After recently reading my 2023 retrospective, I’ve come to the conclusion that as we age, things just get harder. 2024 was a brutal year. It was busy, stressful, and sad. In a lot of ways it was still a good year and by no means am I ungrateful. A lot was accomplished at work, an incredible amount actually, and even at home — despite the tragedies — we had a lot of peace.
Travel was about the same as last year, but definitely got a few more miles in. In March I was back in Virginia for the CISA Open Source Security Summit, then off to Brno CZ for a week, which was great because I’ve not been back to Brno since before Covid. It was awesome to see coworkers in person again, and I just really love Brno. It was also great because I learned a lot about some wonderful Czech Easter traditions and even made myself an easter whip which was a lot of fun and which I was able to bring back home (my cat absolutely loves it and my wife thinks the whip, and the tradition, is hilarious!). A few weeks later in April I was back in Raleigh, in May I was in Denver for Red Hat Summit, in June back to Raleigh for ALDE graduation, in July I was back to Virginia and also in NYC (for the first time ever) for the OSPO For Good event. NYC was… interesting; my hotel was just off Times Square and that was probably not the best choice but it was only for a few days. In September for holidays we were in a nice cabin in Rocky Mountain House and then went off to Lake Louise. In October I went to Atlanta for SOSS Fusion and then less than a week later was off to Doha, Qatar for ICCC 2024. In November I was in California for the LF Member Summit and got to experience the atmospheric river rather than the heat I was hoping for, and then wrapped it up in December going to Amsterdam for the OpenSSF CRA workshop, where I got to hang out with one of my cousins and her husband while visiting the Rijksmuseum which was really neat.
A lot of travel, and a few firsts. I didn’t have to travel to speak at the local BSides event in September, gave a talk at SOSS Fusion, and did the industry keynote for ICCC. Most of the speaking engagements I’ve done have been Red Hat events, so doing so many talks for non-Red Hat events was a definite first. Oh, and the fireside chat for the Upstream virtual event with friends at Tidelift as well.
However, interspersed with all of that travel were a lot of tragedies as well. For my birthday in February, we had to put down our boy Ted due to kidney failure and a urinary blockage that kept coming back. There was nothing to be done, and it was especially tragic because we’d only had Ted for three years. He was one of my favourite cats ever, a true gentle giant with a serious food obsession. I still miss sharing my cheese at lunch with him every day.
Shortly after I returned from Brno, my mother-in-law whom stayed with us in 2023 fell ill and had to be rushed to hospital. She was in there for a few weeks and ultimately had to go into hospice when we were told she had days left. She was in there for a week and then I had to leave for Raleigh for my team face to face meeting, which was a terrible decision to have to make. My wife made it for me, as her sister was staying with us so she wasn’t alone, but that trip was the most stressful and distracting because I honestly thought any day I would get the call. Mom hung on longer than she should have though and passed about seven hours after I got home from Raleigh.
A week after mom passed, my father-in-law went back into hospital as the surgery he’d gotten the year before (to fix his ankles) wasn’t as successful as one would hope, and shortly after he got home last years three of the screws in his ankle had broken, leaving him in excruciating pain for months. This meant the funeral had to be delayed, and he was in the hospital for six months this time. Thankfully he’s home and doing exceptionally well and, thank God, with no pain anymore.
Our neighbour of 23 years had been fighting cancer for a few years but a month after my mother-in-law passed, my neighbour passed. She was a great friend and the best neighbour you could ask for. I’m grateful I was able to visit with her shortly before she passed. Two days later, my aunt passed. The Directors for NAME, the National Association for Marriage Enhancement, through whom my wife and I were affiliated for marriage counselling, both passed around the same time as well. She passed first, just before my mother-in-law, and he passed three weeks later. They were amazing people, good friends that we’d been working together with for almost a decade, and they will be sorely missed by many who’s marriages they impacted and helped. And then finally, one of my wife’s best friends’ brother committed suicide while living in South America, which was a devastating blow to a family so close to our own.
All six of these deaths that were so very impactful to us directly or indirectly happened within a six week period. I’ve gone to more funerals this year than I think I’ve ever gone to in my entire life.
Additionally, our beautiful town of Jasper was impacted by a terrible wildfire this year and the cabins we’ve been going to for the last five or six years were completely destroyed, so we had to adjust our plans and thankfully were able to find the cabin in Rocky Mountain House at the last minute and also visit Lake Louise, where my wife has actually never been. It was nice, and it was a good break, but we could only get rooms for a week between the two places, not the two weeks we had intended to spend in Jasper.
Due to the stress around her mother passing and being in hospice, my wife’s iron absorption was impacted and we spent much of the year dealing with that as well, which ultimately ended up requiring an iron infusion to get everything back to normal. Due to our abysmal healthcare system, it took a lot longer than it should have.
A contributing factor to this stress was likely also because we had mice in the house, which we didn’t realize until shortly before Ted was sick. They must have come in during the renovations last year and made their home in the basement ceiling, from where they could get into the kitchen. The kitty litter was a wheat-based litter and when we found out Ted had a urinary blockage, we changed the kitty litter to a silica-based one that would change colour if the pH was off or there was blood in the urine. I suspect the mice were eating the kitty litter which is why they went undetected for so long, and once we changed the kitty litter, their source of food was gone so they had to forage in places where the cats could find them. Stuart, the ragdoll, is an incredible mouser and he caught a few (which meant I had to take them away from him to… dispose of). Ultimately we caught three and found one dead after we put poison bait traps around the house. There might have been more, but I have yet to summon the courage or desire to open up the ceiling to look. Sometimes you just don’t need to know! There’s one pretty funny story on how we found the first mouse, but I won’t share it as I’m positive my wife will not appreciate it. ;) Nevertheless, it’s a good one that I’m happy to share in person (and I’ll deny that I did if she asks!).
Any one of these would be a lot to handle, but six deaths, and Ted, and Jasper (our absolutely favourite place on earth) just made this year really really tough. We also did a lot of marriage counselling this year — for some reason this year felt worse than Covid and during that time period we dealt with a lot of marriages that were really having a hard time. This year felt worse for some reason — maybe it’s subjective due to all of the other tragedies, but some of these challenges were really tricky to deal with.
So here, at the end of the year, despite all of the tragedy, there’s still much to be thankful for. I count my blessings, and they are many, and I’ve received a lot of comfort from friends, family, coworkers, and most of all Jesus, to whom I am most thankful to. I don’t know what I’d do without my faith and my church family, to be honest.
Work was work. I have a great team, I can’t be more thankful for them. Lots of stuff going on, a big focus on AI and some great things happening there as well. But for the most part, we just keep chugging on, getting involved where we can and where it makes the most sense (open source foundations, projects, industry standards bodies, and so forth).
As an aside, I literally have no idea who (if anyone) reads these things. Part of this is personal therapy I think, and part of it is that it’s interesting to look back at prior years, which I do every time I write these things. This time it probably reads a bit more sombre than others in the past — here’s to hoping that next year’s will be better. I’m under no illusions that it won’t be tough, as they always seem to be, but hopefully less full of tragedy and sadness!
On a positive note, Christmas was good (got a ridiculous number of books) and my daughter is doing exceptionally well. My team is great, and I hope they’re enjoying some much deserved time off and rest. I got to do some coding this year that was more than just personal “play time” and created the vex-reader python module and also a demo site to display Red Hat VEX information, almost identical to our CVE pages just to prove that it will work. BTW, VEX is pretty awesome especially if you’re in a disconnected environment. Super useful stuff.
Books read
Started keeping track of the books I read last year, and was fairly impressed by how much I read. Looking at the list below, it doesn’t feel like I’ve read as much, but some of these books are pretty massive so maybe in terms of number of pages it came out roughly the same.
- The Axis Trilogy 3: StarMan, Sarah Douglass
- World Without End, Ken Follett
- A Column of Fire, Ken Follett
- Dune, Frank Herbert
- Shogun, James Clavell
- Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert
- HBR Emotional Intelligence: Dealing with Difficult People
- Tai-Pan, James Clavell
- Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
- The NIV First Century Study Bible
I also started but didn’t really have the energy, time or interest to finish:
- Ian Fleming’s Seven Deadlier Sins & 007’s Moral Compass, Benjamin Pratt
- Cybersecurity First Principles, Rick Howard
- Leading Through Activating the Soul, Heart, and Mind of Leadership, Kim B. Clark, Jonathan R. Clark, Erin E. Clark
Games played
I mentioned how much I played Nioh and Nioh 2 last year. It’s still my primary motivation to exercise, but my wife thought I was getting a little too obsessed with those games. I’m also a fan of racing games, but those are a lot harder to play on an elliptical (I think all the motion would make me dizzy and fall). So this year I played a few other games that I also completed:
- Rise of the Ronin (excellent game!)
- Ghost of Tsushima (_I had started this previously but never finished it, and Rise of the Ronin is so similar that I went back to finish it)
- God of War: Ragnarok (I had started this when it came out but it has so many long story scenes, and the part where you’re in Jotenheim riding a yak just annoyed me so much I stopped; glad I decided to pick it up and finish it though as aside from that part of the game it’s quite good)
Now I’m play Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty which is very much like Nioh so I’m enjoying it even though the dialog is truly terrible. The fighting is pretty good though.
Hope that anyone who’s read this has had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you a happy new year and a prosperous 2025!