Today I went to Bruges, a beautiful city near the Belgian Atlantic coast. I woke up a bit late (I still haven’t really adjusted to the CEST timezone), but I managed to get to Bruges by around 11 in the morning. I enjoy trains, and I got to take the train from Bruxeles-Midi through Ghent and on to Bruges.

I’d skipped breakfast, so by the time I arrived in the city centre, I was hungry and went to a restaurant called De Beurze. It was a cosy place, with a little fireplace that I sat next to. I had a nice steak with salad and fries, all while having a great view of the main square. I really enjoy the way that they do service in Europe. Nobody comes to bug you while you’re eating, but they are attentive and you can easily flag the wait staff down if you need anything. I don’t like that you have to pay for the water, though. But it gives me an excuse to order sparkling water since it’s the same price as still. Additionally, since the US Dollar is so strong against the Euro right now, the prices are also very reasonable. I think it was 1.08 USD to 1 EUR while I was there.

The primary purpose of my trip was to attend FOSDEM, a Free and Open Source Software conference. I attended last year as well and enjoyed it, so I decided to make the trip to attend again. FOSDEM is the biggest meeting of people in the Matrix community every year, and there is also a sizeable Go presence at the conference as well.

This year, I once again travelled to Brussels for FOSDEM (see my post from last year). I took the Wednesday 13:30 flight out of Denver through Chicago O’Hare to Brussels, and arrived on Thursday morning. The connection through O’Hare was a bit tight. As scheduled, I only had 50 minutes, and then due to our incoming flight being vectored to the wrong runway on the first approach, we had to circle around to land at the correct runway. I was at the back of the plane, but luckily my gate was not very far away and I made it just fine.

Every year since 2015, Eric Wastl creates a two-part programming problem for each of the 25 days of Advent. He publishes a new problem every day at adventofcode.com at exactly midnight EST which is 22:00 the day before for me in MST. The last two years, I decided to do the problems as soon as they came out and streamed my problem solving sessions on my Twitch channel and uploaded them to my Youtube channel. The last two years I updated a blog post about each of the days, and I will try and do that this year as well.

This week, my company (Beeper) had our fall work retreat in Toronto, Canada. It has been nearly six months since our March retreat in Amsterdam and it was great to see everyone again and meet some of the new team members. I have also written about our four retreats prior to Amsterdam on this blog.

One of the main goals of each retreat is to provide opportunities to connect as a team on a personal level. There were three new team members present at this retreat.

This weekend I flew out to Los Angeles to see my friend Ethan Cranston. He is a former student of mine at Mines, and we got to know each other well because he was one of the most consistent in-person attendees during the hybrid COVID semesters. He now works at SpaceX and since I have a ton of Southwest points, I decided to visit him somewhat on a whim.

I recently became a homeowner. Here are a couple of reflections that I’ve had about this new phase of life:

• The permanence of owning my own house is nice. The first time this really hit me was when I was putting up some decorations. I realized that it was my walls that I was nailing things in to. I don’t have to answer to anyone about the holes in my wall if I move out.

For the last six years, Mines ACM has hosted a High School Programming Competition (HSPC) modelled after the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). I wrote about the 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 competitions on this blog. The problems from every year are new and written by Mines students and some Mines alum specifically for the competition. This year, I wrote four of the problems and helped Ethan Richards with organizing the competition.

I woke up late on my last day in Amsterdam, and missed breakfast at the hotel. After saying goodbye to the remaining coworkers at the hotel for the retreat, I went to drop off my bag at the hotel where I am staying for one night before heading back home.

I then headed back into Amsterdam city and walked around the streets admiring the beauty of the city. I stopped for lunch at a restaurant and had some very nice pizza. I was planning on renting a bike, but it was drizzling on and off so I opted against it; walking in the rain was enough for me.

This week, my company (Beeper) had our first retreat of the new year in Amsterdam, Netherlands. We aim for about three retreats a year, though due to holidays and a recent push towards our beta exit milestone, it has been a little while since we have all gotten together. The last retreat was in Mexico City in October and before that we had three other retreats. The goal of each retreat is to provide an opportunity to connect as a team on a personal level, discuss future plans, and reflect on the progress we have made.