Last updated October 14, 2024 from Fall-painted Chicago 🍂

What's happening in my life right about now. You can see previous updates here.

Happiness Meter 🤩

8.5/10. The time in Chicago is coming to an end: We go back to Colombia at the end of the month. While happy to go back to our version of normal, we will miss the feeling of being on an adventure. And most of all, we will miss the daycare our kids went to, DeColores. Diana and her husband Diego have been amazing, and my kids love the daycare and their teachers Andrea and Johana dearly. Alas, Diana rejected our idea of teleporting them to Colombia daily.

Also, I stopped exercising again, my one big regret. I really want to build the habit for exercise. Any suggestions?

Family 💛

We have seen more of Chicago, and we had great company to enjoy it with. We went out with Diana and Diego a couple of times, and we had visits from our family. My wife’s mom, my dad + his wife and a cousin + her family all came to visit us over the few months we were here. My mom comes to visit us next week! We have been able to flex our newfound Chicagoland knowledge to look like passably-realistic locals.

There are 2 things I love the most about the city: It’s parks and its museums. The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry looks like some Tolkienesque Dwarven monument, and the inside is just as magical. And Grant Park, together with the Museum Campus, is one of the best urban parks I’ve seen.

A subset of the things we have seen:

• An actual submarine, buried underground. And its huge. They buried it 4 inches at a time. AMAZING!
• So many trains and so many airplanes.
• The fricking SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
• All kinds of dinosaurs.
• A couple of huge elephants right next to a Titanosaurus.
• Many, many, many fish. And cool sharks!
• SO MANY ANGRE GEESE. And they poop a lot 💩.
• Grant Park holding a concert, holding an all-out eating experience, holding a marathon, holding a fireworks show… It’s amazing.
• Gorillas, Lions, Seals, Bears, penguins, turtles, monkeys, you name it 🐒. For free!!
• Pizza of all kinds. I shouldn’t say this before leaving, but I think NY style is better. As an aside, Franco can somehow fit 8 full slices in his tummy. He is a freak.
• The beaches. We liked Montrose the most.
• Many many neighborhoods. We loved Wicker Park.
• The Columbus Day Parade. Weird bit of knowledge, in the USA Columbus seems to be this huge Italian hero. In Colombia, he is a symbol of Spain.
• The food is delicious. So much variety! Here is a small list of the places we liked the most. Cafe Robey is incredible, we went there 3 times.
• A startling amount of Vintage and thrift stores.
• The children’s museum was amazing. We spent 1+ hour just building stuff.

Franco was much more alert than us when it came to the T-Rex

Learning 📚

I have been reading up on Systems Engineering a ton. It is a subject I find enthralling, not just for software engineering. How can you build a system that is robust to failures but that is still adaptable to change? I have gathered most of what I’ve read in /resources

On a related note, I’m obsessed now with building a new kind of educational institution in Colombia. So, I’ve been reading on educational models, particularly on project-based learning.

Work 🧰

I’m currently a Tech Director in R5, which means a ton of coding, team management, strategy + culture work together with the rest of the C-Team and collaborating on product ideas together with Ricardo.

My work over the past month or so has been immersed in implementing a better planned Software Architecture for R5. Many, many deep conversations about both theory and practice on the topic with Jesus and Rafael.

Entrepreneurship 🚀

I have decided to build a new kind of educational institution in Colombia. More soon!

Health ⚕️

All seems good so far! I didn’t keep up with running, which makes me sad since I thought I’d really manage to keep up the habit. I’ll do my best to start again, since my friends are thinking about doing a 15K…

Spidey-fication 🕷️

The metamorphosis is complete. There is no going back.

They are web-slingers now