Currently reading: The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner 📚
Hard not to read this quote about AT&T’s testing of the Picturephone (an early telephone with video features) in the context of Zoom fatigue in 2020:
When the AT&T market researchers asked Picturephone users whether it was important to see the person they were speaking to during a conversation, a vast majority said it was either “very important” or “important.” To phone company executives, this must have been deeply encouraging. Apparently the market researchers never asked users their opinion about whether it was important, or even pleasurable, that the person they were speaking with could see them, too.
Some people baked bread, some people cut bangs, some people took up knitting. Maybe my pandemic coping hobby can be “needlessly replacing every tool in my productivity tool chain.”
If you think installing tracking software to spy on your reports would make you more comfortable with extended remote work, you have failed as a manager.
Now that I’ve had a chance to rewatch The Rise of Skywalker a couple times, I feel comfortable ranking the films. Posting it here for posterity:
- The Empire Strikes Back
- Rogue One
- The Force Awakens
- Return Of The Jedi
- A New Hope
- Solo
- The Rise Of Skywalker
- The Last Jedi
- Attack Of The Clones
- Revenge Of The Sith
- The Phantom Menace
Thank you for your time.
I’ve consumed a lot of “how to lead remotely" content lately (for obvious reasons) and so much of it boils down to:
- acknowledging humanity
- meeting your reports where they are
- demonstrating empathy
- active listening
So, like… what were leaders doing before last week?
Finished reading: Horror Stories: A Memoir by Liz Phair 📚
If you were expecting a linear memoir Liz Phair, or “here’s what happened the night I wrote ‘Flower,’ you’re going to be a bit disappointed. Phair abandons the linear format that plagues many otherwise interesting memoirs and instead presents a series of stories that seek to answer the question “why are you like this?”
She’s always direct, never pulling punches, even when she’s shining a light on her own behavior. She never apologizes, but rather presents her truth and leaves interpretation up to the reader.
Being a huge fan of her discography isn’t required to enjoy this book; in fact, she devotes vanishingly few pages to it. Most of the musical discussion that is present in the book focuses on the aftermath of her 2003 self-titled record, and how exhausting and uncomfortable her brush with pop stardom felt for her. It never comes off as pity-seeking, but rather “these were the consequences of choices I made.”
Bought myself a belated Christmas gift: the 3LP reissue of Wolf Parade’s “Apologies to the Queen Mary.” Sub Pop knocked it out of the park on this package: the remastered album on 2 LPs, a third that collects the EPs that led up to the record’s release, plus a heartfelt essay from Sean Michaels (of Said The Gramophone fame).
At a time when every new indie band either seemed to be from Canada or have “Wolf” in their name, these guys stood out and created a record that aged better than any of the other Blog Rock records of the early 2000s (yes, that includes “Funeral”). Simultaneously urgent and timeless, it’s a minor classic.
If sea levels increase a little under 2 feet by 2100, Delaware (the nation’s lowest-lying state) will lose roughly 8% of its land area, including nearly all of the state’s protected wetlands.
Ten Years in 17 Bullet Points
- got laid off
- did the self-employment thing
- bought a house
- learned to code
- had another kid
- took a job
- ran a 5-miler
- took another job
- did a featured speaking thing
- got promoted to management
- made a blog
- Saquon Barkley cooked TJ Watt on a wheel route in the Big Ten Championship Game
- did another featured speaking thing
- became a Swim Dad
- filled my rings for 250 consecutive days
- started therapy
- turned 40
I never bothered to make a Best of 2019 music list, which is something I’ve done since my teenaged years, but I did make a “best beers I had for the first time in 2019” list, so there’s that.
Twenty Nineteen
2019 was a rough year. I doubt I’m the only one who feels this way, for reasons personal, professional and/or political. In the intrest of focusing on the positive and shining a light towards more of what I want in 2020, here are two achievements that defined my 2019:
My first hires as a manager
Thanks to the largest single project we’ve ever tackled, we were able to add two full-time members to the Arcweb design team in 2019. These were my first two hires as a manager.
Hiring forced me to be thoughtful about what the roles actually required, rather than just defaulting to a number of years of experience or a list of design tools as prerequisites. It also gave me a chance to think about the existing team as an entity, and consider what it needed to thrive and grow.
It was of utmost importance to me to run a fair, inclusive hiring process. This meant not stopping once I had found a candidate who could do the job in question, as counter-intuitive as that sounds.
I was especially focused on not putting too much burden on the candidates with countless rounds of all-day interviews and design tests and such. To facilitate this, I needed to learn to trust my hiring team and take their counsel.
I am exceptionally proud of the hiring process as a whole in both cases, and I look forward to what Arcweb’s newly-augmented design team can accomplish in 2020.
“Hiring” a therapist
I’ve been seeing a therapist since early last year. For reasons that are not that interesting or relevant, I stopped seeing her early this year. To find a new therapist, I didn’t just pick a name out of an online listing and cross my fingers. Rather, I ran an interview process.
I made a list of candidates using Psychology Today’s wonderful website. I made some exploratory phone calls and, armed with what I had learned from my first therapy experience, I scheduled three in-person sessions. I treated these sessions as interviews (I was transparent about my process with each candidate), and used them to determine whether they were right for me and my specific therapeutic goals.
This was… scary as hell. It’s hard enough to open up once, but to three different people, not knowing whether you’ll continue the relationship? But the results were worth it. Committing to a process led me to finding the perfect therapist for me, rather than satisficed with an earlier candidate who was “good enough.”
NB: I am very lucky and privileged to be able to access mental health care. Many are not. If you believe therapy is out of reach for you, take a look at this calculator. The help you need may be more in reach than you think.
After decades of advancements in semantic markup and accessibility, Instagram decided that we should consume all content as flat, inaccessible images via Stories and we just… went along with it.
The very structure of American life has changed to make the basics of stability difficult to attain, down to something as simple as eating with your partner or child…The problem of dinner is far larger than what you’re going to eat.
🔗 Dinner in America: Who Has the Time to Cook? - The Atlantic
Haven’t watched anything yet, but my first impression of Disney+ is that every single other streaming platform needs to copy how D+ handles login on Apple TV.
This new Sturgill Simpson record is the sound of an artist just straight-up Going For It on every single song. It has no chill whatsoever, and I mean that in the best possible way. I think I love it.