Weeknote #16 (20250105-20250111)

meta

This was my “re-entry” week — returning to work after having had the last couple weeks off for the holidays. As such, I didn’t do a whole lot other than get caught up on work things and think about 2025 goals for work …and try to wrangle my sleep schedule back into shape after the chaotic state I allowed it to get into during break

did

  • Eased back into work, caught up on email/slack/github/etc, and spent a lot of time staring off into space and thinking about goals for the next year
  • Beat simulation clicker, although I did use the keyboard some
  • Continued to play BG3, a little bit here, a little bit there
  • I haven’t been lifting normally for a few weeks, due to lingering shoulder/upper arm pain from when I slipped and felt in Seattle last month. (I’m pretty sure I’m aggravating the injury with my favored sleeping position, which I keep getting into while not fully awake, and then waking up in pain…) I got some stretching advice from my gym person, and I’ve been trying to be good about just doing those stretches and not stressing that area, and it seems to be getting better but it’s so damn slow and I just want to LIFT something already 😠
  • My non-lifting cardio exercise is usually rowing, but that also seems like a bad idea if my shoulder/arm is hurt, so I took long walks on Tuesday and Thursday instead …that may need to turn into more of a regular thing

read

  • Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

    The important piece that gets forgotten is that Agile was openly, militantly anti-management in the beginning. For example, Ken Schwaber was vocal and explicit about his goal to get rid of all project managers – not just get the people off his projects, eradicate the profession from our industry.

  • Folk Interfaces

    It’s unclear what the full range of local materials and traditional techniques of interface design and programming are yet. Perhaps its simply spreadsheets, browsers, and more accessible end-user programming tools. We should be on the lookout for others. Giving people the raw materials to solve their own problems is the folkiest way forward.

  • Never Forgive Them — yeah, yeah, everybody linked this over the past few weeks, but actually it is good and you probably should read it…

    In plain terms, everybody is being fucked with constantly in tiny little ways by most apps and services, and I believe that billions of people being fucked with at once in all of these ways has profound psychological and social consequences that we’re not meaningfully discussing.

    …

    The picture I am trying to paint is one of terror and abuse. The average person’s experience of using a computer starts with aggressive interference delivered in a shoddy, sludge-like frame, and as the wider internet opens up to said user, already battered by a horrible user experience, they’re immediately thrown into heavily-algorithmic feeds each built to con them, feeding whatever holds their attention and chucking ads in as best they can. As they browse the web, websites like NBCnews.com feature stories from companies like “WorldTrending.com” with advertisements for bizarre toys written in the style of a blog, so intentional in their deceit that the page in question has a huge disclaimer at the bottom saying it’s an ad.

    …

    Even if you’re technologically savvy, you’re still dealing with these problems — fresh installs of Windows on new laptops, avoiding certain websites because you’ve learned what the dodgy ones look like, not interacting with random people in your DMs because you know what a spam bot looks like, and so on. It’s not that you’re immune. It’s that you’re instinctually ducking and weaving around an internet and digital ecosystem that continually tries to interrupt you, batting away pop-ups and silencing notifications knowing that they want something from you — and I need you to realize that most people are not like you and are actively victimized by the tech ecosystem.

listened

  • This old song by David Ford came up on Plex “whole collection” shuffle, and I was reminded just how much I liked it …which led to tracking down the linked video, and I gotta say, that’s a helluva one-shot video effort, I really enjoyed that
  • Due to a random Midwest emo mixtape, ended up falling into a Hot Mulligan sinkhole — I’m sure I’ve heard their stuff before, but I found myself really enjoying it. Lots of things added to the wishlist, waiting for the next Bandcamp Friday…

watched

  • TheWife and I finished watching NCIS: Hawai’i season 2, and moved into season 3 — glad to see LL Cool J show up

cooked

This was not a great week on the home cooking front — probably more than a little fatigue from the fancy cooking over the past couple weeks. We had takeout …let’s just say, more than once, and tried to get rid of the leftover accumulation in the fridge otherwise. Next week will be better!