In the beginning of the last month of 2017, I’m writing a short summary of November to check and update about what’s going on in my life.
It didn’t feel long, but it’s been already a year since we’ve moved to the UK. It was good 12 months although too much focused still on getting everything together, working hard and adjusting to the new environment. It doesn’t feel much different though. I’m happy and thankful for being where I am. Perhaps I’ll write about this in detail some day.
Looking for work balance
Last month I wrote about some dissatisfaction going around the projects I’m involved in. I now think that the things are going to change. We’ve quite successfully passed Black Friday, which is the most important day of the year for the e-commerce company. We can now move forward.
Couple recent meetings with my & other teams suggest that finally, we will be able to move in the direction of building modern frontend with React and NodeJS. Of course, there are still lots of challenges ahead but see big opportunities here. Maybe our team will finally gain some velocity!
Building side projects
I had some free time in the evenings so I’ve also started to play with couple ideas I have in mind and decided to work on 2 projects. First, a site with tech conferences listing and updates and second - a SASS app for operating a small business (focused on specific niche). I’ve kicked both projects with Rails 5.1 and I guess I’ll update them to 5.2 soon. I was considering Node but the amount of work necessary for scaffolding initial look and feel is simply too much.
I’ve got good progress on the conference site, unfortunately, the Pareto principle kicked in, meaning that remaining 20% of features needed for my idea of MVP is taking 80% of the time! But my goal is to finish and launch it until end of this year. That means less than 1 month left!
Training
My training hit the bottom again, with only 3 runs (total 14km) and 5 gym sessions. I think that I didn’t settle yet with the transition to winter time & colder weather. When I finish work it’s already dark and with the local park is closed during the night hours I have to run further from home. It’s not bad, it just requires more willpower that I’m currently struggling to achieve.
Ingolstadt run
During my business trip to Germany, I was staying 2 days in Ingolstadt, small city, about 100km from Munich. Of course, I went for a short run while staying there.
It is almost a tradition for me. Every time I do business travel I’m packing a pair of running shoes, shorts, shirt & running jacket. And if there’s an occasion, I run. This time, it was a short loop, from my hotel, across the river, a little bit along the side and back.
New watch
My old Garmin watch broke about half year ago and since that, I was usually running only with Strava app on my iPhone. It’s not that bad, as the app works quite reliable and I’ve never had any problems with it. But anyway, I knew that I also needed something handier - a running watch.
So, During the Black Friday, this year I was eyeing at Garmin watches on Amazon and actually found a good price for the 735XT. I didn’t hesitate long and bought it.
I had to wait about a week to receive it but it finally arrived just a few days ago and I’ve already done couple workouts with it. So far I’m enjoying it. I’m hoping it will give me some boost in my training.
How about December
Upcoming month is already quite determined. I’ve got scheduled the trip to Poland to join my coworkers on a Xmas party; I’ll be working on finalizing my project ideas I’ve mentioned earlier; I’ll do some training. By the end of the year, I’ll also write yearly reflection piece for 2017. See you then!
