Weeknotes 2025W38

I donated blood for the first time this week. When I had to get a lot of blood drawn for tests, it was not a fun experience and I thought it would go something like that. Instead, the people were very kind and it was really easy. And I got a free t-shirt out of the deal.

For our weekly game night session, instead of playing dungeons and dragons, we played Catan virtually. I forgot what a great game it is. We had a tough map with a near-constant rock shortage so the game lasted longer than normal but we had a blast. One last shot-in-the-dark development card saved me at the end.

I started a new work goal to have one coffee chat per week to 1) network and 2) take advantage of working around all these really smart engineers and scientists. This week was a previous manager from when I was an intern and she kindly turned it into an impromptu résumé review which I am incredibly grateful for. I got quite a few good tips and I’ll be working on implementing them this week.

For the weekend, we traveled back to Central Oregon for a watch party between University of Oregon and Oregon State University. I don’t care that much about football but it was a fantastic reset on the farm. It was so quiet, I haven’t slept that good in weeks.

Links

• You’re a Slow Thinker. Now what? by CasualPhysicsEnjoyer. I’m not sure if I would classify myself as a slow thinker but needing more “processing time” definitely resonated with me.
• Why Make a Website in 2025? by Jim Nielsen. Do it because you like to.
• A string of beads by Oliver Burkeman.

  What is within our power is to thread beads, one after the other, and gradually to develop the internal trust that we’ll be able to thread the beads that need adding in the future, too. (The opposite of anxiety, I’ve seen it said, isn’t calm, but trust in your capacity to handle what happens later on.) [emphasis mine]

• I’m Not a Robot by Neal Fun. Really fun captchas, I was giggling to myself the whole time.