Wearing a silly hat, his trusty folding bike at his feet, and using a purple fountain pen, Igor “Began with the end in mind” with the “important but not urgent” task of penning this eulogy, likely starting at 5am. Igor wanted this life, so he wrote it, he reviewed it, he lived it, and he worked with his family, friends, and multitude of mentors, to adjust and tweak it.
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Currently the purpose of my eulogy is to guide me in living my life. As death gets closer, the purpose of this eulogy will transform into entertaining others at my funeral
For many of my roles, I’m still figuring out who I want to be, and how I will achieved it, so this list is not yet in priority order. The fleshed out sections are the easy ones to write, because, well, they are the easy ones to write :)
Dealer of smiles and wonder
Making cards change colors at a spectators command or passing coins through a spectator’s hand – Igor lived to see eyes go wide and mouths gape with wonder. Igor especially loved it when strangers got drawn in against their inner objections, or when a kid having a meltdown, or a grown up looking miserable, forgot their troubles. Once Igor learned magic, that consumed his free time and became his favorite tool.
In 2022 Igor discovered ballooning which was amazing as well.
Back in his 30s he used to juggle lots of things, the coolest of which being juggle fire.
Mostly car free spirit
Igor took a strange pleasure in not driving. Riding his folding bike, or making a long day of public transit with Zach and Amelia. Igor would take the kids on the bus, to the train, to the airport, to ride the airport elevators, just to reverse the process and head home so he could enjoy his kids, and the bus, without spending a dime.
Igor loved living in the city so he could walk Zach and Amelia to their school and local library. Igor also loved the subway station 10 minutes from his home, which when combined with his folding bicycle let him get anywhere in the city car free.
Igor was especially fond of his folding bicycle (even wrote a song) which let him look goofy, be incredibly practical, and carry around the things he loved. Nothing made Igor happier then having the kids on the folding bike.
During Covid-19, Amelias was in a homeschooling pod, and Igor got to ride her to school everyday up a very big hill.
In 2022, Igor biked over 3,000 miles, but in 2023 that number dropped below 300, which his bestie foreshadowed by telling him, “Buying a Tesla for someone who wants to be a car-free spirit is like buying an ice cream maker for someone trying to lose weight.”
Zach named the Tesla Tony (Soprano), and Igor deluded himself believing he was still car-free. After all, Tony did the driving, Igor was only along for the ride.
Igor integrated his roles into the Tesla: Taking the kids on many adventures(manic meatballs, california coast, ashland, yellow deli, camping ), Igor decorated Tony with flowers and bunnies, set it to make fart sounds whenever he received a text, and even gave Tony an AI agent with the Tony Soprano accent. Charging was a drag, but Igor made the most of it: spending his charging time juggling, meditating, sleeping, and even doing kettlebell swings.
Disciple of the 7 habits of highly effective people
Igor became enthralled by the 7 habits of highly effective people, and used it as his personal life guide. He created a 7 habits video series so he could better understand the concepts and teach them to others.
Discipline is a core concept of “Begin with the end in mind” (Habit 1), and Igor’s discipline started strong at the beginning of the day/week/month but he’d often fall of the wagon. Igor realized that was OK, and started his discipline again the next day. This embodied compassion and having grand mother mind.
Fit fellow
Igor knew physical health was the source of his energy and acted accordingly. Every month Igor pledged his weight would be 160lbs, and he put 1000$ on the line to make sure he never reneged on his pledge. In 2024 Igor discovered Terzepatide and from that point forward weight loss was never an issue.
Igor valued his cardio vascular endurance and tried to run a fast 4 miles 2 to 3 times a week. Igor also tried to incorporate biking into his life whenever possible: biking to work, biking to doctors appointments, and even biking the grocery store (which was not efficient nor effective, but enjoyable). Finally, Igor knew the importance of sleep, and always woke up @ 5am. When Igor was having trouble getting enough sleep, he’d cut his caffeine to make sure his body forced him to get the sleep he needed.
It took Igor almost 40 years to get his weight under control sustainably. At his most unhealthy, Igor weighted 230 lbs, and felt terrible. Luckily Igor’s good friend recommended Fat sick and nearly dead and Igor began juice fasting the next day.
In 2022, Igor discovered Kettle Bells - which he loved and became an anchor to his strength!
Igor was incredibly grateful to his friend Ammon for teaching him about the weight pledge, and for being a weight pledge partner for over 30 years.
Emotionally healthy human
Igor understood emotional health is the basis of his stability, and invested heavily. Igor started each day at 5am by recording his blessing in his gratefulness journal, followed by 20 minutes of meditation. Igor closed the day in a similar vein, a final 10 minutes of meditation and writing out what made his day great in his gratefulness journal.
Igor strived for grand-mother mind, which he applied to himself, and others. A grand mother doesn’t judge, she believes people grow, listen whole heartily, encourages, and remains calm like water.
Husband to Tori - his life long partner
Becoming a husband started when Igor met Tori, and then took several twists and turns to get married. Tori values her privacy so this section will be Tori light, and Igor heavy.
Technologist
Igor loved technology - taking copious notes through his technical journeys, putzing with his blog and many small projects. Igor was REALLY proud when Zach got his own website, and when Zach made his first pull request. Igor was also very proud of his first open source pull request for a command line spell checking installer.
Igor loved VIM, the command line and TMUX. His dotfile collection was impressive, and he even made a VIM plugin for OneNote. Perhaps the command line usage was about minimalism, and as a result Igor loved being able to do everything on his iPad using an external keyboard, a makeshift stand and ssh’ing to a cloud based EC2 instance.
Professional
Igor didn’t write this section - but he did describe his dream job and his thoughts on being a good manager. He also wrote up several cool things he’s proud of at work:
Charity Gifting On Alexa, Software as a Story, Staring Cloud Computing, Smile, Cache, and Human meetings.
Family man
Igor used to think being a family man would be easy. Being proud of his family, looking back fondly on time with them was easy, but making the time for them, supporting them, teaching them - that was all really hard. Hard yes, but totally worth it.
Igor realized that when it comes to family, like all things, it’s easy to confuse hours for quality. Being at home playing on his tablet, while the kids played on theirs wasn’t family time. Instead Igor realized the key is having dates, a time he gave the gift of his complete attention to Amelia, Zach and Tori. Date nights were sacred and could be whatever the kid wanted.
Igor also realized that writing about kids in an eulogy is hard as kids are constantly growing and evolving and what you do at 5, is so different at 7 and so different at 10. Here are some things which he totally loved:
- Enjoying them growing up: Seeing as they learned new skills, came up with clever thoughts
- Watching them do things together: There is no feeling better then seeing your kids do things together. When Amelia is scared and Zach lets her sleep in his bed, melts Igor’s heart.
- School: Walking the kids to school daily, going to all the field trips, doing magic for kids.
- Enjoying them being proud of their dad: Greedy yes, but true none the less.
- Amazing when the kids encourage me to do exercise or magic
Father to Amelia - an incredible girl
Things I cherish with Amelia @ 10:
- Seeing how she’s unique and brave (Wearing a tail, and sometimes even a mask)
- Seeing how emotionally mature she is (She wants to be a couples counselor)
- Seeing how strong and physical she is (She’ll do quadrupedics on the trampoline, she’ll carry the kettlebells)
- Taking her out to do photography
- Long walks in the arboretum where we talk about her challenges, pride, and adventures
- Seeing how independent she is
- How she goes on long bike rides (story of Math Agency bike riding)
- How she does quadrobics at night bringing her string and mushroom knife
- Seeing her love of sharks
- Knowing so many shark facts
- Making her own shark suit
- Having a bunch of shark stuffies
Things I cherish with Amelia @ 9:
- Seeing how kind and wise she is
- Seeing how fierce and brave she is
- Seeing her grit and determination
Things I cherish with Amelia @ 6:
- Roller Skating
- Swimming
- Taking her for bike rides
- Reading her Matilda
- Helping her spell
When she was in 1st grade she was very behind in her reading. She barely knew the alphabet and hated reading, and Tori has some dyslexia in her family. In my head I diagnosed her as being dyslexic, and spent a bunch of time studying how to support a dyslexic child, and how best to equip her in a reading world. Luckily, I was introduced to special decodable reading books, and spent 30 minutes painfully reading with Amelia. She went from hating to read even simple words like cat, to volunteering to read to me, to wanting to know how the story ended, to volunteering to read to Yelena and Baba. Watching her pride in seeing how much of a story she’d read, and getting to start a new book - wowsers!
Father to Zach - a wonderful boy
Things I cherish with Zach @ 14:
- Seeing him flourish in high school:
- Improv club
- Fighting for a fair high school election
- Comfort riding the bus
- Seeing him become a rower:
- Leaning in when he fell out of the boat
- Getting strong with land days
- Being able to do exercising with him.
- Excitement about his strength from rowing translating to other physical activities
- Seeing him host his friends:
- Being a DM for D&D
- Tea parties, including the baking
- Helping his friends with their homework
- Seeing him have close friends:
- Max, Tavi, and the twins
- The D&D kids
- Healthy pride in being superior:
- Reading hard books
- Not wearing headphones to be present.
- Seeing how he’s curious and with courage
- Always wants to try stuff (Yellow Deli, Stopping at new creamery; Stopping to enjoy Lookout point)
- Getting to engage with him as a grown up
- Listening to podcasts together
- Very much looking forward to him teaching me more and more
- Words
- Politics
- Social Sciences
- Evenntually, new tech
Things I cherish with Zach @ 12.5:
- Getting to program w/Zach. He’s been taking the programming course from RICE University.
- Taking Zach kayaking.
- Seeing Zach flourish.
- Making a movie with Zach.
- Seeing Zach wake up at 5 a.m. and do an exercise bike daily.
Things I cherish with Zach @ 10:
- Working on his website together.
- Setting up Patreon. Zach was the first to monetize and makes more on Patreon than he does on his allowance.
- Seeing how Zach would set up his Discord services and stream.
- Seeing Zach use GitHub.