What did you do this week (and weekend)?

My foot has been healing quite well (I noted a couple weeks ago that I broke it). I'm able to walk short distances without a boot or crutches, but I'm still going to be dependent on the boot and crutches for a few weeks yet when I go grocery shopping or whatever, but I've been doing much better (and regret a little bit spending $180 on a knee scooter that I've used twice and that I don't think I'll actually need again).

Besides that, I've been absolutely binging the olympics. I thankfully have a job that allows me to just have it up on my second monitor all day, so I've been consuming a ton of it during work and then watching events I missed after work. I've been loving judo, archery, canoe/kayak, badminton, rugby, cycling, and basketball, though I've been watching a little bit of everything.

Tomorrow, I'm having some much needed in-person social interaction after being stuck at home, I'm playing Twilight Imperium with my sister and some of her friends that I haven't met yet, so it will be a good time!

I will say that I'm getting pretty antsy watching the olympics and not being able to do any sport myself right now. Before I got injured, I was playing tennis once a week, disc golf twice a week, and going for at least a 20 minute walk most days and now I just can't do anything for another 4-6 weeks probably. I am considering once I'm healed signing up for a martial arts discipline. I did karate when I was younger and as a young adult, I did a little fencing as well as stage combat and some HEMA (primarily saber legion), but it's been about 4 years since I've done any (stopped at the start of the pandemic) and I'm really missing it. There are taekwando, jujitsu, karate, and judo dojo's near me and some offer free first lessons, so I'm considering picking up a martial art to get me out of the house each week and get me back in shape while giving me something to achieve.

I purchased my Framework 16! It cost my entire paycheck because I didn't account for my 401k contribution, but I'm not hurting at all. It was easy to set up the DIY edition, which was great. I put Aurora on it and was up and running. I wanted to stress test the graphics so I put Starfield on it, and it worked perfectly well through my Lenovo dock that I use for work. My only complaint is Linux Bluetooth sucks, like I can't easily reconnect my laptop. I wanted to set up RDP or VNC, but Aurora being Plasma 6 and Wayland suffers from these shortcomings as well. But as basically my dream laptop (modular, serviceable, powerful), it meets everything I want.

At work, we launched a system that I've been working on for 3yrs. New CRM, that merged two disparate CRMs that we used. Well, I say launched this week, but more like we said to turn it on after the weekend, first thing Monday. But still. It's been a long time coming. It's not perfect, there are still issues to resolve, but at least the data merging and migration seemed to have gone OK. The team that has been helping me on this has been great; they really stepped up to get this done. First time I've led a project of this size, so I made a lot of mistakes. If I'm being honest, I never want to do this again, haha. I am not a PM, but I'm glad that I at least tried.

In my personal life, finally got my new apartment locked down...maybe? Idk, I've signed a lease last night, but now they're telling me I need to show up tomorrow with a certified/cashier check in-hand, as the lease starts tomorrow, even though I told them I would've in the area for another two weeks. Otherwise they have may have to redo the lease, push my lease start back., which may trigger a higher, though also maybe lower, rent (they use RealPage and the rents literally fluctuate daily).

I started this process two weeks ago, intending to pay online, but now the method is unavailable to me. I was supposed to pay online by the 30th, even though they didn't get me a corrected lease until the 31st. The initial, wrong lease, was issued on the 25th, but then it took them 6 days to respond to me, even though I emailed/texted/called everyday trying to get a response, which put us at the 31st. Sorry, I'm not sending them money until a lease is in place. It's absurd to hand over a few thousand dollars in first month's rent and fees, without an agreement. But somehow that's my fault. I couldn't overnight a check in time, so Idk. At one point this morning, I was even looking at last minute plane tickets.

I wrote them a strongly worded email about this whole thing, documenting this whole adventure (luckily so much of my interactions with this company is by text and email, which is their choice). That if they want to continue this, they need to let me pay online, understand that the settlement of funds will obviously be after tomorrow, but leave my rent alone. I'm tired of being on their schedule, and I refuse to be penalized for their incompetence and delay.

I probably won't get an answer until Tuesday, given how they are. So we'll see. Think it's time to start talking to my backup plan apartment.

UPDATE: Finally someone from on-site called me. Not some random person #4 from halfway across the country, in the other direction, at their corporate office. And in 15min, the on-site manager and I came to an agreement. I officially start me lease a little later, my rent actually goes down a little (though I moved from 12mo to a 15mo lease), and I keep my one-time discount and concession. Amazing what a quick phone call can lead to, instead of the back and forth asynchronous communication, where one party (read: them) waits 6 days to answer, when we only have two weeks to get everything completed. I'm only a little salty from this whole thing.

We're trapped.

We're trapped in Minot, North Dakota. On the way home our RV sprang a little leak in the hydraulic pump and rather than take a chance at a breakdown in a tiny hamlet between here and home, we decided to take it into a shop here. But its an old RV and parts are rare, and the tech couldn't find what he needed before Friday closing, so we're stuck here for at least three more days.

Doesn't everyone want to spend half their vacation in Minot? lol

The good part is that this little city is growing on us. Its got a great dog park, the shopping seems to be decent (we're Canadians so Menards is like Disneyland), we've found some cool restaurants (like Kroll's Diner) and the people seem very friendly, down to earth folks. Today there is a Car and Tractor parade and show which should be fun and there's apparently a nice little lake region about an hour away so we'll probably head out there to give the dogs a run on the beach.

I can think of a lot worse places to be trapped.

I've had a pretty busy week at work. We're nearing the closed beta release date for our project and we're rushing to get all the major bugs ironed out. One of the feature's I'm working on was supposed to be code complete while I was away on vacation but the scope changed and now I'm rushing to get it finished. Just have some final touches to put on it.

My friends and I have also finally began finalizing the details of our trip to New York City. This trip has been a long time coming, the idea to visit NYC was proposed over 2 years ago. We've done other trips in the mean time but going to NYC seemed like the elusive trip. We'd booked hotels and flights months ago, just spent the last few days figuring out what wanted to do while we're there. Unfortunately for me, I am on-call during this trip. Normally I'd be able to swap my rotation with another backend engineer but due to a lack of backend engineers on my team at the moment, I'm stuck being on call for part of the trip. Oh well, still have a solid weekend to enjoy with friends.

Over the last few years, I've invested a decent bit into the Apple ecosystem for my personal tech and after using it for a few years now, I'm looking to move back to a mixed tech ecosystem. While the Apple ecosystem has been great, I miss some of the control I had over my devices and certain features like Airdrop have been unreliable and iCloud has been annoying to deal with. I've given my little brother my iPad, and I'm looking into selling my Apple Watch and maybe my Macbook Pro as well. I was thinking of taking my brother's old Thinkpad as I need a Windows PC to be able to mod my car's software and I kinda want to throw Linux on it to see what the Thinkpad+Linux experience is like. I was also thinking of purchasing a Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 to replace my iPad as I really like its OLED screen and a tablet is perfect for consuming media when traveling or when in bed.

I gave my turntable to a friend tonight. I just wasn't using it anymore and hers died. Its nice because we spend a lot of time at her place and now we'll sit around listening to records and stuff. This is the first time I've ever been without a turntable. Its kind of weird, but, like I said, I just wasn't using it.