Sunday #
Scott (my husband) came home from a trip to see the Columbus Blue Jackets game the previous evening. He napped until we saw Captain Marvel. He almost fell asleep during the movie, so I mocked him a bit for not planning his activities around this movie better. The trailers for the movie had me concerned that Captain Marvel would feel the cheesiest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). I reminded myself that I had concerns about a talking raccoon and a walking tree messing up the MCU for me before I saw Guardians of the Galaxy, and then enjoyed the hell out of that movie, not to mention buying almost anything Groot related. So I entered the theater with no real expectations for the first female-led superhero movie by Marvel; I was open-minded. I enjoyed the film and am really looking forward to Avengers: Endgame and how Captain Marvel will be woven into the mix.
Monday #
Lots of meetings at work. Discussed goals with my team. Talked about the work they are doing with my boss during our 1:1. Commented about changes that could be made to how planning happens at our company, in the spirit of continuous improvement. Discussed a project that is running late from its original launch date with the business analyst who is part of the project team. We'll negotiate potential deployment dates with the development manager. We're concerned about upcoming slated projects and how to set expectations appropriately for when things will be deployed so that this project doesn't keep getting pushed down the priority list.
Tuesday #
Took a sick day. Did not sleep well at all the night before and knew there was no way to rally enough energy to go into the office. While laying on the couch, I watched the season finale of The Passage. Vampires. Not the glisteny, sexy kind, but it has Mark-Paul Gosselaar in it, so I kind of had to watch it. I'm now a fan of Saniyya Sidney.
Wednesday #
Spent the morning talking through technical considerations for an integration on the website where I work. The IT team we have does a fine job explaining what it will take in the system we have to accomplish this kind of work. I believe that educating the marketers in this way allows them to have more realistic expectations and a richer understanding of the demands that get placed on IT.
Thursday #
A blur of meetings spread throughout the day leaving me 30 minute pockets between them to try to accomplish anything of substance. Days like this are tough on my psyche. I feel like I should have been able to do something, but end up doing very little. 30 minutes is not enough time for me to do much but answer an email here or there.
Friday #
I really love working from home. I used to get to do it more and I really miss it. It's mostly about not having to think about what clothes to wear. Sweats are a given. Sitting on the couch to work, also a given. I tend to get a lot more done when I am at home than when I am in the office. Caught up on email. That does not mean Inbox Zero for people who are into that sort of thing. I took an assessment to determine our organizations experimentation maturity. I already believed that our organization is immature in this respect. Doesn't that bias then make the result which matched self-fulfilling? I tried to be fair when I filled out the questionnaire. Either I'm really in the know, or I skewed the results to be exactly what I wanted them to be.
Caught the news about the shootings at the Mosques in New Zealand by white supremacists. Acts of this nature make me ashamed to be Caucasian. People are different...in many, many ways. This is the very essence of humanity. The long-term viability of the planet is called into question. Exactly why does anyone think they have more right to it than anyone else? It's going to take all of us (every race, creed, identity, etc.) to figure out how to keep all of humanity alive when the planet becomes more hostile.
Saturday #
I spent a lot of time screwing around with this site. I got nowhere in all of my efforts other than to open up the notes section that I had kept "hidden" while I worked on it. I am struggling to find a sane way to make it possible for the tags page to display in distinct tabs for each content type. It seems like it should be possible in Nunjucks, but I am lacking skill in this area. I'll keep investigating things like macros and such until I get it figured out, since if statements and for loops aren't getting it done.
Some of the stuff I read this week #
- Matt Griffin's essay on his move from Pittsburgh to Ottowa. I've wondered how things are going for him and if his family had acclimated to living in a new country. I'm so glad to hear that they have!
- I have no words. Actresses Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman among 50 charged in college exam cheating plot
- THIS. What even IS this? Why tech companies are still failing us. I love working in tech because tech is very interesting and fun to me. I also hate what our industry has become. We need to slow the hell down and really understand what we are building and what the implications of it could be.
- 30 Years On, Reports of the Web's Death Are Exaggerated. Happy birthday, Dubdubdub!
- The web we broke. Ethan mulls over the terrible state of affairs uncovered in the WebAIM analysis of the top 1,000,000 home pages. He's right. We all need to do better. My addition to that sentiment: --even if we think we are doing a good job now.
- Measuring the Impact of a Design System by Cristiano Rastelli. I loved the graphical display of productivity shifts from main application codebase to design system codebase, but more importantly how much more efficient the team's efforts are. The reduction of repetitive tasks means that the people doing the work have more time to plan and to think about the best way to implement something. This is exactly what our team is aiming to achieve with the creation of a design system where I work. We don't have multiple teams or products that we have to unify the design for--we are a small group. But, having a design system will allow us to not reinvent the wheel for every new request, as well as provide pre-baked components to hand off to agency and vendor partners to keep our brand appearance consistent.