Ramblings

Welcome to the fall/autumn edition of ramblings.

COVID-19

Surprise, surprise COVID is still raging across the world and we are heading into flu season. To say this continues to be a stressor is a massive understatement. At some level, as people have gotten used to this new world and have started doing gatherings more it has gotten harder for them to understand that we still have to hold ourselves apart to make sure at-risk family members stay safe.

On the upside, we are hopefully getting closer and closer to better treatments and vaccines.

Remote Life

Working from home is going great and it seems like any of the rough bit have been worked out long ago, at least at our company. Microsoft Teams keeps getting better and better which has been a big help. For example, I can’t tell you how much I love not having to reset my virtual background at the start of every video interaction.

While office-related items seem to work well for me remotely I struggle on the user group/conference/community side of things. I would much rather watch a video of the content that join live. For me being remote means there is very little value in being forced to watch the content live. If you run a conference or a user group please make your content available after the fact if it is possible. I do wonder if I’m the only one who is struggling with this or it others are feeling the same way. I want to learn, but the thought of spending n hours watching videos isn’t what I’m looking to do, but taking that same content and letting me watch it over days or weeks I am interested in.

Blogging

DbUp and Web Template Studio have recently been keeping the tech side of the blog going. At this point I have pretty much run through all the content I had planned so I will be looking for new topics. I still haven’t covered anything .NET 5 related which at the release candidate point with the final version coming in November. The table rebuilds stuff for Sqlite migrations in Entity Framework Core 5 look amazing, for example. I’m also kicking around doing a post on converting a library from the old school project to the new SDK style and targeting .NET Standard 2.0.

Dealing with Stress

If you follow the books section of the site you will notice that the number of fiction books has increased dramatically this year. One of the reasons is it helps me deal with the stress of this year with some level of escape where the non-fiction stuff tends to focus me on the stress more as I look for ways to apply the lessons from the books. The amount of video games I play has increased as well. I know these are short term solutions to the new world order and as I better adjust over time I plan to move back to a more healthy mix. On the move positive side of dealing with stress, I have done much better at consistently exercising.

Wrapping Up

I hope you enjoyed this edition of my ramblings! See you back with another edition in a few months.

Welcome to the summer edition of ramblings. I tend to do this type of post once a quarter so I have added a ramblings category to keep them better separated from my normal tech style posts.

COVID-19

COVID-19 is still raging across the world. Here in the United States, the case count seems to be growing at a faster and faster rate as the push for reopening continues. Keep in mind I’m writing this in mid-July so things may have changed drastically by the time this publishes. We have multiple at-risk family members and the longer this goes on the more the stress of builds up. I’m sure that is true for most people. All we can do is to continue to be as safe as we can and hope others are doing the same.

Working from home

Working from home continues to go well. I do miss the random interactions of the office and have a much more limited set of people I interact with on a daily basis mostly based on what project I’m working on. I think this has added to my feelings of isolation. I would say my interactions these days are 80% to 90% Microsoft Teams based with the remaining being Zoom. It is amazing to me how much Teams have changed since this pandemic started, especially the video features. I highly recommend giving Teams a shot if you haven’t before.

The lack of a commute is still the best part of working from home. I also tend to get more focus time than I do in the office. It seems people are more likely to schedule a meeting for something vs just popping in.

Blogging

Not a lot has changed on the blogging front since the Spring Ramblings post. Posts have continued to be focused around Azure DevOps with a little bit of GitHub Actions mixed in. I want to get back to more programming topics. .NET 5 is fast approaching and I need to dig in and see if I can find some topics there. I have also been kicking around giving Python a shot and if I do I’m sure I will end up with some post from that.

Wrapping Up

Here’s to hoping by the time I do another post like this will thing have improved. Thanks for reading!

We are well into one of the strangest springs, well really years, that I can remember. Read no further if you’re looking for anything technical. As the title says this post is going to be a bit of rambling from me as I come off the series of posts on Azure DevOps.

COVID-19

COVID-19, Coronavirus, SARS-Cov-2, The Rona, or whatever your favorite name for the virus is the cause of this year being so strange. The virus has been devastating. We have been lucky that we don’t know anyone who has died so far. I don’t think anyone in the world has escaped the effects. Even if you or your loved ones haven’t been sick or died I’m sure like us you know someone who has lost their job at a minimum. More this as affected life will be mixed in the rest of the post, but I thought it best to make it clear upfront that the virus is the root of what is to follow. I also wanted to drive home that I realize how much it has changed life for so many people even when the rest of the post may not convey that level of seriousness.

Working from home

I have been lucky that my company basically went fully remote in March so I have been working form home for around two months now. Getting the job part of working remotely has been good. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I had so much time to focus. It is crazy how much time gets consumed with random interactions when you are physically in the office. One of the downsides is I really miss the level of interaction I had with the teams I work with. A lot of my random interactions aren’t personal and deal with answering questions and providing different perspectives on problems and I really enjoy that part of my job. It isn’t that those interactions don’t still happen when really needed, but they do seem to be much more intentional.

If you are working from home make sure you are willing to invest in your setup. While I was effective when I first started working from home my setup wasn’t 100% on par with work. I ended up buying a 4k monitor and a couple of things to switch inputs between my work and home equipment and it has made a huge difference. My home setup is now much better than the one I have at work. Being able to exit work mode and be back in home mode in seconds has also been great for when I finish work and the family has some stuff to do on the computer.

Blogging, reading, podcasts, etc.

Blogging in this new world hasn’t been easy for me. Thankfully I had a good set of content planned out with the Azure DevOps posts. Part of the reason for this post is I’m not sure what topics I am going to move to next. If anyone has any requests let me know!

I have slowed down a ton on reading and listening to podcasts since I’m no longer commuting. I have found a good way to fit in the same level of content when I’m not driving 1.25+ hours a day. While I don’t miss driving or the traffic it was a useful time to learn and a good transition period to and from work mode.

On the positive side not having a commute means that finding time to exercise has been easier, not that having time helps with the motivation to do so. It also means more time with the family which is also great, most days.

Wrapping Up

Hopefully, you enjoyed my spring rabblings. I try and keep this type of post to a minimum and stay focused on technical topics, but at times I need a break and this help. While I don’t say it much I really appreachte you all taking the time to read my blog.