jan for ian
A snappy January update written just for you
Why am I baby new year?
We’re well into 2024 now, but that new year shine hasn’t quite worn off. While I’m covering January (which includes the new year of course), I wanted to share a little bit of Ian trivia. If you’ve ever played games with me online, you’ll know that I go by the name babynewyear.
Some people assume I got this name because I was born on January 1st. I wasn’t born on January 1st. My birthday is in May. So where did this name come from? A long time ago, my hair was a lot more blond and messy than it is now.
Combine that hair with my blue eye color and inability to grow facial hair and I start to bear some resemblance to the Baby New Year character from the old claymation Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special.
Does it make sense? Does that look like me at all? I don’t know, but that’s where it came from, and it ended up sticking.
Back to NY
After our stay in Illinois, Cindy and I flew back to New York where I got to take this great photo. Can you believe it? Me! In the big apple!
It has been a very social month in NYC. One nice thing about January is that because so many people were busy and traveling during the holidays, everyone has been in town and pretty available recently. We’ve been seeing a lot of friends since being back, and it feels like we’ve gone to an above-average amount of parties in the past month, especially considering the fickle weather.
New video(s) out, and more to come
I’ve been putting together more videos more recently. It’s a nice thing to be able to work on because it’s not career related and thus less stressful.
I put out two pretty different YouTube videos in January. The first video is me talking about this browser game I made over the holidays. The short version is that I made a little arcade game you can play on your computer. Check it out if you haven’t.
The second video I did was a little weird. Most of you know I like movies. I like watching good movies, but I also enjoy watching bad movies because I can talk over them and crack jokes the whole time. I thought this could be a fun video idea, so I watched this movie called The Cat from Outer Space, and I set up my microphone to record my commentary. I cut my reaction to The Cat from Outer Space into a video. So if you feel like learning about an old Disney movie from the 70s while listening to me talk, consider giving it a watch.
In fact, I liked this format so much that I’m working on putting another one together right now. This next one is going to be about a werewolf movie. The only problem with this format is it takes a while to edit the footage together, so this next one won’t be out for probably another week. Subscribe to my channel so you can watch it when I upload it!
Career stuff
I spent a lot of time in January applying to jobs and doing interviews for software engineering roles. The interviews are funny because I end up talking to strangers on video calls about companies that I never knew existed, which makes it difficult to know if the job they’re hiring for is any good.
On the positive side, I did get a job offer. I’m taking the offer, but the start date isn’t right away, so I’ll continue to be unemployed for a couple more weeks. I’m mentioning it here but not really bringing it up in conversation because fielding questions about this job I haven’t even started yet is too exhausting, and I’d rather wait until I get settled in to start telling people all about it. So please hold any congratulations until I update my LinkedIn.
One last thing.
I went to an art gallery opening this month. It was at the Ryan Lee gallery where my friend Ethel works, and I was shocked to see that I ended up in the background of one of their photos when I was checking my phone! These kids these days can’t get off their phones 🙄
Hope everyone has a fun leap day. See you next month!
congrats!!
congrats on the job Ian!