Monday was one of the most difficult days of my life. Monday was our pack and load date with our movers for our upcoming move. Watching as our lives were packed into nondescript boxes was an emotional experience, especially when they were packing my son’s belongings. My irrational thought was that the movers were packing our life away. They were packing our son away.

It’s surreal to equate your life, your being, to the possessions in your house and to see those possessions stacked like malformed Tetris blocks in a trailer, tied down and prepared for a cross country trip. I just wanted to get out of the house. I was supposed to stay on the premises the entire time to answer questions, but I couldn’t really take it. While watching movers efficiently box our belongings, I wanted them to take time to appreciate what they were packing. Didn’t they know how important those things were? Those toys and toddler clothes?

They didn’t know. And they shouldn’t know. And they shouldn’t care. They have a job to do and they were doing it. I’m glad they were doing it. I can’t imagine how difficult it would have been on me packing our belongings. Sure, the physical aspect of it would be trying. But the mental aspect of it would be brutal. I nearly lost it a few times while packing clothes into a suite case.

The truth is, I needed those movers. I couldn’t have moved out our stuff and held it together. As a matter of fact, every time I enter that empty house and I see that our belongings are missing, I break down and I cry. I broke down yesterday when doing the final walkthrough. I broke down this morning when running in to grab a few things. I’m going to break down tomorrow when going in to get our luggage prepared for our flight on Thursday. This is not regret for taking a job and moving to California; I’m looking forward to our time out there and to my new job (which I consider one of my dream jobs). This is the pain of leaving our first home. This is the pain of leaving Max’s home. This is the pain of realizing that Max won’t have a memory of that house.

I recently read Evan Ratliff’s post, My wife found my email in the Ashley Madison database. I sort of understand where he is coming from here. No, my email address is not in the Ashley Madison database dump (as far as I know and I have not checked). My email address is, however, frequently used by other Todd Groomses around the country. I receive Lexus maintenance reminders for a Todd Grooms in Florida. I’ve received daycare notices for a Todd Grooms in Illinois. I usually attempt to respond to the sender to let them know that my email address does not belong to the person he or she is trying to reach, but this always feels so odd and so pushy on my part. Do I have an obligation to contact someone if the email seems to be important? Are they listing my email address knowingly to avoid spam in their own inboxes?

I believe there was just a misunderstanding and an error made when recording the email address for the Todd Grooms in Illinois. However, the Todd Grooms in Florida must knowingly give out the wrong email address as he frequently signs me up for newsletters from Lamborghini and Ferrari dealerships as well as boat dealerships. The Todd Grooms in Florida is kind of a jerk. Not only am I getting signed up for newsletters that I do not want, but I have to have this guys seemingly deep pockets flaunted in my face.

This also brings up the question: do we really own our email address? When I receive misplaced email, it almost feels as though someone out there is impersonating me. I sort of feel as though a small part of my identity has been taken away from me. I realize that my main contact address is a Gmail address and that at anytime it can be taken away from me, but I that email address has become apart of my identity. I’ve had it since 2005-2006 (it’s been so long ago, I don’t honestly remember). It’s a surreal feeling realizing that someone can essentially impersonate me or possibly represent me in a context that I do not want or am not aware of. It’s silly and, ultimately, trivial, but it’s something that I think about.

I’ve recently been pushing for use of pull requests in our workflow at LunarLincoln. I believe code review to be an important aspect of development and I feel that pull requests promote code review with every feature added. This kind of attention to detail isn’t just for open source projects on Github.

My Bad

There is an issue to opening an, ideally, small pull request for every new feature: inevitably, a new feature will rely on a feature that exists in an open pull request that has not been approved yet. What do we do in this situation? Normally, I would just create my new feature branch from the open pull request branch and work away. I did not do that this time. I had not thought that far ahead. After a few commits on my new feature branch, I realized I needed the work from an open pull request branch. So I did the logical thing and merged. I did not include the --no-commit --no-ff. I unintentionally merged code from an open pull request onto my new feature branch. To make matters worse, I edited the merge commit and royally screwed up my feature branch. So much so that later, I was testing my new feature branch after having merged in the approved pull request, the changes from the approved pull request was missing. Yikes.

My Experience

What was I to do? I had never run into this situation before. My first thought was to create a new branch and manually copy over my changes, then open a pull request for this copied branch. This would surely work, but there were a few commits worth of work (about 8) and that seemed tedious.

After pondering for a bit, I did create a new branch. I then used git’s cherry-pick command to bring over the commits from my fubar’d branch and save face. I had never used the cherry-pick function, but I was aware of its existence from the docs and from previous developer given talks at meet ups. While I didn’t have direct experience with it, I was able to use my indirect experience and solve my problem.

After seeing An iPad-Only Workflow for Creating Jekyll Posts , I decided to try my own hand at it.

I purchased Editorial and started accruing workflows. I downloaded a New Jekyll Post workflow and made a few adjustments tailored to my site setup (namely asking for whether or not comments should be enabled and asking for tags). Next I found a Publish Jekyll Post workflow for publishing my posts to my Github repo. While these weren’t perfect, I was able to learn how workflows in Editorial are built and I was able to customize these workflows to be more inline with how I work. I had been looking for a way to publish content to my site given my new Jekyll setup and I had been unhappy with what I had found. I had even contemplated writing my own app to accomplish this task (and I still might), but I think I’ll give this a try for now.

In preparation for the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs tonight (that’s hockey for you non hockey people), I’ve been doing a bit of research into the Nashville Predators regular season record against the other teams coming out of the west. It’s important to note that of the eight teams in the playoffs out of the west, five of them come from the Central (the Predators’ division), leaving three from the Pacific. The first spot goes to Anaheim with 109 points. The eighth spot goes to Calgary with 97 points. The West was so tight this year that only 12 points separate the 1st seed from the 8th seed. This year’s playoff race felt much tighter than last years (but this could be due to my increased interest with the Predators being smack dab in the middle of the race for the Central division crown; after all, perspective is everything).

Once the playoffs were set, I started thinking about how the predators do not match up too well against any possible matchup that they might have. This curiosity led me down the path of looking at their regular season record against potentail foes.

Predators Regular Season Record Against Western Conference Playoff Teams

The number in parenthesis denotes a shootout loss, which are special cases and in my opinion come down to chance.

First Round

The Predators have drawn the Chicago Blackhawks in the first round. Out of the teams from the Central, the Predators only played Chicago four times (versus five times for the other teams). This has to do with the Western Conference having seven teams in each division (whereas the Eastern Conference has eight teams in each division). During the first loss to the Blackhawks, the Predators started their backup goalie, Carter Hutton and only lost 2-1 in OT. This is a pretty good outcome, especially considering the Predators played this game on the backside of a back-to-back (the frontside being played against Winnipeg). The last loss to the Blackhawks ended with shootout (again, I chalk these up to luck and happenstance and I don’t personally find anything interesting in these losses or wins). If we discard those two games, that leaves the Predators with a 1-1 record (both games in Nashville) against the Blackhawks (a 3-2 win and a 1-3 loss). Both of these games had roughly the same number of shots for and shots against. Nashville had power plays in both games and did not convert on any of them. Nashville had to kill off penalties in both games and did not allow a power play goal in either. Rinne was the starter in both of these games for Nashville. The Blackhawks starting goaltender, Corey Crawford, did not start in either of these games.

Looking at the history, this series seems like a toss up. I think the Blackhawks have the edge (ignoring recent results from both teams). It’s hard to say because the last time these two teams met was in December. The last game between Nashville and Chicago was December 29th. That’s a big deal.

Other Interesting Notes

• The Predators did not tally a win in the regular season against two playoff teams: the 1st place Anaheim Ducks and the 8th place Calgary Flames (both Pacific Division teams).
• The Predators did not “earn” a shootout victory against any of the Western Conference playoff teams.
• Out of the eight playoff teams in the west, two teams ended the season with a losing streak: Nashville ended with a 6-game losing streak (3 of which were to playoff bound teams), while Chicago ended the season with a 4-game losing streak (3 of which were to playoff bound teams).

Closing Arguments

This observation means nothing. It will not foretell who will come out on top in this series. I just found it to be an interesting exercise in prepration for the start of the playoffs tonight. Go Preds.

Lonely Planet recently had another featured app in the iOS App Store: Make My Day. This app is near and dear to my heart. Make My Day was one of the two apps that I worked on during my tenure at LP and was the one app that I worked on from start to finish (the other app that I worked on is slated for release later this year).

From what I can recall, this is the first app that I had a major hand in to be featured in the iOS App Store (Slacker may have been featured, but I cannot recall; additionally, I would not classify the involvement I had as “major”). Being featured is very exciting for me. There are many developers for whom this would not matter or for whom this honor has been bestowed upon many times and has now lost its luster. Not me. I am going to enjoy this. It is another milestone in my career.

If you are inclined, I hope you will check out Make My Day.

I have mixed feelings today. I am excited because I am picking up a new (used, but new to me), but sad because I am trading in my 2007 Volkswagen Rabbit.

The commute into work was uneventful and somber. I dropped Max off at his daycare a little earlier than normal. I then started the short drive to my office. I tried to savor every gear shift (for my Rabbit is a manual transmission). I reveled in every red light so that I may have the opportunity to accelerate through quick gear changes again. I tried to shift as smoothly as possible. I take pride in my gear shifting and in my opinion, there are only a few things in this world better than a smooth take off and a smooth gear change.

The Rabbit was my first new car. It was love at first sight. I wanted it since the first advertisement I watched when Volkswagen reintroduced the model in 2006. It served as a very dependable vehicle through long commutes to and from college. It was my escape. I could climb in, find winding roads, and focus on the drive, leaving all my worries behind (if only momentarily). I literally bought the thing right off the truck when it arrived at the dealer. I was the only owner. I was the driver for nearly 116k miles. I have logged many miles behind the wheel and many smiles as well.

You may think it is ridiculous to have such an attachment to a vehicle as I have to my Rabbit. I would argue that you would be the ridiculous one for not having an attachment to your vehicle. Your vehicle is an extension of yourself. Depending on the commute you have, you may spend more time in your car than you do awake at home. It may sound as though I am lamenting the loss of an old friend when I speak of my Rabbit. In truth, I am. Instead of suffering the pain of a something I care about being taken away too soon, I get the opportunity to possibly give someone else a modicum of the enjoyment that I have had behind the wheel of my Rabbit. I hope, in someway, that the owner who eventually purchases my Rabbit sees this. Take care of her. Enjoy the ride.

Goodbye friend.

While listening to Mark Maron’s interview with the Director Richard Linklater on his WTF podcast, Linklater brought up an interesting mantra: “Pressure is a choice.” Linklater heard this from former University of Texas pitcher Huston Street while filming Inning by Inning. In general, the idea is that everything in our lives is a choice. We choose what we focus on each day. If we can focus on the right things, then everything will fall into place. I feel like I need to change my focus onto things in my control and what I feel is important for my goals. It’s easy to get bogged down in the everyday grind and to focus on the wrong things. I do it everyday.

An interesting piece from Fog Creek regarding their review process.

I found this link on HackerNews and one of the comments on the story caught my eye:

I don’t believe a code reviewer should even have to know about the requirements of the feature/bug, and should focus more on the design/quality vs. whether it works.

I believe this is a fallacy. This is like saying an editor does not have to understand what he or she is reading as long as he or she is focusing on grammar. Should the editor not be able to ensure that the author is getting his or her point across? Should the reviewer not be able to ensure that the code should functions as intended? If the reviewer does not understand what the code is meant to do, how can he or she understand whether or not something such as a conditional is behaving correctly? That a loop ends at the proper step? While the reviewer may not need to know every implementation detail, the reviewer should have at least a working knowledge of what is expected of the product. I can write nonsensical code that does not cover the requirements for a product that is syntactically valid and even clean. Should the reviewer focus more on the design/quality of code? Sure. I just believe the reviewer should know at least what he or she is reviewing.

I have recently accepted a wonderful opportunity to work at LunarLincoln and I will be leaving my position at Lonely Planet, effective December 19th. This comes as a shock to me. I was not actively looking for a new job; I just happened to have stumbled into this serendipitous opportunity and, after a period of deliberation, have decided that the offer is too good to pass up. The founder of LunarLincoln is a good friend of mine and made me a generous offer to come work with friends. It was difficult for me to say “no” to that.

I thank Lonely Planet for everything they have given me: confidence, fond memories, and the chance to work with wonderfully talented developers. I wish everyone there nothing but the best.

With that said, I look forward to beginning my time at LunarLincoln in 2015.

This is Major Todd to Ground Control: I am ready for takeoff.