When you’re building a team and producing great products, it’s easy to ignore a lot of things. Maintaining your health, your car, your home, and your family generates any number of little tasks that, put off again and again, add up to major stress. One thing you can’t put off is aging, and this old body saw completed yet another rotation of the sun.

 

All of this to say, yesterday was my birthday, and as a gift to myself, I took the day off to catch up on all the little things that were causing me stress. I got my car serviced, so the little maintenance light would stop accusing me every time I went to work. I got my front door lock fixed, so I no longer spend all say worrying if I forgot to lock the door, or that I won’t be able to get my key in the lock when I get home.

 

 

Lest it be said I do nothing but drive perfectly good engineers and designers to an early grave, I’m having a little birthday party for Tristan and myself on Friday, August 8. It’s meant to be a pretty chill scene. Stop by my apartment in Mountain View for cold drinks, pinball, and Wii, board and card games. Drop in for a moment, or hang out for a while.

 

 

Speaking of pinball, rebuilding pinball machine flippers is easy. Most of the parts just get swapped with the new parts in the kit. Minimal tools and light soldering and my flippers are as good as new. It’s doable by one person, but a second pair of hands comes in handy when you’re trying to put everything back together while keeping things properly aligned. Now I just have to learn to play Doctor Who with a working left flipper — it’s a completely different game.