It has been a long, long time since I have reread any of these posts, and longer still since I wrote any.
Mom died at the end of 2017 (or was it 2018?). I owe her a separate post. She stayed in her home in Torrance until the end, with Susie's help. She would fall and not tell us. Once (thanksgiving) she fell the day before we drove down, and we got a call from Susie, who had stopped by to check on her. Becky called Lisa, who went over and helped clean up (Susie had gotten her upstairs and into bed, after cleaning her off since Mom had been lying on the floor for 24 hours unable to get up and had soiled herself), Becky flew down, and we continued driving down. Mom didn't want to see a doctor. We fed her in bed for a few days, and she was able to get about and take care of herself. Inexplicably, we let her. A few years later it happened again, this time she had an emergency device on a string around her neck, and the paramedics came and helped her. They wanted to take her to the hospital, she said no. She fell again the second day, and this time they insisted on taking her to the hospital. Again Becky and I flew down. This time we just stayed there, working from her home and taking care of her. The doctor suggested hospice, Mom wanted out of the hospital, and she had some serious problems-- spinal injury, inability to swallow. We set her up in a bed in the living room and spoon fed her for two months. She was ok at first, but never regained her ability to eat or stand up, and was starting to lose full comprehension of her situation. She passed a few days before Christmas.
After she died, at work they cancelled the Noto project and I had to find some other project in i18n. No one really seemed interested in me (a sign I should have heeded) so I transferred to assistant tools. The first project went ok from my perspective, but I didn't get a good review on it, and the PM failed to ensure it was a project the conversation design team really wanted, and soon left, so the work was in limbo. My manager set me up as TL of a new project with a team of three others, but one member left Google due to family issues, and the rest of us took a long time getting a product together. My manager was thinking, I think, six months, but it was 2-1/2 years, so a clear failure from his point of view. Once again poor reviews. In the fall of 2021 it got canceled and I hung on in assistant tools working on other things waiting to see if the other teams we collaborated with on it (speech synthesis and conversation design) would be able to find funding. They got a promise, but no signature, and eventually (due to poor planning by Google around the end of COVID) Google hit financial difficulties and it was canceled for good.
Then in January 2023, while I was down in LA helping Becky deal with the house, Google laid me off, along with about 12,000 other employees. This is where the years of middling reviews (I was always told I was doing a good job, yet the numbers were always not great, and when I'd point this out my managers would insist I was doing a good job and would get a bit annoyed) pushed me into the disposable 5%. Since Lillian had been asking about retirement, and my job (after the project I was TL for got canceled) was not that motivating, it seemed time to retire. So I took the severance and am now moving forward as a retiree. I find that I don't miss work, but that I'm also not much more productive at home than before. Nothing really has changed at home, which is a tragedy, but in this respect the entire 35 years here have been a tragedy, in the truest sense of the word. Financially we seem ok so if anything I think I should have retired 5 years earlier, but I was just too nervous about not having employment. We still have some things to take care of, transitioning to medicare and the retirement health plan Lillian has through Stanford is the main thing. Other than that things seem fine. I don't find myself with too little to do, and I don't seem inclined to work on programming projects at all, which just shows me how burned out I actually was (I'd worked pretty hard on the failed project I was TL for).
Partway through COVID Nick and Rose got married, last year Rose graduated, they moved to SF, and she got a job at Google (neither she nor Nick were impacted by the layoffs). Then this May they had a daughter, Jade. So Lillian and I are now grandparents. Nick is a very dedicated father and enjoys caring for Jade a lot, which makes me happy. For some reason I seem to be holding back with Jade, not jumping at (or requesting) opportunities to hold her, for instance. I'm afraid I'm preparing myself to be the friendly but distant grandpa. It's an easier role that requires less of me, and the fact that I'm setting myself up for that makes me sad. I'm feeling that I'm kind of getting a bit more distant from Nick and Allie too. Lillian is much more proactive, and has monthly breakfasts with Nick, for instance. I rarely seem to talk with N&A about anything important. My relationship with them is a bit better than the one I had with my father, but I don't feel like I really know them, and I'm not sure they really know me, or are all that interested in knowing me. I want to be accessible but I suspect I'm not. Anyway, Nick's a father now, at the same age I became a father. Quite a future ahead of him, I think he'll be grateful to have had the opportunity to be a father. I certainly was, and am.
So, anyway, eight years of life history there. Too bad I've neglected blogger really, it was good to read a bit of my thoughts from long ago. Maybe I'll write here again.
