March 2014 – Page 3 – onvural.net – melih

Introducing bug hikes

So it turns out that having a yard, and being by the park, has inspired a whole new activity for the kids… bug hikes!

The kids went out yesterday, and found a mole in the woods. They look for spiders, ants, bees, and anything else that crawls. Genevieve is totally into it too which is great. Amelia is the one requesting it, but they’re both really into it.

And that’s where my dilemma begins…

Amelia is asking to go on bug hikes. I’m really excited that she’s into nature & biology. Hopefully this turns into a life long love for the sciences. It’s too early to say, but it’s definitely a start. And yet, I don’t want to be excited just because my daughter is into bugs. I want to be excited absolutely.

And so if I celebrate her pushing for bug hikes… am I exacerbating stereotypes about girls not being into science? Does chasing bugs count as science? Is the fact that a girl is into dirt busting a stereotype?

Maybe I’m just thinking about it too much…

Forget it, let’s just go on a bug hike, and we’ll worry about the social implications when the time comes 🙂

My Coach Mac story

A teacher at Cary Academy passed away this weekend. His name was Dave McAllister. I knew him as an athletic trainer, gym teacher, NC State fan, and a great conversationalist. He gave us shit all of the time because he cared. He always did right by the person first. And I’m incredibly sad that he’s left us. We even shared a birth date. It doesn’t actually make sense (he’s younger than both of my parents), but I guess that’s how life goes.

A bunch of folks are sharing their stories on Facebook, but I wanted to share a few Coach Mac stories here.

I remember driving down the highway once, and this car was stuck between me and a tractor trailer. I noticed that the car had NCSU around the license plate (one of those plate decorators that you screw onto your license plate). Because I was in no rush (I was probably skipping 2nd period where I didn’t have class senior year), I let the car get ahead of me, flashed them a Wolfie sign, and off they went. The car driver smiled at me, flashed the Wolfie sign back, and drove off. When I got to school, and saw Coach Mac getting out of his car, I realized it had been him. It was a connection we were both really proud of (often making fun of my brother in the years since he went to UNC).

As a coach at Cary Academy, he always helped me keep my cool. It’s hard to be hyper competitive, and then have a set of players who just don’t self motivate to do so. He often came down to practice to make jokes (sometimes at the players, often at me), and it kept me grounded, and it helped me out a bunch. He was genuinely fantastic at that.

Man. It’s just not fair. It just doesn’t make sense. Our last interactions were over Facebook helping him brag about taking his son to an Eagles concert, and making fun of Doruk for needing help reading a kid’s book from Amelia. I loved that he was always rooting for me no matter where in the world I was.

RIP Coach Mac.

Life Updates, Uncategorized 2

This week in review

The week that Doruk was here.

It’s quite fun to have family around. I think that’s true regardless of who’s side it is. It also becomes a persistent reminder of how far away we are from family. I grew up a very long airplane ride away from my family, and somehow I’d like to make that distance feel much shorter for the babies. So far I think we’ve done a good job, but as flights get more expensive, the family grows, and folks get older and it’s harder for them to travel, I’m not sure how we pull it off. I guess that’s tomorrow’s problem, and so it goes…

What did we do this week? Hmmm….

A visit to Oakland and Brown Sugar kitchen in the rain. Followed that with a trip to the Alameda flea market where I got a snazzy belt!

The week was filled with the chaos of working too much; coming home to the babies & Doruk who were laughing too much; and the joys of having my baby brother around.

Yesterday we went to the beach, and just enjoyed the weather. The moment. It was really nice. When I took the big babies to the airport, it was a perfect ending. Doruk made me laugh the way he left, and I felt like a complete cycle of being together had passed. It was really nice.

Sunday felt like a down day. Luka started his new soccer season. Amelia wanted to join in. We’re going to have to figure that one out… She’s just not that into it, and so we didn’t sign her up… but may she is into it? I played too. It was a disaster 🙁 During my game, Amelia got nailed in the face by a shot. She took it amazingly well. She’s a rock star when it comes to pain.

Then we ended the weekend with good family bonding, and Micky heading to the airport for her trip this week.

Home ownership, Uncategorized 0

Discovering the neighborhood: A walk down Irving

We walked to the beach today. We were mixing friends (Justine & Baby Renzo), with family (Doruk & Hanna), with beautiful weather. There’s a cool little deli (called Clancey’s Market & Deli) around 41st and Irving where we stopped to have lunch. The sandwiches are amazing. The owner is a great guy. And the prices aren’t San Francisco (which is nice).

It’s also a fantastically easy walk. It’s flat. There’s plenty of things to see, and places to eat, around the way. We saw a cool photography studio. There’s a New Orleans food spot. There’s a surf shop (because I’m clearly going to have to learn).

I think discovering the neighborhood is going to be one of the best parts of having a home. The neighborhood will grow up with us, and we’ll become part of its fabric.

I really love this home ownership thing.

Fatherhood, Uncategorized 0

Rejection of a two year old

Here’s a million dollar question…

Should we tell Amelia that she has now been rejected by every school to which we’ve applied?

She’s visited a bunch of them, and is very aware that she visited a bunch of new schools. She has even asked about going back to them when she doesn’t want to go to school. Now we’re scrambling to figure out what to do next. We’ve got one option open that I love, but may be too complicated to pull off from a logistics point of view.

I’m also going to have to scramble and find some schools in the Sunset.

Between it all though, the big question is whether she’s supposed to know. And I don’t know why, but it’s a hard one to figure out 🙁

Life Updates, Uncategorized 1

Dinner party at the new house

A big chunk of the amplifize crew came over last night to the house. It was our first big dinner party, and we had a real blast. I cooked kofte, rice, and shepherd’s salad. Doruk got lots of wine. The night was spectacular.

The babies helped me cook. Luka is really into cooking, which I think is quite cool. Amelia is quite into being the center of attention 🙂 So it goes. They helped me mix up food in the food processor. Pushing buttons is a delight for them. Which I find genuinely fascinating. Then they shaped the kofte as well. It was going really well until Luka started eating the raw meat. So it goes.

Then babies slept, and the adults had fun. Heather and Brock. Mary, Mat, and Reese. Doruk and Hanna.

It’s funny how a digital family can come together in real life, and mix the two worlds together so well. Some stories start from amplifize articles. Others are about our real lives – problems at work, with the cats. The familiarity is fantastic. So is the genuineness of the moment.

amplifize was not (and won’t be) a commercial success, but I’m really happy with what it’s brought in my life. Fantastic friends. Great conversations. And a smile to lighten up the day.

Becoming a PM, Uncategorized 1

Creating a PM community

I jammed with Jason Monberg today who is a really cool cat who came into my world view through Ian. Jason and Ian worked together at MarkLogic.

Jason has a consultancy that’s quite cool. They do both product development as well as product strategy, process consulting, and the like. He’s got a cool office space, and he’s been jamming on starting a PM meetup there.

We talked a lot about what’s valuable in those meetups, and this is a topic I’ve thought about a lot. There is no StackOverflow for product management. Product management is also a lot of things at a lot of places. Finding good templates is hard. Finding tips on actual execution and tactics is tough. Figuring out strategy from insanity requires real mentorship or kinship at times… and neither is readily available.

Product managers need a community. One where they can trust each other; openly discuss how to better the craft; and ultimately feel less lonely when ganged up on by the world.

Jason and I talked about this a lot, and how to pull it off. Hopefully there are some really good ideas that he’s got now to run with because if we can pull this off, then I really believe that the craft will take a big leap forward.

Fatherhood, Uncategorized 0

This just happened

We were in the locker room getting dressed after swimming tonight. Amelia & Luka noticed that another baby from their class was using the hair dryer. They asked to use it, and then this conversation happened:

Amelia: Daddy, you do it first

Me: Amelia, I don’t have any hair to dry

Amelia: No daddy, on your back

Yeah… that just happened.

New Year Resolutions, Uncategorized 0

February book update

Book update for the New Year’s resolution:

I’m reading, in parallel, three books. It’s not the best way to nail one book per month, but I’m really enjoying it because the context switch keeps the content of each book fresh. Here’s where I am with all three:

Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business – 100 pages to go, and we’re starting to apply a lot of this to our design and product development process. Not overly explicitly yet, but we’re understanding WIP, the amount that can be delivered in a sprint, and I’m mentally creating the stages for projects. From there, we’ll want to start telling the story of how it all works, and there are some good folks helping me out with that.

Above the Fold: Understanding the Principles of Successful Web Site Design – This one I’m about halfway through. It’s not a lot of new content, but some good examples of existing best practices. Useful to read, but not really a life changer like the Kanban book.

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days – I need to dive back into this guy. I’m only 25 or so pages in (PayPal’s Max Levchin, and the founder of Hotmail). I didn’t realize how much the Hotmail guys hated their VCs. A lot of lessons to be learned in this one.

And so the resolution is slightly revised to be reading 12 books this year. But other than that, I’m on course!

Life Updates, Uncategorized 0

This week in review

This was a good week.

On Friday I had lunch with Dave Sloan. I’ve inherited a lot of friends in San Francisco from Micky since she’s about 10,000 times more social. There are some where I think… Hmmm. Random. We would never have met otherwise. With Dave it’s more like, yup, I get you. We’re homies. I can’t tell you why. But he’s great to hang out with. We had lunch at Tin which is a favorite of Isaac W. as well. I ate my weight in pho, and it was awesome.

And then this week wasn’t so great 🙂 the kids were sick, and I was constantly covered in throw up. Not a good look.

Micky and I ran away Wednesday night and had a killer date night (another win).

And… I’ve restarted the piano project. I have keys, and now I need to rewire the piano to work with the new setup. Let’s call that a draw 🙂

All in all a pretty good one. Here’s to the next one.