August 11th. Quite the auspicious date.
The birth date of this blog. Now heading into its 18th year!
And the first anniversary of getting unceremoniously laid off.
No sugar coating, that event was stressful and a bit traumatic. At the time though, I said it wouldn’t define me. It hasn’t.
I’m still here. Surviving, not quite thriving … yet. Gettin’ there.
This morning I woke with slight trepidation, fearing Groundhog Day. Then I got stuck into the business of life. Helping my son get going. Working with my team to cut a software product release for internal customers. Hearing that the same software and team is highly regarded by an external customer ready to spend money throughout the rest of the calendar year. Hands on work agentic coding (not only do I know what’s BS and what’s real in agentic tools, I’ve got some hard won experience and opinions to share). Real intellectual challenges (evals, deep research agents, MCP server design, oh my!). Knock off at a reasonable hour guilt free. A nice sunset walk around the block with said son. A home cooked bite to eat.
And writing a blog post.
Here’s to many more auspicious August 11ths, bring what they may, but especially new adventures.
P. S. the white MacBook is still humming. I think its Wi-Fi adapter crapped out or just succumbed to too much protocol lag. Otherwise, still serving cycles on my tailnet