2024 in Review

It’s important to pause and reflect every so often to stay grounded and focused. So, each December I look back on the year’s events and summarize them in a blog post. And after doing this again this year, I realize that 2024 was one of reflection, gratitude, and exploration.

I was fortunate enough to go on some epic winter hiking adventures with my dog Pepper in January before she passed away in February at the age of 13. Losing a dog is the hardest thing because we form such strong bonds, but she was an amazing dog that had an awesome life and I’m grateful for all of it. I’m reminded of a pet memorial plaque I saw many years ago that said “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” I spread her ashes in the areas she loved most: my back yard, the sports park behind my house, the public park at the end of my street, and in the stream under the bridge my daughter and I often took her to on the Mill Run trail.

Of course, as an avid hiker who loves to be outdoors, I kept up my same trail regimen afterwards – even more so, because the weather was dramatically better compared to previous years. We had plenty of sunny days and just enough rain to keep everything green for the whole summer. I revisited all of the same trails from 2023 as well as explored many stunning (and often challenging) new ones, including:

• Mono Cliffs Provincial Park
• Boyne Valley Provincial Park
• Hockley Valley Provincial Park
• Smith Property Loop Trail
• Limehouse Conservation Area
• Huron Natural Area
• rare Charitable Research Reserve
• Geo-Time Trail
• Benham Tract
• Britton Tract
• Turner Tract
• Robertson Tract
• Mahon Tract
• Currie Tract
• Cox Tract
• Flemming Tract
• McNamara Tract
• Victory Tract

2024 was also the year of social events. The meetups that fizzled away during the pandemic started coming back in 2023, and this year they were in full force all year long – and even more so than before the pandemic. I attended KW-LUG meetups, tech socials, work socials, hiker meetups, alumni events, gaming nights, and even escape rooms. I don’t there’s been a single week all year where I didn’t attend at least one great social event.

On the academic side, I continued teaching my new IT Professional program at the college during the mornings, including the Server, Cloud, and Automation Technologies (SCAT) course I was very excited to finish designing earlier in the year. Outside class, I spent the remainder of my workday supporting, refining, updating, and expanding curriculum (and other resources) for both the IT Professional and Mobile Web Developer programs. Along with their subsets, these programs comprise the Technology Faculty at the college.

I also volunteered to give a talk at the Kitchener campus graduation to fill in for a guest speaker who couldn’t make it last minute. My ad-hoc talk was entitled “Three Unconventional Tips for Career Success.” I wrote it on my phone during the graduate procession and it ended up being a hit that had the audience laughing throughout.

In addition to all of this, I managed to write some certification exams (CloudNetX, Security+), attend a few online tech conferences (AllDayDevOps, GitHub Universe), and complete authoring my Hands-On Windows Server 2022 book for Cengage. I dedicated it to Pepper. Once I get printed copies of the book, I’ll replace these draft pics with real ones:

Speaking of Windows, I managed to get one of the few Snapdragon X Elite Dev Kit Windows Copilot+ PCs. It’s by far the fastest Windows workstation I’ve used, and after the next Linux kernel cycle I’ll be installing Linux on it natively to dual boot both Windows 11 and Ubuntu Linux. I’ve had plenty of fun in the meantime playing with and developing for the AI features of the Snapdragon X Elite and Windows.

With such great weather for outdoor pursuits alongside the need to support new programs at the college, I took a break this year from the more intensive extracurricular projects I’ve enjoyed in previous years. Instead, I mainly just oversee and guide the developer team, workflow, and cloud strategy for an interesting tech startup in the region, as well as do a small amount of cloud development and workflow automation for them until they can hire more people. In other words, I’m essentially doing what is called platform engineering nowadays. It keeps my hand in the game without chewing up too much time and is a good use of the skillset I built up over the past 6 years (this ain’t my first rodeo).

I also enjoyed plenty of Zoom calls with my daughter and grandson in Australia and will likely do more of them in 2025 once my second grandkid arrives. But on the local front, I must say that – just like in previous years – I’ve enjoyed my neighbourhood and neighbours tremendously. I walk everywhere I can instead of driving, and there’s been no shortage of epic sunsets over the park from my back yard. And as the sun sets on 2024, I’m ready to embrace the opportunities that 2025 has in store. Cheers!