Found myself giving a bit of advice to new cyclists, so I figured I’d store my thoughts here so I can share it. This is primarily for road cycling, but a lot of it could be applicable more broadly. These are just semi-organized tips this is not an exhaustive list of everything you should or need to do. I like riding bikes, I’m not a mechanic, I’m not a pro, and my opinions are subject to change.

It was my dad’s birthday recently, which sparked a bit of reflection. What are the past situations where I’m grateful for having learned appropriate behavior? What positive qualities have I successfully incorporated into my own life? Vanity purchases Ever since I was born, I’ve known my dad to only be extremely reasonable when purchasing things. Never flaunty or flashy always purposeful and value oriented. He buys a Honda accord and drives it for 150K miles.

Intelligent and deep-thinking people may hold opposite opinions of one another. If you hold an unshakeable opinion about anything that exists in some state of probability or confidence its almost certainly a mistake to be doing so. One of Amazon’s leadership principles is Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit. I wish it would elaborate a bit further, Have Backbone; Disagree, Reevaluate and Commit. It shouldn’t be disagree, hunker down, and ram my opinion through… but rather an exploratory process where people that respect each other’s opinions get closer to the truth.

Last Tuesday I went to The Parlor. I was back in Phoenix and wanted some pizza. I couldn’t find anyone willing to drop everything and go with me, so I went by myself. I rarely go to restaurants by myself, its somewhat uncomfortable because I feel limited in what I can stare at. I’ve been trying to fight the feeling that I always need to stare at something. Sometimes, I get pretty in my own head about what/who I’m staring at, how much eye contact to make, etc… Anyway, reading that back that sounds pretty weird, but I’m just going to leave it… this is off the cuff.

$$$ I wanted to quickly jot down my current positions on personal finance topics. This will be quite interesting to see if I maintain these views into the future or if I change my mind. On Saving Saving money now (Currently 25 years old as of writing) is incredibly important due to the nature of compounding a dollar saved now is extremely important given the long time horizon it has to compund.

A Chess Puzzle I recently encountered a chess puzzle that revolved around capturing my opponents material due to a forced mate in one threat. While exploring various permutations of moves, I struggled to choose the right piece (between the bishop and the knight) to simultaneously block my opponent’s mate in one threat while allowing me to freely capture a few of his minor pieces. After a brief though I played Knight C3 -> D5, blocking my opponents mate threat on g2 and adding an additional attacker to the black knight on F6.

For some people, not red lining all the time is a skill in and of itself. Why wait until you have an injury or a mental health crisis to take a breath? Reflection I was brushing my teeth recently, paused, turned to my girlfriend and proclaimed that I wasted all four years of college on two degrees that were not challenging. I said that I should’ve majored in something “more difficult” like Engineering, Math or Computer Science because “I could have” and people wouldn’t “default to questioning my abilities”.

Stress I’ve been meaning to jot down my thoughts on this for a while, but I keep running into things that tweak my mental model about stress. Recently, I watched some old home videos. Twenty years ago, my parents moved us into the home we still live in today. Around this time, my dad filmed a video of my brother and I walking the quarter mile from our house to a canal that runs through metropolitan Phoenix.

Two months as a BIE Promoted to BIE on the same team I have been on since September. Worked hard during my first four months on the team, put together a doc with my boss and got approved starting about two months ago. Since Septmeber I’ve done a lot of stuff: A little Background - Redshift Cluster Maintenance and Query optimization of our longest running jobs - Working toward establishing code reviews and a central code repository - Created new production tables for partner teams - Made adjustments/additions to some of our most critical tables that buoy all reports How to improve Looking back, I am very happy with my effort, but I want to do two things better.

Four Months as an Analyst at Amazon My perspective switching to the Supply Chain BI team. A little Background The first four months have been interesting. Last week, Amazon laid off 18,000 people. Fortunately, nobody on my team or, I think, my whole org got the axe. This really hit home the fact that jobs come and go, and that I should be prioritizing employment that allows me to work on what I’m interested in and gain meaningful skills.