Archives: Now

Current Desktop

Sitting back, enjoying a New England IPA and listening to upbeat 2010’s alternative music streaming on Pandora Radio while I do some light coding of my opengraph plugin. The wallpaper feature is by Rootkit via Wallhaven.

Some casual coding to get me back into web development for my personal use. Ever since late 2022 when I lost my Drupal front-end development job I haven’t done much. My current role is in communications and visual design, I miss making things on the web.

 

How I prepare for potential layoffs

Last Thursday, Cal Poly Pomona announced a voluntary separation of service program to begin in March, resulting from a Cal State University budget shortfall. I experienced these actions in 2008, working for the Long Beach Press-Telegram at the beginning of the financial crisis, at that time, a fraction of employees accepted the offer, and I anticipate a similar response. Unfortunately, higher education, like journalism, is underappreciated and underfunded. These are the steps I use to prepare ahead of potential layoffs.

  • Freeze voluntary retirement contributions in favor of expanding my existing emergency fund.
  • Audit my website, journals, sketchbooks, and files for new portfolio content; these can prompt ideas and blog posts and boost my personal website’s SEO ranking routine updates.
  • Unsubscribe from pointless email newsletters, reduce incoming spam, and boost the visibility of important emails as they arrive.
  • Review my social media and professional accounts for tone to reflect my authentic personality.
  • I intend to add an introductory section to this website linking to my portfolio and social media, making it easier for clients and potential employers to find me.
  • Website theme customization doubles as a working example of my web developer and communications specialist abilities.
  • Correct any broken bits on this website; I know of a few.
  • Add Now and Post Status to my sidebar. I’m not active on social media and prefer to share content on a platform where I can control my presentation.

Finally, get Docker Desktop running in Ubuntu; seriously, I can quickly spin up and down web hosting environments for development in LAMP, but the world has moved on to Docker. Get with the program Joe.

Featured Image Credit: RoZie on Pixabay.