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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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…
