April 2026

"The Green Flame" was snuffed out. My youngest's pinewood derby car did well but did not make it into the final round. He would have finished somewhere in the 5th-8th place range. We're going with 5th. The competition had a change this year, the cars had to be turned in a week before the race. They would be in storage and inspected & weighed during that week. When we turned in the car, it was smooth and would roll with a slight turn to the left. It was ready to win. A lot of hard work by the youngest to polish the axles, align things, you name it.

When we got it back after the race and rolled it on the floor for fun, it would immediately turn hard left and go in circles. I'm not crying foul but something happened to "The Green Flame" while it was out of our hands that week. The fact that it made it as far as it did is surprising. How much energy was spent trying to turn left as it raced down the track? A life lesson... hard work doesn't "always pay off". Sometimes you need a little "luck".

My oldest got to give his Fine Arts competition speech again. This time to a much larger audience for the school's Spring program. He totally crushed it, again. It's really fun to watch him feed off the crowd's energy and reaction. It is not something I would have enjoyed doing at 13. Probably not even today. I can speak publicly without much problem. But it doesn't jazz me up.

He also performed his piano duet and they played it even better! It's such a pretty piece and I'm glad I got to hear it one more time. I hope the duo does something together next year.

Keeping with the oldest boy and Fine Arts, this month the school performed "Frankenstein" by A. S. Peterson. My oldest had a role as a sailor. As soon as he was done memorizing his competition speech he was memorizing his part. He was also working on being the backup for Frankenstein's younger brother in the play. Busy. Busy. Busy.

The play was excellent. All the kids did an outstanding job. The performance of the sailor... he was top notch, unbelievable, Oscar worthy. ;)

We saw the new Mario movie this month. I had pretty low expectations for a sequel and I was wrong. It was a lot of fun and had a lot of "easter eggs" for old gamers like myself. We made a boys' day out of going to see the movie. First was the movie and then we went and ate some wings while watching the Twins' home opener. It was a great day and one I'll keep in my memories forever.

Baseball practices and coaching the boys has been wonderful. I have learned how out of shape I got over the winter. Oof. It's been so nice to be outside, on the ball field, coaching and playing. Work has been stressful. I appreciate being able to leave it all behind and just be on the ball field.

There was some confusion around baseball schedules. Unfortunately, I don't get to be as active with my oldest's team. That was a huge let down for me and him. I'm still there as a coach, just not as much as I could have been. I'm working on trying to juggle and figure out my schedule for the remainder of the season.

Last but not least, I have been given the opportunity to move into an Enterprise Architecture role and will be working on the transition. I'm pretty nervous about it. It's not that I don't think I can do a good job. It's from being disconnected from the teams I have worked with for so long. Being disconnected from actual coding. I've been able to find a good balance of guiding, architecting, doing. Now my doing will change... and I'm not 100% sure of what my guiding will become. I definitely don't want to become an Architect that's disconnected from how the day to day goes. More to come on that.

- Ben