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_posts/2015-04-26-four-years-lookout.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Four years of Lookout"
+tags:
+- lookout
+- personal
+---
+
+
+Four years ago today I started work at [Lookout, Inc.](http://lookout.com),
+embarking on the longest journey of my career to date. I had left
+[Apture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apture) frustrated with our inability to
+grow the product and engineering team, but with pockets full of experience at
+building and deploying service-oriented applications "my way." At the time
+Apture was literally down the block from Lookout, so on a Friday I left Apture
+and the following Monday I took my same commute in to Lookout. What I wasn't
+able to get at Apture, I found at Lookout.
+
+As one of the first fourty or so employees, I've been fortunate enough not only
+to see an organization grow up, but also to play an important role in that growth.
+
+To give you an idea of what four years looks like, here are the initiatives I'm
+most proud to have worked on:
+
+ * Deploying Jenkins/Git/Gerrit, cementing continuous integration and code
+   review into the development process.
+ * Building a large Selenium test suite to help qualify releases of the
+   consumer web application
+ * Moving the consumer backend web application from two week to daily
+   deployments, driving a 33% deployment failure rate down to 3%.
+ * Leading the team which built and delivered an entirely new version of the
+   consumer web application
+ * Leading the team which built and delivered the Small and Medium Business
+   product, one of the first service oriented products delivered at Lookout,
+   based on 5 discrete services.
+ * Leading the team (same as the last team) which built and delivered the beta
+   product for what has been since renamed to [Mobile Threat
+   Protection](https://www.lookout.com/mobile-threat-protection), composed of a
+   number of discrete services, built on newly deployed infrastructure components
+   such as [Apache Kafka](http://kafka.apache.org) and [Apache
+   Storm](http://storm.apache.org).
+ * Helping hire over 30 new members of Lookout Engineering.
+ * [hackers.lookout.com](http://hackers.lookout.com) and [Lookout on
+   GitHub](https://github.com/lookout), pushing open source engagement as a
+   top-level engineering goal.
+
+With the founding of my current team, Core Systems, we've finally reached a
+size to merit this specialization in infrastructure engineering which is of
+particular interest to me.
+
+I've now been at Lookout for longer than any previous employer. It has
+definitely been a roller coaster, but it is still one I don't intend on leaving
+any time soon.

_posts/2015-05-27-mostly-growned-up.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Look at me, Zoidberg! Home owner!"
+tags:
+- personal
+---
+
+Just before I head to the bedroom for the night, I walk to the door by the car
+port, fiddle with the lock, tug on the door handle. It's secured. Sliding door
+to the porch? Secured. En route to the sounds of my wife's intermittent snores,
+I check the front door, fiddle with the dead-bolt, tug the door handle:
+secured. Great, _now_ I can go to bed.
+
+
+I have become my step-dad.
+
+---
+
+When my wife and I started talking about buying a house, we used the place we
+were renting in Berkeley as a blueprint. It was roughly three bedrooms, had a
+wonderful backyard and was in what some have called "an up-and-coming
+neighborhood." Which, by my observations, means it is in the process
+of gentrifying. Browsing the prices in the San Francisco Bay Area however was an
+exercise in humility. I thought I was well off, but without a surplus $150k
+in my back pocket, buying the house we were *renting* was practically impossible.
+
+When we had moved to Berkeley from San Francisco, fleeing sky-rocketing rent
+costs, we evaluated Berkeley, Emeryville, El Cerrito and Richmond. For the
+purposes of home-ownership, none would satisfy our wants within our means.
+
+San Francisco appears to be the epicenter of absurd housing costs, from which
+inflated costs radiate outward from the penninsula in nearly every
+direction.
+
+The half-life of this inflation decays the further from the penninsula you
+drive. Looking north towards areas like Petaluma, Napa, Santa Rosa, and
+Healdsburg showed promise in price and potential. Sonoma county in particular
+became particularly interesting to us. Between numerous family events,
+including our own wedding, we grew fond of the eclectic mix of rural farmlands
+which run into hoity-toity wineries which reside adjacent to moderately dense
+suburban towns.
+
+After three months of painful searching, a stack of legal documents unlike
+any I had seen and an eye-watering down payment: we had purchased our first
+home in Santa Rosa.
+
+
+### Playing House
+
+
+The most exciting part about finally *owning* a house is: if you don't like it,
+you can change it (you are of course financing any screw-ups or do-overs).
+
+<center><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/agentdero/17511121721" title="Croy Roofing Co. by R. Tyler Croy, on Flickr"><img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8832/17511121721_44950596de_z.jpg" width="640" height="360" alt="Croy Roofing Co."></a></center>
+
+
+In the short 2-3 months since we moved in, we've already made substantial
+changes, primarily with elbow grease, which I'm quite pleased with:
+
+
+ * Bifurcated the single gas line/valve in the laundry room into [two separate
+   lines and valves](https://flic.kr/p/rqZkFW) to accomodate the gas water heater and new gas dryer
+ * Removed over 2 Ford truckloads of rock from the "backyard"
+ * [Separated](https://www.flickr.com/photos/agentdero/17006390398) roughly 20 5-gallon buckets of said rock from the remainder of the
+   soil to lay the ["foundation" for a foot path](https://www.flickr.com/photos/agentdero/17006402878)
+ * Removed 5 cement fencepost foundations from the yard.
+ * [Built 3 6'x3' garden boxes](https://www.flickr.com/photos/agentdero/16681525110/), using reclaimed fence posts as the supports
+ * Placed 1 cubic foot of mulch, and 1 cubic foot of soil for grass.
+ * Installed 150 sq. ft. of drought resistent grass from a local vendor
+ * [Planted blueberry bushes](https://www.flickr.com/photos/agentdero/16860044786), sunflowers, tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, spinach,
+   swiss chard and carrots in the garden
+
+<center><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/agentdero/17462597162" title="A yard! by R. Tyler Croy, on Flickr"><img src="https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5336/17462597162_7620001c97_z.jpg" width="640" height="480" alt="A yard!"></a></center>
+
+ * Cut down two trees
+ * Dug a trench in the front yard to bury a plastic pipe to carry water from
+   the gutter away from the house
+ * Re-roofed the porch, shortening it to provide more sunlight by removing
+   corrugated fiberglass panels and reusing the existing corrugated tin.
+ * Repainted at least 1/3 of the house
+ * Replaced 70's era toilets with new high-efficiency dual flush toilets
+
+
+We also brought in some craftsmen to:
+
+ * Install an entirely new outdoor electric panel replacing the two
+   previous, daisy-chained together, panels manufactured by now defunct
+   companies.
+ * Removed incorrectly installed outdoor electrical outlets
+ * Replaced lightly degraded (wood rot) flooring and laid new flooring in the
+   bathrooms
+
+
+
+We're not yet done sprucing up the place, but we've reached a milestone whereby
+I'd gladly invite people over.
+
+
+
+### Rooted
+
+
+Most of the people in the bay area are renters, something at all uncommon
+for the middle class here. It's a situation which allows many a great deal of
+flexibility but for me renting was an uncomfortable condition of transience.
+Having grown up in a military household, I have lived in 15-20 different
+houses/apartments; always on the move.
+
+Purchasing a home is not only a long-term committment financially, but
+mentally. Stepping off the merry-go-round of leases, we are now rooted firmly
+in the soil of Sonoma county and the city of Santa Rosa.
+
+In years past I had given local politics a passing interest, always voting but
+never engaging. Feeling like an "outsider", I didn't participate in community
+events, or anything of the likes. Now residing up the street from a city
+councilman, in a neighborhood of concerned and locally active neighbors, I have
+the sense that it is only a matter of time before I more actively participate
+in the shaping of *my* community.
+
+I don't know what else our future in Sonoma county holds for us but so long as
+we make the mortgage payments, and California has water, we're here for a
+while.

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