How to be (a) trans-parent

This is a post that I've been meaning to write for a long time. This morning I was thinking about it and deleted everything and started again from scratch. Why? Well because I was writing in a tone of self-congratulatory hubris where if only you love your child so much then everything will always be okay. Of course, you should love your child unconditionally but the act of growing and learning to be a parent never stops. I would love to believe that I know what I'm doing and what I'm talking about when it comes to transgender issues, but the fact is. I do not. I'm still learning how to do this thing. 

Here's what I know: My child did not choose to be this way, this was not caused by some event or something in the way she was nurtured. I'm pretty sure she was born this way. Here's how I feel: If I had the power to change anything I wouldn't change my trans daughter, I would change the way society treats trans-people. There's nothing wrong with her, she's fine, it's US the ones that are not okay. 

Being a father was one of the most transformative events in my life, I actually started this blog as a response to finding out my wife was pregnant, so this blog is just a little older than Jolyne. I remember how I scared I was. I also know that being a good dad has always been something that I wanted to do well.  Being a bad dad is one of the regrets I don't want to have. 

Jolyne was at the hospital a lot, not because she was a sickly child (although she had jaundice, asthma and fevers all before she turned 6 months) but because as clueless first parents we didn't know better and would go to the doctor's office anytime we were worried. Hundreds of dollars and hours waiting outside doctor's office we figured out that you don't have to take your child in every time there's a fever. 

Jolyne had to have speech therapy from early age. When she was four nobody could understand what she was saying. I took her to so many different types of doctors it was unbelievable. It was around this time I made one of mistakes that I still regret. We stopped speaking Spanish at our home. Jolyne's first words and first language was Spanish but after I took her for testing people at the doctor's office made me feel like it was my fault for "confusing" my child with two different languages. That turned out to be BS and I ended up with children that can't speak Spanish. (yet) 

Jolyne was not an easy child, but she wasn't the worst. She, like me, always has trouble sleeping. She would do things that I thought were a little weird (didn't like anyone touching their head or hair) but some of them were pretty funny. She would do what I'd call "spontaneous nakedness" where she'd take all her clothes off as soon as she got back from kindergarten and run around naked regardless of who was home at the time. 

The Florida school system had her classified as dyslexic because she couldn't read in first grade. She was diagnosed with ADHD when we moved to Seattle. When the doctors gave us the questionnaire to figure out if Joly had ADHD my wife noticed that I have the same exact symptoms, so that's when I got diagnosed too. I just had learned to live with it for most of my life. Up to that point I had always suspected that ADHD was one of those "fake" diseases because there really is no biological test you can take that tells you conclusively whether you have it or not. At this point I'm convinced it's a sleeping disorder with symptoms that affect all aspects of your life. I also felt uncomfortable with giving a child stimulant like Adderall or Ritalin. I had all kinds of objections on moral, and scientific grounds. "If my child's personality is different, which one is the real one?" , "How do you know we HAVE to to give them medication?" thankfully the doctors we've talked to have heard all these questions before. I knew it was real when Joly started catching up in school, the six months right after starting treatment he improved by leaps and bounds.  

Then one day when Joly was 12 they told their younger sister "I think I'm a girl"  

As an aside, Joly told me about other trans girls that knew they were trans earlier than that ironically because they had parents that enforced gender rules explicitly "boys don't play with dolls" etc. We were never that way with Joly resulting in her not knowing until later. 

At first I thought that maybe Joly didn't mean she was trans, I thought that they might be attracted to boys and that's how they expressed it?  In any case, we found therapist that specialized in LGBQT because at the same time, there was a change in demeanor, it was like the bright little child we had was dimming their life force. It's hard to describe, you know when you meet a pregnant woman and you say you can tell she's pregnant because she's "glowing"? Well, picture the opposite of that. The therapist kept telling us that our child was actually not depressed, but Joly didn't want to do anything but be in their room playing video games.  It was around this time where she hated people taking their picture (she still doesn't like it, but it's getting better) If Joly was not depressed it was pretty close to it. I would describe her demeanor as having no ambition, nothing to live for. Just exist. It was hard to see. 

We went to Seattle's gender clinic, and had Joly talk to doctors there, this was during the beginning of the pandemic. As soon as the transition process started, it was the biggest change I had ever seen. Joly went from lethargic to being a full person with drive, dreams and goals. Seeing how happy she is now has been worth it. 

I was worried about how my friends and family would react, would they think I'm a bad parent or something? Turns out every single person in my family and friend group has been loving and supportive. Even my right-wing crazy conservative family. I'm very happy about that.

Today she's a beautiful person with her whole life ahead of her. She's doing her thing in her own words she's "slaying" I think that's a good thing. 

Her thing now days is film. I mean, she could pick whatever she wants to do with her life I'll still love her the same.  She does have a knack for perceiving movies in a way that goes deeper than what most people perceive. Joly sees the technical details as well as the connection of the themes to the Big Picture. She is sensitive to aspects of movies I had never ever considered. I am sure that whatever route she takes it will work out. 

These are some movies she made at the Seattle Filmmaking Camp at the MoPop

The Door from Cherry Street Films on Vimeo.

So what's next? 

For me I want to learn more and know more about trans people. I've read a couple of books "Transgender History" was good but there's other books I've added to my reading list. 

Most importantly I want to help the transgender community secure basic human rights.  Transgendered people are not always protected by the law and suffer greater proportion of violence. 

Okay, I have a new favorite podcast

 I listen to podcasts but not as frequently as I want to because I alternate between audio books and just listening to music on Spotify, but every once in a while I get a podcast recommendation and I try it out and I end up hooked from the first episode. 

This is the podcast description from a co-host: link

"If you’re subscribed to this newsletter you probably know that I’m fascinated by bad ideas. Where they start, how they spread and, most importantly, why we believe them.

About six months ago, I started talking with my friend Peter Shamshiri (of the excellent 5-4 podcast) about how to do a show on the worst ideas of the last 50 years. We immediately thought of “airport books,” the pop nonfiction that has become one of America’s primary vectors for oversimplified history, misrepresented statistics and “contrarian” reinforcement of the status quo"

The podcast is called "If Books Could Kill" and the first episode is about the book "Freakonomics" which I actually really liked when it first came out, but the podcast did such a good job of debunking it I am super into it now. I love when something challenges my pre-conceived notions. I thought Freakonomics was awesome but now I see that I was duped. Check it out if you are into books

Big thanks to @richburroughs on Twitter for the recommendation 

JV

My review of "The State of Affairs" on Goodreads

The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity by Esther Perel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Esther Perel is the author of the best-seller "Mating in Captivity" about rekindling intimacy in long-term marriages. She is a therapist (a good one) with decades of experience across multiple cultures and different couples including same sex couples and polyamorous...groups? triads? anyway she's good and she knows what she is talking about from working with tons of people over the years.

This book covers the topic of Infidelity which is a hot topic that elicits strong reactions, it's after all the only sin that's twice in the ten commandments once for doing it and once for just thinking about it. it's considered the ultimate deal breaker that no marriage ever comes back from. Yet, people still cheat, like, all the time and relationships do come back from it, though often they don't and it's never the same after the revelation.

The book does an excellent job of exploring this contentious and misunderstood topic from all the angles. The chapter about the definition of cheating was thought provoking. If I have a friend at work "work wife" is it cheating if I don't have romantic feelings? What about watching porn? what if it was just sex? what if there was never any sex? There are a ton of scenarios that I had never thought about, the answer, like many things in life, depends on the person and the couple.

There are insightful chapters about the meanings and motives for cheating, it dispelled a lot of myths for me "people in happy marriages never have affairs" or "if you cheat is because there's something wrong with you or something wrong with your marriage" I mean, sometimes that's the case, there are people with narcissistic personality disorder who just don't care about other people's feelings and think the rules don't apply to them and there are times when an affair signifies the beginning of the end of a marriage. However there are times when affairs just happen, and they happen for reasons that are surprising, self-exploration, antidote to deadness, rekindling passions that were lost due to paradoxically the stability and the safety of a marriage. It turns out that safety and intimate knowledge curbs desire over the years. Other people cheat to explore the lives they never lived, etc, etc...fascinating stuff

There is a very interesting chapter dedicated to the other woman. Society does not look kindly on them, there are labels like "home-wrecker" the "mistress", "man snatcher" and worse, it's funny that it's always a woman, you never hear single dudes that have an affair with a married woman referred to as a "woman snatcher" that speaks to the gender roles we still cling to even though society and relationships have changed since the days when women had to endure infidelity from their husband because economically they had no choice but to stay at home and be a mother.

The chapter on the other woman explained affairs from their point of view, their concerns and feelings and it makes them feel heard, I wish it had an explanation about why? what makes a young attractive woman with many choices choose an older, married guy? Is it that we humans just lust after what we can't have? we're emotional machines that think after all. But surely, there has to be more to it. Perfectly smart people make crazy choices I guess. Who knows

There is another section in there about how to recover, the different ways that couples can move forward after the revelation, sadly some marriages cannot recover and well, that made me sad to read.

I liked the depth and breath of the book, I liked that it made me learn and see things from a different perspective. I carry my own baggage because my father had an affair that totally affected everything in our lives. I liked that the author clearly knows what she is talking about.

I didn't like the fact that there are no prescriptions in this book, if you are looking for a self-help book or something like that, seek counseling because you won't find answers here. I wish there were more examples in the book but it turns out the author has a podcast called "Where do we start" that is just that, couples come in and talk about their issues.

Overall, I liked this book as a way to understand a complex subject. Is it for everyone? Maybe, maybe not. For me it was super interesting.


View all my reviews

A short interview about Racism for my daughter's high school project

Jose Villalta 1 · Interview about Racism for Black Studies HS Course

Operation Iraqi Freedom 20 years later

 Yesterday marked the 20-year anniversary of the day that the 124th Infantry Regiment from the Florida National Guard was activated by Governor Jeb Bush in order to support the war on terrorism. I was a 23 year old, newly-married FAU student enlisted in the FLNG thinking that we'll never get deployed (haha)

Our unit ended up deployed for 15 months. We got our orders January 10th 2003 and I returned March 11 2004. 

So I was thinking about doing a thing were I post a journal entry on the anniversary of the date in the journal, but I read my diary last night and decided against it because it was way too personal and I wrote things in there that are for me only. 

20 years later I feel kinda the same I felt 10 years ago or 5 years ago. Namely, that shit sucked. But I'm glad we made it through and I'm grateful for being able to say I served this country. 

 Big picture thinking I hope we as a nation learned our lesson not to get involved in conflicts that you can't stop, but America has the amazing ability to ignore history when making political decisions. 

The thing that bothers me (haunts me) is the plight of Iraqi people. Civilians. They got a bad deal and yet they are still there living the best they can with the circumstances they have gotten. They didn't choose to have the US fucking level their country but, there they are. I don't want to offer simplistic answers to a complex situation, the Iraqi people have been fighting among themselves for a while, Sunni and Shiite tribes have been struggling for power there for centuries but I still feel bad for them. 

It's so easy to think about wars in abstract terms and to imagine combat as an empty battlefield with two opposing forces. Truth is messier than that. There are more than two players and there's always collateral damage. Yeah our leaders weigh in the pros and cons but it's the grunts on the ground that have to get their hands dirty. It was people like me and other young idealistic service members that get sent there and have to see first hand what destruction really looks like. All that, for what? What exactly did we accomplish there? What was it for? Oil? Dominance? For our Freedom? 

On a personal level I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I was able to do what I wanted to do with my life. I have mostly moved on even though this type of experience stays with you for me it's not a heavy burden.

Sometimes I dream about Iraq, they are not pleasant dreams but the next day I feel like I had a catch up session with an old friend. I am thankful and grateful for every day I get because you are here one day and the next you may not be here. 

JV

Play ball! 2023 Opening Day in Baltimore

Now that it's safer to travel, I'm going to try to go to at least one new baseball ballpark per year. There's nothing like a summer night at the ballpark.  Last year I started going to the ballpark again after the pandemic hiatus. Before COVID we used to go at least a dozen times per year. Here's one of those times where Seattle Transit featured a picture of us in their IG account. 

Last Year I visited Wrigley Field home of the Chicago Cubs. That was quite something to be in the same building where Babe Ruth called the HR shot in the 1932 World Series. 

I've been to a few ballparks before, I was in the old Yankee Stadium with my Brooklyn-born wife. 

The game was fun, but the subway ride from the Bronx back to Queens was...an adventure, you try wearing Yankee Jerseys in Mets territory. 

EDIT: Added one more picture form Yankee Stadium, I had to find it in my digital vault lol

The very first MLB game I ever went to was what was then called Joe Robbie Stadium in Florida, I don't know what the name would be today, Dolphin's Stadium? Don't Say Gay Stadium? Who knows. 

Anyway, Joe Robbie was possibly the worst baseball ballpark in all of Major League, maybe the world?

We got rained out all the time, the seat angles were all wrong and day games were excruciatingly hot. It still holds a dear place in my heart because it was my first, for a little boy in love with America's past time going to a major league baseball game was a big deal. My first Marlins game cost my mom $4 and I remember the trip because we got a flat tire on the way to the game and a state trooper pulled over and helped us fix it, I was mad because I missed the first pitch. The Marlins played the Houston Astros a team I detest with all my heart. Anyway here's a pic when the Miami Marlins were called the Florida Marlins circa 2005 AD. 

I must say out of all the baseball stadiums we've been to the most beautiful park is in the West. Specifically San Francisco's ATT Park. I don't have any pictures that do it justice, there's nothing wrong with Seattle's T-Mobile, it's a lovely park, but I'm NGL, I was jealous of the Giant's home, the view of the Golden Gate is just breathtaking. Here's a pic with Gabs repping Florida, of course. 

So this year I'm going to go see Opening Day at Baltimore! Can't wait. The Yanks will be playing the Orioles, I already heard that wearing Yankees stuff will get me killed. Fair enough. I'm not going to go wearing Orioles stuff though, I'll just wear a subtle white shirt with blue stripes or something. 

My Review of "It Ends with Us" on GoodReads

It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lily Bloom meets Ryle, a neurosurgeon with a temper on the day her dad died.
This NA Romance covers some serious topics under a somewhat predictable plot.

I must admit, this is not my usual type of book, but my sister recommended it to me so I was curious and I checked it out. I liked that the author wrote the two main characters with depth and honesty that sadly were lacking in the rest of the cast. Colleen Hoover has something to say in this book about domestic violence and I think she did an excellent job of putting it out there.

I haven't read a lot of romance books, Hmm, I take that back, you could always find Eric Jerome Dickie paperback in my backpack back in the day but I don't think was meant for me. I didn't enjoy the story, or the plot as much but had admiration for the courage and the message CH puts out there.

I accidentally bought the sequel first, so I'll be reading that as well.

View all my reviews

How to deal with stress

A couple of months ago I had the chance to get interviewed by Hugo Castellanos for his Podcast Conexiones  (Podcast is in Spanish)

towards the end of the interview Hugo asked me a question along the lines of "since you were in the Marines and you've been in combat you've dealt with so much stress, so I bet the office environment is like a walk in the park" and boy, I could tell you, I can talk for hours about that. 

Anyway, yes being shot at is kinda of stressful, it can be traumatic, but I am not going to talk about trauma and PTSD here, even though that's a big topic for me as well since I have so many people close to me that have suffered trauma. I've lost 2 friends to suicide from the service, one of them happened in front of me so, yeah big heavy subject. 

That doesn't mean that service members are the only ones that suffer from stress, everyone does. What I'd like to do here is say what has worked for me and what doesn't always work. 

First, I'd like to tell you what worked for me back in the day by pure luck  When I was in Iraq I just KNEW I'd come back. I was 100% positive nothing bad was going to happen to me, to the point that I did things I shouldn't have done like volunteer for stuff I shouldn't really volunteer for. I knew people that were consumed and obsessed with fear and it didn't help them at all, they were living in misery. I just told myself that there's pretty much nothing I could do about the danger so why stress out about it since it makes no difference, if I am going to get blown up might as well not be miserable while I'm still here, right? In that case, I do recommend letting go of the things you can't control, but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Positive thinking is nice, but that alone is not enough. Here's what I think works better. 

Clarity of Purpose and Preparation. 

If you have a clear reason or purpose for putting yourself through something then there isn't much you won't be willing to do to reach that purpose. Most of us are determined to survive, if you have a goal that you really care about then you probably won't mind. 

This applies to the real world, if you have a clear idea of who you want to be, what they call your "Horizon Point" and you constantly work towards that goal, then you can endure whatever to get stuff done. 

If you put your energy into what you can do and let go of the things you can't then yeah, life gets easier. 

I'll tell you what I try (but fail to achieve constantly) is to do less harm and more good to others, to the world. I don't like to hurt people. I understand that my actions and words have hurt people in the past and I always regret it, I carry the baggage of Iraq with me all the time because I have been asking myself since then (almost 20 years ago) was all that for a good reason? Did I really help make anything better for anyone out there? 

I'll confess something here, it took me 8 years of service as an infantry man, 6 of those years as an NCO to realize that I am no warrior, I hate violence and I want to compensate all the destruction I've done by building and nurturing lives. I hate it when I know I've hurt people, I wish I could take it all back sometimes, but I have had to make peace with my past and just, let it go. 

My purpose is to be good to people, at least that's the idea. It's not always easy because like David Foster Wallace said in "This is Water" our default setting is to be selfish. Link to youtube

So having a clear, non-selfish purpose is good, what else?

Mindful Meditation

Alright, another fun fact, my favorite perk for working at Amazon is the "Fishbowl Events" where famous people stop by to speak, before the pandemic they used to come in person. I was able to meet Neal Stevenson, Malcom Gladwell, Martha Stewart and more. I must say it's nice to meet the authors of books you love, but it's fun to discover new people, new things, it turns out I really enjoy listening to authors of cookbooks like Ina Garten. Here's a lady who quit a job in the White House as a Nuclear Strategy Advisor to follow her passion as a chef and she is so passionate and dedicated to her craft that I was, I don't know, fascinated? I just appreciate excellence when I see it. Martha Stewart was the funniest, coolest convict I've met and she's friends with Snoop Dogg? it was awesome to meet all those people in person. 

So last year there was a Fishbowl Event titled "how to train your mind" (not the mushroom dude, that would be "How to change your mind") which discusses how meditation can improve your focus and help you deal with stress. At that point I had heard that meditation actually works meaning that there's scientific evidence to back it up. So I downloaded the audio book, and thus my journey to mindful meditation started. 

Being mindful of your thoughts and being able to control your attention is as close to having a SuperPower as any person can come. My favorite book on the subject is Peak Mind by Dr. Amishi P. Jha although "Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari brings a lot of interesting points regarding the role of tech and social media and what it does to our attention. 

I must say Mindful Meditation works very well specially when combined with a good clear purpose. 

Disclaimer: YYMV not a substitute for actual professional help for some situations. 

The Stress of Difficult Decisions

What happens when you are in a situation that offers no easy choices? I think that's still an issue for me, sometimes I want 2 things but I can only have one. In that case my answer is to:

1. Think about the regret rule. What will you regret having done or not having done 20 years from now. 

2. Think about your "Horizon Point" which decision gets you closer to who you want to be. 

Some decisions are harder than others. Some decisions are "2 way door decisions"  and those should be picked quickly, but there are decisions that once you make them you can't come back from. 

Even with all the different tools, there are sometimes not obvious right answers. I think about our leaders deciding to send thousands of people to their deaths in a war, who bears the burden for that? Is it for a good cause? If it's a war for a just cause, yeah. 

Some times the right answer is obvious, but it's too painful to make, in such cases the right thing to do is of course do the thing that lines up with your "Horizon Point" 

I recommend reading "Decision Making Models" and applying them when appropriate. I like to think of the trade-offs, long-term, short-term. However, humans are emotional creatures that can be rational, not the other way around. Reason goes out the door when it comes to matter of the heart. That will be a topic of a different blog post. 

;)

My favorite books from 2022

 Of all the books of 2022 I'd like to call out the ones I enjoyed the most or consider important enough to mention

Best Fiction of 2022

(notice that this are books that I read in 2022, it doesn't mean the book was *published* in 2022)

Patternist Series by Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler is probably the most under-rated science fiction writer of all time. Every thing she has written is freaking good. 

Seed to Harvest starts out with two immortal beings that meet in the plains of Africa in the 16th century, then they travel to America before the Revolutionary War. The first book of the series starts as the story of a power struggle between our two protagonists. The thing that stands out is that as the series progresses the books and characters start to change in a way where each book could stand on its own until the end where it all comes together. 

My favorite thing about this book is the depth of the characters, there are no good or bad people, just people who act according to their views, goals and fears. It's an excellent exploration of power and gender. 

Billy Summers by Stephen King

Reading Stephen King is like watching a movie, you sit back, relax, grab some popcorn or a snack and let him take you on a ride. The main character was a Marine that was deployed to Ramadi, Iraq in the year 2004 and for some weird reason I can relate to that. The plot and people are good, and yeah, I cried at the end of the book, don't say I didn't warn you. 

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

This is a story set in America in the 1950's two boys go on a road trip in search of their mother. This is like reading the classic Odyssey but it's in the States instead of Ancient Greece. Gorgeous writing, good characters, the plot is okay but the point is the journey, not the destination. 

Most Thought-Provoking books from 2022

The 1619 Project created by Nikole Hannah Jones

A collection of different essays that expands on the NYT series.  This book caused conservatives to lose their shit because it dared to question the established myths that we tell ourselves about America. 1619 explores the legacy of Slavery in the United States and explores how much it shaped our country, our history, our culture. 

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

Who is Peter Thiel? That's the question this book attempts to answer. It does a good job at it, but what makes it thought provoking for me is that Silicon Valley has this reputation of being run by a bunch of hippie bleeding-heart liberals and the truth is quite the opposite. 

How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going

This book confronts the current big issues of our time and offer the reader a sober look at reality. Where does the energy we consume come from and where does it go to. What does concrete and steel production have to do with climate change (spoiler: a lot) 

I must say that this book is a bit depressing, there are a lot of complicated problems with no easy solutions. This is the stuff that doesn't get talked about as much on the daily news because it doesn't have catchy sound bites, but it's worth knowing about. I'm sure John Oliver in HBO does a good job of covering these type of things. Anyway, this is an important book, if you want to be an informed citizen, you should know what's in this book. 

Most Useful books of 2022 (For me anyway)

Peak Mind: Find your Focus. Own Your Attention. 

How to pay attention and be present in the moment. The answer: A tried and scientifically proven way to improve mindfulness: Using Meditation.

Fun fact about this book, I picked it up on impulse when I was at Chicago O'Hare Airport, the opening paragraph caught my eye and I bought it and did not put it down until I was done with it. I really liked the author's voice, it's like she's having a conversation about this stuff with you. 

I must say that I can struggle with paying attention and being in the moment, but without this book I would be much, much worse. 

Success Under Stress: Powerful Tools for Staying Calm, Confident and Productive When the Pressure's On. 

This is one of those self-help books, so I got this book for free, there was like a big stack of them at the Blackfoot building in Seattle back when it housed the EC2 team (back when I worked for EC2) I picked it up, started reading it, went like, meh, and moved on. However, I picked it up again after reading the book on paying attention. I started to slowly read it and do all the exercises in the book. There are a lot of sections that I still think are BS, but there are some gold nuggets in there disguised as tautologies. I like the section about having clarity of purpose and understanding one's own Horizon point. 

It's 2022 and I'm back! Again

 Hey, so I've decided to go back to writing on my blog. Writing here has helped me sort things out for myself, I've been going back to my old posts and I must say that I'm glad I didn't just delete the blog. 

This thing here is just going to be me putting whatever comes to my head, there's no thread or order or purpose other than to help me organize what's going on in my life at the moment. 

If you are still reading this, um, thank you? 

Anyway, since my last post a lot of stuff has happened so I wanted to write one of those posts to catch up on the latest. 

Let me go in chronological order

2016

Trump's victory in the 2016 election was a surprise. I didn't think he was going to win, so I spent a lot of time and energy trying to make sense of it. How did it happen? I read a lot of different explanations but after a lot of digging, and a lot of reading I understood the obvious reason. It's racism. Maybe I should explain myself, list the books make the argument, I might or might not. If I do, it would be entirely for my own benefit, I know better than to think I can change someone's mind on the internet about a subject as touchy and explosive as this. 

I have put a reading list at the end of this post if you are interesting in knowing more about how racism got Trump elected. 

2017

Jolyne came out as trans to us. It was not easy or simple for any of us, but our first reaction was "we will love you and support you no matter what" and that was that. I set out to understand everything first before making decisions. 

In 2017 we had a big trip all of us went to Europe. We flew to Spain, visited Madrid, Toledo and Barcelona. Then we took a train to Paris and finally London. 

During the trip the Unite the Right Rally happened in Charlottesville, as well as the attack in Las Ramblas Barcelona, I was meeting with my cousin in Barcelona in Las Ramblas the night before the attacks happened. 

2018

In 2018 I started working for Amazon. This is something that I had wanted for a long time. It felt like a big win for me. I have a lot to say about working there, it's most definitely the best job I've ever had but it's the most challenging.  

In the summer Martha and I took a big trip to Budapest. 

2019

In 2019 we bought a house! Buying a house in Seattle is hard. We got lucky we found something we wanted after years of trying and failing we found the perfect house. Well, nothing is perfect but this is the only place we saw that we both said "this is it, this is the one" as soon as we walked in. 

In 2019 we got Petunia. I didn't want a dog, but now this dog pretty much owns me. 

Amazon sent me on work trips to Vancouver, Canada, Toronto, Madrid for a couple weeks and Brisbane, Australia. 

Martha planned an awesome trip for the whole family to Munich during Octoberfest. 

2020

We started the year with a trip to Copenhagen with a brief stay in Iceland late February early March, this is right before the pandemic started in earnest in the US. We thought we were going to be stranded in Denmark but we made it back and then Covid started. 

This is the year I decided to learn to ski so that I could go with Gaby. 

During the pandemic I made bread, beer and learned to mix cocktails. 

Jolyne started her transition after months of therapy, the change in her personality was like night and day. It's like she is living her life as her true self and wow I have absolutely zero doubt that it was the right decision.  

2021

Went to Jackson Hole WY during the winter break. 

Went to Orlando FL for 2 weeks during summer break

At work I started working for a new team. I became part of AWS Fargate. 

In November I went to Fort Lauderdale thanks to my sister the city of Tamarac put my name on the wall of Tamarac residents that served overseas, although technically my zip code was 33071 when I was deployed, it's close enough. My name is engraved in the park at University and Southgate. My sister is big into Girls Scouts so there were some people there from her troop. I can't say enough nice things about my sister she's been nothing but nice to me (well, most of the time) since forever. Thank you Caro. 

2022

Winter break we went to Park City Utah to ski

In April Amazon sent me to Dublin, Ireland I took Martha with me it was a good trip, a few days of being a tourist and then work. 

In the summer we want back to my homeland, no, not Venezuela, Florida silly! We went down to Disney World for a few days. 

In October it was my 20 year Anniversary. I am the luckiest man alive for having this amazing woman as my wife. 

In the fall I almost burned myself out working. I was doing too much at once. 

My dad was diagnosed with a very treatable form of cancer, I freaked out anyway. 

Wife suggested I take a month off work. So I took November off to spend time my family. The outcome was the most memorable vacation of my life. I had an awesome time disconnecting from the office and connecting with my family and with Florida in general. I gotta say the vacation was too good because it has taken me a while to get back into the normal rhythm of life at work in Seattle.  

Now it's December and it's back to normal life. I have my personal goals and things I'd like to do next. 

1. Improve as a person. Yeah it's sound corny or whatever, but it's the truth. I can always be a better person, a better father, husband, brother, co-worker and citizen. My intention is to always strive to grow. 

2. Professionally, I want to get promoted, I want to become a Principal Engineer at Amazon. 

3. I want to write. Write more, write better. 

A brief Summary of my Readings

I read a few books since 2016. I have done what I like to call "Rabbit hole explorations"

If you are interested in my full reading list, you should check out my GoodReads and friend me there. 

Understanding Racism and Trump Reading List:

- The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story 

- White Fragility: Why It's so Hard for White People to talk about Racism

- Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

- Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

- Fear: Trump in the White House

- Why we're polarized

- What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays

- Born A Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

- So You Want to Talk About Race

- The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America

- Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America

- On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

- How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

- Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy

Silicon Valley and Capitalism Rabbit hole:

TODO (I'll add a separate blog post)

How to improve myself Rabbit Hole: 

TODO (I'll add a separate blog post)

Understanding Trans* reading list :

TODO (I'll add a separate blog post)

Okay, I've run out of time, rather than set this aside to get back to it on some later time, I am going to just publish what I have. I'll finish the reading lists some other time. 

What I've been up to these days. (Technically Speaking)


Before I answer that question, I must tell you how I got into Computer Engineering in the first place.
Let's go back, way back, late nineties back, I was a young NCO in an infantry battalion in the U.S. Marines, I had these grand plans, I had all my life mapped out. My life goal then was to be the first Venezuelan born USMC General. For real. I had a few things that stood in the way, one, I was not a. U.S. citizen yet, and another minor thing, I didn't have a bachelor's degree, yet. So the plan was for me to get into the MECEP program, anyway, that's a whole other story, but for now I must tell you that back then I was planning on studying law. Yep, I wanted to have a law degree. This was before I totally understood what it meant to go to law school and pass a BAR and all of that. In any case, in the marines we were allowed to take college courses for free (yes, for free) as long as it didn't interfere with your mission, you could do it. You needed permission from the CO, but you could do it. So, I did, I took College Algebra, Intro to Sociology, Intro to Anthropology and Criminal Justice at Park College on board the USS Austin. I bet you didn't know that Navy ships had college courses, yes, we do, or did back when I was in. So in the Criminal Justice course I totally and completely lost my desire to study law. Our Justice system seemed, well, unfair. I just thought that I would be the world's lousiest lawyer. And frankly, I didn't want to go to school for that long.  I just wanted to get a degree so I could be on my way to OCS and become a Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps, so school was more of a means to an end. Once I figured that I didn't want to be a lawyer I had to figure out what I was going to do. I took the aptitude exam and got Cop, FBI agent or CIA whatever, I thought the FBI was cool, but I knew in my heart that's not what I really want, that's when I picked up a career guide and saw that engineering was a well paid profession. Could I be an engineer? I thought, I remember my father told me that he started in Mechanical Engineering before dropping out and then going on to study accounting. I remembered how much I liked math, (I actually used to think that I was pretty damn good at math actually) and I also remembered how much I enjoyed programming my first computer, I used to have an old thing running Windows 3. I learned to write BASIC programs in 6th grade. This was the year 2000 and I was completely unaware of all the things going on in Silicon Valley at the time. But I had heard a lot of about Y2K and the .com bust. So I thought it would be cool to be a Computer Engineer, not Computer Scientist because I wanted the title "Engineer" it sounded so, well, professional, serious, rigorous. 

So back to my point, back in the day I thought that Computer Engineering was about building websites, I had effing clue what was coming. I learned about how processors worked, all the way down to the metal, literally. I learned about Circuits and about Discrete Mathematics and some programming in C, and some other neat stuff like Operating Systems and Networking. But I didn't learn anything about the web. I took a course on Network Security, and Cryptography, but I ended up doing an internship at a chip design team, and then I ended up doing embedded firmware after I graduated.

So finally, two years ago, I am in a team doing web services, that's what I've been up to. Yeah, I know it took a long time to get to this, so if you are still with me, thanks for reading (hi mom!)

So yeah, I am now finally doing something that I've been wanting to do for a while. I am doing Ruby on Rails for the most part. Although my team does a bit of everything, really.

In order to get better I've been reading "The Well-Grounded Rubyist" by Black Manning, hands down the best Ruby book I've read.

Another thing I've been working on is how to become a real-life hard-core algorist. For that I am slowly working my way through "The Algorithm Design Manual" by Steven Skiena.

I am still in Chapter 1.

The first chapter talks about the mindset of the algorist (a person skilled in the design of algorithms)
things like finding counter examples, proving correctness of an algorithm and proving things using mathematical induction.

Yeah, about that,

I've been stuck with the concept, yeah, back in school I did all the homework and passed the test back when I took Discrete Mathematics and Stochastic Systems. But, I feel like I just memorized how to work a family of contrived problems and I didn't really, like truly, deeply learned what proving by induction is all about. On the surface it still feels like magic. I mean, Induction seems kind of simple:

Suppose you want to prove that some property about any integer is true,  say, "n times (n+3) is always an even number" you first prove it for a base number 1, then you prove it that if it's true for then it is true for that base number plus 1 then it is true for all the numbers.

What I am still wrestling with is, how in the world do you know it is proven? How do you know you haven't made a mistake? The set of all natural integers is so freaking large, how do you know there isn't a counter case somewhere.

Obviously I still have some work to do. It may seem like this concept is so far removed from the practical world of actually building programs that do things that people find useful and valuable, but indeed it is very much related, here's why:

Induction is Recursion and Software is Recursion.

Yes, that's right, Recursion is just about doing the same step incrementally until you reach the base case. Most problems and algorithms in Software can be modeled as recursive objects.

Permutations? Recursive objects.
Sets and Subsets? Recursion
Graphs? Recursion
Trees? Are you kidding? Recursion
Strings? Delete one element from a string, what do you get? A smaller String. Strings are recursive objects.

So if you understand Induction, you understand recursion, if you understand recursion you know how to model most algorithms.

10 things I love about Seattle and 10 things I don't like about Seattle

Love

1. Scenery: This state is freaking gorgeous. The snow-peaked mountains. The Puget Sound, the rivers, lakes, the parks, Mt Rainier. It's a beautiful area. San Juan Islands, Ferry to Bainbridge, wow, it's overwhelmingly pretty. Specially for me coming from the Tropics, this is very different from what I grew up with. 

2. Coffee: I live within walking distance of Vivaci, Ladro, Torino, Victrola, Vita, not to mention Starbucks Reserve and more. Good stuff

3. Tech Scene: There's competition for hiring the best software engineers, the big companies like Microsoft and Amazon cannot pump people fast enough. There's tons of smaller companies too and all the big players like Google, Facebook and Uber have offices here, if you can code, you work and live here and not have to pay the high cost of living of the Bay Area.

4. UW: The University of Washington is an great organization, the campus is beautiful, and the ties to the tech industries feed the private sector with world-class talent.

5. City Life: Good restaurants, museums, all kinds of cultural festivals in the city center, there's always something to do here. 

6. Pho and Teriyaki. Enough said. 

7. Nerds and Geek Culture. So there's a lot of scientist and engineers here, so, yeah, there's a lot of geek stuff going on, and it's plain awesome. I've never lived in a city where being a geek was the norm. 

8. Dog Friendly City. You can take your dog anywhere. There's a bulldog meetup, there's tons of dogs everywhere, there are more dogs than kids in Seattle. 

9. Weekend things with the kids: Hiking RattleSnake Ridge, Chilling at GasWorks Park. Going to the IMAX theater at the Pacific Science Center

10. Safeco Field and Century Link: Going to see the Sounders and the Mariners. I heard the Seahawks are good too, I just haven't had a chance to catch an NFL game yet. 

Needs Improvement

1. Traffic. Probably the worst thing about Seattle is it's traffic. I am not one to complain since I don't have a very long commute. (My office is a 2 minute walk) But still, the way the city is structured plus the lack of a solid public transportation infrastructure make Seattle one of the worst places to drive in the United States. 

2. Pacific North West Passive Aggressiveness. Seriously, wtf? People here are the opposite of, say, New Yorkers, they are nice to you and yet cold to you at the same time. This one warrants more in depth analysis. Just know that people here are...different.  We have met many nice people here, but the funny thing about that they are usually other transplants from the East Coast. Our closer friends here are mostly Floridian, although we've met nice people from Utah, California, Oregon and even Australia, but we're yet to be close friends with any native Seattleites, what gives? 

3. The Weather. It doesn't bother me a lot, but I'd be lying if I said that sometimes the constant drizzle doesn't get old. It's one of those things that you don't think about much as you go about your day, but last week when I was driving back from San Francisco, we had nice weather all the way, until we literally crossed the Washington border and bam, that annoying drizzle again. Maybe I am writing this because we had a brutal super rainy winter, but thankfully the weather has been nice lately so it's making up for lost time. When I first moved here a friend told me that locals just pretend like the rain is not there. That trick actually works most of the time. When you've been driving for 10 hours and want to get home safe, the PNW drenching drizzle is the last thing you want to see on the road. 

4. I-5. See traffic, it's so bad it needs its own entry. 

5. Homeless problem. Man, there's a big problem with homelessness in Seattle. You will see a lot of people on the parks, streets, under the highway, every where. 

6. Drug and Crime. It's not Chicago, it's not the Bronx, Hialiah, nothing like that but, there's a lot of car prowling and petty theft.  It's not uncommon to see used syringes laying on the sidewalks or on the public parks. 

7. Anti-tech sentiment: Amazon has transformed South Lake Union into a hub of mid to high rises with a bunch of new office buildings and a bunch of new rental apartments, as a result, rent has gone up and many people resent it, I totally get why people would get upset if their rent goes up, but the way they express it is by lashing out against programmers and transplants, because we must be the cause for everything that's is going wrong in Seattle. It's ironic that the same people who preach about tolerance and understanding and against stereotypes loves to stereotype the typical tech worker as self-absorbed, boring, white, privileged "brogrammer" when in fact, these companies are introducing a lot of diversity to the city. We transplants are helping the economy and are, for the most part, making Seattle a better place. 

8. House Prices: While it's not as bad as the Bay Area, it's getting there. You can still live quite well out of the city, but then you'd have to deal with traffic. See points 1 & 4.

9. Your vote doesn't count as much. We're all liberals here, so what's the point of voting? the vote has been decided already. If you are a conservative here. Good luck with that. 

10. They don't have a Publix here. (This should have been on top of the list)

 

How does one live a good life?

This is a good question. I don't want to sit here and ramble a long answer. Part of the reason I am forcing myself to write once a day is to improve my communication abilities. 

When it comes to our desires and our feelings there are two different parts that compete for control. There's the "impulsive" brain and then there's the "reflective" brain so to speak. There's a part of you that is concerned about the here and now, it's the part of you that craves to binge-watch netflix, order pizza, sleep, it's the part of the brain that just want to feel good now. It's associated with the primal desires. It wants to eat, sleep, have sex, be entertained. Then there's the part that wants more than that, it wants you to be better, that better can be different things. Maybe you want more money, more fame, more power, or you want a goal that you care deeply about, like building that bike shed, or running that marathon, losing 20 pounds, or helping the needy, or whatever. 

A good life is when you can satisfy both halves, when you can have a good balance between both sides, also, the goals that you pick matter, it turns out that there are things that are not fulfilling, once you have a certain amount of money, more of it won't make you happier, so what does?

It turns out, the old philosophers were right, improving your character makes you happy. Specifically, The 24 character virtues outlined by Martin Seligman: I recommend you take a look. 

https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/classification-character-strengths-virtues/

 

Why I had stopped blogging and why I want to start again.

I stopped blogging ironically because I wanted to write better posts. I wanted to share with the world something worth sharing. The problem is, the tasks seemed so daunting that I would just give up before even starting.

I guess I am just giving up on that and just want to just write whatever comes to my head. Is not like that many people read this anyway.

So what would stop me for writing is that I wonder what would I write that people would want to read?

My life is not boring, but it's not really that unique.

So I'll share with you what's important to me. I strive each day to be better than I was before. But what does that mean? Well, I try to be a better father, a better husband, a better engineer and a better person. I am not always successful, but I try not to make the same mistake twice.

So for the past few years I've been working on that, learning what it means to live a good life, and learning what it means to be a better person. There's actually a lot that has been written about that and I maybe I'll get around to listing them.

Another big theme for me has been the quest for being a good software engineer. I have a lot to say that as well.

How to be stupid in the Internet

Rule #1. Have a Narrow Point of View

Never consider or try to understand things through viewpoints other than your own. Of course your point of view is the only one worth considering. It's the right one!

Rule #2. Be very emotional.

The more emotion, the better, anger is best. After all, is good to be passionate, so the more anger, the better, this leaves out other pesky ways of thinking, like rationality, and logic, who needs those? Make sure you get offended easily.

Rule #3. Never Change your mind. 

Never, ever, under any circumstances even entertain the idea that you might be wrong. That's what weak people do, absolute certainty is the way to go. There is no way others could be right, and you could be wrong.

Some unexpected things I've seen in Paris

EDIT: I was going through my blog drafts when I found it.  I wrote this a year and a half ago when Martha and I went to France to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. I couldn't sleep, wrote this and forgot about it.  I thought I put it up anyway.


It's 5:30 AM in France, almost midnight in Florida, can't sleep, can't blame it on the time difference..anyway, This is the list of weird things I've seen in Paris

 1. A group of 10 people dressed like where is Waldo walking around looking at a map

2. 2 little kids almost separated from their parents who were at a sight seeing bus, bus driver did not want to stop, even though the kids were small and the parents were telling the driver to stop. Wtf?

 3. Inside the metro, a group of people dressed like a fruits, they had a whole fruit salad going on, strawberry, banana, and something green, not sure if peas or what.

 4. A police foot chase, near the bridge of locks, the cops were chasing a girl, by foot, car and boat.

5. Not as many Americans as I expected.

How do you Break the Spell?

I read somewhere, I don't remember where or when, a story about an old lady in 18th century Scotland, (or was it Ireland? England?, doesn't matter where) the thing is this lady's son went out on a fishing boat, and the boat didn't come back, it may have been a storm, pirates, a fire on-board, something happened, bottom line, the ship sailed and it was never heard from again.

After some years, in these situations most people give up on hope on ever seeing their loved ones, but not this lady, she would assert that her son was still alive, she had no reason or evidence that would support her belief, but that didn't stop her. She just knew that her son was out there, alive, somewhere, and it was only a matter of time before she got to see her son again.

I can only imagine what it is not to know what happened to someone you love. I put myself in that lady's shoes and can see where she is coming from. You want to keep the hope alive, you don't want to face the unthinkable, the worst case scenario, the excruciating pain that comes from losing your son.

Perhaps she thought that her son was in some tropical paradise, they wrecked with no way out of it, and settled in with the natives, had 10 kids, and was living a happy life secluded from Civilization. Most likely he drowned in a bad storm, who knows? The question is, which version would you rather believe? The lady, let's call her "Mary" chose to believe the version that made her feel better, not the one most likely to be true. Who can blame her?

As more and more years passed it become more apparent that the son was probably not coming back and Mary would not see her son again. But then, one day, 27 years later, a stranger showed up to Mary's town claiming to be her son.

I can see the commotion, the excitement, he's back! Our Mary was right all along. But then things turned ugly, the guy claiming to be Mary's son, had no resemblance at all to him, the more they town people got to know the guy the more apparent it became that he probably had heard about Mary's story and wanted to take advantage of her.

But Mary saw things differently, she was so happy that her son was back and she thought that the town people were jealous of her happiness she wanted to believe that her son was alive so badly that she ignored any signs that it was not him. He didn't look the same, did not act the same, it was a complete stranger, but she could not see it.

My question is, if you care about Mary, do you make her see the truth or do you let her be happy the way she is?

The answer depends, is she really happy? or does she know, deep down that her son is gone? What if she really believes it? Who are we to interfere? Do we draw the line when she starts to make bad decisions? When others start to take advantage of her faith to gain favors? Do we draw the line when she starts hurting others?

Is it wrong to let her live her life in such delusion? Is it wrong to make her suffer and shatter he hopes?

Some say no, let her be happy. I can relate to that, live and let others live, as long as she is not harming anyone else, that's ok.

But others would say, well, if you care about her, if you really have love, concern and respect for that person, the dignified thing would be to help Mary face reality with courage and strength, help her grieve her loss and move on with her life.

The right answer should be somewhere between those extremes, you can't make a person see reality if they don't want to. You have to let people have the freedom to make their choices as long as they are not harming anyone else. You can provide guidance if they ask for it. But you can't go around telling them how wrong they are.

And that's kind of how I feel about atheism. I see people believing in all kinds of stuff that I see as superstitions, as something slightly above Santa Claus for grown ups. But I can't go around telling people that, especially if they don't want to hear it, if they don't want to question their beliefs. I used to take for granted that since I am always trying to question what I think its true, I thought that others would do the same. But that's not the case, in fact, most people would love to share their beliefs with you, but not the other way around.

But, sometimes, faith can have its consequences, when it goes to extremes, let the law take care of it, otherwise, education will solve the problem, since religion has evolved a lot since the elighqment, I think that it will eventually go away on its own now that we live in the age of information, thanks to the internet, curious minds will have access to other people with the same questions, and ignorance while it may never go away, it will be mitigated effectively.

How is that for a self-delusion?


J.V.

A tale of two robots

It was the best of teams, it was the worst of teams.

One robotics high school team had all the resources it needed, it had an excellent teaching staff, involved parents, a bunch of smart kids, and adequate funding to go to three Regionals. Let's call this school "A.

Another high school robotics team had enough funding for only one tournament, it had a handful of kids, one teacher, and no parents, not a lot of support, not a lot of evident motivation. Just some kids and a volunteer. This team started building their robot only days before the competition (As opposed to weeks before, which is what A did) Let's call this school "B"

Both robotics team were sponsored by my employer. A few of my co-workers and I spent some time helping out these schools.

One school finished last place in the tournament, while the other ranked 14 out of 63 and played in the quarter finals in the Regional competition. Guess which one won and which one didn't?

If you guessed school A. Guess again. School B made it to the second round. While school A, with all the great kids and staff didn't make it.

I've been trying to figure out why for the past couple of days.


Is it talent? School A had a bunch of smart kids, some of which will probably be accepted to Ivy League schools, a big chunk of them will go to the University of Florida's college of Engineering. So what happened. Was it the way the team was managed? Was there some kind of systematic problem with school A? Was it luck? God? The Liberals?

Although winning is not the most important thing in these Robotics competitions, it does raise an important question. How do you put together a winning robot? How do you get these teams to win?

First let me explain what happened.

Rebound Rumble is this years Robotics Game. In order to win,two competing Alliances compete to score as many basketballs into their hoops as they can during a 2 minute and 15 second match. Each alliance consists of three robots. The higher the hoop in which the basketball is scored, the more points the Alliance receives. The match begins with a 15-second Autonomous period where the robots operate independently of driver input. Baskets scored during this period are worth extra points.




The match ends with robots attempting to balance on bridges located at the middle of the field. In Qualification Matches a team scores extra points if they try to balance in the center bridge with a robot from the opposing Alliance.

Robot A was designed and built to do all the tasks in the game, it had a camera that talked to the processor in order to perform computer vision. It would scan the image it was fed for targets, then it would determine the distance to the target and figure out how much current it needs to send to the rollers that will make the basketball shoot.

Robot A also had an arm controlled with pneumatics that was going to bring the bridge down in order be able to get on the ramp.

Robot B could only do two things, it could move, and it could shoot, there was no time spent trying to get a camera vision thing, it spent no time trying to have a ramp mechanism.

Robot B however, had one thing that Robot A didn't have, it had a student that could drive that robot like it was nobody's business. Not to say that the drivers for Robot A sucked or anything, they were adequate, but Robot B's driver was good, it made no mistakes, and it had a sense of where to put the robot. It knew how to use what it had to get the most out of the game. Robot B had strategy, it could do a couple of things well, and it stuck to it. The team knew strategy, the team was able to build a shooting motion that was repeatable enough that it could land a ball in the basket time after time once it found the sweet spot. Robot B also got lucky, but I'd say that it manufactured its luck.

Did Robot A make any mistakes? perhaps it did. A lot of effort was put on making a mechanism to lower the bridge that was never used and was not crucial to winning the game. As a result, no time was spent on perfecting the shooter. The pit for Robot A was full of well -intentioned, talented people, but, nobody brought up this fact until it was too late.

Lack of vision? foresight? perhaps lack of leadership?

Probably a bit of everything. You need both, you need the talent and the leadership to set direction. You can have a bunch of talent but if nobody knows where to go, you will not get anywhere.

Well, that's all I have for now. I got other stuff going on but remember, be good to each other ya'll.

J.V.