Trips, Reading and Reflection
Summer 2024 is flying by in a blur. When you spend many long and dark months in a Canadian winter, you look forward to the summer expecting to squeeze the life out of every day. There’s been a little bit of that, but not enough.
We took a trip to Costa Rica in the middle of July - a break my wife and I were really looking forward to. Two days into the trip, the illnesses began, starting with one kiddo and spreading quickly to everyone else. It was too late, plans were already made, AirBnBs already booked, and so we drove 700 km around the country, through hilly and rainy conditions, trudging on through the sickness. At least we ate good food, saw a lot of butterflies and even some crocodiles. Not as eventful, and definitely not as restful and energizing as we had hoped.
The trip home was affected by flight delays (thanks CrowdStrike!), and in the end, we were just glad to be back. One of those trips where you need a vacation from the vacation.
This has been another year full of reading. To expand on my work-related knowledge, I’ve gone through (or am going through):
- Web Authentication Handbook by Sambit Kumar Dash to refresh my knowledge of authentication protocols
- Threat Modelling by Adam Shostack to get a better understanding of how to think about security and threat modelling for complex systems
- The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook by Dafydd Stuttard and Marcus Pinto to get a better understanding of web application security
I completed the first one, and I’m going through the other two. The goal is to read through at least a few pages a day of either one (ideally a full chapter).
I’ve also been reading a lot of fiction, specifically books by Brandon Sanderson. I’ve been so immersed in the Cosmere universe that Sanderson masterfully weaves together, that I just can’t enough. I’ve gone through:
- The first four books in the Stormlight Archive series
- Two novellas conencted to the Stormlight Archive series - Warbreaker and Edgedancer
- All of his Kickstarter books - Tress of the Emerald Sea, The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, The Sunlit Man, and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
Here are two short passages from Tress of the Emerald Sea that stuck with me:
Change has an illusory aspect to it. We pretend that big changes hang on single decisions, single moments. And they do. But single decisions and single moments, in turn, have a mountain of smaller decisions behind them. You can’t have an avalanche without a mountain of snow, even if it begins with one bit starting to tumble. Don’t ignore the mountains of minutes that heap up behind important decisions.
and
Sometimes the moments in our life pile up and become an unstoppable force that makes us change. But at other times they become a mountain impossible to surmount. Everyone misses shots now and then. But if you become known as the person who misses - if you internalize it - well, suddenly every miss becomes another rock in that pile. While every hit gets ignored. […] clutched by the very invisible but very real claws of self-fulfilling determination. Then you start missing not because your aim is bad, or your eyesight is poor, but because your arm is shaking and sweat is pouring down your face. And because missing is what you do.
I’m Siddhartha (Sid) Shankar, and I am currently a Senior Engineering Manager at GitHub serving the CodeQL dynamic languages team, supporting JavaScript/TypeScript, Python and Ruby. I have had the privilege of leading and managing engineering teams since 2015. I’m at my best when engaging in opportunities that require bringing people together - often across teams - to deliver value to customers in a sustainable and pragmatic way. More about the author →
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