Weeknotes 21:04

January 23, 2021

Week of January 17-23

• I enjoyed the three-day weekend. I spent time on Sunday and Monday getting my office set back up to the way it was six months ago. It meant moving my desk back into the room, moving some furniture, and restoring my baseball memorabilia shelf on the bookcase. My oldest daughter did her college classes remotely for the Fall Semester. I gave up my office so she could have her own room and moved my office downstairs to our dining room (which we don’t use as a dining room). It was nice to be back in my office space this week.
• It was a pretty light week work-wise. Most of our projects are in the design phase right now so there was not much work on my plate this week. But I am anticipating that changing come next week.
• The end of my week was very heavy on meetings as I sat in on some project kickoffs, had some 1:1 meetings with my manager and HR person, and did a walk-through of the WordPress backend for a recent project where we added a new section last week for 2021 Events.
• I also spent time this week reviewing some resumes and portfolios as our team searches for another front-end developer. We met with someone on Friday who we are really excited about. I was very impressed with the person’s skill level and thought process we walked through a recent project looking at the front-end and WordPress backend. It was just the type of skills we are looking to add to our team.
• I started a new book this week, How Charts Lie. My team is reading it for our next book club.
• We had a raccoon in our backyard on Friday. We were not sure if it was injured because we thought it strange that the animal was out during the day. I looked into contacting Animal Control but from what I found, I think we would have had to hire someone to come trap it. Fortunately, the raccoon vacated our premises sometime in the evening and has not been back.
• My daughter was able to go back to the studio for her ballet classes which meant picking her up from class at night became part of my weekly routine again. I really enjoy getting out of the house because I do so little of that these days.

Articles I Read

• Understanding Clip Path in CSS – Ahmad Shadeed keeps putting out quality content. I have started using clip-path more in my work as I have opportunities. This is a great article on the subject.
• In Critical Defense of Front-End Development – A thoughtful look at the subject.
• What I Love and Hate about Tailwind – I always enjoy articles where the author highlights the pros and cons that they have working with something.
• Why Tailwind Isn’t For Me – Again I like the perspective of this article because it is not just another hate on the subject article but the author explains why it is not for him. I have not tried Tailwind myself. But one of the reasons why is it just is I don’t think it is for me.
• Checkboxes make excellent buttons – Finally took time to read this one from September.
• Working with JavaScript Media Queries – I probably need to use matchMedia() more often.
• A minimum viable experience makes for a resilient, inclusive website or app – I really enjoyed these thoughts from Andy Bell about progressive enhancement. And I liked the simple example that he walked through.
• Dignity Beyond Accomplishment – A very thought-provoking article. It made me think about a documentary that my team watched in the fall, Life Animated. The father in that documentary asked, “Who determines what a meaningful life is?” This article asked a similar question about people with Downs Syndrome.

Watched

• 23 Easter Eggs & Callbacks in Cobra Kai: Season 3 – I enjoyed this video put out by Netflix. There were several that I missed when watching Season 3.
• WandaVision (Disney+)
• Chiefs-Browns AFC Divisional Game – I got really nervous with Patrick Mahomes went down with a concussion. Glad that the Chiefs pulled out the win. I am hoping Patrick plays tomorrow in the AFC Championship game.