Weekly Notes 2025.41

2025-10-19 2 min read

I think I’ll keep this week’s update short and sweet. 🙂
A majority of this week in-office was spent in user acceptance testing of the new systems. My time wasn’t needed quite as heavily as last week though, so I started to get back to a normal work schedule.
Wednesday evening I went out to eat with some of my local and international colleagues that were in town. We enjoyed pizza at Brienzo’s, followed by ice cream at the new-to-me Yeni’s Palarte. (Sorry, no pictures this time!)
Thursday a couple of coworkers and I headed to Yasakani Ramen for lunch. It’s been a while since I’ve eaten there, and I found that my taste for spice has increased to the point that “extra spicy” tastes only mildly spicy to me!
Friday brought a change of pace. I was in the office for meetings, but over lunch and for a while in the afternoon, I also took on the role of tour guide for both some international colleagues, and one of their children. It was an interesting experience explaining what we (and our products) do to someone unfamiliar with much of Midwest farming!
I attempted to spend a majority of the weekend relaxing, splitting my time between catching up on things around the house, personal projects, and a little gaming (StarCraft II again).
Saturday brought rain to the area, and so I spent most of my time indoors, with a few walks between showers.
By Sunday, the temperatures in Central Illinois started to feel like October finally. I enjoyed having nice weather while it was here, but I also like the cooler temperatures!
Sunday started with Divine Service, followed by groceries, as is my routine. After that I grilled some burgers for lunch (well - one for lunch, the rest for later), and finished it off with a bit of ice cream.
And with that, it’s time to prepare for another week!

Weekly Notes 2025.40

2025-10-12 2 min read

After being gone all of last week, it was nice to be home and in a little bit more of a normal routine this week!
However… as luck would have it, I had actually moved my Fargo trip from last week forward, as this week’s schedule needed my attention in-office for training on some new systems.
Training Tuesday - Friday meant that I moved a majority of my normal meetings to Monday, and Friday afternoon. Which meant that my coworkers barely saw me at my desk, even though I was often in the office before they arrived, and stayed until after they left. 🙃
Wednesday evening I went to dinner at a local Texas Roadhouse with some colleagues in town for the systems training.
Saturday morning, I got up and (for the first time in weeks) mowed my lawn. We’ve had just enough rain in the past week to cause it to grow, although only certain patches really needed any attention.
Saturday afternoon I spent some time playing StarCraft II for the first time in years. I’ve gotten in the habit of watching interesting pro-level matches occasionally on YouTube, and wanted to try my hand at the campaign again. It was a fun diversion from the types of games I’ve been playing recently!
Saturday I also spun up an Immich instance on my TrueNAS setup. I’ve talked about Immich in the past, but had not dedicated time to getting it functional again after my server rebuild. After a bit of tinkering, everything is running, and I’m slowly working to rebuild my photo library from a combination of backups and iCloud Photo sync. Since I’m currently heavily in the Apple ecosystem, my opinion is that it makes sense to use the features of iCloud Photos, but I want a functional copy on my own infrastructure in case that ever changes.
And that brings me to today! This morning I attended Divine Service as usual, then did my weekly grocery shopping. After church, I spent more time migrating data to my Plex & Immich instances from backups, and continuing to catch up on work communications from the past few weeks.
Next up: post this, then start preparing for dinner! See y’all next week!

Weekly Notes 2025.39

2025-10-05 1 min read

This week was one of my busier in a while, as I was in-office on Monday morning, then traveled Monday afternoon/evening to Fargo, ND for some meetings with colleagues based out of our office there.
Tuesday morning through Friday mid-afternoon was spent in meetings, some planned, some impromptu, and enjoying interacting in-person with team members that I normally only see virtually. I don’t have much to share publicly from my time in-office in Fargo, so insetad I’ll include some food photos! 🙂
Tuesday lunch: ThaiKota
Tuesday dinner: Pounds
Wednesday morning coffee (from Caribou Coffee) & sunrise
Wednesday dinner: Brewhalla
Thursday morning coffee (from Caribou Coffee) & sunrise
Thursday lunch: Thai Orchid
Thursday dinner: Ziti’s
Friday afternoon snack (cheesecake, courtesy of Sean)
Friday dinner: Berghoff Cafe @ ORD
Upon my return to Illinois, I spent most of Saturday just relaxing, and taking a mental break from the events of the week.
This morning (Sunday) I went to Divine Service, followed by grocery shopping, and starting to catch up on emails, messages, and small projects that I’d put off while traveling.
And with that, it’s time to wrap up my post, and begin preparing for the week ahead, which once again looks to be jam-packed!

Weekly Notes 2025.38

2025-09-28 1 min read

This week will once again be a shorter post, as a majority of the week followed my normal patterns work/life patterns.
I was in-office all week, splitting time between meetings and continued deployment work on the aforementioned ECAD tool.
Wednesday, a group from work visited Jonah’s Oyster Bar for dinner, where I enjoyed my standard spread of Salmon, New England Clam Chowder, and a delightful Old Fashioned.
Also, as mentioned before, in the evenings I spent some time playing the RuneScape Catalyst League. I’m continuing to have fun replaying some of the earlier stages of the game, although the leveling process has slowed down (as expected) as I approach the mid-level in most skills.
Over the weekend, I spent some time catching up on chores that have been slipping through the cracks due to my schedule (and, if I’m honest, choosing to spend time doing more “fun” things…).
And with that… off to begin another week!

Weekly Notes 2025.37

2025-09-21 2 min read

This week’s post is a bit shorter than the last few (which in general isn’t bad in my opinion).
I was in-office every day this week, and split my time between meetings & email (as usual), and continued work on deployment of the ECAD tool I referenced last week, which consumed a majority of my time.
On Monday, the RuneScape Catalyst League went live, and I spent some time (normally an hour or so) every night this week playing it, enjoying reliving the early stages of the game. It’s also really fun to see a lot of players all in the same areas at once, which hasn’t happened in years that I really recall.
I tried to take a walk most evenings this week as well, and continued listening to The Sword of Shannara while out and about. I can clearly see places where the author was inspired by other books in a similar genre, but so far it remains interesting, and I think I’ll finish it in the next week or two.
Over the weekend, I split my time between continuing playing the Catalyst League, working on small projects around the house, and rebuilding my Plex movie collection.
One of the small projects I undertook Saturday was updating all of my various Apple devices to their respective new OSes. So far, the Liquid Glass look is actually somewhat appealing to me, and I am enjoying the refreshed look across my various computing tools. I think the macOS changes are going to take the longest for me to get used to, with some of the iPadOS multitasking changes in a close second.
Today (Sunday) I went to Divine Service, with shopping afterwards, as usual. This afternoon I worked through both my weekly review, and catching up on emails, in preparation for another busy week ahead.
And with that, I’ll set down my… keyboard? (doesn’t sound as cool as “pen” or “quill”), and start a slow preparation for bed! 🙂

Weekly Notes 2025.36

2025-09-14 4 min read

This week turned out to include a nice mix of work projects, local events, and some quality time experimenting with new tools. The weather has been all over the place though… enjoyably cool early in the week, then warming back up to obnoxious for September by Thursday.
Monday was a pretty standard day in the office. After work (and dinner), I decided to experiment with having Claude help me write a status update for my blog (not because I needed help, more because I was curious to see what it would do). I ultimately wasted way more time than it was probably worth, but it was interesting to see what an LLM thought a status update should look like, vs what I would normally post.
Speaking of my status update… it was actually about the weather. 😬 The weather was perfect Monday evening for a longer walk through the neighborhood, and I wanted to remember that when perusing my website in the future.
Tuesday, a group of us watched the Apple iPhone event over lunch. The live translation feature on the updated Airpods Pro looked especially cool, though I would rarely have a reason to use it, and the orange iPhone Pro definitely stood out from the usual color options. Feature-wise though, it felt like a general spec bump/improvement year rather than revolutionary changes, outside of the iPhone Air unveiling. I won’t be ordering one for myself, but the concept is intriguing as a design direction… I’ve been trying to rationalize who exactly it’s for, as I’ve yet to find someone who intends to buy one.
Tuesday afternoon I was asked to sit in on the cultural interview of a candidate for a position at work, after which I and a coworker took them out for dinner at The 208 House, who just happened to have a new menu for us to enjoy (unbeknownst to me until we arrived). The food was delicious, and it was nice getting to know the candidate a little better outside of an office environment.

2025-09-08

I decided to enjoy some of the last of the cooler weather for a while, and go for an evening walk… And was pleasantly surprised by a mostly-cloudless sky, and a bright full moon to keep me company tonight! 🌕

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