A week in Austin that turned into something different than planned, my first time leading a steering committee, and discovering that grackles run that town.

Shipped

I spent most of the week in Austin for work. What had been originally scheduled as end-to-end testing of our new software turned into training and on-site team building when the lab wasn’t quite ready for full testing yet. So I spent my time improving our tooling, meeting folks in the organization who are based in Austin, and getting a feel for how the place operates. The deployment will be rescheduled, but I took the opportunity to lay the groundwork to make the Austin office my “home base.” There are plenty of personal reasons to spend time in Austin too, so I’m looking forward to a regular cadence of trips where I can mix work and pleasure.

The Natera office lobby. The company name and logo, a clover-like cluster of four overlapping circles, are mounted in white on a feature wall made of vertical wooden slats. Two vertical strips of blue and green LED lighting flank either side of the wall, with the same colored light continuing across the slatted ceiling overhead. Two round blue swivel chairs sit on a dark gray rug in front of the wall, separated by a small mustard-yellow side table. Beyond the lobby, a glimpse of an adjacent room with more lounge seating and a window onto another office building.
My new home base, when I'm not at home.

The new software my team is launching sits on top of a platform written entirely in-house — a collection of services that can be connected together to manage data flow, validation, integrations with other systems, and so much more. Many hands have had a part in building it, including familiar faces and dear friends from previous projects I was on. I may be new to the organization, but much of it feels deeply familiar thanks to patterns brought over from those other projects. Our team happens to be the first to launch an application on top of the platform, but others are following close behind, so it has to mature quickly. One of my responsibilities is co-chairing a steering committee alongside the fellow who started the platform work over a year ago. It’s daunting, with so much to come up to speed on, but he and everyone else on the committee has been very welcoming. I led my first meeting this week, and besides talking so long that the only other speaker on the agenda couldn’t present, it went well. Wasn’t entirely my fault — folks had asked me lots of questions ahead of time that I wanted to make sure I covered — but I’ll have to get used to running meetings on a timetable again. It’s been a while.

Read

Got a little further into John Scalzi’s Starter Villain, but didn’t really have the time to read more than a few chapters..

Would you be surprised if I said I’m still reading so much documentation? It hasn’t been enough, so I’ve found myself writing a ton of it too. That helps me learn and build up the mental model of what’s going on across systems.

Played

Had another fun Gloomhaven session, with two new mercenaries joining the party thanks to two retirements last time. It’s such a clever way to keep us collectively figuring out new strategies against foes that might otherwise feel like more of the same. I feel like I’ve reached the max of what I can do with my mercenary, but it’ll be a couple more sessions at least before I meet my retirement goal. My goal, randomly drawn when I started this character, is to “die” a certain number of times during scenarios. So I’m having fun wringing every last bit of power out of him while protecting the new characters and trying to exhaust right before reaching the goal.

My partner and I had a rare outing to the movie theater to see Project Hail Mary. I’d read the book and loved it (super short five star review), and my partner hadn’t yet but was eager to watch it. Neither of us were disappointed.

Cooked

Team building in Austin meant several group dinners. They were quite different from the California dinners, but still wonderful. I even ate at my very first Michelin-starred restaurant, Leroy and Lewis, a counter-service barbecue joint. I have no regrets that my first Michelin experience wasn’t at a white-tablecloth fine dining place.

An overhead view of a barbecue plate at Leroy and Lewis, served on a divided cream-colored melamine plate set on butcher paper. The top-left compartment holds a charred whole head of smoked cauliflower. The top-right compartment holds chunks of dark, crusty meat topped with melted yellow cheese and shredded cheddar. The bottom compartment holds three thick slices of pink-rimmed tri-tip on the left and a generous mound of pulled pork on the right. To the right of the plate, a folded flour tortilla, two small black plastic cups holding a yellow mustard-based sauce and a dark reddish-brown sauce, and a pile of cucumber slices and pink-tinged onions in brine.
Tri-tip, pulled pork, smoked cauliflower, and barbecue carnitas hash. No notes.

My teammates were spread across several hotels, but three of us stayed together downtown and met up each morning to walk to a different coffee place. We’re each coffee aficionados in our own ways, and it was fun to try out these spots and compare notes. My favorite was Desnudo, run out of a tiny camper trailer at the edge of a city park.

A small vintage white camper trailer with a horizontal blue stripe along its lower half and the word ‘Desnudo Coffee’ painted in blue near the back, parked on a brick plaza beneath the spreading branches of a massive live oak. The serving window is open, with coffee equipment visible inside. A wooden side table holds three coffee dispensers, and a larger metal-topped service table sits next to the trailer with espresso machines and a tall blue umbrella overhead. A small line of customers stands waiting their turn, dressed in business-casual clothing. A string of cafe lights runs through the trees overhead, and a fluffy white dog can be seen at the right edge of the frame near the building.
The vibe shift between Bay Area coffee culture and Austin coffee culture, in one photo.

My first night I was on my own and just went across the street to Velvet Taco. It’s a chain but not one I’d been to before. Every week they have a different “weird” taco, and this week’s happened to be a beef bulgogi taco. My favorite sandwich in Athens is a beef bulgogi cheesesteak (Random Recipe Project video), so I’m rather fond of beef bulgogi showing up in unusual places. The taco was excellent.

On the way to the Atlanta airport I stopped at Xi’an Gourmet House, a spot in an Asian food court that’s purported to have the best biang biang noodles in Atlanta. I’ve written about biang biang here in recent months after becoming somewhat obsessed reading Automatic Noodle, and I’ve made them several times at home, but this was my first time having them at a real noodle shop. Their toppings were fantastic and I learned a few things, but honestly, I think my noodles were at least as good as theirs. I think that’s a testament to the simplicity of the dish more than me being some sort of noodle prodigy, but it felt good all the same.

Overhead view of a generous bowl of biang biang noodles from Xi’an Gourmet House, served on a red plastic tray. The wide, flat hand-pulled wheat noodles peek out from beneath an abundant topping of stir-fried lamb in a glossy dark sauce, mixed with chunks of white onion, sliced green bell pepper, and bright green leaves of leafy vegetable. A heaping pile of red chili flakes and toasted sesame seeds sits in the center, with a small drizzle of red chili oil pooled around a piece of onion. Scattered scallion greens add bright color throughout. The cream-colored ceramic bowl is stamped with red Chinese calligraphy characters.
Theirs were good. Mine are at least as good. I'll take it.

Noticed

The weather was perfect for walking around Austin. Not too hot, a little drizzly, and just pleasant. The office sits in an un-walkable office park, so I was happy to have traded a slightly longer commute for a room downtown.

Walking around downtown also meant stumbling into Austin’s public art at every turn. This rainbow-painted horse and rider, with reins and mane made from tangles of colored wire, was parked on a sidewalk just down the block from my hotel.

A monumental sculpture of a cowboy on horseback, maybe twelve feet tall, standing on a downtown Austin sidewalk. Both horse and rider are rendered in flat geometric panels painted in a rainbow gradient that runs from orange through yellow, green, blue, and purple along their bodies and legs. Pale starbursts decorate the horse’s flanks. The horse’s mane and tail are made of tangles of brightly colored translucent wire, exploding outward like fireworks. The rider wears a wide black hat and sits stiffly upright with one hand resting behind him on the horse’s back. Behind the sculpture, parked cars and trees line the street, and several downtown office buildings rise into a clear blue sky.
Downtown Austin's eclectic art scene on full display.

So many grackles. We get a few in our backyard, and I love when their angry-looking faces show up in my bird feeder’s camera. There aren’t enough of them at home to be a pest or to chase away the other birds, so they’re a fun novelty. In Austin, at least this time of year, they were far and away the dominant bird.

Thinking About

Even though the Austin roll-out is delayed, the San Carlos launch is proceeding, and barring any no-go calls from further up the chain, we’ll be heading back there in two weeks. The software is in great shape, so I’ll be spending more time on documentation and tooling around our support effort. For the first month or so, our team will be responsible for direct user support. For the first week, we’ll be on-site, working in shifts 24 hours a day to provide that support. It’ll be an altogether different experience than our last trip there, potentially much more stressful. The better I can make our tooling and procedures before then, the better off we’ll all be.

What’s Next

Home for a week before flying out again. It’s an untenable schedule, but luckily not one I have to sustain for much longer.

Vivian finishes college in two short weeks. There’s no graduation ceremony to attend, so we’ll have to make our own plan to commence the next step in their journey.

Vibe Check

Time in Austin really hammered home how different two labs can be, even when they do the same thing and use the same software, and how much thought we have to put into usability, flexibility, and support.