Matt Brubeck

It's been a while since I posted a personal update here. Sarah and Eleanor and I have been in a nice routine for a while now, so it usually feels like there's nothing new to report. Unlike last year, we haven't moved or changed jobs (or changed jobs again). Eleanor is now in the long steady climb through toddlerhood, so her milestones and breakthroughs are not as frequent as they were. But over a year, things do add up.

Eleanor turned three last month. This fall she started going to a nearby co-op preschool, four hours a week. She chatters constantly, and likes singing and rhyming. She has started drawing specific things, like people, flowers, and cookies. She likes taking baths but not having her hair washed. For Halloween Eleanor was a monkey and I was the man with the yellow hat. (Sarah was a firefighter, which also fit the Curious George theme.) She enjoys sharing her Halloween candy with us.

Eleanor still spends one day a week at my mom's house while Sarah and I are at work. When Sarah's school started this September, I moved to a four-day work week so I can stay home with Eleanor on Sarah's other work day. This continues a pattern: When Eleanor was born, I worked four-day weeks for a few months at Amazon after Sarah went back to work; before that at GoTech I worked four-day weeks to spend more time on side projects.

I'm still working at Kiha and we're still in stealth mode. The work itself has changed quite a bit, not surprisingly. I feel much more productive than just one or two years ago, thanks to improved sleep at home and a focus on habit- and skill-building at work. I've also started doing more studying and programming outside of work again. My recent side project Compleat got a nice reception on Hacker News and Reddit a couple of weeks ago. I did put a lot of work into that write-up, hoping for more people to read and share it.

That was also the first post at my new weblog. I'll post programming-related articles there instead of LiveJournal or my old Advogato diary, so please subscribe if you want to know what I'm working on. Or if you are subscribed to Planet Matt then you'll see my blog posts along with all my other feeds.

If you use the bash command line a lot, and especially if you'd like to add custom tab completion for different commands, please check out my new project Compleat. It's a way to create new bash completion rules without writing tedious shell functions.

I'm going to write up some more documentation and post this to Hacker News and other places in a few days, so I'd appreciate it if you can test-drive the installation process for me. Follow the link above to get the source code from GitHub; the README file has installation instructions. Please let me know if you run into any problems or bugs!

Last year I wrote about my backup strategy. Here are some new developments.

I'm still using rsnapshot for local backups, and duplicity for encrypted remote backups. I switched to the S3 backend for duplicity. (My meager data costs less than $0.10 per month to upload and store there.)

Things got a little more complicated when Sarah and I each got our own laptops. (Before that we shared a desktop computer.) I still use a git repository for my own home directory, but I wanted something simpler for files we share. And I want those files backed up even when we're away from our home network and storage server. Dropbox is the perfect solution. It syncs folders over the network, integrates perfectly into the Mac/Windows/Gnome desktop, and can share files publicly over the web or privately between Dropbox users. Most importantly, it has a simple way to view and restore previous versions of files that change. And (for my meager needs again) it's free!

The one part of my system that wasn't automated before was backing up data from various online apps. I wrote, "There's a business opportunity here for someone who can make this easier." In fact, I was seriously thinking about creating that business myself, but Backupify did it for me. They back up my data from Flickr, Twitter, Google Docs, Delicious, and GMail to my own S3 account. (They'll handle the S3 stuff if you don't have an account, but you can save money by registering your own.)

The reason I'm writing this now is that it's the last day of their blogging contest, so I can get some free stuff for telling them the feature or service I wish they'd support. Well, my number one service is LiveJournal (where I'm publishing this post). But more importantly, my number one feature would potentially allow them to support many services, even ones they've never seen.

Right now, each major web app has a different custom API for getting access to data. This means that Backupify doesn't support brand new or obscure services, because they need to write different code for each one. What I'd like to see is a standard for how services can use standard protocols like OAuth and the Atom Publishing Protocol to support export and backup of users' data. Then, as a web developer, I could support that spec and know that my users could employ existing software like Backupify to keep their data safe. There's an obvious chicken-and-egg problem here, but if Backupify could partner with a group like Google's Data Liberation Front to champion a new standard, then they could get some real momentum. (Google is a good candidate since they already support OAuth, and their GData API is based on APP.)

Being a parent is like having an unrequited, unsuspected crush. All she has to do is smile, and my heart stops and my world goes from black and white to color. And she has no idea that this happens. Is it always like this? Does this explain all the cute, pathetic, embarrassing things parents do?

I want to start my own software company whenever I finish at Kiha, whether it succeeds and I'm rich, fails and I'm laid off, or just gets big and I get bored.*

Specifically, I want to work on a very small and focused project with one or two partners, fund myself for 3–4 months, launch a product by the end of that period, then decide whether to put in more time/money, seek outside funding, or what. Anyone want to join me—not this week or this month, but maybe this year or next? Let's talk. See my profile for contact info, or add a comment below.

*Don't worry, bellwethr, I'm not suggesting anything is imminent! I'm very happy at Kiha. This is a longer-term dream, but I figure it needs some advance planning if I want it to be real someday.

I just got an ORCA card, the new stored-value card for our local transit agencies. Now instead of getting a new card each month, I can just go online to renew my ORCA pass. I can also check the current status and transaction history online, and set up a monthly auto-payment plan. But that also means that there's an electronic record of all my trips, associated with my name and address.

ORCA offers both "registered" and "unregistered" cards. Unregistered cards (they claim) are not associated with any identifying information. This means they are potentially more private, but they also have fewer features. If you lose a registered card, you can deactivate it online and get a new card for the same account. Unregistered cards are like cash; if you lose one then you lose any balance associated with it. And registration is required for monthly payment plans and other online account management.

I got a registered card, since the balance protection seemed worthwhile. I don't value my privacy that much, and anyway I'm not confident that the unregistered cards are really that much more private. (Several of ACLU-WA's privacy concerns apply to unregistered cards too.) Mostly I thought it was interesting that they make the trade-offs explicit, and offer customers a choice. Also, I think that just knowing that I could get an anonymous card made me feel better about ordering a registered one. Another version of the see salad order fries effect?

Via Netflix, Sarah and I are catching up on the past decade of television. Here are some of my impressions while watching The West Wing seasons one and two:

• Oh, so this is what fueled my more political friends' Obama fantasies.
• So many things seem bittersweet in hindsight:
  1. An administration that considers it catastrophic to have an approval rating of only 42% (in early 2000, cf. all of 2006–2009)
  2. Space Shuttle Columbia having problems that endanger its landing (in May 2000, cf. February 2003).
  3. Saying they "still don't know where bin Laden is" (in October 2000, cf. 2001–present).
• Hopefully not bittersweet in hindsight: worries throughout season one about racially-motivated assasination attempts.
• For a show that's really quite shockingly well done in almost every way, they sure do make some clumsy use of thunder and lightning when people are supposed to feel gloomy.

If you ride the bus every day, you don't need an analyst to tell you about mobile technology trends. I remember the point in early 2007 when suddenly everyone on my bus had an iPod. Seriously, I'd look at the ten people sitting near me and all ten would have white earbuds. Then in 2008 people started using more different gadgets for a wider variety of purposes: playing games on a PDA, watching movies on a PSP, listening to music on a GPS unit, reading books on a Blackberry. I also saw a number of Kindle owners, though I suspect that many of them were fellow Amazon employees.

In 2009, all of the electronics have vanished except for the phones. I guess once you have a reasonably capable phone—the one gadget you never leave at home—there's no more desire to haul around anything else. I see as many old-fashioned paper books as ever, though.

For the last couple months I've felt like I'm back at Mudd taking about six credits of algorithms and combinatory logic. My mom bought me Algorithms in a Nutshell, Statistics in a Nutshell, and Real World Haskell (highly recommended!) for Christmas and I've been working through them on the bus to and from work. Then my copy of To Mock a Mockingbird arrived at the library and I started working through the exercises in Part III. Then last week I started working obsessively on Project Euler and quickly reached level 1 (25 problems solved).

I'd glanced at Project Euler years ago, but was never motivated enough to sign up and record any solutions. Getting familiar with Haskell was a perfect excuse to try it out. Reading other people's solutions in the forums is interesting. I have three conclusions so far:

1. You can sometimes beat my Haskell code in performance, but usually the only ones to beat it in conciseness are the APL/J/K programmers.
2. Now I really want to learn J or K.
3. For time-critical numerical algorithms, C and its kin are still important tools. I should do more of my solutions in D.

My new hobby: competing to be the least hip person in the room.

"Dude, I didn't even know who Sleater-Kinney was until after they broke up. I was more into, like, Metallica back then."

"Metallica? They were so much better after they sold out..."

Congratulations to photon0912 & cubetime on their new baby! Also, belated congratulations to patrissimo & choiceful, kuddliphish & maxemulien, olstad, chanusa, kimdons, anahas & mr_minconbop, and 2gouda4u & thegreatgonz; and early congratulations to aardvark428 & omega697 and katiemouse & schempp. Not to mention any others I've forgotten or who aren't on my LiveJournal friends page.

With a dozen or so young'uns by my count, is it too early to start planning for our do-it-yourself Mudd Gen.2 summer camp? Maybe modeled after demolition camp? (We could give it a clever name like "Baby Boom" or "Population Explosion" or "Let's Blow Some Stuff Up, Wooo!")

Oh, yeah! I work at Kiha with bellwethr now. It's nice.

I had a month off between jobs. I spent some time interviewing at several companies, served on a jury (criminal trial; drug possession, crack cocaine; guilty), and spent a lot of time playing with Eleanor and doing work around the house.

Eleanor is talking more every day. She chooses to wear pink almost all the time (despite our best efforts to give her clothes in lots of different colors). She plays make-believe games with her toys. She still wants to spend about half of each day reading books. Her favorite place to go is the grocery store.

Eleanor heard the fireworks from her room this evening, so I let her out of her crib to see them out the window. I told her there was a new president.

One more thing about the new house—

After we moved in, I was doing some work in the crawl space and dropped a nail. Fumbling for it in the dark, I felt something that didn't seem like one of the normal rocks or bricks used to weigh down the black plastic sheeting. I grabbed it and brought it out into the light. It was an 8GB iPhone.

The iPhone was dead, so I took it to work the next morning and borrowed a colleague's charger. When I powered it on and opened the mail program, I could see it belonged to the previous owner of the house. I contacted him at the phone numbers and email address I found in the iPhone. He was very surprised when he responded, wondering where on earth I had found his phone.

Based on some investigation the phone company had done after the phone was lost, he knew that the phone had last been accessed on the day he moved out—after it had turned up missing. With my account, he was able to piece together a possible scenario: One of the movers, or someone else with access to the house, had picked up the phone, checked that it worked, and pocketed it, hoping to steal it. But later the thief became afraid of detection, and ditched the phone in the dark corner where I eventually found it.

I returned the iPhone to its grateful owner. I admit I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to keep it.

I'm sitting at home, unemployed, sick, taking care of a sick child, with no heat and no stove. And feeling pretty good.

My job at blist did not last very long. My peers were great, I contributed a lot, and it was a much-needed change at the time. But I was demotivated by the CEO/founder's management style, and he was never satisfied with my effort. So last week as the company blew past its planned launch date with no shippable product and no achievable end in sight, I was let go. Our two contract engineers also left in the same week. I wish the best to the remaining five engineers. I feel no regret—I knew it wasn't the right place for me, and was already planning on quitting soon.

If you know of a great job opening in Seattle (not including the Eastside, sorry), please see my resume and send me a note. I'm already talking to Google, and I'm on the fence about interviewing at Amazon again.

In other news, we're all moved in to our new house (photos here) and we're having a party this weekend. If you want to come and haven't gotten an invitation yet, just let me know!

I did finally come down with the cold that Sarah and Eleanor have had for over a week now. So my first few days of unemployment have been spent sleeping and reading Anathem. Our heater and other gas appliances are out while we wait for our new natural gas furnace to be approved by the city inspector. We haven't had a working dryer or dishwasher since we moved, or a working stove since our old electric one was hauled away weeks ago. Fortunately it's sunny and warm for once in Seattle, so we have the clothesline and grill set up in the back yard. Here's hoping everything's back to normal soon!

Every year my family goes camping at Penrose Point with a group of other families that we've known since I was in daycare with them. We reserve the group camp site for two nights, drive in with our tents and coolers and Coleman stoves, and spend most of our time relaxing at the beach or around the campfire. On the second evening we have a party—usually with a theme and costumes. This has been going on for something like 26 years now. Sarah and I skipped last year's trip because we weren't ready to take the baby with us, so this year was our first time camping with Eleanor.

Eleanor was thrilled beyond words with the entire trip. She'd love to spend every hour of every day playing outside, but we normally have to bring her back inside after a couple hours for pesky things like food or sleeping. So camping was like paradise for her. She spent hours playing in the dirt and wading in the lagoon, and thought that eating and sleeping outside were highly amusing. It also helped that we had grandparents and other friends around to keep her entertained when Sarah and I got tired.

Oh, and our Dr Horrible costumes were a hit at the "Musicals" theme party.

We accepted a counter-offer on the Tuscan bathroom house,* and this week the seller agreed to the modifications we requested after our home/roof/chimney/sewer inspections. So, we're buying a house!

Our closing date isn't until August 15 because the sellers need time now to buy a house themselves, and both parties will be out of town in the coming weeks. We're still waiting on final approval for the loan (they won't approve it more than 30 days before closing), plus we need to schedule movers, contractors, and extra childcare for our move-in week.

We'll be taking a couple weeks after closing to do some work on the house before we move in—repainting a couple rooms, buying a washer/dryer (they weren't included with the house), adding a dishwasher, and installing natural gas and replacing the stove. Longer-term we will need to have some work done on the chimney, and figure out a better way to seal off the basement from the crawlspace.

*The pictures aren't on the listing sites now that the house is off the market. I saved copies for myself, and I'll put up some of my own pictures later.

We decided not to make an offer on the porch house. Instead we revisited this house from our first home tour.

Yes, it's every bit as fun and funky as the listing suggests. Possibly a bit too fun and funky. But on the plus side:

• Great location: walking distance to Sarah's work, public library, produce stand, playground, grocery stores, shopping center.
• Just the right size, with plenty of space for storage, home office, guest room.
• Great interiors with hardwood floors and lots of light.
• Spacious fenced yard with lots of garden space.
• Good kitchen and dining room.
• In the Seattle school district.
• Skylights!

Minus:

• It's three houses past where the sidewalk ends.
• Partial basement with possibly inadequately-sealed crawlspace.
• Oil furnace; no natural gas (but there is a gas main in the street).
• Only one bathroom.
• Near the top of our price range – may strain our cash flow if we need to hire contractors or buy appliances right after closing.

Anyway, we decided to make an offer. Now I must initial many pieces of paper and make many phone calls.

We're thinking of making an offer on this house.

Pro:

• Great location: easy walking distance to the library and lots of restaurants and shops; across the street from Safeway.
• Two blocks from Sarah's current workplace.
• Two blocks from a playground.
• Less than one block from several bus lines, including express buses to/from downtown.
• Really nice, big, open kitchen.
• Really nice big living and dining room space.
• Space for a home office, and some other good extra rooms.
• Not too big or too small.
• All wood (actually laminate) floors. (Necessary because of dust mite allergies.)
• Huge master bedroom with its own bathroom and walk-in closet. (Not necessary, but nice.)

Con:

• Yard is adequate but not great.
• No garage or basement.
• Right at the intersection of two busy streets; across from a giant parking lot.
• Half-block outside of Seattle city limits. This may change soon.
• Relation between the house and street is weird. (The "front" door faces sideways into the driveway.)
• No natural gas hookup?

One of Eleanor's latest developments is playing pretend. It's interesting because unlike her other skills, she started it without really being taught or shown how. Also, it's cute: She carries around empty food containers and "feeds" Sarah and me, or has her stuffed animals eat from them. She "opens" doors inside the house with her toy keyring (note these are doors without keyholes). And most recently, she holds her stuffed animals by the hands and has them "help" pick up laundry or toys.

Sarah and I are spending our free time hunting for houses in West Seattle. Not much to write about yet, but our favorite from last weekend's tour was this house with an amazing yard and nice basement. This weekend we're touring more homes, including this one with a nice floor plan and good location.