Late Summer 2024

A Few Of My Favorite Things This Summer

“Things are fluid in this world, and if you don’t remain fluid, you get lost in the sauce.” - Talib Kweli

This summer I got to watch the Olympics from home and contribute to the Special Olympics at my alma mater Santa Clara University. I co-organized a volunteer day with the Special Olympics Summer Games. I was impressed by all the athletes and appreciative of my 40 coworkers who participated.

We volunteered at three events but my favorite part was having a catch after the combine event. The competition was still running high after the combine and it turned into full contact. I eventually handed over my responsibility as all-time quarterback (randomly also the title of Ben Gibbard’s solo project). It was the most fun I’ve had on work time and I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to do this kind of thing each year.

This summer I also prioritized working on THE RANDOM FOREST and I’m excited about what it’s becoming. I’m using app-based advising alongside standard advising and it’s helped me be able to take on more parent-founders. The app uses AI to summarize resources I've used in past advising sessions so I can scale out advising while still having an advisor-in-the-loop. It was fun putting together the demo with a cameo from my toddler.

The fun continued as I got to learn about random things while putting together different content tracks. Things like why Blue Bottle named their coffee after the most “the most feared song in Jazz.” I enjoyed the technical aspects too. Like using generative AI in Gemini and Vertex AI as well as Python in Colab to create the summaries.

I also had a chance to get away from work and family for a few days. I went to San Diego with some friends and did things I haven’t done in a long time. We saw a comedy show and one of us (who had a good view of it) pointed out a beautiful stained glass ceiling that you wouldn’t expect to see at a bar. The words Charity and Brotherly Love stood out.

At a hip hop show we heard a rapping water polo coach sing about how we’re better now so we don’t need to write things down we can just freestyle. During the show songs were stopped and restarted. You’d hear lyrics from other artists. Fluid and rough all at the same time.

We also got in some good water time sailing and surfing. Surfing was humbling. Wiping out required a state of calm. And riding on a shorter board than I have before made it hard to gauge where I needed to be relative to the wave. I used my app to summarize some surfing code that would have helped. The short summary is that good surfers tend to be in the right place at the right time. The slightly longer summary Surf Smarter Not Harder is available in a natural surfer voice on the app.