Evan Yamoto

Tag: Life

  • Redesign & Branding

    Now that I plan to start working on my site again, I think it’s time to work on my personal branding. 

    I’ve always been a technology generalist when it come to my work. I had some life events happen and it caused me to reflect on things, including my work. I was considering making a career change from a developer to an UX (user experience) designer.  It’s something I’ve always been interested in, but I’ve come to realize that I am best categorized as an UI (user interface) developer.

    I’ve always been passionate about user interfaces and the design of things for as long as I can remember.  I did think I should be a UI developer jobs after my life at Oracle, but there wasn’t much emphasis on UI and the jobs were hard to come by in 1999.  I’ve been working as a software developer ever since then and while I was not officially a UI developer, it’s something I’ve always done unofficially.  It’s what’s allowed me to become one of the most highly regarded members of a team, even when I’m not the best programmer.  Understanding and building good  UIs is what makes something that ‘works’ into something that people enjoy using are more efficient when they use it.

    I enjoy working on the design side, but I’ve also become much more proficient at C# .Net MVC over the past few years.  I’ve become the UI developer at my work and it’s also improved my JavaScript skills as well.  So as much as I enjoy design and UX design, I realized that I’m best suited to focus on my UI skills but remain and grow as a developer. So, a maybe I’m back to being a generalist.. but with an emphasis on UI.

    Now that I have my title (mostly) figured out, I though about updating this site.  I made this site back in 2016 and used a template, that I made a lot of modifications to.  I didn’t want it to be a static site, so I used a WordPress API that was in beta at the time.  I’m sure lots has changed with the technology and I would make this site differently today.  However, I’m not sure if it’s a good use of my limited time right now.

    I think the design has held up pretty well over the years.  And for now, my plan is to back fill this blog with some personal things but also to show some work I’ve done, which is probably time better spent.

    Lastly, I realized that I already have a logo for personal branding.  I’m of Japanese ancestry and I think every family has a crest, called a ‘mon’.  Mine is two hawk feathers surrounded by a circle and is on this site in various places.  They aren’t unique to every surname, but nevertheless, it’s something that helps identify me by name and tradition and I will be using it more platforms.

  • Rebooting – Part 3

    Well, it’s been almost 2 years since my last post so it’s time to reboot and rebrand while re-evaluating life. 

    2020 happened and it’s not even over yet.  Life has changed so much, but I can only think of how fortunate we have been so far.  My family has pretty much been stuck inside since February, but other than that, it’s not too bad.  We have or health, our jobs and things are as good as they can be, but that can all change in an instant.

    I keep telling my kids that:

    1. This isn’t forever
    2. We’re lucky all we have to do is stay at home

    I haven’t had to go through anything like this, but my parents were both in the Japanese American internment camps and had to live through tough times afterwards.  And my grand parents, who were also born in America, lived through the great depression.  So I remind them that even though we all might get a little bored or feel restless at times, we sit at home, watch videos and play games.  My wife and I have both been working more than ever, but it keeps us busy.  Hopefully, things will get better soon and until then, we will keep a positive attitude and keep perspective on life.

    And as for every day life, I’ve been building out my office/guest room for the past few years even though I hardly ever sat in this room.  I can’t say I planned any of this, but it’s worked out great so far.  I posted a picture back in February of my workspace ‘for the next few weeks’.  In retrospect, that was incredibly wishful thinking.

    Another thing I’ve learned to do is to cut my own hair.  I tried to do it a little bit in college and I’ve cut my boys hair every now and then.  But I’ve been getting better at it and I might keep at it when the pandemic is over.

    There’s only a few more months left this year, but there seems to be something new for this apocalypse meme every week.

    Hopefully things start to change for the better soon.

  • Strange things afoot in the OC

    Last week, we decided to go out to dinner and saw something unusual in the sky.  The first thing we saw was a glowing cloud, followed by a few different bright lights and some strange pulsing rings.  We pulled over and watched the last of it pass by and had no idea what we just saw.

    We turned on the radio and I checked Twitter, Facebook etc and it eventually got out that it was a SpaceX rocket launch.  But for a few minutes, we were left to wonder if this was the alien arrival we’ve seen in the movies.  I immediately thought, well, if they came all this way and and they want to destroy us, we have no chance against their technology.  And then we thought, oh well, we’re hungry.  Let’s go eat Chinese food because they’ll be open (which they weren’t, but for a different, non-extraterrestrial reason)!

    It was a really interesting experience.  We went from seeing aliens to welcoming our new alien overlords to wanting to eat Chinese food in a few minutes.  It sure would’ve been nice if Elon Musk and SpaceX announced it because a lot of people freaked out.  And I would’ve made time to look outside to watch the launch and we would’ve ordered Chinese food instead.