Weeknotes 22:39

December 14, 2022

Week of December 4–10

Highlights

  • I started a new project on Monday. LGND is building a new site for Toyota Policy Drivers. We are moving their site from the Qurom platform and giving it a fresh design. Toyota Policy Drivers is a community of thousands of Toyota team members across America working together to protect and promote Toyota and the U.S. auto industry. We have a great relationship with the TPD team and I am excited to be part of this build. I am only using Gutenberg sparingly. I am primarily using Advanced Custom Fields and several custom post types. It is nice to work on a smaller-scope project. This project is a three-week build which I will finish in January after I take PTO for the final two weeks of the year. I am working with Karissa again after completing a project that we worked on together last week
  • I attended the third of the Art & Science of Flow training. We have been learning how to use Kanban to improve our workflow. I will complete the fourth and final session this coming week.
  • I spent time putting together a “brag document” for the second half of the year as I prepare for my six-month review at work. This has been a challenging season in my life and it was an encouragement to see all the things I accomplished in the past 6 months. I built and launched two big projects that utilized Gutenberg. I was influential in the decision by our leadership to hold an in-person retreat this fall through a blog post I wrote in August. I was heavily involved in our search to add a new developer to our team (he joins us full-time in January). I helped in interviewing several candidates for two project manager positions. We added two great teammates who are quickly making an impact. And I was reminded of new things I learned and new techniques I learned.
  • Our daughter danced in The Nutcracker with Chattanooga Ballet. This was would have been her tenth performance with Chattanooga Ballet had it not been for COVID-19. I reminisced throughout the whole performance as I thought of all the different roles she has played. I really enjoyed watching her dance on pointe last year as a flower. It was one of her longest times on stage. But my favorite memory is of the year that she and her sister were a mouse and soldier and they “fought” each other. We did miss being at The Tivoli Theater, which is being renovated. It is a much more intimate setting than Memorial Auditorium, which is a much bigger venue and we were further from the stage.
  • My son finished his first semester at Murray State. He is really enjoying his art classes and the friends that he has made in the Honors College. We are looking forward to spending time with him over the next month of his winter break.
  • My oldest came home for the weekend and we had a full house. She will be returning next week to spend a couple of weeks with us. It is great to have the whole family back together.
  • We played pub-style trivia at our LGND Campfire on Friday. Some of the categories included LGND history (most of which I was a part of but still got several things wrong) and facts about our teammates that have been shared on Friday standups (we have a fun question each week).
LGND Trivia at Friday Campfire
Nutcraker 2014
One of my son’s art projects. It is a found object sculpture of a hedgehog that we have named “Poky”.

Articles I read

Books I read

I met my reading goal of 42 books this week when I finished User Friendly. I thought I was going to blow away my goal as I was way ahead going into the summer. But I slowed down a bit this fall. I recently finished several books and close on some others.

What I watched

  • Downton Abbey (Prime)
  • Kim’s Convenience (Netflix)

What I attended

  • Chattanooga Ballet’s The Nutcracker – I attended two performances over the weekend to see my youngest dance as a spice drop and a snowflake.

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