From the category archives:

family

We Adopted Again

by Pete Abilla July 12, 2008

Our little baby boy was born June 23, 2008. Lakin (pronounced “lay-kin”) is our 8th child and we brought him into our family through the blessing of adoption. For long-time shmula readers, you might remember that we just adopted Mylie in November 2007 and we adopted Preston in November 2006. Yup, we did it again, [...]

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Visual Management and Self-Reliance

by Pete Abilla January 25, 2008

One of my primary goals in life is to teach my kids to be eventually good, productive, and self-reliant adults.  One area of life-skills that my wife and I are focused on in teaching our children, is teaching them the principle of work: how to work, the value of work, to take ownership over their [...]

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We’ve Adopted a Baby Girl

by Pete Abilla November 9, 2007

Our little baby girl was born yesterday.  Mylie is our 7th child and we brought her into our family through adoption.  For long-time shmula readers, you might remember that we just adopted Preston last year.  Yup, we did it again 1 year later, and we’re very, very happy. The last month has been a humbling [...]

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Halloween 2007

by Pete Abilla November 1, 2007

Tradition in our family is that daddy (me) takes the kids out to trick-or-treat.  This year was so fun.  I’m so proud of my kids.  Below are some pictures that make me really smile. Here are the 3 younger boys — my superheroes — Batman, Superman, and Spiderman: Here are all the kids: From left-to-right: [...]

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Shmula Now at eBay

by Pete Abilla April 27, 2007

I resigned from my previous position with Ancestry.com; after considering 3 offers, I accepted a position with eBay.  Our family will still be in Utah (eBay has a large office here), but I’ll most likely travel to other offices also.  I’m very, very excited to be at eBay.  From a high level, I’ll be leading [...]

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Queueing, Disneyland, and FastPass

by Pete Abilla March 29, 2007
This entry is part 14 of 28 in the series queueing theory

In a previous article, I discussed the Psychology of Queueing and my experience at Disneyland while on vacation with my family.   In this post, I want to briefly talk about FastPass at Disneyland, in the context of Queueing. FastPass is a feature that Disneyland offers its customers, wherein a customer is invited to obtain a [...]

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Psychology of Queueing & Disneyland

by Pete Abilla March 26, 2007
This entry is part 15 of 28 in the series queueing theory

I went on vacation last week to Disneyland.  We had a lot of fun.  It was also a time to learn how organizations like Disneyland deal with queueing challenges, especially with systems under high stress and load.  In this post, I want to cover the Psychology of Queueing and how Disneyland satisfies several of the [...]

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Shmula on Vacation

by Pete Abilla March 23, 2007

My family and I have been in Disneyland all week (since March 18 until March 23).  This has been a really fun break — I love spending time with my family.   While on my vacation, I’ve made it a point to see how Queueing works in theme parks, such as Disneyland, where a system [...]

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Simplifying Shmula

by Pete Abilla February 18, 2007

I’ve needed to unclutter my life of non-essential things, interest, and activities: I need to simplify my life.  So, yesterday and today, I decided to do two things.  First, I unsubscribed from 36 blogs; and second, I decided to break linkedin connections of strangers I don’t know. Unsubscribing from blogs was gratifying.  My criteria was [...]

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