Outside computers

I was Lodge Vice Chief of Administration for 2024 to 2025 and then Lodge Chief for 2025 to 2026, which is the top youth leadership position in the lodge.

The thing worth saying about it is that it is a volunteer organization, so nobody has to do what you ask. You cannot fall back on authority because you do not really have any. What you have is whether people think the thing is worth doing and whether you have been reliable enough that they believe it will actually happen. That is a different skill from being in charge and it is the one I use more.

For my Eagle Scout Service Project I planned and led the construction of a veterans memorial wall for Escondido Moose Lodge 1874. I started planning it in February 2022, while I was still in eighth grade.

My job was getting it from an idea to something physically installed in the community. Developing the plan, coordinating the work, organizing volunteers and materials, and leading it through construction. When the plan stopped working I had to adapt it and keep everyone moving. I was in eighth grade and I had no idea how much of a project is just refusing to let it stall.

The finished memorial gives the lodge a permanent place to honor veterans in its community. The project and the Eagle Scout rank were later recognized by the City of Escondido, which presented a certificate of recognition, the City of San Marcos through its city council, Congressman Darrell Issa, and a few other community organizations.

I did all three seasons my freshman year. Football in the fall as a defensive end, wrestling in the winter, distance track in the spring. That was too much and I would not recommend it, but it sorted out quickly which one I actually wanted.

Wrestling is the one that stuck. Four years total, two of them varsity, captain for my last two seasons, finishing around 165. It is the first place I really got that improvement is mostly showing up consistently when nothing is visibly working yet. Wrestling is unusually honest about that. There is no talking your way through a match, and the feedback is immediate and not open to interpretation.

Being captain was the other half. You are not the best guy on the team by definition and the job is not to be. It is mostly showing up before everyone else and holding a standard in February when the season is long and nobody feels like it. That is the same stretch of work that gets a compiler finished, which I did not expect to be true.

These days I train jiu-jitsu, which I had done in middle school before wrestling took over. Coming to it from wrestling is strange, since a lot transfers and some of it actively works against you. The instinct to never end up on your back is correct in one sport and a liability in the other. What I like about it now is that it is a technical problem I am allowed to be bad at.

I listen to a lot of R&B and yacht rock. This is not an ironic thing. It is most of what is actually playing.

What I like about it is the restraint. The stuff I keep coming back to has real musicianship in it and then deliberately underplays it. The chords are more complicated than they sound, the arrangement is doing a lot, and none of it is showing off. Something sounding effortless when there is clearly a lot going on underneath is basically what I like in software too.