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Here are some short form posts - enjoy!

Release It Book Preface Discussion 1

What are you hoping to learn from Release It!? What are you hoping to get out of the book club?

#ReleaseItBookClubPreface #ReleaseItBookClub

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. Based on the title, I thought it would be about Continuous Delivery, deployment strategies, etc. Maybe it will touch on those topics, but it seems to be much more focused on the design of robust software in production. So now I am hoping that this book will help me espouse these principles of robustness in my own work and throughout my company. Similarly, for the book club I’m looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts and experiences on the content of the book to see how it could be applied in different contexts, and hopefully receive some inspiration for applying it in my context.

Release It Book Club Starts Next Week

#ReleaseItBookClub starts next week! You can obtain your copy (use discount code stevenoxley at pragprog.com) and start reading. I’ll start posting discussion questions next week using tag #ReleaseItBookClub and tag pattern #ReleaseItBookClubChapterN so you can read and discuss at your own pace. See you there!

Release It! Book Club Discount

I have news! You can use the discount code stevenoxley to get a 40% discount on Release It! Second Edition by Michael T. Nygard - making it that much easier to join the async book club that I’m starting here in February.

Release It! Async Book Club

I’m starting an async book club for the book Release It! Second Edition by Michael T. Nygard and you’re invited to join! You can sign up here to register your interest and (hopefully) get a discount on the book: https://forms.gle/kti3xFYD7cMjEBYk9. Or go ahead and buy the book now (I already have mine). I plan to start reading and posting discussion questions at the beginning of February. I’m looking forward to it, and feel free to spread the word - all are welcome!

Tea Advent Calendar

Behold, my tea advent calendar! I have some catching up to do.

A large cardstock poster board with 25 slots to hold Pukka brand tea packets - all of which are full.

Flexibility Progress Update 2

More hamstring flexibility progress! I’ve been able to touch my toes for weeks now, and last night I was able to touch the floor with my knees locked. I’ve never done that before 🙀

A before picture on the left trying to touch my toes and being about 5 inches away. An after picture on the right of me stretching and touching my toes!

Nudgsicle Preorders Available

Nudgsicle pre-orders are now available 😁 (also 🤣, also 🙏). https://www.nudgsicle.com/

Team Topologies Book Club: Chapter 1 Discussions

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?

POSSE

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.

Flexibility Progress Update 1

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!

Me stretching - still a few inches from touching my toes, but much closer!

2024-10-22T15:23:37-07:00

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!

2024-10-22T15:23:30-07:00

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

Nudgsicle and pr-reminders

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

2024-10-20T09:02:15-07:00

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.

2024-10-17T06:39:17-07:00

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 😂

Our boat in the garage with a snowblower and snow plow in the foreground

2024-10-16T12:43:43-07:00

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:

Screenshot of mastodon ellipses

LinkedIn screenshot with shortened URLs

PR Reminders Open Sourced

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 😁