Weeknotes 24:14

April 8, 2024

Week of March 31–April 6

Men’s Retreat

This past weekend, I attended a men’s retreat with about 20 other men from my church. We met at the Fort Bluff Camp and Retreat Center just outside of Dayton, TN. As a new member of the church, it was a great opportunity for me to meet other men in the church and strengthen relationships.

The weekend was a mixture of group sessions, small group breakouts, worship, and time to play games, hang out, and get to know one another. The focus of our time was building community across generations. Each small group had men in different stages of life. I enjoyed getting to hear each of their stories. We had some great discussions and I look forward to continuing to build my relationships with these guys in the days ahead.

Front-end development’s identity crisis

Elly Loel added to the recent conversation about the devaluing of the front-end developer’s role and the dilemma that many of us face about who we are. It is a challenge for me to describe myself because I don’t fit in many of the buckets that the term ‘front-end developer’ describes today. I wrote a bit about my personal experience almost a year and a half ago. The dilemma has become more personal recently as I have begun looking for a new opportunity. I have found it a challenge to find roles that hit my sweet spot.

Articles I read

• Hell to Pay: What Truly Happened to Jesus on the Cross?
• Why Do You Do What You Do (And Not Something Else)? (Tim Challies)
• The Left Is Colonizing the Calendar
• Anonymity in Blogging (Jonathan Snook)
• The genius of the church at the turn of the age
• The one about the web developer job market
• Front-end development’s identity crisis
• Gambling has made ends of games miserable for college basketball benchwarmers (The Athletic)
• Voters reject sales tax for Chiefs, Royals stadium projects, raising questions about teams’ future in KC (The Athletic) – My dad is one of those voters.
• Start Small; Finish Big
• Owning My Own Social – I just skimmed this one because I was not interested in hosting my own Mastodon instance.
• Rays’ Brandon Lowe returns just when Tampa Bay needs him most (The Athletic) – Brandon is one of my favorite players on the Rays.
• The Beautiful Islands of San Serriffe – A great story about a practical joke The Guardian pulled off in 1977.

What I watched

• Avatar: The Last Airbender (Netflix – animated)
• Somebody Feed Phil (Netflix)
• Kim’s Convenience (Netflix)
• Together: Treble Winners (Netflix)

Books I am reading

• Mere Evangelism
• Gentle and Lowly (Third reading)
• Necessary Endings

Walks I took

• Sunday PM – 2.76 miles in 48 minutes
• Monday PM – 2.10 miles in 37 minutes
• Thursday PM – 1.97 miles in 34 minutes
• Friday PM – 2.42 miles in 40 minutes

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I played a game on Sunday and lost on a walk-off hit with two outs.