Coding and Beer

I haven’t blogged much lately.  A lot of things have happened in my life in the last year that focused my efforts elsewhere.  I thought I would go ahead and jot down some notes.

Being a supervisor, I rarely get to code much anymore.  Lately I have been getting to do so on a project I wrote a while back.  I needed to add new functionality to it and it needed to have a design overhaul to accommodate the changes.  You know how you always have the “I would totally change that if I were to write it again” thoughts after finishing an application? Well, I get to make those changes to this app.  The new functionality isn’t a priority to finish fast, so I get to work on the app in-between other work.  This allows me to slow down on it and really update it correctly.  I’m removing a bunch of jQuery based javascript I wrote at the time and replacing the client UI interactions with a binding framework.  I chose KnockoutJS for that.  I also removed a bunch of CSS and leveraged BootStrap a lot for layout and base styles.  These two improvements required me to dig in and learn some new things, but the amount of CSS and javascript has significantly dropped on this project so far.  It has a responsive design now which will be great for mobile device use.  I love re-sizing the window and watching the elements flow correctly.  The rework will extend all the way to the database table structure, so I will be plowing through the ASP.NET MVC and SQL database layers as well by the time this project is over.

On a personal level, I started working out again.  It feels really good.  I have dropped about 15 pounds over the last year.  I hope to drop 15 more to get to my ideal weight.  It’s really hard because I love eating good food and drinking great beer.  We are still a cable/sat free household.  Netflix gets used more than I would like, but at least the price of that is small in comparison.

Spring is here, so it is time to start planning the garden and summer projects.  My wife asked me to build a pergola before July.  That should be easy, but I also have other large landscaping projects in mind as well and they also need to be finished before July.  Just got to figure out how to fund it.

A blog entry by Mike Crittenden titled “Coding skill vs. employee skill” got me thinking.  When I was heavy into development, I valued the Coding Skill person more because I was working with code all day.  As I transitioned into a supervisory role, I’m now looking for more Employee Skills from my people.  So I would say he was right on the mark in his post.  Just thought I would pass along the link for others to read.