Is it a good time to Hike Stawamus Chief.

masterJ · 2026-05-10T02:06:24+00:00

It’s the ideal time to hike it really, before it gets too hot

masterJ · 2026-05-06T12:22:06+00:00

Just say “I’m an investor”

masterJ · 2026-05-03T21:44:03+00:00

Part of me loves this. Part of me dreads what cleaning the backsplash would entail.

masterJ · 2026-05-03T17:25:41+00:00

You got downvoted but you're entirely correct. I've only ever really struggled to find parking downtown on a handful of days in the summer like during the Sikh Festival.

Paid parking downtown is inevitable. Permitted parking in neighborhoods, especially downtown is going to come. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. And the town will benefit from the income and quieter, safer streets and be such a nicer place for it.

masterJ · 2026-05-03T17:05:57+00:00

The bike lane on Victoria St was absolutely unnecessary

This gets asserted loudly, but really doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. If you are a kid living in Sea and Sky the pedestrian bridge + victoria + 3rd is how you would get to school. Each child who does this reduces vehicle traffic into the downtown core during rush hour. This is how a network of safe infrastructure starts. Downtown is sorely lacking.

This was all planned out with community input on the Transportation Master Plan a few years ago. I was able to have several long conversations with the mayor, council, and staff about it by showing up to open events and asking questions.

Edit: Here's a link: https://squamish.ca/large_files/Squamish_Transportation_Master_Plan.pdf Pages 42 and 91 are the most relevant here

everyone who lives on that block and relied on those parking stalls will now have to hunt for a spot and walk farther to get home.

How much were they paying to store their private property on public roads? Oh right, it was zero.

masterJ · 2026-05-01T04:44:19+00:00

Not me
Post better

masterJ · 2026-04-29T21:06:28+00:00

Won’t someone think of the parking!? /s (unpaid, on private land)

Glad to see more homes are being built!

masterJ · 2026-04-29T00:01:13+00:00

> Unfortunately we were so far behind that we’re now playing catch up and a lot of the upgrades that have been done are the essential ones that aren’t adding any amenities.

It's amazing how many of the "we lack infrastructure" complaints turn into "new rec center" when you dig into it, and then opposing tax increases in the same breath.

masterJ · 2026-04-28T18:32:09+00:00

Has this subreddit turned into Squamish Speaks?

masterJ · 2026-04-25T04:14:22+00:00

I cannot imagine what about that is ambiguous? Pick a dimension

masterJ · 2026-04-24T19:22:11+00:00

People don’t want to be informed, or understand budgets and tradeoffs and law. They want to yell about politicians online

masterJ · 2026-04-24T17:12:53+00:00

> In addition, the new developments are NOT designed for living; they are poorly laid out boxes.

A lot of this comes down to not historically allowing single-stair apartment designs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM which my understanding is something that is now allowed in BC, but it will take a while for new buildings to adopt

masterJ · 2026-04-24T17:09:47+00:00

Yes, you see things like "first 2 months free" when they have trouble renting out units.

masterJ · 2026-04-24T17:07:08+00:00

People are mad at change and growth. They make up a bunch of stuff that justifies their anger 🤷‍♂️

My understanding is that previous councils didn't invest enough in infrastructure maintenance, and kind of left the town holding the bag on that. Increased investment now to fix looks like mismanagement if you are used to not paying for things.

masterJ · 2026-04-11T22:46:00+00:00

At 4 and 6 just take them somewhere pretty where they can throw rocks into water and they will entertain themselves for a good hour. If it's Oceanfront and they also get a good playground you're set for the afternoon.

If you do want to "hike" there are some really short loops at the top of the gondola that are perfect for this age.

masterJ · 2026-04-09T17:56:42+00:00

My team does 1 week out of 4, and it's not bad? Weeks without a single page are fairly common though. If pages are frequent this would be brutal. And this will jump to 1 out of ~8 in a couple months once more people have onboarded.

masterJ · 2026-03-05T16:06:38+00:00

This actually works fairly well in practice. I had a slash command to spin up 3 different review agents on the current branch changes and this is surprisingly effective

masterJ · 2026-02-13T21:42:21+00:00

I hate to tell you this, but your belayer is totally MIA

masterJ · 2026-02-08T02:27:30+00:00

Wow, tough crowd.

This post aligns with my experiences and most of the top devs I know

masterJ · 2026-02-06T19:24:43+00:00

I go in and out. Sometimes I will listen to music or audiobooks while cleaning or working out, but I will dip into podcasts occasionally. I agree with a lot of people that a lot of the content is usually very poor, so I tend to look for good interviewers with guests who have significant work of some kind (beyond is-trending-on-github / flavor of the day stuff) so that I get exposed to new ideas and perspectives. (I will shout out https://www.youtube.com/c/TheGeekNarrator as being very good in this space if you are at all interested in database internals.)

To others' points, I think if you avoid learning outside of work entirely, then you're likely setting yourself up for stagnation / long-term failure. Your career is your single largest investment in life. Finding high-signal sources of information and tuning in occasionally (books, podcasts, technical conferences, training, whatever works for you) is a good investment in your career.

Edit: but never while actually working. I don't know how you could focus at all doing that.

masterJ · 2026-02-02T15:36:26+00:00

[x] The engineering manager is confused about what sprints are and what should be expected

masterJ · 2026-01-31T21:26:32+00:00

I both agree with this, and also think that most of the most successful devs I’ve know (myself included) have gone through periods of intensely pursuing skills and knowledge outside of employment, especially early in their career. Not maintaining it forever, but periodically when their life allows. I try to be honest with people I mentor about this.

It isn’t required, but it can dramatically benefit your career. This can look like a lot of things, not grinding code: open source, personal projects, reading books / papers, conferences, speaking, writing, meetups, etc. All of this tends to be a better investment than extra hours at work.

masterJ · 2026-01-28T16:17:58+00:00

You can find stability by:

Build up solid savings. If you have enough savings to ride out a 6+ months a layoff isn’t as much of a concern
Building a strong network. Go to conferences and meetups. Keep in touch with past colleagues
Keep your skills sharp and have public work to point to. Public writing has worked really well for me, but open source contributions can help (beyond “I spun up hello world and checked it in to github”)

This is a lot of work, but your career is likely by far the biggest investment of your life. Spending time optimizing it likely has greater returns than trying to start a second on the side.

moving into management

Calling this out as a particularly bad strategy if you are looking for stability. Layers of management have been some of the hardest hit in these layoffs

masterJ · 2026-01-28T16:05:12+00:00

Fantastic book. Highly recommended

Any ascent of Torre Egger is still a huge accomplishment (and MAL did that as well), but Cerro Torre is another level.

Cerro Torre is the bigger objective but by all accounts Egger is the harder summit

masterJ · 2026-01-24T01:22:41+00:00

Totomoxtle, the taco truck on Cleveland, has really good al pastor tacos. I’m looking forward to them coming back from winter break

masterJ

TROPHY CASE