In a recent conversation with one of my teams, they shared that they often felt left out when changes were made. Their view was that we needed a culture shift to ensure their functional area was considered.
Culture matters. But it’s also big, fuzzy, and not something you “fix” overnight.
But, what we can do is zoom in on concrete examples and solve them one by one.
When I asked for a specific instance, they pointed to teams shipping breaking changes without respecting their area of the product. That’s a simple problem to solve with something like CODEOWNERS or a CI check.
Small wins add up.
We got a walker for Ember to help teach her how to walk, though we hadn’t got to using it yet since her therapy is focused on the standing frame and electrical stimulation primarily.
But, we took a few minutes this weekend and sat her in the walker to see how she did.
Weekends are to catch up on time with the kids. Like this moment where Ember rolled around in her clothes while I hung up mine and Sara’s clothes.
One of my son’s friends messaged me asking how to get started with coding.
My answer was to start with AI. Use ChatGPT or Claude, probably the paid versions, and have it help you code something that you actually care about.
That’s how I learned to code with WordPress. People wanted features that WordPress didn’t have out of the box. I figured out the code to make it work. That cycle of problem then solution kept me moving forward.
AI makes this easier if you use it right. If you just ask for a finished game, you probably won’t learn anything. If you ask the model to explain what it built, piece by piece, then you start learning.
To provide a concrete example to my son’s friend, I asked ChatGPT to build a Frogger style game in JavaScript. One prompt and I had a working game in the browser.
Frogger Game Preview
Starting from something that is working then provides many threads that can be pulled on:
Explain why all of this works.
Break down the code section by section.
What code defines the cars, frog, and logs?
How can we use actual images?
How can we change the speed of the pieces?
How can we insert in a concept of leveling where the difficulty starts out as easy and gets much more difficult?
Each of these threads, or questions, is small enough that you can ask AI to walk you through it. Each time you walk through one of these questions, you’ll gain a bit more knowledge.
You can even push further and ask it to build you a whole learning plan around extending Frogger. The game is not the point. The point is pulling on those threads until the pieces start to click.
This past week, I was in York, England to see the folks from team Shilling. It was a good meetup, with a good mixture of fun and work activities.
The biggest takeaway from the meetup was seeing faces light up with joy as Claude Code worked magic. The most fun thing was playing Dungeons and Dragons, which I hear now makes me an official Shill.
I got this photo of Ember while we were at Bahama Bucks to get a weekend snow cone.
We were in Houston last week for some medical research appointments for Ember. What this really meant is that we spent a few hours at the hospital and then a lot of hours in the hotel room.
While waiting around in the hotel room, I decided to deploy some code to WordPress.com. As I was walking through the steps, I had Ember type in shift + y to handle the final deploy to 100s of Millions of sites. 😄
Yesterday morning, Ember and I snuck out for a burrito at El Norteno. Ember had pancakes with syrup for the first time. 😄
While I was doing a bit of work this weekend, Sara decided that Ember needed to come spend some time with Dad in the office. ❤
This past week, I was in Lisbon with the Gamma team. It was a great week, filled with discussion about PCI compliance, demos, upcoming work, great food, and a bit of fun.
Below are some photos from the meetup.
As I was swapping out laundry yesterday, I sat Ember down in the half-full laundry basket. She liked it for maybe 10 seconds and then wanted to be picked up.
I snuck away for dinner on Tuesday night with Sara and Ember.
Sara went to DFW today, so I got to spend much of the day with Ember. Starting with giving her breakfast. ❤
Earlier this week, I spent a few days in Miami with the Quark team. We did quite a bit of work, but still found some time to head to walk along Muscle Beach and play a game of Pokemon.
We’ve used automatic waterers at home, for our pets, for a while. They refill themselves, which is sweet.
They also leak. Constantly. The seals wear out. The fittings are garbage. I’ve bought replacement parts, bowls, adapters. Today, after another new bowl leaked straight out of the box, I gave up.
I bought one of those upside-down jug waterers. Put it by the hose. I’ll just fill it every few days.
Automation’s great until it becomes your newest maintenance burden.
Same with teams. Permissions. Infrastructure. CI. If your “easy” system isn’t reliable, it’s just waiting to leak.
Earlier this week, I flew to Los Angeles to spend a couple of days with one of my teams, Chronos.
I grabbed this impromptu photo in our working space.
We took this photo at dinner.
And then grabbed this wonderfully imperfect set right before I ran out the door, with my phone balanced on a power adapter and the shutter triggered from my Apple Watch.😂
Sara sent me this photo of Ember from their lunch today.
This past Wednesday, I went to the Destined Rivals prerelease at Collector’s Den and won 2 out of 3 matches. 😄
