Weeknote for 11/27/2022

Posted on December 3, 2022 by Andy

Holidays

😐

I’ll need another week or two on the Christmas labels. I reached a major mile stone last week, but after achieving this 90% mark, I find I have 90% left to go. But this project is giving me lots of data for planning next year’s edition.

🙂

I had a pleasant solo Thanksgiving again this year. My dinner mostly plopped onto my plate from cans, but I did somehow spend a couple of hours longer in the kitchen than I expected baking green bean casserole and pumpkin muffins. I compensated with an environment made of fall candles, my “community folk” test playlist, and a Thanksgiving kitchen ambience playing on the TV to pretend someone more prepared was around to do the cooking. I ate my meal with good old Doc and Marty and felt stuffed afterward. And had lots of leftovers.

Productivity

🤔

I’ve made one of my interval timers for cooking. I noticed the recipes I make all take the same basic shape, so I’m trying a timer that’s specific enough to guide and push me along while being general enough that I don’t need a new timer for each recipe. I’m hoping it will let me focus enough on each task to find ways to streamline them. Right now the timer is at 1.5 hours, and I’m hoping to get it down to 45 minutes.

Programming

🙂

Practical SQL by Anthony DeBarros (2018) led me to a better grasp of the language. I’ve used SQL here and there over the years, but I’d never learned it from start to finish, so I had several gaps and confusions. Now, thanks to the book’s explanations and the extra reading it prompted, I understand complicated joins, grouping, and the main math functions.

One interesting effect of the book is the way it focused my attention on SQL’s uses. The book was written primarily for journalists analyzing data for stories. It helped me see that SQL is one of those tools non-programmers can learn to make their work much more effective without diving fully into programming. And since the focus was less on the intricacies of the technology, I found myself noticing the significance of people’s purposes for it, things like spotting suspicious spending increases, trends in library usage, or demographic shifts.

Movies

🙂

Back to the Future Part III taught me there’s someone out there for everyone, even eccentric scientists, though it might require time travel. I also learned that I spoke too soon in my Part II complaint about character development. Part III wrapped things up nicely.

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Weeknote for 11/20/2022

Posted on November 21, 2022 by Andy

Christmas

😐

I didn’t quite get to the point I was hoping for with my Christmas labels, but I made substantial progress. I’ll have to finish some final steps after my two-week deadline, but I think I can do most of it in the timeframe I intended.

🤔

I booked my flights for Christmas. I had a bit of environmentalist crisis over it. Air travel is bad for the climate, so I was planning to take the train. But I worried I might be stuck in a bad experience for many hours each way, so I looked up Amtrak reviews, and apparently it has indeed gone downhill since I last rode, partly due to cutbacks during COVID.

I could drive, which I find taxing and somewhat stressful, but I found out for the distance I’m going, flying actually hurts the climate less.

I was gratified to find I wasn’t the only environmentally conscious person uneasy with the trade-offs of train travel. Fortunately, Amtrak is getting a big boost from the infrastructure bill, so maybe someday it’ll be worth the switch.

Personal development

🤔

I think my routines are regimented enough now that I’m ready to try daily journaling again, which I’m calling my daily wrap-up. I’ve made a database template for the page in Notion. The main sections cover worries, gratitude and inspiration, and a retrospective—observations about how I conducted my day. I only started a couple of days ago, so we’ll see if I can keep it up this time.

Music

😎

I attended a piano concert by an acquaintance of mine, Matt Peterson, for his very listenable new jazz album, Better Worlds. It was a solo performance, but the album features a full band. I bought the CD, which makes great commute music, and the title track quickly got stuck in my head. The album is coming to Spotify in the spring.

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Weeknote for 11/13/2022

Posted on November 15, 2022 by Andy

Christmas

🙂

I finished making my Christmas list. I like to craft my wish list, which takes some research time, and I ended up with way less time than I thought I needed. But the work journaling I’ve been using for all my projects helped me prioritize and streamline the rest of the research and filtering.

Next up is a couple of weeks on my Christmas labels, my annual tradition of making creative tags for my Christmas gifts to my family. I try to incorporate a theme from my year, but I keep the theme a surprise until Christmas. This project always takes way longer than two weeks, so wish me luck!

Productivity

😎

Even though my productivity system update is a side project at the moment, I’ve been stubbornly pouring time into it, because in its unfinished state my Notion system is kind of annoying. Last week I set up a Kanban board, which has been helping me juggle my current projects. But mainly I’ve been redesigning the format of my work session notes, which should help me review each project more easily and gather data for improving future projects.

After a ten-year hiatus, I’ve come back to learning Gregg shorthand. I’m hoping it’ll speed up the weeknote drafts I always write by hand now. I’ll learn a unit or two each week using the textbook my mom used in high school, Gregg Notehand (1968). I started last week with the forms for s, f, v, a, e, n, and m.

Nature

😎

I got up early on election day to catch the end of the lunar eclipse. I managed to get one clear photo through my binoculars. I think of lunar eclipses as just a blur of orange that passes across the moon, so I was surprised to see after totality that the earth’s shadow made a fairly sharp line.

 

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Movies

🙂

Back to the Future Part II was another fun and suspenseful action comedy, though thematically heavy. It managed to grab my attention when I wasn’t in the mood to watch it, and they did a great job weaving it together with the first movie. I was expecting them to do more with the “Nobody calls me chicken” thing, though. The first movie had character development from cowardice to courage, so I thought this one would move from pride to prudence. A missed opportunity.

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Weeknote for 11/6/2022

Posted on November 7, 2022 by Andy

Christmas

😐

Thanks to some turbulence in my sleep schedule and some competing activities, I didn’t get anything done on putting together my Christmas list. But interference from life is part of the reason I’ve started scheduling two weeks for projects like this one.

Productivity

😎

As a suspiciously time-consuming “side” project, I’ve been exploring ways to string together Notion features to add sophistication to my system. I found out how to create tasks in context using + mentions, I used a database item as a variable to filter multiple views at once, and I tried out a small experiment in automating Notion with Make.

Programming

😎

Fundamentals of Data Engineering by Joe Reis and Matt Housley fills in another large gap in my programming knowledge with a comprehensive framework for understanding the data processing pipelines most of my programming projects involve. I appreciated that it introduces the field of data engineering from scratch and emphasizes concepts rather than specific tools.

Foundations for Architecting Data Solutions by Ted Malaska and Jonathan Seidman digs into key practical issues in designing and managing a data project. This short book does assume familiarity with the data engineering field, and its coverage of topics is more selective than Reis and Housley’s, but my impression was that it’s a good supplement that packs in a lot of advice.

Nature

😎

My replacement binoculars arrived on Monday, and the secrets of the universe are being revealed to me, such as the moons of Jupiter. It is unbelievably awkward to take a photo through the binoculars with my phone camera, but I’ll see what I can do with my tripod or a phone adapter.

 

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Fiction

🤔

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu does a nice job of slowly unveiling the seriousness of Earth’s predicament while also offering some perspective. While I can understand some reviewers’ complaints about the novel’s characterization, since I’m not familiar with Chinese writing, I assumed some of that impression could be due to cultural differences, and in any case I was happy to let the very interesting science fiction ideas outweigh any problems.

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Weeknote for 10/30/2022

Posted on November 3, 2022 by Andy

Politics

🤔

After a big final research push on Saturday, I dropped off my mail-in ballot. The research was interesting and educational, as usual, teaching me about the local and state issues people care about at the moment and giving me a clearer sense of the criteria I use to make election decisions.

Christmas

😐

The first of my Christmas projects is to update my wish list, which is a tradition in my family to make it easier for everyone to shop. Mine ends up being a whole research project on its own, so this year, since I’m into scheduling things now, it’s getting planned like a project and scheduled for the next couple of weeks.

Health

🙂

I had an appointment with the new primary doctor I’d chosen. He was personable and actively solicited my questions, and he helped me rule out a medical test I wondered about having done, all of which made me satisfied with my choice.

People skills

🤔

Emily Post’s Etiquette overwhelmed me with its long list of rules and suggestions to learn covering a wide range of social situations. But I was glad people had come up with this kind of advice, and I’m looking forward to calming the overwhelm by analyzing this treasure trove down to its principles and then aggravating it again by speculating on how they’d apply to even more situations.

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Weeknote for 10/23/2022

Posted on October 27, 2022 by Andy

Politics

😐

My friend Heather jumpstarted my election research with links to some helpful endorsements. Other than listening to those, I only got as far as setting up an outline for my notes, but I’m still aiming to drop off my ballot on Saturday.

Programming

😎

Event-Based Programming by Ted Faison gave me a detailed map of this paradigm so I won’t have to feel lost when I wade into creating normal, user-driven apps, in contrast with the very linear programs I’ve always written. I was especially intrigued by the thought of using event-based interaction patterns to represent human procedures, such as the book’s example of a cook round-robin polling their pots to detect when they’re done.

Movies

🤔

I had another dual reaction to The Amazing Spider-Man 2—the highly questionable comic book science that I’m not sure even followed its own rules vs the very relatable human elements. Somehow I really felt this movie despite my low expectations for it.

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Weeknote for 10/16/2022

Posted on October 16, 2022 by Andy

Productivity

🙂

I’ve imported all my Evernote notebooks into Notion using the enex2notion script. The next step is to integrate the notes into my Notion system, which will take some reorganizing of the two sets of projects, and I’ll need to do it as a side project, because officially I’m putting this one on hold to focus on some others.

Also on the side, I’m updating other aspects of the system, such as the format of my work journaling notes and the Kanban boards I want to use to manage my project and task schedules.

I’m starting to schedule my projects in two-week and two-month intervals. These are the timeframes I’m noticing my shorter and longer projects falling into, so I’m trying them out as default expectations for planning purposes.

Politics

🤔

For the next couple of weeks I’ll be researching the candidates on my midterm ballot. In the process I want to note the evaluation criteria that emerge as I research so I can make future election decisions more quickly.

Food

🙂

Barissimo Midnight Blend: 4/5. Possibly just a rebrand of their Dark Roast, this is another good one for times I want a coffee with some bite that I can still settle into without fuss.

🤔

As I search for a simplified meal plan strategy, one aspect I’m exploring is using whole grains, such as brown rice if I can figure out what to do about the arsenic (opinions from Harvard, Consumer Reports [summary, report], and the FDA). In the meantime, I have a bunch of leftover white rice and pasta I want to use up, so that’ll dictate my meals for at least a couple more months, hopefully still using simple recipes that aren’t too boring.

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Weeknote for 10/9/2022

Posted on October 10, 2022 by Andy

Productivity

😐

I’m trying a third-party script, enex2notion, for importing my Evernote notebooks into Notion, since Notion’s import is unreliable. Last week I laboriously exported all my many notebooks from Evernote into ENEX files for the script to import, and this week I’ll attempt the import.

Programming

🤔

Professional Software Development by Steve McConnell was, for me, a feel-good piece about the effectiveness of careful and organized work. Overall the book dealt with the institutional aspects of the software development field, and the most interesting new-to-me discussion was his case in favor of software engineer licensing and how that would fit into the industry.

The Leprechauns of Software Engineering by Laurent Bossavit reminds me to take programming advice with a pound of salt and makes me wonder if the field’s body of knowledge is really ready for a license. The book recounts the author’s attempts to track down and evaluate the sources for some common “leprechauns,” notions about software engineering that have grown from unsupported claim to assumed fact within the community.

People skills

🤔

Long Story Short by Margot Leitman gives practical advice for the kind of live personal storytelling I probably won’t specialize in, though it will sometimes come in handy. As usual there were places I wish the advice had gone deeper, mainly on story structure, but I know where I can get that kind of info, and she lists some helpful places to find storytelling examples to learn from, notably David Sedaris, who I didn’t know was such a luminary in this field.

Movies

🙂

References in Stranger Things and Mr. Robot convinced me to finally fill a pop culture gap in my childhood with Back to the Future. It was lighter entertainment than I normally go for, but it drew me in with its stressful situations, its point about the power of self-assertion, and a guitar performance that got a LOL out of me; and I’ve moved the rest of the series up in my queue.

Posted in Movies, People skills, Productivity, Programming, Weeknotes | 1 Comment

Weeknote for 10/2/2022

Posted on October 6, 2022 by Andy

Life maintenance

😐

I narrowed down my candidates for primary doctor and ranked them to clarify my options. This week I’ll try to make an appointment with one of them for the annual physical I’ve been postponing since the start of the pandemic.

Productivity

😐

I’ll take a couple of weeks to work on importing Evernote into Notion. In the meantime I’m starting my note writing exclusively in Notion and considering Evernote an archive.

Programming

🙂

Software Architecture in Practice by Len Bass, Paul Clements, and Rick Kazman filled in, at an overview level, some gaps in my knowledge of software design, such as virtualization and designing for mobile systems. It was another of those well-organized, comprehensive practitioner textbooks I find so satisfying, so it’ll probably be my starting point when I study software architecture in more depth.

Housekeeping

🙂

I managed to decorate for fall early in the season this year. And I picked up the gourd and pumpkin decorations I wanted to use last year.

 

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People

🤔

Saturday I visited the grave of my friend Phil, who I used to visit at his nursing home. I found out the night before that he had died a few months ago and where he was buried, and since it would’ve been my scheduled day to meet with him, the next day I made the short trip over there. I listened to the recording of his graveside service and spent a little while talking to him and his parents, who are buried with him. Phil’s life had significant challenges, but he met them with perseverance, hope, and kindness toward the people around him, and I’m glad he’s at peace now.

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Weeknote for 9/25/2022

Posted on September 25, 2022 by Andy

Life maintenance

🤔

Looking into candidates to replace my retired primary doctor has been teaching me some more about research processes that work for me. I’m hoping this week I can settle on a few doctor options and make an appointment.

Productivity

🤔

Taking care of longer life maintenance tasks I’d been putting off has me thinking again about large-scale rhythms my schedule could adopt so I can make sure I keep everything important moving in a timely fashion. I’ll need to experiment to find satisfying patterns, but one likely idea is to take week-long break from my main project every month or two for a side project.

People skills

🤔

The Power of a Positive No by William Ury came across the most earnest book of his negotiation trilogy, since so much of it was about finding and affirming the deeper values that are driving your “no.” As usual I appreciated all the detailed advice, but I was left feeling the series had some gaps when it came to the problem of social engineering, which will be a future topic in this project.

What Great Storytellers Know by Bernadette Jiwa gave me permission to take an organized and careful approach to collecting and crafting stories. It also got me to ponder what inspiration I have to offer my storytelling listeners.

Programming

🤔

Object Design by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Alan McKean features extensive and valuable discussions of the design process. But it also reminds me I still haven’t done enough object-oriented design to comfortably understand all the metaphorical language of responsibilities and collaborations, and the complexity of the design decisions only strengthens my interest in Clojure’s perhaps simpler data-oriented paradigm.

Nature

😎

I’ve been neglecting my nature walks lately, so I took a couple more so I wouldn’t regret missing the rest of summer. It reminded me nature is the show that never ends.

 

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Posted in Life maintenance, Nature, People skills, Productivity, Programming, Weeknotes | Leave a comment