Weekend Musings + Hiking in Austin

Hiking in Austin

Hello, happy Sunday, and welcome to my Weekend Musings. I’ve had a few emails from readers over the last couple of months asking for more photos in my weekend musings posts so I’ll be doing my best to make these posts more visual going forward. The photo above is from a hike that we did in Austin yesterday.

One of the things I really appreciate about Austin after living in LA is how close you are to nature even when you’re in the heart of the city. We live in the middle of downtown but are only ten minutes from about ten different hiking spots all that five minutes in make you feel like you’re in a middle of nowhere.

Yesterday we hiked along the to Twin Falls and Sculpture Falls, both along the Barton Creek Greenbelt which is a series of trails running along Barton Creek. The water is beautiful and yes, you can go in it and a lot of people do at several different points along the trail:

Austin Waterfalls

This weekend represents something new that Daina and I are trying, a weekend off. We typically end up working most weekends, which we love doing since our work really doesn’t feel like work, but we still think it’s good for the soul to try to spend a weekend away from our computers. Of course I we still ended-up working a bit last night, and I’ve been doing emails this morning, but hey, it’s a step in the right direction!

This morning we are going to head over to the Colorado River for some kayaking, then I’ll be doing Yoga while Daina does Ballet, and then we’ll probably go swimming. The weather is absolutely beautiful in Austin right now and I’m excited about the day ahead. Of course this is only a small fraction of our lives so here’s a quick update on what’s on my mind this week:

  • Interviewing, interviewing, interviewing – we have four open positions at Fashion Metric and right now our main focus has been interviewing. It has been an incredible learning experience and something that I think we get better at with each person. Most of these are senior-level positions which means we are hiring people with more experience than us, which can be a bit weird but is also incredibly exciting and it is so amazing to see how many bright and creative people want to join the Fashion Metric team, it feels like we really are building a dream team.
  • Working with clients – our API is live and we have clients that are actively using it. This is incredibly exciting and it’s also so important for these early clients to have an amazing experience with FM.
  • Building our company culture – now that we have our own office and a team that’s bigger than Daina and myself we’re thinking more and more about how to create a great company culture. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot before but doing it is a whole different thing. Luckily we have some great mentors and advisors that have done this many times before that are providing really valuable insights as we build a great team and culture.
  • Getting addicted to Reddit – I find that I read Reddit now more than any other site on the net. Here are some of my favorite sub-reddits: Machine Learning, Python, Startups, Oculus, Retrogaming. I wish I could recommend the /r/domains sub-reddit but it’s mostly spam with very little comment activity so I still get all my domain-related news from Domaining.com.
  • I played Galaga yesterday – as many of you know I am a retro-gaming fan and the Wii U has some awesome retro games. One of my all-time favorites is Galaga and I can tell you it is much harder than I remember it, either that or I’m out of practice. They also have the original Super Mario 2 which is called Super Mario Bros – the lost levels, definitely worth trying if you liked the original Super Mario Bros game.

If you’ve made it this far then somehow I’ve managed to make my weekend musings interesting! Enjoy the photos below from our hike yesterday and as always feel free to share your own musings or comment on any of mine!

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Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton