Trying very hard to not think about space. 2026-06-28T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.caseydoran.space/posts/feed.xml 2026-06-28T00:00:00+00:00 2026-06-28T00:00:00+00:00 https://blog.caseydoran.space/posts/frist-psot/ <p>Hi, I'm taking a break. I've had a very demanding job for the past eight years, and I'm incredibly lucky to be able to go take three months off.</p> <p>Writing used to be a big source of joy in my life, but I haven't done it much in the last few years. During my time off, I want to spend some time writing. This is where most of that outlet will be focused.</p> <h2 id="what-else-will-i-do-with-that-time-off">What else will I do with that time off?<a class="zola-anchor" href="#what-else-will-i-do-with-that-time-off" aria-label="Anchor link for: what-else-will-i-do-with-that-time-off" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h2> <p>This is probably a preview of what you'll see me writing about, spoiler alert.</p> <h3 id="baseball">Baseball<a class="zola-anchor" href="#baseball" aria-label="Anchor link for: baseball" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h3> <p>I have joked that I'm taking time off to go to a bunch of baseball games. This is true. I'm a Mariners season ticket holder and will try to go to the rest of the home games this season. This should be a lot easier to accomplish than in years past because the Sound Transit 2-Line project just completed, connecting my home on the Eastside to the heart of Seattle by fast, reliable transit.</p> <p>I'll only be doing this while it remains fun. It's easy for something you do every day to start to feel like a job. This is meant to be a time to recharge. Baseball has always recharged me, and T-Mobile is such a beautiful park, but going every day certainly can become draining. I'm looking forward to it but won't be afraid to shed it and take breaks as needed.</p> <h4 id="on-the-mariners">On the Mariners<a class="zola-anchor" href="#on-the-mariners" aria-label="Anchor link for: on-the-mariners" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h4> <p>I'm an adopted Mariners fan, but I am an ardent one. The 2026 club are the most Mariner Mariners that have ever Marinered, in my estimation. They're not going to dominate, they're going to thrash you with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, but gosh are they going to play fun baseball.</p> <h3 id="health">Health<a class="zola-anchor" href="#health" aria-label="Anchor link for: health" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h3> <p>I've aged 12 years since beginning the marathon that this career has demanded (I start counting from the day that grad school confronted me with how out of my depth that I was). I was proud on my way out of school of the fact that I was pretty put together compared to my peers: I kept a tidy and organized home, I was competent in the kitchen, I was able to navigate finances, and I could reason my way through nutrition and fitness well enough to keep my frame healthy. This meant I was able to throw myself at my work with all the hours and attention it demanded.</p> <p>In my early 20s, it was easy. In my late 20s, it was sustainable. In my early 30s, it has become unsustainable. This became apparent about a year ago, and I've had moderate success in collaboration with my medical team chasing the key metrics that I care about with diet and exercise.</p> <p>It is hard to sustain that progress when my job's demands are so bursty: making time to cook healthy food when you're working 12 hour days, and to go for a morning run when you have been up late fixing problems just doesn't work. Doing great for a few weeks, and then having a bad week that wipes out the progress doesn't build good habits. Some time to sustain that habit development and then a fresh start on my return with reasonable new expectations of work and nonwork separation seems like a key to real progress in the long term.</p> <h4 id="cooking-healthy">Cooking Healthy<a class="zola-anchor" href="#cooking-healthy" aria-label="Anchor link for: cooking-healthy" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h4> <p>Growing up in the south, the recipes that I know by heart are more tasty than wholesome. I can crank out a mac 'n cheese pan that would make a potluck blush, and a cardiologist wince.</p> <p>With more time to focus on cooking, I'm going to be working to build a repertoire that fits my needs while still nailing great taste. Plus, the kitchen is my happy place. It will be nice to do some growing in it, especially with a decade of lessons to reflect on.</p> <h3 id="travel">Travel<a class="zola-anchor" href="#travel" aria-label="Anchor link for: travel" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h3> <p>That burstiness of work had been deleterious for other things in my life. It's been hard to plan elaborate travel when you don't know if you'll be asked to work a holiday weekend or to cover a pager. I've fallen back to just visiting family who can accommodate schedule uncertainty and declining big events like weddings and group trips where having to bail last minute would put undue burden on my friends.</p> <p>I can't undo the opportunities I've missed (and I'd encourage the next generation of engineers behind me to fight harder for those opportunities than I did). But I certainly am in an ideal spot to tackle some trips now. Will go to some places in support of the baseball theme (I'd like to make one of the Florida series so I can double dip on some family visitation, and maybe a California series), and will also do some additional trips in collaboration with my travel agent, <a rel="nofollow noreferrer external" href="https://www.costcotravel.com/travel-offers/travel-hot-buys">Mr. Costco Travel Last Minute Deals</a>. He's great, you should get in touch.</p> <p>I'd also like to touch some grass more directly, probably a little camping is in order. I used to joke that I didn't need to travel, I got to see the whole world every day, from 550km above. Am overdue to see it from ground level.</p> <h3 id="home">Home<a class="zola-anchor" href="#home" aria-label="Anchor link for: home" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h3> <p>I'm lucky to have purchased a me-sized condo a couple years ago, and I am proud of how homey I've made it with substantial work on the kitchen and bathrooms followed by a lot of work furnishing and "making it home". I have a bunch of WIP projects that have been dragging for longer than I'd like, and will probably be tackling the ones I can in my time off.</p> <p>Homes are chore-generating machines. I'm not going to lie to myself that we'll get to pencils-down, but I do think I'm in striking distance of hitting a stable V1.0.</p> <h3 id="media">Media<a class="zola-anchor" href="#media" aria-label="Anchor link for: media" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h3> <p>My relationship with the media I consume reflects the fractal nature of my attention span. I used to be a big reading guy, and then as time went on I became a TV &amp; movies guy, and now at this point I can barely sustain a Youtube playlist and I have a podcast backlog that no amount of listening at 1.5x speed will catch up to. Will be carving out time to read every day for sure.</p> <p>I used to be a college radio DJ and lately I've enjoyed setting up a whole-home audio system to always have music during chores and the rare lazy morning. More time to broaden my music horizons will be awesome.</p> <p>I love video games and haven't played one all the way through in ages. I have pieced my way through to the final chapter of Expedition 33 over the past several months, and I'd like to finish that. I also want to get through Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and 007: First Light. Maybe an indie in there. Hopefully Half-Life 3 surprises us, too.</p> <h3 id="technology">Technology<a class="zola-anchor" href="#technology" aria-label="Anchor link for: technology" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h3> <p>I've been a Linux user since 2005, and Free software has shaped my life as an engineer. When I was a student, it taught me how software is composed. When I was a teacher, it provided real challenges to navigate alongside my students. When I've been a builder, it provided me tools and materials and a foundation to construct upon. And, when I have been a leader, it has provided examples of how to navigate human-driven software evolution and collaborative construction.</p> <p>I use it every day, and I feel like there's much I can do in the way of exploring the landscape and broadening my skillset.</p> <p>There are a number of tools I have become a daily user of: Home Assistant, Nextcloud, Immich, NixOS, Jellyfin, and many others. Doing a little open source work to give back to these projects that I benefit so greatly from will help me scratch the "make the computer do what I want" itch while giving me opportunities to learn.</p> <h4 id="on-ai">On AI<a class="zola-anchor" href="#on-ai" aria-label="Anchor link for: on-ai" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h4> <p>I am, have been, and am likely to continue to be, an AI hater. I find that the quality of the outputs it produces is not commensurate with the energy - electrical and human - that it consumes.</p> <p>I am not, however, a moron. Genies, even deeply incompetent ones, do not go back into their bottles, and transformers are here to stay. I have no intention to spend much time during this period interacting with LLMs, but I am at least open to finding applications for small-model tools, particularly when combined with more-robust tooling and narrow scopes. Guard-rails made operating systems and robots and aviation and spaceflight better and more effective, no doubt they'll improve LLMs too.</p> <h3 id="reflecting">Reflecting<a class="zola-anchor" href="#reflecting" aria-label="Anchor link for: reflecting" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h3> <p>Close to a decade in the trenches has left me with a bunch of hard-won lessons, both as an engineer and as a leader. I don't think that they're all ready to share, but writing will definitely help me to better digest the ones that are still giving me heartburn.</p> <p>Don't hold your breath, nothing world-changing or novel, but definitely some stuff I wish I could fold back into my old Intro to Software Engineering course.</p> <p>Enumerating and explaining your values helps you to confront who you are and where you stand to grow. It also makes navigation easier when the orbits get rough.</p> <h2 id="what-i-won-t-be-doing">What I won't be doing.<a class="zola-anchor" href="#what-i-won-t-be-doing" aria-label="Anchor link for: what-i-won-t-be-doing" style="visibility: hidden;"></a> </h2> <ol> <li>Looking at stock prices.</li> <li>Micromanaging CI.</li> <li>Puzzling over roadmaps.</li> <li>Overthinking fault tolerance.</li> <li>Dreading the walk in.</li> </ol>