Blog: Entries From 2016

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Last Year's Goings-on - Monday, February 8, 2016
Since I've been on an unintentional blogging hiatus (another way of saying "neglecting my blogging duties") since August of last year, here's what's happened since then:

On the CI team at Pure, we had two college interns join us from June till September: Celia and Candice. I was their mentor, and the three of us worked on a project called the Artifact Cache, a system for caching build artifacts. The interns did well for their role, but we ended up extending an offer to just one of them, who initially accepted but later declined due to having moved up to San Francisco. Overall, it was a pleasure working with them, and our team learned a lot process-wise and what expectations to set on both sides of the fence.

In the middle of September, Priscilla, Christine and I flew up to Seattle to visit Nathan and Andrea, who had moved up a few months prior for Andrea's new job at Microsoft. On Saturday, we explored Pike Place, Chihuly Gardens and Glass and the Sky City restaurant at the Space Needle. On Sunday, we went to their church and did some hiking at Snoqualmie Falls, which has a beautiful waterfall. We flew back on Monday, but not before getting a tour of Microsoft.

On October 7, Pure IPO'd! Most Mountain View employees gathered early in the morning to watch the livestream of the opening bell at NYSE. The day was filled with much partying and food and little work, but the next day was back to work and business as usual. Since then, not much has changed, except for the fact that our options can be exercised for real shares of stock now (still in the 180-day lockup period until April).

Shortly after the IPO, our newest team member Maciej joined CI, and I served as his mentor. I've learned a lot about Docker and related technologies from him, and it's been a good pairing. So far we've used Docker to deploy a cron runner service and an HA-environment for our CI web applications.

Last December, Aaron and Lauren tied the knot at their church in Laguna Hills! I was the best man (returning the favor), and I didn't say anything too embarrassing during my speech, so presumably it went well. Priscilla and I drove down for the weekend and then drove back to the Bay Area on Monday. So for once, we were in the Bay Area for Christmas and New Year's and were able to spend those holidays with Uncle Kenway, Aunt Susan and her family.

It's been a busy few months, and with many things going on in 2016, it's sure to be a busy next few months as well!
Fourth Pure Ski Trip - Sunday, February 28, 2016
Pure had our annual engineering ski trip at Heavenly resort in South Lake Tahoe this weekend, and about 200 employees attended. Once again I took ski lessons Saturday morning. I forgot that I took the novice level lessons last time, so this time around I again requested the novice level. However, one co-worker who was in my class last year was in my class this year as well, and overall I felt like my class this year built on what I learned last year rather than merely repeating it.

I definitely improved my control. I found that I was having trouble making right turns, whereas my left turns were generally fine. I think the three main reasons for my bad form were: not always leaning forward in the boots, not shifting my weight when making turns, and my right foot being lazy and not doing as much work. The instructor, Ian, told me to consciously keep focusing on making my right foot do what it needed. Additionally, regarding stance, he reiterated the fact that I should always been leaning forward to maintain control of my skis and thereby my speed.

In this year's class, we focused mainly on turns and using "skidding" to control our speed. The instructor taught us that we should be leaning forward but mostly standing straight ("tall and forward") when going straight, and then crouching a little when turning in order to help absorb the impact.

After the class and after I had practiced my form on the green run a few times, I decided to try the California Trail blue run again. I was definitely making the widest turns there compared to everybody else, and I fell a few times, mostly when trying not to build up too much speed and not crash into other people (it was a little crowded). Were I in a competition, I would've been awarded no points for speed and even fewer points for form, but at least I was able to mostly turn where I wanted to go and control my speed to the point of not just barreling down the mountain. In other words, I have a while to go before I can do a blue run comfortably, but it was my best blue run to date!

This year we stayed at Harrah's, and the rooms were quite nice. It seemed like every room had a double bathroom! I was rooming with Maciej, and unlike the past two years, I didn't get the room to myself due to my roommate not being able to make the trip.

Friday night, Pure had the South Shore Room at Harrah's booked, and we had an awesome dinner with salad, sliders, tacos and ice cream. A rock band, Hairballs, starting playing an hour into the dinner, and people were definitely rocking out on the dance floor. On Saturday, breakfast was provided at the hotel and dinner was provided at a nearby lounge, but for dinner a small group of EngOps people crashed a nearby cabin owned by a friend of Chris'. We had salad, mashed sweet potatoes, steak and salmon - definitely better than pizza!

Due to traffic, the bus ride back to Mountain View ended up being just over 6 hours instead of 4.5. I'm tired from the long weekend, but I had a lot of fun and will most likely want to attend next year's trip as well.