Monthly Check In

Not a lot to report this month other than to acknowledge that I am on track with my health goals and things are trending in the right direction and the right slope.

More interesting is what this month is bringing. Teresa and I are heading to Huntington Beach, California, for the next month or so.

Teresa's mom is having back surgery, so we are relocating for a bit to help her during the recovery. She normally is the caretaker for Teresa's dad, who is in his mid 90s, so we'll be on point for that as well.

Fortunately, we had some advance notice, and were able to get vaccinated earlier than expected. It's a mixed bag. Totally happy that we don't have to worry about severe complications from COVID but a little apprehensive about traveling to a place that hasn't treated this thing as seriously as Portland has. All said, happy to be leaving the cold rainy weather behind for some warm sunny beaches. Dogs will be ecstatic.

It's probably time to start leaking that I am close to finishing another app. This one was born out of a classic situation: I was looking for an app and couldn't find one to meet my needs. So I am writing it. It's a utility that allows the user to time and pace a presentation or speech, with visual and verbal cues, and progressive time warnings.

After seeing the comparable results between the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for our first app, Can Dogs Eat It?, I've decided not to create an Android version. At least not without any market demand. Android may command 70% of the market, but they account for less than 2% of our sales.

This has given me the motivation to finally learn Swift and SwiftUI. The declarative nature is a natural progession from a ReactNative - Redux framework and has been generally easy to pick up. Using iOS design guidelines has also allowed me an attitude of "do more with less" - don't overthink design, do it the Apple way, and enjoy the results. And I am fairly pleased with how things look and feel, even at this stage of development.

Pending news on the work front, but that won't become official for a few days. My mid year review gave me time to reflect on what I really want to accomplish and contribute at this stage in my career. That coupled with the last year of personal work really gave me insight into what I want to pursue. Shared it with my manager and he has been a great ally in helping me prepare. More news to follow...

I am really liking this format of "status update". Low to no traffic. No audience to please except myself. Greater transparency to those who care. No involvement for those who don't.