Content Warning: This is a highly personal post about a cancer diagnosis.

On Feb 16, 2026 I was 'prepping' for a routine colonoscopy that was scheduled for February 17th at about 1pm. For those of you unaware what is involved in 'prepping' don't google it, but just know that your Gastroenterologist wants the 'end' of your GI tract 'clean'

This also involves a lot of not eating. So you can get hangry. Or at least most people do. I had felt something wasn't quite right for a while. Nothing I could really put my finger on, I just didn't feel right. So when it came time for the prep it turned out I wasn't really hungry anyway. I couldn't really eat the weekend before either, and had been having issues sleeping. I was stressed about what my colonoscopy would show. At least subconsciously I was worried.

On the day of my colonoscopy the staff at the office were all really nice. I even got a "First Colonoscopy" sticker!

I was wheeled into the procedure room, introduced to the doctor and told to look at the wall. The next thing I knew I was being wheeled out to the recovery room. I laid there for a few minutes and then I saw my wife Emily. I was still a bit groggy from the anesthesia but I was so happy to see her. It was the best feeling.

She came next to the bed I was laying on and the doctor came over. He let Emily know that she may want to sit down. She said she preferred to stand. The doctor then told me that during the procedure they found a tumor.

You have cancer

I let the phrase sink in ... "You have cancer" ... "I have cancer".

The doctor was not very comfortable delivering this news. You could tell this wasn't the type of thing he was used to doing. Emily even heard him saying "at the other place I don't have to tell patients this".

I think he tried his best to be positive about the diagnosis, but honestly it was a pretty shitty delivery. He kept saying things like "you're young" (at the time I was 47) ... "you're good looking" ... "you're married"

I didn't really understand why any of that mattered.

I have cancer

He then proceeded to let me know that the tumor had likely been there for years, maybe five. Had asked me if I had any symptoms, was there anything that felt off. How could I have not known something was wrong. I have cancer and it's my fault I didn't know sooner.

He also let me know that I'd need to have an ostomoy bag. For the rest of my life.

I have cancer ... that's all I could hear.

I cried. I cried in front of several people that I had never met before. I cried in front of my wife.

I have cancer. And I don't know anything about it at this point other than it seems like everyone I know with colorectal cancer died from it.

I have cancer.

I'm going to die

... those two phrases kept going through my head

I cried.

As an aside, I told a friend of mine how my cancer diagnosis was delivered to me. This friend has had many cancer battles / scares during their life. I figured when I told them my story they would say it wasn't so bad. Turns out it was. Even they were like, "Holy Shit. That's awful!"

After a few minutes, and once Emily and I were a bit more able to see the world, I was wheeled out to our car. We drove home. We didn't say much. What is there to even say? I have cancer.

We got home and although I could eat again, I wasn't hungry. I was afraid I'd never be hungry again.

That night I couldn't sleep. Or the night after. Or the night after.

The next day I had a follow up with a different GI doctor. He was basically like, "There's no new information. Why are you here?"

But we had questions. What are the next steps. Who should we contact? What do we do? The one question I didn't dare ask, "Am I going to die?"

For the next 16 days I lived in the grayest of gray areas. I could barely sleep, or eat. I lost about 8 pounds.

Emily and I spent time working to make sure that all of our affairs were in order. Are all of the banking apps installed on your phone? Do you have all of the passwords? Does the car title need to be updated? The title for the house? How do we do our finances?

We make a good team in that we each have our 'assignments'. We're pretty autonomous in those assignments. We'd talked about "cross training" on some of them, especially the financial stuff, but there just never seemed to be the time.

And now it felt like we didn't have the time but were going to have to make it. I felt like I was writing transition docs for leaving a job. But in this case I was afraid of the job I might be leaving.

To use any other word than brutal to describe these days wouldn't do justice to the way we felt. And even then it doesn't really begin to cover it.

During that time we told a few people. A very few people. Telling people made it real. Telling people was like delivering a trauma to them. Telling people led to questions. Questions we didn't have the answer for. Brutal.

I had nights where I would cry. Especially if I was alone. I have cancer, but there were things that still needed to happen. Emily had a major work event that she was responsible for. She had coworkers and friends she was able to rely on, but that didn't mean she didn't have to do things. Away from home. Away from me.

My Aunt had the same cancer diagnosis I do and she was helpful and caring and loving and kind and all of the things you need from a family member. But she didn't know the future. She didn't know if I was going to die. And so when the words, "You're going to be fine" came from her, they were nice, but hollow. I have cancer. I might die. I am scared.

On March 5th I met with a surgeon. Before meeting with the surgeon I needed to have an Abdominal CT scan done. It was completed about a week before I met with the surgeon. I had the results 2 days before meeting with the surgeon. I couldn't look at them. I didn't want to look at them.

The day of the surgery consult came. He was going to tell me the next steps. From what I heard surgery was likely to be my next step. My wife and I went to the appointment, she's been going to all of my appointments with me.

The staff were so nice and friendly and helpful. I started in one exam room and was moved to another exam room. My first thought was, "Oh no, was I in the 'you're going to be fine room' and got moved to the 'You're going to die' room? But the nurse let me know the reason for the move. A simple reason. No big deal. Except it was. It was the biggest deal. But she took the time to let me know the why of the move.

I went through the exam. Emily came back so the surgeon could talk to us.

All of the fear, and horrible anticipation. What ever he said next we were going to work through it. We were going to figure it out.

At the end of all of this, "we" might end up being just "she".

And the doctor said ...

It's actually not bad. We seem to have caught it early. We'll want to do chemo and radiation before reevaluating surgery.

I cried. This time I cried because it was the first hope I'd had in almost 3 weeks. I cried because my birthday was in 2 days and I had friends I was going to hang out with and it will be an actual happy party and not a pre wake party.

Since the surgeon I've seen a few more doctors. An oncologist and a radiation oncologist. Each appointment was mostly what one might expect. A brief conversation about potential side effects of the treatment. Which are pretty horrific if you think about them for too long. I try not to.

My treatment will be 5 days a week for 5 1/2 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy. Reevaluation of the tumor for potential surgery 6 - 12 weeks after that.

I'm sleeping better, but still not great. I eating better, but still not a ton.

And then ... for a few weeks ... nothing. Paper work is getting processed and I'm waiting for an MRI. The important part about the MRI is that it will tell me what stage and grade my tumor is. Once that's completed and the results are read then all of the doctors will have what they need to allow me to officially begin my treatment.

That being said, I have a tentative start date for my treatment. Unless my MRI shows something unexpected, I'll start my radiation and chemotherapy treatments on April 13. Officially. Fifty Five days from when I was told I had cancer to start of treatment. I'm not sure if this is a long time or not. It felt like a long time. A really long fucking time.

As part of the treatment you go in for a prep session. During this session they fit you for the device that blasts your tumor with radiation. In my case they also gave me 3 tattoos. One on either side and one right below my belly button.

I always thought my first tattoo would be of something way cooler 🤷🏻‍♂️

Before my diagnosis I had some plans for this year. I was going to go to PyCon US, PyOhio, and DjangoCon US. I even toyed with the idea of going to North Bay Python.

I won't be able to do any of these. Although my treatment will be done by late May, I'm not sure I can commit to much travel. I'm not sure how I'll be feeling.

Also, anywhere from 6 - 12 weeks after the end of my treatment I get re-evaluated for surgery. If the tumor is gone and the various docs feel like there's no risk, then surgery might not be required. If there is a risk, then surgery will be required.

The outcome of the surgery will be a colostomy bag that is either temporary (about 6 months) or permanent.

I'm less than 2 months into my cancer journey and there's still so much I don't know. Still so much that just can't be known. And honestly that's the hardest part.

My prognosis is good. My family and I are optimistic. But there's still so much we can't know. We hope that this will be a 'blip' and that by 2027 or 2028 we can go back to what ever normal is. But we just can't know.

One of the things I've really focused on over the last 2 months is trying to find the good things. I saw someone post on Mastodon (sorry, I can't find the original toot) about finding what they called glimmers. Those small things that make you happy.

I try to do that every day. A song I haven't heard in a long time. A friendly face while I'm out and about. A text from a person I haven't heard from in a while. Going for a swim. These are all things that I was taking for granted. I will likely end up taking them for granted again. But for now, I am really trying to be more appreciative of them. I'm trying to be more present.

Anyway, for those of you out there in that are 45+ and haven't gotten a colonoscopy. You should. We seem to have caught this early in the process. My prognosis is good. If someone hadn't told me I had cancer I would mostly have no idea.

Posted by ryan on Mon 06 April 2026

I was hoping to have this written and posted last week, but for Christmas this year Santa brought me a cold which knocked me on my butt for a few days.

I had done a bit of prep, but wow, when I look back at 2025 it was a pretty big year for me personally.

Professional

I celebrated 17 years at my current employer. While this isn't a nice round number sort of anniversary, about 6 months before the actual anniversary date I was promoted to an Associated Vice President and joined the Senior Management Team. This has been a goal of mine since about 2010 and after a lot of hard work (and honestly more than a bit of good luck) I "made it".

In addition to the promotion at work, I also helped to lead a multi department team to a successful upgrade for a major application AND helped to lead a major network migration for our EHR that went really well. Two major projects accomplished in the same calendar year was a pretty good feeling.

We also do annual employee satisfaction surveys and my department had a 96% satisfaction rating. This is a really good feeling as a leader. We get shit done AND people are happy to do it!

Since 2021 my department has consistently scored above 90%. This isn't just me though! I have a great management team that helps to make this happen.

Over this same time period I've had 7 people leave the department¹. Five of them because of retirement. I really like that where I work is a place you retire at more often than not! That, along with the high satisfaction rates, suggest that my management team and I are doing something right.

Django and Python

On the Django and Python side it was also a really big year. In February I spoke at PyCascades in Portland, Oregon.

In September I spoke at DjangoCon US in Chicago, Illinois. This was my THIRD talk at DjangoCon US²

I was also active with Django Commons on the admin team, was a Djangonaut.Space Navigator in Session 5 for 2 amazing Djangonauts, and got to hang out at Jeff's Office Hours pretty consistently (though not as often as I would have liked!)

The biggest accomplishment was getting elected to the DSF Board and then being elected Treasurer of the Board. This is still all very new and I'm trying to feel my way around, but I've got some amazing support and I'm really looking forward to working with the board in 2026 and beyond.

Technology

A few weeks ago I watched Jeff Triplet migrate various infrastructure for DjangoPackages.org from Digital Ocean to Hetzner with Coolify. This got me to dive into that ... pretty deeply. I spent a lot of my December PTO³ working to migrate my servers from Digital Ocean to Hetzner managed with Coolify. I plan to write more about that later, but needless to say, as of December 29, 2025 I had successfully migrated everything off Digital Ocean to Hetzner.

Personal

Music

Watching live music is a lot of fun. My wife Emily and I really enjoy doing this. We didn't get to see as many concerts as we would have liked to, but we were still able to see a few. Kelsea Ballerini (with our daughter Abby) and Benson Boone at Crypto.com arena in Downtown Los Angeles, Sessanta at Acrisure Arena, Third Eye Blind⁴ at a local casino, a show at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee as part of a conference I attended. We also saw about 5 or 6 different bands in 3 days at different venues while we were in Nashville (though sadly we didn't get to see a show on the stage at the Taco Bell Cantina which feels like a real miss!) though we did get to see The Steel Drivers at the historic Ryman Auditorium

We also saw Post Modern Jukebox at the Fox Theater in Riverside. We stayed a few days to get out of the heat of the Coachella Valley, but were shocked to learn that Riverside is only about 15-20 degrees cooler. And when it's 115-120 here it can still be above 100 there!

We still had a great time and it convinced me even more that the wild idea my friend Mario and I had to pitch Riverside as a location for DjangoCon US 2027/2028 was actually a really good idea, not just a wild idea 😀

Hockey

I went to a ton of hockey games. To start the year off I went to the Cactus Cup and saw 4 NCAA Division 1 games in 2 days. The best part was sitting behind the goal right at the glass and seeing just how fast (and LOUD) the game can be.

I was pretty exhausted (but happy) by the end of it.

I also got to see 36 Firebirds home games (regular season⁵ and post season⁶), 2 Firebirds road games (both in San Diego against the Gulls), and was able to attend the AHL All Star Competition at Acrisure Arena in February.

On the NHL front I went to a game to watch the LA Kings host the Seattle Kraken (the Firebirds big kid club) and while I was in Nashville for a conference in November I got to watch the Nashville Predators play the Calgary Flames.

My favorite hockey-related experiences this year though were the Teddy Bear Toss game (even though the Firebirds lost) and getting to greet the players in the tunnel before the game

Baseball

Sadly we only made it out to a few baseball games this year. We saw a few California Winter League games one Saturday in February, and one game out in Rancho Cucamungo to see the Dodgers Low A Affiliate the Quakes play. The Dodgers won the World Series, and that was nice, but I didn't see any of their games in person this year.

Family

This year Abby started her second year of College so Emily and I continue to be empty nesters most of the year⁷

One of my favorite highlights from the year include Abby coming home from college for the weekend for my birthday last March to surprise me. A completely unexpected visit that literally made it one of the best birthdays ever. I read something earlier this year that once your child leaves your home for college, or whatever, they'll have spent about 95% of the time they're EVER going to spend with you. This hit me pretty hard. Like wanting to sob uncontrollably hard. So for Abby to come home to spend time with me for my birthday was the best gift ever.

Conclusion

Looking back it was a pretty great year. Lots of accomplishments, lots of great memories. The year started off with lots of fear and trepidation. I still have that (in spades) but I also am starting to have a bit more hope.

I don't have any lofty goals, and I didn't do the same kind of Theme planning that I've done in the past. This year it just didn't really work for me, so I'm pausing on that exercise.

That being said, if I was going to have a theme for 2026 it would be 'The year of Intentionality'. I've spent more time this year than I would have liked doing things but not thinking about what I wanted to do. I just did them because they were easy or it's just what I always do. For the last few weeks I've been trying (with varying degrees of success) to be more intentional in my actions, and my plan is to continue that into 2026.

Here's hoping to a great 2026!

1. The department is 13 people ↩︎
2. DCUS 2023, DCUS 2024 ↩︎
3. Paid Time Off / Vacation ↩︎
4. yes, they are still a band ... no this was not my idea! ↩︎
5. This includes games for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 season ↩︎
6. just 2025, obviously ↩︎
7. I might just be misremembering, but when I was in college we didn't have this many breaks, and they weren't this long! ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Wed 31 December 2025

With the announced demise of Pocket by Mozilla I needed to migrate all of my saved articles to 'something else' by the end of the month. I've actually tried to migrate from Pocket a few times over the years. I landed on Instapaper for a while, but it never really clicked for me. I tried a service called Devmarks that Adam G Hill runs, and I really liked it, but for whatever reason I stopped using it. I had also previously tried Raindrop.io ... and I'm not really sure what drove me away from it, but it didn't stick for me at the time.

Since I didn't have a choice about Pocket I did a bit of purusing my options, and finally landed on Raindrop.io again. The process of migration is pretty painless. I just export out the links from Pocket and then import them into Raindrop. No fuss ... no muss. Raindrop even checks for duplicates and allows you to not import them!

So, I imported everything (all 11,500+ articles!) and started to incorporate Raindrop into my workflow. This basically just means saving things to Raindrop instead of pocket, and then checking Raindrop instead of Pocket every week to make sure I'm all caught up on my articles to read.

Over the last weekend I was looking at how all of the imported items in Raindrop were put into the 'archive' collection and decided that I could probably do something about putting them into proper collections.

With the help of Claude Code, I was able to put them into better collections. There were some stragglers and I decided that I could categorize them on my own (there were less than 100).

I started going through these last ones I kept coming across articles for iOS7, or an app that I think I liked in 2015 but isn't on the App store anymore. I came across this article (which I also tooted about on Mastadon) from September 4, 2014 with the title What the Internet of Things Will Look Like in 2025 (Infographic). It's wildly naive, but a fun read nonetheless.

Needless to say it was the only gem in the 100 articles that I went through. I had so many saved articles that aren't 'Evergreen'. I then started looking at some of the articles that had been categorized and came across stuff for Django 1.11, Python 3.8, and other older stuff.

These were great articles when I read them, but I don't know that I need them now. In fact, when I looked at my general workflow for using any read-it-later service, I essentially save it to read later. If it's sitting in my read-it-later service for more than 4 weeks I'll either delete or just archive it.

So really, unless I'm planning on doing something with these articles, I'm not sure that I need to keep them. And that's when it hit me ... I can just delete them. All of them. I don't need to keep them. If they are truly impactful, I can write up something about them in Obsidian. If I really think someone else will get something out of my reaction I can write it up and post it. But, if I'm being honest with myself, this is just digital clutter that isn't "sparking" any joy for me.

So, just like that, I went from having 11,000+ links to having 0. And I have no ragrets.

I'm sure there's some deeper story here about physical things and just letting them go as well, and maybe I'll be able to apply that to my non-digital life, but for now, I'm just going to revel in the fact that I was able to offload this thing and just not ... care? Be sad? I'm not sure what the correct term would be here.

Regardless, it was a good exercise to have gone through, and I'm glad I did.

Posted by ryan on Thu 19 June 2025

I was added to a work email that was requesting a not-so-small new project that was going to need to be completed. The problem that needed to be solved was a bit squishy, but it had been well thought out, and it had an importance to it that was easy to see.

There was still some workflows and data that needed to be reviewed, but overall it was on a good path to having a real project feel to it.

One question still outstanding is, what platform will this project be implemented on? In our EHR, or on a separate web app?

During my weekly project review meeting with the Web Development team I let them know about the potential for this new project and that it would likely need to take priority over one of our current projects. The start is still a couple of weeks away so we have time to plan for it (as much as we can anyway). We looked at the project board and determined a ranking of the current projects. We decided on the project that would likely get bumped if this new one ends up with the web developers. And just like that we had a contingency plan for how to plan for this project given our current constraints.

Now, this project may never make its way to the web development team, but having that conversation with the manager, and then during our standup today, to let the team know that this might be something that will need to be worked on by them felt right. No surprises in a few weeks. No randomness about what projects we'll be working on ... just a bit of planning to prepare for something that might never come.

Eisenhower said, "Plans are nothing, planning is everything."

The team appreciated being in the loop about a potential project and being able to align expectations moving forward. I felt grateful that this was brought to my attention well before it was submitted as a request. The requester now has a bit more information on who to speak with internally, and it really felt like we were working together to solve a problem in a very professional way.

I wish all projects started like this. It would make life way easier and not so much like this

Posted by ryan on Sun 15 June 2025

The 2024-25 season for the Coachella Valley Firebirds ended on May 9th with a 2-0 loss to the Abbotsford Canucks. Overall, that series saw the Firebirds score

• one goal in Game 1
• one goal in Game 2
• five goals in Game 3
• no goals in Game 4

This isn't surprising given exactly how young the Firebirds were this season, but it was disappointing.

Coach Laxdal talked a lot about how young the team was and how on any given night we would have anywhere from seven to nine rookies that were in the starting lineup. And in a team of 24, that's a pretty big portion of guys out there who are very young.

That being said the disappointment is palpable the this is the earliest that the Firebirds have ever exited the postseason. Granted this is only their third year but we are typically used to seeing hockey for another seven weeks. When put into that perspective, it is really disappointing.

Still, I think there were some really bright spots from this year, including Leyton Roed, Jani Nyman, Nikke Kokko, Ryan Winterton, and Ty Nelson.

At the start of the season, I did indicate to a friend of mine (who also has season tickets) that I had pretty low expectations for the Firebirds and may have even indicated I wasn't sure that they would make the playoffs. The Pacific Division has 10 teams and 7 of them make the playoffs. I may have been a bit too pesimisitic in that analysis.

During the first round the Firebirds swept the Wrangerls 2-0. This is great, but they did manage to blow a 3-0 lead in game 1. The were able to win that game, but it took two plus Overtime periods (it ended a few minutes into the third OT).

Game two of that series did see the Firebirds win 2-0 with Nikke Kokko getting his first professional AHL shutout, which was great . But it's also a bummer that it took until the 74th game of the season for him to get his first shutout of the season. ¹

In six games, the Firebirds were 3-3. They scored four goals, two goals, one goal, five goals, one goal, and no goals. They were 0-17 on the power play, and they gave up two, count them two, 3 goal leads.

Needless to say, this was just a hard set of games to watch. The season was hard to watch as a fan. The Firebirds would find ways to lose games. In previous seasons these were the games that they would find some way to win!

There was an article in the Desert Sun that spoke about how proud Coach Laxdal was of the players and how much effort that they gave. And I agree, they did give a lot of effort and he spoke about how young they are.

And again, they are young, and missed their captain Max McCormick for basically two thirds of the season. But they did have some veteran players out there Mitchell Stephens, Brandon Biro, Cale Fleury and Gustav Olofsson. Unfortunately it was just too much to try and overcome.

One of the things that Coach Laxdal also commented on was exactly how much younger next year's team might be. And so while I am again very excited about watching hockey in six months, which is just so long away. I am lowering my expectations for the 25-26 season even lower than they were this year. I'm really hoping we make the playoffs, but won't be surprised if we don't.

And that's going to be okay ... because even bad hockey is still hockey. And I love hockey, and even when they lose, I love watching the Firebirds.

1. During the regular season, there was exactly one shutout by Victor Ostman ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Wed 21 May 2025

The Origin of Systems

When thinking about systems it's easy to think that they have always been there, or been that way. This isn't true of course. The systems that are in place were put there, by people. People that made decisions. Decisions are what I want to focus on here.

In general when making a decision about the implementation of a system you would want to engage with the stakeholders of that system. This of course implies that you can identify at least some of those stakeholders.

But sometimes there aren't any key stakeholders other than regulations, or best practice, or some other nebulous thing that needs to be met. These are the decisions I really want to focus on.

The Illusion of Success

Take a security system for instance. The basic tenets of the security system are that it keeps 'something' safe. If the thing to be kept safe is still safe after the implementation of the security system then the people that implemented the system can claim success. They can look at the evidence that since the security system was put into place the thing has been kept safe.

Of course, it's entirely possible that the thing was never in danger, and that the previous system was doing just fine. In fact, it could be that the security system is actually making it harder to keep the thing safe. It's just harder to see because all you're looking at are potentially meaningless metrics like. Questions like is the thing safe after implementation of the security system don't take into account if the thing was 'unsafe' before? This can lead you to think that the new security system must be responsible for the safety of the thing.

Something else that can be happening is that the security system has caused the people responsible for keeping the thing safe to work more hours, hire more people,who are oftentimes keeping the security system running.

Questioning Purpose

The more we look into a system like this, the more we might ask, "Why is it there?"

There can be a couple of reasons, but I'll focus on one in particular. The person ultimately responsible for keeping the thing safe can show with some kind of metrics that the thing is safe with the new security system, whereas they couldn't under the previous system. There weren't any reports or metrics that showed what was going on, which is why the system was implemented in the first place.

OK ... so that's how some systems can be put in place.

User-Hostile Systems

What about systems that are hard to use, or maybe actively hostile to their users? How do those get put into place? I would argue that the reason we see many user hostile systems in place is because they are decided upon not by their users, but by their ability to meet regulations, AND their ability to maintain by a support system. The consideration of the user is secondary, or maybe not even thought about.

Think about any Enterprise software you've ever encountered. Would you say that it was a joy to use? Would you say that onboarding was simple, and that new employees loved to use it? My guess would be no.

Why Bad Systems Persist

So if the users don't like it, why is it in place? Two reasons:

1. It meets some kind of regulation (this could be a government regulation, but it could also be a regulation of a guild, or union, or something else)
2. It's easy to maintain by the support system

For any software that meets these criteria you are likely to have users that don't like the software, because they are always an afterthought. The primary responsibility of the software developers of these types of systems is always the regulators, and the support infrastructure.

The first because they have to keep producing software that is compliant in order to be sold with a specific rating or seal of approval.

The second because if the support team can't easily support it, they're going to find an alternative solution that they can support.

Conclusion

It's a simple decision of maximizing for the people that enforce the rules (regulators) and that make the decisions (support). The users of the software don't matter. At all.

This is why you will see software for widget processing that could benefit from bulk operations, keyboard shortcuts, or being browser agnostic and they just aren't. The only considerations are: Does it meet the regulations? Is it easy to support? If the answers are yes then the users tend to lose out. They don't matter. If the answer is no, then find a competitor that does and move over to them, even if the current system is loved by your users.

Posted by ryan on Mon 31 March 2025

"If you think technology will solve your problems, you don't understand technology and you don't understand your problems"

~ attrib. Laurie Anderson

From a Toot by Jake Rayson

In a previous post, I wrote about how to ask why without sounding like a jerk. This is a slightly related concept (at least in my head).

Sometimes, as technical people, we are asked to solve problems. The more we dig into them, the more we discover that the problem that needs to be solved isn't a technical one but a people one. In many cases, it's just getting two groups to actually talk to one another.

This can be hard and awkward, so people may want to avoid it. Creating a report telling someone they're doing something wrong is way easier. No hurt feelings! However, I've found that the approach tends to create more problems than it solves.

The situation

The situation is a real one, and I'm obfuscating details to help 'protect the innocent'.

At the start of each year, large amounts of new data are needed to be added to a system. The additions are, by their nature, very manual¹ and so the team responsible for them spends much of their time trying to get the data added.

Another team is highly dependent on this new data being added in order to process their widgets². The widgets get loaded into the system and checked to see if the data from team A is complete. If it isn't, then the widget gets flagged. This flag directs the members of Team B to reach out to Team A to get clarification on the state of the data needed to process the widget.

Only, that's not how Team A understands it. While they are furiously trying to update data, there is some basic data that covers roughly 80% of the widget processing data needs that are already available. So, the vast majority of the time, there is no need for Team B to reach out to Team A because the information they need is available in the system to process the widget.

This understanding was either lost or never communicated effectively so Team B would just email Team A with questions about the widget data and then get their answer and move on. This is despite the fact that the information is available in the system for the members of Team B to review!

The leader of Team A asked me if I could 'update a report' to 'remove some of these widgets so Team A could better focus on the work of adding the data'.

I thought that seemed reasonable, so I asked Team B a few questions and then made a bit more discoveries and found out the actual problem, which was that the information needed by Team B was in the system. Team A just needed Team B to do a better job of looking for it and asking questions about the things that were needed instead of everything.

The Solution

I proposed that the leaders from Team A and Team B get together to talk about the issue.

At the meeting, the leader of Team B was horrified to hear what was happening. They had no idea that many emails were going to Team A about questions that the members of Team B should be able to answer on their own.

This is all well and good, but why did it take a tech person to spot this and get the team leadership together to figure it out?

I wish I knew the answer. I think part of the insight I had was the current pipeline of work, how long it was going to create a report, and the need to have the problem solved sooner rather than later didn't line up. At all.

I needed to look for a potential non-technical solution. The other thing that I think happened here is that I wasn't weighed down by any history of interactions between the Teams. I was just trying to gather information. In gathering information I was able to see what the real problem was and that the only solution that made sense was for the two teams to just talk to each other.

The Outcome

During the meeting, Team B committed to retraining staff and helping to make sure that they only reached out when there was an actual question about the data for the widget production. Team A was thrilled with this solution, and now they can focus on getting the data into the system more efficiently and with fewer interruptions. A win-win, all because a tech guy got some non-tech people to talk to one another.

1. yes I would like to automate this, but one step at a time! ↩︎
2. Not actually widgets ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Thu 06 February 2025

This is the fourth part of my How to Watch a Hockey Game Series. You can catch up on previous articles here

Game Outcomes

In many North American sports when reading the standings there are typically just Wins (W), and Losses (L).¹

Hockey is a bit different. When you look at the standings for Hockey you'll see 4 headers:

• W: Wins
• L: Losses
• OTL: Overtime Losses
• SOL: Shootout Losses

As discussed earlier in this series, if a game is tied at the end of regulation, a five-minute overtime period is played. If either team scores during this Overtime period then the winning team gets a Win, while the losing team gets an Overtime Loss (OTL).

If they're still tied then a Shootout is played. Once a winner is declared in the Shootout they get the Win, while the losing team gets a Shootout Loss.

Because of this, values are assigned to each type of outcome:

This might best be shown with a concrete example.

A Concrete Example

Let's say that the Coachella Valley Firebirds have played 39 games so far. They have won 21 games and lost 13 games. They've also played in 5 games that went into overtime and lost. Their overtime losses are one (1) in the Overtime period and 4 in Shootouts. Their record would look like this:

Coachella Valley Firebirds: 21-13-1-4

Points Calculation:

• Wins: 21 × 2 = 42 points
• OTL: 1 × 1 = 1 point
• SOL: 4 × 1 = 4 points

Total: 42 + 1 + 4 = 47 points

The Firebirds play in the Pacific Division of the Western Conference, and the standings might look like this:

Legend: - GP: Games Played - W: Wins - L: Losses - OTL: Overtime Losses - SOL: Shootout Losses - PTS: Points - PCT: Points Percentage

Winning Percent

There are 2 things to look at in the standings: (1) Total Points, and (2) Winning Percent.

The Total Points we've already spoken about so let's review winning percent.

The winning percent is calculated as the Total Points the team has divided by the total possible points that they could have gotten. The total possible points are calculated as the Games Played x 2 (that is, what are the total number of points that they would have if they won every game they played).

That is

    Winning Percent = Total Points ÷ (Games Played × 2)

For example in the table above, we see that the PCT column for the Firebirds is 0.603. This is calculated by the Points (47) divided by GP x 2 (39 x 2 = 78), that is 47 / 78 = 0.603.

The winning percent allows ranking intra-season when teams haven't played the same number of games. After all games have been played, the rankings are determined by the total number of points a team has.²

Conclusion

You should now be able to parse the standings in a Hockey League and be able to tell how well (or poorly) your team is doing.

This is the end of my series (for now). If there are any other burning questions you have about hockey, reach out to me on Mastodon.

1. Football also has Ties (T) but they are exceedingly rare and are only ever displayed when the first Tie of the season occurs ↩︎
2. Depending on the league there are tiebreakers, but that's outside the scope of this article ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Mon 03 February 2025

In a previous post of this series I laid out some basic rules of hockey. In this post I'll hopefully provide some tips on what to watch during your first few hockey games.

What should I 'watch' though?

This is a tough question and depends on if you're watching on TV or in person.

On TV

If you're watching on TV you're limited by whatever the camera and director are showing you. Hopefully they're pretty good at what they do and they'll help to show you what is interesting. You'll also have the benefit of replays. ¹

Watching the action on TV will be your best bet. The commentators will do a reasonable job of explaining the play. For some of the best NHL broadcasts you'll want to watch a Canadian feed. This might not be an option depending on where you live, but in general, watching a Canadian feed of a Canadian team will be really helpful.

If, for whatever reason, you're watching an AHL game² the best broadcasts to watch, in my opinion, are the Lehigh Valley Phantoms called by Bob Rotruck and Cleveland Monsters called by Tony Brown. Each of these is a single broadcaster doing both the color commentary and the play-by-play ... and they honestly get so excited it's hard to NOT get excited with them.

In Person

For your first in person game, just try and follow the puck as best you can. If for whatever reason you can't do that, pick a spot on the ice to concentrate on, preferably near one of the goalies. Which one? The goalie of the team you're not rooting for is a good choice! Then you can just kind of watch the action there.

Keeping in mind the rules start by focusing on just one rule - either icing or offside - for an entire period. Once you feel comfortable recognizing that rule during gameplay, switch your attention to watching for the other rule in the next period. For example, if you spent the first period watching for icing, spend the next period looking for offside plays.

Hopefully after a full game you're able to see them when icing or offside happen. If not, it just means you'll need to come back and try again 😁.

What not to worry about

Hockey is a fast paced game. No, like really fast. Don't worry too much about anything other than watching for the puck, if you can, and trying to pick up icing and offside. You'll see other stoppages in play when a penalty is called. The refs will make hand gestures to indicate the call on the ice and someone will be sent to the box.

Don't worry about whether or not a fight will break out. They don't always, and if they do, each player will be assessed a major penalty and will spend 5+ minutes in the penalty box.

Don't worry too much about learning the positions. The goalie is an obvious one (that's the person with all of the pads, the bigger stick, and the giant, well painted mask in front of the net), but trying to distinguish between a defender and a center ... like just don't worry about it!

Conclusion

Hockey is an amazing sport to watch, whether in person or on TV. It can take a little bit of time to get used to the fast pace, but hopefully this series has given you some tips to enjoy it and understand what's going on.

1. and refreshments that are much less expensive! ↩︎
2. home of my beloved Coachella Valley Firebirds ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Fri 31 January 2025

Game Structure

Hockey has some stuff in common with live theater. No ... really! 😁

They both have dressing rooms and they both have intermission ... but that is probably where the similarities end.

Each hockey game is split into three 20 minute periods. There is an intermission between each period that lasts 18 minutes. During the intermission the players go back to the dressing room to regroup and chat about the previous period a strategize for the upcoming period.

Out in the arena there are chances for you to get overpriced refreshments, stand in long lines to use the facilities, or just stay in your seat and watch the silly intermission games.

Some examples I've seen of silly intermission games are Fuego Pong (like quarters, but with soccer balls and large 5 gallon buckets), ice bowling where a player is put into a giant slingshot on the ice and hudled towards inflatable bowling pins, and the dress up game.

It's also during this time that the ice is resurfaced by a Zamboni to make it nice and clean for the next period.

If at the end of the third period the game is tied then you're in luck because you get free hockey, also known as Overtime. One thing to keep in mind is that the overtime rules during a regular season game are different than a postseason game.

Regular Season Overtime Rules

At the end of the third period there is a 1 minute 'intermission' and then a 5 minute overtime period starts. The overtime period will feature 3 skaters from each team as well as their goalie.

If a penalty occurs in Overtime (or is carried over from the third period) the period starts with four players on the power play team and 3 on the short handed team.¹

Each team tries to score a goal first. If they do, then they win in overtime. If, at the end of 5 minutes of play, the score is still tied then a shootout happens.

In the shootout each team has 3 chances to score a penalty shot. Essentially a skater from each team has the opportunity to try and score a goal with only the goalie trying to prevent it. If at the end of the three rounds we're still tied, we keep sending out skaters to try and get that penalty shot until one team is victorious. The record for most rounds of a shoot out is 20 rounds in the NHL, and 16 rounds in the AHL.

Postseason Overtime Rules

Postseason overtime rules are a bit different. Basically you just keep adding 20 minute periods until someone scores. Once a team scores they have won that game. The longest overtime in NHL Postseason history went into the 6th overtime and was played in 1936 between the Detroit Red Wings and the Montreal Maroons. The longest AHL overtime was between the Charlotte Checkers and the Lehigh Valley Phantoms which went into a 5th overtime period. This game started at 7:03 pm local and didn't finish until almost 3:00 am local the next day!

In general most hockey games don't get past the first OT period. From The 2006 playoffs through to the 2024 playoffs there have only been 52 games that have gone into a second overtime period (out of 1312).

OK, you've got a few basics 'under your belt'. In the next part I'll try and answer the question, 'What should I watch?'.

1. essentially it would be a short Overtime period and probably pretty boring ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Wed 29 January 2025