Category: Sabbatical

Well, the sabbatical is drawing to a close. 2 weeks left.

Phase 3 (primarily Christmas)

• Made treats for friends
• Decorated the house (lights outside, garlands inside)
• Spent time with family – didn’t get any surfing done really.
• Many basketball games.
• Updated nef.family site. See this post.
• Christmas!
• New Years!
• Water heater broke. We attempted a repair under the warranty, but the replacement parts didn’t fix the issue. We were sick of not having hot water (we went over a week without it). So, we bought and installed a new one.

Phase 4

I’m currently in phase 4 and I’m trying to get a couple projects done before I return to work so we’ll see what I can accomplish.

• 🛑Working on getting finlaysons.us site working with an autobiography of my great grandfather. (He was an inventor). I ran the printed copy I have through AWS OCR tool and started editing it for correctness. Status: on-hold, waiting for missing pages from my Mom.
• ✅ Had first speaking assignment with my new church calling: 20 minutes of speaking took a few days to write and edit. This was more work than I expected.
• ✅I have a bunch of CD’s that I needed to back up. Bought a new DVD/Blu-ray drive to rip them.
• ✅ Backed up all family pictures to cloud.
• 🛑 Fixing broken kindle: I bought a new screen for the version of Kindle I have (using the information from ifixit). This was incorrect information for the 10th generation kindle paperwhite 4, and the new screen is not the correct replacement. Seems that this kindle is borked. Not sure if I should recycle or try to sell on ebay.
• ✅ Added recipes to family site.

Stat	Count
Books read	5 (+4) Primarily padding to reach goal of 52 books for the year.
Video games played	5 (+2) Death Stranding/Ghosts of Tsushima
Surf trips	3 (+0)
Movies (in theater)	4 (+2) Sonic 3, Mufasa

I haven’t gotten much done since the last post. Unfortunately my grandma passed away (aged 95 – she lived a great life and we’ll miss her) so there was a funeral to attend. Tami and I flew into Provo and picked up Jake, drove up to Idaho. The trip was fast and memorable — 32 of 35 grandchildren attended. Hopefully I’ll see many of them again 🤞.

Lindsay had a week of games (before the funeral) in Irvine. I spent 4 days driving back and forth for those. Other trips to Redlands and around SoCal have also occurred.

The house needed to be prepped for Christmas. I got all the decorations out of storage and setup the garlands, lights and trees.

Jake came home for Thanksgiving. We went surfing twice. Tami cooked a fantastic meal. We watched movies (Wicked, Moana 2, Rez Ball) and had an enjoyable time together.

I was asked to become a lay-leader in our local church organization and started assuming some of those duties.

Tech Fun

• Updated MerPress plugin to Mermaid 11.4.1

Overall Stats

Stat	Count
Books read	1 (no change)
Video games played	3 (+1)
Surf trips	3 (+2)
Movies (in theater)	2 (+2)

As part of my work with Automattic, I’m granted a 3 month sabbatical after 5 years and I started it recently. I want to document some of the projects and things that I manage to do.

It might make sense to report each week — meaning I report back each week on a specific cadence. Great for ensuring something gets posted, but I’m not sure I’ll have enough to report each week. (Progress on video games is not be terribly riveting/memorable).

The first “phase” cleared maintenance tasks around the house I’ve wanted to tackle but haven’t prioritized high enough.

• Clean/organize garage
• Clean/organize office
• Flush water heater
• Fix some yard things (lights, bushes, grass, etc.)

I finally completed building a LEGO Delorean set that I got for Christmas last year.

Lindsay organized a beach day/bonfire on Monday. I chaperoned by mainly staying out of the way and surfing — it did take a whole day though.

I started playing Rocksmith to improve my guitar skills. I haven’t been very regular with my practice so I’m ramping up slowly.

Our friend’s Father passed away and I’m covering their church class this week. This is a daily seminary/scripture study course for high school students.

Needs improvement

I haven’t gotten many books completed and I would like to make a habit of getting some regular study in.

Overall Stats

Stat	Count
Books read	1
Video games played	2
Surf trips	1