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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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. At that rate it felt like we could have almost driven the plane to Harlingen!

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.