June Update - links and why I got a voicemail from the Denver District Attourney
Hi there!
My gosh, a lot has happened in your life since you got an email from me. A lot has happened in my life, since I last wrote one of these. I cannot tell when my last update was (this ConvertKit interface isn't exactly built for the way I use it; I might migrate to Buttondown soon) but I think it's been at least six months, and it was quite sparse up to then. 2019 was the last year I wrote "regularly" on my website or this newsletter thing.
For you who are new around here: I always make it easy to unsubscribe from my emails. For a bunch of reasons, I probably care almost as much as some of you, and more than most of you, about if my emails are useful/worth reading or not. Here's your unsubscribe link, every email from me will lead with an unsubscribe:
I'm going to be writing a bit more going forward than I have in the last few years.
updates on me:
I have avoiding writing updates because it feels like there's too much to talk about, either in this update email itself, or in the several/many blog posts I want to write.
I've got a nine-month-old baby, and it's been an eventful and interesting time because of it. I look forward to finishing up the the "lessons learned && things I wish I'd known ahead of time" blog post. I've written a handful of posts this year: https://josh.works/blog
A few months ago I joined the dev team at Homebot.ai, and oh boy is it an interesting domain. I'm "the other engineer" on a new team formed around "email stuff", primarily mitigating business risk (the deliverability rate on some of these emails that go out is INSANE, and like any complex system, it needs to be constantly defended), while also getting new functionality/capacity bolted on.
I like the problem space - my time on the customer success/inside sales teams at Litmus had me deep in the weeds on the email design space, and then my time at Wombat/Proofpoint had me working on an email-sending service full-time. (We did 'phishing emails as a service'.) The stack is fun and familiar - Rails, Redis, Sidekiq, Mailchimp, etc. It's a healthy company and a healthy team, and they have a beautiful office in downtown Denver, so I ride my scooter in to the offic 1-3x/week.
I've been up to a lot, but for this email, I'll settle for sharing some interesting links, that I've crossed paths with in the last few months:
👉 RailsConf 2014 - All the Little Things by Sandi Metz
this railsconf talk is a great tour through refactoring a gnarly chunk of code into something much better. I did the refactor myself a few times.
👉 https://acesounderglass.com/2022/02/07/epistemic-legibility/ (Tl;dr: being easy to argue with is a virtue, separate from being correct.)
👉 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/07/secret-world-beneath-our-feet-mind-blowing-key-to-planets-future (a fascinating look at healthy soil. High-quality soil inervated with plant matter matters a lot. I joyfully look at my yard full of waist-high growing things, and regularly dig into the soil to look at all the life that's emerged where once was sandy, dead soil. Pairs well with Fantastic Fungi (trailer, youtube, it's on Netflix)
👉 https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2022/05/uc-examines-low-cost-ways-to-improve-ohios-streams.html: UC leads demonstration project to improve Ohio streams - Biologists launch pilot project that could have implications for health of waterways (basically, by placing heavy logs across stream beds, seems like one can quickly do a lot to reduce water runoff and improve quality-of-life around that log when there's not flooding.)
I've spent a lot of time lately thinking about water runoff. I'm not strange, you're strange.
👉 I got a scooter. (Like... a 125cc vespa moped) about a year ago
Look at where I ride it! AAAAALLLLL over Denver! It's as good as a car in some ways, better than a car in many ways, and inferior to a car in some very managable ways. (90mpg, anyone? free parking right next to your destination?) I spend $3800 at Sportique Scooters on South Broadway to purchase a brand new Genuine Buddy Kick.
👉 a few weeks ago it got stolen. I replaced it the next day. (Sportique didn't have any Buddy Kicks, so I got a Lance Cabo. Eventually, the old scooter got found. (apparently someone with drugs and a gun was riding it, got arrested, a mile or two from where it was stolen.)
I'd spent a few hours walking the streets around Movement baker (from 9-midnight, approx) hoping to find the scooter. Here's a bit more about that particular journey:
Here's the strava data I have for the trip from Golden to Denver, including some of when I was walking/lyft scootering-around looking for it:
strava.com/activities/721… pic.twitter.com/KDySpK09p3 twitter.com/josh_works/sta…
A few hours ago, someone rolled my scooter somewhere that wasn't Movement Baker, and the surrounding streets and alleys I explored.
I'm bummed, but only a little. I hope it brings someone else as much joy as it brought me. Insurance makes this trivial to me. But... May 28th 2022
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I ended up speaking with a few folks at the Denver PD, and the Denver District Attorney (via email/phone) and I'm gonna get my scooter back, no impound/storage fees. Wahoo! It was *very* interesting having an unwanted but generally non-adversarial interaction with the Denver PD/legal machine. I'm glad to have gotten my scooter back. I'm also aware that being male, White-passing, and able to display conformity to certain group norms helps ensure I have pleasent police encounters instead of unpleasent:
This brings me to what prompted this whole thread. The form for reporting stolen property is difficult to fill out. Confusing UI. And then I got to this part of the form: pic.twitter.com/2GpAXfkViv
Anyway, I bought a new scooter the next day. It is a very real upgrade in a few ways, though I still wish I had my old scooter back.
A few people asked if I'd filled out a police report, TBH, I have not, because I have a dim view of police in general, and DPD in specific. June 9th 2022
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For context around some themes for those works, and as an introduction to those of you who are new around here (and have no idea why you're getting emails from me):
- I live in Golden, Colorado. My wife and I bought a house here in Oct 2020.
- I'm a software developer, ish. (I started a new job that's delightful at Homebot. I am "the other engineer" on a newly-formed team that owns "email & email stuff" for Homebot. It's a ton of fun, more on that later. My title is "full stack engineer, Wyld Stallyns team")
- I rock climb (just spent the month of April at the Red River Gorge with my wife, Eden, and friends!) and I ride a moped-thing all over Denver (and eventually beyond).
- I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about "well-functioning mobility networks", and won't shut up about them, so if you've met me in person, or someday meet me in person, I apologize in advance. FWIW, your personal/familial wellbeing is somewhat contingent upon the health of your local mobility networks, so from a perspective of simply being affected by a system, it isn't unreasonable to invest some energy points in getting a 101-level of understanding. Might help you with a house purchase or keep you/loved ones safe when moving through a gnarly intersection.
- I think scooters (like a Vespa) are the future of mobility. if 5% of trips that originated/terminated within a certain region were done via scooter, so much of the congestion pressure on the roads would be eliminated. So, if anyone from Sportique scooters on South Broadway is reading this, please know I'm going to keep trying to get you to open a scooter shop in Golden!
More soon,
❤️, Josh