Posted in A8C

Automattic Grand Meetup 2015 – Day 3

Posted on by Scott Stancil

Last night the Automattic Town Hall went until at least 2am, but I left around midnight and went back to the party suite to hang out for a while.  I ended up hanging out talking to people until 3am…probably the latest I’ve been up since before Gia was born in 2013.  It was fun, and I met a lot of people.  Always really good to put faces to names and figure out people’s personalities. Of course, staying up so late meant I missed the A8C 5k this morning. Oh well.

Today:

Posted in A8C

Automattic Grand Meetup 2015 – Day 2

Posted on by Scott Stancil

I posted last night that I was going to skip the movie and hang out by the fire pits…but that only lasted about twenty minutes before I decided to go inside and check things out.   It was a lighter crowd in the movie room than I was expecting, and they hadn’t started playing it yet.  Instead they were just showing the Halloween Power Hour DVD that my friend Vanessa made a few years ago.  I’d given it to Asher (the guy organizing the movie), and he was using it as an intro while people filtered in.  Pretty cool, and definitely sets the mood.  I’m glad it made the cut.

Yesterday evening I gave my Flash Talk (a required <4 minute presentation on any topic), and it seemed to go over well.  I talked about the path I’ve been on for the last few years of turning into a coffee snob.  Although there are a lot of people here who are way more intense about their coffee than I am.  As I write this I’m drinking coffee I made in the hotel room automatic drip machine with a pre-ground packet of Starbucks.  I could wait and get slightly better coffee at breakfast, but I like having it in my room first so I can add MCT oil to boost my metabolism at the start of the day.

On tap for today:

  • Breakfast meeting with my team lead, who I’ve been talking to online since May, but only just met in person yesterday.  When I first interviewed we did it all over Skype chat, sparingly in the evenings over the course of a couple weeks.  I thought that was standard (and it worked really well to do it asynchronously so I could maintain my schedule), but I found out yesterday that it was an experiment on his part, and normally they just schedule a time for an extended chat to get it all done at once.
  • Flash Talks (glad mine is over with, so I’ll just be watching others)
  • More “Let’s Build React Components” class – Having a lot of fun here…learning a lot, and it already helped get me over the initial hump of getting familiar with the React structure so I’m comfortable reading/writing the code now, even if I don’t know all the ins and outs yet.
  • A8C Town Hall tonight – Basically an open forum where we talk about the future of the company
Posted in A8C

Automattic Grand Meetup 2015 – Day 1

Posted on by Scott Stancil

I landed in Salt Lake City yesterday afternoon, and took the shuttle to the Canyons Resort in Park City.  We had an informal light dinner buffet where everyone was just hanging around getting to know each other.  It was tough being a new guy, but everyone is super friendly and excited to be here.

The way these events are structured is that you have your choice of either spending time doing your normal job, working on a specific project with a team (which may not be your normal team), or taking a class.  I opted to take a class on building React components, which is a driving technology behind a lot of what A8C is working on right now.

So that class is what’s going to dominate my schedule for the next couple days.  But on the fun side of things, tonight a group of us are getting together to watch horror movies.  Should be fun.

P. S. –  Here’s the view from my room:

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Panorama of the mountain view of Park City
Posted in Fitness

Army Ten Miler 2015

Posted on by Scott Stancil

Today I ran the Army Ten Miler for the seventh year in a row.  I’m pretty sure it was the seventh, but my numbers could be off.  I need to pull out my stack of finisher medals and count them.  That sounds pompous when I write it out, but I only mention it to highlight the fact that I didn’t get one this year.  I got to the finish line and they ran out.  It’s not like I was at the end of the pack, either, so they were ridiculously short.  They must have left a pallet of them back at the warehouse or something.  But don’t worry, they’ll mail one to me later.

Anyway, I’m on the metro now on my way home.  Once there I’ll shower and start packing for the Automattic Grand Meetup in Park City, UT.  I fly out in the morning!

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Posted in Family

Annual Snead’s Farm Visit (or Pumpkin Plethora Pleases Plenty of Parents)

Posted on by Scott Stancil

A bunch of us get together every year and go to Snead’s Farm in Fredericksburg, VA every fall to pick pumpkins.  They have a ton of activities for kids, and everyone has a lot of fun.  This was only our second year going…we went when Gia was just a few weeks old, but missed last year due to weather.  This year the weather was perfect, though.  A little chilly to start, but warmed up quickly.

Jen and I forgot to bring our good camera, so this was all taken with my phone:

Posted in Misc

Second Post!

Posted on by Scott Stancil

Back to writing on my real phone, vs the emulator.  I could’ve just edited the last post, but I wanted to mention a couple other things.

I plan on trying to post something every day.  I know that won’t happen, but you never know until you try.

I don’t plan on advertising this blog outside of close friends and family.  I’m not trying to keep it private, but I don’t want to feel like I need to write anything special.

And finally, here is a picture of my kids, as promised…one of the few I can find of both of them without at least one looking upset.  Although it is really blurry.

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Posted in Misc

First Post!

Posted on by Scott Stancil

So it’s been a month since I started work at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, and I figure it’s about time I actually started a blog of my own.

I was originally thinking of starting a coffee blog, since roasting coffee is my latest hobby, but I had trouble getting the motivation to start it.  So instead I’m just going to start with a default site and fill it with anything at all…which is kind of the idea behind blogging to begin with.

I’ll still post about coffee, but mostly I’m guessing this will be pictures of my kids.  So Mom, you can follow me here instead of being upset that I’m not on Facebook.

I started the post mentioning that I work at Automattic.  My job there is software testing, focusing mostly on writing automated tests.  And at the moment, one of my first projects is beefing up the testing of the WordPress mobile apps.  So I’m going to try and do most of my posting from the app, which means you can expect more short entries as opposed to long rambling ones like this.

But just because I’m a huge nerd, at the moment I’m writing this post from the Android app running inside the emulator, so I can still use my real keyboard.  Feel free to mock me in the comments below.