3
It's been a while since I posted a personal update here. Salal and Eleanor and I have been in a nice routine for a while now, so it usually feels like there's nothing new to report. Unlike last year, we haven't moved or changed jobs (or changed jobs again). Eleanor is now in the long steady climb through toddlerhood, so her milestones and breakthroughs are not as frequent as they were. But over a year, things do add up.
Eleanor turned three last month. This fall she started going to a nearby co-op preschool, four hours a week. She chatters constantly, and likes singing and rhyming. She has started drawing specific things, like people, flowers, and cookies. She likes taking baths but not having her hair washed. For Halloween Eleanor was a monkey and I was the man with the yellow hat. (Salal was a firefighter, which also fit the Curious George theme.) She enjoys sharing her Halloween candy with us.
Eleanor still spends one day a week at my mom's house while Salal and I are at work. When Sal's school started this September, I moved to a four-day work week so I can stay home with Eleanor on Sal's other work day. This continues a pattern: When Eleanor was born, I worked four-day weeks for a few months at Amazon after Salal went back to work; before that at GoTech I worked four-day weeks to spend more time on side projects.
I'm still working at Kiha and we're still in stealth mode. The work itself has changed quite a bit, not surprisingly. I feel much more productive than just one or two years ago, thanks to improved sleep at home and a focus on habit- and skill-building at work. I've also started doing more studying and programming outside of work again. My recent side project Compleat got a nice reception on Hacker News and Reddit a couple of weeks ago. I did put a lot of work into that write-up, hoping for more people to read and share it.
That was also the first post at my new weblog. I'll post programming-related articles there instead of LiveJournal or my old Advogato diary, so please subscribe if you want to know what I'm working on. Or if you are subscribed to Planet Matt then you'll see my blog posts along with all my other feeds.