Today I went to visit the Van Gogh Museum in the morning, and the Anne Frank House late in the evening. In between, I walked around the city, and met up with my coworkers for dinner. One of the reasons I chose the hotel that I did was that it was a very short walk over to the Van Gogh Museum. I had tickets for 10:00 at the museum with an audio tour. I recommend getting the audio tour as it gave some good background about Van Gogh and his life story. Going into the museum, I did not know anything about Van Gogh’s life. Read more...

Today I once again am venturing across the pond for a work retreat. This time, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I’ll get there mid-day Saturday and I’ll spend the afternoon and all of Sunday sightseeing before meeting up with coworkers on Monday for a week of in-person work! My dad kindly took me to the airport this morning. Security was pretty crowded, but I have TSA precheck which makes it so I don’t have to take everything out of my bag and take off my shoes. I got to the airport in plenty of time, and I had brunch at Panda Express before heading over to my gate. Read more...

For the first time since 2020, FOSDEM was held in-person in Brussels. FOSDEM is one of the largest gatherings of open source enthusiasts in the world every year. My employer, Beeper, funded my flight, and I decided to attend. It was a great experience! I learned a lot and have a long to-do list of projects to try out. I also really enjoyed interacting with the Matrix community and reconnect with many of the people who I’d met at the Matrix Community Summit in Berlin last year and meet a bunch new people as well. The Matrix Community Meetup The conference was Saturday and Sunday, but there was also a Matrix Community Meetup on Friday that I attended at HSBXL. Read more...

During my time in Brussels for FOSDEM, I took the chance to do a bit of sightseeing. Here are some pictures of what I saw. Church of Our Lady of Victories at the Sablon Palais de BruxellesApparently, Belgium is a constitutional monarchy. Grand-PlaceI’ve read that this is one of the most beautiful squares in Europe, and I have to say that might well be true. The AtomiumI didn’t go inside since it didn’t really seem worth it as it is located well outside of the center, but looking at it from the outside was very cool!

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be travelling to Brussels at the end of the month to attend FOSDEM, one of the largest open source conferences in the world! I arrive on 1 February, and I fly back on the 6th. My flight is being funded by Beeper, and I’ll be attending the Matrix Community Meetup at HSBXL and then the conference itself. I’m especially excited about the following devrooms: Matrix - since I’m working at a company that is building a product in the Matrix ecosystem. Go - since I use it extensively at work, and I’ve become a fan of the language overall. Read more...

This year was a good year. I’m going to list a few things that I’m thankful for, in no particular order. I’m thankful for… God’s goodness. My family. My friends. My church. Getting to ski with a bunch of friends in Utah at the beginning of the year. My new apartment in Golden. Getting to celebrate my sister’s graduation and wedding. My great coworkers. Getting to work on many interesting projects with great people at my job, including a really fun greenfield project to write a custom homeserver. Getting to travel to many exotic locations for work retreats. Getting to go to Berlin for the Matrix Community Summit and got to meet some awesome people and make new friends. Read more...

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. Last year, I also updated a blog post after each day which I intend to do again this year. This year, I’m going to be streaming my solves eventually, but for the first few days, I’m going to skip that because of illness. Read more...

On my way back from my work retreat in Mexico City, I took the weekend to visit my friend, Nic, who lives near SpaceX’s Starbase facility in southern Texas. Nic is a photojournalist for nasaspaceflight.com and reports on the developments at Starbase. My flight on Saturday was to Harlingen through Houston. The flight path from Mexico City to Houston took me basically right over my final destination, but I wouldn’t arrive for some number of hours because of my connection. The United flight I was on from Houston to Harlingen was on an Embraer 50-seater plane. The flight itself was only 45 minutes, but we taxied for what felt like half an hour. Read more...

This week, my company (Beeper) had our Fall retreat in in Mexico City, Mexico. We have company retreats about once every four months and this was our fourth. Similar to all the previous retreats, the goal was to provide valuable in-person time to collaborate and connect as a team on a personal level. I was able to meet a couple people who had joined the company since the last retreat and reconnect with many coworkers that I’d met during previous retreats. We had fifteen members of the team at this retreat. We stayed at a hotel called Camino Real Polanco, and we were able to utilize some office space from another Y-Combinator startup. Read more...

Today I had to leave the beautiful city of Berlin to head back home from the Matrix Community Summit. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the city and at the summit. Getting to the airport via the train was uneventful and my quick flight to Munich was fine as well. On the flight from Munich to Denver, the seat configuration was a 3-3-3 in economy, and I was in D (outside of the middle row). In a stroke of luck, the middle seat in the row was unoccupied, so I was able to put my backpack under the middle seat and have more legroom. Read more...