2016 Year Review

2016 was a pretty full year for me.  It was one of my first ever with long term habit building and execution of ideas as my focus, and I can’t wait to continue on that path in 2017.  I don’t think I published one of these last year, but seeing as this blog has become one of my primary tools for keeping track of personal growth I’d like to make it annual practice.

Graduated

I finally finished all of my Bachelors of Computer Science requirements at DePaul.  They were significantly delayed due to my full time work schedule (DePaul restricted my course load to part time because of my job) but what matters is that it’s complete.  Overall I enjoyed my time studying at DePaul and do feel I was able to build some solid CS fundamentals there. That being said I grew old of the academic world and rejoiced in being able to focus all of my efforts on building real and useful software in the world.

Work

I left my roles as a developer in trading and as a systems engineer at DePaul for a new development job in March.  I’ve been there for about 9 months now have gotten to work on some pretty cool things. The company is a great one that’s made the consciousness shift towards remote work really elegantly.  I’ve enjoyed working with my team and will continue on there in 2017.

Fully Remote

This year also marks the first time all of my work has been remote.  Previously I had mixed some office time in with at home work, but now I’m fully on my own.  This really suits my personality type as I enjoy long uninterrupted blocks to work, vs. the meeting/office centric world most are subjected to.  

Kneadit

A big goal of mine was to finish the build of our massage booking app, Kneadit.  After losing our developers (ok actually I fired them due to incompetence), in an effort to cut costs I took on finishing the project myself.  This has been the largest iOS project I’ve built and it’s completion forced me to do a lot of learning about payment processing, iOS design, and of course the system administration to build a redundant backend/API.  It wasn’t always pretty but I’m proud to say that as of today we are in live production-ready testing and have several Massage Therapists lined up to begin serving customers. In 2017 we’ll look to grow the user base and determine if the Chicago market is worth pursuing further.

Food Truck King -  ftkchicago.com

This is a project I started with a friend, and is around 50% complete.  The premise of the service is to allow people (mostly office bound workers) the ability to save time and order takeout from Food Trucks that are nearby to their office.  It’s a service I wish I had access to in my days of office dwelling, and we are hoping to bring it to the streets of Chicago in Spring of this year. If you’re interested in updates check us out at ftkchicago.com  and get on the mailing list.

Speechbytes and RoboChef

The Speechbytes project has been a lot of fun for me.  I’ve kept my hands off of most of the code (handling only backend server work now)  and drove the development of two apps over the finish line. The first is RoboChef, and accessible iOS game build for children who need to practice their speech.  Children play this cute and entertaining game and are prompted to speak certain words throughout their gameplay.

Their sound clips are then recorded (by the game)  and shipped over to the Speechbytes Dashboard, a web based service built for Therapists.  The Dashboard allows a speech therapist to view all of their clients, play their sound clips and assign ‘homework’ sounds to practice even further.  

The dashboard is just about done, but not live yet.  Jump on the mailing list at https://speechbytes.com if you want more info.

The game itself can be downloaded for free and played at https://itunes.apple.com/dm/app/robochef/id1168242044?mt=8

Travel

I didn’t do a crazy amount of traveling this year.  Dominican Republic, San Francisco, St. Augustine Florida were all about week long trips. Right at the end of the year I flew to Miami, and will be here working until February of 2017.

Sailing

Continued sailing my Vanguard 15 on Lake Michigan for the summer and learned quite a lot.  Even took some lessons on a larger boat throughout the summer. In the fall, I was able to simultaneously sell my smaller Vanguard and purchase a 1984 Seafarer 22’ at an end of summer discount.  Really looking forward to putting her back in the water next spring and getting some good experience on a larger boat.

Sold truck

The days of my ridiculously large and hilarious pickup truck are unfortunately over.  I bought a small trailer for my motorcycle and thus no longer needed the beast to haul my bike to the track.  A sad day indeed but glad to be rid of such a mechanical liability.

Track Days and Competition License

I was able to pull my bike together in time to get licensed to race competitively this spring.  I spent the summer going to track days (not sanctioned races but open tracks) and doing significant work on the motorcycle.  The summer ended with a blown up engine (totally my fault) and a wild weekend swapping the bad engine/transmission out for one I bought on ebay.  The bike’s running now and will be ready to race again in spring.

Real estate

The investment property went more or less smoothly all year.  I had to perform a myriad of minor repairs over the first half of the year and then was able to secure an awesome manager in the Fall.  Not having to manage the day to day issues with the building has freed up a good amount of my time to focus back onto work and acquiring other buildings.  Unfortunately the Chicago market has been disenchanting (more on that in another post) so I’ve started researching deals out in the Denver area in hopes of finding good cash flow.   I still believe prices have a long way to fall in the next few years so I don’t anticipate finding a great deal any time soon.

Fitness

I spent almost the entire year in competitive volleyball leagues either indoor or at the beach.  As for my lifting, I was able to set personal bests in all three compound lifts (Bench/Deadlift/Squat) and am looking forward to returning home so I can keep up my progress.  I’ve grown to really love the mental challenge of lifting heavy weight, and find it at better motivator than the desire to look better etc. Either way it’s a habit I plan to continue on into this year.

Trading

I reopened my futures trading account to gain some more experience trading currency futures.  Though I’ve been only marginally profitable, actively trading is a great mental exercises and I do feel my discipline and instincts continuing to improve.  In 2017 I plan to take larger more long term positions and finish the year net profitable by at least 5%.

As for my not so active trading, I’ve gotten almost entirely out of US equities as the market has roared to all time highs.  It’s essentially a Daoist/Austrian technique to ensure I have the maximum amount of liquid capital available for when the markets inevitable take a dive.  I’ve also began a plan of purchasing deep out of the money options to protect against such a market correction. In 2017 I’m going to automate this options strategy and try and sell it to other traders to use.

Next Year Plans

I have plans to continue to build on most of those categories in 2017:

Work - Up my skills on a few different technologies and keep improving

Apps-   Get Kneadit, Speechbytes and FTK launched and profitable on a monthly basis.

Fitness - Build on my habits and push my lifting numbers up at least 25% by end of year.

Sailing - Have an awesome time learning on my boat in Lake Michigan.

Real Estate- Continue exploring new markets (Denver/CO)  in preparation for the day prices come back to earth.

Trading - Continue my patience in the equities market while writing an automated trading strategy to hedge tail (large drops in market prices) risk.

Travel - As of now only have plans for Miami (now) and Boulder in Feb/March.  Hoping to do another extended trip in Fall/Winter to either Chile or Hawaii.