Weekly Notes 2025.09

• Another week, another weekly notes update!
• This week I ended up working from home for 4 days. When I returned from my trip last week, I ended up catching Covid, and so stayed home until symptoms had resolved.
• Ultimately, working from home worked out well anyhow, as many of the days I was in remote meetings. My home video conferencing setup is at least as good as in the office, and it’s more comfortable!
• Late this week, the weather started getting nicer, and it looks like the trend will continue into the coming week, with highs potentially reaching 70F, which is almost shocking for early March.
• Over the course of the week, and finishing on Saturday, I re-listened to Team: Getting Things Done with Others by David Allen and Edward Lamont. I am definitely not an expert when it comes to GTD, but I’ve found that as my roles and responsibilities continue to change, the concepts taught in the original Getting Things Done book, along with the team-based corollaries discussed by David and Edward in Team, are a valuable way to keep myself sane, and keep projects on track.
  • At some point, I would like to do more official training. I feel like my self-training has kept me afloat, but that there are practices I’ve struggled to put into use that an official training or seminar might help with. I also may just be idealizing the concept of training in this case, so… 🤷‍♂️
• A good portion of Friday, and this weekend, was spent catching up on emails that from when I was traveling, and that I was unable to finish dealing with over the past week due to meetings.
• The weekend has also included a lot of work around the house, cleaning, and getting back into the swing of things here at home.
• I briefly looked at the app Tapestry this weekend, from the team at IconFactory. I like the concept, but haven’t decided where it fits into my workflow. For Mastodon I prefer using Ivory (I think), and I already have an RSS reader, though I do like the timeline-based approach. 🤔
• Today was also the switch to daylight saves time, which means I’m running on slightly less sleep than I prefer…

Weekly Notes 2025.07 & 2025.08

• I originally had this written up as two separate posts, but ultimately opted to combine it into a single update (you’ll see why shortly - I think it works better as one large update).
• Monday I spent mostly in airports, and flying… I decided a few months ago to take a week-long trip to Brazil to visit some friends. The trip was supposed to start on Sunday, but inclement weather caused my flights to be delayed enough that I didn’t make the flight to Brazil. So, I went 24 hours later!
• Tuesday through Saturday morning were spent at Maresias, a lovely city and beach a few hours away from São Paulo. My time was largely spent enjoying the wonderful environment, amazing beaches, delicious food, and fantastic company! For the first time in a while, I almost completely checked out of work (including email/Slack).
• On Saturday, we returned to São Paulo, and spent time visiting my friends’ family, and the local community.
• Sunday and most of Monday were spent in central São Paulo, which included shopping, more amazing food, lots of traffic, and even a Tchaikovsky concert!
• And then, all too soon, it was time to return to the US. My flight left around 10p local time, and I arrived back in the States early Tuesday morning, then flew back home in the later morning, arriving at my house by ~11:30a.
• Tuesday afternoon I spent attempting to get back into the swing of work, and catching up on emails and conversations.
• Wednesday and Thursday were spent in the office, with a combination of meetings, work, and continuing to catch up on things from my time away.
• On Friday, I only had one meeting, and so I opted to stay home. I also had some work that required dedicated time and thought to complete, and working remotely has been the best way for me to actually make time for such an effort.
• Saturday and Sunday were spent almost entirely at home (with a quick walk as weather allowed), mostly relaxing, with some light housework included.
  • I rewatched Black Blood Brothers on Saturday. I’m not really into anime, but this show I enjoy for some reason.
  • On Sunday I was debating what to watch, and recalled that Beast Games was on Amazon Prime. I’m not a huge MrBeast fan, but I was curious to see what the show was like, and ended up watching the entire season.

Weekly Notes 2025.06

• Not too much to report on this week… my time at work was focused on two primary projects
• Project #1: ensuring that a device intended for limited commercial release is successfully being manufactured. There were a few issues that I didn’t really have time to troubleshoot until within the past week, but by week’s end everything was up and running 🙂
• Project #2: tool selection and working groups for the broader organization. We had a number of national and international colleagues in this week to kick off some tool selection and migration activities, which consumed a large portion of the week. I think we have a path forward though!
• I also got to meet some colleagues that I’ve only worked with remotely before now, and go out to dinner with them on two separate occasions. Overall, it was a good experience, and it’s good to put a personality to a face on my computer!
• This weekend has been fairly uneventful - the weather is turning colder this week, so I enjoyed a little time outside clearing off snow before everything freezes again.

Weekly Notes 2025.05

• The weather continues to shift in Central Illinois, sometimes daily. Monday had highs in the 60s, followed by highs in the 30s-low 40s for the rest of the week. And next week looks to be even cooler, with highs in the 20s-30s. I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much, as it is still Winter. 😬
• My schedule calmed down somewhat at work this week, which was good, because I had a few projects that I needed to be able to devote working hours to.
• There have been a number of meetings and discussions at work over the past week (and extending back to early this year) regarding tool consolidation and/or selection for a number of disparate teams within the organization that will be working more closely together in the future. In my current role, I get the opportunity to speak into some of those decisions, which is interesting, but also somewhat time consuming.
• I’ve been wanting to set up my iPad to be able to function as a light-weight computer replacement while traveling. After an hour or two of work over the weekend, I think I a) like most of the apps that I’ve set up with, and b) have a working solution (combined with a keyboard) for my use cases. I’ll be able to answer email + messaging questions, but that’s about it.
• I really like using emojis as part of my pattern for written communications, and the fact that I don’t have Rocket on my iPad is kind of really bothering me. I have a dedicated emoji button on my keyboard, but it’s really not as seamless as just typing : and typing the name of the emoji I want.
• I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned VueScan on my blog before… I primarily use it for scanning old photographs, but it also has come in handy for general purpose scanning with my flatbed scanner as well. Today (Sunday) I had a document to scan and submit to a website, and it was an awkward form factor which didn’t work with my ScanSnap, and the combination of VueScan plus my (very) old flatbed worked fantastically!

App Selection

This started out as just a set of bullet points, but quickly became too nested, and so I spun it out into a separate section…

Weekly Notes 2025.04

• The work week for me was very busy, but most of my time was spent planning for the part of the org/team I work with, so there’s not much to share.
• We had some international colleagues in town this week, so in addition to my normal work, I had some meetings with them to work through issues that have come up in their territories.
• Thankfully so far I’ve avoided any of the illnesses that seem to be floating around! I’ve had a LOT of coworkers out sick in the last week or two.
• I apparently have nearly hit my GitHub storage limit (500MB?). I think that it’s due to the cache of my deployments being saved, but I’ve not spent much time investigating yet.
• Friday I worked remotely, as I had a lunch scheduled with a friend in town that I don’t get to catch up with as often as I’d like. It was great sitting down for an extended meal, talking about each other’s lives, and the broader community that each of us are involved in.
• The weekend involved a bit of work, which I’ve been trying to avoid. However, there is a project I needed to make headway on, and Saturday/Sunday were the best times to do it. I also got to spend some time soldering and debugging software, both of which I enjoy but have been doing less of recently.
• On Sunday, I ran across Kev Quirk’s question on month in review posts, which got me thinking… does anyone find my weekly review posts interesting?
  • My immediate thought is that a) I hope someone does, although if no one does, it’s not really something that bothers me, because b) the posts are only partially for others. They’re also a public journal of sorts for myself, so as long as I think they’re important, it’s worth me writing them!
  • As I also told Kev in an email, I do genuinely find other’s posts interesting, not only to see what others are up to, but also because I enjoy seeing what tools they are using, etc. It’s another place for me to learn.
• Sunday also marked my first full month with Kagi search. I was curious exactly how many searches I used in January, and was slightly surprised to see that for the month I was at 949 searches. I didn’t actually start using Kagi until a few days into 2025, but that’s an average of around 30 searches a day.
  • I’m actually not sure if I’m surprised that it’s that high, or that it’s that low. I know I use search a lot, which is why I instantly went for Kagi’s unlimited plan. I should note, that does include searches from my computer(s) and my phone.

Weekly Notes 2025.03

• This year was Precision Planting’s annual Winter Conference! I had very little to do this year, but attended a number of the sessions on Tuesday, and then met with colleagues from other offices + vendors & suppliers throughout the rest of the week!
• Some of the meetings included dinners out, which means I had the opportunity to try a few restaurants I’ve not been to before: Joe’s Original Italian & Martini Bar in Peoria and the newly-opened 208 House in Morton, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed!
  • Both restaurants had unique takes on Old Fashioned’s that I greatly enjoyed. I don’t recall the name of either, but Joe’s was some like “Rye Not Coffee Old Fashioned”, and I think The 208 House had an Apricot Old Fashioned? Either way, strongly recommend both, if those are flavors you might enjoy!
• I attempted to switch a few coworkers to Kagi this week. I’ve been using it nearly exclusively for almost a month now, and I continue to be thoroughly impressed with it!
• I spent the weekend largely relaxing, and taking some down time after a fairly hectic schedule during the week.
• One of the topics I spent time on this weekend was game design - I’ve been hooked on a few different YouTube channels with game-design-specific content, and while I don’t think I’d ever devote much time to it (as it’s a very time-consuming project), some of the concepts are interesting to me!
• I also managed to get distracted watching some more of The Office again… I’m now through Season 5.

An Amusing Incident at the Office

I’ve shared this story with a few coworkers and family members, and decided to write up a short post to share with y’all as well. I’ve left out the names of those involved, purely out of a respect for their privacy, and used only titles as descriptions for the story.

As a part of my current job, it is fairly common for me to have meetings with various vendors, and this past Thursday was no exception. As I was walking between buildings to get to a meeting with a vendor that had stopped by our offices while in town, I met one of my coworkers, the IT manager, and we stopped to chat briefly.