New Year, New Blog

This past year, 2022, was a pretty tumultuous year for me and my family. There was a lot of loss, a lot of change and a lot of reflection on what is to come.

Coming into 2023, things are looking up and forward momentum is being made. This year I've got a couple of professional goals I want to accomplish.

Practice Writing

Writing has never been my strong suit (neither has hard science or math) but it's something I want to improve on in 2023.

At first, I was considering taking a composition class at Oakton Community College or something more low key in the Chicago North Shore area but nothing jumped out at me as either applicable or satisfactory for what I need right now.

Then I've considered writing a small novel of some kind (I've got some interesting ideas) but that involves a ton of planning before the actual writing starts, so that one is on the backburner too.

I wanted to build a personal website/portfolio and realized incorporating a blog into it might be a good idea. So for now, I'll practice by emitting my stream of consciousness into this little piece of the web.

Couchmate v6 Out The Door

I've been working on Couchmate since 2013. Ten years of my life thinking about and architecting a solution for live community interaction around television. I launched v6 into "beta" last week.

This iteration took me only 6 months. Couchmate v5 took me two years, so not too bad. Granted, it's just web and not native apps too, but I'd say we're trending positively.

This year I want to grow the userbase organically, try a little guerrilla marketing/growth hacking along the way. Not going to think too hard about it this time as it's stable and does what an MVP needs to do.

Help Improve Criminal Sentencing

Another project that I've been flirting with for the past two years deals with trying to improve federal criminal sentencing outcomes. This project organizes and correlates the United States Code, the United States Sentencing Guidelines and other data sources to give its stakeholders more information and historical context.

U.S.C 18 § 3553 states,

"The court shall impose a sentence sufficient, but not greater than necessary..."

During the sentencing phase of trial, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges and clerks all come together to determine the fairest sentence for the crime. A tool that helps surface that information faster and more accurately can hopefully lead to more equitable results.

Help The Last Mile

The Last Mile is an organization that helps those incarcerated learn programming and build a solid professional foundation, hopefully reducing recidivism.

I've had a huge itch to teach software development foundations and have thought about career switching into a High School Computer Science teaching role. While I believe I would be fulfilled at a level doing that, career switching carries a decent amount of risk and something like The Last Mile may be a good compromise to not only teach computer science/engineering but to those who would greatly benefit from learning these skills.

Help Evanston's Environment and Sustainability Goals

Climate change and sustainability are incredibly important to me, hopefully to most people. One of the ways I want to contribute is to join Evanston's Environment Board and collaborate with those who also want to see change.

I've been to a couple meetings so far and have meet a couple of people associated with it who have encouraged me to join.

Apply to NWU's MPPA Program

Is it wierd to have 40-year goals? Ever since college I had three main professional goals I wanted to accomplish in my life.

The first was Couchmate and growing it into a real company, we're still working on that.

The second was to get involved in sustainable, clean energy generation. I kinda did that for 8 months with Tesla, but it was incredibly short-lived. I'll probably write a post on that sometime. I don't think that goal is over for me though, we'll see.

The third is to get involved with politics and run for office. I had always thought this would come much later but I realized at the end of last year that it doesn't have to wait.

One of the steps I want to take toward that is learning how the sausage is made. From what I've seen, many elected officials just get into politics and don't have an educational foundation in governing. That's not super surprising since governing is local, variable and dynamic but there is still a lot I think I could get out of an education in Public Policy.

Not only is Northwestern walking distance from my house, it's in the top 20 Public Policy schools in the country and has a pretty accommodating part-time program.

It might seem like a lot, and it is, but I'm about time maximization. I haven't included any of my personal goals in here which include being the best husband, soon-to-be Dad, and my personal health goals but those are always the top priorities. Everything above is just stuff I want to get done in my free time.

Here's to a fun and fulfilling 2023.