January 2024 Check-In
January was a pretty lousy month for me. I started the month having to say goodbye to my cat, Cookie. And to be honest, the sting of that continued on for the rest of the month.
Cookie
I had Cookie almost my entire adult life. I got her 2 years after I graduated college and she’s been by my side ever since. Having to say goodbye to her was a real kick in the gut, especially since I didn’t see it coming. When I lost my previous cat, Nibbler, and dog Otto, I knew there was a good chance it was coming prior to the worst news. With Cookie, it was sudden. I took her in for what I thought was digestive system issues, but quickly found out a tumor had reduced her lung capacity to 25% of what it should be. I was obviously devastated and after talking it over with my wife and the vet, we made the tough decision to say goodbye. I miss her.
Unfortunately, it left a bad taste in my mouth that obviously still stings and made the rest of the month feel kind of bleh.
Work
Work has been going well. I was finally able to finish up the one feature on one project that had been in development since August or so. It was nice to finish that up and get it out the door.
My next big project is just about to be ready for development and I’m excited to get started on it. I’m not sure what I can really say without getting in trouble, but it’s a fairly large project and should be a real challenge which I’m looking forward to.
Side Projects
I wrote about limiting what I work on as a side project. I haven’t made up my mind exactly which project I’m going to tackle, but I’ve been delving into the new .NET 8 Blazor web app and am seeing what’s changed since I last worked with it. The separate Blazor WASM vs Blazor Server has morphed into a hybrid model that I’m still wrapping my head around.
Monthly Round-Up
🏃🏼♂️ Fitness
- Running: Didn’t run too much, but managed a little over 10 miles.
- Walking: Ended up walking a measly 3 miles.
- Biking: Nope.
- Lifting: Slowly getting back into my routine.
📚 Reading
- Finished The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan
- Finished The War That Made the Roman Empire by Barry Strauss
- Finished Grit by Angela Duckworth
- Finished Easy Money by Ben McKenzie
- Started Parallel Programming and Concurrency with C# 10 and .NET 6 by Alvin Ashcraft
✍🏻 Writing
- Reading Log
- Wrote About
- The movies I watched in 2023
- The TV I watched in 2023
- The books I read in 2023
- Adding notes to my site
- Learning about primary constructors in C# 12
- Figuring out my notes apps
- Remembering Cookie
- Learning how to style RSS feeds
- Reviewing the Moonlander keyboard
- Learning about the new CSS colors
- The Chevron Doctrine
- Limiting my side projects
- That broccoli & cauliflower are cabbages
- How apps and lock-in are problematic
- One month with Eleventy
- Banning books is bullshit
🎮 Gaming
- Finished Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores
- Started Mass Effect
📺 TV
- Finished Daria
- Finished Season 3 of The Mandalorian
- Continued The Pacific
- Started Sopranos
- Started Good Eats
- Started Death and Other Details
🎬 Movies