Status Report: The busiest time of the year

Advent is in full swing, and it's the busiest time of the year!

My wife and I celebrated our 8th anniversary this past week! There has been a lot going on with that, Thanksgiving, my wife's first craft market, my daughter's dance show, Christmas shopping, and the start of Advent of Code.

What went well?

I was able to post my first tutorial based on the work I did to get this site and roundaboutbuddies.com up and running. The Roundabout Buddies site was ready for my wife's first craft market, and it works as intended!

Progress was also made on several financial goals like rolling over my 401K, an HSA Transfer, and figuring out our budget for the coming year.

I completed the first two Advent of Code problems in python and have a repo for all my AoC solutions on GitHub.

What did I struggle with?

I had some struggles getting my first tutorial up. Technical tutorials are fairly time-consuming to write, but I am happy with the results and hopefully, someone will find its contents useful.

I also had some issues getting started with Advent of Code. First, I didn't have Python 3.11 installed on my computer and I hit a couple of snags getting pyenv installed correctly on ubuntu 22 LTS. Second, I had wanted to explore creating visualizations for AoC, but I didn't find a tool that would let me make something that looks nice without a lot of effort. I started watching a tutorial on D3 and probably let it distract me from other stuff too much.

My email list is kinda working, but the field errors when you use it to sign up... I am not super happy with the email providers I have looked into. A lot of people do this so it seems like it should be easier? I am trying Mailchimp but I still want to look into ConvertKit. I also don't understand why AWS SES requires approval to use.

Things I used and discovered

  • The Hero's Journal - I have been using this journal my wife gave me for my journey in starting a business. It's a bit expensive, but it's pretty fun and has kept me engaged.
  • The Might-Do List - I am trying to implement a might-do list with my hero's journal. I read about this in the Make Time book and it's a nice way of dealing with what is otherwise an endless to-do list.
  • Chart.js - I am thinking of using this library for my status updates. I was also hoping it would work for Advent of Code visualizations, but I don't think it will.
  • D3 - This is a cool and flexible visualizations library, but it also looks like it will take a while to learn
  • Data Visualization with D3 – Full Course for Beginners [2022] - This is a very detailed Data visualization course I found on SVG and D3.
  • Mailchimp - A marketing automation platform and email marketing service.
  • ConvertKit - Another email marketing service.

How am I feeling?

Things have felt a little overwhelming with all the stuff going on in the last two weeks. I still have been able to accomplish some things this week, but I need to be careful about what I am prioritizing and not letting myself get carried away with things that aren't priorities. Especially as the might-do list continues to grow, and projects like painting the bathroom need to be prioritized. I will try using a calendar with my might-do list next week and see how that goes.