Weeknotes 23:16

June 11, 2023

Week of May 21–27, May 28–June 3, June 4–10

Life has been incredibly full over the past three weeks and I was not able to make time to write weeknotes so this one will cover the past three weeks. Life has been full of good things, challenging things, and things in between.

• My wife and I celebrated our 30th anniversary. It is a pretty big milestone that we quietly celebrated over dinner at a restaurant that was new to us.
• My son started a summer internship at Flywheel as a motion designer. They were really impressed by the video he made last year documenting his creative process for the HSP production of The Grand Duke. He will spend the summer creating several promotional videos for the company. It is a really sweet opportunity with mentorship and a lot of creative freedom.
• My mother-in-law came home from a rehab hospital after being away for a month. Her recovery has required more hands-on care which has been a challenge. But we were very encouraged by some progress this week that restored much of her independence.
• We have spent a lot of time consulting, praying, and just listening to our daughter as she has been heavily engaged in a job search for the next school year. She showed a lot of courage in turning down one offer that was just not right for her. We believe she is close to receiving an offer from another school that she is very excited about and is only 7 minutes away from her apartment in Nashville.
• My youngest started her first job at a local coffee shop (and frozen custard), Sourdough Cup of Joe. It is only 5 minutes from our house. She has enjoyed the experience overall and likes her co-workers. I went and visited her one night this past week and enjoyed a Slip and Slide (banana split with caramel and chocolate sauce). I anticipate more visits for ice cream throughout the summer.
• Workwise, the past three weeks have been much busier as I was asked to jump in to help out the new LGND site, which I will expand upon more below. So besides life being full, work has also been full which did not leave much time for me to keep up with weeknote posts.
• LGND is undergoing some structural and organizational changes to better leverage the breadth of talent of our team. As part of those changes, I have been asked to take on a leadership role. More specifics about this new role will be communicated during my upcoming six-month review.
• In preparation for that review, I took some time a week ago to review the past six months of work to look for accomplishments and areas of growth. Here is a resource I have found helpful in remembering the work that I need to be recognized for during a review period.

Jumping in to help with the new LGND site

For the past three weeks, I have been helping out with the new LGND site. We recently updated our branding and needed a new site to reflect those changes.

I pulled out the content that was originally in this post. Read Jumping in to help with the new LGND site

Articles I read

• You Can’t Tear Down the Norm and Then Be Surprised by What Comes Next (social commentary)
• The Freedom of Embracing My Weaknesses (Tim Challies)
• Cynicism Isn’t a Spiritual Gift
• Why Boys Don’t Wrestle Girls – I admire this father’s stance and convictions in the midst of changing cultural values.
• Walking Away from Holy (Paul David Tripp)
• What’s new in CSS and UI: I/O 2023 Edition – An overview of what’s new in CSS and UI from the Google I/O 2023. This article is good to read and catch up with what is happening.
• If You’re Not Getting Better, You’re Getting Worse (Chris Guillebeau)
• What Your Employees Really Want (It Might Not Be What You Think) (Kevin Eikenberry)
• The Sound Witness of An Ordinary Life
• On browser compatibility and support baselines – A caution about using Google’s new Baseline to determine if a feature is a good compatibility feature for your project. “Google Baseline does not answer crucial browser compatibility questions”.
• What is your “one thing”?
• Problems with Preferred Pronouns
• Blasphemy Then and Now (Carl Trueman) – An article about The Life of Brian.
• Reaction (Jeremy Keith) – I am glad that Jeremy was able to determine the cause of his anaphylaxis reactions.
• Scooby Doo, Oxfam and The Sexular Age
• When Winsome Doesn’t Work

More Tributes to Tim Keller

As I mentioned three weeks ago, Pastor Tim Keller passed away. I shared some articles related to his passing in my previous weeknote post. Here are some more I read the following week (22–27)

• Thousands of Happy, Unwitting Plagiarists: The Shaping Legacy of Tim Keller (Jared Wilson)
• Remembering Tim (Paul David Tripp)
• Tim Keller Is Now Home with Jesus (Randy Alcorn)
• Post-everythings (An article by Tim Keller that was mentioned in one of the tributes)

Books I am reading or just finished

• The Creative Act
• From Strength to Strength – I finished this one on May 26. I was a little disappointed with it. It gave me food for thought but was not practical enough for where I find myself. I would have liked more guidance/help determining the next steps to jump to the next career curve.
• True to His Word
• Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing – I finished this one this past week.
• Engineering Management for the Rest of Us – I had looked forward to reading Sarah’s book for a long time before it was released. And I bought a copy when it was released. But by the time it came out, I was reading other things and this subject was not as relevant at the moment. But as I finished up some other reading recently, I decided to pick this up and I am really glad that I did.
• Design is Storytelling – I had this one on my wishlist for a long time.
• The Prodigal God (Tim Keller) – About 14 years ago, I had listened to sermons Tim preached that were the basis of this book but had never read the book. It is so rich in the gospel and is full of insights I had never considered about this parable in Luke 15.

What I watched

• Messiah (Netflix)
• Paul Hollywood’s Big Continental Roadtrip (Netflix)
• Great British Baking Show Junior (Netflix)
• Across the Spider-Verse (Theater) – I like this one more than the original. Both the story and the visuals are so rich.
• Break Point (Netflix)
• King of Collectibles (Netflix)
• Star Wars: Rebels (Disney+)
• Into the Spider-Verse (Prime)

What I played

• MLB The Show 21 (Rays) – I started a new franchise season with the Rays and really enjoyed playing with this team. I had played an entire season of MLB The Show 20 with the Rays and the roster has a majority of the players from that team. I have been tempted to buy MLB The Show 23, as it has recently been on sale but think I am going to stick with what I already own.