Being a dad suits me. Luxuries that are making it great: not needing or wanting to work, taking outstanding afternoon naps whenever needed, having a kid who’s a nice kid.

A couple weeks ago, those of us for whom the mere fresh thought of being alive doesn’t constitute exercise got back on our respective horses. Mine has been to walk a solid hour every day, or at least to supplement walks with Haskell — who may be slowing down a bit, or may just be doing his Alaska-dog darnedest to tolerate the Lower-48 summertime — to reach 10000 total steps.

For my brain’s health, just about every evening after Taavi and his mom go up to bed, I sit quietly and code. I’ve been focusing on C: a tiny bit on my Mandelbrot codebase from a year ago (dynamically loadable image-rendering modules!), but almost entirely on solving some real problems I’m having while running my own mail server. My mail-server software of choice, though long unmaintained, has remarkable design integrity. When I change or add, I try to preserve and extend it as though I were the maintainer. I’m having fun, learning more about systems programming, solving problems, and imagining solutions to future problems. I’ve organized my work at a new qmail page.

In a few days, Taavi completes his second month. Lots of wonderful photos piled up. I think I’ve made it easy enough to do that, or at least removed enough accidental complexity that what remains is mostly the essential complexity of managing information and making decisions. Anyway, we’re due to post some more on our gallery. Here’s one right now:

In a few more days, Taavi takes his first flight. We’re going to Germany to introduce him to more of his family and cultural heritage.

While we’re there, I might be able to carve out a day or two to help a nearby client with TDD, BDD, mob programming, refactoring, or anything else XP and Agile. Know of someone who might be able to use my help between August 14-25 (inclusive)? Kindly put us in touch.