Managing a Starship

Currently playing Fallout: Sonora, a mod for Fallout 2. There is an English translation of it now. It is really good.

It's also funny to wander about because I am from Arizona and Sonora's Phoenix is filled with cultists and Flagstaff is a penal colony.

If you want to know what I am like, my Substack (in bio) is a good start. I've been managing folks for a long time and working in software development for 12 years.

If the times don't work, give me a holler. I'm still dialing in what is a good amount of time for this. We can figure something out!

Hi!

Would you like someone to talk to about being a manager? Or to ask questions about how interview effectively? Or about careers in software development? Or how to talk to a manager?

I'm opening office hours! Ask me anything.
calendly.com/managingasta...

Exposition needs work though. Waste of time to have her explain the place.

Watching Willy's Wonderland again.

Such a dumb, fun movie.

I should probably mention what this is.

I'm making a completely offline period tracking app (that can track other stuff too) and it is named after my cat. The icon is a silhouette of the namesake cat.

Image of the Android notification bar with a cat head shaped notification icon.

Look how cute my notification icon is!

Also, Android, please, make the code for setting up notifications better. Between how permissions are verified and handled, and the lack of good documentation on it, it can use some help.

Turns out you can summon me by saying you use LeetCode tests in your interviews.

I will come out of the shadows and admonish your company for not investing in actual interviewing practices.

I bought lab grade deionized water once. ONCE. I wanted to use it to clean my screens.

Now I get ads for literal drums of isopropyl alcohol.

It's like meme, meme, meme, wanna buy 55 gallons of isopropyl?, meme, meme.

Tonight's refactor is brought to you by Gamer Supps flavor Copium!

Working alone on this stuff sure makes the first pass really bad. At least we aren't passing view models around everywhere now.

I forgot how terrible it is setting up notifications in Android...

a cartoon character with the words it 's all coming together on the bottom ALT: a cartoon character with the words it 's all coming together on the bottom

Excellent! All those years of management haven't made me incapable of building apps.

I can now track days and have automatic UI updates.

Now if I can get the notification to remind folks to track the cycle, I have something ready for an alpha on Android.

If you have someone writing the text for your UX, please thank them or thank yourself if you are having to be the everything for your product.

I'm trying to think of what to call a CTA for four states on a button and desperately missing my friends in product design who know how to make this clear.

I still need to build out the iOS UI as many of my friends are on that platform, but at some point it will have an alpha.

It's been an interesting experience. Between the malaise that is looking for work and the further frustration of how Jetpack Compose is set up (why do you apply padding more than once?), it's been nice to see something come together.

I've been working on a period tracking app (with the help of my period having friends, I don't have them...) that is meant to be offline for safety. It'll be open sourced as well so folks can audit it.

It's funny. I just was replying to another thread about how hard it is to deal with time and I was trying to find a specific article about it. Found one called "UTC is enough for everyone, right?" and in the beginning it mentions to never build a calendar... Which I happen to be doing.

Just watching my Gamer Supps package go from KY to WA (where I am) and then get sent to GA for some reason...

Now it is in CO. It is late and I want my stuff please. I drink the caffeine free one to keep me from drinking soda and I am all out. Soda is lookin' real good right now...

I am extremely envious of that bowl. That is an awesome bowl.

I gotta say, 100-150 line commits daily is better than even my highest expectations.

If your team isn't on daily commits, we should figure out how to get you there because this is _nice_.

From an IBM file decades ago. A good reminder.

This was the first thought I had as well. That job description is two, maybe three different jobs, all in one, for less than one of those positions cost.

Just means you need more Motörhead shirts and that is a lovely problem to have.

I even know how to code!

I mean... if folks just want someone knowledgeable to chat with and confidently make up answers sometimes, I can do that for $8000 a month if they want to.

Fun reminder that your managers should be working for you, not the other way around.

You work for the company. Your output is the reason the company can operate.

Your manager also works for the company. They don't have a job if you and your team don't exist.

Make them work for you.

A levity needed in that moment for sure. However, if that yak doesn't know the keywords for cascading deletes in SQLite, he needs to get out of my fields.

Working with SQL is always neat, but it is one of those things I do once every two years or so. Every time I try to remember how to do something it's like pulling a half formed stone tablet out that has some syntax, but is actually a joke about the time a yak entered my wheat fields.

I can definitely visualize the Doom Slayer listening to the Dead Kennedys and mowing down his victims in hell. Just a hop, skip, and a grind away from doing it on a board.

As long as the super shotgun is involved in the special, it'll be awesome.

One beeeeeg monitor > single monitor > multiple monitors

My main monitor is a TV that I break up into four quadrants. Fantastic.