Goodbye, Redfin

This week I was one of 862 people whose jobs were eliminated at Redfin in the second round of layoffs at the company since the housing downturn began earlier this year. I had been with Redfin for over seven years. I initially worked at Redfin from 2010 through 2013, when I left to escape a specific awful individual. I returned in 2018 after that person left the company.

When I left Redfin in 2013 I felt awful. I hated that one person had been able to ruin what was otherwise the best place I had ever worked. When I was able to come back five years later I was elated. While I had been gone the company went through an IPO and a lot of growth, but it still felt like returning home.

Tim and GlennFor me Redfin wasn’t just a place I worked—it was part of my identity. I honestly believed that I would be at Redfin until I retired. In hindsight I guess it was foolish to get emotionally attached to a workplace, but I just couldn’t help it. I loved Redfin. I loved the product, the mission, the passion, the transparency, the people… everything.

Here are just a few examples of what I mean when I say that Redfin was more than just a job for me.

At our last big all-company in-person meeting in January 2020 before COVID screwed everything up, I brought a squirrel mask to the after-party (a “rabid squirrel” became the company’s unofficial mascot after a 2011 Michael Arrington blog post) and spent the whole time posing with people in my “I ❤️ Redfin” shirt.

It's on like Donkey KongOur CEO Glenn Kelman, who I consider a personal friend, had a number of silly catchphrases that he would say in company meetings, including “it’s on like Donkey Kong!” I spent some of my free time at home making that one into framed Perler bead pixel art, which I later placed in his office.

Even though my job had nothing to do with social media, I outed myself as a Redfin employee on the /r/REbubble subreddit, where most users were particularly hostile toward anyone in the real estate industry. I had the mods give me a custom flair and stood up for Redfin whenever people attacked it without good reason.

rabid squirrel trophyI even spent some of my own money for a freelance 3D designer to make a model of the rabid squirrel from the 2011 blog post that I was going to 3D print and turn into a commemorative trophy to decorate the HQ office. Sadly that is one project I never had the time to finish before my time there ended.

When I shared with my coworkers that I was one of the ones who had been laid off, many of them sent me kind messages with sentiments like “I’m sure you’ll find something great.” While I do feel confident that my unique combination of skills and talents will help me land another good job, nothing will be able to truly replace Redfin for me.

Anyway, I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad or change their mind. What’s done is done. I just wanted to share what Redfin has meant to me, and I guess I feel that putting it in writing like this will help me process my grief. Thanks for reading.

Well, it's Groundhog Day… again.

The Best Time Loops & Why Time Loops Aren’t Time Travel

In the spirit of Groundhog Day, I’d like to share my personal ranking of the best time loop movies/TV shows:

  1. Groundhog Day
  2. Russian Doll
  3. Cause and Effect (ST:TNG episode)
  4. Edge of Tomorrow
  5. Palm Springs
  6. Source Code
  7. Happy Death Day

Now, before you comment “why isn’t Tenet / Primer / [whatever other movie] on your list?!?” allow me a moment explain the difference between what I consider a “time loop” story and a “time travel” story. Although time loop stories do involve time travel, in my opinion they are a distinctly different genre.

  • Time travel: One or more people travel forward or backward through time, usually intentionally. Multiple instances of the person or people traveling through time may exist simultaneously.
  • Time loop: One or more people repeat a relatively fixed period of time over and over, usually against their will. Through any given loop there is only one instance of the person or people repeating the time period.

Even if a story covers the same period of time over and over like in Primer or Tenet, if there are multiple instances of the characters existing simultaneously, that’s a time travel story. And yes, I’ve seen the articles about Christopher Nolan’s claim that Tenet is “not a time-travel film.” He’s wrong. It obviously is. The characters are travelling back and forth through time. What would you call that if not time travel? 🙄

I also want to mention a couple of great video games that use the time loop mechanic: Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and Outer Wilds . I’ve played these each just a bit, but sadly I haven’t had the time to finish either one. There’s also a 1986 novel called Replay by author Ken Grimwood that I’ve read and enjoyed.

Are there other great time loop movies, shows, or video games that I’ve missed? Let me know! I’m always on the lookout for great content in the genre.

Even more collisions and near misses at the intersection the City of Everett refuses to fix

Enjoy (?) this collection of near misses and collisions collected over the past year and a half. The City of Everett has declared the existing traffic controls at this intersection to be “appropriate” and they refuse to make any changes to the design.

Previously…

And of course these are just the ones that happened while we were home and checked the camera after hearing the commotion.

Update: One of my neighbors contacted the city yet again to request some sort of improvement at this intersection and the similar one a block north. Here is the city’s reply, in part:

It appears that no crashes have been reported to the Everett Police at the intersection of 36th Street and Wetmore Ave in recent years. The intersection of 35th Street and Wetmore Ave does have an average of 1.5 reported crashes per year, but only about 1 crash every 2 years results in any injuries. While ideally there would be no vehicle crashes in Everett, the low incidence of injuries in this area is considered acceptable to the City.

Tugboat with stuck horn at Port of Everett

Listen to the tugboat’s stuck fog horn at Port of Everett that kept my neighborhood up all night

Sunday night just as I was about to go to bed, I heard a strange noise coming from outside. It wasn’t too loud so I didn’t think much of it, but then I got a notification that someone had just started a thread on my neighborhood’s Nextdoor page: “Boat horn/siren 11pm?” When I got onto Nextdoor, there were two other threads that were rapidly filling up with people complaining about the noise, which was apparently really loud in parts of the neighborhood. There was speculation that maybe it was coming from a train, or maybe a boat at the Port or the Navy base.

So of course, instead of going to bed I decided to hop in my car and go try to find the source of the noise and get it on video:

It turns out the noise was coming from a tugboat with a stuck horn, as first reported that night by My Everett News:

The tugboat horn did not stop until around 3:30 AM, keeping many people awake for most of the night. In the follow-up story the next day on My Everett News, they included a photo of the offending boat, which you can actually see in my video starting at around 1:25:

Tugboat with stuck horn at Port of Everett

Tugboat with stuck horn at Port of Everett (click to enlarge)

A lot of people must have been disappointed that they missed out on the sound of the horn, because my video turned out to be fairly popular. It was featured on a handful of local news sites, radio reports, and even the national Fox News site:

So I guess I’m officially a video journalist now.

I logged every cup of tea I drank in 2016

For no particular reason, I decided to keep a detailed log of every cup of tea I drank in 2016. I kept track of the time I started drinking each cup, what time I finished the cup, the brand and flavor of tea, the type of vessel I was drinking from, and a few other things. Now that 2016 is finally over, it’s time to share the results. Note that here I am referring only to hot tea. I don’t tend to drink iced tea.

Tim’s 2016 Tea Stats

  • Total hot tea consumed: 7,086 fl. oz.
  • Number of individual mugs: 790
  • Average duration per 8oz.: 1 hour 50 minutes
  • Median duration per 8oz.: 1 hour 37 minutes
  • Favorite brand/blend: MarketSpice Cinnamon-Orange (3,514 fl. oz.)
  • Top hour for tea: 9AM-10AM

I don’t drink coffee, so I tend to drink a lot of strong black tea in the mornings. Meanwhile, the early afternoon is a good time for green tea, as evidenced by the tea type by hour chart:

Tim's 2016 Tea Consumption by Hour

The majority of the tea that I drank in 2016 was from MarketSpice, a local tea company here in Seattle. In a distant second was Tazo, the brand of tea stocked in the office at work.

Tim's 2016 Tea Consumption by Brand

Most of the tea that I drink is black tea. I should probably try to shift the balance more toward green tea, given its numerous health benefits.

Tim's 2016 Tea Consumption by Type

Most of the time when I’m drinking tea I’m sitting (or standing) at my desk, working. At both my workplace office and my home office I’ve got an electric mug warmer that keeps the tea at a pleasing temperature for the entire duration of each cup.

Tim's 2016 Tea Consumption by Vessel

When I’m drinking tea away from home, it’s almost always in my Zojirushi insulated mug, which keeps the tea hot literally all day. Even though I took a lot longer to drink tea when I was away from home, it was always still hot when I finished it.

Tim's 2016 Tea Drink Duration by Vessel

I was also curious whether there’s any sort of seasonal trend to my tea consumption. The answer to that question appears to be “not really, but there was a bit of a drop-off in November and December.”

Tim's 2016 Tea Consumption by Month

Finally, I thought it would be interesting to compare my 2016 tea consumption to data on tea consumption around the world. The best data I could find on this was from a 2014 Quartz story. The catch is that the annual per capita consumption by country data was measured in weight of tea leaves rather than volume of tea drink.

In order to properly compare my 2016 tea consumption to the rest of the world, I counted up the number of cups I drank using tea bags and multiplied it by the average weight of tea contained in a typical tea bag, 0.075 ounces. I also weighed the leaves I typically use to brew an eight ounce cup of loose leaf tea, which was about 0.4 ounces for MarketSpice Cinnamon-Orange. I told you that I like my tea strong.

The total estimated weight of the tea leaves used to prepare all the tea I drank in 2016 came out to 13.5 pounds, nearly double the per capita consumption in Turkey, the heaviest tea-drinking country in the world, and over 27 times as much tea as the per capita consumption here in the United States.

Tim's 2016 Tea Consumption vs. The World

In conclusion: I like hot tea.