Hi!
Since M and I got married, we’ve been trying to figure out what exactly our next steps were going to be. I think, finally, we’ve figured it out, but it has been a long, stressful journey to get there. This honestly took up most of my time for the past three months, which is why these updates have been so short lately.
But there’s plenty of good news to share!
The biggest thing to talk about is that Fastmail has promoted me to team lead; I am now calling myself Client Application Development Lead. So between that and two additional projects at work, I’ve been spending a lot of time at work and thinking about work… which means I basically haven’t done that much outside of work at all.
M has also gotten a new job, where she’ll be working remotely. We put a deposit down on a car as well, and we’re hoping that it actually arrives when we think it will. We’ll see!
All of this combined means that there’s no "programming" section in this month’s article, or a "video games" section… it’s basically been work and planning for the future for the past 90 days. I think we’re coming out of being in this mode, though, so I’m looking forward to all the cool stuff I’m going to do next month.
Music
Reading
I did, however, read a ton this month. Just an absurd amount.
First, I finished Anathem by Neal Stephenson. I wasn’t the biggest fan of it — I thought it was clever in a lot of ways, but I just didn’t think the plot was that engaging to pay off the time investment. There were also aspects to the world that this novel built that might have seemed interesting when I first "unlocked" the puzzle that Stephenson had put together, but once I started considering it further, it didn’t really make any sense or do anything special. Finally, without going into spoilers, the climax of the novel ended up hinging on a type of magic that is my least-favorite trope in sci-fi. I still went out of my way to read it, though, so that’s saying something!
Next, I reread both The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. I really do think I’ve unlocked all the secrets buried in this universe, and I started writing up a "What Happens at the End of the Kingkiller Chronicle" article… but realized that it’s going to be a bit of an effort to get it anywhere close to done. Hopefully I’ll finish it up before the magic wears off!
That about sums up fiction — I did pick up and put down a handful of other books, but I’ll hopefully have more opinions to share next month.
In the realm of non-fiction, I’ve been reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. I think this is a book that most people have already picked up a lot of habits from just by nature of being around other people who have read it — but even though I still have some ways to go, I’ve already changed a few of my habits, and I’m looking forward to where the rest of the book takes me!
failbetter
Work with failbetter‘s intern continues!
This month, failbetter published:
- "Pacemaker Of The Heart" by Billie Hinton
- "Memory with Water" by Jessie Raymundo
- and "Lion Eats Elder" by Ellen Darion
Stats
This month:
- I typed 740,000 keys and clicked 121,659 times.
- I listened to 924 songs.
