Petros Amoiridis

Writing on a schedule

I am going back to the habit of writing on a schedule. These posts are under the Weeklies category.

The title is always of the following format: YYYY-CWnn, which is the year followed by the calendar week number.

The things I write every week in these posts are genuinely random. They come mostly from things I’ve done the previous week and maybe things I want to do in the following week. I often write this on Sundays, but it can be Mondays too.

One could even choose to subscribe to this category if they wanted less noise. However, please know you can manage your subscription settings to decide how many emails to receive (instantly when I post, once a week, etc.).

For this week’s (really the previous week) weekly, I want to talk about my job hunt.

I’ve been searching for what’s next since last September. If you are new here, you can check Being a programmer again to see how I quit my job in 2022 to find what’s next.

Looking for my next thing

I have been applying to different companies. I have also been talking to my network. I haven’t had much luck, but recently I’ve moved a couple of interviews forward. I took take-home exercises, and did some live coding challenges.

It was both stressful but also fun. I even did a paid 3 day gig with a potential employer, so that they can see how it would feel to work with me on a real feature request for their product.

That’s what I did last week. Here are a few things it reminded me. First, it’s challenging to dig into legacy code you haven’t written yourself. Legacy code that’s on older versions of language+framework (in this case Ruby on Rails). Code that’s has a lot of technical debt, and that’s risky to tweak (if it works don’t fix it).

But it’s rewarding when you start having some understanding of how things work. And even more rewarding when you finally implement something new.

I didn’t have enough time to finish my implementation. But I managed to propose an approach. One with minimal changes. I even wrote a couple of test cases in an attempt to finish a proof of concept.

I am now waiting for the folks to let me know if they would like to move forward.

Started going to the gym

I always had trouble with that. Lifting weights has always been too boring for me. But as I am getting older (almost half a century on this planet), I started feeling the pressure of not doing what I need to be doing. That is, lift weights. That’s supposed to be one great way—among other habits—to stay as healthy as possible.

I have been going to the gym for the past two and a half months. That’s the longest I lasted since my last attempt to stick to it many years ago. I can now talk safely about what helped me stick to it so far:

• I have to get into my car and drive 25 minutes to get there
• The gym has time slots and is very strict about them (you have to plan your week and put your name)
• It’s almost personal training (just the owner of the gym that shows you exactly what to do every time)
• I asked the gym owner to never exceed an hour of training
• I go three times a week

Driving for 25 minutes in the city I live in means the gym is rather far from home. How the heck does that help, you may ask. Well, every time I chose something closer, it was easier for me to postpone the training session. I would think, I can go later in the day. Now that I know that’s not an option, I make sure I get there. Since I work from home, that’s also a nice excuse to actually use my car.

The fact the gym is strict with the number of people signing up for a specific slot, helps a lot. I don’t like crowded gyms. I love this gym cause we are only a handful of people each morning. Pretty cool.

The gym owner is basically telling you what to do next, and is there to ask questions, and even corrects you when you do something wrong. That’s not something I had in the more traditional gyms. The experience there was rather bad. If I had a question, I would have to wait for someone to be available, and they weren’t the same person every time. No one had a full picture of my level, my health issues, my personal goals and more.

Sticking to no more than an hour for each training session helps me a lot. Anything beyond that, and I would get bored. I would probably stop going after a while. An hour is just about right. It allows me to do 4 double exercises (8 in total). I go early in the morning, and I am done by 9am. I can start my work back in the office at 10am.

Finally, I go there three times a week. I could do more, but I think that’s fine as I am also playing padel tennis which helps with different aspects of my health.

Well, that’s it for now folks. I hope you enjoyed this Weekly issue. Until next week, stay safe!

Here’s what I am doing

At Workbrew, I help our customers succeed, while working on docs, fixing bugs, and developing internal tools. At Amignosis, I pour my heart and skill into crafting slowly brewed software, one thoughtful line at a time. I am craftsman in a world of complexity and low-quality solutions. I am a shoemaker. I take the time to create simple, timeless software built to last. Check what I am doing now and talk to me.