Weeknotes 24:02

January 14, 2024

Week of January 7–13

Getting my son off to Spain

On Sunday, I took my son to the airport in Atlanta so he could start his study abroad adventure. He had a direct flight from Atlanta to Barcelona. I helped him to check in and then the time came for us to say our goodbyes. I watched him make his way through the TSA line and then finally broke myself away and said another goodbye that only I could hear.

It is hard to let your child go like that. I am very excited for him and the experience that lies before him over the next four months. But I also miss him terribly. I am also a bit jealous of the fact that he will be spending the next four months in Europe. I would enjoy taking the classes he is going to take. I know he is going to have an amazing experience as he meets people from a lot of different cultures and backgrounds.

I enjoyed communicating with him on WhatsApp throughout the week. It was great seeing pictures from his homestay and from Elisava where he is going to school. He sent me some pictures from his visit to the Sagrada Família. I am a big fan of Antonio Gaudí’s organic forms in his architecture.

The highlight of the week was a 45 minute “phone call” through WhatsApp on Friday. I enjoyed hearing the excitement in his voice as he shared about his many adventures from his first week in Barcelona. He jumped in right away starting classes on Tuesday. He is enjoying new foods and meeting other students in the study abroad program. It was nice to hear his voice and be able to have that connection when he feels so far away.

He is studying at Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering for the spring. He is taking a typography class, a furniture and product design class, an art history type of class, and a Spanish class. He has not taken Spanish in the past. All of his classes are taught in English.

New phone

I got a new phone this week. I bought a refurbished Samsung A23 off of Amazon. I have needed a new phone for quite some time. I only had 16 GB of memory on the old phone and it would quickly fill up. I got the new phone (64MB) just in time to be able to download the WhatsApp so I can communicate with my son in Barcelona.

I have been contemplating getting a new phone since at least this past summer. But I have been reluctant because I didn’t want to buy one and have it not be what I expected. It seems like every vendor on Amazon has some bad reviews and stories of people not getting the right product or they were defective. I was very pleased that the A23 was in great condition and the battery life is amazing.

I am not one to buy very expensive models like the iPhone or Pixel. The last time I got a more high end phone, it bricked out on me in about 6 months and I still had to pay it off with AT&T. I ended up getting a cheap Go Phone and have used that strategy ever since. But I needed a phone with much more memory. My kids all have Samsung phones and I have a Samsung tablet. So I decided to spend a bit more than normal and bought the A23. I am very happy with it so far. And I am glad that I have the space to add new apps.

Other highlights

• We had a kickoff meeting with the client team for a project LGND is doing this year. It is the biggest project we have ever done in terms of scope and team involvement. All of our creative teams will be involved in the project (design, development, and video) along with members of our X team. The project timeline will stretch over the entire year with the projected launch in December.
• I continued to work on a refreshed design for this site. I am hoping to get it to a point this coming week to launch the refreshed design. I am excited about the new typography and spacing along with new color schemes. My plan is to launch a refreshed design that updates the current one and then refactor the HTML, simplify the CSS, add some different grid layouts, and evolve the site over the next year.
• The Toyota Policy Drivers project moved into QA (quality assurance) at the end of the week. I will address any issues that were uncovered in our internal QA this coming week and then pass it off to the client team for them to do their own QA testing.

Articles I read

• Part of a Christian’s Job is to Point Out that Modern Life Stinks
• Notes on Using Logical Properties and Values
• Are you nostalgic for a way of building websites gone by? (Boost by Frontend Masters)
• Using the correct ISO language marker matters (Nic Steenhout)
• Resolute (Jeremy Keith)
• It’s Humans All the Way Down (Jim Nielsen) – Good article about AI and why people matter.
• Cold-blooded Software (Jim Nielsen) – I like cold-blooded projects.
• Sharing links (Hidde de Vries) – Hidde has decided to add a links page to his site. I am considering the idea for myself.
• A Weird Thing That Happens (Chris Coyier) – Chris revisits a post from ten years ago.
• 2024 (Todd Libby) – A very honest post from Todd Libby as he considers leaving tech.
• Why landing on the moon is proving more difficult today than 50 years ago (The Guardian)
• How an Atheist’s Book Led Me to Write about Christian Humility – I spent a summer with Mike in Hungary in 1990. We were on different teams but lived in the same city and would see each other periodically when traveling around Lake Balaton on a train. We were also in campus ministry and would see each other at conferences and regional events. I am looking forward to reading his upcoming book.
• Is naming things still hard? (Chris Ferdinandi) – I think it can be at times.
• Stop Looking For Friends, And Start Making Them
• Church without God: How secular congregations fill a need for some nonreligious Americans – I found this one interesting as one coming from a Christian perspective.
• A life of preferences (Dave Rupert)
• How to make external links accessible
• The Dress – Her daughter’s engagement and wedding preparations are the launching point of this mother’s reflections on her kids growing up. I find myself having more of these reflections as two of my kids are out of the house and the third one will graduate from high school this year.
• Sustained in the Fire – I so often want to be rescued rather than sustained. Just another instance of having to trust God in the midst of trials.
• I miss human curation (Cassidy Williams) – Another in a series of posts I have seen wanting to get back to the Indie Web.
• Let’s make the indie web easier – A call to make more tools to help others establish their own online presence.
• More on the easier indie web – A follow-up to the previous article.
• Trying to be the ideal American family with a small fridge (Dave Rupert)
• Will following my heart set me free?
• Top Front-End Tools Of 2023 (Smashing Magazine) – I am going to go back and look into several of these links when I am on my laptop this week.
• ‘Bumpy’ FAFSA rollout leads to frustration for college applicants – Filling out the FAFSA is never fun. I am looking less forward to the experience this year based on the things covered in this article.
• Please, Own Your RSS Links
• How holy are you?
• In Praise of Prudence: What the Cardinal Virtues Can Teach Us About the Splintering of Evangelicalism
• Lead vs Leader vs Leadership – I have sometimes wondered why the church draws so much leadership material from the business world.
• Five Fears of Old Age (John Piper)
• Early Web Design Helped a Generation Express Themselves Online. How Do We Capture That Feeling Again?
• Giving Yourself Stakes (Chris Coyier) – Build something that matters to you. I hear the Shop Talk manta in the background. “Just build websites.“
• Be a Light in 2024 (Paul David Tripp)
• Quotes from moving house (Dave Rupert)
• Water (Chris Coyier)
• Jesus, Immanuel
• Exposed RSS (Chris Coyier)

What I watched

Under the radar CSS features for your reset (Kevin Powell)

• Packers-Bears (CBS) – I watched this one in my hotel room in Atlanta on Sunday.
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Disney+) – One of my teammates told me that I would enjoy it. I enjoyed getting to revisit the character. Not a bad movie. But glad that I didn’t pay to see it in the theater.
• Season 45 – Lexington Modern of This Old House (TOH website) – I didn’t realize that this is a current season. They are about halfway through the project and we have watched all the episodes that we can at this point.
• Project Runway Season 11 (Prime) – We finished season 11 this week.
• Project Runway Season 12 (Prime) – We started a new season on Saturday.
• Bluey (Disney+)
• Gilmore Girls (Netflix)
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Disney+)
• JAG (Pluto)
• The Force Awakens (Disney+)

Books I am reading

I am a bit bummed that I have not made more time to read recently. I only read a couple of times this week. But I enjoyed what I did read.

• Holier Than Thou
• The Loveliest Place: The Beauty and Glory of the Church

What I played

• MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I played four games this week and went 3-1. I am still holding onto a slim lead a top of the AL East.
• FIFA23 (Manchester City)