“Every single person with whom you work has a vastly different set of needs. They are chaotic beautiful snowflakes. Fulfilling these needs is one way to make them content and productive. It is your full-time job to listen to these people and mentally document how they are built. This is your most important job. I know the senior VP of engineering is telling you that hitting the date for the project is job number one, but you are not going to write the code, test the product, or document the features. The team is going to do these things, and your job is managing the team.”
“Everything was fun and nothing mattered because everyone knew that sooner or later the cannons would boom again and nothing would be fun and everything would matter.”
It seems like the hip new thing is for apps to give you a fancy recap of your usage at the end of the year. I thought I’d consolidate a few of them here for posterity.
Music
Being an old fart I tend to buy music rather than stream it. I self-host a Plex server with the media I’ve accumulated over the years and my default music player is the better-than-the nostalgia-bait-name Plexamp client. This is what I used it to listen to in 2022:
Nothing surprising here. Klaus Schulze, the Hades soundtrack, and (oddly enough) Black Tie White Noise are quite good background music for work.
Podcasts
For podcasts I’ve been a long-time user and supporter of Pocket Casts. Here’s what it had for me:
I tend to listen to podcasts while driving, taking walks, and doing chores around the house. I’m curious if this ranking is according to hours listened, because nearly all of these podcasts release weekly, and individual episodes of The Flop House are typically over an hour long while the rest tend to be in the 20-30 minute range. Old Gods of Appalachia is a new favorite of mine. Lovecraftian horror set in old mining towns in the Appalachian mountains. Definitely worth checking out if that sounds interesting to you.
Video Games
I found a bit of time to play games last year, especially once I managed to acquire a Steam Deck:
Last summer when we had interns on my team at work we did some team building video game nights. I had never played Counter Strike before then, and I have no doubt the team enjoyed scoring headshots on their boss. I introduced them to Rocket League and it remains a favorite. Very late in the year I picked up both Strays and Tunic, which I expect will show up in the summary for next year.
Now that console shortages have eased up we picked up a PS5 as well, and I’ve been able to spend a bit of time with it too.
Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales dominated my PS time last year, and I have no regrets.
I read a bunch in 2022, but not as much as I’d like. I tend to switch between ebooks and dead trees pretty evenly so I don’t have a fancy app to give me a summary of everything. I did start using The StoryGraph as an alternative to Goodreads, so hopefully I’ll keep up with tracking and have a nice summary for next year.
Exercise
Despite all the above I did manage to get off the couch every once in a while and get some exercise. I started biking across the city to the office on occasion, I take frequent walks, and I even managed to get into a kayak a few times.
I’m hoping this year to get more reading done, get a bit more exercise, and to do a bit more creating after all this consumption. I have a few ideas for projects and hopefully I’ll find the motivation to get moving on them.
Header image from Flickr user Tau Zero used under Creative Commons license.
Nachos with pickled vegetables After a long hiatus I’m back on my Frankenlunch kick. Today I had to get rid of some pickled vegetables I’d made for some bánh mì sandwiches last week, so I decided to do the easiest possible thing and throw them on some nachos. This one honestly turned out pretty weird. The cold, tangy veggies mixed with the warm, gooey and also tangy chips made for some texture profiles that were not altogether unpleasant, but certainly not something I’d serve to someone else.
I mentioned this on social media the other day, but it’s lodged itself in my head and I rather like it so I decided to put it somewhere maybe a bit less ephemeral:
The phrase “Chronic Unaligned Duck Syndrome” worked its way into my head today and I don’t know if I heard it somewhere or I made it up but I can think of many areas of my life where it applies.
I have a very clear idea of what “Chronic Unaligned Duck Syndrome” means to me. What does it mean to you?
This one is a bit of a changeup. I had originally planned to top my nachos with something boring like chicken fried rice, but alas I missed the boat on those particular leftovers. Instead I spotted some hard boiled eggs in the fridge, so I shelled and crumbled one of those bad boys onto my chips.
The flavor was about what I expected. The saltiness of the chips complimented the egg, while the tang of the salsa and Mexican cheese blend rounded things out pretty nicely.
