Weeknotes 23:19

July 2, 2023

Week of June 25–July 1

According to plan

The goal of the week was to get the new LGND site launch ready. I had a plan and started executing that plan on Monday. I started by reworking on animation on the homepage on Monday. There were several elements of the animation that were just not working so I went for a simplified solution. On Tuesday, I reimplemented animations back into mobile (I had taken them out of mobile a couple of weeks ago). I also refactored the animation triggers for the case studies so that they would be more flexible and not require a developer to add specific classes when entering future case studies.

The next part of the plan was to do another round of QA on Wednesday with several other members of the development team. Thursday and Friday were set aside to address any issues that came up in the final round of QA. It was a pretty light list and I had some time to address some nice-to-have items on our list.

It was very satisfying to be able to execute the plan and deliver on my promise to our leadership team.

The State of CSS Survey 2023

I took The State of CSS 2023 survey on Thursday. This is the fourth year that I took the survey. I shared my thoughts about this year’s survey in a post I wrote several days after this weeknote.

If you write CSS as part of your job, I encourage you to participate. This year’s survey features the ability to create a reading list about the CSS features you may not be as familiar with.

Yard work can be painful

On Tuesday, I decided to tackle some yard work. I was not thrilled to have to do it but it needed to be done. I started by clearing several weeds that had grown about as tall as me near the deck in our backyard. That job was painful at times as there were blackberry vines growing between the other weeds. The gloves I was wearing did not offer much protection.

After clearing the weeds, I decided to try to get rid of a decaying stump before mowing. I thought I could just break it apart with a hoe but it was more solid than I thought. So I got out a shovel and started to dig it up.

That is when the pain started. I realized that I had been stung or bitten by some type of bug. At first, I thought it might be fire ants. But then I saw a small insect that had wings. I headed into the house to address the stings.

My wife helped me out by putting baking soda on my leg. It was really hard to tell where I got stung. I also took some Benadryl as a precaution. The places I got stung hurt much more than I could ever remember from previous stings. I had several waves of intense pain, especially in the joint of my right kneecap over the next few hours.

I returned to the scene of the crime the next day and saw that I had disturbed a nest of sweat bees. These little insects pack quite a punch.

Articles I read

• ‘Past Lives’: Mature Wisdom in an Indie Romance (Brett McCracken)
• Celebrating Good Times When Life is Hard
• With Friendship in Decline, Belonging Is a Powerful Apologetic
• Blurbs. (Ethan Marcotte)
• Building Motion for the Web: In the ‘Zone’ (Viget) – The first post in a series on motion. This first article described the challenge of classifying types of motion to better plan and communicate in projects. I enjoyed reading their findings and look forward to the other articles in the series.
• Rejecting Your Maker Means Rejecting Your True Identity
• How to Speed Up YouTube/Vimeo Embeds in WordPress – This article gave me some food for thought as I consider how to improve the performance of page on our new agency site.
• “Artificial Intelligence & Humanity” (Dan Mall) – I appreciate Dan’s thoughts about how to utilize AI in the design process. He identifies where AI falls short and the need for a human agent.
• The umpire on the cusp of a watershed moment for baseball: ‘I think she’s going to do it’ (The Athletic)
• Forgetting God

Books I am reading

I am reading slowly through several books right now. I only read through a couple of short chapters at a time with The Creative Act and not every day. I read a chapter daily in True to His Word and am about a third of the way through it.

• The Creative Act
• True to His Word
• Engineering Management for the Rest of Us
• Invitation to the Jesus Life

What I watched

• Secret Invasion (Disney+) – I watched episode 1 on Sunday afternoon and then later that evening with my kids. It has my interest so far.
• Breakpoint (Netflix) – I finished watching the series this week. I really enjoyed it and I was able to read an article about this year’s Wimbledon field and know who the players were because of watching this series.
• The Pez Outlaw (Netflix) – This is an interesting story. Several of my teammates had recommended it.
• Is It Cake, Too (Netflix)
• Endeavor S9:E2 (Prime) – I am glad we have the Masterpiece subscription so I could watch the episode I missed last Sunday.
• Air (Prime)
• The Breakfast Club (Netflix) – This was on my son’s list of movies to watch this summer so we joined him.
• M*A*S*H (MeTV)
• The Andy Griffith Show (MeTV)
• American Pickers (Defy)

What I played

• MLB The Show 21 (Rays) – I went 2-4 this week. I had high hopes that my fortunes were changing when I came back against the Angels in the middle of the week by tying the game in the 8th and going ahead in the 9th. But then I dropped the next three against them, blowing a late-inning lead the day after the dramatic come-from-behind win.
• I had a fantasy to real-life moment in the game I played on Wednesday. As Manuel Margot, I hit a deep ball to centerfield that I thought would be a two-run homer. Instead, Mike Trout robbed me of that homer (then hit a solo homer to lead off the bottom of the inning). IRL, Trout robbed someone of a home run in about the same location in Angel’s Stadium on Thursday afternoon.