Motivation begets motivation

The older I get the more I find that motivation is the limiting factor to starting just about anything. There seems to be a minimum amount of motivational momentum or fuel required to learn something new.

The older I get the more I find that motivation is the limiting factor to starting just about anything. There seems to be a minimum amount of motivational momentum or fuel required to learn something new. Paradoxically, the only method I’ve found to generate motivation is through motivation. I don’t think I’m unique in this either. Looking around it seems the older and more comfortable humans get the less motivation we have to challenge ourselves either physically or mentally. The rest of this post is simply a prattling on my discoveries regarding motivation.

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. However, I found three limiting factors that no one warned me about but make these products no smarter or superior to the items replaced: my wife and two kids.

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. So if you leave with just one takeaway from this blog post, let it be this: use plum tomatoes. Only plum tomatoes will do and nothing else is acceptable, especially if you’re using canned tomatoes. So on to the recipe:

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. From the lips to the throat, it went down smooth with very little burn. As it goes down I get a lot of oak, a bit of spice, and maybe stone-fruit. The finish is a heavy vanilla. I did a bit of research and I was surprised to find out it was a 100% corn whiskey. So the finishing really makes this whiskey. It is finished in three different types of barrels, one of which is a wine cask. The process is well documented so I’ll spare the reader any details, but it seems quite complicated and that shines in the final product.

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. In both cases, the satellite offices I worked in were small at the outset but grew to exert a significant presence over time. The first satellite office was in New York. The mothership was in the Valley and I was one of the many tech kids flying the JFK to SFO circuit on a frequent basis. This brings me to point number one.

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. This blog post documents a few things I discovered that make golf less boring.

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. The purpose of this post is to simply detail my experience and offer some advice to others thinking of doing the same.

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. This year I thought I’d try using historical data to help me pick the best travel time and help me avoid long waits.

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. The majority of the applicants I interview have only a basic understanding of CSS and the browser and struggle significantly when the frameworks are taken away.

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. And now that the procedure is over, I can say unequivocally that our butt cracks serve an important purpose (more on that later).