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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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).
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).
