Two Years

May 07, 2013

I'm alive and kicking. You wouldn't know it looking at this blog. Or my Twitter account. Or my (deleted) Facebook account. But, yep, I'm still here.

I know I have not had much of an online presence for the past two years. There are two main reasons for my hiatus. First, my then-toddler-now-pre-K daughter. Weekends spent coding, evenings spent catching up on RSS feeds, and spare minutes spent tweeting have been replaced with educational trips, outdoor sports, and moments of ad-hoc dancing and laughing. I believe this change is a "good thing" for all parties involved. I hope it persists. (And, FYI, I still can and do code after kiddo's 7:30 PM bedtime.)

Second, Watson. Nearly all of my compute time, at work and at home, for the past two years has been spent working on the Big W. I cannot share details, but suffice to say my horizons have been greatly expanded. I've gained new knowledge about distributed systems, machine learning, natural language processing, applied statistics, and data science. Not to mention, experience with new tools (I ❤ IPython Notebook), practice leading a small part of a big team under pressure, and many new contacts. It's been all-consuming, yet enlightening.

I'm now transitioning to a new project at work. I do so armed with all that I've learned in the past two years, both about my discipline from Watson and life from my family. I hope to share more about my experience this time around.

Or, at least, only let one year pass between postings this time.