Best Things this Year (2016)

What a year. Every week another beloved celebrity passed away and our electoral system gave us a 2.9 million vote loser as president. People I love voted for a guy who bragged about sexually assaulting women, thinks climate change is a Chinese hoax, and wants to build a registry of muslim Americans.

But her email server…

It’s hard to write about the best movies I saw this year in a world there our next president says the US should “expand its nuclear capabilities“.

It’s hard to talk about interesting work projects when a presidential candidate publicly called on the Russians to hack our politicians and then blamed the white house for not stopping it.

It’s seems trivial to tell you which TV shows I thought were interesting when we’re about to have a president who won’t release his tax returns and won’t properly divest his business interests. We can only assume he’ll use his position to benefit himself and his family.

But let’s do it anyway.

Annihilation was the best book I read in 2016

Books
I read fewer books in 2016 than I have in the past few years.
The New Turing Omnibus by Alexander Dewdney
The Little Big Things by Tom Peters
Annihilation by James Vandermeer
Authority by James Vandermeer
The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck
Running: A Love Story by Jen Miller
Martian Time Slip by Philip K Dick
The Castle by Franz Kafka

Work
RJMetrics was acquired last summer by Magento, so I have a new job as the engineering manager for Magento Analytics. It’s essentially the same position I had before, but our team is now improving analytics for the Magento community.

In Q1 of 2016 I worked on a project called the SQL Report Builder, which allows you to build charts directly from SQL queries. I may have built more chart builders than anyone.

Alex Kleger and I won the first ever Magento Analytics hackathon in November. We created a feature that allows customers to add new data sources without impacting their update times.

Writing
Against my own rules I did some long form writing on Medium this year. It’s not the most popular, but my favorite was this one about the NJ EZ-Pass website.

Weddings

What do you wear to an 80’s themed wedding?

Last year I spent NYE in Milwaukee at Quinn and Lindsay’s wedding, I rocked a Pac Man suit at Dan and Jesse’s 80’s wedding, and I watched my beautiful sister get married in Orlando.

Owen and I getting ready for Sarah’s wedding

Music
I’ve become obsessed with the Kills

I saw Advance Base and Free Cake for Every Creature at PhilaMoca

Austin
I visited Austin, TX three times to visit the Magento offices there. I can’t tell which I love more, the tacos or the BBQ. Need to gather more evidence.

TV
Westworld was good, but season three of Black Mirror was better than anything else on TV.

Stop Motion Movie
Sasha made this awesome stop motion movie for my birthday