Now
February 2023
🏠 Personal
February started great with a small-honeymoon trip to the Archena Spa. This was our first trip without Bernat, who stayed with my sister for a couple of nights. Everything went well on both sides and we had a nice relaxing time in this beautiful location, including a fancy lunch near Murcia.
The rest of the month went normally until the date for our honeymoon trip was approaching and we all got a stomach virus that fortunately passed away just in time for our departure to Miami to get onboard on a cruise to the Caribbean sea. Our first flight to Madrid was heavily delayed so we missed our connection to Miami, fortunately, we wanted to spend a day in the city before getting on board so we did not miss the boat!
The last days of the month were on the ship and the first stop in Jamaica. Traveling with a two-year-old baby is challenging and limited our options but still, we had a (hot and humid) nice stroll through Ocho Ríos and with that February was gone.
👨💻 Professional
On the work side, I got embarked on a new project to migrate our continuous integration logic to a new system so I will have to review and update all the testing, building, and deploying of Elastic Maps Services projects. I could just get started because we had also a full testing week for the next upcoming release and other duties.
Another highlight is that one of our managers started a sort of book reading club to discuss together a quite interesting read called “Staff Engineer” by Will Larson. The book is a collection of blog posts, well organized and written, around the different aspects of the technical roles beyond senior software engineer (tech lead, architect, etc.). I will not be able to join future sessions because of the holidays but from what I’ve read already, I’m enjoying the book.
❤️ Community
February got a couple of community highlights. One is that we managed to organize a second local gathering for geoinquietos, combined with a Geography conference organized by a cultural association. The other was that even though I could not participate much, I was able to put a bit of time into Humanitarian mapping for the terrible earthquakes in Syria and Turkey.
Unfortunately, I had to cancel my participation in the Cibervoluntarios training session. I was in a supporting role so the activity hopefully carried on without issues.
📚 Reading
This month apart from the “Staff Engineer” mentioned above I also finally finished “Stranger things happen”. I looked for a new read staying in the “fantasy or sci-fi written by women” theme and I decided to start the “Broken Earth” series written by N. K. Jemisin with the first book “The Fifth Season”. I’ve read more than half of the book and I can see how she is building something large and interesting. Fortunately on the trip, because of the lack of TV and Internet, I’m reading quite a lot so I’m sure I’ll finish this book before the cruise finishes and I’ll get the second part.
🔊 Listening
A selection of non-musical podcasts from this month, all from “Documentos RNE”: