eczema (see an allergist) to the grinding bits inside both shoulders. I keep putting them off, but hey, I’m gonna be 40. Time to make sure I get some of this sorted out while my body can still theoretically recover from this stuff.

2015 was, in general, my favorite year from the last five or six. The kids & family were great, I don’t hate work anymore, I love the team I’m working with now & what we’re making, and everything has been ticking along nicely. May 2016 resolve some of that potential, and lead to bigger and better things!

K: “We have the dinosaur problem!”

Me: “What’s the dinosaur problem?”

K: “I don’t know!” *shrugs*

—

One of my favorite exchanges w/ K recently. He came up to me and said this out of the blue, and after saying, “I don’t know!” he shrugged and wandered off. It’s an exchange that feels like it’s straight out of Calvin & Hobbes. And no, it wasn’t when he was wearing this jacket, but the picture seemed appropriate. 😀

Most of the last half of this year has been taken up by two things: work & kids. And in both cases, the thing that’s been absolutely wonderful is the progress that’s happened. Work is work – if you wanna see what’s up there, go to wonderspark.co.

But both kids are really … blossoming. Over the last few months, K has gotten to a point where he can articulate fairly complicated thoughts. Where he used to mimic everything that anyone said around him, he’s now expressing ideas about things that aren’t just repeating others, and it’s really fun to have little conversations with him about things. He wants to do so many things, and he’s getting to a point, I think, where he can do a lot more, rather than just want to do a lot more.

Seeing J&K play together has been really fun, too. It’s not just J wants X and K does it just because, now there’s some push and pull as they try to figure out how to play together when they both want to play, but don’t necessarily want the same things. Of course that leads to some conflict, but so far they’ve actually been really good about working through things & compromising.

As K’s gotten better at verbally expressing himself, J’s gotten to a point where he’s doing a lot of reading and writing. The other day, he read his first non-trivial book cover-to-cover (Dinosaur Dig – he’d read some BOB books before, but those are all like, “Dot hit bob. Bob ate Dot.”), and he’s able to sound out & write down a lot of stuff. Yeah, this is the age when that starts happening, and it’s clear that he’s made a lot of progress because of Kindergarten, but it’s still magical to me to see this progress.

Both kids also seem to really be getting a kick out of going to the pool. Last year was the first time that they seemed to really enjoy it, but this year’s the first time that J’s actually been making significant progress swimming. K’s spending a lot of time jumping off the edge of the pool, and he has absolutely no problem going underwater, which is something that apparently surprised a lot of the lifeguards last year when he was a lot smaller, but now he’s big enough that it’s not particularly weird.

J’s made huge strides this year – he’s getting the hang of side breathing (though he breathes to the left), and he can swim across the medium pool without stopping. He’s not quite at the point where he can go the whole long way of the big pool, but that’s fine. It’ll happen when it happens. The other day, the deep end was open for rec swim, and I figured we could try diving, and that it’d probably take a while, but from literally the first try, he was fine – I held his feet for one dive, and after that, he wanted to dive again & again. So that was neat.

K calls the arrangement in the following photo, “Bread, meat, happy salad, and other bread.” He’s the happy salad. Seems like an appropriate nickname for him. He’s almost always so cheerful and curious. And finally, both kids are sleeping through the night, together, the vast majority of the time. K’s making progress on getting out of diapers, which will be a nice change, and something it’ll be nice to be done with until one day Ei-Nyung & I are old and need ’em. 😛

But yeah – that’s really about all that’s up. Our clothes washer fatally broke, so we got new ones, and that same week our bathroom faucet sprung a fatal leak, so that got fixed. The other day I tried to put a suction bird feeder on a bathroom window that had a small “bullet hole” like crack (from a rock that was kicked up by the lawnmower years ago) and the whole window shattered into huge shards. Fortunately, they all fell “in”, and nothing say, sliced my arm off. So that’s getting fixed. Someone backed into the front of one of our cars and smashed it up a bit, and it’s at the shop getting fixed. So lots of little repairs & upgrades & stuff.

Mobi’s still doing well. He’s definitely getting older, but there are times when he still acts like a big, dumb, excitable puppy. What a goof.

All in all, things have been great. Really just totally great. 2015 is such a massive step up from 2013-14 from a work-happiness perspective that it’s just mindboggling, and I’m so glad to be working on a project I’m super excited about, that I can’t wait to have people play, with a team I love working with every day. Good stuff.

We just got back from a trip to Canada. It was a bit of a strange journey – we flew SFO-YYZ on the 29th, stayed at an AirBnB in Toronto, took a train from Toronto to Ottawa on the 30th, stayed at my aunt & uncle’s AMAZING lake house from the 30th to the 4th, trained back to Toronto, and stayed at a hotel until the 6th, when we flew home.

What a fantastic trip.

The initial part, getting to Toronto, was uneventful, which, when traveling with kids is good. Lots of movies & games on the iPad, nothing special. Whew! Getting from YYZ to Toronto was interesting – we took a new express train called the UP, which is really nice, but also pretty darned expensive ($55 family one-way). Compared to a taxi, unless the traffic is abysmal, it’s a really difficult proposition. If they can get the price to something reasonable, though, it was really, really nice.

Immediately after arriving in Ottawa, my uncle drove us up to their place on Meech Lake. We went there last time we went to Ottawa, a few years ago, and it’s just as beautiful now as it was then, just worn in a bit. They’re building a workshop for my uncle to build boats, so they’d just poured the foundation for the boathouse before we’ve arrived. He’s going to build the rest himself (!!!). Amazing.

J’s been really into birds recently. Ei-Nyung got a bird feeder & a hummingbird feeder, and it’s been really great. He’s spent hours watching the birds as they come in to feed, and in our backyard, we have a bunch of stuff – Anna’s hummingbirds, Western Scrub Jays, House Finches, Oak Titmice (mouses?), Mourning Doves & more. But he’s seen those. A lot of those.

So this trip promised to be interesting because Aunt Kim has been posting tons of pictures of birds from the lake house, which is surrounded by forest. We saw a handful of neat things – Loons, a family of Downy Woodpeckers, a Red-eyed Vireo, a P-something that had nested under the house, some Great Blue Herons on the lake, Turkey Vultures & a lot more.

J also got to feed some chipmunks from his hand, which was really neat. There was a Red Squirrel competing for the food, but I think it was a bit more wary of approaching quite as close.

K loved tromping around the lake, splashing things, looking at fish and the like. He accidentally fell in off the dock one time while my cousin & I were watching him, because he’d reached down to pick something out of the water, but after a moment of surprise, he was a-ok.

We took my uncle’s rowboat (that he built himself! by hand!!) out for a spin, and chased some Loons. We ended up about an oar’s length from a couple of them, and there were some fish jumping out of the water (probably to get away from other Loons hunting around underwater), which was pretty cool. Sitting in the middle of a lake on a rowboat is just a really pleasant experience. Something that I think we can & should do more often on Lake Merritt.

So from that perspective, big success!

From every other perspective, frankly, big success as well. The family got to meet Mr. K, who was gestating-but-not-yet-born when we were here last. I got to hear a bunch of family stories I hadn’t heard before (including one about my dad getting arrested accidentally wandering into a protest at MIT & my uncle protesting with the Weathermen!!).

After spending a few days in paradise, we headed back to Toronto. My cousin awesomely had driven up to hang out with us at the lake, and then drove back down while we trained over to pick us up at the railway station. Which was pretty amazing of him. That afternoon we just crashed around, but the next day, we went to the Royal Museum of Ontario. When I get the pics downloaded from the other camera, I’ll post some, because it was epic. They had an astonishing display of dinosaur fossils, and a brilliant bird exhibit that were both utterly mindboggling.

Everything was going great, until that afternoon, J got some sort of stomach bug/food poisoning and barfed a handful of times. We went out to dinner, and the poor guy was miserable, but at least feeling a little better. I thought, “Well, better today than tomorrow, when we’ll be flying.”

Sure enough, a few hours later, my stomach started gurgling, and I spent the entire night in the bathroom. The next morning, we flew home, me on about an hour or two of sleep, and still feeling consistently like I was going to puke at any moment. Ei-Nyung heroically took care of the kids for the vast majority of the flight and after we returned home. After about 12 hours of sleep, I woke up feeling much, much better. And then installed a new ceiling fan.

Overall, a really genuinely spectacular trip. Up until the last few hours, I loved every second and can’t wait to go back.

You’d think that after sixteen years of working, I’d have some idea of what I want, right? Something that I could clearly articulate, that I could defend, that I could state without compromise.

It’s strange, then, that 2015 has so far been a year of realizing that it’s really, really hard to understand what it is that you actually want. Or rather, that it’s really easy to get distracted from it.

So here’s what I want out of work. I want to be able to build things that are amazing. That I am deeply proud to have brought into the world. That make other peoples’ lives better in some meaningful way. I want to control that, and not ever be put in a position where I have to give it up for any reason.

I want to be able to use work – my time at work – to help people become better people. To be more empathic. To help other people achieve their dreams. Maybe that’s a message that I can get to the players, or maybe it’s a message that’s for the people I’m working directly with.

If we’re fortunate enough to be successful, I want everyone to share in that success in a genuinely equitable way. If we’re fortunate enough to simply be able to continue doing the things we love doing, I want to give people opportunity. I want to help the underrepresented get a foothold in game development.

I want to build something amazing.

2014, like 2013, is a year that contained huge swaths of stuff I’d much rather never think about again.

I’m not going to go into it here, for reasons that I wish were obvious to most folks, but it’s been made clear to me over and over again that they’re not. Regardless, even as vague as that is, that’s all I’m gonna write about it. Professionally-speaking, the first half of 2014 can go fuck itself over and over again until the end of time.

Personally, where it’s possible to separate the two, 2014 was awesome. The kids are great. 2014’s driving characteristic, honestly, is “lack of sleep”, but aside from that, we’ve got two of the greatest kids I could ask for. They get along great, they’re funny, they’re constantly learning and growing, they’re generally really positive and happy, and if K slept through the night, we’d be in a really great place. Ei-Nyung’s mom has also helped us a TON this year, and we’d be much, much worse off without her help at critical times.

This was a year where we spent a huge amount of time at the Piedmont pool. Since I was unemployed, I started swimming a bit, and I brought J&K to the pool as well. J went from hating it to loving it in the span of a day or two, and K has zero fear of the water, which is both awesome and terrifying. That’s been one thing that’s been a really clear distinction between the two kids – J had tended to be inherently cautious, while K is just like blaaaaaaah!  And for the record, both approaches are great, and valuable, and it’s really interesting to see how differently they both approach things.

We did a good amount this year. Had a great trip to Maui, went to El Sargento, made some new friends, spent a lot of time with old ones – never enough, really, but our lives are all different than they were, and given what they are now I’ll take what I can get and appreciate it. I *deeply* love the friends that I have, and whether I see them one day a year, or they come over for dinner a few times a month, or we grab lunch every few weeks, it’s great to have such a bunch of caring, generous, and god-damned brilliant people I can call my friends. I’m really, really lucky in that regard, and I never, ever take it for granted.

The latter half of 2014 turned around when Ei-Nyung suggested we do a startup together. I wouldn’t have ever expected that before, but this year it made perfect sense, and thus Wonderspark was born. It’s been a really satisfying, really interesting experience so far, because even though this is my 2nd startup, this phase of it is stuff I didn’t have to do with the previous one. So it’s been a really good learning experience. I think the one key takeaway is that your message can never be simple or clear enough, and when you’ve got it down to the least it can possibly be, you’re still an order of magnitude off. Every time the message gets simpler, it gets better.

We’ve now spent a good deal of time talking to investors, and it’s clear that in this environment, raising money is going to be an uphill battle. That’s fine – it’s what we expected, and we’re fortunate enough to be able to crank away at this for a good long while without needing to go find other jobs. The disappointing thing is that we can’t just bootstrap and hire other people at this point, but well, it is what it is. Either we’ll find some folks who are interested in working with us for equity, or we’ll find some way to get a product out with what we have. Either can work.

I had a bunch of resolutions last year. With any of the “lose X pounds,” I failed miserably. I did get a public speaking gig this year, which was one of my bigger ambitions. I gave a talk at the Lean Startup Conference, which you can find here. “Um” is the thing I’ve gotta fix the most, I guess. :D Maybe in 2016, GDC. If you watch it, and have any other feedback, a comment would be greatly appreciated.

Went to a lot of trackdays, and found that the real cost of these is (for me) in brakes and tires. Ha. Gotta get some trackday-specific wheels & tires at some point. I’m thinking I might try it by just switching to Yokohama Advan Neova AD08r’s on the stock rims, trying that, and then if that works, getting a set of dedicated wheels. During the summer, when it’s guaranteed to be dry. Learned a ton, though, and had a lot of fun with friends. Not much to complain about there.

The last of my resolutions for the year, though, were that by the end of the year, I’d control my own destiny. It’s weird, and it cost a lot in many, many ways, but that is something I was able to accomplish in 2014. And it’s the reason 2015 is gonna be fucking awesome.

Trip Notes

We left Oakland at 9am. Picked up Halmoni and headed to the airport for an 11:20 flight to Los Cabos. Everything went well, though traveling with two kids & two carseats is never trivial.

The flight was smooth – 3 hours and change, but what I hadn’t expected until reading the notes that day was another 2 hours of driving on the other end of the journey. The flight was a bizarre juggling of Kuno & Jin with me & Ei-Nyung + Halmoni, with a C & P thrown in in completely random places for good measure.

After arriving, we needed to get the car rentals, which was more of an adventure than it should have been, even though we were forewarned of the additional $45/day in *mandatory* insurance, which more than tripled the base cost of the rental. Some folks who hadn’t read up on things ended up quite surprised, and at least one other person in line ended up storming out of the place in a huff. This is really dumb, car rental folks. Just put up honest rates and you’re gonna have a lot fewer angry customers.

We needed to get supplies & food, and we weren’t sure what was going to be in El Sargento, other than the house owners had said it was a small place, without even an ATM. So we decided to stop by a nearby supermarket, where we picked up a bunch of food. Ended up eating there, since we were all pretty hungry. Was about as good as any other lousy steam-tray style supermarket lunch, which was to say, “Not particularly good.”

Next up was the 2+ hour drive from Los Cabos to La Ventana to El Sargento. Eric led the way, and we were just following, and by the time we were on the road after getting our stuff, getting the cars, and getting food, it was already completely dark. The drive was fun, though – lots of twisty turny bits, and it was only at the end where conditions got a bit dire. I don’t know why folks put speed bumps in large streets, though, other than a handful of folks probably nuke their suspensions hitting them at way to fast, because there’s no warning they’re coming and few clearly posted speed markers. Still, we noticed them all, nothing bad happened.

Last bits of the drive were on dirt roads – turns out El Sargento is a pretty small town. The house we’re in is pretty nice – a main living area connected to an open kitchen, along with three bedrooms & two bathrooms. You can go up onto the roof easily & look at the stars. It’s not a huge place, but it does have direct beach access by walking down a bunch of stairs, which makes it TOTALLY AWESOME.

Every day basically starts on the beach. Eric’s done a lot of kiteboarding, but for us, it’s mostly just playing in the sand and some in the surf. I went out and snorkeled for a bit – it’s fine – there’s some coral, and there are a handful of cool fish, but at least so far it’s been too murky and too choppy to really be something to *cough cough* write home about. Eric also got stung by a jellyfish, so I’ve been a little paranoid floating around out there.

We’ve cooked a lot of fish tacos, made tons of guacamole and had a lot of good food, mostly home-made. We went out to eat at Las Palmas last night, and it was fine, but it wasn’t leagues better than what we’re making out of the local ingredients. The one notable exception was their beef tacos, which were delicious. I could have eaten a bunch more of those. We’ve been getting fish from a local place that catches whatever that day, and it’s been great.

The kids are getting along as well as can be expected. They squabble over stuff here and there, but for the most part, are content to run around and have adventures basically non-stop. It’s nice to see J & K so happy to be running around on their own. J & I read through “How to Train Your Dragon”, and I was surprised by how not at all like the movie it is. We also read through “The Complete Book of Dragons”, which was fun – J’s drawn a lot of dragons over the last few days.

K has really gotten down his “Yes” on this trip. He’s been using it sporadically before, but now you can ask him almost anything with a yes/no answer, and he’ll answer you. You might have to ask a few times to get an *accurate* response, but he’s way more communicative now as a result, which is awesome. He’s been having a *blast*, and it’s great to see. He runs around a lot with the bigger kids, and when he’s not up to that, he’s hanging out/spending time with Halmoni. He’s still not sleeping well, which is not great, but ah, well. What can you do?

We’ve shuffled sleeping arrangements around a lot. Most nights, J is in Halmoni’s room, but one night I slept in there while J & C slept in the same bed. Last night, I slept with K while Ei-Nyung slept out on a couch in the living room, and that didn’t go particularly well for anyone. Still, feels like things are slowly getting better. Or I’m delusional. I dunno. K was sick for a bit, and he’s still stuffy, but it seems like he’s on the upswing, at least. Nothing gets that kid down. When he’s awake, he’s happy. When he’s asleep, he’s fine. The only time he’s sad is when he’s making the transition either way.

Today we hiked for about an hour up and down the beach trying (unsuccessfully) to find hot springs. More later, but so far, it’s been a really nice trip.