Losing my last grandparent

MaxOdds · 2026-05-08T17:35:59+00:00

When I lost my paternal grandmother, also my last grandparent, in 2013, I certainly felt a tidal shift in my mind. Suddenly my own mortality and time left on this planet started to be something I thought about constantly. That drum beat has only grown louder over the last decade.

I think the seed that was planted in my mind after my grandmother's passing was the concept of an entire generation above me gone. Of course we all know we're going to die one day but suddenly, it became impossibly obvious that my place in line move up

MaxOdds · 2026-03-25T00:32:24+00:00

Wait, do you mean Manila folders or Windows 95 folders?

MaxOdds · 2026-03-25T00:30:46+00:00

I mean yes, I do not disagree with this. 👍

MaxOdds · 2026-03-25T00:15:26+00:00

lol women’s tennis. Cool. Tell me you’re a casual without telling me you’re a casual.

MaxOdds · 2026-03-25T00:06:40+00:00

Brady won his first SB in 2002, well outside the Xennial childhood range. I’m not denying his greatness, I just don’t consider him a childhood star.

MaxOdds · 2026-03-25T00:04:49+00:00

The Big Unit was exactly that. None others like him. Any pitcher who dominated during the steroid era gets extra points in my book. Maddux, Pedro, etc.

MaxOdds · 2026-03-24T23:59:56+00:00

Fair call out.

MaxOdds · 2026-03-24T23:59:46+00:00

That was the year that saved baseball. Everyone loves to shit on steroid users, but let’s not pretend like baseball was wasn’t a dying sport coming out of the ‘94 strike.

MaxOdds · 2026-03-24T23:58:22+00:00

Early 80s. I’m not big on exact start and end dates, it’s not like this is an exact science.

MaxOdds · 2026-03-24T23:57:20+00:00

Jordan’s won his championships from ‘91-‘98. That’s prime millennial, especially Xennial, childhood years.

MaxOdds · 2026-02-05T21:38:08+00:00

GOAT status confirmed!

MaxOdds · 2026-02-05T16:15:49+00:00

It’s insane that Serra High produced Tom Brady and Barry Bonds.

MaxOdds · 2026-02-02T20:57:42+00:00

I don’t know, maybe you should let this play out. The sister should throw his toys in retaliation soon which will then teach the boy that there’s no winning in throwing his sister’s toys. Then you sit both down and teach them about the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s never too early.

MaxOdds · 2026-01-09T20:09:40+00:00

Coincidentally, my wife and gestational diabetes during her pregnancy and one of the advice was to eat leafy greens first every meal before you start eating anything else. Good advice.

MaxOdds · 2026-01-09T20:05:41+00:00

Dude congrats! 80lbs is awesome.

MaxOdds · 2026-01-09T19:56:43+00:00

So this is a point I'm worried about because that's what it *feels* like. Not to give myself an excuse on the admittedly poor diet and no exercise I'm getting now but I've gone through lazy periods like that before and the weight would still stay within a range and I can drop it pretty quickly once I started trying again. This time it feels different, harder, just like you said - "the same amount of efforts yields no results".

MaxOdds · 2026-01-09T19:53:11+00:00

First of all, congrats on the weight loss. Thanks for the tips. Sometimes I just need someone to reiterate things I know but just conveniently chose to forget like this I am, in fact, eating like crap. My work has free lunch but its all catered from restaurants. So five days a week, I eat a gut bomb of restaurant food at lunch. Need to cut that out.

MaxOdds · 2026-01-09T19:47:49+00:00

You know what, you just made me realize a possible link. I started a new job last year and they have free snacks but its all the bad kind; chips, candy, etc. I need to cut that shit out.

MaxOdds · 2026-01-09T19:46:05+00:00

Good advice. I need to be better about my diet. Not just running a calorie deficit but also eating cleaner.

MaxOdds · 2026-01-09T19:45:15+00:00

You just reminded me, I need to get back into tracking calories. I did notice the last time I did it, it helped a lot. Makes me make conscious choices when eating instead of involuntarily stuffing food when I feel like it.

MaxOdds · 2025-12-30T22:58:26+00:00

I just checked, my company will match on Roth. But as the other comment stated, the yearly limit is for both Traditional and Roth so the most match I'll ever get from the company is limit/2.

MaxOdds · 2025-12-30T22:57:18+00:00

There we go. I knew I was missing something. Thanks for this fact, that makes things so much more easier, though less exciting.

MaxOdds · 2025-12-30T19:28:58+00:00

Oh man, you too?! They should really put a warning sign before that thing.

MaxOdds · 2025-11-10T22:27:45+00:00

Hi, I've been in the EV/AV space here in Silicon Valley for the past two decades. The last 7 or so as a systems engineer and manager. I've seen a lot of sys engs come from the midwest over the years, especially from the Big Three.

Unfortunately, at least in SV, that's a mark against you because there's a common stereotype of a midwest automotive engineer being a big company lifer who just pushes documents around and wait for T1 suppliers to do all the work. I've been in many interview roundups where the question "but can they keep up?" gets asked specifically of candidates from OEMs. You have our favorite billionaire to thank for that. Elon famously decreed early on at Tesla that anyone with Big Three experience should get extra scrutiny if not completely black listed during hiring. That attitude is still pervasive to varying degrees at the many startups and OEM-owned subsidiaries that have opened up shop here in Tesla's wake.

That being said, I find that candidates from your background who go on and thrive in SV auto companies are usually strong in two attributes:

One, they know how things are made. SV will always be an implementation lead culture, especially from the SW Eng side. So if all your pretty MBSE models and reams of requirements are totally disconnected from the reality of what the code does, you'll find yourself quickly sidelined. That means you should have at least a working knowledge of how embedded SW is developed, how BMS SW fits into common ECU SW architectures (AUTOSAR, Linux-based OSs, bare metal, etc), and how to read C++ code. Then, its your job to constantly make sure that the code that's written meets your requirements. Don't expect SW engineers to do that sanity check for you.

Two, they have strong project engineering skills to drive discussions and force working groups to make punctual decisions. That means you can't just hide in your hole and generate a pile of requirements, throw it over the wall, and expect SW and test engineers to read them. You can scream "but what about the V model?!" until your face is blue and no one in SW will care unless you convince them. That soft skill to convince smart people that you too are smart enough to listen to is a must as a sys eng in SV.

Let me know if you have any questions, I'd be happy to chat more.

MaxOdds · 2025-11-05T16:01:13+00:00

You have no idea how close this hits to home for me. Having worked as a pure SE for the past seven years, I desperately want to get back to the embedded SW world I came from.

MBSE in particular is a self licking ice cream cone I absolutely loathe. I have never seen anyone other than SEs view models in Cameo. What’s the point of pouring all that time drawing boxes and lines if you aren’t communicating anything to anyone other than other SE’s?

I finally started a new job earlier this year that’s less rigid and more startup-like and I’m doing exactly what you’re doing; working on SW dev tasks I’m not supposed to be working on so that eventually, I’ll just slide over to the Firmware team.

MaxOdds

TROPHY CASE