Weekly-Notes on Justin Vollmer

Weekly Notes 2026.15

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:15:00 -0500

Back to the office this week, with some storm spotter training on the weekend, and a bit of gaming!

Goal Progress

Books: 2/18 📚
Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️

Work

I was back to the office every day this week after a week remote visiting family.
Most of the week was split between standing meetings and working through architecture on a few new projects (which I personally find very engaging!).

Personal

Saturday morning I attended a virtual spotter training from the local NWS office (Lincoln, IL). A coworker attended an in-person training a few years ago and strongly recommended it, and I must say, it was very informative. I can see why an in-person training would be more engaging, but this was when timing worked best for me.
Saturday afternoon was mowing (again), and spraying dandelions… I may decide to hire some of the yard upkeep done. I like mowing, but the rest is kind of a slog…
Sunday after church I played MarioKart with a friend online. 👾 We wanted to also play It Takes Two, but the game was giving me issues when attempting to go online…

Weekly Notes 2026.14

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 18:15:00 -0500

Holy Week, 2026! 🌥️

Goal Progress

Books: 2/18 📚
Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️

Work

I was only in-office one day this week (Monday). Otherwise, remote meetings were the norm as I visited family for Easter!
Wednesday - Friday were choc full of meetings, which is abnormal around holidays. However, everyone was finally back from vacations, traveling, etc, and so there was a lot to discuss.

Personal

Monday was the first time mowing this season… seems a bit early, but the grass definitely needed trimming.
Tuesday-Sunday I was in Ohio for Easter with family.
We ended up having Maundy Thursday services without power… made for an interesting experience!
Good Friday was a Tenebrae service. For those unfamiliar, I strongly recommend a) reading about the practice, and b) visiting one at some point. It’s hard to do justice in my own words.
Saturday we held a Mario Kart bracket/tournament with some family friends after coloring eggs for Easter. I… got 4th. 😬

Notable

I decided to see how far I could push “vibe coding” this week (mostly to understand exactly what is possible), and started “building” my own weather app. So far it’s pretty basic, but I’m trying to combine what I like from both forecasting and radar apps.
After hearing glowing reviews from the likes of ATP, I purchased and installed YoLink sensors in my house before traveling for remote monitoring. So far, I’m impressed by their function/ease of use!

Weekly Notes 2026.13

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 11:15:00 -0500

Back to a busier week, combined with preparations for Easter!

Goal Progress

Books: 2/18 📚
Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️

Work

Meetings began picking back up this week.
Wednesday especially was a full day, with various project and planning meetings, and ending with dinner with a vendor (208 House, if you’re curious 😉).

Personal

Not many personal events this week; I’m planning to visit family over Easter, so this week was spent catching up on a number of projects around home.

Weekly Notes 2026.12

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 11:15:00 -0500

This was an overall pretty standard week for me…

Goal Progress

Books: 2/18 📚
Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️

Work

Similar to last week, this week at work was also quieter than normal, due to both vacations and work trips. I’m still catching up on some projects that have been languishing though, so I had plenty to fill my time with!

Personal

Last Sunday, a good friend and coworker was both baptized and confirmed into the LCMS, and I both got to attend, and was honored to be their sponsor! ⛪
Last Sunday was also a bit bittersweet, as two friends who had been in the area for the past 2 months left for Europe… 🛫

Notable

We had a few storms come through the area both last week and this week, and I’ve started out my days recently by skimming the Storm Prediction Center website.

Weekly Notes 2026.11

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 11:15:00 -0500

Daylight Savings Time has arrived! 🌄

Goal Progress

Books: 2/18 📚
Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️

Work

Slightly lighter week in the office; a number of coworkers were traveling for work, so I spent most of the week focused on catching up on projects that needed my input, and working through email backlogs.

Personal

I was finally convinced to order a Nintendo Switch this week. It arrived mid-week, though I’ve not had much chance to use it yet other than a basic unboxing/power-on/sign-up.
I decided to drop the workout/GTD goal trackers from these posts. I like the theory, but I don’t always keep close track during the week, and so it was becoming noise.

Notable

I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but this week I picked up “Morton-opoly”, a Monopoly variant centered around Morton, IL. 🤔

Weekly Notes 2026.10

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 11:15:00 -0500

For the first time in a while, I got to spend at least one day this week heads-down on a project!

Goal Progress

Books: 2/18 📚
Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️
Workouts: 3/7 💪
GTD reviews: 4/7 daily, pending weekly

Work

A majority of this week was reminiscent of the last few weeks in the office; lots of meetings, focused on a variety of projects.
However… Friday was pretty minimal, and I was able to spend a majority of the day heads-down on a project nearing release! It took a bit to get back into that mode, but was fun to get to devote a concentrated period of time to a specific topic!

Personal

I finally had time this weekend to begin working on digitizing old photos again. I didn’t make much progress (only 10 photos), though it’s a start! Below is one such photo, taken in Lakewood, NY in the 1930s.

A couple of friends have almost convinced me to buy a Nintendo Switch. It’s been years since I had any dedicated gaming hardware (other than my Windows computer), but the combination of games and multiplayer options is convincing me.
I also spent a lot of time this weekend catching up on projects around the house, something sorely needed given how distracted I’ve been lately with work!

Potpourri

I ran across this series of courses from Anthropic that appear useful for anyone interested in understanding the current state of LLMs (broadly called “AI”).

Weekly Notes 2026.09

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:15:00 -0500

Another busy week, with a fun team dinner on Thursday to break it up! 🙂

Goal Progress

Books: 2/18 📚
Photos digitized: 5/500 🖼️
Workouts: 3/7 💪
GTD reviews: 5/7 daily, pending weekly

Work

Throughout the week, I continued experimenting with ways Claude can assist with my day to day work. The biggest wins seem to be around daily briefings/summaries, and meeting prep. I have a set of prompts designed that I can execute in the morning, and Claude pulls from previous meeting notes and a screenshot of my calendar to prepare me for the day ahead. It’s far from perfect, but I’m seeing benefits.
I also tried having Claude help me prepare a summary of product requirements, and an analysis of a few different component options. In both cases I was pleasantly surprised by the results, though I had to give a lot of direction to get my desired outcomes (unsurprisingly).

Personal

Not much going on in my personal life; I need to work on rebalancing work and personal time in the evenings.

Notable

On Thursday we had a team dinner at Black Band Distillery; tasty drinks, delicious food, and great company!

Weekly Notes 2026.08

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 11:15:00 -0500

Another short entry this week; keeping busy at work, and unfortunately not spending a ton of time on personal projects.

Goal Progress

Books: 2/18 📚
Photos digitized: 5/500 🖼️
Workouts: 3/7 💪
GTD reviews: 4/7 daily, pending weekly

Work

I mentioned last week that I was exploring LLM usage at work; this week I spent a decent amount of time looking at how to incorporate it into my daily workflow to make things like meeting prep, pulling tasks out of meeting notes, etc easier. I got to a workflow I’m fairly happy with, though I’ll still be tweaking it for the foreseeable future.
I also made some progress on a utility app that I’ve been wanting for a while, but never had time to write myself. It turns out (unsurprisingly, I guess) that Claude Code is capable of doing most of the heavy lifting, as long as I can accurately describe what I want. Writing accurate and well-structured prompts continues to be an area I’m learning…

Personal

My LLM experiments for work consumed a lot of my personal time, though I’ve also been looking at how to use what I’ve learned in my personal life.

Notable

Wednesday night was Ash Wednesday, which started weekly Lenten Services.

Potpourri

I ran across a fun tidbit this week: when Gmail first entered public beta, it ran on 300 Pentium computers nobody at Google wanted. 🤯

Weekly Notes 2026.07

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 11:15:00 -0500

Short entry this week; I’ve been busy with work/personal projects and I don’t have much to share…

Goal Progress

Books: 2/18 📚
Photos digitized: 5/500 🖼️
Workouts: 3/7 💪
GTD reviews: 3/7 daily, pending weekly

Work

This week was particularly busy with project meetings at work; nothing specific to report on.
I mentioned starting to experiment with Claude Pro at work last week. That continued this week, and on Saturday I spent time intentionally attempting to develop an app using entirely Claude Code (with my guidance) to find the boundaries of the current technology. I was overall impressed with capabilities, though it’s abundantly clear that using LLMs requires forethought to actually get outputs you want.

Personal

I’m looking at using LLMs to help augment some of my GTD workflow; still experimental, but I work better with external prompting & conversations vs working through my own checklists.

Notable

Game nights continued this week with some new additions: 5 Minute Mystery and Really Loud Librarians.

Potpourri

I watched this video on agent teams on Saturday to better understand agent team architectures in the context of Claude Code.

Weekly Notes 2026.06

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 11:15:00 -0500

At long last, my schedule started slowing down this week! 🎉

Goal Progress

Books: 2/18 📚
Photos digitized: 5/500 🖼️
Workouts: 3/7 💪
GTD reviews: 3/7 daily, pending weekly

Work

Nothing major to talk about at work this week. With fewer meetings, I had time to sit down and work through some project planning, along with some testing and hands-on engineering work.
For the meetings I did have, I intentionally added breaks in my calendar to refocus, which seemed to help. I’ll be doing the same in the upcoming week.

Personal

I still didn’t get my GTD practice back on track, unfortunately. I started working through my inbox backlog, but I think I still have a week or so of periodic work before I’m back to a truly “good” place.

Notable

I finally got time to work on some photo digitization again this week! Not much progress, but a little is better than none.
Game nights continued again this week, though nothing new. I may need to look at extending my collection soon to keep things interesting… I’d really like some more cooperative games, but not a full-fledged TTRPG (I think).

On Saturday I went out to the 208 House with friends. As usual, the food was amazing! 🙂

Potpourri

For personal use I’m still predominantly using Kagi Ultimate for LLM access, but this week I began experimenting with Claude Pro at work, and for certain types of interactions I was much more impressed with it than with the same model through Kagi. Which has me in a bit of a dilemma… Splitting work across multiple LLMs feels counterintuitive to me, but using whichever gives me better results is probably the right choice?
A week ago today I saw Kev’s post wondering if our children/families will inherit our blogs. It’s a topic I’ve thought on briefly over the years, and seeing that Kev and others are pondering the same is interesting. I’ve wondered if I could set up a fund to pay for my website in perpetuity after I’m gone, or save everything into a book that I publish before death and give to family? 🤷‍♂️
I also ran across the make a freaking website website this week (yeah, I edited that - I don’t like swearing). As someone who whole-heartedly advocates domain ownership and making your own website/blog, I thought it was completely worth sharing!
…and one more post on blogging: lessons learned from 20 years & why you should blog by Adam Caudill. I’ve never run across Adam’s website before, but saw his post linked by someone I do follow, and enjoyed the read. Something he calls out that I need to focus on more is creating a website for yourself, not just a blog. While I have some extra pages on this site, it’s definitely an area I could improve in…

Weekly Notes 2026.05

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 11:15:00 -0500

This week actually ended up busier than the last, though unlike last week it was primarily during office hours. 🤔

Goal Progress

Books: 2/18 📚
Photos digitized: 3/500 🖼️
Workouts: 4/7 💪
GTD reviews: 3/7 daily, pending weekly

Work

Somehow my meeting load at work went up this week, even though fewer people were in the office. I’d say 90+% were genuinely useful, so no real complaints. However…
… I’ve realized that I don’t have a good plan for decompressing after meetings or resetting my brain when switching gears. That’s something I started looking into this week in the evenings, and I may tweak how I block my calendar going forward to make sure I’m actually useful in all those conversations.

Personal

On Thursday I finished the audiobook of Apple in China. It was an interesting look at how one of the world’s largest companies became tied so closely to China and Chinese industry, and I actually learned some potentially useful stuff for my own career - at minimum, understanding the dynamic between US companies and Chinese CMs.
This week my GTD practice really started falling apart. I’ll need to spend some time this weekend and early next week getting back on the bandwagon. 😬

Notable

Game nights with M and her mother continued this week. Late in the week I introduced them to 3D5, a game I’ve had for years but rarely play. It’s a fun three-dimensional twist on Tic-Tac-Toe that requires some concentration. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s no longer produced…

Potpourri

I haven’t actually tried this myself yet, but I’ve seen a bunch of articles recently on OpenClaw (formerly ClawdBot), including this one by Federico Viticci on MacStories. Every time I’ve looked at similar concepts in the past, it feels like a solution looking for a problem I don’t know that I have… but that could just be me being stuck in my current workflow and struggling to adopt new tech. 🤷‍♂️
- The most interesting idea I’ve read (in another blog psot) is automatically pulling tasks out of meeting notes. But I think I need to get better at taking meeting notes before that works… 😉
I completely forgot to mention this last week: I saw a post from Cassidy Williams on tricks for getting discovered by LLMs and AI tools. Will I actually use any of the recommendations? Probably not… this is really more of a personal blog without a specific theme, but it’s helpful to know. I’ll keep an eye on https://llmstxt.org/, and maybe add a “/for-llms” page in the future.
Completely non-AI related: I ran across the Lolgato project a few weeks back, and while I haven’t tried it yet, next time I work from home for a few days it’ll probably get installed. For those unaware, I use Elgato lights in my conference call setup at home.

Weekly Notes 2026.04

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0500

This week’s update might be even shorter than last… with Winter Conference going on, my week was heavily consumed by work discussions and dinners. But I’ll make up for it with more photos than normal. 😉

Goal Progress

Books: 1/18 📚
Photos digitized: 3/500 🖼️
Workouts: 3/7 💪
GTD reviews: 5/7 daily, weekly pending

Work

Tuesday through Friday of this week was our annual Winter Conference at work, which is a 4-day event (each day is identical) where we both present agronomic topics to farmers and share our latest results and new products. For this year’s announcements, see https://www.precisionplanting.com/resources/news/2026-ptx-winter-conference.
A majority of the week for me (outside of watching a few of the sessions) was spent in conversations and planning with colleagues from across the company who came in for Winter Conference.

Personal

I started a new book this week (not because I finished another, but because it sounded interesting): Barbarossa: How Hitler Lost the War, by Jonathan Dimbleby.

Notable

Since coworkers were onsite, we had a number of meals at multiple local restaurants. I’ll share the highlights here, from BlackBand Distillery, The 208 House, The Oyster Bar (Jonah’s), and Jim’s Steak House.

Game nights continued this weekend with M and her mom. No new games, but I did introduce her to Rock Runners by Scott Johnson, which I haven’t played in ages.

Saturday evening I also got to see a view of Peoria from a height I’d not been to before (see below). 🙂

Potpourri

I’ve heard of 512 Pixels’ macOS Screenshot Library before, but was reminded about it in a recent podcast episode I was listening to (probably ATP?). It’s an interesting trip down memory lane for those who enjoy Apple’s UI design.

Weekly Notes 2026.03

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0500

Shorter post this week… a lot has been going on, but mostly work-related, and therefore not much to share here…

Goal Progress

Books: 1/18 📚
Photos digitized: 3/500 🖼️
Workouts: 3/7 💪
GTD reviews: 5/7 daily, weekly pending

Work

This week has been a whirlwind at work. Monday-Thursday were in office; Friday I stayed home for tire maintenance on my truck, expecting downtime, but had several unplanned conversations instead.
At the beginning of the week I felt on top of all of my projects; by the end of the week, I have a few hours of review/clean-up to do. I’ll focus on that some today, though it may bleed over into tomorrow in-office.

Personal

I finished my first book this year: Dr. Mutter’s Marvels. 🎉
And I’ve started another, this time in audiobook form: Apple in China, a book I’ve heard a lot about but never made time to read. So far, it’s a very interesting look into Apple’s interactions with contract manufacturers (I’m only 20% done).
My photo digitization & workouts still need more attention this week, though I did a bit better on my daily reviews!

Notable

Mid-week I started adding in game nights again with M and her mom (a consultant working with our company). And to mix things up a bit, this time we tried a few new/new-to-me games: Castle Panic (which I bought my sister for Christmas, and enjoyed enough I bought for myself too), Backgammon (I’m still learning), and Small World of Warcraft (owned for a while, only played once before). And we threw in some Mario Kart to break things up (which… I’m ok at. Not great…).

Potpourri

Late in the week (Saturday, maybe?) I ran across Cassidy’s encouragement to not give up your brain, related to using LLMs, and avoiding their overuse. It’s a good reminder, and reaffirms my current approach too.
Speaking of LLMs: earlier in the week I saw two articles that I’ve partially read, and will be revisiting over the coming weeks. I haven’t decided if I agree with them, but the first is from the founder of Todoist, who I’ve followed for years, and the second is a recommendation from his post:
- How to ramp up on AI (as a dev and non-dev)
- Everyone should be using Claude Code more
In non-LLM news… apparently there is some new Linux malware. 😬 It’s probably worth a quick review if you run Linux at home or in the cloud.
And finally, a fun post: a 100-year-old self-playing violin! I recommend checking the article out, and watching the accompanying videos!

Next Week

This coming week is our annual Winter Conference at work. If you’re a farmer, in the ag industry, or even ag-adjacent or ag-curious (is that a thing?), it’s worth attending at a site near you to see what we’ve been working on, what’s coming, along with a whole load of agronomic data and commentary from our agronomists! 🚜

Weekly Notes 2026.02

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 11:15:00 -0500

One full week of 2026 over already? 😐

Goal Progress

Books: 0/18 📚
Photos digitized: 3/500 🖼️
Workouts: 3/7 💪
GTD reviews: 3/7 daily, weekly done

Work

This week, the team and I were back in the swing of things, and I was in office all 5 days.
It was slightly belated due to shipping, but this week we also began passing out Christmas ornaments to the team, both local and around the globe. Making a department Christmas ornament has been an annual tradition almost as long as I can recall being at Precision, and we’ve carried it forward through org changes.
I’ve continued experimenting with useful ways to incorporate LLMs into my workflow. I’ve found both good and bad ways to use them for project & meeting planning, now trying to find the right balance as I move forward…

Personal

While I’ve yet to finish any books this month, I have been reading daily, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. My guess based on current progress is that I’ll hit 18 books by years end, but may not make it much over that goal.
I’ve struggled to make time for workouts though… I’ve done a few, but that clearly needs more focus in the coming week.
As does working on photo digitization. I made time to work on it briefly this weekend, but I got distracted soon after starting.

Notable

This week was RuneScape’s 25th anniversary, and I made time to log in and play through the celebratory event. Wednesday also marked my 21st year of playing the game, though it’s been in fits and starts. And no, I still do not have 99+ in all skills. Perhaps next year? 🙂
Tuesday was the 12th anniversary of my website as well. I briefly considered writing up a post (like I did for the 10th anniversary), but I think I’ll wait and only do major posts on the 5-year incremental anniversaries. I haven’t changed much in the past year on my blog, other than being intentional with my posting schedule!
And, I found a fun new game (or at least, fun so far!): Against the Storm. I try not to buy computer games too frequently, as I’ll never play all of the games in my library. However, I sometimes enjoy city builders, and this struck me as a fun option to pick up while it was on sale. More to come in future posts, I’m sure!

Potpourri

Early on in the week, I thought this section was going to be short, or non-existent. What a sweet summer child I was… 😂
First up: Manu’s yearly reminder to use RSS. I really have no notes to add - I’m a longtime RSS user/reader, and I encourage others to try it out if they haven’t, and continue using it if they have!
Cal Newport’s article on why AI didn’t “join the workforce” in 2025 also caught my attention, as it highlighted something I’ve noticed when using LLMs: they seem particularly good at certain tasks (data summarization, editing, coding), but lacking in many, many other areas.
Speaking of LLMs and coding: this thread by Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code on how he uses Claude Code was both interesting and almost baffling. I understand the words used, and even most of the process (I think), but this is not something I’d have ever considered attempting personally…
One more LLM-related topic: I don’t recall how I found this, but a Wall Street Journal article on the downside to using AI for all those boring tasks at work somehow crossed my digital path this week, and it was interesting enough to pass on. A short summary/premise: “The catch is that our brains aren’t capable of thinking big thoughts nonstop. And we risk forfeiting the epiphanies that sometimes spring to mind while doing easy, repetitive job functions.”
Alex Chan wrote a helpful blog post explaining how she stores her multi-factor recovery codes. It’s a bit more involved than I’m ready to emulate currently, but overall I quite like the concept!
Mid-week I saw a number of posts on how Logitech mice were not working/freaking out due to an un-renewed certificate. I normally try not to jump on the bandwagon when it comes to “I just want my tech to be simple”, but… come on. Really?!?
And to wrap up the week (though he wrote it Tuesday): Kev Quirk’s post on The Case for Blogging in the Ruins. Okay, so it’s actually his response to Joan Westenberg’s post of the same name, but since I first heard of it through Kev’s blog, I’ll give him credit. 😉 The quote below is his pull-quote from Joan’s original post, and a great way to end this weekly review:

Start a blog. Start one because the practice of writing at length, for an audience you respect, about things that matter to you, is itself valuable. Start one because owning your own platform is a form of independence that becomes more important as centralized platforms become less trustworthy. Start one because the format shapes the thought, and this format is good for thinking.

Weekly Notes 2026.01

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 11:30:00 -0500

First weekly note of the new year! 🎉

I’m trying out a new format for my weekly notes this year; we’ll see how long it lasts. Instead of a giant run-on list mixing personal and professional, I’m splitting the two, and throwing in a “notable” section, which is for events, and may sometimes be omitted. Additionally, I think I’m going to try keeping track of my goal progress, though I may pull this into a monthly note in the future.

Goal Progress

Books: 0/18 📚
Photos digitized: 1/500 🖼️
Workouts: 2/7 💪
GTD reviews: 0/7 daily, weekly pending

Work

Only one day of work this week (Friday), mostly spent catching up on some remaining emails, Slack messages, and planning for the week and month ahead.
I’m still experimenting with useful ways to incorporate LLMs into my workflow. I found them helpful for cleaning up some emails I needed to send (effectively proofreading/editing), and for some meeting planning. I’ll see how they work out over the next few weeks.

Personal

I spent some time trying out gaming on Linux, since that’s a serious consideration instead of my aging Windows gaming rig in the future. Northgard worked relatively well, although there was more lag than I expected (which I’ve not narrowed down yet).
I haven’t completed any books yet this year, though I started two, and have been keeping up with my morning reading routine ever since Jan 1.
- Dr. Mutter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine (paperback)
- Silverthorn (audiobook)
As I already shared in a status update on New Year’s Day, the moon was particularly bright, and easily to photograph out of my office window. And so, since taking photos with my GH5 is on the list for 2026 (and I wanted to try out some old glass), I took photos with both an old Minolta 80-200mm lens, and my Panasonic 100-300mm lens. I had the best results editing the raw files, as the out-of-camera JPEGs looked okay, but not amazing.

Notable

Monday I returned from visiting family in Ohio. The trip was mostly uneventful (thankfully), although it was by far the windiest driving conditions I’ve ever made the trip in, and it took me an extra ~30 minutes, not counting stops.
I met some coworkers for lunch on New Year’s Eve at Casa Agave, which was a new locale for me. We all ended up having nearly the same meal, but it was delicious, and it was fun to meet up before the new year began.

Potpourri

I ran across an article on how poor sleep health is associated with an older brain age. TL;DR - getting healthy sleep (not just amounts, but good quality sleep) is good for your brain, as I think we all know.
I wrote up my own goals for 2026, and then shortly after read Matt’s post on the same topic. He was much more concise, and much more willing to put numbers/metrics to goals.
Speaking of 2026 - I ran across an interesting thread from Paul Fairie on predictions made in 1926 about 2026. I highly recommend a quick perusal if you have time!
I’d been putting off reading some blog posts by Cassidy Williams, as I was debating linking or writing a comment post… I’ve decided on the former. Her post entitled My inbox is so full hit close to home. I don’t deal with quite that amount of email yet, but email hygiene, shall we say, is something I’m focusing on in 2026.
And another post by Cassidy: influencing without authority. This is an area I find myself in frequently, and her commentary on tools at your disposal you can use in such a scenario was much needed encouragement.
Thanks to Slashdot, I ran across a post on how reading is a vice. A vice, you say? Really? I don’t know wether I fully agree with that premise, but viewing reading as something to do for pleasure, not a duty, is definitely beneficial, and the way I attempt to approach it.
Music ownership and not relying on Spotify seems to be a big topic of conversation in the blogosphere currently. I have been hosting my own music library for a while, and may have more commentary at some point. But interesting reads:
The Trekorama project on GitHub is cool, for the Trekkies among us. 🚀
Today’s Miniature Calendar post, Styrofoam Fight, is pretty cool. 🙂

Weekly Notes 2025.51

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 20:00:00 -0500

Week in Review

It’s the last full week of the year! (Yes, I know, next week is 50/50… I will probably start my week numbering over for 2026 next week though.)
Sunday afternoon, after posting my weekly update, I headed home to visit family for the holidays.
Sunday evening I gave my sister one of her gifts: a cold brew coffee maker, which we promptly had to try. Spoiler alert: she loved it. 🎉

Monday and Tuesday I worked remotely for a few hours in the mornings, and otherwise spent time with family.
Monday evening we made pizzas for dinner, which turned out spectacularly!
Wednesday was my first full day of vacation. I spent time with family during the day, and in the evening we went to the Christmas Eve service/children’s performance at the church I grew up in.
And on Thursday… Christmas! We always go to Christmas Day service at church to start the day, then have lunch with family, and open presents. And this year was the same!
Thursday afternoon my sister and I made rum cake, which turned out surprisingly well. My dad even enjoyed it, and he’s normally not a cake person!
Friday was round two of Christmas food for us. We had planned on doing a turkey on Friday (taking after mom’s side of the family), which gave us more time for prep, and ham and scalloped potatoes on Thursday, which was easy to prepare and a traditional meal on my dad’s side of the family.
Saturday was my parent’s 39th anniversary! I wished them a happy anniversary early, then went to my sister’s office to help with a computer backup (yes, I’m sometimes family IT, but I don’t mind - it’s interesting as long as it’s in small to moderate-sized doses).
Saturday afternoon, my sister and I tried our hands at making crème brûlée, which turned out shockingly well. Unfortunately… I forgot to take a picture to share!
Saturday evening we’d planned to go out for dinner, but my mom wasn’t feeling well, so we ended up ordering in instead. I got pizza, and for dessert, Buckeye Cheesecake 😋
And once again, we’re to Sunday! Sunday morning started with Divine Service, followed by lunch with family, and then spending some time wrapping up anything else I wanted to do before returning home (and writing this blog post!).
I delayed posting this until this evening, so I could add a picture from dinner: Apple Strudel. Thanks mom!

Potpourri

On Christmas Eve I ran across a post on rats in the toilet from One Foot Tsunami. Weird, but kind of amusing.
Christmas Eve also saw a (very infrequent) post from Linus Torvalds on GPLv2. I don’t follow him as closely as I once did, but seeing his thoughts on a legal ruling was interesting.
The Christmas Day post from Miniature Calendar was a really fun Star Wars-themed picture, and worth checking out!
I also saw this fun thread on BlueSky (well, technically reposted on Mastodon, but 🤷‍♂️) of Christmas movie posters, but with Muppets.
On Saturday, I ran across a video from MKBHD showing the scale of transistors on modern electronics, which was interesting enough that I had to share. As someone who works with MCUs/MPUs, I have a general idea of just how impressive the scale of modern tech is, but seeing it in video form that is easy to understand was super useful.
I also saw an opinion post on The Register (via Slashdot) on how memory is running out, and so are excuses for software bloat. While I don’t think that hyper-focusing on memory efficiency is the right tradeoff to make all the time, it is true (as the author noted) that memory usage seems to have been steadily climbing for years, and it would be worth it for software developers to examine if there are some easy ways to reduce their memory footprint. I don’t focus on software development as much as I once did, but many others at work do spend time every year making sure our products function well, and one aspect is managing memory in a constrained system. Viewing desktop platforms as a constrained system from a memory standpoint might be worthwhile. 🙂
And finally… PhotosExport. I haven’t used this yet, but I frequently think about what I would do if I wanted to leave the Apple Photos ecosystem, as I’ve put a substantial amoutn of effort into metadata there. This looks like a handy tool if I ever need to make a full backup/export of my library.

Weekly Notes 2025.50

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 12:15:00 -0500

Week in Review

It’s the last week before Christmas!
I was in-office every day this week, though my schedule became more focused on wrapping up small projects, cleaning, and preparing for the new year than usual.

Monday, a couple of coworkers and I went out to Jacks for lunch, where I had a tasty chicken dumpling soup and buffalo chicken sandwich.
Tuesday evening, after work, I met a friend at the church he works on to do some lightweight repair of an electronics module. It was fun to catch up, and to get to use my skills outside of the office!
Wednesday, a coworker brought in some left-over crème brûlée to share, which I enjoyed as an after-lunch treat!
Wednesday evening brought the final advent service of the year at church, after which I headed home for a late dinner.
Thursday and Friday brought little out of the ordinary. I continued working on wrapping up small projects in the office before preparing for the holiday break.
Saturday was spent cleaning my house, wrapping presents, and picking up a few last-minute gifts for friends and family. I won’t share more, else I spoil surprises!
And we’re to today! This morning (Sunday) I went to Divine Service (see the below photo for the Christmas decorations), and will be spending the rest of the day preparing for Christmas with family and friends!

Potpourri

In my news feed this week, I noticed an interesting article on how observing pupil dilation in patients when requested to imagine light or dark objects could reveal aphantasia. I have at least one family member who we believe has aphantasia, and so I forwarded the study to my sister (an optometrist) for further localized trials (ie, seeing if we can repeat the results).
This week a coworker brought in some rum cake to share in the office, and I enjoyed it enough that I requested the recipe and make it with family sometime. 😋
I also read a post from Matt Birchler on how streaming music is the lie we tell each other this week. I’m still putting my own thoughts on it together, and may post a response/blog post in the weeks ahead.

Weekly Notes 2025.49

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 17:15:00 -0500

Week in Review

Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal, with meetings scattered throughout the day. As I did last week, I worked remote Monday morning, then drove to the office for some in-person work in the afternoon.
Tuesday evening was our R&D Christmas party at a local establishment. For the… fourth year in a row, I was on the planning committee, so I arrived slightly early to set up, and stayed afterwards to assist with some minor cleaning. The food and festivities were fantastic, and I think everyone had a good time! 🎄

Wednesday was mostly my standard schedule, with the exception of a meeting with a vendor over lunch. A month or so ago I got a chicken/bacon croissant, and really enjoyed it, so I decided to try it again (and it didn’t disappoint!).
After work I drove to church for our Advent services. I (unfortunately) missed last week due to a work commitment, but was glad to be able to attend this time around!
For the second week in a row, Thursday ended up being quite busy, with only a brief break for lunch. I felt like I got a decent amount accomplished though, which is always good!
Friday was a pretty standard day in-office, though it actually started with a quick trip to our ops center to assist a colleague with a product-related question. After work I did some quick shopping, as I saw that Saturday/Sunday could be interesting weather-wise.
Saturday the temperatures began dropping, and it also snowed for about 9 hours. I think all-told we got nearly 7 inches of powdery snow, which I spent the late-afternoon hours shoveling. 🌨
I pulled out my camera to take some photos of the snow… which didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. But I did take a photo inside of my snowman that’s not… terrible.
During the day while inside, I (once again) migrated my task lists from OmniFocus back to Todoist. I’ve mentioned such a transition in the past, and as before, the allure of some of OmniFocus’s design drew me in, somewhere around a month ago. However, the interface was actually feeling slightly clunky to use, and after some consideration (and bouncing my thoughts off an LLM, which was semi-useful), I decided to go back to the trusty tool I knew.
Saturday also saw me continuing to finalize my gift planning for family for Christmas. I split my shopping between online and in-person this year, which was a little abnormal for me (I mostly shop online historically). I also used an LLM for some idea generation for gifts… I had a few individuals that I was struggling to finish shopping for, and needed some ideas (well - specific ideas, I had a general category in mind). Using an LLM made it a little more interesting than just browsing online stores or doing standard web searches.
This morning when I woke up it was below zero (Fahrenheit)… brr! Since I wasn’t sure what the roads would be like, I got around and left for Divine Service early. The roads were snow-covered in places, but overall not bad!
After church, I came back home, finished some shoveling that I didn’t do yesterday (sidewalks), played a bit of Northgard, then began prepping for the week! In between said prep, I’ve been writing up this post. 🙂
All that’s left today is some cleaning, dinner, email, and then it’s off to another week! See you then!

Potpourri

I had a few other things that don’t fit my normal format, but that I wanted to include, and aren’t long enough for their own standalone blog post… (and yes, Matt, if you’re reading this, I totally stole the section name from you! Although I’m kind of using it differently.)
It appears that others are borrowing/stealing my weekly note naming scheme. 😁
Maybe 2026 is going to be the year of the Linux (gaming) desktop? I enjoyed reading Matt Birchler’s thoughts, and realized that even though I’ve had a Linux desktop for years (that could game), I haven’t really given it a go recently. I keep a Windows desktop around for 90% gaming/10% random other uses that require Windows, and I wonder if perhaps in 2026 I should see how much of it I can run on Linux now? Most of the games I play are on Steam, which means they likely have Linux support, either natively or via Proton.
I read through (well, ok, skimmed) Joel’s post on things he learned making a game engine. Though I no longer program as much as I used to, designing a game engine (or building a game that requires only a rudimentary engine) has been something on my far-distant someday/maybe list. It was interesting to see some of what Joel learned, and perhaps one day I’l take a stab at it myself.
For those interested - when I use LLMs, it’s through Kagi Assistant. I’ve been using Claude 4.5 Haiku model, with reasoning, and with Kagi web searches enabled. I keep an eye on Kagi’s benchmarks, and switch models roughly every other month, if there is a better recommendation for my use cases.
I ran across a Chicago food recommendation blog post from Cassidy Williams this week that caught my attention. While I don’t visit Chicago often, having a list of restaurants to try in my Obsidian vault is always a good idea for if/when the topic comes up!

Edits

2025-12-14: Added comment + link from Cassidy Williams’ blog.

Weekly Notes 2025.48

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 20:10:00 -0500

This past week largely saw a return to my normal schedule.
I worked remotely Monday morning, then headed to the office for some in-person meetings later in the day.
Monday evening as I prepared to leave work, a coworker asked me about my photo backup strategy, something I’d mentioned in passing before, but never in detail. She asked me to send her my recommendations, and instead of just a text, I ended up writing a blog post, which I published the next day. LINK

I would go on to spend a majority of Tuesday thru Friday in-office, with only a few exceptions.
Tuesday for lunch, instead of eating at my desk as is usual, a coworker and I headed to a local restaurant for a change of pace.
Then in the evening, I had another meal out, this time to catch up with some vendor reps that were in the area town. We met up at the local 2601 Oyster Bar, where I (of course) had my normal salmon, a personal favorite. It was great to catch up, and we split our time discussing business and family.
Wednesday evening I joined some coworkers and a colleague from out of town for dinner at Brienzo’s. It was my first time meeting this colleague in-person, so it was nice to put a face to a name, and hear some about their background, family, etc.
Thursday was by far my busiest day in a very long time, with only a brief 30 minute break for lunch until around 3:30p in the afternoon. That, of course, meant that I crammed most of my other work into the last 90 minutes of the day, then headed out with coworkers and the colleague from Wednesday to (of all places) the Oyster Bar again. Once I’ve found something I like, I really don’t mix things up much, and I once again enjoyed the blackened salmon.
On Friday, even though many coworkers tend to be remote, I was in office for a few in-person meetings (and some work that I couldn’t do easily at home). I stayed until mid-afternoon, then finished my work week out from the comfort of my home office.
Saturday morning started with a haircut, followed by going for a short drive around the area while it was sunny (and a little warmer than the past week). After that, I worked around home, splitting time between working on old family photos, putting up Christmas decorations, and genealogy.
On Sunday I started the day with Divine Service, followed by grocery shopping, and then relaxation. I also ripped some new (to me) Christmas albums to my Plex server, and worked on a few family photos and genealogy, before sitting down (after dinner) to wrap up this post, and begin preparing for the week ahead.
Something cool I saw this evening: a “tracker action” pipe organ, in a post from Cabel Sasser. I shared it with my sister, an accomplished organist, and thought others reading my blog might find it interesting as well.
And with that, I’ve come to the end of this post. Have a good week, and see y’all in a mere seven days!

Weekly Notes 2025.46 & 2025.47

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 15:10:00 -0500

This week I’m combining two posts into one (25.46 and 25.47), as I was a) delayed writing last week’s post, and b) it was looking short anyhow.
I mentioned last week that I was heading to a game night after my post, which I did! This time, instead of just games, we also did a puzzle (in only… 3-4 hours?).

Monday - Thursday I worked from the office, with my normal mix of meetings (scheduled and impromptu), plus working on a few projects that have been needing my attention.
I also threw in a couple more (short) game nights throughout the week, including teaching M Dutch Blitz, which I think she enjoyed. 😂
Friday I worked partially remote, and partially from the office, wrapping up some last minute testing on a product before the Thanksgiving break.
Saturday was primarily spent at home, with some relaxation in the morning, followed by yardwork (hopefully the last of the season?) in the afternoon.
Sunday I was up early for Divine Service, then headed home to pack for my trip to Ohio. I headed out slightly before lunch, and made it to where my family lives right around dinner time.
Monday through Wednesday I split my time between some remote work, and spending time with family. Evenings were spent enjoying homemade food, and playing the occasional game (Dutch Blitz made an early appearance, and would continue throughout the rest of my time in Ohio).
Tuesday evening we made pizzas, as I normally request to do while I’m home
Wednesday evening I joined my family members for a choir rehearsal at their church (where my sister is the director), followed by a Thanksgiving Eve serviced focused on the parts of the Lord’s Prayer.
Thursday was primarily spent with family, both enjoying good food, and playing a few games, including more Dutch Blitz, 6 Second Scribbles, and Yahtzee!
Thursday evening the skies were super clear, and on my way back from Thanksgiving I took a quick photo of the moon.
Friday morning started with some quick family photos that my mom requested for her Christmas card. My sister’s dog even got in on the pictures, as seen below. And after that, it was time to pack…
Based on the forecasted snow, I opted to head back to Illinois early, and so began the trek on Friday afternoon, ~48 hours ahead of my original plan. The trip was pretty uneventful, though I did pause to take a photo of this large… chicken? rooster? along the way.
Saturday, as expected, the snow began to fall. We got 4-5 inches in total, less than some other nearby locations, but enough that I had some shoveling to do! I spent the day catching up on work around the house, and doing some family photo & genealogy updates.
And once again, we’re to Sunday! This morning started with Divine Service (a little emptier than normal due to the weather), then on to grocery shopping for the week, then home! I’ve spent part of today beginning my Christmas decorations, and will do more after this post is complete.
I also finished Magician: Apprentice (audiobook) today while working around the house, and plan to start the next book in the series this evening.
And with that, time to wrap up this post!

Weekly Notes 2025.45

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 13:30:00 -0500

Welcome to weekly note number 45 for 2025!
Not much out of the ordinary occurred in the office this week. I was in all 5 days, including a longer-than-normal Friday, due to me shifting some meetings that needed to occur but that I couldn’t find a place for to Friday.
Tuesday evening, a coworker that is primarily remote was in town, so a group of us went out to dinner in the evening at the venerable 208 House. I tried pasta this time, which didn’t disappoint, and finished off with gooey butter cake (yes, it’s a lot of sugar, but it’s also quite tasty!).

Friday evening saw the return of game nights the aforementioned M, who once again traveled with her mom to the area on business. This time there was a slightly larger group, and we ended up playing Monopoly Deal (a continued favorite), 5 Minute Dungeon, Yahtzee (which I won!), and Bananagrams.
Saturday morning I worked on projects around home, then did some early Christmas shopping at some local stores. I normally do most of my shopping online, but decided to mix things up a little this year.
And that brings us to Sunday! This morning I attended Divine Service, did some grocery shopping, and wrote up this post, and am now preparing to head off for puzzles & games with M and her mom. Catch you next time!

Weekly Notes 2025.44

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 18:30:00 -0500

This week’s post will be fairly short. I was in the office Monday - Thursday, with a slightly higher volume of meetings than normal.
Wednesday morning I met a coworker at a local restaurant for breakfast and to catch up, which was a nice way to start the day!

By the time I left work on Wednesday evening, it was already dark, and the moon was out. When I got home I decided to grab my GH5 and zoom lens, and attempt to get a nice photo… see below for results 🙂
Friday, for the first time in a while, I took the opportunity to work from home. It was a nice relaxing way to end the work week, and catch up on some projects that I hadn’t had time for in office.
This weekend the temperatures finally started turning colder, though not so cold that I didn’t go for a few walks! I also spent the weekend catching up on personal projects, and relaxing, preparing for the week ahead.
Oh… and I almost forgot! On Sunday we had our first snow of the season! It didn’t last, but I took a photo of the snow on some shrubs while I was out for a walk.
And with that, we’re on to next week! See you then!

Weekly Notes 2025.43

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 02:30:00 -0500

Welcome to my 43rd weekly note post!
I referenced in last week’s post that I was heading to play games with a colleague & her daughter (M) while they were in the area. Obligatory photo below. 🙂

Monday morning started with meetings in the office, then lunch with a coworker at our favorite local ramen restaurant (and… maybe the only local ramen restaurant? 🤷‍♂️). I had a break in the afternoon then, and focused on catching up on projects in office.
Tuesday was a pretty normal day, until I got a text mid-afternoon asking if I was interested in stopping by to play games with M. They’d ended up extending their stay by a few days, so after dinner I grabbed a few games (Clue & Monopoly), then headed off to see if I had any chance of winning this time (I… did not 😂).
On Wednesday, I was to the office a little earlier than normal, to meet a coworker from Fargo in for project meetings. After some meetings in the office in the morning, I took him on a tour of our Ops Center, followed by lunch at a local Mexican restaurant. Then it was back to the office for another series of meetings.
Wednesday evening we were supposed to have an event for dinner at the offices, but I was a little exhausted, and headed home to relax, in preparation for Thursday.
Thursday, I knew my day was going to be busy, but that ended up being an understatement… I got pulled into a few unplanned meetings (unplanned by me that is), and thank goodness that I spent time over the weekend getting familiar with OmniGraffle! Many of the meetings involved project planning, and being able to rapidly draw up system concepts was extremely helpful!
Thursday evening I took the coworker visiting from Fargo out for dinner at The 208 House, which he had never been to. Dinner was delicious as always!
I had intended to work remote Friday, but ended up with a couple of meetings that I couldn’t take earlier in the week and needed to be in person. I did get done slightly early though, and headed home for dinner. With it being Halloween, I intentionally didn’t do much in my front room and kept porch lights off, as I generally don’t hand out candy (nor were there many kids in our area this year, based on conversations with neighbors).
Saturday was largely spent at home, with some walks around the neighborhood thrown in for exercise. It was a little on the cool side, so I focused most of my efforts on projects around the house.
This morning (Sunday) started with Divine Service, although not quite as usual. Today I had a coworker joining me at service, and then we both went to a service at another local church where another coworker was being baptized. After the second service, a group of us went out for lunch, and then I headed home to begin prep for the week (and to write this!).

Weekly Notes 2025.42

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 02:30:00 -0500

This week’s update might be even shorter than last week’s, although with a few twists!
I worked from the office all week, with a majority of my meetings taking place on Monday (other than standard cadence meetings throughout the week).
This week was a little quieter than normal, as a number of close colleagues were traveling for meetings…

The unplanned portion of my week began Tuesday, when I was invited to play some board and card games with a colleague from Europe and her daughter (who I’d met the week before, and for privacy reasons will only refer to as M). I brought some of my games along, and taught her Monopoly Deal and Fluxx, both of which she greatly enjoyed (especially Monopoly Deal). In return, she taught me Uno Flip, which I think I’d heard of, but never played.
On Thursday, M visited her mom at the office over lunch, and we convinced a group of coworkers to join in a round of Monopoly Deal.
Thursday evening I was asked to join a game night again, and this time I brought along Exploding Kittens to throw into the mix (which unbeknownst to me was one of M’s favorites).
Friday (which is normally quieter around the office), M once again visited her mom at lunch, and we talked another group of coworkers into a quick game, first of Seven Up, then Exploding Kittens.
Friday evening and Saturday morning I spent largely relaxing, and catching up on some projects around the house. I also purchased and began experimenting with/learning OmniGraffle, a visual communication tool (think diagrams, flow charts, etc) that I’ve tested in the past, but never committed to learning. My job has begun to include meetings where being able to rapidly prototype ideas on such an application during the meeting is useful, and after some research, I decided that OmniGraffle was the right tool for the job. I’m still pretty new to it, but at some point I’ll probably write more, after I’ve put it through its paces.
Saturday afternoon I was invited to play some more board games, and this time I took along Sorry, Monopoly (the original game) and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, a game based on the Pandemic System. M had played Monopoly before (and she beat me quite handily), and then I taught her how to play the Pandemic-style game, which she enjoyed.
Sunday morning started with Divine Service, followed by groceries, and mowing my lawn. It’s been a while since I’ve needed to mow, but it was time to knock things down to a manageable level.
And this afternoon, it looks like I’m being invited to a game event once again. I’ve been asked to bring along the Pandemic-style WoW game, Sorry, and Exploding Kittens, so this should be fun!
See y’all next week!

Weekly Notes 2025.41

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 17:00:00 -0500

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

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 16:30:00 -0500

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

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:00:00 -0500

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

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 20:15:00 -0500

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

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 20:10:00 -0500

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

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 17:00:00 -0500

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.

Wednesday was back to a pretty normal day, much of which I spent preparing for a project review on Thursday. The review (held on Thursday over lunch) went well, though as often occurs, I have additional items to do after the discussion. 🙂
Wednesday evening I decided to play around with Obsidian Bases for a while, though I ultimately decided that I’m not ready to incorporate the feature into my current workflow. I did switch back to the Minimal theme by kepano while I was at it though, and I’m enjoying it as a different style for my notes for a while.
Thursday a coworker and I also spent time planning for the deployment of an updated ECAD tool for the organization. This is one of the larger pieces of enterprise software I’ll have deployed, and it’s always interesting thinking through config, etc.
Friday morning I was in-office for meetings (more on EU regulations, yay!), then headed to lunch with a number of coworkers at the Morton Pumpkin Festival (a yearly event for our team).
Friday afternoon, a smaller group of coworkers and I went to Northwood in Morton for the Blue disc golf course. It was fun, though I definitely need to practice more! My technique isn’t great, but the course itself is really well-designed with good variety of holes.
Friday evening, even though I’d been outside most of the afternoon, I set aside an hour for mowing. Though the grass is barely alive right now with how dry it’s been, there were a few areas that needed some trimming to look even, and I like things looking tidy.
Saturday, as has become my routine, I went to the Pumpkin Drive Thru for lunch, and bought a few quarts of ice cream for family and friends in Ohio.
Saturday afternoon I spent time adding a bunch of additional music (mostly from video games that I’ve bought over the years) to my server, and then began rebuilding my movie collection as well. There’s something satisfying about having your media properly organized and accessible, and I hadn’t realized how much I’ve come to depend on self-hosted media until I didn’t have it for a while.
This morning, I went to Divine Service as usual, then headed to the store for groceries. On my way home, I started a new novel, The Sword of Shannara, listening via Prologue. I’ve had the book for a while, but never got around to actually reading it until now.
Around noon, I ate a simple lunch (fried eggs and spicy ramen), and have been working on laundry, some home projects, work email, and adding more movies and home videos to my server ever since.
And with that, I think I’m caught up, and ready for another week! (Or… will be, once I finish this and some emails 😉)

Weekly Notes 2025.35

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 12:45:00 -0500

This week turned out to be an interesting mix of holiday productivity, server upgrades, good food, and diving deeper into some AI tools (a phrase I never thought I’d write).
Since Monday was Labor Day here in the US, I had the day off, and spent it doing some small personal projects around the house, plus working on another work-related project that I’ve not had time for in the office (see the next point - and yes, I know it was a holiday, but it was a project that I both needed to spend time with and that I was enjoying experimenting on). Nothing too exciting, but it felt good to catch up on things I’d been putting off.
While I’m not going to go into detail on the work project, I did find it as an interesting excuse to attempt some “vibe coding” on a little one-off Java app to manipulate Excel files (reformatting columns, adding new data fields, combining data from other files into a final export, etc). I got the first part working with Apache POI, though I still need to finish the combination logic. I do appreciate how quickly I was able to get to a functional solution, and the code is readable/modifiable, but I’m not entirely sure how comfortable I am with the overall vibe-coding concept. It still feels potentially perilous to me.

Tuesday through Friday, I was back in the office for what felt like an endless series of meetings, largely due to the condensed week. No complaints though, and not much to report otherwise… it was the usual mix of project & vendor discussions, along with some team coordination.
Wednesday evening brought a fun diversion though. After dinner, a couple coworkers and I went out for drinks at Dac’s Smokehouse in Morton. It’s a barbecue joint that I’ve mentioned before, and that I am fond of. Dac’s has a nice atmosphere, and it was enjoyable to catch up over some locally-brewed beers.
Thursday I made another trip to Yasakani Ramen with coworkers for lunch. I think I’m risking becoming a regular there… the ramen is consistently delicious, and it’s fast enough for a work lunch. It’s a bit further away than I really prefer, but once every couple of weeks isn’t too bad.

Friday, I got my oil changed at the local Ford dealership, and ended up spending the wait time learning about some upcoming EU regulations with the help of Kagi Study, which I think uses Claude on the backend? It was actually a productive way to kill time, and I was impressed with how well it summarized complex regulatory language, and assisted me in thinking through potential implications.
The big accomplishment of the week, personally, was my weekend server rebuild. On Friday evening I finally installed TrueNAS on my Dell R710, and rebuilt my storage array. The migration from my old Ubuntu setup went smoother than expected, and I’m already appreciating the ZFS features, though I’m also definitely still in a learning phase…
Friday and Saturday I migrated my Plex music library (all purchased/owned, in case you’re wondering), and so far everything seems to be working well. Today, as I write this, I’m migrating my audiobook library (same addendum; all purchased/owned) to the new server as well, and that will probably take me a large portion of the rest of the afternoon (in the background, not active work).
Speaking of audiobooks, on Friday I also finished Sir Patrick Stewart’s memoir, Making It So. It was a fascinating look at his career journey, from Shakespeare to Star Trek and beyond, and Stewart’s narration of the audiobook made it particularly engaging.
On Saturday, while my music was migrating to the new server, I spent more time experimenting with Claude directly, instead of through Kagi (something I hadn’t planned on doing until this weekend). I tried out a few different lines of thought to see how it behaved, including brainstorming blog ideas (prompting me for what I should go into detail on in my weekly notes, instead of the boring versions I’ve been writing), researching some topics I wanted background on before talking to a professional, and even attempting to build a theoretical recipe list for the week (although… I didn’t choose to use the recipes for the upcoming week). On that last item though - I did find some interesting websites targeted at recipes for 1-2 serving meals, which I will definitely be using in the future. I’m still evaluating where AI tools fit into my workflow, as I have concerns both about their origin, their capability (and/or lack thereof), and the implications of using them, but I don’t think sitting on the sidelines and fully ignoring them is a viable approach.
This morning I went to Divine Service as normal, then followed up with my weekly grocery shopping.
When I got home, I also played a bit of RuneScape, finishing up my participation in The Need for Mead event (which I’ve been working on a little bit at a time since it was announced). It’s a time-limited event running until Monday (squeaking in at the end, i know!) where players collect nectar to earn rewards like the Meadweaver’s Outfit (which I personally think looks pretty nice on my character) and a Chunky Bee pet. It’s been a while since I devoted any time to playing, and it was fun to once again enter the world of Gielinor.
That reminds me… Over the past few weeks I’ve become interested in playing Sudoku and crossword puzzles again, and completely forgot to mention it on my blog. I tried a few different apps but ended up settling on the NYT Games app and subscription, which I’d used in the past. It seems to have the best design and play style for my preferences, and it’s a fun way to keep my mind active.
Oh! And I almost forgot! Throughout the week, and also this weekend, I’ve been taking advantage of the nice weather and going for walks in the evenings. For those unfamiliar with the area, September in Illinois typically sees highs in the low 80s°F, but this past week had cooler temperatures in the 70s. Yay! (I enjoy more moderate temperatures.)
And with that, time to wrap up this post a bit early, and enjoy the flatbread pizza I picked up at Kroger! 🍕

Weekly Notes 2025.34

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 18:00:00 -0500

It’s been another week already? Well, I guess that means it’s time for another blog post!
Monday was fairly routine – nothing particularly noteworthy to report. Just the typical start-of-week meetings and catching up on projects.
However, Tuesday brought a fun change of pace as I headed down to the Farm Progress Show in Decatur with some coworkers. For those not familiar, it’s the nation’s largest outdoor agricultural event, and this year marked its 20th anniversary at the permanent Decatur site. The scale of the show is always impressive, and it’s fascinating to see all the latest innovations in farming technology, both from our company and competitors.

Wednesday was probably the highlight of my week from a learning perspective. Our team has a standing monthly lunch & learn, where we either discuss ongoing projects, or a special topic that would be of interest to the team. This month we invited the data science team, who presented a deep dive into how LLMs actually work under the hood, and some of the science and terminology behind them. I’ve been aware of these tools for a while, and have used them lightly, but hadn’t really taken the time to fully understand the underlying mechanics. The discussion covered everything from training processes to how they generate responses, and I found myself genuinely fascinated by the whole thing. It’s one of those topics where the more you learn, the more questions you have…
Thursday and Friday were back to the standard mix of meetings and project work. Nothing too exciting to report there. 🤷‍♂️
Saturday started with the inevitable yard work – yes, more mowing. I think this might be the last time I need to mow my full lawn until we get more rain. It’s a bit annoying, but hey, at least I’m getting my steps in!
Throughout the week, with some extra time on Saturday, I continued working on digitizing and cleaning up/editing more family photos. My goal is to knock out 5 or so a day, which seems really slow, but keeps me making forward progress!
This weekend also brought a major decision point I’ve been wrestling with: how to rebuild my home server that recently had a few hard drive failures (within the last ~2 months). After much deliberation, I’ve decided to stick with my current chassis (an R710) and source some used enterprise SAS drives off eBay. It’s amazing what you can find in the enterprise surplus market if you’re willing to do a bit of hunting.
With the rebuild, I’m also tentatively planning to make the jump to TrueNAS instead of going back to Ubuntu. I’ve been wanting to experiment with ZFS for a while now, and this seems like the perfect opportunity. The data integrity features and snapshot capabilities have me intrigued, even if there’s going to be a learning curve involved.
Before I made the decision to begin a server rebuild & migration to TrueNAS, I spun up a temporary Plex server on an old computer that I’ve had sitting around. I realized that without a functioning home server I’ve not been listening to audiobooks, and therefore my yearly reading has been slipping. I had tried to come up with an alternate solution previously, but nothing had the same simple workflow as Plex + Prologue, and I didn’t want to switch back to the Audible app (partially on principle). As soon as I had a functional audiobook server again, I started in on a book I’ve been wanting to read for a while: Making It So by Patrick Stewart (narrated by the author)!
Sunday morning started with a combined Divine Service (which we do on 5th Sundays of the month), with a guest pastor (Rev. Dr. Chad Kendall) visiting from Concordia University - Chicago. It’s always interesting to hear different perspectives and preaching styles, and I appreciated his message.
Throughout the weekend, I also continued working with Dorico on that project I mentioned last week involving my sister. I’m still learning how the software works, but it’s beginning to feel more natural!
And that’s a wrap on this week’s post! I’ll be enjoying my long weekend (thanks to Labor Day), and look forward to seeing what happens in the week ahead!

Weekly Notes 2025.33

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 18:00:00 -0500

This week was mostly back to my normal routine, with a few bright spots that made it memorable.
Monday started off on a high note when one of my coworkers brought in homemade blueberry pie to celebrate a team member’s birthday. There’s something about unexpected office treats that just makes the whole day better – and this pie was no exception!

Tuesday through Thursday were pretty standard fare – the usual mix of meetings, project work, and catching up on things that had accumulated from the previous week. Nothing particularly noteworthy to report.
Thursday evening, however, was a nice change of pace. Instead of our yearly camping trip (which got cancelled this year due to scheduling conflicts), a few friends and I decided to meet up at The 208 House for dinner. It had been way too long since we’d all gotten together, so it was great to catch up!
Friday brought another food highlight when some coworkers and I ventured out to Yasakani Ramen for lunch. I’ve been wanting to try actual restaurant-style ramen for a while now, and it definitely lived up to the hype!
Saturday and Sunday I spent a good chunk of time working on digitizing and organizing some old family photos – part of my ongoing project that I’ve referenced before. The process is slow, but I’m making steady progress.
I also tackled some much-needed yard work over the weekend. August in Illinois means the grass is still growing, but everything else is starting to look a bit tired from the summer heat. Nothing too exciting to report there, but it felt good to get caught up.
This weekend also brought an interesting new experiment: I started exploring music notation software for the first time in many years. I’ve been curious about digital composition tools for a while, and finally decided to dive in, prompted by an upcoming project with my sister. I spent some time trying multiple tools, and finally settled on Dorico, which seems to be a good mix of functionality without breaking the bank.
And with that, my week is over, and it’s time to begin preparing for the week ahead!

Weekly Notes 2025.32

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 18:15:00 -0500

After a week away, this week it was back to the office, and a semi-normal schedule. Well… okay, half-normal. I had a coworker from Fargo visiting this week, which meant a few extra meetings, and a few extra meals out!
Monday was pretty standard, preparing for the week ahead and catching up on a few things I’d missed while out.
Tuesday we had multiple vendors meeting in for meetings, so I was barely at my desk all day. In the evening we took our coworker out to La Fiesta for dinner and drinks.

Wednesday was a bit more project-focused, followed by a (later) dinner at The 208 House with another vendor who was in town for PTI.
Thursday saw a partial-return to my normal routine, and meals at home (which my waistline needed after multiple meals out!).
Friday I had an optometrist appointment in the morning, followed by a meeting in the office, and then a final lunch with our coworker from Fargo before he headed home. Lunch was at Verandah, a restaurant that I don’t frequent often, but which has an interesting variety of foods.
On Saturday, it was once again time to mow, so the morning was largely spent mowing, trimming, and making my yard look like someone actually… you know, takes care of it. 😂
Saturday afternoon I spent time working on some projects around home, and then the evening was largely spent watching a tv show.
Sunday morning I went to Divine Service, which was a little different than normal, as the pastor was unable to be present. The service was modified slightly, and a lay-person delivered the message, but overall everything went well!
Sunday afternoon I worked on a few personal and work projects (I didn’t do any one thing for more than an hour or two), and after I finish authoring this post, it will once again be time to prepare for the week ahead!

Weekly Notes 2025.31

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 11:15:00 -0500

The past week was both more and less eventful than normal. How’s that possible, you ask? Let me explain…
Sunday afternoon I packed up and drove to visit family for the week, doing a remote work/vacation hybrid.
Monday through Friday I spent working during the morning/afternoon, with lunches and dinners with family.
Monday evening my mom, sister, and I baked pizzas for the family, and experimented with a few different flavors. The traditional/meat lover’s was my favorite, but everything turned out well.

Tuesday evening my sister and I made beef stir fry for the family (once again - delicious, and we finished it off in one setting).
After dinner, before going for an evening walk, I saw some interesting light/cloud formations, and took a picture with my M4/3 camera, which I posted as a status update.
Wednesday evening my whole immediate family went to the Auburn City Steakhouse in celebration of my dad’s birthday. It’s the first time I’ve ever visited, and I was very impressed with the quality of the food and of the drinks!

Thursday afternoon I visited one of our contract manufacturers, and spent most of the afternoon discussing ongoing projects and catching up with a team I’ve not seen for nearly half a year.
Thursday evening my brother was in the Fort Defiance Players production of Big Fish, a musical that I’d never heard of until he was set to perform in it. The cast did an amazing job, and it was an enjoyable evening at the theater.
Friday evening I went out to Two Bandits with my parents for dinner, where we enjoyed some breadsticks (appetizer), and I tried their new Ragin’ Cagin’ Mac & Cheese (which was delicious!).

On Saturday I began preparing for my trip home, and after lunch, drove back to Illinois.
And that once again brings me to Sunday! I went to Divine Service this morning, followed by some grocery shopping, and since it’s currently raining, I opted to write my weekly update a little early.

Weekly Notes 2025.30

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0500

I promise I’m not a food blogger, nor am I aspiring to be one, but I like to take photos of tasty food when I’m out, and I was out to eat with coworkers a few times this week, and so… this week’s update is going to include some food photos. 😂
Monday was overall a pretty normal day, not much to report.
Tuesday through Friday I had a coworker from Sunnyvale in town, for some internal meetings on tool consolidation and workflows. This meant a) a lot of our time was taken up in meetings, and b) you guessed it, some food!
Tuesday evening a local coworker and I took our Sunnyvale counterpart out to eat at The 208 House, one of my local favorites. After a long series of discussions during the day, it was great to relax and talk shop without as much pressure to settle on anything specific.

Wednesday we had a team lunch celebrating the successful launch of a product at Seasons Gastropub. It was a fun time to catch up with coworkers and celebrate wins, and enjoy a meal together!

Then in the evening I caught up with a vendor at The 208 House again (yes, twice in two days), and ended up spending an enjoyable evening both discussing upcoming project needs, and chatting about family, faith, etc.

Thursday there were no big meals (which was fine - I needed to have a day off!), but instead we had intern interviews! I helped with cultural interviews for some of our existing interns, evaluating how they would fit into our org were we to offer them a full-time position. It was interesting getting to hear more from some individuals that I haven’t had time to really meet prior to now, and also observe how other coworkers ask interview questions.
Friday I worked from home in the morning, then, along with another local coworker, had a farewell lunch with our Sunnyvale colleague at Thyme. My afternoon was pretty light, and with that, my work week was done!
Saturday I spent most of the day working on yardwork (thanks to the rain, there was plenty of mowing/trimming to do), and then relaxed in the evening while watching some YouTube videos that had caught my attention.
Sunday morning started with Divine Service (which I’ve been attending on Saturdays throughout July), along with some brief shopping.
And with that, I’m once again done with my update, and preparing for the week ahead!

Weekly Notes 2025.29

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 20:30:00 -0500

Overall, the past week has been pretty standard, without much to write about.
During the week I largely worked on catching up after being remote for the previous week while visiting family.
I don’t use LLMs much, but a few times during the work week I experimented with various ways to use them, primarily around data summarization. One example: I had a PDF of a presentation that I wanted to summarize in an email, and instead of manually authoring the entire email myself, I opted to see how well an LLM do at converting it into a semi-formal email. And I must say, I was surprised. The phrasing didn’t feel like how I would word things at times (unsurprisingly), so I did a lot of tweaking prior to actually sending the email, but it did help breeze past the monotonous part of the work. Whether that’s good or bad I have yet to decide…
During my off-hours (evenings/weekend) I mostly worked on my family genealogy. I had received a large chunk of information from my great-uncle while in Ohio that I did not have incorporated into my database, so I spent probably 8-12 hours poring over the data and corroborating everything with records online when possible.
- For those interested - I use Family Search for most of my initial research, and Gramps as my software/database.
Speaking of which - if you’ve never worked on family history before - the amount of records that have been digitized that you can now access for free online is staggering.
The weekend of course also included yardwork, housework, and Divine Service on Saturday (all as normal).
And with that, we’re to the end of my week!

Weekly Notes 2025.28

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 13:50:00 -0500

This week we had a coworker from Fargo visiting our office, so Monday saw an earlier morning than normal in the office, anticipating their arrival.
For lunch we catered a meal to the office and had a lunch & learn to give the team an opportunity to learn more about a project that the visiting coworker has been involved with.
Monday evening was filled with preparations for travel, as I planned to visit family Tuesday - Sunday.
Tuesday morning I met coworkers for breakfast, then headed the office for a morning of meetings. By around 1p I was done, and then it was last minute packing, and off to Ohio!
I worked remotely from Ohio Wednesday - Friday, taking time over lunch to visit with family, and enjoying time together in the evenings.
Thursday evening we invited my paternal great-uncle over for dinner (brisket - yum!), and afterwards some reminiscing on family history, followed by a few games of Pepper (a Euchre variant popular where I grew up).
Friday evening our family went to Two Bandits for dinner & drinks (see pictures below), and afterwards my sister and I went for an extended walk (I thought it was going to be a little over a mile… pretty sure it was over two).

Saturday I had nothing major planned until dinner, which of course meant that I kept pretty busy! In the morning I went with my sister to her office to help troubleshoot a computer issue (thankfully an easy fix), and after lunch most of my family walked down the street a little to where a neighbor was having a garage/estate sale, where we picked up a number of old but still useful items.
Saturday evening my sister and I went to a family friend’s house for dinner (burgers, corn, potatoes, and ice cream - delicious!), and followed it up with some good conversation.
Sunday morning started out with coffee and packing for my return trip to Illinois. I also attended Divine Service with my family, then had a light lunch, and it was time to start driving! Thankfully, the drive home was uneventful, and there were only some light rain showers to drive through.
And now, off to another week!

Weekly Notes 2025.27

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 20:30:00 -0500

This week’s update will be a little shorter than normal, as nothing overly eventful occurred.
I was in-office for the entirety of this week, mostly focusing on meetings and my standard workload.
Tuesday evening a group of coworkers and I went out for dinner and drinks to La Fiesta, one of our local favorites.
Wednesday evening I went out to another local restaurant, The 208 House, with a different group of coworkers who visiting our office from out of town.
Friday evening, after work, I got distracted for a while watching the Sorted Food channel on YouTube. I ran across their videos a few weeks ago, and find the team enjoyable to watch, and occasionally I learn a thing or two as well!
Saturday was a bit rainy, and so I spent most of my time indoors, split between some light gaming, working on family photos, and then Divine Service in the evening.
Sunday saw better weather return, and so my morning was spent outside working on yard work, followed by house work after lunch, a little more gaming, and continued photo restoration efforts.

Weekly Notes 2025.26

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 20:30:00 -0500

With a shortened week this week (thanks to Independence Day on Friday), my normal work week was both shortened, but simultaneously filled with a few extra meetings as everything was compacted into 4 days.
Monday through Thursday saw roughly my normal schedule of in-office work, without a lot to report.
Friday, being July 4th, meant time off, which I spent largely relaxing and working around the house.
I also picked up a new game, Northgard, on Friday, which I would continue to play occasionally throughout the weekend. I was looking for a different RTS that I hadn’t played before, and Northgard fit the bill nicely. It’s a different take on a strategy game than I’ve played before, and it’s a little hard to describe verbally… I’d strongly recommend taking a look at gameplay videos if interested to get a better understanding of how it works.
Saturday morning was once again consumed by yardwork… there hasn’t been a lot of rain in this area, but just enough to keep both grass and shrubs growing.
Saturday afternoon I continued working on scanning and restoring old family photos, and then went to Divine Service in the evening, followed by shopping for the upcoming week’s groceries.
Sunday then was left as my final day of rest prior to the start of the next work week. I slept in a little (which for me still means up before 8), and worked on housework, along with some additional gaming (Northgard) and continued photo work.
And with that, this week’s post is concluded, and it’s time to finish preparing for the week ahead!

Weekly Notes 2025.25

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 20:30:00 -0500

Monday of this week I opted to work remotely, mostly due to remote meetings, and a single in-person meeting at our manufacturing facility, which is closer to my house. It was a nice break, instead of traveling to the office.
Tuesday, after an early dentist appointment, it was off to the office, for a day largely filled with meetings. That was the story Wednesday through Friday as well, and my evenings were mostly spent either reading interesting articles online, or watching YouTube videos.
Saturday morning, before it got too hot, I spent time outside trimming shrubs, and catching up on some mowing that (if I’m being honest) probably needed done a few days ago, but… this is when I had time 🤷‍♂️
Saturday afternoon I worked on some odds and ends around the house, and then attended Divine Service in the evening.
Sunday morning I slept in, since I’d be to church the night before, and then spent time reading, exercising, and enjoying my coffee in the morning (not necessarily in that order!).
In the afternoon I decided I felt like playing a game, and ended up playing some Age of Empires II, which I haven’t played in years. It was a fun trip down memory lane. In the later afternoon/evening I called my family to check in, since it had been a few days since I called.
And now, after I post this, it’s off to finish preparations for the week ahead!

Weekly Notes 2025.24

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 20:40:00 -0500

Wow… it’s been another week already?
This week started out with me getting an opportunity at work to use a skill that I’ve not utilized in a long time: video editing. We had some onsite meetings later in the week, and my team members asked me to assist in editing two “hype” videos for upcoming product launches. So of course, I obliged! That took up most of my time Monday, and a bit of Wednesday.
Tuesday (the odd-day out in the above paragraph) was our department offsite, so instead of heading to the office I instead headed to nearby Bloomington for some team building activities, and of course, tasty food! (No, no pictures of it this time.) I was ostensibly on the team helping to prepare for and set up the offsite as well, but with everything else going on, my assistance narrowed down to transporting and setting up the tech for our over-lunch presentation from our department head. Overall it was a great day!
Wednesday was back in-office in the morning, finishing the second video. I headed home around lunch then, as I saw some bad weather approaching and decided I’d rather take calls from home rather than potentially having to sit out a storm in a restroom. Thankfully, none of the tornadoes touched down where I live (or at work), though there were at least three in our county!
I rounded out the week (Thursday/Friday) with mostly normal work in the office: a handful of meetings, and catching up on emails, messages, etc.
Saturday began a heatwave (well, at least what I’m calling a heatwave… low to mid 90s F) here in Illinois, and so my mowing happened much earlier than normal.
For most of Saturday afternoon I worked on scanning and editing old family photos and slides, and uploading them to both my own photo management system, and to my parents, so that we have two separate copies. In between, I of course added in laundry, dishes, and general housework (inside!).
Sunday morning started with Divine Service, during which we had the induction of our new DCE intern, as well as his wife, who will be serving at the Lutheran school associated with our church.
After church, it was off to do my normal grocery shopping, and then back home, where I once again began working on editing old slides. I enjoy both seeing bits of family history, and getting to “be a part” in some small by archiving and editing the photos.
And now… it’s almost time for me to call it a day, so I’ll post this and finish up some last minute chores! Till next time!

Weekly Notes 2025.23

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 13:50:00 -0500

I haven’t done this often, but I’m going to include a few photos in this update, because… why not? It’s all just food from my trip (which you’ll be reading about shortly). Anyhow… on to the update!

Monday morning I headed to ORD with some coworkers to fly to Fargo, ND for work. We were originally going to fly out of PIA, but the United flight was delayed enough by early in the morning that we decided to drive instead.
This was my first time parking at and navigating the external portion of ORD. Overall it went well, but I definitely prefer to fly into O’Hare, not drive…
Monday evening after we arrived we met our Fargo-based coworkers at Lucky’s 13 Pub, and had an enjoyable few hours catching up.

Tuesday was planned to be a day mostly full of meetings, which started at 8a. I was up early for breakfast, a tasty Eggs Benedict, and then it was a short drive to the office.

After work we headed to Würst Bier Hall, a restaurant I first visited back in November (during my first visit to Fargo). I probably should have tried a different meal than my previous trip, but I’m often a man of habits, and I again ordered a Jager Schnitzel Sandwich, along with a few local beers.

Wednesday started out with another couple of hours in the office, and then it was time to fly back to Illinois! We made it to ORD a little after 1p, then drove back to the Peoria area. I was kind of worn out, and ended up sleeping more Wednesday night than I normally would.
Thursday and Friday saw a return to the office, with days mostly filled with a combination of meetings and catching up on email, conversations, and work that I didn’t complete while on my trip.
Saturday I spent a large portion of the day debating/rethinking my note-taking app decisions. I won’t regurgitate the details here, but needless to say, I didn’t get much else done other than some chores…
Today (Sunday) is Trinity Sunday, which means it’s the primary Sunday each year that the church confesses the Athanasian Creed during Divine Service. I decided to read through all three Ecumenical Creeds this morning during my devotions as well, so that I could spend more time thinking about what they are stating.
The Athanasian Creed always reminds me of “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies”, a fun satirical video dealing with the trinity. I recommend checking it out; I tend to watch it a few times a year. 😂

For lunch, I cooked up a couple of burgers that I’ve had in my freezer, along with some fresh corn on the cob (yum!). And now… I’m finishing up this post!

Weekly Notes 2025.22

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 16:45:00 -0500

The first part of this week I spent working remotely while visiting family (meetings during the main part of the day, helping on the farm in the morning and afternoon/evenings).
Monday was my sister’s birthday (Happy Birthday Hannah!, and so in the evening I spent some time after farming celebrating with family and friends.
Tuesday was largely a repeat of Monday from a work + farming perspective.
Wednesday morning I started out the day helping do a final fill on the air seeder, and then preparing to travel home, along with a few meetings. For lunch my sister made cocktail meatballs (delicious!), and then all to soon it was time to get in my truck and start driving.
I drove into rain on the way home, and ended up spending about half of the trip with some level of downpour occurring. Thankfully it didn’t slow me down too much, and the fields definitely needed the water!
Thursday and Friday I was back in the office. Both days were spent catching up on some meetings and email from being gone, and then for lunch on Friday we went to a local town festival for some turkey sandwiches.
Saturday and Sunday were largely spent working around the house, catching up from being gone for nearly a week. I also ran into an issue with one of my photo backup solutions, and so I spent a non-trivial amount of time putting a workaround in place.

Weekly Notes 2025.21

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 21:00:00 -0500

Monday was Memorial Day for the US, and I mostly spent the day relaxing at home, not really working on anything in particular.
Tuesday through Thursday noon I was in office, with largely a normal schedule/workload. However…
On Thursday afternoon I headed to Ohio to visit family, and work remote for a few days while also helping out on the farm. Northwest Ohio was running slightly slower on getting crops in due to weather delays than is normally preferable, and the timing worked for me to be in the area for planting.
Friday and Saturday were spent mostly helping prepare the planter and seeder to run, and starting a few fields that had already dried to an acceptable level.
On Sunday I went to Divine Service with family, and then visited a local Mexican restaurant for lunch, after which it was (you guessed it) back to farming!

Weekly Notes 2025.20

Sun, 25 May 2025 21:00:00 -0500

I was once again in-office the entirety of this week, and it was a pretty standard schedule for me. Over the summer I’ll probably move back to remote on Fridays, but it hasn’t worked out yet.
Friday I started out the day with breakfast with coworkers at a local diner. The food was good, but honestly… I think my homemade breakfasts might be tastier!
I spent a large portion of the weekend rethinking my personal document management system. I’ve been scanning and storing digital copies of most paper documents in my life for over a decade now, but have not been completely happy with my setup for over a year.
- Initially I used Evernote for this purpose, and was fairly happy with the system, until I decided to migrate away from Evernote.
- I experimented with multiple options for the next couple of years, but never found one I liked, including Joplin (which worked ok, but felt like the wrong approach), DEVONthink (which was nice, but was iOS/macOS only, and rather expensive), and just the file system (which was not as searchable and ubiquitous as I wanted).
- Finally this weekend I settled on Paperless-ngx, running on my own server, accessed via Tailscale. I wish there was an offline/native app option, but for now it meets the easy search, ubiquitous, and easy maintenance requirements, so I’ll give it a shot.
When not migrating and filing documents, I also spent some time working on editing and restoring some older family photos. My current workflow is VueScan for scanning/ingest, a markdown file for keeping notes about each image, Affinity Photo for cropping + setting the created date, and Photoshop for final edits, and cleaning up the image. I’m not entirely happy with all of the tools, and have been looking for an alternate to Photoshop (including GIMP, which is how I normally process slide & negative scans), but I haven’t yet found anything that I like better.

Weekly Notes 2025.19

Sun, 18 May 2025 21:00:00 -0500

This week, I was in the office all five days, though I headed home after lunch on Friday to work remotely in the afternoon. I was fairly busy all week, but nothing specific stands out as something to write about…
…Until Friday, that is! I was slightly surprised (and then both humbled and grateful) to get mentioned by Shellsharks on Mastodon, in the announcement of Volume Sixteen of the weekly IndieWeb, Fediverse, and Cybersecurity Scroll! I’ve been following Shellsharks’ blog ever since I first found it a few months ago, and I’m honored to have been one of the posts linked to this week!
Also, Friday for lunch, in a first for me, I tried Chicken & Waffles at Dac’s Smokehouse. I’ve been to Dac’s many times, but as I’ve never had Chicken & Waffles before, I always ignored it and selected a burger or meat plate. However, for whatever reason it sounded interesting this week, and I must say, I’m glad I tried it! It’s not a dish I’ll probably order often, as it’s a little heavy, but the flavor was fantastic!
Saturday morning was spent doing yard work, followed mostly by relaxing in the afternoon/evening.
One way I spent some of my time was playing Voxel Tycoon again. It’s been almost a year since I really spent much time playing it, and I had fun starting a new game from scratch, and then slowly expanding tech trees, into new zones, and improving delivery throughput.
I also spent time Saturday working on scanning and editing some old photographs. I’m still not entirely happy with my workflow - it seems to me that it takes me more time to edit the photos than I’d like, but I’m too picky to just upload the scans directly to my server.
And on top of photographs, I also worked on some more of my genealogy on Saturday afternoon. Every couple of weeks I try to either add some new data that I haven’t gotten around to yet, or do general maintenance (add supporting documents, clean up locations, etc).
This weekend I also took a hard look at some of the projects in my Todoist lists, and spent time cleaning up tasks that were completed but that I’d missed checking off, adding plans where needed to move other projects forward, etc.
On Sunday, my pastor made a reference to Touchstone Magazine in his sermon, which caught my attention, as I’m always on the lookout for interesting articles and magazines. I haven’t chosen to subscribe yet, but I’ll probably pull the trigger soon.
Sunday has also been a day to do some laundry, and to do some cooking for the week ahead, including a tasty stir-fry that should last me until mid-week.

Weekly Notes 2025.18

Sun, 11 May 2025 14:00:00 -0500

First off: Happy Mother’s Day to both my amazing mother, and all of the other mothers around the world!
This week’s notes will be a little on the lighter side. It’s a tad out-of-order, but as I type this, I’m working at my home Linux workstation (Arch, btw), which rarely sees much use these days. I should correct that…
A majority of the week at work was consumed by meetings, preparing for some data migrations, and resolving how various integrations would work.
Tuesday evening I enjoyed a dinner at Jonah’s Oyster Bar with some colleagues. As is becoming my normal when I visited, I enjoyed blackened salmon, and a nice Old Fashioned. If ever visiting the Peoria, IL area, I strongly recommend checking it out.
Friday I had flowers delivered to my mother for Mother’s Day. I’m not in person this year (which is not entirely abnormal), but thankfully it is quite possible to coordinate and have flowers delivered to surprise my mom!
Saturday morning was consumed largely by yard-work, mostly mowing and trimming.
Saturday afternoon & evening I focused heavily on chores around the house; laundry, dishes, planning the next week of meals, etc.
I attempted to watch a tv show or two over the weekend as well, but so far my mind hasn’t been in it.
And that brings us to Sunday (today)! So far today I’ve mostly been relaxing, working on odds and ends after I got home from church + grocery shopping.

Weekly Notes 2025.17

Sun, 04 May 2025 19:00:00 -0500

To get it out of the way… May the Fourth Be With You! (Happy Star Wars Day!) And now, on to the rest of my week!
Monday I started out the week in the office, mostly with some standard meetings. In the evening I started digging into a software-related issue for work, which I knew would consume most of my time Tuesday as well.
And I was right! Tuesday I ended up working remote, as that is one of the best ways to focus on a problem for me. I actually woke up early and spend a lot of the day focusing on the issue, since it was top of mind, and fairly urgent.
Wednesday I was back in the office, though still spending some time in software development, attempting to wrap up my work from Monday/Tuesday. I ran into an interesting issue where two peripherals are sharing a FIFO, and though I’ve read the datasheet and understand what’s occurring, I’ve yet to figure out how to remedy the situation. However, I finished the rest of the work, shelved everything on a branch, and moved on.
Thursday morning I had a planned meeting with a colleague from Germany that was onsite, which ended up blowing past the original time and extended nearly to two hours. All in all it was good to meet someone from a different part of the org though, and I think it was time well spent.
Friday I debated whether to work in-office or remote, and ultimately decided to go in. Most of the day ended up spent on small tasks, and I headed home slightly early (well, early for me, not by normal standards), as my brain was running out of steam it seemed.
However, Friday was also yard work day, and so after I got home I promptly mowed my yard before I was able to actually relax! 😂
Since my mowing was done, Saturday I spent the day working almost exclusively on side projects. I did quite a bit of work throughout the day scanning and editing old photos, and in between added in a little gaming (once again trying RuneScape: Dragonwilds, though it hasn’t really stuck yet), as well as began the effort of porting my Mastodon and Instagram posts to my website.
Speaking of data migration to my website: on Saturday, my obsession with consolidating old posts from social media to my website hit a critical point, and so I started out the day by migrating a majority of my old Mastodon posts as status updates. I then followed suit in the afternoon/evening by beginning to migrate my old Instagram posts as well (in the same fashion), and by the end of the day I had most of them ported over.
Sunday, after Divine Service and grocery shopping, I continued the work of migrating my Instagram posts, and by lunch the work was done. But of course, I couldn’t stop there…
Sunday afternoon I realized that I could also post the show notes, along with links to the Archive.org archived audio, of my now-defunct podcast that I did with my sister to my website. After about 30 minutes, I had that done, and now almost everything that I posted online since 2014 is hosted here. The only things missing are my videos (maybe I’ll post them, we’ll see), Facebook posts (I no longer have my archive), and Twitter posts (same - I didn’t keep the archive, unfortunately).
On Sunday I also started listening to a new (to me) audiobook: We are Legion (We are Bob), Book 1 of the Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor. It’s proving to be interesting so far, and I kind of wish I would have started it sooner!
And with that, my update for the week is done! 🙂

Weekly Notes 2025.16

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 20:00:00 -0500

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)… 😞

Weekly Notes 2025.15

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 18:00:00 -0500

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.

Weekly Notes 2025.14

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 18:00:00 -0500

Sunday and Monday I had a chance to once again delve back into embedded software development. Nothing overly complicated, mostly data piping, but it was nice to have an opportunity to code again.
Wednesday morning was spent with two coworkers preparing for our summer offsite. I haven’t been heavily involved before, but it’s the same team that I’ve worked on Christmas events with in the past, so we are used to working together.
Wednesday evening and early Thursday were spent finalizing preparations for some upcoming travel. Thursday afternoon I hopped on a plane and headed south for a few days to visit family!
The final few days this week were spent visiting my extended family in the Carolinas. Some of my extended family lives in the Charlotte area, and so my entire immediate family headed down to visit over the weekend.
Friday was mostly spent working remotely, and in the evening I went with my uncle to pick up my sister at the airport.
Saturday, we spent the morning helping to prepare for one of my second cousin’s graduation party, and then went to her senior violin & viola recital in the afternoon, followed by the party at their house in the evening.

This morning (Palm Sunday), most of my immediate family visited a Lutheran Church in the Charlotte area that is much more high church/traditional than what I’ve been to before. It was definitely a very interesting experience!
And finally, this afternoon my immediate and extended families visited the Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately, only some portions were blooming since it’s still early in the year, but the parts that were blooming were beautiful, and it was a great excuse to walk around and enjoy the outdoors!

Weekly Notes 2025.13

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 11:00:00 -0500

Saturday night/Sunday morning I didn’t sleep well, and had a few odd health symptoms. I ended up going to prompt care on Sunday, and was put on antibiotics.
Monday, though I was feeling overall fine, I worked from home. It happened to be a day where I had a substantial number of meetings, and I can take them just as easily from my home video conferencing setup as I can in the office.
The rest of the work week was mostly uneventful, thankfully. The weather dipped again this week, and by mid- to late- week it was again on the cooler side for Spring.
Saturday I finished and submitted my taxes, to ensure that I had everything completed before the deadline. This was one of the easier years in recent memory, thankfully!
On Saturday afternoon I also played RuneScape for the first time in a while, including a little skilling, and playing through the Contact! quest line. I eventually want to finish all of the in-game quests so that I can follow new storylines when they are released, but I don’t spend much time playing, so it’s going to take me a while…
Saturday afternoon/evening I decided to watch The Imitation Game (movie) about Turing and the Enigma machine. I’ve seen clips online for years, and finally dedicated time to watch the entire movie. Overall, I enjoyed it, and would recommend it to others!
While watching the movie, I also spent a little time fixing links on my sister’s website. I converted it to a static site for her a few months ago, but had not done an exhaustive review of internal links, and earlier this week I realized that some pages didn’t navigate correctly (thanks to a 404 seen on GoatCounter!).
I spent a little time looking for my old Facebook and Instagram posts today, with the hopes of adding them to my website. Alas… I no longer have the exports that I downloaded when I shuttered my accounts.
This afternoon I will probably mow my lawn, for the first time this season. The grass is getting just tall enough that it’s time to even everything out, and even though it’s still on the cool side, I’m ready for the lawn to look nicer.

Weekly Notes 2025.12

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 21:00:00 -0500

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

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 21:00:00 -0500

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

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 14:45:00 -0500

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

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 16:40:00 -0500

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

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 18:00:00 -0600

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

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 13:15:00 -0600

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

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 21:00:00 -0600

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…

My increased usage of my iPad for productivity has brought me back to my perennial debate between notes apps and productivity apps. 🤦‍♂️

Notes

On the note taking front, I’m overall very happy with Obsidian, and the iPad experience is actually very good. I was slightly surprised. However, I still have an affinity for Bear Notes (both in terms of ease of use on mobile platforms, and its overall design), and so I once again have both apps on my devices, and am examining the pros and cons of each.

The things that are really missing right now from Bear for me are a) a web app, or way to access my notes when not on an Apple device, and b) good version history. I have hardly ever needed a way to revert to an older version of a note, but I’m lightly paranoid about it.

Tasks

I haven’t looked as seriously yet at an alternate to Todoist, as historically I’ve always come back to it every time I’ve considered an alternate within the past decade. However, being on an iPad has once again made me debate if I should consider OmniFocus. I think it’s still more work to maintain than I really want, and slightly clunkier to use than Todoist, but the more native app has its appeal… 🤔

Weekly Notes 2025.04

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 20:00:00 -0600

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

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 20:15:00 -0600

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

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 14:45:00 -0600

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

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 18:30:00 -0600

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

Sun, 05 May 2024 12:00:00 -0600

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

Weekly Notes 2024.16

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 20:00:00 -0600

At this point, I should just summarize every week this Spring with “work is very busy, and I haven’t done much besides that of note.” 😂 (Of course, that’s boring reading though, so I won’t do that.)
I continued my meal planning this week, which included running across a tasty and easy Chili recipe. I was tempted to make it again next week, but I probably should have some diversity in my meals.
As you’ll see in my Read section (below), I went on a kick reading how others use OmniFocus, and I pulled a few ideas from Scotty Jackson’s article that I’ve implemented into my own system.
This weekend, I removed my /now page from my website. It was a fun idea, but I found updating it tedious, especially when I’m busy. And a /now page that doesn’t get updated isn’t particularly useful…
I also spent some time playing Voxel Tycoon, a game that I’ve played on and off for a few months. Something about this type of strategy game can be very fun for me.

Read

Listened To

ATP Insider: Computing Origin Stories
Mac Power Users: 740: “From The Beatles to The Libertines,” with Lee Garrett

Watched

The Beekeeper (2024)

Weekly Notes 2024.15

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 20:00:00 -0600

The past week was pretty busy at work, with a combination of meetings, project kickoffs, and Spring beta testing/troubleshooting. And this weekend, as I publish this update, I’ve been crunching on a project as well, so I don’t feel like taking much time to write…
I did, however, make a bit of a change to something personally though… For the first time in years, I designed a weekly menu, and actually roughly stuck with it. This got me both purchasing a few foods I am not used to at the store, and also being a bit more conscious of exactly what I was eating day to day.
Speaking of changes… During the week, for some reason, I got very annoyed at Todoist and am back on OmniFocus. I’m not sure if it’s a coping mechanism for when I feel overwhelmed, or if there are features of OmniFocus I was missing in Todoist… 🤷‍♂️
I’m also strongly considering changing the format/content of these posts. I enjoy having a short outline of what I’ve done, interesting things, etc, but the time commitment to write it up discourages me if I’m at all busy. And there are times of my life when I am, in fact, pretty busy. Perhaps I’ll switch to just notable podcasts vs every podcast I listened to?

Listened To

Issues, Etc.: 1033: The Teaching of Limited Atonement - Dr. Jordan Cooper
Mac Power Users: 739: Checking in on Freeform

Watched

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)

Weekly Notes 2024.13 & 2024.14

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 20:00:00 -0600

The last week in March (Holy Week), I was traveling for both work and to visit family, and didn’t take the time to write up my weekly notes. So this post is going to include two weeks.
On the Wednesday of Holy Week, I was in the office for a few hours, then headed to Ohio to visit family, and to do some heads-down remote work. I’ve found that for certain projects, I really need to have dedicated time away from the office to focus if I want to complete the work in a reasonable amount of time…
Thursday through Sunday were a mix of church services for Holy Week (which included some of my absolute favorite hymns), along with a fair amount of remote work, in an attempt to finish the aforementioned project.
Monday started early with some travel for work, followed by a late afternoon/early evening trip back to Illinois. Then, Tuesday through Friday were back in the office for a fairly busy week of work.
Thankfully, this weekend I’ve had some downtime, which have included some reading, some catching up on chores and projects around the house, and a little gaming.
Speaking of gaming… I’ve enjoyed playing RuneScape over the years, and on Saturday (4/6) I finished the 2024 April Fools event, which brought Benchsitting as a new skill to the game.

Read

Owning My Own Social
- I’ve long considered spinning up my own Mastodon instance, and find it interesting to follow the exploits of others who have tried it.
Get Started with Embedded Swift on ARM and RISC-V Microcontrollers
- I’m not sure I’ll ever actually try this, but seeing that Swift is supported on ARM and RISC-V microcontrollers was interesting.
North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 580: Socks in the Knob-Hole
Accidental Tech Podcast: 581: A Different Way to Be Evil
Accidental Tech Podcast: Specials: ATP Diamond Dogs: Talk Me Out of It
Accidental Tech Podcast: Specials: ATP Dev: Other People’s Code
Accidental Tech Podcast: Specials: ATP Tier List: Connectors
Accidental Tech Podcast: Specials: ATP Insider: John’s Windows
Connected: 495: The Boy Who Cried iPad
Connected: 496: I Tried to Put My Finger in Myke’s Mouth
Darknet Diaries: 144: Rachel
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Tech Topics We Hate - Bonus Show
Focused: 200: Favorite Productivity Hacks
Issues, Etc.: 0861: The Deconstruction of Christianity Movement - Alisa Childers & Tim Barnett
Issues, Etc.: 0953: This Week in Pop-Christianity: Evangelical Prophecies about the Solar Eclipse - Pr. Chris Rosebrough
It’s A Thing: 310: All Aboard the Skinship
It’s A Thing: 311: WHOOP, There’s Your Score
Just and Sinner: Sola Gratia: Grace Alone
Late Night Linux: 274
Late Night Linux: 275
Linux Matters: Snappy Snap Snapshots
Mac Power Users: 737: Scoring a Movie, with David Metzger
Mac Power Users: 738: Apple Collecting 101
The Omni Show: How Pete Edstrom Uses OmniFocus
The Rebound: 488: I’ve Already Forgotten What We Were Talking About
The Rebound: 489: What Did I Miss
Smarter Every Season: 100: Spring Updates for April 4, 2024
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 397: ‘Less Space Than a Nomad? Lame’, With Jason Snell
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 398: ‘You’ve Never Seen Email Like This Before’, with John Moltz
Under the Radar: 289: Vision Pro Numbers
Upgrade: 505: Abolish Drafts: The 2024 iPad Draft
Upgrade: 506: Legacy When? Legacy Now?
We’re Not Wrong: About RFK Jr.’s VP and Ronna McDaniel’s short television career
We’re Not Wrong: About the World Central Kitchen bombing in Gaza

Watched

Friends, S02E02 - S02E19

Weekly Notes 2024.12

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 20:00:00 -0600

The past week was once again relatively uneventful, with work consuming a lot of my time.
I found out mid-week that you can right click on a contact’s name in Slack, and copy the link to a Slack Huddle with them, then paste that to a meeting invite, so that scheduled meetings can take place directly in Slack. I won’t have a use for that often, but I may use it for scheduled lightweight meetings on occasion.
Over the weekend I worked on setting up a computer I need for a work project with Ubuntu, and decided to go ahead and pay for/set up Ubuntu Pro on it as well. I’ve gone back and forth on whether I like the idea of a paid subscription, but live Kernel updates and 10 years of ESM seems worthwhile for a system that I’m not touching on a day to day basis.

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 579: Use Your Words
Clockwise: 546: Taco iPad
Congressional Dish: CD289: The Not A TikTok Ban Bill
Connected: 494: Esse Tiere
Cortex: 153: What Even Is an Office?
DTNS/Good Day Internet: How Do You Keep Listener’s Interested? - Editor’s Desk
Getting Things Done: 250: Projects and Someday Maybe Lists
Issues, Etc.: 0782: The Bible and Gender Ideology - Dr. Mark Rockenbach
Issues, Etc.: 0802: Dealing with Pornography’s Temptation - Daniel Weiss
Just and Sinner: Is the Christian Forgiven of Past, Present, and Future Sins at the Moment of Conversion?
Just and Sinner: Sola Fide: Justification by Faith
Just and Sinner: What’s Wrong with the Modern Conception of Rights?
Just and Sinner: Sola Scriptura: Scripture Alone
Just and Sinner: From Reformed to Lutheran
Late Night Linux: 273
Linux Matters: the Joy of Linux Torture
Mac Power Users: 736: Maintaining & Caring For Your Apple Hardware
The Rebound: 487: Have You Tried NOT Going Viral
Upgrade: 504: Tone 47
We’re Not Wrong: About Sonia Sotomayor retiring and the death of Electric Vehicles

Watched

Friends, S01E05 - S02E01

Weekly Notes 2024.11

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 18:00:00 -0600

This past week was pretty uneventful. Work has been busy enough that I haven’t devoted much time to personal projects.
Over the weekend I replaced a failing drive on my media/backup server, which required a pretty small amount of my direct time to get resolved, but took well over 12 hours to rebuild the array.
Over the weekend I also watched the first part of Dune. I quite enjoyed it, and am looking forward to seeing the sequel sometime soon (probably when it’s out on BluRay).

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 578: Weird Can Be Beautiful
Ask Noah Show: 380: Open Source Task Management
Clockwise: 545: Cake and Cookies
Connected: 493: Ends in Potify
Dot Social: Moving the Fediverse Forward at FedifForum and Beyond, with Johannes Ernst of Dazzle Labs
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Why is DTN’s Twitch Channel called GDI? - Editor’s Desk
DTNS/Good Day Internet: About ByteDance (Narrative)
Issues, Etc.: 0743: The Book of Mormon - Dr. Jordan Cooper
Issues, Etc.: 0753: This Week in Pop-Christianity: A Jesse Duplantis Easter Sermon - Pr. Chris Rosebrough
It’s a Thing: 308: Living in a World of Fandom
Late Night Linux: 272
Mac Power Users: 735: Catching up with Ryan JA Murphy
The Rebound: 486: I’m Eating a Turtleneck
Upgrade: 503: We Own the Refs, the Stadium, and the Field
We’re Not Wrong: About the TikTok ban and Boeing

Watched

Dune (2021)
Friends, S01E01 - S01E04

Weekly Notes 2024.10

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 16:00:00 -0600

This week was, for some reason, slightly exhausting for me, though I can’t point to any one specific event or series of events that caused the exhaustion. I had a fairly standard work week, and then enjoyed a visit from my sister this weekend.
While she was visiting, we played World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - A Pandemic System Board game and Small World of Warcraft, two games I picked up a few years ago but hadn’t had time to play. Both proved fun, and I hope to play them again sometime soon!
Also this weekend, I had the pleasure of watching an amazing performance by the Concordia University - Chicago Wind Symphony. It’s been many years since I attended an event of this nature, and I didn’t realize until afterwards how much I’ve missed it. All of the performers did a fantastic job, and it was a delightful way to spend an evening.
In the generally-interesting category, I ran across DropDMG when reading through a blog earlier this week. While I don’t have an immediate need to distribute macOS applications, knowing that such a tool exists could be useful in the future.

Read

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 577: Colorful Criticism
Clockwise: 543: I Hear The Boxes Are Much Bigger
Clockwise: 544: I Would Like It To Actually Be Good
Congressional Dish: CD288: Government Funding 101
Connected: 492: What is the But For?
Darknet Diaries: 143: Jim Hates Scams
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Tom Has a New Book - Editor’s Desk
Getting Things Done: 249: GTD and Personality
Late Night Linux: 271
Linux Matters: A Mini Swap Adventure
The Omni Show: How Michael Darius Uses Omni Software
The Rebound: 485: EeeeeeeUuuuuuuu
Upgrade: 502: It’s the Way Towards Colour
We’re Not Wrong: About Nancy Pelosi’s Stock Portfolio and California’s Minimum Wage Law

Watched

The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, S01E01-S01E03

Weekly Notes 2024.09

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 20:00:00 -0600

Last week I referenced to trippy, a handy networking tool that I had run across but hadn’t had a use for yet. This week I ended up having a use case… and I can definitely report that it’s handy for tracking down routing issues!
Mid-week, I got annoyed at the amount of effort that I was putting into OmniFocus, and reverted to using Todoist. In general I like a lot of features of OmniFocus more, but it has a few extra steps required for virtually every action I want to do, and it doesn’t feel fast on my iPhone. Todoist both has features I don’t want, and is missing features I’d like, but it works at the speed I think, and more often gets out of my way. We’ll see how long this lasts before I’m tempted by another tool again. 😂
On Saturday, I decided to quit using a self-hosted FreshRSS instance for my RSS aggregator, and migrate to Newsblur. It costs about half as much as what my DigitalOcean droplet was costing me to run FreshRSS, works at least as well (if not better), and reduces the number of computers that I’m managing. And in the grand scheme of things, I’m not sure that I care if I self-host my RSS aggregator. It’s a cool thing to say “I did it”, but I don’t think it provides me many benefits presently.

Read

Super-Resolution iPhone Panoramas for Vision Pro
- I haven’t actually tried this yet, but after trying the Vision Pro a few weeks ago, I am convinced that capturing photos & video for a future where I use one is a worthwhile endeavor.

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 576: Quiet Little Leech
Bad Voltage: 3x65: Not Evenly Distributed
Congressional Dish: CD287: War Money
Connected: 491: Improper Work Attire
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Are We in A Dot-Com Bust? - Editor’s Desk
Focused: 198: Revisiting Journaling
Getting Things Done: 248: Workplace Challenges - Improvements
Issues, Etc.: 0584: Worshipping with the Church Triumphant – Pr. Andrew Packer
Issues, Etc.: 0612: This Week in Pop-Christianity: Joel Osteen on the Whispers of God – Pr. Chris Rosebrough
Just & Sinner: Luther’s Contribution of the Two Kinds of Righteousness
Late Night Linux: 270
Mac Power Users: 733: Our Favorite iPhone Apps
Mac Power Users: 734: I Got to Be the Hero
The Rebound: 484: What Breed Of Dog Is Biting Me?
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 396: ‘The Essence of Stealing’, With David Barnard
Upgrade: 501: The Perfect Noodling Computer
We’re Not Wrong: About IVF and Fani Willis

Weekly Notes 2024.08

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 17:00:00 -0600

This week I ran across trippy, an interesting little networking tool that combines the functionality of traceroute and ping. I don’t have a current use, but am filing it away for when I need it.
Much of my in-office time this week was focused on troubleshooting new products. I experimented some with using SSH from a Java app, which I’d not done previously. Once I figured out the basic requirements, it was pretty seamless!
This weekend once again included ripping some new-to-me Jazz & Swing CDs to my Plex server, along with some albums of hymns from CPH. I continue to enjoy using Plexamp, combined with my own library, to stream music, instead of one of the major streaming services.

Read

JavaScript Bloat in 2024
- And interesting look at the amount of bloat in current (popular) JavaScript-based pages…
iMessage with PQ3: The new state of the art in quantum-secure messaging at scale
- As someone who is both privacy- & security-conscious, and an iMessage user, enhancements to the security of the iMessage platform are always welcome!

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 575: Walk a Little Faster
Ask Noah Show: 377
Clockwise: 542: You Should Not Toss Leprechauns
Connected: 490: Ivy League Ferret
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Are We in A Dot-Com Bust? - Editor’s Desk
Focused: 197: Feel Good Productivity
Getting Things Done: 247: David Allen talks with Keven Kelly
It’s A Thing: 305: This Thing Literally Slaps
Late Night Linux: 269
Linux Matters: An Exodus of Bitcoin
Mac Power Users: 732: Catching up with Mike Vardy
The Omni Show: Omni Group’s 2024 Roadmap
The Rebound: 483: Dial the 9 and the 1
Upgrade: 500: Core Face/Peripheral Face
We’re Not Wrong: About the Border and Trump’s NY Business Trial Penalty

Watched

Wonka (2023)

Weekly Notes 2024.07

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 19:30:00 -0600

A large portion of this week in the office was spent working through some interesting networking configuration to allow test devices at remote sites to securely access a cloud database… thankfully people much smarter than I were able to assist!
Precision Planting’s 20|20 Display was featured this week in a story on the Qt website, which included an interview with my coworker Dave. It’s a nice view into some of the products we work on, along with some of the technical decisions we’ve made over the years.
While working on a project in the office, I was reminded that, sometimes, slightly over-engineering is not a bad thing. I had forgotten that I built a safe-guard into a product’s software so that it wouldn’t install updates that didn’t explicitly include support for its hardware revision. While it was an annoyance this time, it also has saved many headaches in the past.
This weekend was spent ripping some new (to me) Jazz CDs to my Plex server. I’m really enjoying some of the new albums, and am currently listening to The Best of Miles Davis: The Capitol/Blue Note Years while writing this post.

Read

The Missing Semester of Your CS Education
- There are a number of useful courses here for developers, covering all of the tools that we use daily but that don’t get taught.
Firehouse Five and the Cinderella Surprise
- Very interesting blog post by Cabel Sasser about a Dixieland jazz band that I’d never heard of before.
Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo
- I hope this is a net positive for Mozilla. I love using Firefox, and want it to thrive, and continue to grow in market share.
Backdoors that let cops decrypt messages violate human rights, EU court says

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 574: Weird Forking Scenario
Clockwise: 541: Peripherereral Free
Connected: 489: The Birds Chirp in the Black Void
Darknet Dairies: 142: Axact
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Where Do You Draw the Line? - Editor’s Desk
DTNS/Good Day Internet: 4708 Extended: Don’t Pass on Passkeys
Getting Things Done: 246: Slice of GTD Life with Rene Lie
Issues, Etc.: 443: Dechurching in America, Part 2 - Michael Graham
Issues, Etc.: 472: The Presence of Jesus’ Body and Blood in the Sacrament - Dr. Jordan Cooper
It’s A Thing: 303: Tom fought in the Rumi Wars
It’s A Thing: 304: Men Are Welcome Until They Die
Late Night Linux: 268
Mac Power Users: 731: “Tears Rolled Down My Light Seal”
The Rebound: 482: Two Out of Three Hosts Say Yes
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 95: ‘I’m a Real-World Man’, with Adam Lisagor
Upgrade: 499: We Have All the Cushions
We’re Not Wrong: About Libertarian RFK Jr. and the Monoculture

Watched

So You Think You Know Git - FOSDEM 2024

Weekly Notes 2024.06

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 12:30:00 -0600

Early this week I set up an old Lenovo ThinkCentre to run a headless install of Ubuntu, and started playing around with some projects I’ve heard of from others, but never used myself. First up: Pi-hole, a network-wide ad blocking option. It took a little while to get everything configured the way I wanted, and I’m still working through some odd behavior, but overall I like it. Most of my browsers already have some form of ad-blocking enabled, but this works even with devices I don’t have as many options on (phone, iPad, etc).
I’m still sticking with OmniFocus, and actually started using one of their slightly more advanced features, Mail Drop. I’ve used similar functionality on Todoist to auto-forward certain types of emails as tasks to my inbox, and I’m happy to now have the same workflow set up with OmniFocus.
I spent some time digging into Tailscale’s permissions management options, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to configure. I wanted to start limiting certain connections on my tailnet, instead of leaving settings wide-open, and within minutes I was able to set up a few simple rules that put things in a much better (and arguably more secure) state.
A few weeks ago I heard about LocalSend, an app that gives you an AirDrop-like experience between virtually any two machines, on the Linux Matters podcast, but didn’t have a reason to use it at the time. Fast-forward to this weekend, and I needed to transfer some large files between two machines on the same network, but didn’t have another mechanism set up. In almost no time at all, I was able to download the app on both machines, and send the files… it was one of the most “it just works” experiences I’ve had in a while. I highly recommend checking it out.

Read

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 573: Look at It Harder
Clockwise: 540: I Did Something Bad
Connected: 488: hot guy, incredible actor, hot dude
Cortex: 152: Apple Vision Pro: The Future is Here
Issues, Etc.: 363: Women’s Ordination, Empathy and Feminism - Dr. Joseph Rigney
Issues, Etc.: 393: Baptism and the Giving of the Holy Spirit - Pr. Mark Surburg
Late Night Linux: 266
Late Night Linux: 267
Linux Matters: Magazines Reloaded
Mac Power Users: 730: “Treat it as an Intern,” with Jeff Richardson
The Rebound: 481: You’re Doing A Great Job (Abridged)
Upgrade: 498: Leap the Uncanny Valley
We’re Not Wrong: About the Tucker/Putin Interview and the Arizona GOP

Weekly Notes 2024.05

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 14:00:00 -0600

News articles are continuing to be published regarding Precision Planting’s 2024 announcements. This post from AgriNews had a good overview, and (in my opinion) nicely combined comments from yours truly with those of Justin McMenamy, Vice President - Disruptive Products.
Friday was the release of Apple Vision Pro, so I’ve been watching and reading reviews of it all week. I’ve linked some of my favorites below in the Read and Watched sections. I’m not yet convinced to drop $3500 on it, but I’m also still considering it…
I’m still actively using OmniFocus 4, and did my first (abbreviated) weekly review with it today. While I still wish there was some more natural language processing built in, similar to Todoist, the overall experience is growing on me.
A project at work has me dusting off my Python skills (meager though they are), and also relearning how documents in MongoDB work. It also gave me an excuse to play with Python packages in Nix, which I’m still finding extremely useful for software development.

Read

Why Tim Cook Is Going All In on the Apple Vision Pro

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 572: Cryptofarts and Copyright Infringement
Clockwise: 539: You Folks Need Some Help
Connected: 487: Mr. Fake John Voorhees Goes to Europe
Focused: 196: Focus & The Reading Life, with Maryanne Wolf
Getting Things Done: 242: Slice of GTD Life with Richards and Spurgeon
Issues, Etc.: 293: Countering Technological Liturgies - Joshua Pauling
Issues, Etc.: 311: Responding to Roman Catholic Proof Texts: Protestants Deny the Real Presence - Dr. Steven Parks
Issues, Etc.: 332: Evangelical Cliches - Bryan Wolfmueller
It’s a Thing: 301: Little Treats Mission Creep
It’s a Thing: 302: Spray Candy Is My Roman Empire
Mac Power Users: 729: Don’t Hear What We Aren’t Saying
The Rebound: 480: You Like Developers? Name Three
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 394: ‘An Impossible Balcony’, With Matthew Panzarino
Upgrade: 497: The Poison Pill
We’re Not Wrong: About the Border and Gen Z’s Gender Split

Watched

Weekly Notes 2024.04

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 14:30:00 -0600

Overall, this week was relatively uneventful (outside of some stuff at work). I didn’t focus much on personal projects, except for…
Only a few weeks after claiming that I was sticking with Todoist for the foreseeable future for as my task manager, I once again got curious about OmniFocus, and ended up switching my entire task list over mid-week. Todoist has been implementing more team-based features recently, which I don’t need. And something about OmniFocus keeps drawing my attention… We’ll see how long it lasts.
On Saturday, I spent a substantial amount of time becoming familiar with the Nix package manager, which I am interested in using for reproducible builds of a project at work. The basic premise was easy to learn, though it took most of the day to get a fully functional solution.
Sunday so far has consisted of Divine Service in the morning, some cooking over lunch (which included prep for the week ahead), and some small amount of time focusing on a work project.

Read

Using nix-shell to create and share reproducible embedded development environments

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 571: Adding Some Carrot
Clockwise: 538: If I Lose It, I’ll Die
Connected: 486: Elden Widge
Getting Things Done: 242: Slice of GTD Life with Richards and Spurgeon
Late Night Linux: 265
Linux Matters: Fetch Is Going to Happen
Mac Power Users: 728: All About AppleCare
The Omni Show: How Kaitlin Salzke uses OmniFocus - Part 2
The Rebound: 479: $3500 Worth of FOMO
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 393: ‘An Asterisk on the Bento Box’, With Marco Arment
Upgrade: 496: 40th Anniversary of the Mac Draft
We’re Not Wrong: About the New Hampshire Primary (Live from Manchester)

Watched

Reacher (2022), S2, E05-08

Weekly Notes 2024.03

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 14:30:00 -0600

Even though it’s technically a holiday, I had work on Monday, preparing for our conference, and will instead use it as a floating holiday sometime later this year.
Tuesday through Friday of this week was Winter Conference 2024 for Precision Planting. The following links include coverage from various agriculture-focused outlets, a few of which quote yours truly, and I’ve thrown in a picture of one of the show stands as well:
Over the weekend I spent some time improving my Obsidian daily note setup, mostly adjusting the file location(s)
To automate some of the work, I used zmv, which was a new tool to me… it’s shockingly powerful

Read

Author Clock
- I’m very tempted to either buy one of these, or set up a screen at my home showing off the web version 🤔
Long Live Webpages
What Even is a Webmention?
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (finished)

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 570: The Local Mooching Situation
Clockwise: 537: All I Found Were Three Apple TV Remotes
Connected: 485: A Mobile Hamburger Menu Three Feet Wide
Cortex: 151: The Second Best Time is Now
Dot Social: Pivoting Out of the Attention Economoy, with medium’s Tony Stubblebine
Focused: 195: The Productivity Field Guide
Late Night Linux: 264
Mac Power Users: 727: The Productivity Field Guide
The Rebound: 478: Skizzy
Under the Radar: 285: Recreational Computing
Upgrade: 495: Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong
We’re Not Wrong: About the Iowa Caucus

Watched

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023), S1, E10
Reacher (2022), S2, E01-04

Weekly Notes 2024.02

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 14:30:00 -0600

Early in the week, I spent a little time to make my Mastodon account discoverable by searching for this domain.
This week’s office time was primarily devoted to preparation for our annual Winter Conference.
On Thursday, I cleaned up the post structure on this website, which accidentally led to me spamming my RSS feed with old posts.
Friday morning I woke up to the sounds of my battery backups all going off at 3a, due to the loss of power in my neighborhood (really the first time this has happened since I moved here). Thankfully, the local power company was able to find the issue and restore power by about 5:30a, and so I was able to go about the rest of my day as planned.
This weekend, in my free time, I’ve been playing some of Tavern Master and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, both on PC via the Steam store.
- Tavern Master is a style of strategy game that I normally enjoy, though I’m currently finding it a bit tedious. We’ll see if I continue to play it or not…
- Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is an action game that is definitely outside of my normal gaming style, but it’s proving to be interesting so far. I expect that I’ll keep playing it occasionally.
This weekend also saw a cold snap to negative temperatures in the Midwest, along with some of the first real snow I’ve had to shovel this season. I’m happily staying indoors as much as I can.

Read

Listened To

Mac Power Users: 726: Journaling Update: Apple’s New App, Day One Updates & More
Focused: 194: I’d Like to Take a Mulligan
Upgrade: 494: Copyright Violation Machine
The Omni Show: How Kourosh Dini Uses OmniFocus - Part 2
Dot Social: Moderation and Migration for a Better Social Web, with Fediverse Leader Tim Chambers
Linux Matters: 20: Unfold Your Coding Potential
Late Night Linux: 263
Connected: 484: The Rickies (January 2024)
The Rebound: 477: Brrreeeeoooooouuuuuuuggghhh
Clockwise: 536: Spay and Neuter Your Pets
We’re Not Wrong: About the Secretary of Defense Going Missing and DEI
It’s a Thing: 299: Smut Rising
Accidental Tech Podcast: 569: Do Grasshoppers Have Tongues?

Watched

January 13th: A Somber Day In Lithuania
xXx (2002)

Weekly Notes 2024.01

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 12:30:00 -0600

I decided to try something a little different this year. I’ve seen other bloggers (for example, Jamie Tanna) implement a weekly review of sorts on their blogs, and thought it might strike an interesting balance between daily, monthly, and yearly posting, all of which I’ve tried at one point or another. I’ve also attempted weekly posts in the past, but often with some specific topic in mind. These notes will be simple recaps of my week.

New Year’s Day 🎆

Nice relaxing holiday on Monday (New Year’s Day)
I decided that migrating away from Todoist is a nonstarter currently, and so cleaned up and closed my OmniFocus account.
While in cleaning mode, I also did some general upkeep on my Obsidian vault.
Tuesday marked my return to the office.
Most of Tuesday through Friday was consumed by preparing for our annual Winter Conference at work.
Saturday was spent working on my 10 Year Anniversary post, followed by some research into comment platforms while I watched some TV and movies (below).
Sunday (today) started with Divine Service in the morning, followed by implementing giscus on my website.
After I’m done writing this, I have a small project to do for work, then it will be time to prepare for the week ahead.

Read

2024: The Year of the Personal Website by Matthias Ott
Minimize Your Circus Factor by Mercedes Bernard
Defiant by Brandon Sanderson (finished)

Listened To

The Talk Show with John Gruber: 392: ‘Halos and Harps’, with Casey Liss
Late Night Linux: 262
Upgrade: 493: Upgradies Hall of Fame
Darknet Diaries: 141: The Pig Butcher
Connected: 483: Send John Your Face
The Rebound: 476: Vision Pro No Show
We’re Not Wrong about The Epstein List and Texas Power
Accidental Tech Podcast: 568: The Year of Romance
It’s a Thing: 298: Let’s All go To The Bullpen
Clockwise: 535: It’s Even Embarrassing in Metric
Getting Things Done: 240: David Allen talks with Justin Hale
Dot Social: The State of Federation, with Mastodon’s Eugen Rochko

Watched

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023), S1, E8-E9
Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts (2022)
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)