Bytes and Bikes

I love books. I love reading books about work. I especially love discussing books related to work with my colleagues, so I frequently run and participate in book clubs at work. I’m currently running a book club with the book Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, and I thought I’d share the discussion questions I’m using for the book club. Here are the questions for chapter 1:

1. What are the takeaways you have from this chapter?
2. What ways have you seen our company’s org chart mismatch our communication structures?
3. What are examples you’ve seen of missing dynamic and sensing aspects of traditional organization design?
4. How are we doing with regard to the five rules of thumb for designing organizations?
   1. Design when there is a compelling reason.
   2. Develop options for deciding on a design.
   3. Choose the right time to design.
   4. Look for clues that things are out of alignment.
   5. Stay alert to the future.
5. What are some examples you’ve seen of Conway’s law in action at our company?
6. What are some examples where teams at our company have had to deal with excessive cognitive load?

2024-11-04 16:33:02 -0800 PST

I’ve been trying to practice POSSE - Post On (your own) Site Syndicate Everywhere (LinkedIn, X, and Mastodon for now). I’ve been using Zapier and Buffer to do this, and it honestly kinda sucks and will be expensive when my 7 day Zapier trial ends…

I could probably make it work how I want since Zapier is quite flexible, but in order to access multi-step Zaps (which would be necessary), I’d have to spend $20 / month. Not worth it.

2024-10-30 08:56:14 -0700 PDT

The hamstring stretching routine I’ve been doing is working! After only a couple days I saw major gains. Unfortunately, it seems like my hamstrings reset each day and I have to stretch them again to reflexify them. Also, I haven’t seen much absolute progress since the first couple days. I’ll keep at it!

2024-10-29 16:05:05 -0700 PDT

I set myself an audacious goal this year to try to launch product(s) that will make me $1M / year by the time I’m 40. That is not very far away at this point - 40 months from yesterday. I set the goal 4 months ago and I’ve launched…. nothing.

In order to accomplish the goal, I think I’ll have to launch lots of products until something sticks… My original goal was to launch one every two months. But I’ve been too focused on success!

Today, I thought, “What if my goal was to fail instead…” and it was oddly freeing. That takes a lot of the pressure off of making things perfect… or even good for that matter. So maybe that will be my new goal - launch 20 failed products by the time I’m 40. And maybe I’ll happen upon a success or two in there, as well.

2024-10-22 15:23:37 -0700 PDT

Tralina (my wife) and I give ourselves a “discretionary spending” budget that we can each spend however we want without consulting the other. I have taken $500 of my budget and put it in a bank account for my product launching side business project. It might be fun to track that investment money and see how it dwindles over time (or if I keep it in the black!). Current status: $466.79

2024-10-22 15:23:30 -0700 PDT

I’ve reached a major milestone with Nudgsicle - the product I’m working on to help with timely code review. Specifically, I and some colleagues released the core backend functionality that will power it as an open source project. More details here: https://nudgsicle.com/articles/announcing-pr-reminders-open-source.html

2024-10-21 08:07:37 -0700 PDT

I’ve always had issues with hamstring and lower black flexibility. Even as a kid I couldn’t touch my toes with my knees locked and performed poorly on that part of physical fitness tests. In my 30s it became a problem when I pulled both hamstrings one summer playing softball.

Since then, I’ve been better about regular stretching and flexibility exercises (I even got to where I could touch my toes with my knees locked once!) but I still have issues with injury now and then. For example, I did three cycling workouts last week, and yesterday I was literally just walking around and felt like my left hamstring was about to give out.

So I’ve decided today that I’m going to start taking this flexibility thing seriously. My new goal is to get to where I can put my palms fully on the ground with my legs together and knees locked. I’m not even sure what will work for me, but I’m going to start with daily stretching of some sort. The first two routines I’m trying are:

• https://youtu.be/RCtMzDjL_Bo?si=jbaXRrJNowuLTqae
• https://youtu.be/W5LvKNElKH4?si=cO9LGoE-IEd3xWpr

Wish me luck!

2024-10-20 09:02:15 -0700 PDT

Well I made it fit. I had to manually push it to get it at the right angle so the door would close, but my 1 year old daughter was helping me so it wasn’t too bad 😂

2024-10-17 06:39:17 -0700 PDT

I love how Mastodon does link shortening using ellipses. LinkedIn is the worst - you can’t tell where you’re going until you click on it. And at least X gives you a choice not to shorten at all… For example:

2024-10-16 12:43:43 -0700 PDT

I recently open sourced a project at work with some colleagues. It’s a bot for reminding teammates of code awaiting review. I wrote more about it here - check it out 😁

2024-10-15 13:06:37 -0700 PDT