Friday, August 23 2019

Dear Journal,

Good morning everyone! And happy Friday to you all. I think it's safe to say that we made it to the end of the week. I love writing blog posts on Friday. Not only does Friday put me in a good mood, but having a whole work week to look back on, there's plenty of things to write about.

Yesterday was a pretty light day of work. In the morning, I helped a friend with their python script, then finished putting my paper together. While combing my essay for errors, one of the interns asked why I put two spaces after each period. I was pretty tickled by that, because it comes up every now and then. The Internet will tell you that double spacing after periods is a relic from typing on a typewriter, and it exists in the modern world thanks to old people. But I meet enough young people that also practice ye olde double tap - enough to question that theory. Maybe you don't have to be old to put two spaces after a period. I acknowledge that it's unnecessary, but I challenge any single spaced heathen out there to try it on a really clicky keyboard, then tell me it's unnecessary.

After getting my essay out, I decided to snoop around and do some work reading. I have been working with the interns all summer, and I was starting to feel as if I was in my own bubble. I spent a good hour pulling on threads, reading meeting notes and announcements. It can be fun starting with a public announcement, then following the bread crumbs all the way back to the project kickoff or first proposal.

After work, Rodney, Marissa, and I made our way to the suit store so I could get measurements taken. As the attendant was measuring me, Rodney yelled out "GOOD JOB DADA" each time my arms went up or down. I guess it's nice to get so much positive affirmation from my son for doing so little, even if it means everyone else in the store snickering.

We ate dinner at Portillo's. As we ate, Marissa and I discussed their barbecue sauce. If you haven't been initiated, Portillo's makes their own barbecue sauce and it's pretty delicious - but as we discussed yesterday it must be the sugar. I feel like an old fashion sauce is really tangy and pickly, but Portillo's sweetens the heck out of it. If you close your eyes and focus, you can almost imagine it being made like a BBQ flavored cake frosting.

After dinner, we stopped by the Jenny Street grocery store. We're having the interns over to make pizza, so we wanted to get the good ingredients. Jenny Street has a great cheese selection. We picked up some mozzarella, pecorino, parmesan reggiano, and though they didn't have any provolone, they had something called provolono that looked and felt like provolone, so I took a gamble.

After putting Rodney to bed, I caught up on emails and other random tasks, watched some YouTube, and played a few games of chess. To my disappointment, I discovered the computer has been set to "easy" all along. Last night, it got check mate in only five moves. You really need to be careful, even while playing defensively. If you don't move enough pieces, you can get sniped by a bishop and fall victim to a very impressive trap.

Today will be a lot of meetings, but for the most part I'm just sitting back as an observer. We're meeting with the interns to get feedback from them so we can improve the intern program. I'm also hosting a big presentation to the rest of Madison engineering, giving the interns a chance to show off what they did this summer. I saw most of the slides yesterday, I think it will be a good show.

Hope you all have a wonderful Friday today. Play some chess - even if you're terrible at it. It's still fun to see how many different ways you can lose.