Weeknotes 26:32

Posted 4 hours ago

Week of August 2–8

Around the workshop

• My team launched two migrations from WordPress to Django this week. We moved our German and South African sites. The project started back in February. I had a part in building new pages in Django, adding hero images to several sections, and other odds and ends. My teammate Nicholas did most of the heavy lifting, including implementing a lot of translation work. We have now moved all our language sites off of WordPress. Having a common CMS is a huge win for us as we prepare for the next phase of Wonder of the Word in 2027.
• Speaking of Wonder of the Word, I worked on a couple of templates for the next phase of Study Through the Bible. This phase of Wonder of the Word is Nancy’ DeMoss Wolgemuth’s first-ever journey teaching through the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. We are inviting women from around the world in 17 different languages to join Nancy over a two year process of studying through the whole Bible. Daily emails and spiral companion guides will aid woman as they follow along. I worked on an archive template for the 6 different sections of the Bible. I also started on the “Hub” page which will become the main jumping off point to all the different ways to participate in Wonder of the Word starting in 2027.
• I also built a landing page for Revive Our Hearts 25th Anniversary, which we will celebrate in September. The page will include a retrospective video, images of our major milestones, links to historic Revive Our Hearts messages, mostly from past True Woman events, and testimonials of the impact Revive Our Hearts has had around the world. We will launch the landing page later this month.

Trucks, planes, and goodbyes

On Friday, I traveled from Chattanooga to West Lafayette, Indiana to help my son move. He is joining his fiancée, who will start graduate school at Purdue. My son has moved out of our house and is starting a new chapter of his life. I am glad that I could help him out and share this adventure with him.

We are still trying to figure out why an almost 9 hour trip ended up taking almost 12 hours. Even accounting for the stops we made for gas, restroom breaks, and eating lunch, we seemed to tack an additional 2 hours on. At one point, we were off the beaten path in rural Indiana. Not sure why Google Maps told me to turn. My son got us back on course.

Even though it was a long day, I enjoyed driving through rural Indiana with the sun setting to my left amidst a bunch of clouds. It was an amazing scene. And I enjoyed the corn and mint fields along the road along with the old barns and charming farmhouses.

We rolled into West Lafayette around 9:30. We checked into our hotel, drove over and checked out his apartment, and then ate a late dinner at Applebee’s. We hung out for a bit in the hotel room before calling it a day. We headed over to his apartment around 9 and had the truck unloaded by 10:30. After returning the truck, we came back to the apartment where his fiancée and her family were unloading the stuff she brought and setting up the apartment.

My son dropped me off at the hotel in the early afternoon and we had our goodbye. I am flying back to Chattanooga today (August 9) through Indianapolis and Chicago.

I wrote a raw post on Saturday about saying goodbye to my son.

Articles I read

• Works & Wonders – Restoring Rembrandt, The Last Museum, Inventing the Fire Dept (Tim Challies)
• Coding Exquisite Corpse (Viget) – I scanned this one. Interesting idea.
• I Broke My 4th-Grade Class Economy (Tyler Sticka) – I love these personal stories. Inspires me to think of stories from my own life that I could tell. My favorite article that I read this week.
• Breakout Background using Modern CSS (Temani Afif , CSS Tip)
• Outburst (Chris Coyier)
• Dark mode toggles: two states are enough (Lea Verou) – I have three states on my site. Lea makes a compelling argument.
• Studio Notes #96 (Dan Cederholm)

What I watched

• Spider-man: Brand New Day (Theater) – We made a spontaneous decision to see the movie on Tuesday night. I won’t say anything because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who has not yet seen it.
• The 355 (Netflix) – My wife and I enjoyed this on Sunday.
• Quarterback, Season 3 (Netflix) – I finished this one on Thursday.
• American Pickers (Samsung TV Plus)
• Mad About You (Samsung TV Plus)

Books I am reading

• The Discipline of Grace (Jerry Bridges) 
• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (Cory Doctorow) – I finished this one on Thursday. I am interested in reading it again. It was different than what I expected but very good and though provoking. It was more about economics and business than I thought it would be. Focus not as much on products as the services.
• Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness (Bobby Jamieson)
• Enjoying Jesus (Tim Chester)

Swimming

I enjoyed swimming in the pool at my hotel on Saturday. I had the pool to myself. It is a saltwater system.

When I say swimming, I don’t mean exercise type swimming of laps. I swam a lot underwater, floated on my back, and just had fun. This type of swimming is a me type of thing. I grew up with an above ground swimming pool at my parent’s house. I was out in it every day during the summer. I also enjoyed pools at hotels when we traveled.

I wish I had the chance to swim more often. As an adult, I did not want to spend the time needed to maintain a pool and really could not afford one. I was surrounded by pools in our neighborhood in Orlando. Not as many pools in my neighborhood in Chattanooga. We had bought a family pool pass a couple of summers in Chattanooga but never felt like we were able to get the most out of it.

What I played

• MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I believe I only played one game this week. I was going to play on Tuesday night but we made a last minute decision to go see Spider-man. I won the only game I played against the Oakland A’s.