The Trouble with Smart Home

This year I used the extra COVID time at home to experiment with smart home products. The goal was to identify rooms and spaces I used often, make them smart~ish, then simply live with it for a while and develop an opinion on the product space (e.g. setup, maintenance, reliability, troubleshooting, value-add, etc). There are plenty of obvious drawbacks to the tech including fragmented apps to control the devices and cost to name a couple.

How to make great pizza sauce

Last year I shared my [family’s pizza recipe] ( https://miketheglum.com/post/2019/authentic-italian-pizza/). We’ve been working on that recipe for close to a decade now. Last year I posted a how-to of sorts for the dough, but in my negligence have yet to follow up with the sauce recipe. There isn’t a secret to pizza and pasta sauce. It really is dead simple to make and requires very few ingredients. The right ingredients however are important.

What I'm Drinking: Bearface

As fall turns to winter, my liquor cabinet fills up with brown liquors, usually scotch. This year I decided to fill it with whiskies of the Canadian variety. The cabinet was looking pretty bare, so the purchase of a cheap everyday whiskey was prudent. I know nothing about Canadian whiskies, so I blindly perused the shelves and picked bearface based purely on packaging and gut feel. I was surprised at how easy drinking the whiskey was.

Working Remotely: Lessons Learned

I’ve worked my entire career in tech from either a satellite office, as a remote employee, or a combination of the two. Through several life events, working remotely has been both a blessing and a curse, and this post is to highlight some of the ups and downs of working remotely as a tech employee as well some lessons learned along the way. To set the stage, my experience has been with two of the four FANG companies (doesn’t really matter which ones, just that these are big shops), working in satellite offices, for remote teams, but in major US and Canadian cities.

Making golf fun again

My five year old showed interest in golf this year. Excitedly, I did exactly the wrong thing and took her to a local pitch and putt. After some reflection I came to the same conclusion my daughter did: golf is objectively boring, especially for a child. After a few swings she was more interested in naming the worms than playing golf. The good news was that I now had a problem to solve: how to make golf less boring for a kid.

Traveling With Golf Clubs

I recently flew to California to visit my dad and brought my clubs so we could play golf during my visit. Before this trip I had been renting clubs on my visits and simply got fed up with the worn out clubs that the vast majority of courses and even country clubs provide. I decided it was time to start bringing my own clubs on these trips. After a couple weeks of research I purchased the Club Glove Last Bag collegiate travel bag.

Traffic Avoidance - Victoria Day

I’ve been crossing the Peace Arch and Pacific Highway border crossings on a regular cadence for over a decade now. In fact, I’ve crossed the border so many times I know a few border guards at Pacific Highway by name and have learned which days/time slots to avoid. But regardless of how much experience I might have crossing the US/Canada border, some days just suck. Victoria Day, unsurprisingly, is one of those days.

Fundamentals: Frontend Developer

I’ve been conducting a lot of interviews this year helping organizations in my company hire front-end developers and it is proving a challenge. The primary issues in my judgement are an industry trend toward “full-stack” developers as well as a heavy reliance on frameworks across the industry. The majority of applicants applying for front-end positions (at least at the company I work for) are only front-end developers in-so-far as they are familiar with React/Angular and are moderately competent in Javascript.

I know why we have a Butt Crack

This week my pilonidal cyst was surgically extracted. Last year it decided to get infected again and was literally a pain in my ass for a month. It took nearly a year to get scheduled for the surgery (this being Canada), but last week the fateful day had come for me to rid myself of this embarrassing predicament. As it turns out, getting a pilonidal cyst removed is more undignified and embarrassing than having to explain to people why your butt hurts in the first place.

What I'm Drinking: JJBean

I’ve chosen JJBean as the supplier of my morning coffee beans for a couple years now. Whether out of a moka pot, aeropress, or french press, beans from JJBean never cease to keep my taste buds occupied while the rest of me attempts to kickstart my day. If purchased at one of the local cafes around Vancouver the beans will have been freshly roasted, usually in the past couple days. If there was ever doubt the roasting date is conveniently printed on the bottom of every bag.