In November, Christie and Bryan visited for Thanksgiving, and we did some hiking in the Olymplics.
Over the holiday break I traveled alone to Iceland and London to visit babies: Axel, Ludo, and Raphael! Traveling around the peak of Omicron variant meant a lot of testing, masking, and isolation.
Have been snowboarding in the Cascades more than in previous years.
Lucy is busy with faculty job search, not sure where we will be next year, in location or pandemic.
Early summer we squeezed in a few more fun trips: we attempted Glacier Peak in the Cascades (didn't summit, but great snowy trip), then climbed and skiied Mt Adams with friends on the hotest day... ever?
In July Lucy and I had a complex Portland/SF/LA trip planned, but wildfires burned up some Amtrak lines, so we had to trim it down. Did still bike from Seattle or Portland (and saw friends), then I flew to San Francisco for a short trip.
In August, Lucy and I took separate trips to the east coast to visit family, who we hadn't seen in-person since the begining of the pandemic.
Also this summer Josh and Paula moved to Seattle, yay!
Later in September, Lucy and I did a week-long bike tour through Yakima back to Portland, which as expected was varied and wonderful.
Delta variant has meant tightening restrictions, but we have been able to see folks outside fairly regularly for picnics.
In March we took a house trip to the Tilly Jane Ski hut on Mt Hood for Will's birthday, along with Nadya, and it was so great! First time backcountry splitboarding.
The project I have been working on, Internet Archive Scholar (aka, scholar.archive.org) launched, which is exciting.
We booked a Rainier guided climb back in the fall, and have been training all winter for it. Did an early season St Helen's ascent in April, carried heavy packs up a lot of outdoor stairs in Seattle, and I ran an informal marathon with Lucy's support.
Finally in May we did the Rainier trip! With Mako and Mika and Ana. We had amazing guides, the weather was just right, snow conditions good, and we all summited. It was great having this to look forward to through the entire winter.
Vaccines finally started becoming available, and we jumped on them as soon as we could. For Lucy and myself, this meant a long drive out to Yakima fairgrounds, then a second dose at a huge stadium in downtown Seattle, with sunny spring snacks in the International District just after. Feels like the world is coming back to life!
Not so much has been happening, as we remain mostly locked-down through this section of the pandemic.
The USA federal election and subsequent January 6th insurrection was a debacle, but the inauguration did finally happen. Was uncertain there would actually be a transfer of power on that day. Will always remember Amanda Gorman declaming her poem, standing proud.
In December we did a house trip to a rented cabin in the woods which had a pizza oven, record player, and hot tub. I have been reading "The Power Broker".
The pandemic continues! House has been cooking and eating intensively, a different meal every day. A new housemate, AP, moved in. We watched the bamboo grow on the back porch, and I shaved my head at some point.
In addition to COVID-19, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter have been on everybody's mind all summer. Seattle Police have been aggressive and violent at local protests, cummulating in the CHAZ/CHOP zone nearby on Capitol Hill.
In July, Lucy and I did a roadtrip around the Cascade Volancoes, including Oregon and northern California. Many beautiful mountains climbed and biked! Hot, sunny, another world.
After a couple cancelled attempts (due to wildfires), in early September, Lucy and I were finally able to drive to San Francisco and move me out of my old Valencia St apartment. I will miss it, and my housemates there, but am very happy to be together with Lucy during the pandemic.
Later in September, the whole house took a bike tour around the Olympic Penninsula. It was very smokey leading up to the trip (from wildfires), and there was some rain during the trip, and I had sooo many flats at first, but it all worked out wonderfully.
Spent the holidays and much of January in Seattle, which was cozy and fun, with friends visiting and lots of time around the fireplace.
In late Feburary, just as concern about COVID-19 was becoming more widespread, I took a roadtrip with friends to Owen's Valley in eastern California. After another week or two of slowly closing down offices in San Francisco, I bailed out and caught a last-minute flight to Seattle, where I will weather out the pandemic.
Feeling very grateful to have a group house with friends to be living in, and spending as much time outside working and biking as possible.
In October traveled to Edinburgh with Jefferson to give a conference talk about the fatcat.wiki project (what I have been working on at Internet Archive).
In November, traveled to India with Lucy, C, B, and M, for the wedding of some friends, which was wonderful!
Lucy and I had layovers in Hong Kong in both directions, and got to walk all over. This was in a period of intense protest/police conflict, which was heartbreaking but also inspiring to see how organized the protesters were and broad the support was (though not 100% support of course).
In July biked over the Santa Cruz mountains to Internet Archive's dweb camp at the "Mushroom Farm". Great see old faces and meet more characters, like the Secure Scuttlebutt crowd.
In August Lu and I did a long bike ride north from San Francisco to Sea Ranch, for a Newbold family reunion.
Then off to Europe for Wikimania (in Stockholm, with Mako and Mika), CCC camp in Germany (with Will, Noah, others), then finally a quick visit to Seo and Alex at the Barbican in London.
In Feburary Lucy defended her Phd successfully in Seattle, and we caught up with friends to celebrate.
In March we biked from Salinas to Los Angeles, about 350 miles over a week, really great riding. Saw Christine and Casey and baby Yosemite in LA.
After that Lucy moved back up to Seattle and things slowed down around the Bay Area, though did get to see Mako and Mika and Will a few times.
Attended WikiCite in Oakland for work. It was great! Really love wikifolk.
In Decemeber, on a whim and cheap tickets, spent two weeks or so in Hong Kong with Lucy. Stayed on Lama Island for a few nights, did a trip through Guangzhou and Macau, and hiked some hills. I really loved wandering around the city, and feel like I came away with a more realistic mental model of the city. Lucy wasn't as enthusiastic.
Spent NYE at Maggie and Buro's place with Lucy, then biked furiously up Twin Peaks for fireworks at midnight. The first NYE we were together in a long time!
Hiked Sonora Pass area with Lucy, after doing the same trip earlier in the year with Logan.
Traveled to FORCE11 in Montreal for work, then did a quick Europe baby visit trip to London and Berlin.
In Novemeber there were huge fires in California, and it got smokey in San Francisco. Lucy and I drove through Yosemite to the east sierras as an impulsive road trip to escape. We stayed in Mammoth through some snow, worked remotely by a huge fireplace, watched moonrise in a hot spring, drove south through desert to the Kern River pass, then back up I-5 (blech). Really beautiful!
In June, traveled to Bozeman, Montana for Open Repositories (work trip).
A packed summer outdoors! Lucy and I biked to Big Basin (partially with Jessie), then Rode Around Mount Rainier in One Day (RAMROD, though self-supported not the official event; June 18th), which was about 150 miles and 10,000ft of elevation gain including the Paradise spur. After finally hiking up to Camp Muir on Rainier (third attempt?), we hiked Mt Adams, one of the Cascades volcanoes, camping above 10,000ft.
I visited Boston and Maine and went on an overnight sailing trip with my dad north to Roque Island, which was further north on the coast than I had been before (pretty close to Canadian border). This ended with a very memorable late night haul back through the thoroughfare and downwind to Rockport.
In late July, visited Christine and Casey in Los Angeles, and spent an amazing night at the 100-inch telescope at Mt. Wilson.
The Internet Archive hosted a dweb summit.
At the end of August, ELS house packed up, put everything in storage, and everybody moved to the Bay Area (for a year only)... including Lucy!
In the fall, took a road trip with Jane to the Grand Canyon.
With Lucy, traveled out to Bath, NY with Lucy to visit Grampa Bryan, then Christmas at my parent's house in Boston.
Went to CCC (34c3) with friends and housemates; the first congress in Leipzig. Huge and inspiring, lots of people to see, but also pretty stressful.
Work shifted to focus on archiving open access journal literature, though I stayed involved in the Dat project, drafting protocol RFCs, and working on a Rust implementation.
Traveled to Boston for Jess and AJ's wedding in the BPL.
Took an ELS house trip SCUBA diving in Belize, along with Colin, which was great in mid-winter. Visited Marie Sharps' hot sauce factory, and a day-trip to Tikal in Guatemala.
Had the flu pretty bad after Belize, especially after getting incredibly cold in the airport in Denver. Oops!
In June, traveled to JCDL in Toronto to represent the Internet Archive.
In July, helped my old friend Tom drive a ridiculous pickup truck from Boston to Baltimore.
Traveled to New Zealand for the wedding of Christine and Casey, then road tripped down through the South Island to Christchurch.
A busy start to the year! Another CCC trip to europe (33c3, the last in Hamburg for a while: puzzle games). Lucy and Colin and Richard came to SF for New Years.
Trump won the US presidential election in the fall and was innaugurated in February. Around this time I decided to leave Stripe. I visited the Internet Archive for a Lost Landscapes of SF screening, heard they were hiring, and got a job there, initially to build a research data archive using the dat dweb protocol.
My parents (and Lucy) visited SF, and we went to the Long Now bar (The Interval).
In March Lucy and I biked down to Big Sur.
Around the same time I started at the archive, I went on a road trip from SF to LA then through the southwest to Santa Fe with friends. Visited Meow Wolf, which was great.
After RC, took a job at Stripe as an infrastructure engineer, operating distributed event and task queues. This meant moving to San Francisco, into an apartment on Valencia St in the Mission. Immediately dove in to biking around the hills and redwoods of the Bay Area, while still traveling back to Seattle often to visit Lucy and housemates.
In late August, Seo visited Seattle and we went hiking. We flew to NYC for Zeke's wedding. My dad visited Seattle and we took a group hike through the Enchantments (in addition to a trip around the Olympics).
Visited Friday Harbor in February.
In mid-March traveled to San Francisco (well, Tomales Bay) for Sadie and Jessie's wedding.
After getting increasingly lonely working remote in Seattle, I traveled to New York City to attend the Recurse Center. It is wonderful! Met many new friends and had endless conversations.
Was really wonderful to be back in NYC; lived in Morningside Heights area, Roosevelt Island, and Brooklyn. I visited Seattle for a week in the middle, and Lucy came to NYC for a bit as well. Got a hole in my foot (!) while sailing with AJ on Cape Cod. Also went to JuliaCon in Boston.
Lots of friends and family visited our UD apartment over the summer; we showed them the subway construction pit and took them on hikes, including a group hike through the Hoh Rainforest.
In September, we hiked the Enchantments with Diana and Sid. Cold, it snowed!
Richard Stallman stayed with Lucy and I, which was an experience. We visited the Boeing factory together, which is amaaaazing.
In November, Lucy and I moved into a new group house on Delmar Dr with friends, which worked out great for everybody. Yummy thursday night dinners, long bike rides, house experiments, mmmmm! Val and Brian visited.
Pretty sure this was the year that Lucy's parents came to Thanksgiving at my parents' house in Boston.
In December traveled to China with Lucy, mostly in the north: Shanghai, Huangshan, Beijing, Shenyang, Harbin. Then flew to Paris for Christmas, and Lucy came to Hamburg for CCC.
Continued to work remotely for Twinleaf, building skills in PCB layout and more complex systems. Worked from home in our apartment in the University District. Hiked around Washington, seeing lots of Alpine Lakes and fungus. Traveled to CCC (31c3) for New Years, and stopped briefly in Iceland for some server repairs, and in London to see old friends. Went SCUBA diving in Thailand, then traveled to Japan with Lucy over spring break. Got to see beautiful cherry blossoms both in Tokyuo Ueno Park and then back in Seattle at the University.
Took a work trip to Tuscon!
A busy summer! Started working directly for Twinleaf; left Camrbridge and lived in Princeton (NJ) for several months. In August Lucy and I traveled to Hawai'i and WWOOFed with the excellent Mariana Rainbow on the big island. We backpacked around Kaua'i and the Volcanoes, visited the top of Mauna Kea, and ended in Honolulu with Lucy's extended family. We traveled back to NYC opposite routes around the world (I stopped by Portland for a free software conference, Lucy went through China) and then packed everything into a tiny car to move west to Seattle. We took I-90 all the way across with great stops in Wyoming and South Dakota.
Over the winter traveled to Iceland to install a communal server. Later I rode Amtrak to Miami to catch some sun. The first revision of the neurobiology hardware was completed, and I primarily started working timing and controls contracts for a magnetometry company in Princeton.
LeafLabs and I get entangled in an increasingly complex modular smartphone project, involving Industry Lab friends, Silicon Valley giants, and lots of suspended disbelief. Lots and lots of bus, train, and plane travel down to Baltimore to visit Lucy.
I moved back to Cambridge, MA, and live in a purple resident-owned co-op house. I rejoin LeafLabs, which has moved into a new space in Inman Square (a continuation of the earlier "Technology City" in Central). We work a number of contract projects; I primarily write FPGA firmware and glue code for a large-scale neurobiology readout system in collaboration with a group at the Media Lab.
In the fall, traveled to Iceland with Lucy! It was lovely. Lived in Berlin for a few months, continuing work on rooter. I gave a talk in Ljubljana and traveled through the Balkans to Istanbul. In the New Year I reunited with Lucy in Berlin and we traveled to Morocco, Turkey, and China; I stopped through Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Singapore briefly.
After a year at Octopart i'm taking time off to volunteer on projects preserving the internet as a strong public commons. I helped with Free Network Foundation deployments in New York and Kansas City, started an open source wireless router project called rooter, spent a couple weeks reading in Maine, then traveled to the west coast to crash with Star at The Sprouts and drive north to Toorcamp at the tip of the Washington state peninsula.
Time flies! Visited friends and hiked on the west coast in August and gave a talk about electronics pricing at the Open Hardware Summit back here in NYC. Traveled to Berlin for the 28th chaos communication congress, then through Zurich and Copenhagen.
After joining a motley crew of salad eaters in Reykjavik for a week of bracing winds and bit twiddling I moved to lower Manhattan with my girlfriend Amanda. Wrapped logistics for the Keck group at Harvard, read up on Prolog and ML, built psyche.cc with friends Toby and Scotty, and will soon start a job at Octopart (a search engine for electronic components).
Worked up a storm at LeafLabs, including helping start a new tech startup space in Central Square (Cambridge, MA) and took a Complex Analysis course at Sprouts. Took a contract job at Harvard to make ends meet, I now spend most of my time there working on the controls and data acquisition systems for the Keck Array South Pole CMB telescope.
Ventured to Newfoundland and Labrador for snow camping with Tom, and then bounced around Toronto with Christine. Spent two lovely months in NYC building video games and robotic furniture, then took a job at LeafLabs in Cambridge.
Worked at a microbial fuel cell (bio-energy) startup for a few months, then got hired as the South Pole Telescope winterover and spent time at Berkeley and UChicago, but then that fell through and I came back to Boston.
Graduated from MIT as Course 8b (Physics, sadly sans thesis), biked a lot, and taught Java to high school students in Jerusalem as part of the MEET program. Then traveled through Egypt and beautiful Jordan in deliciously dry heat, paradise!
Finishing up my undergraduate degree, working on an amazing thesis project, hacking scheme, staying warm. Visited Mexico City in January with my family.
Made peace with quantum mechanics, programmed FPGAs, la la.
