On 2013

An overview on 2013, which on twitter I called my favorite year yet.

I read about 36 books, but I also read hundreds and hundreds of comics. This included the entirety of Preacher and a full re-read of Sandman, both of which are on my favorite comics of all time list. The list of books I read is on Goodreads. Warning: It includes a lot of Star Trek books. I regret nothing!

I helped in an extrememly minor way to put on the first San Diego Maker Faire. I’m happy to have gotten involved with that group and the whole family will be helping more to put on future Maker Faires for sure.

I made a resolution of sorts to do and document 100 creative things throughout the year. I failed miserably on that front because I didn’t document anything. I did a lot of creative stuff but not 100 things for sure. This year I’m trying something a little different which I’ll talk about more later.

I helped my wife coach my daughter’s Lego FIRST Robotics team, which was awesome fun. It was amazing watching these 5th & 6th grade girls go through a lot of the challenges faced by professional programmers/engineers. They all had a ton of fun and learned a lot I hope. They also won a trophy at the big regional competition, taking 2nd place in the Teamwork judging category.

I personally think I kicked ass at work. Shopzilla has been a super great place to work. My first 2 months I was on a regular site team doing website features. Then my coworker and I were made into a team building up a new part of the organization. Then we reorganized and since then I’ve been a one-man team (one programmer anyway, with business/project people) again doing new stuff. This has been really fun and I’m learning a ton.

As usual, I played a lot of Minecraft off-and-on. That game still surprises and gives me ways of spending hours on it. I also bought and built a lot of Lego sets.

I started running and ended up running the Disneyland Half-Marathon in August. This is still a mind-blowing idea to think about as someone who used to joke “I only run if the cops are chasing me”. I’ve been a slacker since then but I’m going to get back into it. I’m probably going to the Disneyland race again and I’d like to do other 5k or 10k races also.

I did a presentation at SoCal Code Camp called ‘Intro To Not Sucking At Presentations‘. People seemed to like it.

And now, for 2014, I’ll let the poet Jay-Z speak for me: “I move onward, the only direction. Can’t be scared to fail in search of perfection”.