Author Archives: Alan V

Changes

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Well, a *lot* has happened since my last post, so I suppose it’s time for an update. This was originally going to include some photo stats as well given quite a few phone changes (acquiring of an iPhone 16 Pro, acquiring of a moto g power 5g, and loss of my work iPhone 14), but I’ve fallen behind on photo tagging, so that will have to be a future post.

As to not bury the lede: After almost 18 years at Salesforce, I quit my job in November.

There are a lot of things I could get into about why (and maybe that’ll be a future post), but the TL;DR version is: I burned out in June badly enough that I got three months of medical (mental health) leave from my doctor, went to therapy (with an amazing therapist), and decided that I couldn’t stay in the tech industry for now.

So… freedom!

In lieu of work, I’ve been pursing creative outlets: Baking, writing, and sewing for now, and I also want to take up drawing at some point. I’ve also been scheduling (and executing) a bunch of travel plans, starting with a San Francisco/San Diego/Phoenix trip we just got back from.

One thing I regretted from leaving rather unexpectedly was not getting a chance to really say good bye in person to my teammates, some of whom I’ve worked with for almost all of that 18 years. With my therapist’s blessing, I booked a trip to SF to meet my teammates the first week of December (during release planning). My manager (and his EA) threw me a farewell party during that time, which was amazing and one of the most gratifying experiences of my life.

It was also a good chance to see SF friends for the last time in a while… now that I’m no longer employed by a San Francisco-based company, I’ll have much less reason to travel there in the future.

Afterward, we did the “usual” hop to Phoenix, with a bonus (slightly too) quick trip to San Diego. They were both extremely enjoyable, although they also both just reinforced how much I’m glad we can walk everywhere in Pittsburgh (and don’t need to own a car). Also, having the ability to really enjoy the time without the looming prospect of a return to the usual work week felt really nice.

Photos from all of this will be up on my photos site eventually. Now that I’m home again until the next significant travel plans (early next year), hopefully I’ll actually catch up on all the photo tagging and processing that I’ve been neglecting.

Life is good. :)

Lifey Life

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Well, I’ve done the thing again where I don’t update for a long time, despite things happening in my life. I suppose, at this point, it’s the new normal.

life’s stats and photo journal have been updated, on time. My photos site continues to be neglected.

Since the last update, in no particular (and certainly not chronological) order:

  • I had some friends visit and we had a nice time wandering the city
  • My cousin visited and we had a nice time repeating the same city wandering
  • I visited my mom in Phoenix for the first time since before the pandemic
  • I ate indoors at restaurants more times than the previous 4 years combined
  • I went to San Francisco for work, twice, once for the usual team planning and once as an “architect sync”
  • Work became super AI and Agent-y, and generally exploded
  • I bought an iPhone 16 Pro because I was worried about the possible impact of tariffs
  • I was the sickest I’ve been since before the pandemic (and probably for years before that, even), and it wasn’t COVID (which I still haven’t had)
  • I went on two ski trips and didn’t ski at all
  • We had Adventures™ on the second of the trips with the rental car tires: one slowly leaked air, and another popped on the drive home
  • I went to a wedding and an anniversary party, and went on vacation with Keith and his family
  • I threw myself a Sonic-themed birthday party
  • We lost power for 20 hours in the ~90 MPH wind mess of fun
  • I continued to fail at accomplishing any goals or, arguably, anything really meaningful outside of my job

Maybe there will be more bullet points in another 7 months.

Travel, Travel, and Travel

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I have a lot I really should write about (and over 8000 photos I need to edit through and post on photos), but I’ve been having trouble working up the energy to do anything these days other than work and collapse into a mindless blob afterward. So here’s my attempt at writing stuff out before I let life updates lapse again.

Photos will come later. Probably. Maybe. (At least life’s photo journal and stats pages have been updated on time.)

I took a work sabbatical this past summer, and spent the first part of it travelling to Thailand with my mom. There’s a lot I could write about the trip itself, including how much I surprisingly enjoyed the back-to-back-to-back travel within Thailand (because normally I prefer my vacations to be sedimentary), but the biggest thing I want to document was the travel experience itself.

For money reasons (ha!) we flew United first class from Pittsburgh to Chicago, and then ANA international business class from Chicago to Tokyo to Bangkok (and likewise on the way back from Bangkok to Tokyo to Chicago). The domestic first class was mostly “whatever” (definitely wouldn’t be worth paying extra for on its own), but international business class… oh my god. I have never arrived at a destination so *relaxed* and *rested* and *unstressed*.

Going into the flight, I was expecting the best part to be the food, because I love eating (and drinking) and the menu for the flights looked amazing, especially the abundance (and variety) of snack foods available at any time. But the benefits of business class by far was the lie-flat seat and the airport lounge access. The seat meant I could actually, properly, comfortably sleep and wake up without pain in my neck or shoulders or back (which was important for the ~29 hour door-to-door travel). And the lounges meant I had a place to sit (with free food and drink) without having to fight the large crowds in the airport, complete with well-maintained bathrooms and showers (although I didn’t use the latter).

The return Tokyo to Chicago leg also featured ANA’s “new” business class, with a closing “door” and a wider seat where my mom and I could literally sit next to each other.

And oh yeah, all of the food was also delicious. So that part definitely didn’t disappoint either.

The expense wouldn’t be worth it for shorter flights, but for over a day of travel, it felt more than worth the price. Especially given we had booked business in the first place because economy tickets were more than triple (!!) their usual cost and business seats were slightly cheaper than usual, making the price difference between them much smaller than usual.

In any case, after we got back from Thailand, I still had some sabbatical left, and I guess was feeling the itch to make up for the lack of pandemic travel… so we promptly booked a Fourth of July trip to Denver and Colorado Springs, to see some friends along with the rest of my family. It was great to catch up with David again, meet some new online friends for the first time, and generally spend time with my cousin and her husband.

After that, I had the usual summer get-together with my in-laws in late July, and then traveled to San Francisco for work at the beginning of August. The work trip itself wasn’t particularly noteworthy except for the fact that we then flew to Seattle afterward (instead of home), saw some friends there for a few days, and then took a cross-country Amtrak home (via Chicago).

The Amtrak was… an experience. It’s been something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but now having done it, I’m not sure it’s something I feel the need to do again given the price and (relatively lack of) amenities. The best part of the trip by far was the food (three cooked-to-order meals a day in the dining car, including three-course dinners) followed by the views (especially from the observation car). But the relatively small room (we had a roomette) and repellent shower (which I didn’t use during the trip, meaning I arrived at home three days later feeling disgusting) were less ideal, and the price (around $1000) made the entire experience feel not really worth it.

I learned afterward that the ticket costs only cover something like 65% of the operating costs for the train, which just makes me feel like passenger rail in this country is stupidly behind. I assume operating costs would amortize out much better with more passengers, which would bring the price way down to something more reasonable (and cover a higher percentage of the costs), but it’s the usual catch-22 with public transit: Cut services so no one wants to ride so you have to cut services so even fewer people ride so you have to cut services so…

In any case, our travel for the summer isn’t done yet, but at the moment I’m enjoying being at home for more than two weeks in a stretch since May.

So… yeah. Hooray for things?

We now return to your regularly-scheduled lack of updates.

Photo Stats Time

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It’s the end of a four-month period and we recently passed 500,000 photos, so the photo journal and stats pages have been updated and… it’s time for new stats!

The cameras table also has an update, because since the last stats update, I’ve gotten two new cameras! I got a moto g pure back in 2022 and work also upgraded my iPhone to an iPhone 14.

Intel Pocket PC camera October 6, 2000 – September 18, 2003 1077 days; 2.95 years 15,829 photos $200 14.7 photos per day 1.26¢ per photo
Olympus C3000 Zoom September 28, 2001 – December 5, 2003 798 days; 2.186 years 10,647 photos $450 13.3 photos per day 4.23¢ per photo
Kodak Easyshare DX6490 December 8, 2003 – March 17, 2006 830 days; 2.274 years 49,413 photos $500 59.5 photos per day 1.01¢ per photo
Nikon D50 March 22, 2006 – November 15, 2009 1334 days; 3.655 years 105,067 photos $570 78.8 photos per day 0.54¢ per photo
+$250 repair cost 0.78¢ per photo
106,916 shutter releases $570 80.15 shutter releases per day 0.533¢ per shutter release
+$250 repair cost 0.77¢ per shutter release
Samsung SL30 July 27, 2009 – December 1, 2016 2684 days; 7.35 years 21,616 photos $70 8.05 photos per day 0.32¢ per photo
Nikon D90 February 26, 2010 – August 20, 2022 4558 days; 12.48 years 208,758 photos $780 45.8 photos per day 0.37¢ per photo
290,157 shutter releases 63.65 shutter releases per day 0.27¢ per shutter release
iPhone 5 June 23, 2013 – December 23, 2014 548 days; 1.5 years 130 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 0.24 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
149 shutter releases 0.27 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
iPhone 6 Plus January 8, 2015 – January 11, 2018 1099 days; 3.01 years 4883 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 4.44 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
23,352 shutter releases 21.25 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
Nikon D7100
(Current)		 December 2, 2015 – April 18, 2024 3060 days; 8.38 years 49,609 photos $620 16.21 photos per day 1.25¢ per photo
126,462 shutter releases 41.33 shutter releases per day 0.49¢ per shutter release
iPod Touch 6 December 2, 2017 – December 10, 2021 1469 days; 4.02 years 5610 photos $160 3.82 photos per day 2.85¢ per photo
66,398 shutter releases 45.2 shutter releases per day 0.24¢ per shutter release
iPhone 8 Plus March 8, 2018 – March 21, 2021 1109 days; 3.04 years 17,751 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 16.01 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
252,264 shutter releases 227.47 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
iPhone 12 March 26, 2021 – March 19, 2024 1089 days; 2.98 years 9291 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 8.53 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
74,656 shutter releases 68.55 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
moto g pure
(Current)		 December 29, 2021 – March 24, 2024 816 days; 2.23 years 1254 photos $199 1.54 photos per day 15.87¢ per photo
6045 shutter releases 7.41 shutter releases per day 3.29¢ per shutter release
iPhone 14
(Current)		 March 21, 2024 – May 4, 2024 44 days; 0.12 years 1050 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 23.86 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
10,628 shutter releases 241.54 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release

Here’s the first iPhone 14 photo:

And the first moto g photo:

And the 500,000th photo (fittingly over Carnival, on a day when I took and kept 887 photos):

Photo count table:

0 25,000 50,000 75,000 100,000 125,000
October 6, 2000 January 12, 2004 October 20, 2004 April 10, 2006 April 20, 2007 December 4, 2007
1193 days 282 days 537 days 375 days 228 days
125,000 150,000 175,000 200,000 225,000 250,000
December 4, 2007 February 7, 2009 July 4, 2009 April 14, 2010 September 4, 2010 June 23, 2011
431 days 147 days 284 days 143 days 292 days
250,000 275,000 300,000 325,000 350,000 375,000
June 23, 2011 December 23, 2011 August 24, 2012 June 2, 2013 February 17, 2014 March 21, 2015
183 days 245 days 282 days 260 days 397 days
375,000 400,000 425,000 450,000 475,000 500,000
March 21, 2015 November 13, 2015 April 29, 2017 December 2, 2018 December 5, 2021 April 13, 2024
237 days 533 days 582 days 1099 days 860 days

And the usual graphs, starting with photos by month over time, log scale y-axis:

And photos by month over time, but with a linear scale y-axis:


Total number of photos taken over time:


And time between 1000 photos:


I Am A Bananupdate

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Is it hypocritical of me to say that I miss when people used to write long-form blog posts when I’ve been really bad at doing so myself?

Probably, but something something do as I say not as I do.

The sporadically (and weirdly) warm weather the past couple weeks seems to have started triggering my spring allergies already, resulting in me waking up at 4 or 5 AM with a running or congested nose, so blame this post on that.

I’ve been reading back through my old journal posts from during and before the pandemic, and I… really miss pre-pandemic life. And it also strikes me that I used to have a much more obvious “life outside of work”, but that mostly disappeared during the pandemic and hasn’t come back since. I don’t think this is the fault of work — my teams and manager and everyone has always been great about work-life balance — but it just feels like something inside me stopped being able to properly destress outside of work (so *all* of my non-work hours are now spent trying to relax) and/or my hobbies now would rely on things I’d consider unacceptably high risk (like going to Origins again and sitting in a convention hall with thousands of people for 4 days).

But it’s striking how much I used to do outside of work, whether it was as simple as “host board games on a weekend” or “go rock climbing once a week” to “dedicate a day every week to doing newspaper things for The Tartan” or “go to things like weddings or group events”. It’s not that I don’t write about them anymore… I don’t do them anymore. It’s probably worth a more serious look at how I can change that.

2024 will probably end up being a year of change (and unexpectedly expected large expenditures of money), in many ways, and not just for myself. It’ll be interesting for me to make a December post and see how many of the currently ongoing pieces of “fun” (both with myself and friends) ended up working out.

Anyway… life goes. There should probably be some photos in this post, but it’s 6:30 AM and I’m not going to boot up my photo computer to satisfy that itch, so wall-of-text it is. (Or was.)