Weeknotes 22:37

November 27, 2022

Week of November 20–26

Highlights

  • I saw a former colleague at church on Sunday. We had worked together in the National Campus Office of Campus Crusade for Christ, now known as Cru. It was strange to see him in such a different context. It has been over 12 years since I left Campus Crusade. Scott was in town over the weekend to do training and then was staying to spend the week with family. I did not interact with Scott regularly but our paths crossed occasionally over the three or four years I worked in that office.
  • This was a short work week with the Thanksgiving holiday. I decided to take off on Wednesday and Friday because two of my kids were going to be home for the holidays. Unfortunately, only one of them was able to come home. My daughter tested positive for Covid-19 and stayed in Nashville. We missed not being able to see her and love on her. It was a very different Thanksgiving without her presence.
  • I participated in the second session of The Art & Science of Flow on Monday afternoon. Our team is split into two groups and we attend the training every other week. In this session, we focused on Kanban boards and specifically on Kanban cards. I was a bit more distracted during this session as some conversations were happening behind the scenes about the media company project that is launching soon.
  • On Tuesday, I worked on addressing several QA items for Principal Media. My goal was to have the site ready to launch when I got back in the office on Monday. It was a challenging day as we were still receiving feedback late in the day. I appreciated one of my teammates who kept the scope manageable on one of the solutions. And I was thrilled that another teammate came up with a solution that allowed me to reuse an existing block instead of having to build a new one. It was nice to get the project to a place at the end of the day that allowed me to be able to step back and enjoy my time off.

Thoughts about Twitter and its possible demise

Like many people, I wonder how much longer Twitter will be around. I joined Twitter in 2008. At first, I did not understand why I needed to be on it. But as I continued to tweet and build a network of people I followed, I found it invaluable for feeling more connected to the Web design and development community.

Besides following industry voices, I also developed several relationships with others in the community. One such relationship led to me getting cookies from New York. I connected to a Web conference that I attended for several years through Twitter (Front-end Design Conference in St. Pete). I found out about a job that led me to move to Chattanooga through Twitter. And I have cultivated new relationships with people in the UK and the US as well as kept up with those that I have met over the years at the handful of conferences I have attended.

I have still gotten a lot of value out of Twitter in recent years despite all the negative things going on in the space. I am sad to see what is happening recently and grieve for the loss of connection this tool has given me over the last 14 years.

I am not sure what I am going to do next. I have pondered moving to Mastadon but have been unable to join a Web building community. My Twitter activity has dwindled over the years and I have contemplated not moving onto another network. It was fun why it lasted but maybe it is time to step away from the social web.

I have also pondered leaving Facebook for some time. The value I get from Facebook is in revisiting my memories each day. I would like to figure out a way to import all of my data from Facebook and Twitter into WordPress and create my memory section. But I have yet to find a simple solution to help me to make that happen without a big time investment. I have even pondered just doing it manually.

I will continue to follow many who blog through RSS. But it is not quite the same as the more casual connections that Twitter facilitated.

College Basketball

My son and I taking a selfie toward the basketball court. We were at the game to cheer on his school, Murray State University, who were playing the Chattanooga Mocs.
My son and I took a selfie before his Murray State Racers took on the hometown UTC Mocs.

I had been looking forward to spending some time with my son while he was home on break from Murray State University. Earlier in the fall, I noticed that Murray State was going to be playing in Chattanooga against the UTC Mocs right after Thanksgiving. I was excited about the chance to go see the Racers play in town with my son before he returned to Kentucky to finish the semester.

The result was not what we hoped for as the Racers lost to the Mocs by 3 points. Murray State had a tough night hitting shots from beyond the 3-point line and the Mocs got hot near the end. The game did come down to a final play and the Racers had a chance to tie the game and send it into overtime but missed the 3-pointer that would have made that happen.

I hope to go up to Kentucky this spring and go to a game with my son at Murray State. I promised him that I would wear a different shirt. I wore the same shirt earlier in the fall when we attended a football game and later a volleyball game during Family Weekend. The Racers lost both of those games. I think it is time to retire the shirt now that it has an 0-3 record.

Articles I read

I caught up on a lot of reading this week as I took time off. I also revisited two articles that I had read at the end of last year. They were about some spiritual disciplines that I did not incorporate into my life this year but want to consider for the new year. One of the advantages of documenting my life through these weeknotes is that I can easily find links like those.

Books I am reading

What I watched

  • Downton Abbey (Prime)
  • Kim’s Convenience (Netflix)
  • Tales of the Jedi (Disney+) – I really enjoyed the last one of this series.
  • Andor (Disney+) – We went back and rewatched several episodes to catch my son up before watching the finale. We had a marathon watching the last four on Wednesday night. Great series. Can’t wait to see the story progress in season 2.
  • The Great British Baking Show Holidays (Netflix)
  • Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade (NBC) – A holiday tradition at our house. Though I probably spent more time on my tablet reading things than watching the parade.
  • The National Dog Show (NBC) – Another tradition. I remember watching the first one before heading over to some friend’s house to celebrate Thanksgiving with them.
  • Blockbuster (Netflix) – I watched an episode after waking up in the middle of the night with some acid reflux caused by eating too much for Thanksgiving. I am not sure if I will be watching further episodes.

What I played

  • FIFA 23 (Manchester City and Croatia) – I decided to play in a World Cup tournament with Croatia. I have liked Croatia for many years and visited the country when I lived in Europe in 1998. I recently watched a documentary on Netflix that included Croatia as they qualified for the World Cup. I made it to the quarterfinal with a comeback win against Germany, scoring the go-ahead goal in the last ten minutes of the game. But I fell 4-1 against Portugal to end my run.

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