Weeknotes 26:34

Posted 2 hours ago

Week of August 16–22

Move-in for our youngest child

On Tuesday, we traveled to Johnson City, Tennessee (northeast corner of the state) to move my youngest into her dorm on Wednesday. This is the first roadtrip that I have not driven in a long time. I rode along with my daughter, who got her license about a month ago. She did great job and I enjoyed getting to spend that time with her.

On Wednesday morning, we headed over to the ETSU campus. They had a whole system set up to where we parked the vehicles, they unloaded everything, and delivered it to my daughter’s dorm room. They had us print out tags to put on everything so we knew where it went.

We spent the morning helping her to clean and set up her room. We hit a bit of a snag with putting up her curtains. My wife had purchased hardware to try several different options. We ran into some obstacles which we eventually solved with a couple of trips to Walmart. We finally finished up around 9 p.m. after taking a couple of breaks for lunch and dinner (and those trips to Walmart).

We had originally planned to leave on Thursday morning. But we ended up staying an extra day because we were trying to get my daughter’s windshield replaced. A piece of debris from the road had hit the windshield a week earlier. We tried to get it fixed in Chattanooga but had a couple of delays. We finally got the windshield replaced on Monday (mobile at our house) but they could not calibrate the safety cameras in the car. I took it over to their store early Tuesday morning but they were unable to calibrate it and determined that the replacement windshield would need to be replaced.

The company had a service in Johnson City so we were going to try to get it replaced before leaving town. But they ended up not being able to do it on Thursday and they could not do it on Friday due to rain. I ended up working from the hotel on Thursday and we drove home on Friday.

Around the workshop

• I worked from home on Monday. I continued working on the digital version of the Revive Our Hearts Fall newsletter, which celebrates our 25th anniversary on September 3. I added Splide functionality for a photo carousel and a timeline component. I did not have a chance to finish styling the timeline component on Monday.
• As I mentioned earlier, I had planned to be off Tuesday through Thursday and work from home on Friday. But I had to pivot on Thursday and work from our hotel in Johnson City. It was a bit of a frustrating morning as I spent quite a bit of time updating my local development environment. Our team had made some updates to the codebase that I needed to sync up. The slower Internet at the hotel made it take a lot longer than it normally would have if I had been at home. But I was able to make the best of it and got several things done in the late morning and afternoon. I finished styling the timeline component on the newsletter page. I also made several content updates to the 25th anniversary landing page that I started building a couple of weeks ago.
• I wrote a short article about my most common CSS typos. The idea was sparked from Kevin Powell, who asked the question on Bluesky.

Visiting to the Aquarium

We celebrated our daughter’s birthday before she left for college with a visit to the Tennessee Aquarium. We had bought memberships a year ago when we celebrated her birthday. She wanted to go one last time before she left. We had fun exploring the Ocean building. We enjoyed seeing the Lemurs, touching the rays, seeing the butterflies, and enjoying watching all the sea life in the big tank. Afterwards, we ate dinner at Attack of Tatsu. It was a fun little trip to spend time with her before she left and take a break from packing her up.

Articles I read

• Polytropus (Jeremy Keith)
• Been quite a while. Not feeling good is the worst. On the mend, I think. (Joe Crawford)
• Works & Wonders: Niagara Falls, Guinness, 10,000 American Cities (Tim Challies)
• American Evangelicals Long for the Embrace of the Machine God (Christopher Jones, Mere Orthodoxy) – I found this article interesting from a theological standpoint. I have not embraced AI and have a lot of concerns. I am glad to see some Christian authors start to address those concerns and share them.
• AI Writing: The Day of Reckoning (Collin Hansen, The Gospel Coalition)
• Our Line in the Sand on AI: TGC’s Missional Opportunity (Brett McCracken, The Gospel Coalition) – I had already mentioned last week that I applaud The Gospel Coalition’s stand against using AI in its writing. I finally got around to reading it in their own words.
• Don’t Be Ashamed to Be Old (Tim Challies)
• Oops, Should’ve Thought of That (Jim Nielsen) – Thoughts on unintended consequences in using AI to code. “A good practitioner recognizes that leveraging some foresight is part and parcel of the job in order to mitigate unintended consequences.”
• Connections, Part Two: Social Connections Without Social Media (Jonathan Snook) – Jonathan is back with more thoughts on social connections.
• Ebb, Meet Flow: Intrinsic Design in a Nutshell (Jeffrey Zeldman) – A recounting of history that is just as relevant today.
• The Joy of Baseball (Daniel Darling) – Baseball was my my first love in sports and still is. I remember listening to several games on the radio growing up. I listened to the Rays win the Wild Card in Game 162 on the radio. It has been way too long since I have been to a major league baseball game (2018).
• Do Not Talk To Me About “AI” (Jamie Zawinski) – Jamie created some cards to share his thoughts and convictions about AI with others.
• Are You as Connected to the Church as You Want to Be? (Benjamin Vrbicek)
• What Unique Platform Has God Given You to Glorify Him? (Randy Alcorn)
• Challenges Of Broadcast Television Aspect Ratio Changes (Declan Vale)
• The Slow Drift of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage (Karan Thomas, The Gospel Coalition, India)
• TGC, AI, and the Democratization of Competence (Tim Challies) – Tim shares some thoughts about The Gospel Coalition’s decision on AI and surveys some thoughts from others. He put together a helpful chart to summarize the spectrum of thinking about using AI in writing.
• Studio Notes #98 (Dan Cederholm)
• Who Gets to Define a Woman? The Answer the Next Generation Needs (Katie Laitkep) – This article was also published on Revive Our Hearts.
• A Sloppy Interface Is a Security Liability (Jim Nielsen) – Another reason to consider not to vibe code or let AI “design/build” your interface. Great to see that thieves have found a way to use AI to deceive people online (says sarcastically).

What I watched

• The most undervalued front-end skill right now (Kevin Powell, YouTube)
• Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings (Disney+)
• Monsters University (Disney+) – My daughter wanted to watch it before going off to school.
• American Pickers (Samsung TV Plus)
• Mad About You (Samsung TV Plus)
• Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy (Network TV)

Books I am reading

• The Discipline of Grace (Jerry Bridges) 
• Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness (Bobby Jamieson)
• Enjoying Jesus (Tim Chester)
• Desiring God (John Piper) – My small group decided to read this Christian classic. It will be my second reading of the book.

What I played

• MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 3-1 this week. I played games against the Rockies and started a series with the White Sox.