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.

Weekly Notes 2025.02

• I enjoyed reading Manu’s On the importance of friction this week. I don’t really intentionally create friction anywhere in my personal life, but I am somewhat intentional with where I introduce automation.
• I’ve been working on restarting my daily notes habit in Obsidian. I slacked off some during the holidays, and it’s taking effort to remember to jot down my thoughts. I mainly do it for the ability to review what was occurring at a later date, as life can get insanely busy at times.
• This weekend, and into early next week, are very cold. Not the coldest I’ve ever seen, but with windchills that definitely make me appreciate the indoors!
• I spent some time Saturday working on distant portions of my family tree. I enjoy continuing to make progress as I have time, and it’s a project that’s easy to pick up for an hour at a time.
• I keep thinking that the idea of doing a simple Roguelike game for fun & learning sounds interesting, and I spent some more time poking at the idea on Saturday. But I didn’t make much progress…
• Since I’m spending time indoors, I spent a bit of time this weekend looking into markdown-based documentation solutions (web-based). No idea where I’ll land, but the top three contenders currently are:
  • Hugo with the Hextra theme, which I’m quite familiar with, and have been playing around with for over a month now.
  • Docusaurus, which is completely new to me. It takes the static site approach as well, but has some added niceties over Hugo, though with some added complexity in design.
  • Quartz, which looks very similar in many ways to Obsidian Publish (and, to be fair, that’s how I found them - I was looking for a similar offering).
• I very briefly played with adding link posts to my website, and promptly deleted them. The concept didn’t work as well as I thought it might. 😂

Weekly Notes 2025.01

I decided to try out weekly notes again this year, and attempt to find a happy balance between whatever caused me to avoid them by mid-ways through last year, and the alternative, which is going for months at a time without posting, if I’m not careful. 😂

• This was the first full week back at work after the holidays. I worked Jan 2/3 as well, but neither day felt particularly productive, as it was the first time seeing coworkers since before the break.
• Jan 6 marked the 11 year anniversary of my website. I have some ideas for a blog post around recent changes, but it’s still on the back-burner.
• Jan 7 marked my 20 year in-game anniversary for my oldest RuneScape 3 account. I don’t play very often anymore, but I logged in long enough to pick up my 20 year cape. 🎉
• I got obsessed with planning out how to manage my photo library. I think I’ve settled on Immich as my primary location, with Backblaze backups, as it gives me better overall control than Synology, and allows me to store files locally. I like iCloud Photos in general, but I get annoyed at some of the behavior (especially around uploads), and I like having multiple copies of things I find important.
• It’s snowed a few times, so I’ve added “shovel driveway” to my workout routine. 😂

Weekly Notes 2024.17 & 2024.18

• Once again, this is a combined post! I didn’t have much occurring during the week of 2024.17 noteworthy, outside of work.
• This past weekend, when I would have normally posted my weekly notes, I was busy working to finish off some projects that were piling up both at home and in the office. So I held off, instead of forcing myself to write.
• This week was shortened for me; the first 3 days were in-office, then I was traveling to visit family (more on that ahead). The trip itself was long, but I finished off a re-listen to a book I was working on, so the time flew by relatively quickly.
• My primary reason for traveling? This weekend, I had the joyful privilege of attending the wedding of two of my cousins! My cousins (brothers), Seth & Josh, married sisters (Katie & Gloria), on the same day, in a joint ceremony. It was great to be able to celebrate with them, and congratulate them as each couple begins their new journeys in life together!
• Today (Sunday) also included a special event: Lori, the director of the choir at the church I was raised in, retired after 33 years, and many former choir members (including myself), joined in to surprise her, and celebrate her service in song during the Divine Service, and again afterwards at a potluck. 🙂

Read

• Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock

Listened To

• The Talk Show With John Gruber: 399: ‘I decapitated the MacBook Air’, With Federico Viticci