One of the most amazing perks of working at Stack Overflow is the sabbatical. After 5 years of FT employment, you are entitled to 20 paid days off (outside of normal vacation) that you can spend however you please. My sabbatical officially begins on Tuesday (as Monday is a holiday). Practically speaking, I am out from Aug 31 - Sept 30, returning to work Oct 1st. This is an amazing opportunity and benefit, and I can’t thank Stack Overflow enough for how well they treat employees.

Sabbatical Plans

My plans for this time off are pretty simple (and will be blogged here!):

  • I’m going to unplug from work completely for the entire period. No email, no Slack, nothing. To protect me from myself, I had my AD password scrambed. I’ll unscramble it upon my return.
  • I’m going to relax. Sleep in a few days. Recharge the batteries. Enjoy September.
  • I’m taking cooking classes. Originally they were supposed to start next week, but with hurricane Dorian closing in on Florida as I write this, they cancelled next week’s classes. Totally understandable. I will adapt by taking online classes from America’s Test Kitchen Online Cooking School . Of the online options I investigated, they’re both the cheapest and have the largest course variety and offering. So, hopefully it’ll go well! I’ll be blogging my dishes and experiences, good and bad.
  • I’m also brewing some beer. This will involve some technical stuff (I’m building a kegerator and a temperature controlled fermentation fridge) and I’ll blog about those things as I go as well.

Less Technical in September

I realize that my blog is typically on the topic of programming and management, so this will be a change for a month. I think it’ll be a good one. I’ll try to keep the pace to every few days at the least. We’ll see if I can stick to that. :)

Starting With Hurricane Dorian

Hurricane Dorian is burling towards us right now. My first few days of sabbatical will be detailing my experience with it. This is not my first hurricane, and it’s no longer projected to hit us directly, so it should be an OK time at my house (I’m not evacuating). I really hope it just spins off into the ocean today and ends up not hurting anybody. Damn nature, you scary.

Prepping

So, with that said and explained, I’ll get back to hurricane prep. Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll enjoy coming along with me on my journey in September.