Weeknotes 25:15

Posted 2 days ago

Week of April 6–12

Onboarding

Nicolas, myself, Bryan (our team leader), and Logan. There are several other members of the digital team that did not join us on-site this week or only dropped in briefly.

On Tuesday, I flew to Chicago and South Bend, Indiana and then drove to Niles, Michigan for a couple of days of onboarding with my new job at Revive Our Hearts ministry. I met another teammate in the O’Hare Airport who was also onboarding. We made the trip together from the South Bend airport to our hotel in Niles. At the hotel, we were met by Bryan, our team leader. After getting settled in, we were off to dinner with a fourth teammate, Logan, at The Port of Peri Peri.

The next two days were a mixture of meetings, introductions, and getting set up with our new work computers. Revive Our Hearts uses Django for its content management system. We spent time getting set up with the repo and setting up our local development environment. Django is brand new to me so I will be spending time in the next few weeks getting up to speed with how to use it and getting familiar with the current code base.

I am so glad that we got to onboard in person at the Revive Our Hearts office. It gave us a chance to meet people in person and gave us time to bond as a development team. We ate several meals together and enjoyed getting to know one another. I can tell from our brief interactions that we are going to work well together.

I came home with a full head, full stomach, and a full heart. The trip helped me to feel connected both to the people I will work with and with the mission of the work that we are engaged in.

Googler… ex-Googler

I was shocked and sad for Adam Argyle after reading that his job at Google had been eliminated earlier in the week. As I read Adam’s post, there were so many things that resonated with my own experience a year ago. I felt many of the same emotions that Adam expressed. And just like Adam, it felt like such an abrupt ending to something I was very invested in and felt a strong emotional connection to.

Adam is a great contributor to the CSS community. I have appreciated his articles, talks, and demos that highlight new CSS features. He brings so much excitement to the subject he talks about or writes about. I just watched him on Smashing Meets a couple of weeks ago as he introduced us to many new CSS features (page transitions and CSS carousels) and mesmerized us with his interactive demos.

I wish Adam all the best as he looks for a new opportunity in this very tough market.

The Second Mountain

On Monday, I attended a conversation with David Brooks about discerning purpose in life’s second half. He discussed ideas from two of his books, The Second Mountain and How to Know a Person. I enjoyed watching and taking sketchnotes of the conversation. A friend has recommended The Second Mountain to me earlier in the year. I decided to buy the Kindle version of the book and started reading it on my flights on Tuesday.

Articles I read

I started looking into alternatives to Pocket to save articles to read later. I gave PaperSpan a go and it worked out pretty well. But then I had a problem logging into the Android app after changing my password. I looked into Instapaper on Saturday.

I had used Instapaper before I switched over to Pocket. I can’t remember why I switched. I was able to change my password and give Instapaper a try. I was able to import from Pocket. I am planning to move forward to Instapaper and am considering a premium account so that I can search. One of the reasons I am moving away from Pocket is that the search is useless. And that is with a paid account. I am not sure how much attention Mozilla is giving it these days.

Books I am reading

What I watched

Fun Facts: I Can See Your Page Title, But Why?!

Walking

It was great to get back out and walk around the neighborhood. It was a sunny, 60 degree day. I hope to walk more frequently this week.

  • Saturday – 4.26 miles in 1 hour and 14 minutes

What I played

  • MLB The Show 20 (Twins) – I lost the last game I played and snapped a 13-game winning streak. I won the game I played earlier in the week.
  • NBA 2K25 (Nuggets) – I won the only game I played this week.

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