A year of nothing new. A maintenance year. A year of taking it easy. Whatever I call it throughout the year, it all means the same thing: This year, we're taking a little break from all the busyness, trips, and big life changes. For the past 6 or 7 years my wife and I have gone through a lot of changes and done a lot of things. We're in our late twenties and have been married for just over 5 years and those 5 short years have been a whirlwind of activity and movement and changes and holy crap we're pretty tired. We haven't taken time to slow down, take a few steps back, and take a good hard lo ..read more

At work, we've been revamping a series of tutorial videos. The entire process of revising and producing the videos is often long and tedious, but has been rewarding. Part of the process involves having a coworker review our work before we proceed to the next step. At the beginning of this video overhaul process, I spent extra hours on each video project to get it perfect before the review process. I anguished over every little detail, going through everything again and again in order to get each second of video just right. And then when I felt it was completely flawless, I'd send it on for rev ..read more

Some of you already know this, but I am an introvert. When I'm around people and in social situations, I try to keep interaction to a minimum. Small talk is one of my worst nightmares and it drains me mentally and emotionally. I don't like large gatherings or networking events. I dread the suggestion to “stand up and introduce yourself to everyone”. Most days, I prefer to sit alone and write or think. At work, I prefer to use written communication and keep my earbuds in for most of the day. The holiday season is a time for Christmas parties, Thanksgiving dinners, family gatherings, work get t ..read more

Having a kid has opened my eyes to the world again. It is so fun to see everything through the eyes, experiences, and reactions of our little girl. The stories she tells and her reaction to new experiences are a wonderful, amazing thing. Children have this amazing gift to see things anew over and over and to never lose their sense of wonder. We got our first heavy snowfall of the winter recently. It snowed all day and into the night and then off and on the next day. Our daughter was awestruck every time we looked outside. She kept asking to look at the snow outside and would get so excited, e ..read more

I've been reading about and “practicing” minimalism in my life off and on for over a decade. Sometimes it feels like a natural part of who I am. Other times it feels like a product of my privilege. And other times it feels like a fad that will eventually fade away and give way to some other lifestyle. So, is minimalism a fad? Will it go away? I've seen posts running the spectrum, from those saying minimalism is simply a higher form of humanity, to those who say minimalism is just a passing phase in the evolution of our society. The short answer is that I have no idea. My gut tells me that as ..read more

While some people might say their “dream life” is to sit around and do nothing all day, I am grateful for work and I believe that even those who say they want to do nothing all day would miss work if they really had nothing to do. Putting in some hard work really does give us some pride. It helps us develop skills. It works our bodies and our minds. Humans need challenges to overcome and problems to solve. We are logical beings who derive pleasure from solving a problem (at least, that's how I think, so I assume it's how most other humans think, too). I am grateful for the opportunity to get ..read more

Yes, that's right, I am and always will be thankful for my family. I don't have any fancy reasoning or logical explanations to explain this one. No long blog post about why or how or when. I love my family and even when I'm upset with a family member, I'm still thankful for them. Family is there for you with a special bond only formed by families. Family, however, doesn't have to be reserved for those you are are related to. Family, I believe, is anyone that you feel a strong connection to and that you view as family. You don't need to do a DNA test or compare family trees to be thankful fo ..read more

Giving is one of the greatest things we can do with our lives. There are many forms of giving and many ways to give back to those around us and around the world. If you have the means, you can give money or physical goods, like clothes, food, or hygiene products. This kind of giving helps take care of people's physical needs and is an important way to ensure that people who are less fortunate with physical things can feel the security of having a meal to eat, money to pay bills, or things to help them take care of themselves. If you have an amazing talent, you can give your knowledge and tim ..read more

As I'm writing this post, Thanksgiving is one week away. While I think it's great to be thankful throughout the year, I find it's even easier to reflect on what I'm thankful for during this time of year. So I'd like to focus my posts for the next week on things that I'm thankful for and how they've changed my life, the world, or both. Today, I'm thankful for the miracle of blogging. The fact that I'm even sitting here writing this is a miracle of technology and science. It's the culmination of democracy, years of advancing the technologies of networking, computing, liberal arts, chip design ..read more

The other day while I was driving home from work, traffic was really backed up near a freeway entrance. I was driving in the lane that cars were merging into and I noticed a dump truck trying to merge over into my lane. Several cars sped up to pass the truck and I could see that the driver was getting frustrated. So I slowed down a bit and gave him a gap to merge. In his side mirror I saw him smile, nod, and wave a thank you. Not to brag, but I felt good about my tiny act of kindness. Sure, this kind of thing happens on countless roads all over the world every day. But the opposite also happe ..read more