Blog posts and stories from Gary Button
Our youngest is almost two and he used to sleep well through the night every night. We did sleep train him when he was about 6 months old and he would cry and we would go to him every few minutes and reassure him. It worked well until a few months ago when we think he started to realize he was alone and started to not want to sleep unless we were in the room. So for a few weeks either my lovely…
Sneha is not going to like this one. Somedays I surprise myself and today was one of those days. Usually that is a good thing, I have some skill that I didn’t know or a strength I was unaware of. But today I outdid my absent mindedness, I know I am pretty out there but today was not good. I am currently interviewing but I also have a few other things I wanted to do today, one of the things was to…
This one is a bit technical. Webhooks are really interesting and necessary in today’s webserver building. I think they are mainly used for asynchronous processing or events. They are transient and immediate, and a good compliment to an API. There are many use cases for them, I think some of them are more casual, like there might be a webhook when a user opens a marketing email, then your server…
I am a little anxious this morning, I have an interview in SF and am a little anxious about it. Will I perform well technically? Will they like me? Will I like them? And over the years I have learned two defenses for this type of thinking, one is being grateful for the things I have. It helps to remember what I do have so even if this interview goes poorly I am in a more positive mindset, also at…
I took a few tries to do proper capitalize on the title. I have a few technical blogs I want to write but they take a little longer and require a bit more thought so I am holding off on them. Also the kids have now slept two nights all of the way through so that has been very helpful. I think my youngest is a really really light sleeper, like me, and so I need to be very careful. Ok I was…
Hi, the kids slept a full night and are still sleeping at 6:50 so I feel very lucky. Also our oldest has napped three days in a row and so we went to the park every day to try to get some of his energy out. The results: first day he slept early, second day he slept very late, third day he slept early. What did we learn? I am not sure, I hope we can tired him out on the days he takes a nap. But…
Hi, I found that the domain name muffin-company.com was available (sadly muffincompany.com was taken) and so I bought it and put a little website there. I was going to put random side projects there, just small tools or apps. If you are so included I have also made a newsletter there (powered by beehiiv.com ) and hopefully that it is interested. If you are interested please check it out and sign…
This happened a few weeks ago now so the details are a little more foggy. My lovely wife Sneha and I went to a small trip, a driving trip to Petaluma. Sneha did all of the planning and I just supported, we drove with our two kids and a ton of luggage north of the bay. We woke up on Friday morning, ate breakfast quickly, and left. And the first place we stopped was ‘Train Town’. It is a little…
I got my last job (the one before I launched a start up) around the time of the 2020 pandemic. I was really grateful to get a job right before the pandemic started and earnest and oddly I think the pandemic helped this company (Snapdocs a real estate document company) since there was a spike in digital notarization and the interest rates were super low. In the beginning on 2020 the interest rate…
I remember when people first mentioned terrible twos I thought the idea was a little silly. There is some magic age when kids turn into demons and then sometimes later they turn back into kids (I guess when they turn three?). I do think kids are all kind of different, I was (and still am) a pretty passive person. And I remember one kid from my childhood who got really upset, Scott (I dont think he…
Both of our kids are going through something. Our oldest is currently dropping his nap and so sometimes he doesn’t sleep at school. If he doesn’t sleep then he is very tired at bed time, but also if he does nap then he is extra awake even at 9 or 10PM at night. Also our youngest is almost two years old and he no longer wants to fall asleep by himself, he wants an adult in the room. And he will…
Ok, the last one I think. Here is what we have done so far: Found a company Back of the napkin math and plans Gathered recipes Done some basic market research Created an MVP (one dozen perfect muffins) Told our family and friends about the company Tried a bunch of things for a year and found what worked Scaled and become more profitable One other thing I forgot to mention in the last blog, during…
Ok I think this will be the final blog post about ‘The Muffin Company’ as a start up. Here is what we have so far: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e9d7e35a92e9283f989aa33/653c0b675cf2a031e702bfa8_0*4S1o6ytSfDCwbloK.png Found a company Back of the napkin math and plans Gathered recipes Done some basic market research Created an MVP (one dozen perfect muffins) Told our family and friends about…
To recap, the things we have done so far are: Found a company Back of the napkin math and plans Gathered recipes Done some basic market research Created an MVP (one dozen perfect muffins) Told our family and friends about the company And this is where I find the hardest part, see this chart again:…
We are getting through this well, we have: A company Some back of the napkin math and market research Funding of some kind (or we are working for free) We are getting to my favorite part of the muffin start up, building an MVP (maybe a muffin viable product?) or an MMVP (minimum muffin viable product). I love building stuff, I am an engineer at heart (or a baker) and I love making stuff with my…
I dont know how long this series will be but lets find out. Ok so previously we formed ‘The Muffin Company’ with the help of some lawyers, great. So what next? We probably want to make some kind of plan and secure some funding. We gather a few recipes, we do some really basic math: how much does flour cost, milk, baking soda, etc? How much do muffins cost around town? How much does it cost to own…
I really like start ups, I usually work at smaller size companies, I have twice tried to found a start up. I am not sure why but the idea of making something novel and having control is really interesting to me. Most start ups fail ( https://www.makerstations.io/startup-failure-rate-statistics/ ) and so I am often finding new jobs and all of the start ups i have founded have failed for sure. I…
I think 250 years ago the founders signed the declaration of independence. This is pretty cool, I live in America, I am very American. But other than just patriotism for the place I was born, which is kind of arbitrary, some of the ideals that the founders had were very cool, especially for the time. Here is the first (not very well quoted) part of the declaration of independence (source:…
A year and a half ago I started a company with a family friend, Sameer. Actually about two years ago, maybe even two and a half years ago, I talked with Sameer about an idea he had for tracking the holdings that you have in a retirement account, like if your retirement account was 50% SPY and 25% BND and 25% VXUS. I worked on nights and weekends to see if such a thing was possible technically. We…
I went on a trip with my Grandma and our family, our kids got to hang out with their great grandma and I got to see my cousins. We took a trip to a Santa Cruz cabin and stayed there one night, there were some hard parts, we had to all sleep in one room and I think our youngest is starting to get more active. When I got up at 5AM to pee he started to cry at the top of his lungs, ‘Daddy, Daddy’. I…
A few things up top, Honda CRVs are made (assembled) in the US. Also we were able to find some snacks at Costco, both the fancy trail mix and edamame, so we bought a few and will last for two months. One more thing about name brands, I bought a crappy USB hub on Amazon (USB-A to USB-A) and it worked for perhaps a year but now it broke and so I bought a more name brand one (still pretty cheap) and…
Writing this down before having any coffee so please excuse the lack of coffee related grammatical errors. I wanted to write this down quick because I am worried I might forget it, I have a small queue of topics to blog about, right now it is like three topics deep, but this one jumped to the front of the line (making it a not very good queue). Our youngest got up last night at 2 AM and was crying…
I really enjoy snacks, it isn’t a problem but I do think it pushes me to eat smaller meals. I try not to eat worthless snacks, snacks that are only simple carbs (like chips) seems nutritionally pretty worthless to me. If possible I try to buy snacks that have some kind of protein, fiber, complex carb, etc to have some semblance of healthiness. I also think that snacks that have protein or fat tend…
A few weeks ago we went berry picking, a bunch of our oldest kids friends’ (I hope that is the right use of that) parents made a plan to go mulberry picking. It is one where you go to a far and you pick it yourself. I guess mulberries are this healthy berry that is from India (or greater Asia) that one guy decided to bring back to the California and plant on his farm. We drive out an hour and a…
Writing in my phone because the kids are asleep and I don’t want to risk waking them getting my laptop. Please excuse any phone related errors. We have a whole house water filter system, the previous owners installed it and it works great. Once a quarter (3 months) I need to change the sediment filter, I have a calendar reminder because that is the only way I remember anything. The first time I…
Everyday when I pick up our kids from day care we give them a snack. On this particular day I was picking up only my youngest, I dont remember where my oldest kid was, but I had picked up the youngest kid and put him in the car. He is 1.75 years old. And I think he was in a good mood, I dont really remember the details very much. But we drove and I was picking up boba tea and fried chicken for…
My MIL, mother in law, has a story about how, when she lived with her three kids and two in laws, they would buy six gallons of milk at a time. They drank lots of milk normally, and with chai, as well as she made her own yogurt. It is a nice story and I think she looks fondly back on those times. I didn’t think the story had any relevance to me but I am slowly changing my understanding. I think…
I have often seen the slow for kids signs in different neighborhoods. They are often a neon yellow made of a cheap plastic, sometimes they are shaped like a turtle, encouraging drivers to slow down. I have also seen other signs that serve a similar purpose, ‘drive like you live here’, ‘slow for kids’, etc. And before kids I didn’t think much about them, they are very ugly, but they did usually…
I do feel like I am getting into the meat of being a father. We have moved to the suburbs, we have two lovely kids, and a lot of my day is filled with packing lunches, making breakfast, driving kids to school. Our weekends are filled with play dates, seeing grandparents and families. I have left behind some of my bachelor life, and for me that was the glamorous (but super fun) life of playing…
We went to SF for a party, it was a one year old’s birthday party. It started at 1PM but we wanted to get there early, hang out a bit, and leave late. We knew that it was going to be long day and we would try to get the younger one to sleep in the stroller. So the plan was, leave home around 9AM, get there around 10AM, and then leave around 4PM. And breakfast went well, the kids ate nicely and we…
I have pretty large feed, it is a little annoying since I have larger feet than my dad but am shorter than him. Anyway I remember in high school I wore really big shoes, like size 12, and they would have a little bit of extra room at the end. I thought this was really normal, things didn’t fit me right anyway, I wore really baggy jeans, a really baggy sweatshirt. Since I have become an adult I am…
Ok, let me see how quick I can be, sorry in advance for the spelling and grammar errors. The kids are both asleep, I am listening to the baby monitor, and I have made breakfast, I have also made coffee for myself for I have some variable amount of free time. We will see if I can complete this blog during that free time. Last weekend I went on a vacation with my lovely wife and her family. Everyone…
I love my life a lot. Some days I am sad and I am sure there are both light and dark days ahead for me. But today is one of those days that I like my life a lot, I can feel the gratitude. I am healthy, my immediate family is healthy, they like me for the most part, my extended family is happy and healthy, I love my friends and they are pretty happy and healthy, I like my job a lot, I live in a…
Quote of the day: There is a fine line between a start up being successful and losing all of your money and living with no teeth under a bridge -Gary Button My wife laughed at us not eating fast food. Reading it back I have exaggerated, sorry. We do eat fast food but we try to do it seldomly. I do enjoy In and Out but aside from that I dont think we eat very much fast food. With the birth of our…
This comes from a conversation I had with a coworker a long time ago now which was based on a quote. I do not remember the quote so I will make it up, something like: I must be boring at home so I can live on vacation. -Gary Button And what my style is, and what both of my parents style is, is to eat pretty plainly at home. I try to eat healthy, a slight calorie deficit (if I can), full of nuts,…
These are all hypothetical questions but I am curious what everyone thinks. I love throwing things away but sometimes I throw them away too early. There have been a few things that I have thrown away and then a while later I needed it. But I am wondering, what is the limit one how long you keep something that might be useful in the future? Does it matter how big it is? Does it matter how often you…
I love measuring stuff and my lovely wife wife doesn’t. And all of my hobbies are built around measuring, maintenance, and reproduce ability. I guess that this blog is not very measurable, this is my rock and roll, my water colors. I just write down random feelings and try to work on my writing craft. But all of my other hobbies are pretty measurable. My first hobby is baking and cooking. I only…
I enjoy writing, I am not great at it but it is fun. And I only write fiction, I can’t even imagine writing non-fiction at this point. But fiction suits me, Fantasy comes the most naturally but sometimes I fall into modern day short stories and what not. And one thing that I was thinking was lets say you want to make a story with a wise wizard and a young adventurer. Is the wizard old with a…
I really like quotes, something about them. They have to be pretty succinct but also have to have some kernel of wisdom in them. These are some that come to mind. “A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.” “I took the road less traveled by and this made all of the difference” “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” I dont know where the first one is from. The second on is from a Robert…
Last night I was very tired from hanging out with kids all weekend, definitely the weekends are more involved and tiring because during the weekdays the kids go to preschool and it is lower energy working than taking care of two kids. That being said it was a lot of fun and very fulfilling, I couldn’t really describe the fulfilling part to someone who is inquiring but I feel it in my brain. That…
I went for sinus surgery yesterday and thought it interesting in a bunch of ways. First of all it makes me value my health a lot, I even wrote out a small unofficial will just in case. I know it was very very low probability that anything bad would happen to me but I was a bit anxious going under and not being conscious during a surgery. I haven’t had a lot of surgeries and so this was kind of my…
My oldest son had a wild bloody nose two days ago. It was in the morning, before breakfast, and his nose started bleeding. This isn’t uncommon, he has bloody noses often and so we went upstairs and tried to stop it. And what was unusual is that it took a long long time to stop, maybe 30 minutes. And it was tough, my son started to get upset, Sneha, my lovely wife, freaked out a little and called…
I think that changing behavior is hard, it is really easy to do the same thing you are doing. I think part of it is comfort zone, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_zone and for me I am often in my comfort zone but I do try to get outside of it sometimes. But the main thrust of this blog is that I have lost a small amount of weight. I try to weight myself sometimes, not too often, always in the…
I do really like words, photos, videos. Things that I can look back on, kind of like this blog. I really enjoy printing out photos and having something physical, that being said I dont reminisce too often, but sometimes it is good. Same with photos and videos, I dont post often but I try to take a ton of pictures and videos of my kids. I try to collect older photos and videos of my family and…
Last week was very very hard children wise. Our oldest got a 102F fever and one day was very very sick, he napped an extra five hours that day. Our youngest was healthy but he was not in school because of spring break. So for a day we had two kids at home and for one day we had one day at home last week. And so it is much harder to work, and I felt bad, again having sick children is heartbreaking.…
Our kids are slowly getting older. We have a 4 year old and 1.5 year old now, and it is wild how different they are. And perhaps this is a silly blog since everyone knows this, but they change so fast, especially early in their life. I am not sure how they will change as teenager or older kids but I assume their changes will be slightly less rapid. As kids, again rapidly, they become much harder…
I only have a few minutes before I gotta pick up kids but I thought of a topic yesterday and do not have the mental capacity to do work right now. I did get a root canal today, but that will be the story for another blog perhaps. But yesterday my lovely wife Sneha was cutting apples for our kids. And the way she cuts apples is to take a knife, and make four cuts to the apple, all outside the core,…
We are taking our third flying (it is either our third or fourth) trip with our two kids just now, and I must say that traveling with two kids seems different than traveling with one. It is similar to parenting two kids vs one, there is no switching and getting a break, not a lot of down time except at night (or times like right now when everyone is taking a nap but me). And our plan and…
These are two different topics but I dont have a lot of time so I am going to smoosh them into one blog post. About two days ago I had a very bad case of anxiety, I was dreading this trip we were going to take, I felt like my job was struggling and there was little hope of making a successful company, and I was worried about my family. And this feeling stuck with me for the whole day, I couldn’t…
I think I have learned about myself that I am pretty anti-conflict, in a lot of ways. The other day I was sitting on BART going to SF and there seemed to be a mentally ill person on the train nearby. He was sleeping at first, he did not smell great, but after a few stops he got up and ran around the train for a little bit. He then ran outside, back into the train, and eventually got off at a…