Archive: July, 2025

We received a good surprise in the mail today. It was a check from Progressive for $500, the recovered deductible for the car that was totaled in the Epcot parking lot nearly a year and a half ago.

I wrote about the accident when we got the estimate, but the short version of the story is that Diana was leaving a mostly empty parking lot when a Disney maintenance truck driver clipped the back right corner of the car. There's no universe where anyone other than that driver was at fault, and if you watch the video below, it's very WTF. I'm glad it wasn't more serious and that Diana wasn't hurt. The estimate was $17k, which was high enough to consider it a total loss. The car was almost six years old and paid off.

Progressive was great, and got us paid very quickly, allowing for a solid down payment on the next car, but I'm still bitter because I'm sure that car could have lasted many, many more years. Guess what, a six-year-old EV runs pretty much like a new one. Even the brakes were essentially new. The battery range was down a little, but not in an even remotely meaningful way. We could still not have a payment. Also, the loan for the replacement, while not large, is a shitty 6.4% because of the rise in rates at the time. Some quotes were 8% or more!

But to add insult to injury, Disney cut a check and sent it directly for a few bucks to cover the extra day of rental that we needed beyond what insurance paid for. Worse, cashing it meant agreeing to a non-disclosure agreement about the accident and release them from any further claims (even though the video was already on the Internet). If you know me, it's likely expected that there was no way I'd go for that. I recently started to consider filing a small claims case to get the rest of the deductible, plus statutorily permitted interest and court fees.

Progressive's web site said that they had given up trying to get the deductible a few months ago. But then today, a check appeared in the mail for the $500. No need to sue.

That's the end of the story.

It's that time of year for my annual physical, and the labs are in. Shocker, triglycerides are high, though down from last year, at 290. Normal is under 150, and 150 to 200 is considered borderline. Every other metric is right down the middle "green." Things I need to pay attention to, like kidney and pancreatic health, prostate, possible cancer markers, etc., are all perfect.

That's totally frustrating. I've been in this mode for years. Medications either have no effect or they cause side effects. I'm fairly certain that it's tied to genetics and my weight. The latter is rough, because even in the best shape that I've been in, with more than average exercise, I've only been 15 pounds lighter than I am now. With good routines in terms of food and walking 2 to 4 miles a day, I can get about 8 below where I am. I don't know if I'm a candidate for a GLP-1 variant, but I'm willing to try it if I am.

This does mean somewhat higher risk for cardiovascular "events," but a number of studies show that the risk kind of plateaus over 150. With everything else, including cholesterol, in the right place, I'm generally OK. As much as I don't like checking boxes, it would still be nice to get this one.

The observations made in response to my QA posts were interesting. Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of lived experience out there. What is surprising is that a lot of people commit to strong opinions about what the "right" process is for software development.

This is an area that I find myself conflicted, as I have my opinions as well. But what I have learned is that the right thing depends completely on the context. I'm sure this may bother folks who are very Type-A, consultants, or otherwise box checkers. I find that those camps tend to be inflexible, and care more about their prescription than they do the outcomes.

I know this is obvious, but there are an awful lot of variables to consider. Company size, budget, individual experiences and capabilities, culture, industry, legacies of all kinds... no two situations are the same. When I say that I learned this, I mean that I learned it the hard way by being prescriptive about process, without regard to context, and got it very, very wrong.

There are a lot of themes that are universally right, but I've never really enumerated them. Themes are less specific, and allow room for context. For example, smaller, self-organizing teams might be a theme. Fewer, tightly-scoped meetings are a theme.

But the biggest thing that I come back to, when it comes to process, is to treat it like a feature itself. That means define the problem and (mostly) agree on that definition. Write down the acceptance criteria, so you can tell whether or not the process is solving the problem or arriving at the desired outcome. And above all, let it change and evolve as you discover new things about it.

That last part is the thing that I rarely see. It's the box checking problem, with disregard for the context. We've come to accept all kinds of ceremony and convention in our line of work that doesn't actually serve the desired outcome, which is shipping great software. "Planning poker," I'm looking at you.

Everyone wants to write a book about the correct way to do stuff. It might be abstract, but correctness is contextual. Being a good manager doesn't mean following a step-by-step manual, it means getting the context, and ruthlessly adapting (or rejecting) the process to meet the situation.

I have been skeptical about the usefulness of LinkedIn since, well, always. Truthfully, I've never really used it outside of job seeking. But then my theme park hero started making posts, and I found myself going there more often. Everything that he writes is gold, and it's not really even theme park-specific.

While there, I've had some random thoughts that I've posted about my line of work. It shows you how many people have seen your posts, so imagine my surprise when I would get a few hundreds views. More rarely, I'd see something get a thousand views! Not exactly dopamine hit territory, but obviously people use this thing more than I realized.

Then something weird happened. Last Friday, I wrote some ideas about the value of QA people in software, and that the industry largely letting go of that specialization may not have been the right choice. The next morning, I got an email about a few responses. That's pretty cool, because I didn't think that happened all that much. Even more surprising, the thing had over 2,000 views. I don't know what, algorithmically, is happening under the covers, but I thought it was neat, and then I went about my day.

Sunday morning, I went out for lunch (because Chipotle has some summer bonus program for points). Lunch by myself is me time, to catch up on tech news or whatever, and I value it a lot. For some reason, I looked at LinkedIn, and my little post had exceeded 10,000 views, and there were dozens of comments and hundreds of likes. The algorithm had not let go. I figured, I should write a follow-up, too.

As of now, four days later, that post has over 60,000 views, and it's still going. The follow-up post has 8,000 views in the first day, so who knows if that will continue.

I don't know if there's any value in any of this, but it does make me realize that my "work rep" and networking that I used to do in-person, pre-pandemic, has really faded away. Sure, I still do Code Camp every year, but I used to get involved a lot more among my local colleagues. That just doesn't translate well to remote work. In a wider scene, what you're really doing is marketing yourself, and that's borderline influencer nonsense. That seems exhausting and definitely not fulfilling the way that the in-person networking is.

I like sharing experience and hearing stories from others. I've been making it a point to talk to my directs more about stuff like that when we have the chance, because even after three years, I feel like I don't know them that well. Maybe I should read their LinkedIn profiles.

About two weeks ago, I noticed that my solar and backup powerplant stopped reporting data. It doesn't show how much power I'm generating, sending back to the grid, etc. Two weeks ago I called Tesla, the vendor, and they've yet to respond in any way. I had a similar problem a few years ago, and given the fix then, I know what's probably broken. But this is how terrible they are. When I had the solar installed, the order generated a bunch of tickets to a half-dozen departments (permitting, scheduling, procurement and such), but no one is actually focused on the outcome. It took weeks before I could actually use the energy being generated, and only because I was advocating for the outcome.

This is unfortunately a common pattern in tech companies. People get so focused on processes that they don't focus on the outcomes. They often don't check to see how the process affects the outcomes. Everyone has been there... where the answer to a problem tends to be another meeting (or Slack channel).

It got me to thinking about musical theater. I'm a fan. It's a brutal business to be in, sure, given the low pay and auditioning and such. Hard as it is, most people I know working in it love it. What's neat about it is that it doesn't suffer from over-process. Maybe it's because creatives tend to less frequently be box-checkers and rigid in thinking. The outcome that they're after is a good show, and everything is done in service to that.

"But Jeff," you might be thinking, "Scripts and lighting sequences and even the sheet music are a process." Sure, but these are constructs that don't have a lot of variability. A script is always a series of words (and stage direction) that have to be spoken. Light cues are just an ordered list. And written music structure hasn't changed in centuries, as best I can tell. No one ever hires a consultant to see if they can give the company a better way to read a script. You empower and trust the actors to figure it out.

When it comes to writing code, we know that most of the hard problems have already been solved, but we try to come up with our own clever way instead. Dudes (and it was all dudes) wrote The Agile Manifesto over two decades ago, but we still put "processes and tools" ahead of "individuals and interactions," the opposite of what it prescribes. The principles they describe have a theme of empowerment and focus on outcomes.

Again, this is how a musical works. The stage manager can't be everywhere at once, so they have to trust that every person does their part to make the show happen. It's not that they don't gather the company and course correct when things aren't going well, but you're never going to have the sound operator give a status report about missed cues. Everyone does what they have to in service of the outcome: A good show.

We could learn from this, and get back to outcome-driven process. Does the thing we're doing serve the outcome, shipping quality software, or does it check a box? You'll probably get two different views on this. People who "own" process, a weird thing since they're not the people who have to follow it, will insist that it serves the outcome. But the makers on the ground will likely tell you that the process that they had no part in creating probably just gets in the way. Who is right?

I know I rally against platforms, but I do look at a few Facebook groups, including one about stage lighting. Someone pointed to an ad from an American aluminum truss maker, which had the usual bits of flag waving to sell product. The person who reposted the ad said something like, "You can avoid tariffs by buying from these guys." Putting aside for a moment that most aluminum used in the US does not come from the US, it felt like the right thing to explain how tariffs actually work.

A tariff is just a tax on goods produced overseas, paid by the domestic company or person (you) that buys the thing. If there's a 10% tariff on a widget made in China that costs $100, the cost to you is $110. The thinking is that it encourages you to buy a similar product made in the US. So let's just assume that an American company can produce the same goods at the same price, meaning the cost of labor and materials is the same. They're not, but let's pretend they are.

Let's say that you need to buy a washer and dryer. I'm not sure if LG makes those specific appliances in South Korea or Tennessee, but for argument's sake, let's source them from Asia. Whirlpool makes theirs in Ohio. The LG pair cost $1,000 at the border, but with a 25% tariff, that price goes up to $1,250. Again, pretending that Whirlpool can make the similar unit for the same cost, do you sell your pair for $1,000?

If you're a responsible business, the answer is no. In this scenario, your competition is selling for $250 more than your old price. If you raise the price even by $200, so it's "cheaper" that you competition, you're still winning as a company, and you achieve a higher margin. It's all gravy. The problem is that for you, the consumer, in the absence of the tariffs, your price for either set would have been $1,000. Even at $1,200, you, Joe America, are going to pay 20% more than you would have otherwise.

Now apply this to... everything. One researcher says that 60% of the goods at Walmart are from China. If the rest all came from the US, applying the above scenario, those prices will rise too. The result is inflation. Everything gets more expensive. Inflation can be caused by a lot of things, including an imbalance in supply and demand, or supply chain issues. But the tariff is totally self-inflicted harm. It doesn't benefit consumers at all, it only harms them. Oh, and the nations you put tariffs on will return the favor, so now the goods you want to export risk reduced demand because they cost more elsewhere.

As I'm passionate about learning from history, there's a pretty glaring example of this. At the onset of The Great Depression, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act imposed tariffs that made the depression worse. Global trade collapsed, and the entire world economy tanked.

So how do tariffs work? They don't. You don't need a degree in economics to understand this.

If I can point to any obvious failing in my public education, the biggest one is that history never got far enough along. World history never got beyond World War I, and American history had the same problem. Everything that I know about WWII, Vietnam, the 60's and 70's, I learned after, and probably not in a very complete way. If others had a similar experience, not learning about the Holocaust, the formation of the Soviet Union, etc., it's a real disservice for us. That's not to say that there weren't positives. I think America's first century was pretty well covered, and my experience in post-desegregation Cleveland schools included really rich Ohio history in elementary school. I actually learned about the Western Reserve and the division of 5 by 5 mile townships.

My American history class, as far as it went, was fairly robust for what it was. It reminds me a lot of the Hamilton documentary on PBS years ago, where the actors point out that for all of the greatness of the founding fathers, they were also terrible people who owned slaves, and many defended the practice. The curriculum that I experienced was relatively fair about that. And even my autism brain, which can sometimes struggle to reconcile things that seem too opposite to coexist, found this paradox fascinating. I learned in a setting with an American flag in every classroom, and in those cold war days, it was clear that the "bad guys" were the communists of China and the Soviet Union. Granted, I'm sure some of that sentiment was lingering carryover from McCarthyism, and while I've contemplated the merits of such systems as an adult (or lack thereof, since it's a broken system), it's unfortunate that we never had those thought exercises in school.

The American paradox is that this nation founded by immigrants, searching for freedom from a tyrannical king, would be so terrible to various groups of people. Almost 250 years in, it's still happening. It started with Indigenous and Black people, but in waves it has included Catholics, Jews, Muslims, various Europeans , Asians, Middle Easterners, Latinos, LGBTQ folks and others. It's not a good look, but for now, I want to focus on the history itself.

These systemic "-isms" are real. They happened. I wasn't alive in the Nineteenth Century, and none of us were, so I don't see any reason to feel ashamed about it. I can appreciate that the model of democracy that we enjoy (well, usually) has generally been durable and a model for other nations. I can also appreciate that the nation's record on discrimination is pretty poor. To accept that both of these are true is not unpatriotic. I think patriotism is understanding the paradox, accepting it, and doing our best to right it. We'll all reach a day where our heart stops beating, we stop breathing, and die. This too, is an inescapable fact. With that in mind, shouldn't our legacy be to leave the world better than we found it? Most people genuinely understand right from wrong, and I doubt any honest person could claim that marginalizing groups of people is right.

We all know the old adage that, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." I can't find a definitive answer on who said that first, but it has been repeated by many historical figures. American history as a whole is deeply uncomfortable. I had to take a bus to school across town to mix the Black and white kids to make sure they had equal educational opportunities. This thing that adults couldn't get right had the side effect of me seeing less about race until I moved to a mostly white school, where I was in my first week called a "n-word lover" because I came from the inner city. Maybe I was fortunate to gain that perspective.

There was a movement in US colleges for awhile that promoted "safe spaces" for students, where they could avoid topics that made them uncomfortable. Folks on the right found this laughable, calling them "liberal snowflakes." But now the same folks are worried that the things that make them uncomfortable shouldn't be taught in schools. Those topics shouldn't be found in libraries. In the greatest irony, uncomfortable subjects shouldn't be taught in universities. They have become the arbiters of the very danger that they mocked before.

American history is fraught with violence and hate. In that sense, it is not unique compared to most of the world's history. It doesn't mean the nation isn't great, but it definitely means that we can do better. Abolition was controversial at one time, and we literally had to go to war with ourselves to get beyond that. We've made most kinds of discrimination illegal, but it still happens. Our history is bad and good, and we can learn from it. What we can't do is avoid it, or pretend it didn't happen, just because it makes some people uncomfortable.

I've written about this sort of thing before. Here are a few examples:

• Contemplating America's original sin
• Founding fathers without mothers
• Going from not-a-racist to anti-racist

Like anyone, I can get into these weird modes of self-loathing. Self-awareness is valuable, but taken too far, it gets to be hating on yourself. My thing is that, especially in the last year, I feel like I'm a slug that just consumes stuff. I'm not making things, which is something I ordinarily get a lot of satisfaction from. And I understand the reasons, that there's only so much I can output in the larger context of life, work and parenting. Also, giving more than you take seems like an important quality for a "good" human being.

But if I get deeper on that subject, I also think that there's a cultural contract that no one really signed up for. It doesn't make sense that everyone could produce more than they consume, and so it's not reasonable to have that expectation. I realize that this is abstract, that the "what" of consumption and production is vague, but given a diverse population with a range of skills and interests, there's just no way that everyone can be more of a giver than taker.

Lifetime, I feel like I've given more than I've taken. There are specific ways that I view that, and I doubt a third-party would agree with my assessment. That's OK, because I'm really not looking for validation or approval, I'm just saying what I believe. I also don't want this to sound resentful, because the reality is quite the opposite. I get a lot of joy from the outcomes resulting from what I've offered. If I get hit by a bus today (though I'm not planning to leave the house), I think I will be content with what I've contributed.

The better measure, to me, is not where anyone fits on that scale of consumption and production, but whether or not they've left the world better than they found it. Both sides of that equation can affect that better outcome. That seems like a more reasonable thing to strive for.

But I still want to get back into maker mode.

You'll often hear it said that many people with autism struggle to quickly adapt to changing situations. Furthermore, it's often said that folks avoid change because of the discomfort that it causes. I've seen this in my kid, even into his current teenage era, and it came up today talking to my therapist. As soon as I think I can pin down my own typical situation, I think of a bunch of examples where it isn't true. Yeah, we talk about autism being a spectrum, but the nuance and variations of what any one person experiences are endless. Still, it seemed like a useful exercise when talking to the person you pay to figure out what's going on in your brizzle.

In childhood I can identify countless scenarios where change would overwhelm me. I also know that I somehow managed to internalize so much of that, until I couldn't. Others may have perceived me as able to roll with stuff. It got a little better in college, but ugh, there were so many scenarios where I did not deal. Early adulthood seemed better still, but I was so comfortable in my routines and scene that it never even entered my mind that I could live somewhere else, for example. It may be how I got married the first time, because midlife me can see the unhealthy parts of the relationship. I stayed anyway. (It wasn't all bad, but the bar is higher now, and I know it is for her too.)

Examples to the contrary are pretty big. All in the scope of a year, I got married, unemployed, re-employed, moved cross-country and had a child. Yes, I was mentally exhausted by it all, but maybe it was some bizarre flavor of exposure therapy. Once you meet your baby, you kind of run on autopilot. Having to care for a totally helpless and vulnerable human, it turns out, appeals to your lizard brain and you just do what you have to do. Since that year, change has been constant. From 2009 to 2017, I moved six times. From then to now, if you count contract gigs, I had 10 jobs, not counting the three that I bailed on after a few weeks of seeing how terrible the employers were. So I think that I can roll with change pretty well.

I still can't roll all of the time. When something doesn't go as I expect, more in the scope of a day, I can get pretty frustrated and angry. Yet there are other times when I somehow force myself to deal with it. A number of times that I've traveled alone, when delays and things affect the itinerary, I can slip into something that feels almost trance-like. But take the same scenario with my kid and wife, and I can be a hot mess.

Lately, I've almost been craving change, even though it's not really in my self-interest. I like this new found longevity in a job. I like where I live. And I have to remember that my boy will only be a boy for a few more years. That change isn't far away, and it probably comes with the usual downsizing and reprioritization of life stuff.

What spawned this discussion? Oddly enough it was a reference back to my overall psych evaluation when I got my autism and ADHD diagnoses four years ago. There were some personality conclusions, assembled from some diagnostics and many hours with the psychologist, that don't really sound like me. The social difficulties, sure, right on, that's me, but the bits about how she thought I dealt with those characteristics were pretty wrong. It was fun to talk through, because I've been with my therapist now for awhile and she has a pretty good picture drawn of me.

I don't know that I have a point here, I just find it fascinating that my story is so inconsistent. It makes it a little harder to know yourself.

It occurred to me, watching my kid be picky about where a burger comes from, that I have not eaten beef in 20 years. How I got here is strange.

In 2005, which was a crisis year in so many ways for me, I had an annual physical, and not surprisingly, my cholesterol was crazy high. My LDL was something ridiculous, maybe over 200. I was also inactive, which changed when I started coaching high school volleyball. I was eating a lot of beef, mostly fast food burgers. So I just stopped, figuring that was a serious contributing factor. For whatever reason, it stuck.

By the time I got back into a good rhythm of annual physicals, after moving down here, my LDL was still high, in the 130-150 range. It should be below 100. When I started to see my current doctor, emerging from the pandemic, she convinced me to start taking a statin, and it has mostly been below 50 ever since. So I'm good there, even if my triglycerides still are not. But I've never had any desire to start eating red meat again. I'm just not interested, and I've gone this long without it.

Sure, that makes me even more of a picky, high-maintenance eater. And as it turns out, beef is an awfully inefficient way to produce food. It takes four times as much feed per pound of beef compared to chicken, and of course chickens fart methane a lot less methane. Despite the environmental impact, I'm not opposed to beef production, but it's just not a food I need.

If only I could trick my brain into liking more things that are good for me.

I saw an interview with Brad Pitt, talking about how driving the cars in F1 is something that keeps you very present, in the moment, and that he likes that. That's not surprising since, obviously, a mistake might kill you destroy a car that costs many millions of dollars. I suddenly realized what "being present" really means, in a way that I didn't really understand before.

People often talk about presence as the thing that keeps you grounded, in the moment. The idea is that if you can enjoy the very moment that you're in, you'll likely be happier and more content, more of the time. The opposite of presence is getting your head stuck on the future, and maybe the past, and that's a source of anxiety. The present is the only thing that you can influence with immediate results. Since a lot of anxiety is rooted in a future that you may or may not be able to influence, this further push toward the now gives you a sense of control. I see all of this now.

A part of me has often felt that the gurus preaching presence were in some ways advocating neglect toward your future, or reconciling your past. I don't really think that anymore. It isn't a binary choice. Being present doesn't mean that you practice disregard toward the world. It just means that you need to accept that Ferris Bueller's advice about life moving pretty fast is true. John Hughes was a clever filmmaker.

It's easiest for me to think about this in the context of my own life. One way that I often feel present is when playing certain games. I've written about how relaxed I am playing Against the Storm. When I sit down for that, I know that I'm going to be tuned in and hyperfocused for an hour or two. It's almost jarring when I stop. Similarly, when I'm on a cruise, everything around me feels vivid and tactile, I guess because all of the things I would normally worry about in the moment are taken care of for me. Are these examples of escapism? Maybe, but that word implies that you're fleeing something, and that it's bad to do so. You will ultimately have to return to stuff. It doesn't make sense that you should have to make that future stuff your constant concern. You have a finite amount of future, and we're all hurtling toward the end of it. When the moment passes, it's gone. We're running out of moments.

This is one of those little things about maturing that I like. It's earned wisdom. There's a lot of that to gain, especially when you're in a stage of life where it feels like responsibility is slowly crushing you. See a good therapist, y'all. It helps.

If you've been around computers long enough, you probably know the acronym "GIGO," which means, "Garbage in, garbage out." It predates the band. The phenomenon is exactly what it sounds like, that if what you put into a machine is crap, it's only going to give you crap back. All of the software that you hate is therefore composed of refuse.

The stuff loosely termed artificial intelligence is no different in this respect. These large language models are trained on data mostly from the Internet at large, and if you've seen the Internet, you know how much nonsense there is. The models don't necessarily know how to separate a peer-reviewed study paper against a work of comedy, fiction or conspiracy theory. Last week, people quickly turned a chat bot into an antisemitic racist, and that certainly isn't the first time that's happened.

The problem, as I see it, is that the machines can't yet engage in critical thinking. As a concept, critical thinking combines logic, intuition and morality to figure out what is right, real and just, versus what is wrong, fake and injust. I mean, I read an article about how chat bots are shitty therapists that may convince a person to commit suicide. Duh, it's hard enough to find a human therapist that works for you and can help you.

The robots also can't gain experience and wisdom, which are another factor in critical thinking. This is quite environmental, of course, and humans don't necessarily land in the right place in these areas either. But even for something technical like writing code, the machines may create something that technically works, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't have race conditions or memory leaks or structural problems that make it hard to understand. I really get this one, because I've seen enough of Other People's Code to know that most of it isn't very good. I feel like so much of the profession is trying to figure out how to make stuff better.

If you read stuff on the Internet, and especially if you listen to influencers (those on LinkedIn, yes, it's a thing, are the worst), you'd think that AI has replaced all of the jobs. The reality, as best I can tell, is very different. Those prediction have been around now for two years, and it hasn't really happened. In some cases, it seems to be making things worse. A friend of mine that works in HR says that job candidates use AI to game their resumes, and then the AI used to screen resumes chooses them, so almost none of the candidates are what they actually want. One recent study suggests that AI is making it take longer to write code.

Will we get there? It's hard to say. The Skynet problem is certainly something to worry about, sure, but in most science fiction, machines rarely have any sense of morality and are treated like appliances. It seems that we want the machines to have critical thinking, but is that something uniquely human that can't be replicated? Normally I'm one to reject human exceptionalism, given our insanely brief history relative to all of time. But whatever this thing is that we have, when we're not killing each other, is unique and extraordinary.

If only we could be better about training the humans in critical thinking first. If you can't question everything, including your own thoughts, you can't get there. No one ever tells you that in school.

The only remaining useful thing about Facebook, for the most part, is the memory functionality, and it reminds me that I arrived in Orlando 12 years ago yesterday. Crazy. It felt familiar very quickly, I imagine because I was already coming down here two or three times a year for a long time. This is an enormous state, with no shortage of political problems, but because of its size, it also feels regional in nature. I like our region.

My first job was a contract gig at SeaWorld corporate, which lasted a year, and in that time we started to quickly get a feel for our surroundings. The Horizon West area, in the western part of Orange County, is where we settled, across a rental, a house we built, and then another house we built, and we've been in that one for about seven and a half years. Diana's first endeavor was to figure out preschool and support for Simon, and he had his initial ASD and ADHD diagnosis here. Two years in, she started working at the Dr. Phillips Center For The Performing Arts, and that spot has become central to our social and philanthropic identities. We've continued to volunteer at Give Kids The World, though more Simon and Diana than me. I got involved in a local user group, and I've done tech talks every year outside of Covid. With the proximity of Port Canaveral, we got hooked on Disney cruises.

We discovered a vibrant downtown area, a diverse population and so many good people. We've seen the community come together in difficult times, with the Pulse massacre and the George Floyd protests. We've seen it celebrate with the legalization of same-sex marriage. It's a positive place to live. The theme parks don't hurt, but despite them being something to do for a few hours now and then, they do not dominate our time or interests.

When we were in the process of leaving Seattle, I often said that I suspected we were "pool and palm tree people." We never did get the pool, and I'm not planning on it, but we do own a few palm trees. We don't have to endure winter either. I think it was a good decision.

One of the things I dislike from the conventional consultant approach to "Agile" is the anonymous retrospective. It's problematic for a lot of reasons, and I don't do it.

First off, if your team is right-sized, it's unlikely that any retro observation won't be associated with someone on the team. In fact, that's a reason that someone may not feel comfortable bringing it up at all. But if the team doesn't peg the source, then it lacks context. No one likes feedback that isn't associated with a source because it's hard to make it actionable if you don't have the context.

More importantly though, doing this anonymously says that you don't have the culture and environment for psychological safety. Feedback is not, in fact, welcome if you can't safely provide it without fear of retribution. It isn't team work.

I have my team post retro items on a board ahead of time, with their initials. When we reach that part of the routine, we go around the room and have people talk about what they wrote in the usual categories... what went well, what didn't, what we can do differently. This allows for conversation and clarity and gives every member of the team an opportunity to lead a discussion, which I happen to think is important for professional development.

If you do anon retros, try this. I think you'll find the results far more useful.

We somewhat unintentionally have fallen into a biennial tradition of staying at Walt Disney World on-property, despite living so close to it. In April, the resort was advertising discounted rooms for Florida residents, so with nothing else in mind for my birthday weekend, I booked three nights at Coronado Springs. This was our third time staying there, with previous visits to Art of Animation and Yacht Club. Coronado is a good spot because it has a bunch of solid pools, including the one with the pyramid, the Three Bridges restaurant, and two excellent venues in the tower. It's also relatively fast to get to all four parks, and using the transportation system is kind of fun.

I got the text that the room was ready at 2:30 on Thursday, a little later than I would have liked, but they guarantee 3. You can go straight to the room and open the door with any of your magic bands or phone. We were in the Ranchos section, and really most locations are reasonable to get around. With four bus stops, you're always close to one. We headed out to Epcot, to find a strangely not-busy park. Not quite pre-hurricane, but pretty close. I expected it to be busier the day before Independence Day.

With Simon being 15 now, we don't force him to hang out with us constantly. He immediately did his thing, while Diana and I headed to Mexico for a lap on Three Caballeros (because why not) and some chips and guac, plus margarita. We met back up with Simon to do Guardians of The Galaxy as a family, then bounced over to Soarin' for a ride in B2, the optical center of the ride. We walked all of the way to the split, so not a long wait at all. Considering that Test Track hasn't officially reopened, it was crazy how short waits were. Emerging from The Land, the radar was showing an incoming cell, so we made haste to get to Italy for a dinner reservation, while Simon headed off to Hollywood Studios.

I haven't been to Tutto Italia in a very long time, and it's possible that the last time I went was before they changed operators in 2007. I remember it being fairly elevated and delicious. Unfortunately, it's far from that now. The rain started just as we arrived, and the host stand was chaos. I could see two hosts yelling at each other in Italian. Once seated, our waiter brought some bread, including packaged bread sticks, but forgot the olive oil. Diana ordered lasagna, I ordered fettuccini with alfredo sauce. Mine was pretty bad. I don't cook much, but this is one dish I can do and make it great. It's not hard to combine butter, cream, cheese, garlic and a little pepper. It's such a straightforward dish. Well, what I got was bland and seemed like it was potentially from a can. It had no taste at all. No garlic, none of the saltiness you get from parm or asiago (or both). The chicken on top of it, similarly, tasted like nothing. I'm not usually one to send stuff back, but I did here. If you're gonna charge over thirty bucks, it can't suck like that. I got chicken parmesan, which was, at best, adequate. The service was still terrible, with the waiter not really showing up (the manager took care of the bland dish). Overall, yeah, not a fan, even with 20% off as passholders.

The drizzle persisted after dinner, but we really needed to course correct after that dinner. We went over to the patisserie in France, where the friendly folks there provided us some excellent desserts. By the time we got back to the bus stop at the front of the park, we were pretty wet. The dessert box was pretty wet, but the treats were fine. We showered and called it a day.

On actual Independence Day, Friday, I started by talking to the front desk. A towel hook in the bathroom fell of the wall, and our AC seemed to struggle to get to the target temperature. Also, Simon's charging privileges weren't working. They got it all resolved. Simon started at Magic Kingdom, while we went to Disney Springs for lunch. Because I was hangry and not in the mood for adventure, we landed at The Edison, a spot we've been to before. They have pretty great cocktails and food with a great steampunk theme. We sat at the bar, and the place was not busy. Springs overall was not packed. The weather continued to be suboptimal though, and just as we got back to the bus, it started to pour. Simon made his way to Studios again, and would eventually go back to Magic Kingdom to use his comp after getting evac'd on Tiana's.

I took a nap and just relaxed a bit in the room. I felt like I hadn't done that in awhile, and this was after all a vacation. As much as I say we get to play tourist on these trips, we're not rope-dropping or trying to do all of the things. Well, Simon did, as it turned out. He ended up getting a total of 17 rides across the two parks, because it just wasn't very busy. We made plans to spend the evening at Three Bridges, which is in middle of the lake between, as you might guess, three bridges.

Three Bridges is known for their sangria, and they have a daytime sangria university that we've did a few years ago. The food is Latin inspired, I guess, but the entrees are the usual things like a burger, rice bowls and such. It's all very good, and the service is also fantastic. We sat at the bar and watched the end of that day's Wimbledon coverage, which was followed by dog diving, also knowns as dock diving. Completely bizarre, but satisfying. We racked up a pretty good bill on food and drinks, and ended up being there for about five hours. We met some nice people from Wisconsin and made friends with one of the bartenders. We saw fireworks from three directions, sort of, but since we can see that from home, it was not a priority. Overall, great atmosphere, great food.

Simon got back from Magic Kingdom around 10:30, by which time we started watching Hamilton in the room, which is kind of a new thing I guess that people do on July 4.

On Saturday, our first full day, Simon was unbelievably awake early, and went out for pancakes and a doughnut before we were even up. He went back to Magic Kingdom while we took our time. Eventually, we went to the big counter service spot at Coronado. This, along with the sports bar, are operated by a concessionaire, and not Disney directly. That makes it a bit of a wildcard, like the restaurant in Italy. Fortunately, they have some decent food, including Tex-Mex rice bowls, which is what I had. Really well-seasoned chicken, very satisfying.

We caught up with Simon at Magic Kingdom, and it struck me that I can't even tell you the last time I was in that park. I don't care for visiting because it's always the most crowded, and the whole park-then-monorail/ferry-to-the-gate thing is tired. Fortunately, while still busy, it wasn't the worst I've seen. Our agenda was to ride Tron, which I've only been on once, during previews, and Tiana's Bayou Adventure, which I haven't been on since the re-theme.

I was underwhelmed by Tron on my first ride. I do like the way you enter the building and get the reveal as you are "digitized." But it's crazy how sparse the theme is after that. The station is just a big, black painted room with lights around the edges. In any case, Diana and Simon got front row, I was right behind them. It's amazing how people still climb over one bike to get to the other, despite the way there are signs and arrows and seeing the people before you board. Once off, you get right to the launch track. This is the best part of the ride, along with the big outside curve immediately after it. Once you get back into the building and cross through the block, it's just a series of meandering turns mostly in the dark. Being in the motorcycle position also isn't great. Having sat in one of those at IAAPA years ago, I was skeptical that it was a good idea. It's just not a comfortable profile.

Following a lap on the People Mover, which has updated audio since the last time I was on it, we went back to Tiana's. I'm not sure why the re-theme was controversial. Song of The South was problematic, and almost no one knew the IP in the first place. The first thing that looks great is the renovation of the queue. There are a ton of details that expand the story of Tiana, and it's really great stuff. The ride itself has a ton of new animatronic figures, and the lighting and video is subtle and immersive. The cherry on top is the big room at the end. It's really impressive.

The weather was following the same script as the previous days. Seeing the radar, we scored some Dolewhip and headed for the buses. Well, Simon headed to Haunted Mansion. And once again, we barely made it to the bus before the rain. The weather was really a drag, but mercifully, sub-90. There aren't even 90 days forecast for the next week.

We've been meaning to get up to the top of the tower at Coronado since the first time we were there. The Dahlia Lounge is a bar with an outdoor balcony, facing Hollywood Studios. Next to that is Toledo, the resort's premier restaurant. So on our last night, we had to make that happen. We had a 5:30 reservation for dinner, and we went up about 30 minutes prior to check out the bar. Great atmosphere, and they have all of the good stuff. They have warm churros, too, though we didn't have any this time. Toledo has windows facing both sides, and it's a really beautifully decorated space that ties into the motifs of the lobby, 16 floors below. But the star is the food. I had a Rioja-braised chicken dish that blew my mind. It was absolutely perfect. Diana had a filet of beef that she also thought was amazing. Meanwhile, the service was perfect, and just watching the staff move around, it was an incredibly well oiled machine. One of the best meals that I've had not on a cruise ship.

We were pretty spent after the eating and weather dodging, so we retreated to our room after dinner. Simon didn't get in until almost midnight. Overall, it was a really successful trip, and the change in scenery, even though it was so close, really helped me relax and unplug. Since we were already passholders, the biggest expenses were the room and food. We spent a fourth of what we would on a cruise, for an experience that I would estimate as 75% as good, for our tastes, anyway.