Weekly Notes 2025.16

• This week was my first week back in the office after spending the last week and a half visiting family.
• Monday was mostly spent either in airports, in the air, or preparing to fly… for the first time ever, I flew home from visiting family in Ohio instead of driving, which meant I had to go through ORD on my way back to central Illinois. Overall the flights went well, but I definitely don’t enjoy sitting in airports. I was ready to be home.
• Wednesday morning I had the pleasure of giving a tour of our ops center to our AWS reps while they were onsite for a visit. I’ve given tours off and on to various vendors over the past year, and was requested to step in once again. I find it fun and engaging to explain what our products do, and how they are manufactured.
• Thursday and Friday I primarily spent helping a team at work track down a customer issue. I think by Friday evening/Saturday morning we came up with a good solution, and I spent part of the day Saturday doing testing from my work-from-home setup (I never fully tore down my test equipment from during 2020-2022).
• Saturday morning, after coffee, it was time to start catching up on yard work, followed by work around the house. A downside of travel is definitely the number of things that pile up!
• Over the weekend I also decided that I need to watch my diet more closely again. I noticed myself gaining a few extra pounds over the past two months, and I want to get back to what I consider a healthy, comfortable weight.
• Sunday, after church and shopping, I decided to try out RuneScape: Dragonwilds. I’ve been an on-again/off-again player of RuneScape (now RS3) for years, and whenever Jagex offers a new game I normally at least try it out. I can see how Dragonwilds could be fun, but I’m not sure if it’s a game I’ll keep playing longterm. It seems to me to take longer to progress than I really have time for with my current workload.
• Inadvertently, Sunday afternoon I also found a useful new piece of software. I was planning to use my trusty ScanSnap to scan and file mail from while I was gone, but the scanner refused to work right on my Mac. I could have attempted to use my Windows machine, but let’s face it, I try to use that as little as possible, and primarily for gaming if anything. So I did some research, and after a little experimentation, landed on using NAPS2 on Arch LInux, which worked like a charm. I may actually move to using my Linux laptop for this work going forward, as I’ve been unhappy with my macOS-based workflow for a while (ScanSnap -> File System -> DEVONThink).
• … And, it looks like we might be getting some bad weather this week (hello Spring storms)… 😞

11 Years with Todoist

Today is an interesting anniversary for me, one that I never thought to keep track of until about a year ago. You see, on a fateful (but otherwise mostly forgotten) day 11 years ago, I began subscribing to Todoist Pro.

I don’t entirely recall at this point how I stumbled upon Todoist, though I do generally remember why. At the time, I was working for InSource Technologies as an embedded software developer, and I was finding that the amount of tasks & projects that I was keeping track of at work, along with those at home and at church (where I was heavily involved as a volunteer), were making me feel like I was constantly forgetting things.

Weekly Notes 2025.15

• Monday morning was spent hiking with my sister and second cousin, followed by some meetings, and then some afternoon canoeing! I definitely did not pack appropriately for warm weather and canoeing, which means I was definitely wearing a polo and jeans. I’m sure I was a sight to behold!
• Tuesday morning, my brother, sister, and I flew out of Charlotte to Fort Wayne, so that I could spend the rest of Holy Week with my family. Tuesday afternoon involved a little work, but mostly shopping for groceries for the remainder of my stay, and unloading my suitcase. My sister is (thankfully) kind enough to let me stay at her house when in the area, which is much nicer than a hotel (and more cost effective!).
• Wednesday was pretty standard; remote work, combined with laundry. I normally prefer to not do laundry while traveling, but since I only used a carry-on for the trip, I had to make an exception.
• Thursday and Friday included additional remote work during the day, combined with services in the evening.
• Saturday was overall fairly chill for me. I went with my sister to color eggs with some family friends in the morning, and in the afternoon my dad and I worked to troubleshoot a computer at my sister’s business. It took us a while to find the issue, though eventually we realized that somehow a RAM stick had come unseated. Problem solved!
• Saturday evening I also started showing my brother how to use Hugo to create a basic website. So far it’s mostly just a landing page, but I’m hopeful that he’ll eventually come to enjoy working on his site as much as I do mine!
• Sunday was Easter, which meant being up very early for sunrise service! My sister (and mother) convinced me to sing in the choir, which my sister is the director of, which meant I had to be to the church even earlier than normal… but, it was fun! And afterwards, we got to enjoy an Easter breakfast!
• Sunday for lunch we had smoked chicken, which was delicious (thanks mom & dad!), and then followed up with a fairly relaxed afternoon. I spent some time assisting with IT-related efforts at my parents’ and sister’s house, as I normally volunteer to do when visiting.
• And that brings me to Sunday evening (now) as I’m writing this! I think we’re going to play a few games this evening, but otherwise we don’t have much planned.

2025 Easter Sunday Hymn: I Know That My Redeemer Lives (LSB 461)

This post is the fourth and final of my 2025 Holy Week posts, this time with one of my favorite hymns for Easter Sunday:

I Know That My Redeemer Lives (LSB 461)

1 I know that my Redeemer lives;
What comfort this sweet sentence gives!
He lives, He lives, who once was dead;
He lives, my ever-living head.

2 He lives triumphant from the grave;
He lives eternally to save;
He lives all-glorious in the sky;
He lives exalted there on high.

A Digital Home

Yesterday, in my post on Blogging Expectations, I mentioned the concept of a website as a virtual home, and wanted to expand on it.

I like having a singular place on the internet that I can point people to and say “This is Justin’s virtual home. You want to know what Justin is thinking, or what’s going on? Start here!” And I hope that’s been reflected in my blogging and my site design…

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2025 Good Friday Hymn: Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted (LSB 451)

This post is the third of my 2025 Holy Week posts, this time with one of my favorite hymns for Good Friday:

Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted (LSB 451)

1 Stricken, smitten, and afflicted,
See Him dying on the tree!
‘Tis the Christ, by man rejected; Yes, my soul, ’tis He, ’tis He!
‘Tis the long-expected Prophet,
David’s Son, yet David’s Lord;
Proofs I see sufficient of it:
‘Tis the true and faithful Word.

Blogging Expectations

A few days ago I ran across the post Blogging Expectations by Kev Quirk, and a quick read told me that it was something I wanted to add my commentary to.

…Okay, I just glanced at the date on Kev’s post. “A few days ago” was over a week ago. Apparently my backlog of post ideas is taking longer to review than I anticipated.

Anyhow, today I re-read Kev’s post, and (of course) followed the links to the posts his thoughts were based on, and a few thoughts stuck out to me.