We had a nice family weekend trip. The purpose was to escape a little from our normal routine and to explore the rural land not far away from our hometown.

The first trip since I can remember being with my wife where I did not bring more technical gadgets than my phone and kindle. Usually, I take my notebook with me, on every trip. Newly, also the steam deck and iPad, just in case. Just to avoid possible boredom. (Writing this down and reading it again sounds as if I'm addicted to my gadgets. BuT i cAn stOp, iF i WaNT!)

But don't have these gadgets with me, it was refreshing just having the phone with me. I carry the notebook just in case if I'm bored and can use this time to be productive. Which is somehow good but sounds like an excuse. Without it, I was able to focus on other things. I was able to go through a lot of notes in my notion. Clean up many of my to-do lists. (Yes, there are multiples) And then there were my +99 open tabs in Firefox. I was capable of transforming 50% of them into new to-dos. The rest were mostly articles I want to read some time. I did it with a bunch of them.

At the beginning of the year, I've created 6 to-do lists in the Reminders App. 4 for each quarter. 1 for the current week and 1 for the backlog. Together with my wife, we try to go through the open to-dos and sort them every Sunday. What needs to be done in the ongoing quarter? Which tasks of this quarter can be done in the next week? These are questions we tackle on a Sunday after breakfast. (Or we try it) And it works. We both have a better overview of the things that need to be done. Before, everyone had their one agenda and these agendas collided very often. On this weekend, we thought about this approach and edited many tasks. And we were happy with the result. I'm excited about the next quarter. :)

That's it. 👋

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15 of #100DaysToOffload
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Disclaimer: The Title was generated by GPT-4o mini in Raycast because I had no Idea what to put in there.

So, I arrived at the Hotel and I had around 5.5 hours on a train. A lot of time to do something and make progress. What I'm ended up doing was watching Severance and reading through some articles I had put on my to-read list.

Three reasons why I did not put out my notebook or steam deck:

1. The person who was sitting next to me made me uncomfortable, I didn't want him to watch me, while I code or played on my deck.
2. I wanted to continue to watch Severance because it is so captivating.
3. My initial plan was to watch a Severance episode and then start coding, but I was so demotivated, I just wanted to watch. :D So, I think, I needed the break. Because I was coding a lot in the last week.

This Hotel room is nice. Now I know why it was so expensive. It has this enjoyable little corner with an armchair and ottoman. Here I can sit with the notebook on my lap and the iPad next to me, to watch some Videos. Something I NEED in my home office. Never thought I would need this, but this is now a must-have. 😎

That's it for today. Tomorrow I will spend nearly the whole day at my client. I hope that we as a team will go out for a soda or bear. 🤞

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12 of #100DaysToOffload
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Turns out, February was not going as I planned it should go. There was hope to do more progress on #TheMonthProject. There was progress but only little. So in some kind I see it as failed, but there were other parts that needed more attention. First, more time with the Kids. Second, our basement made progress, and we decided to outsource some work so that I have more time for other stuff. We also had someone who is helping in the garden, to prepare it for spring, which gave another chunk of time I could spend elsewhere.

So what happened? As I've already written, I got a call from an old project which required help, and I started to jump in last week. My day is mostly packed with the work for my clients, the work in the basement and spending the rest time with the family. And when there is some spare time, I'll have a break and watch a Series or play a small game. For example, Silo on TV+ or A game about digging a hole on my steamdeck.

But I've learned something from doing #TheMonthProject. I will continue to write on my progress of the side-projects. This made fun, despite it is more effort. :)

On the weekend, I've tested Cursor on a small side-project and it was interesting. With 2 prompts, I was able to create a new feature in minutes, which would have taken maybe some hours. The result was working, but far from perfect. Plenty of errors and warnings. Still, the app was working as it should. Then I've started to ask if Cursor can optimize the code. It produced a lot of new code, rewrote types which were already imported, and in general made a lot of chaos. :D In conclusion, it made fun to explore what is possible, but for now, I don't see me using it on a professional basis. But I will continue using Cursor on this little project. In the end, I think it is only a matter of how one is writing the prompts. It's like a child, where you have to be as wordy as possible and set clear boundaries.

So, the February was busy without progress. But only on my side-projects. I made progress on my client projects. I made progress on my fitness level by working out continuously (It's nice to have a better form on the sets each week). I made progress by completing a book and started a new one. I made progress by completing 3 audiobooks. I made progress in our basement.

It looks like the February wasn't that bad regarding progress. :D

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09 of #100DaysToOffload
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I think I found some words to describe my music taste.

It needs to make fun, be authentic and honest. (And needs to have guitars and drums in it, some harsh vocals are also a must-have and a nice breakdown hurts nobody). Simple, isn't it? 😅

The metal genre is what I call home. But I'm flexible in that. For years, I was dead against other music genres or rejected everything with clean vocals or crossover elements. (for example, metal with electronic sound pieces in it) But I realized that I'm not happy with this in the long run. And I see it now with my oldest. He is also interested in this kind of music but needs some happy parts in it. So I've decided to be more open about the music. Sure, I have some restrictions I've written in the previous paragraph.

There are some music genres I still don't connect with. For example, Pop, Rap or RNB music. And also a massive turn-off is, when a Band finds its formula on how to write their music. When the songs are so obviously written for the masses that they have no soul in it. Just repeated “hits” from the former records to please the masses. I can understand why one is doing this, and I don't blame them. It seems to work for most of the bands, but in my case, they've lost me and don't play them anymore. I have no problem if they change their sound by experimenting, as long as you feel it in their songs, that they have put in their heart and soul.

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08 of #100DaysToOffload
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Sadly, one week without progress on #TheMonthProject. The weather was dry and cold, so I spent a lot of time with my oldest in the woods. Goofing around, throwing stones into the frozen pond, collecting sticks for a bonfire we plan to do, or just talking and playing with our invented superpowers. I needed this time. And today it also snowed. So I fetched both kids earlier from the Kindergarten so that we can sled from our small hill in the woods and build a snowman afterward.

Besides spending some quality time, I've had a lot to do in one of my projects. Where most of the work is now done for the big release. Now I can slow down a bit here and can concentrate on other things. Funny coincidence, I've got a call from one of my old projects, that they require help. Because I have so much time to spare, I said yes. (This was a joke, I never have time to spare.) 😎 There is always something to do, but I like to help and to build a better reputation.

After this call, we've decided that I need to outsource some work in our garden. Mostly removing old plants and roots, dinging a pit for our pool in summer and some other small stuff, which takes a lot of time. I like this work because you don't have to think a lot here. Just do the work. Some kind of meditation. But I know that I don't have this time until the springs comes. So I have to admit that we need help here. Besides my projects, we also have the basement, which needs to get done. My wife decided that it should be done until her birthday in April. The help with the garden is now a good compromise. And I'm happy with this solution. 😀

That's it for today. Just some random things that came to my mind about what's going on in my life right now.

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06 of #100DaysToOffload
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I've completely missed season 3. I thought it will air in spring 2025. But now I'm happy that it is already there, and I can watch the whole season without waiting.

The last 2 seasons were on point, and I'm really hyped for this one.

Sadly, I planned to work on my side-project this evening, which I have to postpone now. Because watching Bleach is more important. 🫠

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03 of #100DaysToOffload
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Looks like I'm done with the challenge. 🥳 I've counted all the posts, just to be sure that I have not forgotten something. The current count is 100 because I did one post which is not included in the challenge. Which is the page about #TheMonthProject.

It was a nice experience and definitely helped to get going with my blog. Which I thought I will abandon after 2–3 months. So I'm happy that I'm still writing after 1 year.

I never thought I could write 2 posts per week. Then the pressure increased to write 1 post per Day. Which I handled also quite well. After I got ill, the pressure increased one more time and I needed to write 2 posts each day. Which was also doable, but nothing I would want to do over a longer period. I wrote each a day a freestyle post, where I just started to write down what's in my head and the other post was some kind of planned, with more structure and images. I liked how naturally it felt and worked out. But, as I said, nothing I want to do regularly.

What I also learned is, that I liked to write but with the pressure in the end, there is not much room for improvement. Maybe a focus on less post would be better. So that I can write a post and review it multiple times before publishing it. But on the other hand, writing and publishing the post without a good review helped to get the post out in the wild. So, I've learned something but don't know what to do with it. 🫠

One of my best posts was my first one about Paperless-ngx. It still gets views. Another post got posted on Hackernews (not by me). Which was a big surprise and got me plenty of views in one day. These 2 posts are my best and leading by a wide margin.

Furthermore, I'm planning to take the challenge again and start it on February 1. Which will give me a break and free my head a bit. This time I want to focus more on technical post's. Because that's the reason I started this blog. I also played a bit with the write.as API, and maybe I can do some statistics how many technical post's I wrote already on this blog and on my first challenge. The 1. of February is also simpler to remember than the 21. of January. It should start together with my #TheMonthProject which will help me to make a productive month.

It's insane that I really did it. I'm so happy right now. 😃

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100 of #100DaysToOffload
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I like mornings and days like these. A little bit of fog and everything is coated in frost. This and when it had snowed is where I had my best morning runs. Sadly, because of my feed, I'm unable to run. I hope someday I will get there again.

Yesterday I archived some good work in our basement. I got a new saw blade, and it had cut through butter with a warm knife. :) With the new saw blade, I was able to cut the 2,5m long boards into pieces. Now I need to sand and paint them. And we are some steps closer to the finish line. 🏁

And there is one more concert post. I wrote about the show with The Hirsch Effekt and Better Lovers. One of the best shows in 2024.

The illness is still in my body. Or my body is still recovering from it. I need plenty of breaks during the day. Yesterday, I instantly fell asleep while lying on the couch and watching Bluey with my son.

Have a nice Sunday. 👋

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97 of #100DaysToOffload
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