Rick Cogley has been sticking out like a sore thumb in Japan since 1987! 日本語もOK.
CEO & Founder, eSolia. I coding & scripting, calisthenics, jogging & yoga, photography. Yokohama <> Tokyo

Now Professionally

eSolia is 20 years old as of this past July. Things are going well, and while we are a boutique as usual, we are successful and stable.

As a professional services company, we need to increase our process maturity so our success depends less upon individual quality, rather having that quality built in by default. At the same time, we are polishing our "chatops" to make it easy for team members to access information in our operations db, and starting to try to improve "work management".

So that is what we are focusing on this year.

Now Personally

Last year was really a challenge with a lot of stuff happening. After the death of my wife's grandmother, it has been a real journey to figure all the tax issues out, but we are finally on the way to a good resolution.

I've been diligently doing yoga and calisthenics for 30 or 45 min after waking up, and walking to the station for about 30 min per day to get some light cardio in. Apple Watch has helped motivate.

I have been increasing my own awareness of privacy and security, and am closing "social" accounts I don't use. Keybase is a recent discovery but I'm glad I found it!

I have some wrist pain from typing, and I settled on the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard, a split design where one's wrists can be kept straight. It's also programmable via their app called "Agent", which is pretty sweet. It just works.

Wise Words

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ― Robert A. Heinlein