Jake Weidokal

articles

Mar 16, 2025 ∞

Weeknotes Vol. 4

My week summarized into 3 highlights, 2 discoveries, and 1 anticipation. It’s been a while! It feels good to be writing a weeknote again!

3 Highlights

1. 10x10 Supersonic Wind Tunnel and SLOPE Lab Tours

I coordinated tours for my team to visit the 10x10 Supersonic Wind Tunnel and SLOPE Lab at NASA Glenn Research Center. The wind tunnel was incredible. It’s the largest wind tunnel capable of supersonic speeds in the country, and can push close to Mach 5. The tunnel complex is spread around 4 acres, as the tunnels weave in and out of buildings containing things like motors, compressors, an air dryer, and more. My favorite part of that tour was getting to see the results of a recent mishap they had. I am the product manager for NASA’s Mishap Information System, so I see incidents reported in our system all the time, but it is a completely different story to see the aftermath of a mishap in-person. I can’t go into detail about the mishap, but luckily nobody was injured, although it had the potential for severe injuries.

The SLOPE Lab was also a great tour. I had visited before, but it’s always neat to get a refresher on the history of tire design for space-faring rovers. Our tour guide was responsible for designing simulated lunar soil as part of her PhD, and I enjoyed listening to her passionately explain the process of simulating lunar regolith based on data collected from the Apollo missions. It’s also fun to get to handle and manipulate their fancy shape-memory alloy springs, which always return to their original shape. Materials science is way over my head, but utterly fascinating.

The best part of both tours was being able to make the time to provide these tours for my team. Most team members had not seen these facilities before and these tours are great for helping us all feel more connected to NASA’s mission. And on top of that they’re just really friggin' cool.

2. Ping Pong

I’m working in the office full-time now. One of the silver linings is that I discovered our building has a ping pong table that sat idle for years.

And idle it shall no longer be.

I have my own paddle that I bought a few years back which has also been collecting dust, so I’m glad to finally get some use out of it! Having ping pong as an active way to pass the time during lunch breaks is such a relief. I’ve already found a few other folks in the office that are excited to play, and one of my coworkers played competitively in tournaments in the open division in the past. He’ll definitely whoop my butt (already has), but I’m excited to play with him and others to sharpen my game and have some fun while at the office.

Semi-related: I also found a golf range nearby the office and went with a coworker this week. I’d like to put a little more time into my golf game this year and finally fix my slice! I’ve never gone to the range much and only play a couple of times a year… and it shows.

3. Swimming Lessons

My daughter had her third swimming lesson this week. I’ve looked forward to this every week since it started. She loves the water and has been doing great! This week she got a little carried away and took off sprinting around the pool while we were practicing getting in and out of the pool. I had to jump up out of the pool quickly to go catch her. My repeated utterances of “Stop! Come back!” had no effect, much to my dismay. But other than that, she has been doing great, and swimming lessons have been a wonderful way for our little family to spend time together learning in a fun way.

We also have some friends who enrolled their kids in the same class, so it has been fun to go through it together! And we get access to the rec center’s pool after lessons, so that has been a fun time to let the kids splash in the shallow end while we parents catch up with each other.

2 Discoveries

1. Airless Bike Tires

There was a recent Kickstarter campaign for airless bike tires based on the wheel design for recent rovers. Apparently an intern at the SLOPE Lab used their internship to develop bike tires based on the interwoven shape-memory alloy spring design used on rover tires. After proving this could work, that intern sold their design to The SMART Tire Company, who is now trying to reduce production costs and commercialize the design.

This is a great example of how NASA science discoveries often spin off into great commercial opportunities here on earth. For more, check out spinoff.nasa.gov/.

2. Libby

I’m very late to the game on this one, but I finally discovered Libby. Libby lets you connect your library card(s) to enjoy free ebooks and audiobooks. I’ve used other library apps, but I’m liking Libby much better so far.

With my new commute, I’m trying to transform myself into an audiobook guy. I much prefer reading visually so I can go over things slowly and take notes, but I’m adjusting to the audio format. The new audiobook feature on Spotify had me all excited, but then I realized there was a limit on how much I could listen to each month. Boo.

So now I’m using Libby instead. Another nice perk of Libby is that I can set bookmarks and highlights in audiobooks, to take notes. So in theory, it should be pretty easy to bookmark something that stuck out to me while driving, and then I can come back to it later to take notes and export those notes outside of Libby. I’ve yet to test that process, but it seems like it will work, and I’m excited to figure it out.

Another awesome feature of Libby is that it can send ebooks straight to your Kindle, so there’s no need to read ebooks on my phone. I just tested it out this morning with “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, and it seemed to work great. I’m curious to see what happens to all my notes and highlights when I need to “return” the ebook. To avoid heartbreak and be safe, I’m going to export all my highlights and notes before returning the book, but I’m hoping they all stay in the Kindle app somehow.

1 Anticipation

NASA’s Reduction in Force Plan

NASA is due to submit their Reductions in Force (RIF) plan this upcoming week. The deadline across the government was March 13, but NASA got an extension until March 20 due to all the space activities this week, including the Crew 10 mission to the International Space Station, a lunar landing, and more. For those interested, here is the OPM memo that spells out the steps agencies need to take to reduce their workforce and restructure.

I’m not sure what to expect for this RIF. It’s hard to tell whether my position would be affected or not, as it all depends on which areas they target for reductions. Some folks around me are very worried about their jobs.

But truth be told, I feel at peace with it. Despite how chaotic things are on the ground, I believe there is a God who is over it all. What comes will come, and I’ll figure it out. The only certain thing is change is coming, one way or another.

Mar 6, 2025 ∞

How I Got Into This Line of Work

A new blogging format was experimented with during a morning commute, focusing on personal career stories and reflecting on the journey that led to working as a product manager at NASA.

Mar 5, 2025 ∞
My Current Work Routine
A colleague asked me yesterday what routines and practices I’ve been using to manage our new normal of working onsite every day. I typed up this response, and decided it was worth turning into a blog post so I could share it more broadly in case others were interested.
I’ve had all of three days to figure out this new routine, so it’s ill-defined in its current iteration. I’m sure it will get crisper over time, but here’s what I have been doing the past few days.
Before work
• Prep everything the night before work. Meal, clothes, protein shake, etc. If I have to do it in the morning, it will be 10x worse.
• Try to engage with a devotional each morning. For me, the value is reading something short but consequential, that helps me to see life is bigger than my work. And I like to engage with it by journaling about it, so that I’m actually spending time with it and allowing it to reframe my mind.
Starting work
• I use all of my willpower to not open my email first thing.
• I look at my calendar and my todo list. I make new todos if I will need to prep for any of today’s meeting.
• I group my to-dos into either “in-progress” (should only be 1, maybe 2), “next up”, or “backlog”. When I do this, I try to be realistic about what I can actually accomplish today. Preferably, everything in “Next Up” can easily be done in a day, because it feels better to pull in more stuff from the backlog, rather than carrying over a bunch of todos to tomorrow.

During work
• I have a single text file called “Daily Log.md” on my computer that I open up every day as my scratch pad. Each day gets an entry, and then anything can go in there. I usually just log what I am doing as I do it. Sometimes I will log something I learned, sometimes I take meeting notes in there. When I am not sure where something should go, I put it in this text file so I can triage it to where it belongs later.

• I have another text file called “Simmering.md”. I use this as a record of all the things that aren’t necessarily to-dos (they may be too big, or too undefined, or something else), but that I want to keep track of. A lot of these are “side quests” that I am working on, or want to work on at some point. Examples are: “improve user guide process”, “april travel request”, “coordinate collaboration with GRC SMA”.

Ending work
• I want to get better at this one.
• Right now I just check over my to-do list about 30 minutes before I end my day, to make sure I haven’t forgotten something critical that was due today.
• I’ll glance at tomorrow’s meetings so I know what’s coming.
• I will triage anything from my “Daily Log.md” that shouldn’t live there long-term.
• I look back over meetings from today, and decide if there are any last-minute notes/thoughts I need to capture or share, before they are lost to the ether of my ever-forgetful mind.
After work
• I do my best to leave work at work and be fully present for my family.
• I use my commute home to decompress, which usually means listening to something not work related.
• I’ll also start to transition to thinking about what needs done at home, or whether I need to do something restful and life-giving this evening.
Feb 23, 2025 ∞
Targeted by Trump and Musk - On Being a Federal Employee
In my weeknotes post from January 20, 2025, hours before the inauguration ceremony of Donald Trump, I wrote about being uncertain about what a Trump presidency would hold for me as a federal employee.
While government efficiency sounds good (who wouldn’t want that?), it seems like part of the plan is to make things tougher for federal employees. Including return to office mandates, layoffs, worse retirement/insurance benefits, and more. As a federal employee, that does not sound appealing. I am curious to see how much of it is talk, or frivolous bills that go nowhere in congress, and how much of it ends up becoming real and impacting my life.
But the speed and scale of change that I’ve seen in the past month has far exceeded what I thought possible. That we have a president biased for action is indisputable. It’s a stark contrast from the previous presidency. What’s yet to be seen is the lasting effect this flurry of actions will have on our government, and therefore, our nation.
Disruptive Emails
Nine days after writing that post, two disruptive emails found their way into my inbox on the same day.
Return to In-Person Work
The less interesting of the two was an email from NASA HR with the subject “Instructions for returning to in-person work”. I knew this would come, but never expected it this quickly. All NASA employees, with few exceptions, will be back onsite full-time starting February 28. That includes me. In the past weeks I’ve been involved in more than a few discussions about how we are going to make it work to come back onsite.
My organization, the NASA Safety Center, went all-in on the shift to hybrid work post-Covid. We sold about half of our office space. Almost everybody gave up their seat assignments, and the floor plan was reconfigured to optimize for “hoteling”. This allowed people to reserve a cubicle or pick from unoccupied desks in an open seating area. It worked great when we only needed to come in once a week. But now we are scrambling to reverse course.
We have just enough space to accommodate our 30+ civil servants. The team is scrambling to figure out who gets which seats, and coordinating everyone bringing in our NASA-provided IT equipment that we have been using at home for the past few years. On top of that, we don’t have space for the contractor staff we work with closely on a day-to-day basis. We sold that space years ago and the team has grown since then. Contractors are not mandated to return to office under the executive order, so for now we are figuring out how to get all the civil servants back, and then we will figure out what to do with our contractors. We all have worked very effectively from home the past few years, so I believe (and hope) we will offer the contractors more leniency than we have received.
The intent behind the return to office is to get federal workers to quit (Elon and Vivek said this publicly in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last year), so I don’t think that is the correct approach to take with our contractors unless we also want to them to quit. And we do not want that.
Beyond the professional complexities of bringing everyone back to the office, I am saddened about needing to make this change for my family. I will miss the ten hours a week I will lose with my family due to my commute. I’ll certainly miss eating lunch with my wife and daughter, going on post-lunch walks, and being able to put my daughter down for her naps. I still feel incredibly fortunate for the job I have and a commute to the office doesn’t change that, but this marks a stark change in routine and lifestyle, for myself and my family.
Not being one to wallow, I have been trying to focus on the silver linings. I’ll get to connect with my coworkers more. I can become a voracious audiobook listener on my drives. My desk can be the home of a “joke of the week” board that becomes a small part of rebuilding office morale. Focusing on these potential positives has made it a little easier to accept that I’ll be back in the office full-time soon.
This change came fast and heavy. While I’m going to make the best of it, this is going to be a tough transition for my team and me. Yet despite the turmoil this has caused, the return to office email has taken up far less space in my conscience than the other email that graced my inbox on January 29.
Fork in the Road (Deferred Resignation)
This other email came from a curious new sender that just said “HR” and had the subject “Fork in the Road”. It was marked as [EXTERNAL], which is an immediate red flag, and had no branding. If one was to craft the perfect spam email, this is the template they would follow.
But this was real.
This email came from hr@opm.gov. An email address that did not exist a week prior.
In the days leading up to this email, we had received two other emails from this address stating that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was testing a new government-wide email system. These messages were sent to all 2+ million federal employees.
But on February 29, we all got to see why this new email system had been set up. The Fork in the Road email introduced a program called Deferred Resignation. If you opted in to the program, you would agree to resign effective September 30, 2025. In return, you could work from home until your resignation date, and your agency may put you on administrative leave, effectively allowing you to receive your paycheck without working.
How would one enroll in this program, you ask? Respond to the email with the word RESIGN. That’s it. Yes, seriously. No, I’m not kidding.
If you want to see for yourself, you can read the email here. I saved my own copy in case OPM ever takes it down from their website, which they’ve done with a couple of things over the past few weeks.
Now you might be wondering, “Jake, did you take this!? Eight months of pay!? You could take a long vacation and find a new job!”
No. I did not take this offer. I don’t trust it.
There are a few reasons why I don’t trust it. For starters, this email curiously has the same title as an email that Musk sent to Twitter employees when he took over there. What happened to Twitter employees who accepted the severance offer? They were not paid what they were promised. If that’s not enough, it’s also not clear that OPM/Trump/Musk have the authority to make this offer. The federal government is only funded through March 14. Congress needs to pass a new budget by then, and it’s possible that they will not include appropriations for the people who took deferred resignation. And in addition to the budget, current federal law limits agencies to giving no more than 10 days of admin leave.
All of these are, in my opinion, good reasons to be skeptical of the offer.
But there’s more.
A few days later, OPM sent a template Deferred Resignation agreement to agencies that had additional language about how the program would work. The language in the agreement is concerning. Here’s a copy of the template agreement.
I’ll point out a few of the most concerning clauses, emphasis mine.
Employee shall not be expected to work during the deferred resignation period except in rare circumstances as determined by [AGENCY].
I’m not sure what constitutes rare circumstances. We’ve already seen some cases of employees still being required to work, such as IRS employees through tax return season. Another section reads:
By signing this agreement, the parties acknowledge that they have entered the agreement knowingly, voluntarily, and free from improper influence, coercion, or duress. Employee understands that, except as provided in paragraph 14 applicable to Employees 40 years of age or older, this agreement cannot be rescinded, except in the sole discretion of the [AGENCY HEAD], which shall not be subject to review at the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) or any other forum, and waives all rights to challenge the resignation before the MSPB or any other forum.
First, I wouldn’t say this offer is “free from improper influence, coercion, or duress”. The original fork email states that they intend to eliminate positions, and they cannot promise anyone who does not take this offer that they will still have a job. Further, this template agreement came out two days before the deadline to resign. A 48 hour timeframe might cause some duress for a big life decision like this.
But the second part I emphasized is much more concerning. In plain English, the Agency Head can undo this agreement whenever they want, and the employee gives up their right to do anything about it. In summary, this agreement binds the employee to its terms, but it does not bind the agency to its terms.
But wait! There’s even more waiving of rights in here:
Employee forever waives, and will not pursue through any judicial, administrative, or other process, any action against [AGENCY] that is based on, arising from, or related to Employee’s employment at [AGENCY] or the deferred resignation offer, including any and all claims that were or could have been brought concerning said matters. This waiver includes all claims Employee may have under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Employee unconditionally releases [AGENCY] and its present and former employees, officers, agents, representatives, and all persons acting by, through, or in concert with any of those individuals, either in their official or individual capacities, from any and all liability based on, arising from, or relating to the matters that Employee may have against them, including any and all claims that were or could have been brought. Consistent with applicable law, Employee similarly waives any claim that could be brought on Employee’s behalf by another entity, including Employee’s labor union.
Wow. That clause is not typical in the other forms related to separating from the government. I wonder why they wanted to add that in for the Deferred Resignation? Perhaps they anticipate a decent amount of people taking legal action related to this program?
Hopefully you can understand why I chose not to take the Deferred Resignation.
Another funny twist in this story is that the day of the deadline, February 6, I got an urgent email from leadership that the deadline was midnight and there would be NO EXTENSIONS. Then an hour and a half later, I got an email that the deadline had been extended, because a judge put a temporary restraining order on the program until they could have a full hearing on it.
Ultimately, the case was thrown out because it had been brought by the federal labor unions, and the judge ruled that the unions did not have standing since they are not harmed by the offer.
Despite all the concerning points I highlighted above, NASA had about 800+ people on the list for deferred resignation. But here’s the thing: when OPM compiled and sent the list to NASA, they accidentally included more than just the actual respondents. The count got inflated by supervisors who were cc’d on emails, out-of-office replies to the “Fork in the Road” message, and others who had no plans to resign.
It’s worth noting that many who have taken the offer were already planning to retire or very near retirement. From what I’m hearing, that seems to be the vast majority.
Further Shrinking the Workforce
Beyond the Return to Office and the Deferred Resignation Program, there have been a few other attempts to downsize the federal workforce including eliminating DEI positions, firing probationary employees, and beginning preparations for a reduction in force (RIF).
Eliminating DEI
In compliance with the executive order “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing”, NASA eliminated all functions and people whose primary focus was DEI. I think only a couple of people fit this description at NASA, but there’s been a further effort to remove all language related to DEI from all employee performance plans.
Eliminating Gender
In addition to eliminating those positions and modifying performance plans, there were other changes mandated in a separate but related order titled “DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT”, such as replacing the word “gender” with “sex” in government forms and communications. I was tasked with making sure this change was made in one of our software applications that tracks mishaps. When someone is injured, we would collect their “gender” in the application, but had to change the name of that question to “sex”.
It was a trivial change to make. But it was strange to see everybody so nervous about getting it done by the deadline, all the way up to my boss’s boss’s boss. Even seemingly minor orders create intense pressure, with tight deadlines, unclear consequences for noncompliance, and widespread fear of job loss.
Firing Probationary Employees
When someone gets hired into the federal workforce, they start in a “probationary” period for the first year or two, depending on the position and agency. This is intended as a trial period, where the agency has more freedom to separate the employee within the probationary period if their performance does not meet the requirements of their position.
What we’re seeing now is an unprecedented use of the probationary period. Probationary employees are being fired en masse at multiple federal agencies. This is almost certainly illegal, because the intent is that probationary employees can be separated without severance or appeal for performance reasons. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in court, because many of those fired were given a generic reasoning of their termination being “for performance reasons” despite having stellar performance reviews and/or awards.
Luckily, NASA has been spared from these probationary firings for now. It was a dramatic week though, with rumors that firings would happen Tuesday, then rumors that it was paused by the White House, then rumors that it would happen Friday, then nothing except a statement from NASA that any probationary firings would be for performance reasons.
Reduction in Force
One of the more recent executive orders is titled “Implementing The President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Workforce Optimization”. This executive order calls for a reduction in force across the federal government. Some of the language in the order has caused a lot of concern, such as:
Agency Heads shall promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law, and to separate from Federal service temporary employees and reemployed annuitants working in areas that will likely be subject to the RIFs.
I was hired in as a temporary employee, but luckily was converted to permanent last year. But I work with a few temporary employees who fear for their jobs based on the way this is worded. If this is carried out as-worded, it would impact a large chunk of NASA’s workforce. Here’s another concerning section:
All offices that perform functions not mandated by statute or other law shall be prioritized in the RIFs, including all agency diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; all agency initiatives, components, or operations that my Administration suspends or closes; and all components and employees performing functions not mandated by statute or other law who are not typically designated as essential during a lapse in appropriations as provided in the Agency Contingency Plans on the Office of Management and Budget website.
I don’t understand how all employees not designated as essential during a lapse in appropriations should be prioritized in RIFs. At NASA, that’s more than 90% of the workforce. When the government shuts down, it’s pretty much just security and facility/IT maintenance who still come in to make sure things don’t break or get stolen. I can’t imagine this actually being implemented as it is worded, but the wording is causing a lot of confusion and frustration at NASA.
So far, the reduction hasn’t actually begun, but agencies are planning for it. This will take time, but I have no idea what the breadth or scope of the reductions in force will be. I could lose my job from this, but there is no way to tell for sure right now. It helps that I was converted to a permanent position last year, but it doesn’t help that I only have 3 years of federal service and do not have a veteran status.
The Latest Elon Email
Yesterday, Saturday, February 22, all federal employees received an email titled “What did you do last week?”.
The email reads:
Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.
Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments.
Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pmEST.
Viewed in isolation, that’s weird, but not terrible. What makes it much more malicious is this tweet from Elon before this email was sent:*
Consistent with President [@realDonaldTrump](https://micro.blog/realDonaldTrump)’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.

Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025
I don’t see any way it would be legal for a non-response to be equivalent to an employee submitting their resignation. It’s hard to believe these are official government communications being sent to 2+ million federal workers.
What’s further frustrating is that OPM doesn’t have the authority to ask for something like this.
I plan not to respond unless I receive a direct order from NASA to respond.
The invisible subtext behind this email is offensive. It seems to say “We don’t believe you accomplished much of anything last week. Justify yourself to us, or resign.” At the very least, this administration is clearly flexing its muscles and attempting to force federal workers to comply with its untraditional demands.
While I hesitate to make such a strong analogy, I can’t help but be reminded of the stories of German policemen in “Ordinary Men”. They ended up committing atrocities they could never imagine, but were led to that place slowly by continually complying to small, seemingly innocuous orders. I can’t help but wonder if these little orders are meant to condition me into a similar place of compliance and submission. The thought of that repulses me, but it is in the back of my mind with each new directive that comes out.
What’s Next?
Nobody knows for certain what comes next, but it seems pretty clear that it won’t be anything good, at least from the perspective of a federal employee. We know we have the reduction in force to look forward to. I’m certain we’ll get some more Elon-inspired emails sent to the whole government. NASA has a DOGE rep installed at headquarters now, but I’m not sure exactly what they’ll be doing. The word is that they’re looking for contracts to cut. And the “Fork in the Road” email hinted that the performance ratings process will become more rigorous.
On March 14 government funding expires. I am not sure whether to expect a government shutdown or congress to pass a budget. If they do pass a budget, I suspect there will be new legislation included that will adversely affect federal employees. Recent proposed legislation has suggested cuts to federal employee benefits.
Beyond that, who knows. In the meantime, I will be getting my work done and doing my best to ignore all the noise this is causing. I hope to be a calming presence for my coworkers in the midst of all the chaos and fear. As a Christian, this is a good opportunity for me to “love my neighbors”, especially as so much animosity is being directed at them.
I also plan to keep this post updated at the bottom with any new things that happen, mostly as a reference for myself so I can look back someday and remember how wild things were as a fed back in 2025.
Updates
• Feb 24, 2025: Trump and Musk mock federal workers with memes.
Jan 20, 2025 ∞

Weeknotes Vol. 3

My week summarized into 3 highlights, 2 discoveries, and 1 anticipation.

3 Highlights

The Office - I went into the office on Tuesday this week, which was a highlight for two reasons. First, I got an InBody scan as part of a twelve-week fitness challenge I am doing through NASA. The results were what I expected, and I have some work to do to get my body composition to where I want it! Second, my team celebrated the past year by going to Topgolf! It was great being able to chat with coworkers without work being the main topic, and golfing in whiteout conditions was beautiful! Although driving home afterward was a little scary.

The Basement - We finally got the last quote on our basement, and it was our best yet. It’s beginning to feel a lot more real and my wife and I have been spending all week deciding on various finishes for the basement.

The Barn - We met up with my parents and grandparents for lunch at a local place serving up “country cooking”. The best part was getting to see my grandparents and talk with them, but the all-you-can-eat soup, salad, and bread bar was pretty good too.

2 Discoveries

Inside look at modern web browser (part 1) - This four part blog series from Google is a really neat deep-dive into how browsers work, with lots of fun illustrations to help with the concepts. I haven’t made it through all four parts yet, but I’ve already learned from it. I shared this with my team at work this week since we work on web apps that run in-browser and while knowing browsers at this level detail isn’t always necessary day-to-day, it can come in handy. And helps build an appreciation for what is really happening in between raw code and interactive website.

For Every Winner a Loser - This was a fascinating article on how modern finance works. The gist is that most finance is not actually about trading or lending money for goods and services, it’s about betting on prices moving up or down. This paragraph blew my mind…

The total value of all the economic activity in the world is estimated at $105 trillion. That’s the mangoes. The value of the financial derivatives which arise from this activity – that’s the subsequent trading – is $667 trillion. That makes it the biggest business in the world. And in terms of the things it produces, that business is useless. It does nothing and adds no value. It is just one speculator betting against another and for every winner, on every single transaction, there is an exactly equivalent loser.

1 Anticipation

A new president - I tend to be pretty apolitical, but I have been paying close attention the upcoming administration change. That is neither an endorsement nor an indictment, but this is my first administration change as a federal employee, so this has a much more direct impact on my life than I have felt before. And beyond just the change of party, this particular president seems to have a focus on government efficiency. While government efficiency sounds good (who wouldn’t want that?), it seems like part of the plan is to make things tougher for federal employees. Including return to office mandates, layoffs, worse retirement/insurance benefits, and more. As a federal employee, that does not sound appealing. I am curious to see how much of it is talk, or frivolous bills that go nowhere in congress, and how much of it ends up becoming real and impacting my life.

Jan 12, 2025 ∞

Weeknotes Vol. 2

My week summarized into 3 highlights, 2 discoveries, and 1 anticipation.

3 Highlights

Eating in
My wife and I have a chronic problem with being unprepared when dinner time rolls around, so we often end up ordering food or going out. My belt and my bank statements would attest that this is not a good practice. But this week we did much better eating in for most of our meals. I found the Tasty app and have been using that to plan our meals each Saturday so we can pick up groceries on Sunday. Since writing this, I’ve switched over to the Paprika app so I can get recipes from more sources (I’ve enjoyed Budget Bytes, but I am taking recommendations). I like that the interface is bare-bones, with no fluffy advertising or bright pictures/text. Cooking and eating together has been a delightful time for our family. My daughter has been using the toddler tower that my parents got her for Christmas to help while cooking. She likes taste-testing ingredients as we cook and watching hot pans on the stove from a distance.

Helping Hands
I didn’t have to work on Thursday since federal agencies were closed in remembrance of President Jimmy Carter. Instead, I spent the whole day working on the house with my wife, while each of our moms came over at different times to help watch our daughter. It’s amazing how much can get done on a free day with minimal child watching responsibilities. And it was fantastic getting to see and talk with each of our moms.

Green Owl
This week I got back on DuoLingo to try to revive my Spanish skills. I nearly minored in Spanish in college. I dropped my minor during my last semester, with only two classes left, so that I could focus on my internship. It feels a bit tragic to have been so close and not made it across the finish line, but I would make the same decision again. Since then, I’ve been noticing my Spanish comprehension slowly slipping away year by year. I’ve been having a lot of fun this week dusting off the cobwebs and experiencing “Aha!” moments as the intricacies of the Spanish language slowly come back to me. Also, I’ve noticed DuoLingo has changed a lot since I last used it a couple of years ago. I read an article about how they are big on “gamification”, but it’s crazy all the tricks they use to make it fun (and addicting) to learn a language. I guess dopamine reward circuit hijacking is okay if it’s for a good purpose?

2 Discoveries

AI App-Building Platforms
I’ve known about these AI coding platforms for a while, but just started playing with them this week and I can’t believe how good they are! The main one I’ve been messing around with is lovable.dev. You just give it a prompt, and it will build an app for you in seconds. Then you can tweak the app with more prompts. Once it’s ready, you can hook up a database with Supabase and deploy with Netlify or Vercel. Gone are the days of people saying with a straight face, “I have SUCH GOOD app ideas! I would be a millionaire if only I knew how to build them!”. There are no excuses for not building now. Check out this post if you want to learn more: A guide to AI prototyping for product managers

Wesley Huff
Wesley Huff is a biblical scholar with a personal website packed with resources on biblical history. I came across him this week on a podcast. His knowledge on original source documents for scripture is impressive. I can tell that he is very well studied from listening to him, and his website has a lot of great infographics that he has made himself on the bible, manuscripts, archaeology, translation, and more.

1 Anticipation

Fitness Challenge
I signed up for a twelve-week fitness challenge through NASA. The main reason I signed up is that I will receive three free body composition reports via calipers and InBody tests, each spaced six weeks apart. I just started intermittent fasting and regular exercise a couple of weeks ago, so I’m excited to use these reports as extra motivation to stick with it and see how my body composition changes over the next twelve weeks. I’ve already lost 5 pounds in the last week, if my scale can be trusted! I’ll have my first test on Tuesday.

Jan 5, 2025 ∞

Weeknotes Vol. 1

I’m on the couch, coffee in hand, excited to try a new format.

I actually have no idea what the true format will be, but I know that I am going to write weekly. The plan is to have a consistent format for these weeknotes, but I’m more concerned with actually doing the thing, so I’m starting without the format. Jump first, find a parachute later, right?

Bear with me while I sort things out for the first 5, 10, or 50 of these.

The holiday marathon has come to an end, and it feels like I’m settling in for winter now that snow has fallen and stayed for more than 24 hours.

Basement

Being stuck inside, my attention has turned toward my house and projects that need to be done. The biggest of these is finishing the basement. My wife and I have been getting quotes, with the last of these being last week. We also took a trip to the three major big box stores near us, and must have taken at least $100 worth of samples.

I have completely lost my kitchen island to paint and flooring samples. It looks like a detective is trying to solve a murder, and the primary suspects are green-ish paint, blue-ish paint, and vinyl plank.

1Zpresso

I bought a really nice manual coffee grinder this week, the 1Zpresso J. I thought about it for 7 days and 7 nights, and then decided to go for it.

It feels outrageously-priced for something where I still need to grind my own coffee, but I convinced myself it was worth it after reading endless forum discussions on coffee grinders. Supposedly the machining is incredibly precise and there were people who had been using theirs for 10+ years.

I’m excited to feel more connected with my coffee. I’m looking forward to the morning ritual of grinding my own beans fresh, and then making a pour over in my Chemex. I’m also dreaming of sharing this experience with people who haven’t had high quality coffee before. Coffee can be such a wonderfully communal experience.

Anyways, that’s probably just all the feel-good stuff I told myself to justify the purchase. It worked.

Work

I went into the office on Thursday and it was pretty quiet. I talked with our IT guy and got to meet the new designer who just joined on the contract.

I had a lot of time off and most people are out of the office, but our team is also all hands on deck for a major release to the NASA Mishap Information System on Jan 12. So it’s been one of those quiet-but-busy type of weeks.

Health

I’ve been back on intermittent fasting, which has been going well so far. I’m trying to only eat between 12-8, but shorter is better. I’ve always found that to be the easiest eating pattern for me to follow. I started before the Holiday stretch, which was a bad idea, but things have leveled out now.

I’ve also started working out this week (classic New Year). My wife and I have been following along to work out videos on YouTube from our living room each evening, and then stretching afterward. We found a guy that makes videos of Tabata workouts from scenic locations and doesn’t do any talking. That was perfect for us.

In addition to our evening workouts we do together, I’ve been working out in the mornings. We got this treadmill/stair stepper way on sale on Facebook Marketplace recently, so some mornings I use that, or I’ve been using the resistance bands I got for Christmas.

I’m not sure that I would have ever bought resistance bands for myself, but I’m really excited for them now that I have them. They’re easy to use, and I can do all sorts of different things with them. I’m keeping them in my office near my standing desk so that I can get some exercise while I’m in meetings for work.

Devotional

My wife got me the Grace for the Moment devotional for Christmas, and I have used it every day since. Each page is super short, but leaves some space for writing in your own thoughts/reactions. I like being able to slow down with something really short and process through how I feel about it.

This is the first thing I do in the morning (well… after I get my coffee) and it has felt right to prioritize the first part of my morning to look up to God.

Analog

I can feel myself moving into an analog renaissance (again). What I mean by that is I’m using a lot less digital tools and a lot more physical tools in my day to day.

I have been using my bullet journal to capture daily to-dos and track things on a monthly cadence, including my intermittent fasting. I also started printing off articles on pieces of paper to carry with me so I don’t pull out my phone as much. And I’m moving toward taking my sermon notes in a journal instead of digitally, although it has been super cool to see all of my sermon notes and share them from my digital garden. I’m having fun taking notes more visually, drawing ideas/concepts that really resonate with me.

Weeknotes Vol. 1 Postmortem

It felt nice to reflect on my week, but this is definitely not the final format.

I want to keep these weeknotes shorter and punchier. I’ll be more likely to keep up with it that way. I like how Tim Ferris does his 5 Bullet Friday, so it may end up similar to that.

But I did it. I’ll take my win, and I’ll see you next week.

Jan 1, 2025 ∞

2024 Blog in Review



My first full year of blogging is in the books! Or should I say, in the internet archive? Check out this neat sitemap graph of my blog generated by the internet archive.

I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for over a year!

One thing that has become clear is I write more like a geyser than a waterfall. I spend most of my time dormant, and then have a sudden flurry of activity before going quiet again. In the new year I would like to move a little more toward the waterfall model: steady, consistent, and reliable. But, I also would like to have more grace for my geyser-like tendencies. The geyser is beautiful in its own way.

Articles

This year I wrote 34 articles. Well, 35 if you include this one.

My unspoken goal before the year was one article a week, but I’m happy with where I landed. I liked not feeling pressured and being able to write when inspiration struck. That said, I’ve been toying with the idea of committing to writing something on a weekly cadence. I’ve thought about starting a separate newsletter, but that’s more than I want to take on right now. Instead, I’m thinking about doing a weekly review post on this blog instead. That will force me to reflect on my life more regularly, and will keep my 8 email subscribers up-to-date with my weekly happenings.

Here are some stats on those 34 articles:

• Most popular: My Obsidian Daily Note Template - this is consistently my most-viewed article. It was my first article of the year, and is a technical deep dive into how I set up my daily notes in my note-taking app. I still get an email roughly monthly from someone asking me further questions about how I set things up in Obsidian. Actually, as I was writing this, someone reached out from the article and asked me if I have implemented “heat map habit tracking” in Obsidian (I have not). This article had 243 views in the last 90 days. For reference, the next most viewed article over that span had 17 views.
• Most words: My Obsidian Daily Note Template - ~3500 words. The runner-up is my recent post on Aqua Notes at ~1800 words.
• Least words: This Started With A Title - 23 words
• Personal Favorite: Street Corner - Although my technical explainer posts seem to get more views, I love writing personal reflections. This one felt really raw. I remember experiencing the moment I describe in the article, and then feeling later that day like I just had to write about it.
• Average time spent writing each article: No idea. I don’t track this. But it’s pretty short I think. Maybe an hour or two? I don’t usually spend multiple days with a lot of editing and researching and refining. I write it and send it.

Microblogs

I also posted 132 microblogs this year. A large chunk of those were in January, because I went through the book of Proverbs and did a post for each one trying to summarize the most salient points in my own words. This was my way of “starting my year with wisdom” and was also meant to get me into the habit of regularly posting to my blog, no matter how uncomfortable it felt at the time.

Traffic

I didn’t start tracking analytics until later in the year, but since September 432 people have visited my blog.



About 62 of those users came back to my site at least once, and on average people spend 1 minute and 9 seconds on the blog.



The blog was a global sensation (hyperbole) with visitors from every continent other than Antarctica (shout out to the one visitor from Egypt representing all of Africa).



People came to my blog from various corners of the interwebs. Direct traffic, LinkedIn, Google, Reddit, and my newsletter service were all big drivers.



Most people visiting my blog were probably using Chrome on a Windows machine.



So, what is my takeaway from all of these analytics? Not much. It’s fun to look at during the end of the year, but there’s nothing actionable for me here. I’m not trying to supercharge my blog’s growth. I just want to write meaningful and helpful words.

Design

I made various changes to the look and feel of my blog throughout the year. You can see all the changes I made since June 10, 2024 in my changelog. It looks very different from where it originally started, which I shared screenshots of in Tear it All Down.

I’m following the KISS design principle: “Keep It Simple Stupid”.

What will 2025 hold?

Your guess is as good as mine. Will I become an author? Will I abandon my blog and run off with my pen and analog journal? Will artificial intelligence and quantum computing and brain chip implants converge to make the written word irrelevant as we all mind meld and communicate wordlessly and instantly? All possibilities.

As far as my blog goes, 2025 will be similar to 2024. I want to write more, and I’m sure I’ll make design tweaks to my blog here and there. But otherwise I’ll continue to write things that I think are meaningful and/or helpful.

As far as my life goes, it looks like change is a brewin'. I’m looking forward to the new year and all that it has to offer. Some things are scary, some are exciting, all will make for good writing material.

I can’t wait to share my perspective in the new year with you. Thanks for sticking around through my self-indulgent “blog in review” post.

I wish you a happy new year and hope your year is filled with love, given and received.

Nov 28, 2024 ∞

Capturing Shower Thoughts: How Aqua Notes Boosts Thinking

I learned it’s weird to talk to your coworkers about your showering habits.

The slightly uncomfortable laughs gave it away.

But it’s been on my mind because I’ve been doing something different in the shower lately. I think showers are more than just a way to get clean. They’re also a space to think. While most people have “shower thoughts”, I bet a majority can’t remember them.

When I say that showers are a “space to think”, I don’t just mean they’re a place to have thoughts pop in and out. I mean they are a place to do real thinking. To me, real thinking involves:

1. Loading up your short-term memory to work through a web of thought.
2. Moving the important bits over to long-term memory for future use.

Unfortunately, my brain is terrible at real thinking. It may be an inborn trait, or it may be a symptom of growing up a digital native. My brain feels like it’s wired for reacting: social media, texting, news cycles, etc. But I struggle to just… think.

Except I have a little trick to help me do real thinking: writing things down. The paper is part memory-aid and part memory-replacement. Seeing the words in writing helps encode them in my brain, but it also provides a hard-copy of the thought in case my brain fails to hold onto it. Yet even more helpful is using the paper as my short-term memory. I can follow a long chain of thought and remember every step I took. When my thoughts are trapped in paper, they are outside of me, so it is easier to separate my thoughts from my self. I can observe them with more objectivity.

So showers are a space for thinking, but real thinking requires writing. Therefore, showers are a space for writing.

But how does one write in the shower?

I use Aqua Notes.



This is not a paid post and there are no affiliate links. I just like Aqua Notes.

Aqua Notes has changed the way I shower

Some days I go into my shower with an idea I really need to think through: a complex challenge at work, a parenting dilemma, a tough conversation I need to have, etc. But on other days, I sleepily clamber into the shower and wait to see what rises to the surface of my mind while the warm water hits my back.

Regardless which kind of day I’m having, having a paper pad in the shower gives me a way to externalize my inner dialog.

Whether I’m showering with the intention of thinking or not, I always end up doing some thinking. The shower seems to have a unique capacity for shining a light on the recesses of my mind. Then the paper can capture the fleeting ideas that usually lie dormant in these recesses.

I have used Aqua notes to capture all sorts of shower thoughts, from random ideas, to poetry, to visuals. I want to tell you more about what Aqua Notes is, how I’ve used it, and other things I tried before Aqua Notes.

What is Aqua Notes?

Aqua Notes is a simple product. It is just a plasticky paper notepad, a pencil, and suction cups. It was founded by a guy that wanted to remember his shower thoughts, and all the component pieces are manufactured and assembled in the USA.

The Pad

The paper in the pad is waterproof and has a very smooth texture. It is surprisingly easy to write on with pencil, even when wet!

I have not seen this advertised or discussed anywhere, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that each piece of paper can be ripped off and stuck to the wall by itself. It just takes a little water, and I’ve never had a piece of paper fall off the wall from drying out. This lets me write on the reverse side of each paper and fill up my shower wall with notes like a mad scientist.



Being able to rip off pieces of paper also means that I can take my notes with me outside the shower if I need to.

The paper is a little difficult to rip cleanly (although it is perforated) so you have to be careful when pulling a page off the pad.

The Pencil

The pencil is a standard graphite pencil that needs to be sharpened occasionally. Inscribed on one side is the saying “NO MORE GREAT IDEAS DOWN THE DRAIN!”. It has an eraser, which works okay on the plasticky paper. It’s not as easy to erase as standard paper, but not too difficult either.

The pencil has been great, and I love that it’s a no-nonsense tool I can always expect to work. Unlike some of the other things I’ve tried…

The Suction Cups

I don’t have much to say here other than that I have had no issues with these staying on the wall. That was something I was concerned about when I bought this, so I wanted to mention it for others wondering the same.

Now that you know what Aqua Notes is, you might be thinking “but what would I actually write on there?” The answer is: all sorts of things!

What I write in the shower

Tasks

I used to think of something I needed to do while showering, and then would forget it right after.

Now I can write down any pesky to-dos that come up during my shower. After I shower, I’ll take a look at my notes and transfer any tasks into my phone or elsewhere.

Random thoughts

Some random thoughts are worth capturing. This could be a spontaneous idea for a product, self-reflection about how I am living my life, or anything in between.

Intentional thoughts

Occasionally I’ll give my shower a goal. In these cases there’s a very specific thing I need to think through, so I will use my shower as a chunk of dedicated time to work through it. I write through each step of the process and work out my thoughts methodically.

Podcast notes

Sometimes I listen to a podcast while I’m in the shower, so I will write down any memorable quotes. I also write down my own notes about impactful ideas I want to remember.

Visuals

Many thoughts are better captured in a visual rather than words. I might be trying to work through a complex topic, or there might just be an image in my brain that I want to hold onto for later.

I love that the empty pad gives my notes the flexibility to take whatever form they need.

Haiku

I enjoy writing haiku occasionally. I use it as a way to capture an idea in short, memorable prose.

Love notes for my wife

Short shower notes are a sweet, thoughtful surprise that I use to lift up my wife.

Alternatives I’ve tried for capturing shower thoughts

Before Aqua Notes, I had tried to perfect the art of capturing shower thoughts. My previous attempts had revolved around using technology, but they all fell short. I had assumed digital capture would be better because it would be quicker and easier to retrieve my notes. But I found all the digital options to be unreliable and have come to appreciate the way that the slowness of handwriting allows me to simmer in my thoughts.

Smartwatch

I thought for sure the smartwatch would be the answer. I could dictate my notes into my watch and then have them seamlessly uploaded to the cloud for safekeeping and retrieval later. But this didn’t play out in reality the same way that I dreamt it up.

For one, dictation into my watch (Galaxy Watch 5) sucked. It was bad outside the shower, but inside the shower with all the noise I could rarely get it to capture a single sentence correctly.

I also ran into an issue with the apps I tried to use to capture notes. I tried Google Keep and the recording app that came on the watch. The recording app would just randomly shut off in the middle of me talking, which was irritating. And I think something similar happened with Google Keep, although I can’t quite remember.

And don’t even get me started on interacting with the watch screen while it was wet.

Maybe an Apple Watch could do better, but my Galaxy Watch was NOT a good shower notes companion.

Alexa

I also tried setting an Amazon Echo Dot right outside the shower so I could shout notes to it, but it did a poor job capturing what I said as well. It was also pretty annoying to try shouting outside the shower, or opening the door and poking my head out each time I had a thought.

Phone

When I got frustrated with my watch, I tried using my phone for a little while, but that was destined for failure because I was too scared to get it near the water. It was hard to interact with if my hands were wet, and voice commands didn’t work out too well for me.

After going through all of these iterations of digital tools, I realized that sometimes the simplest tools are the most powerful.

Takeaways

Writing is great for thinking is great for showering. So writing is great for showering.

I’ve been amazed at the insights I’ve captured while in the shower. It brings me joy to see an idea from a shower months ago that sparks new thought patterns in me today.

Aqua Notes is the best tool I’ve found for thinking and writing in the shower. It’s simple but effective. It can flex to accommodate two-word ideas, long chains of thoughts, visuals, and everything in between. Though flashier digital tools like smartwatches and automated home assistants seemed better, I’ve found pencil and paper to be the best tool for the job.

Let’s say we spend 15 minutes in the shower daily. That’s roughly 91 hours in a year. Getting clean is a noble enough way to spend that time, but I’d encourage you to also intentionally think and write.

Pay attention to your thoughts and emotions. What comes up might be important. And the important things should be captured, not washed down the drain.

Oct 10, 2024 ∞

LinkedIn is cool sometimes

LinkedIn can be so cool sometimes. I connected with Mural’s VP of Product, Matt Crawford, and we got to talking about my experience.

I told him I LOVE using Mural for user story maps, but I’m having trouble integrating with Jira because of how our instance is set up at NASA.

Lo and behold, the current problem I’m having integrating Mural with Jira Data Center is a priority for him right now and they’re running a pilot program. I’m going to get him connected with the right people at NASA to see if we can get in on their pilot to get things working.

Mutually beneficial for everyone. Product people helping product people.

Love it.

Oct 5, 2024 ∞

Now 2024-10-05

What I am up to now. Check my /now page for the latest update.

Dad Stuff

My daughter is walking! She is almost 15 months old now, and it feels like overnight she transformed from baby to toddler. Crawling to walking took a couple of months, but I think she went from walking to running in an hour. We’re chasing her all over the place now. This is such a fun age.

In addition to walking/running, she’s getting pretty good at sign language and a few words. Her favorite words right now are dada, mama, baby, blueberries (besbes), bees, go (doe), bottle (baba), wheels on the bus (wuhbuh), book (buhbuh), dog (wohwoh, because our dog’s name is Lolo), bye bye, thank you and ball. She’s also gotten very good at shaking her head “no”, and is not afraid to use it. This girl has some sass. It can be challenging, but I am proud that we are encouraging her sense of self and being assertive about her needs even at this young age.

I’m having a lot of fun spending time with my daughter and playing with her. She is sweet and pure in a way that starkly contrasts the messiness and hustle of the world. She loves giving kisses and hugs. I love watching her walk around kissing her stuffed animals, and then offering them up to me or my wife to kiss them too. I want to soak in every moment I can with her.

And yet… if I’m being completely honest, I find myself having a desire to check out sometimes. My wife and I are working to keep each other accountable to not turning to our phones when we’re tired. I know I will be so much happier if I stay present in the moment, but the siren call of distraction can be really strong. I can easily fall into binging articles or videos and justifying it as “learning”, but it’s just my way of turning off to the hard things in front of me.

Creating

I continue to blog infrequently but love it when I do it. It seems li ke my creative energy comes in waves, and it has been on the upswing recently. I went the whole month of July without posting any articles, but wrote a handful last month. Recently, I redesigned the homepage of my blog and am pretty happy with how it turned out. I like just seeing a listing of all the things I’ve written about, and I imagine that’s what others would be interested in too.

A while ago I liked the idea of writing think piece articles where I do a bunch of research to from a novel opinion on a topic of interest, but that hasn’t materialized yet. I think maybe it’s just not my style? So far, my process is that I get super obsessed with an idea of something I want to write, and I need to get it out of my system within 24 hours. Then I publish it with little to no editing. I’m not sure that there’s a right or wrong way, but I’d still like to at least experiment with a more patient approach to writing.

I’ve also been working on Fed Meetup more. I had to update it with the FY25 rates that got posted by GSA recently, and while I was in there I cleaned up the interface. There’s still a lot of room for improvement, but it’s getting better. The worst part about the app right now is the initial load time. It’s atrocious, but I’m still figuring out how to get things to render correctly and lazy load in SvelteKit. That’s the next thing I plan to tackle.

I have ideas for all sorts of other things I’d like to create and put together an ideas page to keep track of them.

Work

My big focuses right now are the NASA Cause Analysis Tool (NCAT) and the NASA Mishap Information System (NMIS). NCAT was the first app that managed from idea all the way to release, and it was released earlier this year. It has been successful so far, and is getting good feedback from the mishap investigator community at NASA. These are the main people using the tool currently, it helps them brainstorm and organize data to determine findings and recommendations as part of their investigations.

NMIS is one of the NASA Safety Center’s oldest applications and I recently to over as the product manager for it. It is the source of truth for all NASA mishap data. It is a big legacy app and has a very different feel from NCAT, which is our newest application. NMIS is going through major changes right now since the mishap policy at NASA is changing, and the software needs to change with the policy. It has been fun getting up to speed on NMIS quickly and thinking about how we will implement major changes that touch most parts of the application.

Faith and Friends

The church group my wife and I are a part of has become completely overrun with babies… When we joined a couple of years ago, there were 0, and now we are well into double digits. We’ve all started going in on childcare together, and that has improved the dynamic of the group a lot. It’s a lot easier to have deep, meaningful conversation when there aren’t a bunch of kids toddling around and screaming.

I feel like my attitude toward my faith has been apathetic for a while, and I’m not sure what to do about it. I believe in Christ as my savior, and I believe God is active in my life and with me, but that doesn’t impact my heart as much as it used to. This concerns me. I feel a dissonance between my mind and my heart. It makes me wonder if I have allowed myself to get too comfortable? Am I settling for a typical American middle class life, concerned more with status and self-satisfaction than with the grand question of why I am even here? How could I not be moved by my belief that the reason I am here is to honor God and share love with others? I am praying for God to reignite my passion and excitement, but I am still waiting. That is okay, it does not shake the foundation of my faith, but I do feel like I am in a dry valley.

And despite all of these existential questions, I don’t want things to change. I really like my comfortable American life. I may be holding onto it too tightly. If I was asked to give it up, I would have a really hard time with that. It puts me in a weird place. I don’t really want change, but I am hoping and praying for it.

Leisure

I finished the Foundation Series by Isaac Aasimov, and now I am reading a couple different books: Ghost Soldiers, Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.

I’ve been disc golfing occasionally when I can and have been playing really well. I played my highest rated round ever couple of days ago.

Exercise

I’ve been doing a couple sets a day of push-ups to failure, and that has been excellent for me. I’ve struggled with making time to go to the gym or even do a full workout at time, and this is so stupid easy that I’ve actually been able to keep up with it. I focus on going slow so that I use not just my arms but also my core.

My wife and I also recently got memberships to our local YMCA. We’ve gone a couple of times, but I’m not sure if we’ll stick with it. The place just has a weird feel. I don’t know if it’s too dark, or has a weird smell, but something is just off. I really want to do CrossFit or some sort of other group class like Jiu Jitsu, but those are so expensive that they’re tough to justify. They also feel like a little more of a time commitment, but I think that would be good for me. I think commitment is what I need.

Home

We’ve been rearranging the house quite a bit. It ended up in a weird setup, so I think we’re going to rearrange it all again soon. We’re trying to figure out how to have a nice adult space that is also kid-friendly.

Also, we had 5 different contractors come out recently to give us quotes for a back patio. We’re looking forward to making our backyard a nice space to entertain friends and let all the kids roam around.

Sep 29, 2024 ∞

This Started With A Title

Let the writing inform the title, or let the title inform the writing?

This started with a title, but it wasn’t this one.

Sep 25, 2024 ∞

Advice To A Demotivated Job Seeker

I received the following question in my LinkedIn DMs:

What is some advice you can give me, I am having motivation issues. I have a decent job but it’s not my dream job, trying to join the aerospace industry. Also doing my masters to specialize in AI and eventually get a leadership role. Not seeing the clear path yet and it’s hard to stay motivated.

Here was my response:

There’s never a clear path! My path has been all over the place, and I never would have guessed I would be where I am now.

I think the key is to do the best you can where you are and always be on the lookout for new opportunities. Reach higher than you think you can go and ignore the requirements in job postings, they’re just wish lists.

I didn’t expect to get the job I have now. I was terribly underqualified on paper, and just wanted to apply to see what the interview process might be like for the kind of position I might apply for in a few years. And then I got the job!

Also, have fun along the way. If you’re early on in your career, look for fun ways that you can boost your visibility and increase your surface area for lucky opportunities. For me, that looks like posting on LinkedIn, starting a blog, working on web apps on the side, etc. Just find stuff you love related to where you want to go, and start now. Find little aerospace projects to work on, or AI projects, or local leadership opportunities.

You got this!

I want to capture this in a post so I can share it with anyone else struggling with the same things. Demotivation like this is really common and I’ve dealt with it too.

To anyone else out there struggling with the same thing, you really do got this! Keep moving, keep having fun, and tell people about what you’re doing. The right opportunity will come along!

I would be happy to chat over email about it!

Sep 21, 2024 ∞
Mikenna and Josh's Wedding
It’s the beautiful easing into dawn as I write. I’m sitting in a rocking chair on the chapel deck, overlooking one of New York’s finger lakes. In the middle of the quiet and solitude, a speedboat just ripped across the lake as I finished that last sentence. It’s 6:50 a.m. I was up at 5:00, woken by my daughter crying. My back hurts and my neck aches from sleeping on the hard wooden bunk bed of the camp cabin we’re staying in.
Despite the aches, pains, and upset baby, I am at peace. My soul is at ease in the morning light over the lake. Now that my wife and daughter have gone back to bed, the seagulls are my only companions.
I had started reading Nietzsche but had to put it down. It’s just too… depressing. Too depressing for the goodness of this moment. Which is ironic, because he was talking about the need for solitude and nature. But he was discussing that need as it relates to all the “blood-sucking poison-flies” that we encounter in our interactions with other people. Sure, the “blood-sucking poison-flies” are out there, but I don’t think they’re as pervasive as Nietzsche thinks. And even if they were, that’s not what I want on my mind right now.
I’m excited for Mikenna and Josh getting married this afternoon. Though it can be stressful, I enjoy the excited energy of being around the wedding party in the days leading up to the wedding.
I used to think weddings were silly. A flashy “look at me” beginning to a lifelong commitment. I still think they are overemphasized in our culture, but I see the value in them now. Bringing people together and having grand celebrations helps everyone process and incorporate big life changes. This is true also for funerals, grad parties, and other traditional celebration/events for big life changes.
While a wedding is about the bride and groom, it is for everyone. As the attendees at a wedding, we get a shared experience of the start of the couple’s journey. We show our support for the couple, and we strengthen bonds with each other, further strengthening the couple’s support network. We are reminded of love. We are reminded that love is worth celebrating. We get to be part of a sacred covenant. Hopefully, we put aside our selfish aims for a day and allow the spotlight to be on the couple.
Maybe most importantly, we pause. We recognize that there are things in life worth pausing for. And the greatest of these is love.

Sep 18, 2024 ∞

Indie Hacking

I have a tendency to be consumed by a niche interest or hobby every now and then. In the past it’s been disc golf, counter strike, yo-yoing, hot sauces, coffee, apologetics, and even card magic. Now I’m introducing the latest interest that my free-time has fallen victim to: indie hacking.

What is Indie Hacking?

Despite having “hacking” in the name, indie hacking is not nearly as nefarious as it seems. It does not involve late night attempts to crack the access code to a terminal while 80s synth wave music surges in the background.

Indie hacking is building software products without a large team and without investments from venture capitalists. Many indie hackers set up their businesses as “lifestyle businesses”, which means that they optimize for time freedom instead of financial growth. So instead of hiring a bigger team to grow the business to infinity and beyond, an indie hacker might set up process automations to make their business run on autopilot so that they can have more time in their day.

My Introduction to Indie Hacking

I started down this rabbit hole after listening to Lex Fridman’s podcast with guest Pieter Levels. Pieter is notorious in the indie hacker community, and has set up several lifestyle businesses for himself, such as nomads.com. After being inspired by his journey, I took a look at his blog and a couple of his posts gave me more to look into:

• https://levels.io/startups/ - how to take an idea from 0 to 100
• https://levels.io/copywriting/ - dead simple advice for writing good copy
• https://levels.io/hoodmaps/ - a crazy long post documenting how Pieter built an app from the first line of code to being complete

Looking at these posts then led me to Show Hacker News, Indie Hackers, and Product Hunt. Show Hacker News is a great place to see what other people are building and to see how the “hacker community” responds. Indie Hackers has all sorts of articles and resources with info on getting started. They also have a podcast I just stumbled on today! I had never heard of Product Hunt before, but it’s a place where each day new apps get launched and then voted on. The most popular apps rise to the top, so for the early-adopter community it is a way to see what hot new apps are available, and for makers it is a great way to get visibility and users for a new product.

What Indie Hacking Means To Me

I’ve been inspired by all the stories I’ve read and the products I’ve seen. My day job is fun and rewarding, but it has become removed from coding. I miss the tight feedback loop of having a small feature in my head to build and then bringing it to life. To reconcile that, I’m moonlighting as an indie hacker. I have no grand monetization scheme, no clearly laid out plan, and little free time as a new dad working a full-time job. But I’m building nonetheless. My latest creation is fedmeetup.com, and I just pushed some new updates to it over the last week.

I’m still a bit embarrassed by how wonky the interface looks (need to work on my design skills) but I’m trying to embrace the indie hacker mantra of “ship early, ship often”. Fed Meetup solves a problem (Where should I host a federal in-person event to maximize savings of taxpayer dollars?) in its current form, so I’ve released it into the wild and will build it alongside those using it. I know of at least a couple of people at NASA who have started using it and I plan to broadcast it more widely through NASA. Once it has had success at NASA, I’ll start outreach to other agencies.

On top of Fed Meetup, I have other ideas that I’m itching to build:

1. I want to make an app for prayer that combines the best elements of Duolingo and Readwise. I often tell people I will pray for them and then forget, so I want to build something that solves that. A place I can store the things I want to be praying for, that also reminds me to pray and maybe even has some gamification to encourage me to keep engaging with my prayers.
2. I also want to make a quick capture app. What I really want to make is a widget for an android or iPhone, that makes it dead simple to capture quick notes and have a running log of these quick notes. I haven’t found a satisfying solution for this yet.
3. I’ve also considered writing a weekly email newsletter that either has a paid subscription option or a donate option. It would have to be something that provides value… I was thinking either “hacks” for the average office user to use their computer better, or a weekly interview with someone who works at NASA, highlighting the person and their work.

This is just the beginning of my ideas, so I’m going to create an /ideas page on this blog to store all of them. I want to share these publicly partly for accountability and partly because I think they need to be built, so I welcome others to build them too! If you have any interesting ideas you think we could work on together, I would love to hear them.

The Piece I’m Missing

The main way I differ from other indie hackers is that I don’t have an intense focus on monetization. I’m more of an indie hobbyist, who may one day metamorphose from hobbyist to hacker. Indie hackers are usually very focused on their Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) which is the key measure for a subscription based business. After reviewing my financial situation, my MRR between my blog and Fed Meetup is -$7. I pay $5/mo for blog hosting, and about $1/mo each for my domain names. And none of this is pulling in any money.

For now, I am content with that. I’m enjoying the craft of both writing and building software products. It brings me immense joy to write these blog posts and to build things like Fed Meetup. However, I do dream of a day when the side projects I’ve built over time could support my family financially. I am quite happy supporting my family through my W-2 job, but I am attracted to the romanticized freedom that having my own business(es) would afford. I know it won’t be all sunshine and rainbows, but I think it would fit my personality well.

In my mind, the key to all of this is experimentation. This is not a big announcement of a shift in focus or career for me. Rather, this is me sharing a potential future path that I plan to experiment with. I plan to start small with my hobbyist projects, giving some more thought to how I can monetize them. Actually, I’m quite excited about experimenting with monetization and value. Stories like the Zappos founder, Nick Swinmurn, fuel my imagination. He set up an online shoe store before having any inventory. While he was validating the company’s value proposition (would people buy shoes online without trying them on?), he would receive orders and then go out himself to local shoe stores to buy shoes and ship them out. Finding opportunities for this kind of “Wizard of Oz” testing to validate business viability is exciting and fun to me.

So why am I sharing all of this? Because you can expect to hear more from me about what I’m building. Building in public is about authentically sharing the journey from idea to product. I hope to do just that and I invite you to join me and follow along.

Sep 17, 2024 ∞

Using Tiny Theme Microhooks to make your homepage display a reverse chronological list of long-form articles, grouped by year

I’ve been feeling like my home page wasn’t what I really wanted people’s first experience with my blog to be. I want people to be able to get a high-level overview of what I write about and what my interests are. I admire other blogs that just have a list of long-form articles, so I decided to update my home page to work similarly.

Check out my new home page at weidok.al



For anyone else using the Micro.blog Tiny Theme that wants to do the same, here is how I did it:

Instructions

Warning: Keep in mind that this is one of the more power microhooks in the Tiny Theme, so it may override other microhooks you have already set up

• Make sure Tiny Theme is installed on the Plug-ins page
• create a custom theme (or edit your existing custom theme if you already have one)
• add the following page to your theme: layouts/partials/microhook-post-list.html
• in that page, add the code below:

<div class="home h-feed">
  {{ $posts := where .Site.RegularPages "Type" "post" }}
  {{ $articles := where $posts "Title" "!=" "" }}
  
  {{ range $articles.GroupByDate "2006" }}
    <h2>{{ .Key }}</h2>
    <ul class="post-list">
      {{ range .Pages }}
        <li class="h-entry" style="padding: 0.5em 0;">
            <div style="display: flex;">
                <div class="post-meta" style="flex-shrink: 0; width: 60px; margin-right: 10px;">
                    <time class="dt-published" datetime="{{ .Date.Format "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00" }}">
                        {{ .Date.Format "Jan 02" }}
                    </time>
                </div>
                <div style="flex-grow: 1; min-width: 0;">
                    <a href="{{ .Permalink }}" style="word-wrap: break-word; overflow-wrap: break-word;">{{ .Title }}</a>
                </div>
            </div>
        </li>
      {{ end }}
    </ul>
  {{ end }}
</div>

• save the template

And voila! Just like that, you’ve updated your homepage to show a list of reverse chronological posts, but only showing long-form articles grouped by the year.

Sep 13, 2024 ∞

Street Corner

Today I found myself in the downtown area of an old, little rural Ohio town. Surrounded by brick buildings, with a large, antiquated concrete community bank on the opposite corner. I stopped in at a local Chinese takeout place with my family for lunch. We ordered our food, and were told the customary “10 minutes”. While waiting for them to prepare our food, I stepped out onto the corner with my daughter.

It was… unremarkable. Another typical Ohio day in a quaint Ohio town.

But doing unremarkable things with a one year-old can suddenly make them remarkable.

Read More →

Sep 5, 2024 ∞

My Meeting Philosophy

I recently had 35 meetings in a week. This is a lot, but not uncommon for employees of large enterprises. While it is easy to lament an organization’s “meeting culture”, there are also actions individual employees can take to reduce their meeting load. I recognized that attending all the meetings on my calendar was not possible (one time slot was quadruple-booked!) so I developed the following approach for responding to meetings.

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Jun 30, 2024 ∞

26 Pieces Of Advice To My Past Self

I recently turned 26. I’m no sage, but I’ve picked up a couple of lessons in my time. Below are 26 things I would tell a younger me if I could.

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Jun 20, 2024 ∞
A Recommendation for Trying AI
The following is a message I shared with my organization today.
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In light of NASA’s push to train up the workforce on AI, I wanted to share a tool that I’ve been using in my day-to-day. This is a simple tool that would be a good introduction for folks who haven’t been using AI much.
Perplexity AI is a conversational AI assistant and search engine that provides citations for sources it is using. You can also specify whether you want it to only search through academic journals, Reddit, or other sources.
I’ve been using this about as much as I’ve been searching for links with Google. I’ve been using it for research, learning new things, troubleshooting other tools I use at work, etc. The cited sources help me to see where the answer is coming from, to judge whether I should trust it or not. And it’s really easy to use. Just type in a question you want an answer to, and it will give you cited responses.
A lot of the other big LLMs are good too, and each have there own strengths and weaknesses. Perplexity would be happy to tell you what they are!
Some others I’ve tried are:
• ChatGPT, from Open AI: https://chatgpt.com/
• Gemini, from Google: https://gemini.google.com/
• Claude, from Anthropic: https://claude.ai/