New school, new adventures

Dear Js,

It was J’s first week at Bing. Abu is here to help with the transition. It hasn’t quite been the vacation we hoped for. j still nurses, and she won’t let Abu near her, let alone feed her with a bottle. So gone are our fantasies to leave you two at home to go out drinking and dancing at night. J loves her though. One day, mama took j to group and Abu took you to the park. On the way back, you said, “I love you so much that I cannot explain it.” Already a little heartbreaker.

Oh, right. Back to your new school…

Day 1, Tuesday – mama dropped you off in the afternoon. This is what she told me later that evening. You found your name tag. Then you ran to the easel and painted your name in whatever style you normally do. Some letters were up right, some were sideways, some were mirrored. They didn’t all go left-to-right. You started from the left, but you soon ran out of space and you painted wherever you could find space. It was a cloud of letters. Then you walked to the bench with sea shells and went “OOO magnifying glass.” You remembered your dinosaur book with invertebrates. “The starfish is so big! Look mama the shell is so big!” Then you ran out into the rolling hills. And through the obstacle course. “Mama I did it all by myself! When j comes, I will show her how to do all these things.”

I asked, “Did you guide him?” She said no. You led her to explore. We were supposed to ease you into the routine, so mama said, “I have to go. I’ll be back after storytime.” You said, “But WHY?” Then, “OK!” That’s when mama called me to say, “I wish you could have seen his face. He was so happy.” You were free; excited to learn in a place that encouraged and rewarded you for being curious. You pretty much chased her away and went to play. I want to visit you for drop off one day. Maybe next week.

Meanwhile… Abu took care of j. In the evening she said, “I survived Julia!” I asked her how it went. She said she managed with single-word conversations. Yes. No. Mama. Point at garage. No mama. Upstairs? No mama. Kitchen? No mama. Want to read? Nononono. Ball? Nononono. Nothing worked until the last hour when Abu thought of the water table. That worked. What a relief. You splashed your head, hands and legs. All over. You played until mama came home.

Day 2, Thursday – You ran right outside to paint your name again. Then, “I want to paint the ocean. Big and blue.” Then you went to the shells. “Why is this cephalopod shell long and why is this ammonite shell round?” You took turns playing train conductor with another kid. There were two crying kids. Mama observed how they handled them and she was impressed. The teacher hugged the kid and explained what was going on, then asked, “Would you like to help me give your friends their name tags?” At your old school, children were told they shouldn’t cry, and if they kicked a fuss they’d get time out. Mama said, “J, I have to go get food now.” You said, “Why? OK.” And you chased mama away again.

It was a big difference from when I dropped you off every morning at your old school. You were bored to shits and you hated that I left you but you accepted it. You would walk around, stick out your lower jaw and stare at things from the corner of your eyes. But here it seems you just run out to explore and play.

Day 3, Tuesday – it was 4th of July week so I escaped from work to drop you off with mama. We also got to chat with your teachers. I saw with my own eyes that time. What a difference.

Day 4, Thursday – all of us went this time.

In the old place, I had to bribe you with animal crackers to get in the car. And at school, you clung to me saying “Daddy, daddy, hug, daddy, carry…” Each morning I tried to show you around the room and find interesting things for you to try. But you were so bored. It usually ended with you accepting that I have to go. Then you would walk away, wander around, touch things but not really do anything. I’d say bye and you’d ignore me.

But at your new school, you can’t stop talking about going. You ask mama if Daddy is coming because you want to show me. I don’t have to help show you interesting things. You show me, then you run off to play before I can say bye. And when mama picks you up, you don’t want to leave. You made her stay on the hill outside to read. “I don’t want to go, I want to stay and play.” I had to bribe you to go to your old school, and mama has to bribe you with a snack to lure you to come home.

It turns out that after your teachers interviewed us and learned that you like dinosaurs, they brought out a dinosaur table. You know, at the old place, it always killed me every time I left you and walked back to my car. Here, we leave feeling relaxed.

First roller coaster. Now that you’re taller than 3 feet, we did some new things at the theme park.

We parked across the bridge that day:

Then you wanted to try the roller coaster. You like trains, so you’ve been wanting to ride it for months. But you haven’t been tall enough until today. I didn’t want to scare you, but I still wanted to prepare you mentally so you knew what to expect. So I didn’t say it was scary. But I said it was fast and that it would surprise you. Then while we stood in line, I put you on my shoulder and we watched the roller coaster go round. I simulated the dips and turns and woosh and weesh. Then it came to our turn. The boy made sure the bar was tight across our laps. I put my hand around you so I could hug you around your chest.

Mama said you need to see his face. “Did he like it?” He looked scared. I could tell from the video, so I slowed it down and freezed some frames:

I asked you how it was. At first, you still weren’t sure what you felt. But you could recall what happened:

I tried to explain that it’s normal for your heart to beat faster. “Why does my heart go bum bum bum bum?” Your heart beats fast when you’re excited. Then later, you decided how you wanted to feel about it:

“I had a frowny face.” You turned to me, “Did you like the roller coaster?”
“I like to go fast sometimes.”
“I don’t like the roller coaster.”
“OK, we don’t have to do things you don’t like.”

And then you looked at another ride you haven’t tried, and said, “I want to try the froggy one”…

You decided you didn’t like that either.

Uncle Jardy’s back in action His gf is away at Ireland for a weeks. After surviving a painful near-death experience (he said the pain was sometimes so bad it made him pass out), he gave himself a deadline. He wanted to finish before his gf returned, which was also his birthday. I got sick of his flaking so I laced the deadline with a seed of poison: “You know, it will be a nice surprise if she comes home and you have made money with your biz.” I hope it sticks. If it does, I’m going to be busy soon to help him test and bulletproof the technical side of things — sales funnel, recurring monthly billing, lock/unlock online classes, email autoresponders, etc. I don’t think he knows how much gruntwork there is left, but I didn’t want to scare him. He just needs to get it done.

Poor j was sick. You threw up in bed. Mama said, “She’s my tough baby, i’m not used to this! Needless to say I totally freaked when she started vomiting in her sleep. Luckily I was right next to her reading. Side-car crib for the win. Hoping she feels better soon.” It must’ve been a virus that hopped around our family. Because me, then mama, then Abu caught something too.

Funny convos…

“No no no you are my mommy only.”
“I want you to send j away in the car.”
“I want to send her to the moon.”

“I’m too tired to fall asleep at home so going to fall asleep on the car.”
(I repeated what you said because it made me chuckle)
“NO! You cannot sleep because you’re driving.”
“I want a pillow.”

First sentence in Spanish – j was bothering you and you wanted to distract her:
“JULIE! Donde esta Kin Kin?”
Now, you say that with everything:
Donde esta _____?

Curious j’s “What’s that?”
You went crazy on Sunday because you didn’t sleep. You came over to the dinosaur book J and I were reading. You demanded to know things.
“WHATAT?!!”
“Sauropods.”
“WOOOLOLOLO!” *FLIP- “WHATAT?
“Pachyderms.”
“LOOOOOLOLOLOooooo”, you said as you shook your head. *FLIP- “WHATAT?”
You kept doing that for the next 50 pages and you were serious the whole time. J was laughing and loving it.

“Mama, I want to go straight to nap after lunch”
Mama was not saying no to that.

Mama biz Mama was late for group on Monday. She pulled into the last spot in the lot. She thought, “Maybe they’re having a sale.” Inside, there were 3 moms hovering outside the room. They were there for her group. She called me later to tell me, “I had SEVEN moms today!” I said, “You were the sale.” j, you were there too. You wanted to nurse whenever you saw other babies nurse. Then you played with the moms and spilled water on them. There were 2 regulars, 1 regular brought a friend, 1 grandma tagged along. They had all kinds of problems, mama helped them all. Even the mom from the goat farm from last weekend showed up. Mama got all their emails.

Happy 4th of July!
Kimi is in front of me in her crate. We are in the hallway because she’s been barking. She doesn’t bark when I stare at her. The fireworks are popping and she’s shaking. But she knows I’ll kill her if she barks so she grumbled and stayed curled in the corner.

You asked me what the sound was. I showed you a video. I have explained it to you for the last two nights. Today you said, “I want to see it.” I said, they’re outside, in the sky. Want to go outside? “No, I want to wait until I’m 5 or 6 years old.” I said The fireworks won’t come back until next year. If you want to see it, we can go outside now. I’ll hug you tight. “Okay.” I put you in the red stroller and we ran out like storm chasers. Our neighbor was out for a smoke and said hey where are you going? I said, We want to see the fireworks. He said, That’s tomorrow. These ones are too far. Oh. I thanked him and said we’d try anyway. We managed to see one bright blossom over the green wall.

When we came back, mama had put Kimi in the garage. She had started barking and almost woke j. I was in a good mood so I thought of helping her through it tonight. (Yesterday we put her in our neighbor’s house across the courtyard. They had us to watch it while they were away.) I put Kimi with me and j in our room and laid in front of her so she could see me while I worked on my computer. I said if you wake j up I’ll kill you. After 30 minutes, she stopped wheezing and whining and crawled to the back of her crate.

I bumped heads with our VP this week. They made the mistake of calling me into a meeting that included him, a Director, a Principal Engineer and some other dude who tried really hard to prove he was doing something valuable for the past month. The goal, from what I gathered later, was to improve our QOR suite. It’s a “golden” suite of designs that are supposed to represent what our customers see. All improvements are benchmarked on it. Projects are declared successful or failed by it. Raises and bonuses are awarded based on results on it. New chip architectures are committed using it. Finally, it produces the only number that appears in every important presentation, all the way up to the CEO. And I thought it wasn’t good enough.

Subject: QOR suite tuning – can we think bigger?
Hi ______

Did you get to talk to Roy or Roman [VP of product marketing] after our last 1-on-1?

I was thinking that since we’re trying to tune the QOR suite, it might be a good chance to also start making WebTrack [customer usage tracker] more useful.

Because, our NDA customer suites are too small. Does it seem like we’re going backwards? — We’re starting with our small data-set and extrapolating what the customer wants from there.

True, this exercise is still useful [I’m careful not to kill his baby, but instead building from it] because it’s all we’ve got right now. But what if we also do “the right thing” in parallel? I.e., instead of starting from the data we have, what if we start from where the customers are?

What if we make WebTrack more useful by linking signing accounts with sales accounts to filter Paying Customers? (I believe Roy tried his hand at this for a bit.)

Then, we only need to extend WebTrack to save critical path data. [I’m trying to reduce a complicated problem to a simple solution] We don’t need the netlist or any sensitive data. We just need the top N paths, just like what we get from our timing report. We don’t need any names. We just need the net delays + the first 2 characters of the cell type so we get the path structure. There is zero risk of reverse-engineering customer IP with this data.

Then, we can apply whatever analysis/profiling we’re doing on our small QOR suite, to the universe of paying customers on WebTrack.

Imagine getting the charts you want, but with $ value associated to them as well:
> $10MM:
   QOR profile charts A
$1MM – $10MM:
   QOR profile charts B
$500M – $1MM
 QOR profile charts C
and so on…
[There is no useful information in this example, I just included it because I needed something to paint the vision]

If we will be using the QOR suite to make decisions org-wide, and these numbers go all the way to the top… plus influence future architectures/yield tuning/etc… shouldn’t they also include a $ revenue factor? [I’m trying to make him feel embarrassed/inadequate]

What do you think? Engineering-wise, we have everything we need to make this happen. I just need some help getting some doors open (Roman, Roy, Vic [corporate VP], etc).

This week in pictures

Bugsy flies again! Bugsy is a kite mama and I bought from a kite store in Morro Bay. It’s been with us since before you two were born.

Mama was committed to unraveling all the string. Then she let you fly it yourself:

I like box

The first thing you did was make everyone a bracelet, because we hadn’t let you open the pack of tiny beads until then

First time back at CuriOdyssey since j was a baby

We made a slide

This week’s cool video – aurora from the ISS:

Drone films inside of fireworks

By the way j, you’ve become a kissy monster. Mama says you’re such a daddy’s girl.

But sometimes you want me and no one else, then you become more monster than kissy. For example, if I walk away or touch any door knob or handle and you catch me, you start screaming. Even when I’m with you, you scream when you want anything. Mama thinks you’re frustrated that you know how to get our attention, but you can’t say what you want to say yet.

Love,

Dad

P.S. Random thought – if there’s one thing life with kids taught me, it’s how to get some work done despite regular interruptions.

P.P.S. Food for thought: “A challenge is an opportunity to grow.” If you are never challenged, you can never grow.