Category: Family

Best Things This Year (2021)

I did get a haircut a few weeks later.

Well, we’re still in year 2 of this pandemic. I feel lucky my family is vaccinated, boosted and able to fend off one covid case. But it’s still sad we haven’t returned to the world we had in 2019. I’m still hopeful we can in some ways, but things will always be different. 2021 was about adapting to new constraints and that isn’t all bad.

I never feel like I did much at the end of the year, but kind of the whole point of writing these is to remind myself I did.

2021 was a year of huge life changes. I got officially divorced on Zoom after separating in 2020 and started a new company with coworkers all over the country. I reconnected with someone and have gone on so many adventures with her already.

I feel like I’ve gotten so close with Sasha and Owen living in this small apartment and it’s been interesting to meet the people they’re becoming. They’re funny, getting straight As in school, and obsessed with anime.

These recaps are letters to my future self and I’m glad I write them every year. I wish they were more personal, but they help me remember who I was and how I got here. Here was 2021:

Carolyn Suzanne Busa

Carolyn and Ben at the One Day Smarter by Emily Winter book launch party
Carolyn and Ben at the One Day Smarter by Emily Winter book launch party

Our birthdays are just three days apart and I wrote this for her on hers:
“Happy birthday to this beautiful painter, comedian, business owner, dog owner, coffee fiend, pizza rater, subway solo artist and woman from la matcha.”
It’s hard to imagine this year without her and every entry below has a piece of her in it somewhere. We get a kick out of each other.

Vaccinated
Vaccines were the hot item in 2021 and I got mine as soon as I was eligible. Everyone talked about their side effects like it was last night’s football. I got two doses of Moderna from Rowan and a Pfizer booster at Walgreens. Seems like boosters will be part of our lives for a few more years at least.

Yes I wear this shirt a lot.

I broke down a little after my first vaccine realizing it was the first step to this thing being over. Didn’t think we’d have this far to go.

Impossible Meat
The first time I tried Impossible Meat it was at Qdoba. It was one of the options for a burrito and I was into it. Since then at home I’ve made tacos, burritos, enchiladas, burgers, and of course my new specialty, korean beef. Trader Joe’s has the best price on it, just $5.99.

My car was destroyed
First accident I’ve been in where I wasn’t driving! The Honda Civic I bought from Jen Miller a while back was wrecked when someone plowed through a fence and drove into while it was parked. The damage totaled the 19 year old car and I got a newer model that was only 12 years old.

Common Paper
Holy crap I started a new company! I looooved my job at Betterment, but when Jake Stein asks you to start a new company what else are you going to say? We’re trying to create a seamless web of deserved trust between companies by standardizing and streamlining their legal documents and speed up the sales process. It’s been great so far and I love working with Jake and Lauren again, and getting to meet Garrett, Tiffany, and Stanley.

Focus Labs did a great job on our branding.

Plants
I’ve never been much of a plant person. I used to have one on my desk in a styrofoam cup in 2001, but it died. Now every window in my apartment is filled with plants collecting the light and I am on a strict watering schedule. So far only one has died, but I really enjoy the kitchen usable plants like the basil, mint, and green onion.

My plant highlight of the year is nursing Ricky the Snake Plant back to health. He’s thriving and recently had a baby!

plant before
plant after
Before and after

Anime
I’ve always enjoyed the Studio Ghibli films, but Sasha and Owen have gotten me into some great anime such as Erased, Evangelion: Neon Genesis, Attack on Titan, and Death Note.

Ryuk is my favorite character from Death Note

Peak Secondhand
I’ve had a lot of jobs, but never worked retail until this year. It’s been so much fun helping Carolyn launch her store and get to work there as an intern on occasion. The pay is terrible but I’m gaining valuable experience. They did a write up about it in the Inquirer.

Carolyn’s secondhand clothing store, Peak

The business model of secondhand stores is fascinating, but it’s been even more enjoyable watching her build a brand and a following.

M1 Macbook
Believe the hype. The new MacBooks with the M1 processors are faster.

Porchfest
I played Collingswood Porchfest for the first time in years and it truly is the best day in town. I performed a bunch of newer songs that I haven’t played much.

Illinois Trip
Saw my brother’s kids for the first time in a while, the giant world of Casey, IL, and Al Bundy’s house.

It was ungodly hot that day in Casey, IL.

Fort Mifflin
Before 2021 I never heard of Fort Mifflin and now I’ve been there twice to see Pam Selle and my new favorite DJ, Avalon Emerson.

Pam on the left, hyper cube on the right

Patco Thread
I was proud of this Patco Twitter thread twitter I wrote.

Pizza Spreadsheet
Carolyn and I visited 15 local jersey pizza places and ranked them. We still haven’t published the results but that’s coming, I promise.

Pocono Mountains
We hiked around the “trail of doom” at the top of this mountain and Owen was afraid to use a bathroom because the drop from the seat to the tank was too much for him to handle.


Collingswood Bikeshare
My mountain bike was stolen earlier this year, but I got the best bike ever from the Collingswood Bike Share. $25/year and they’ve already rebuilt major parts of it for me for nothing. (I gave an extra donation, though)

Odyssey of the Mind
My virtual Odyssey of the Mind team won the regional tournament and finished 3rd in NJ, our best finish in the 6 years i’ve been a coach.

Fear the potato army

Trash Night
Is it the east coast’s hottest new spot or is it just Thursday? Trash Night is finally over, but I even learned how to make my own Instagram filters for this.

Garvey Corp… sold
After 95 years of independence, Garvey Corporation was acquired by a public company. I spent 10 years working there (or 15 depending on how you count it) so there are a lot of feelings wrapped into it, but I think overall it’s a good thing. I’ve seen enough bottling lines to know my dad’s legacy will be the way products are buffered in transit. His innovations will become the standard.

Asbury Park
Never went to Asbury Park before, but now I’m a fan.

TV (non Anime)
Queen’s Gambit
Nathan for You
How To with John Wilson
His Dark Materials
White Lotus
The Americans
Mare of Easttown
Rewatched 5 seasons of Seinfeld with Sasha

Movies
Dune
Tenet
Midsommar
Class Action Park
Woodstock ’99
Dunkirk
The Many Saints of Newark
The Guilty
Matrix: Resurrections

Music
Spotify said my number 1 song was Cotton Candy by spill tab, who we saw perform at the Fillmore Foundry.
I also really enjoyed marinelli, Palo and Pan, Jack Stauber, Midnight Sister, Avalon Emerson and Sasha got me into Surf Curse.
Live music was (somewhat) back in 2021 and I got to see Advance Base, Florry, Palo and Pan, spill tab, JAWNY and 1910 Chainsaw Company

Previous years
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011

Introducing Kids Morning Adventure!

So excited for this! After a year of work, I’m finally releasing my gamfication system for getting kids ready for school, called Kids Morning Adventure. It ended up being very similar to my RPG for kids, Kids Dungeon Adventure, but refined for the busy morning schedule.

Kids Morning Adventure
Kids Morning Adventure

Announcing Lineage: A Family Tree Data Expression Engine

Lineage screen shot

Last week at the Philly JS Dev meetup, I demoed a new project I’ve been working on called Lineage.

It all started as a way to try and visualize all the research my Aunt Peggy has done over the last 50 years. Using D3, I was able to build a way to search, filter and analyze thousands of family relationships in a network graph. It even lets you start at a given year and watch the family grow and connect as the years tick by.

Links:
See a live demo of Lineage here.
I’ve open sourced it on github.
My slides from the Philly JS Dev Meetup

I wanted the project to be useful, but also stand alone as art, so I kept the user interface as minimal as possible and included an option for music during play mode. If you like the music you can download it on Soundcloud. I’m happy with how it turned out. An enormous amount of gratitude goes out to Peggy Haley for doing this research over the last 50 years.

Note for anyone who is actually in the tree, I have done very little in the way of making sure this data is accurate. If you find anything incorrect, email me and I’ll try and get it fixed in the future.

Best Things This Year (2013)

Anecdotally, it seems like a lot of people shook up their lives in 2013. I certainly did. Here are the best things that happened to me in 2013.

1. RJMetrics – In March I started working at RJMetrics, an e-commerce data analytics firm in center city Philadelphia. Leaving Garvey Corp was a difficult decision, but being a developer at of the best SaaS data visualization companies in the world has been amazing.

RJMetrics
RJMetrics

2. The Bulldog Budget – I worked with Philadelphia City Controller candidate Brett Mandel to implement his vision for the city’s open data future. We built a visualization tool using D3 and MySQL that gives both a high level view of the General Fund budget, but still allows you to drill down to individual transactions. A lot of people got excited about it and I think it made an impact in Philadelphia. It also influenced similar projects in Italy and Oakland, California.

Treemap of the Philadelphia General Budget
Treemap of the Philadelphia General Budget

3. Coffeescript – I was skeptical at first whether Coffeescript was a worthwhile abstraction from Javascript. After 9 months of using it at RJMetrics, I’m a fan. Here’s why:

  • Cleaner syntax: No parenthesis, braces, or semi colons. The time I save writing console.log instead of console.log(); has been worth the switch.
  • Improved workflow: Continuously running the Coffeescript to Javascript compiler alerts me of stupid mistakes (ie. ones that won’t even compile) faster than finding them after I’ve loaded the browser.
  • Existential operator: I can’t count the number of bugs I’ve fixed with one character are due to Coffeescript’s great ? operator, which checks to see if it’s null or undefined before proceeding. For example, if in javascript you previously did this:

    if (player != null) {
    player.levelUp();
    }

    In Coffeescript you just write:

    player?.levelUp()

  • Comprehensions: The Coffescript.org docs say you almost never have to write a multiline for loop and they can be replaced by comprehensions. For example:

    for (player in players) {
    if (player.health < 0) { player.kill(); } }
    In Coffeescript you can write:

    player.kill() for player in players when player.health < 0

    • I'm looking forward to getting better at Coffeescript in 2014.

4. AngularJS - I don't want to develop another interactive UI without AngularJS.

5. Bought this swingset from craigslist - With the help of my friend Mike and my father in law, we disassembled, packed it up and a U Haul, and reassembled it in my back yard. I'm amazed it went back together so well.

swingset
swingset

6. Read 13 Books - My morning commute afforded me more reading time. Here's what I did with it.

  • Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
  • Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  • Look at the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Trial by Franz Kafka
  • A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nassar
  • Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin
  • Game of Thones (books 1-3) by George RR Martin
  • Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  • Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
  • Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

7. Public Speaking - I got way out of my comfort zone this year and did some public speaking at Ignite Philly and Technically Philly's Civic Hacking Demo Night.

8. Built the Gonginator

9. Spark Program - Some coworkers and I participated in an apprenticeship program for Philadelphia school kids where we spent 2 hours a week with 8th graders interested in programming and computers. Together we built a game!

That's as much as I could remember from 2013. Check out my lists from 2012 and 2011.

Family Mystery: Solved!

In every family tree there are squirrelly branches. There are stories, legends, secrets, and it’s hard to tell what is real and what was exaggerated for the sake of a better story. For me, one of those stories was the reputed last name of my great grandfather. My father’s, mother’s father’s last name was Delpino, but he had been adopted by his step father. According to family legend, his biological father was Polish and their last name was “Shibbiwubbish.”

Helen Garvey Performing at Assumption School Minstral
My grandmother, Helen Garvey, singing at the Assumption School

As kids, we found this name hilarious, but as I got older I thought this couldn’t possibly be true. It had to be some sort of whisper-down-the-lane situation where the actual name had been modified across four generations. I became so convinced of its inaccuracy I stopped telling the story and forgot about it.

My Aunt Peggy on my mom’s side is a genealogical genie. She’s worked for years on mapping out their extensive family history across the world and has now branched out to other parts of the family, like my Dad’s. A few weeks ago, Aunt Peggy was in town reviewing the 1920 census records and interviewing people. I asked her about the name and she gave me the spelling: Przybylowicz

Przybylowicz didn’t seem anywhere close to the family legend. My mom and I discussed how to find out the actual pronunciation and luckily, I work with a guy from Poland named Andrzej Borysewicz. Without telling him any backstory, I showed him the name and asked him how to pronounce it.

Here is the result:

!!! I couldn’t believe how close the passed down pronunciation was! Phonetically it’s something like “Shi-bee-WO-vich.”