Upgraded rooms, Balinese New Year, bougie dinners...

Yes, I know it's deep into April - but life's been bussssy and honestly not too many updates from March as I settled back down into Bali life.

Here's what's been going on...

• Settled into the nocturnal work schedule 🌚

• Enjoyed a nice Balinese New Year 🎉

• Upgraded the digs 🛖

CURRENTLY IN KERAMAS

Finally back in surf shape 🏄🏻‍♂️

My rule of thumb is 2 weeks...whenever I'm months out of the water - it always takes about 2 weeks until I'm back in "paddle" shape.

It feels damn good to feel comfortable in the water again 😊 (*side note* I'm still fat from epic Bali food, but mother ocean's got no problem with blubber ;)

I think from lifeguarding for nearly a decade I'm super aware of being in ocean shape. It's scary when you go surfing alone in decent surf not knowing how you'd fare if you lost your board. There's definitely more surfers than you may think that wouldn't be ok - they've just got other people around to boost their safety and confidence.

In other news, had a lovely day burning away the evil spirits on Balinese New Year Eve and then enjoyed a quiet Nyepi (aka silent day) at home on one of the best days of the year to stargaze.

I've been taking quiet a few trips to Ubud/Kintamani/Sidemen as well to get some good food and views. I dare not go to the eastern part of the island - it's been overrun with influencers and migrant Russians. 💀 RIP Canggu - you were great while it lasted.

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WORK

Monthly reminder...Angular sucks 🤪

One exciting thing that happened tho...

My work asked me to design a page that didn't exist - so I cracked open Figma and designed the best page in the project...but they wouldn't pay $15/month for Figma so I had to design it in the free plan alongside another project in the same file 😑. They said they would maybe consider it but it would take 6-8 weeks to process 😳

The design came out super nice, but they thought it would auto-generate components, so they're not convinced to design things...Yes, that's right they think it's faster to give 1-line descriptions, build something, get feedback, rebuild, get feedback (etc, etc.).

🤕 My head hurts. I feel like I have to daily repeat to myself, "this is NOT the way to build software, this is NOT the way to build software" - just to make sure I don't fall into the bad habits of the company. I had 6 meetings on Friday 🤣 like what!? When are you suppose to work!? Ugggh I've tried so many times to make suggestions and have push back - but it's a good lesson 🧘

That's about sums up the work. I used to have so much fun with Vue/Nuxt/Tailwind/Supabase/Netlify/Vercel/etc... now I'm using dated Angular and Material Design that's taking all of the joy out of coding. I was told this project would be 6-months and end in June - I can tell it will be minimum 9-months - likely going to last the entire year 🤦‍♂️

PROJECTS

Non-existent.

Feel like I've given up on my dreams work-wise. It's pretty brutal to be honest. I'm not the type of person to give up - so it kind of just sits on me and makes me anxious everyday I don't do anything (which has been 2+ months now).

I need to find time soon.

And the worst part is...

We're probably in the most exciting time in tech in 20+ years. AI is booming - and while 99% of projects being built with it are shit (🤔 mostly by the same grifting crypto-bros), this is fundamentally going to impact every piece of our lives.

While I am bummed I haven't been building anything - I do think there is a silver lining. AI is moving SOOOOO fast. Breakthroughs are crushing projects left and right and it seems like a good time to step back, and extrapolate out years in the future. To spend months building something that becomes obsolete overnight would be a worse feeling than building nothing.

SURF

Waves of the month...

Good video on the changing landscape of "pro" surfers...

Where to go in April...

Tasmania

CONTENT

Remote Work

Tech

Finance

Product of the Month