Weeknote for 20240825-20240831

Meta

I’ve read a couple different weeknotes posts recently, and I’m intrigued enough by the idea to give it a shot. I expect that my overall template here is going to iterate and evolve (assuming I end up sticking with this?), but it feels like this is something that’s worth an attempt…

One of the things that’s inspiring me to give this a go is the job I started about three months ago. It looks like I alluded to this in the Fuckurary post but then didn’t actually announce the new gig here, only on LinkedIn. (Bad blogger, no biscuit…)

Anyway, since the end of April, I’ve been working within the Bedford lab, as the lead of the Nextstrain software team. (Technically, I’m an HHMI employee; practically this has very little day-to-day impact on my job; I will say, depsite being the largest organization I’ve been a part of since the last time I was in .gov-land, they’ve been extremely nice to work for.)

One of the great things about this job is that almost everything we do is intentionally Open Source, and very intentionally built by “working in public”. In theory, I absolutely love this aspect of the job; in practice, I’m finding that I need to let go of a lot of habits I picked up in startup land. One of those habits is avoiding public discussion of what I might be working on at any given point in time.

It felt like trying to develop a weeknotes habit might help get me into a “working in public” headspace, and, well, there’s no reason I can’t link to stuff that’s already available to look at anyway, right?

Did

  • Finally reviewed the set of bookmarks I’ve imported from pinboard into raindrop.io, culling sites that have gone off the air, simplifying the tagging folksonomy, marking some things for re-reading, and making a distinct “recipe” collection
  • Added an RSS feed to our work blog
  • Set some new personal bests in the gym:
    • back squatted 155 pounds for 5 sets of 5 reps
    • benched 125 pounds for 5 sets of 5 reps
    • deadlifted 160 pounds for 3 sets of 5 reps
  • Finished a blog post for the work blog, posting first thing next week
  • Attended an amazing cocktail pairing dinner at Epilogue Took Friday off and did not much of anything, which was amazing
  • On Saturday, TheWife and I introduced a friend to our current favorite wine place, Bryn Mawr Vineyards

Cooked

  • Grilled sausages (Sunday)
  • Marinated and grilled flank steak, for tacos (Monday)
  • Drunken Chicken Marsala with Tomatoes (Tuesday)
  • Grilled sablefish with garlic-dill infused oil; grilled asparagus (Wednesday)

Read

Listened

  • Re-visited a lot of early Get Up Kids stuff after getting an ad for the 25th anniversary re-release of Something To Write Home About
  • Played my vinyl copy of the Violent Femmes “Add It Up (1981-1993)” album for the first time, after finally breaking down and buying a turntable for my office

Watched

  • Continuing to binge NCIS with TheWife, an episode or three most evenings after dinner
  • Started re-watching Criminal Minds while sitting on the rower

Looking forward to…

  • In our monthly (mostly!) CSA delivery, I added on some dried porcini mushrooms; I’m looking forward to cooking something with those early next week!