Weekly Notes 2025.12

• This week is even lighter (on content) than last week!
• Early in the week, I finished reading Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Overall, very interesting read, and I’d definitely suggest it to others!
• At work, we released a new product documentation website that I’ve been lightly involved in, based on Docusaurus, a FOSS project from Meta that I’ve been pretty impressed with.
  • We built this in a very similar way to how I deploy my own website: markdown files in a git repo, with a build & deploy pipeline on push to AWS (S3 + CloudFront). I’ve been pretty happy with the overall design!
• Personally, I’ve spent some more time playing piano again this week, and even started working on learning some new songs!

Weekly Notes 2025.11

• I don’t have much to report on from work this week. I was in-office every day, and ended up doing some remote work on Saturday/Sunday too to catch up on an issue.
• Part of my work for the week included getting back involved in a software project that I’ve worked on historically, but have not had as much time for in the past few months.
• Over the weekend, when not working, I listened to this month’s ATP Member’s Special, which was all about both why the three hosts have websites, and how they create their respective sites.
  • I won’t spoil it, as this podcast is intended to be a perk for members who support the show, but I did have two takeaways: I have a website for similar reasons to the hosts, and my posting setup is simplistic by comparison!
• On Sunday, I became curious to see if I could get screenshots of not only what this website looked like over the years, but also what other websites I worked on looked like. This involved using the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine, and I was surprised to find just how far back their database ran!
  • I added some of the screenshots for this website to my About page, for those interested.
  • At some point, I’ll post images of how I got started in web development, but I haven’t decided the place or the format yet.

Weekly Notes 2025.10

• Wow… it’s already been another week? 😮
• On Monday, I was scheduled to help some friends at a local church with some minor electronic repair after work. It took a little longer than I initially expected, but it was good to catch up, and it’s a skill I enjoy using.
• The middle of the week was pretty normal, and there’s not really much to report. I was in-office every day for a combination of meetings and catching up on some projects.
• Friday I worked remotely. I wanted to enjoy the last very nice day (for at least a little while), and so used my breaks to take walks around my subdivision.
• Friday evening saw some pretty strong storms come through the Midwest; thankfully, nothing more than rain and wind near me!
• Saturday was a pretty relaxing day at home, where I didn’t do much outside of reading and going for a few walks. The weather started cooling off, though it was still nice enough to be outside in a short-sleeve shirt.
  • My book of choice on Saturday was Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. I heard about it earlier in the week, specifically because of Meta’s attempt to limit its promotion, which of course had the effect of making me curious about the book. I’m about half-way through, and so far it’s a captivating read.
• On Sunday, by the time I left for church, there was snow on the ground! It’s amazing how fast weather can change in the Midwest this time of year.
• For the first time in a long time, I decided to make stir fry on Sunday. I think it was a success… I enjoyed the taste, though I definitely wasn’t as fast at preparing the food as I thought I would be.
• Over the weekend I also played piano for a little while at home. It’s been quite a while since I really did that either, outside of a few times when visiting family.

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…