Weeknotes 22:41

December 26, 2022

Week of December 18–24

I am taking the final two weeks of the year off to rest and spend time with my family. Here are some of the highlights from the week.

  • I enjoyed reading several different books. I started a new book, The Air We Breathe. I finished reading Black Box Thinking and Show Your Work. I have been reliving the NCAA Championship by reading Load the Wagon: The Kansas Jayhawk’s Road to the 2022 Championship. My parents sent it to me in May but I put it aside on my bookshelf. This has been a fun read to get into during my time off.
  • I have enjoyed watching several movies with my kids. You can find a listing of them later in the post. I have also just enjoyed having our two oldest back home and around the house. It is nice just to hang out with them at various times during the day and enjoy dinner around the table.
  • I played FIFA23 with Argentina and Manchester City.
  • I wrote a post about strategies for using new CSS features. It is two case studies of how I implemented new CSS in a couple of projects as a way to enhance the interface progressively. It was a post I was on my list of possible ideas to write about. I was inspired to write it after reading Stephanie Eckel’s,  2022 CSS Updates, on 12 Days of Web. And from a discussion with a teammate after I posted the article to our Slack development channel.
  • I surpassed my previous mark of 57 posts in 2005, the first year of my blog when I published Strategies for using new CSS features, which was my 58th post of the year. I am on track to publish 42 weeknotes for the year, only missing 9 weeks (Weeknotes 22:14 covered two weeks).
  • We celebrated my birthday on Wednesday. We had delayed celebrating it on the 17th due to my youngest daughter being sick and my oldest daughter being still in Nashville. My wife cooked me one of my favorite meals, BBQ ribs, and we enjoyed chocolate cake for dessert. I loved the new sweaters I got along with a screen-printed street map of Lawrence, Kansas where I went to college. The celebration was capped off by my family appreciating me by answering different questions that my wife asked. It is always great to receive that sort of encouragement.
  • I started reflecting back on the year by putting together some numbers for different things I have done both personally and professionally. It is a practice I started doing two years ago.
  • We attended a candlelight service at a neighborhood church on Christmas Eve.

Articles I read

Books I have been reading

  • Love Came Down for Christmas
  • Black Box Thinking -Finished this one over the weekend. It is a really good book on understanding how our best learning comes from failure and identifying the thinking and biases in ourselves and organizations that block us from learning from failure. Highly recommend this book.
  • Show Your Work – I enjoyed reading through this book of tips about “showing your work” and putting yourself out there.
  • The Air We Breathe – I have really enjoyed this book on how Christianity has influenced Western values and thinking. Many of the values we hold dear such as freedom, equality, consent, and progress have their roots in the influence Christianity has had. It also dispels several modern myths about the “dark ages” and the “war between science and faith.”
  • Load the Wagon: The Kansas Jayhawk’s Road to the 2022 Championship

What I watched

  • Downton Abbey (Prime) – We started the final season this week. I am going to miss it when we finish it. I have really enjoyed watching it almost every night.
  • Klaus (Netflix) – This was a recommendation from LGND teammates and my son. It is a really good story and a beautifully animated piece.
  • A Boy Called Christmas (Netflix) – Another recommendation from teammates. Our whole family enjoyed this one and liked how different the telling of this story was.
  • Die Hard (Prime) – Watched this classic 80’s movie with my wife and son.

What I played

  • FIFA23 (Manchester City and Argentina) – I decided to play the World Cup with Argentina. I made it to the finals but lost to Portugal 6-3. I replayed the match and won the second try 4-0 behind a hat trick from Lionel Messi. I enjoyed playing with Argentina throughout the week, especially with Messi and Julian Alvarez. Alvarez scored 13 goals and Messi scored 12. I enjoyed playing with Messi again. I played with FC Barcelona in FIFA13 after we bought a Wii. I played with them again in FIFA18. I am happy that Messi won a World Cup this year and reminded us of how great a player he still is.

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