August 2021 Review

My time in Montana is coming to an end—I’ll be spending the next few days camping in Glacier National Park, then heading back down to Atlanta. This past summer really was something special—Livingston and the whole state just have great vibes.

Goal Tracking

• 🟢 Get 1% faster. Not much to say here—I hit this goal and it’s the offseason! Since preseason is coming up again, I’ll probably change this goal next month.
• 🔴 50% less discretionary spending. I spent just 1.8% less this month than my 2020 average. In retrospect, expecting to hit this goal while in Montana was probably foolish—I’ve been way more lax about eating out and paying for experiences than normal.
• 🔴 One hour of solitary free time a day. Still not tracking this—clearly I’m not prioritizing this goal. A good lesson for next time.
• 🟡 Twice-weekly live conversations with friends. Managed this all but one week this month.

Track & Fitness

• I’m fully recovered from my hamstring tear! I even managed to get back on the track for some acceleration work.
• I feel really bouncy—I don’t have any numbers, but I’m almost hitting my head against the ten-foot gym ceiling on double-leg veritcal jumps!
• August was a light month for me; I’ll be starting preseason training next month when I’m back in Atlanta.

Projects

• I built a MacOS version of JOTA, with automatic syncing with the iOS version. I’m hoping to release it to the App Store next month, but in the meantime, you can build it from source.

Writing

• 2021 Track Season Retrospective
• Interview More
• A Taxonomy of Software Engineering Taxonomies
• Legibility in Software Engineering

Reading

• The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
• Gold Rush by Michael Johnson
• Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Links & Quotes

Software Engineering & Tech

• I could do that in a weekend!
• The Classpath is a Lie
• API Tokens: A Tedious Survey
• A future for SQL on the web
• How Developers Stop Learning: Rise of the Expert Beginner
• Reflections on 10,000 Hours of Programming

Personal Growth

• How to be Strategic
• Decision Ops: Effective engineering management
• The Case for Optimism
• Your attitude determines your success
• On Digital Minimalism
• The local minima of suckiness

Track, Health, & Fitness

• Australian National Team 400m training guide
• Getting Over Gold: Athletes and Mental Health

World

• Biden’s Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy

• The American diversity meat grinder

• What to Expect After the Eviction Moratorium

• My Ordinary Life: Improvements Since the 1990s

• On blankfaces

• Almost-Billionaires

• This Can’t Go On