Shattered Glass

Feeling...what? Not sure what label to put on how I feel right now.  I just got home from the Lakeview Robotics team dinner and award ceremony where several minutes of the evening's program were spent remembering Damian. Dawn and I were presented with a framed patch that included the signatures of his team members and coaches. Damian was (posthumously) presented with the "Chain" award for connecting everyone on the team and faculty together. And finally, there was a slide show dedication that was all Damian. I'm sure that his friends had a big hand in putting it together. It was a touching tribute. One that I wasn't really prepared for mentally. Another opportunity to say goodbye. Again...  I love that his coach, Mikhail and his teammates did this for him and for us. To remind me (us) that Damian was important to them, too; that he won't soon be forgotten. At the end of the day, this what I want most - to know that the memory of Damian lives on in others, not ...

Thinking about the war in Ukraine reminded me of the longest I'd ever been away from Damian.  It was in November of 2019 when I spent 3 weeks in Kyiv, Ukraine. I went there for work.  During the summer of 2019, the executive leadership of my company, ETI Software Solutions, made the decision to do a hard pivot in terms of our product strategy. Since the company's inception (1992), ETI has always sold products that were created (read: coded) in-house by our software engineers. While we might embed within our application some 3rd party software, we did this only in places where most software application companies do the same: operating systems (OS) and databases (DB). There are plenty of each available that are either good or very good at what they do. Given the highly specialized nature of operating systems and databases, it's almost always worth it to simply license and use an existing solution rather than code your own. These two exceptions notwithstanding, the rest of t...