The 2016 positivity thread

[pogart]

Cool idea, always good to hear about the joy in other peoples lives. Adds a smile to the planet.
Packed up paints and brushes and dragged Fred back to Hawaii with me, married him, found a new gallery to feature my work and have been trying to keep up with crazy fast sales since march.  Squeezing in a few surf days when I can as well. Winter swells are coming so will be aiming for more surf days : )

[alanp]

Laid to rest some major failures and bugbears.

Moog 960 Sequencer -- built, in Euro960.
Buchla 266 Source of Uncertainty -- built, in Dunno.
Failed first Braids -- fixed.
Failed PT2395 delay -- working.

The major board remaining in the Box Of Fail is the taptempo Rej-delay, which is squarely in the can't be arsed category. Oh, and I still have a bunch of boards that are in the perpetually-delayed, not yet fail category, too.

[mjg]

I started building pedals in 2016, which has turned out to be a fun and rewarding hobby.  Go Team Madbean. 

Quit my long time (15 years) job, found a contract in a small tech company which was good fun for a few months, and now enjoying time off for a few months for school holidays with the kid.  So the later part of the year has been relaxing and a good change. 

Oh, and I bought a new pair of wire cutters the other day.  Using them is like a unicorn is gently caressing the back of my PCB, removing wire with its magical sparkly horn.  It's amazing.  The new cutters make me happy. 

[playpunk]

I'm had a really good year in many ways. My family brings me joy every single day - having a 5, 3, and 1 year old is really awesome. My youngest is sleeping, finally, and it's amazing what a difference sleep makes. Each of my kids brings me joy, and I can't imagine a better crew of little dudes and dudette.

I picked up some nice gear this past year - my first year of nice stuff. I got a G & L asat special, a bad cat cub I, a source audio nemesis delay, and put it all together on a big board.

Work wise I have had a ton of interesting and demanding work - which is great. I took my first case in Federal Court as a defense attorney, and am enjoying that work.

I also lost about 20 lbs and successfully completed the Shenandoah mountain 100 in the mountain bike. Rode the road bike nearly 2500 miles, and have run nearly 500 miles.

2016 has been a really full and good year. Hard, but good. One of the best things about my year was last night: we have hired a new pastor at my church, and stepped out and had two services last night for Christmas Eve. We had a bunch of new faces, and 175 people between the two services. I'm excited about our Church and hope and believe we are going to experience a season of renewal and growth.

As we close the year I've been thinking about the Christmas Story - that the Light has entered the world, and the darkness can't overcome it! That Jesus came not to show us how to be good, but to save us.

Happy New Year!