Recent content in Posts on Justin Vollmer
After over a year of weekly notes, I’ve decided to place the series on indefinite hiatus. I’ve struggled to keep up with it over the past 2-3 months, as my time has been consumed by projects I’m not ready to write about (work and personal). I’m going to try to focus more on dedicated posts as it makes sense in the near future. No guaranteed schedule, just finding my voice…
Back to the office this week, with some storm spotter training on the weekend, and a bit of gaming! Goal Progress Books: 2/18 📚 Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️ Work I was back to the office every day this week after a week remote visiting family. Most of the week was split between standing meetings and working through architecture on a few new projects (which I personally find very engaging!).…
Holy Week, 2026! 🌥️ Goal Progress Books: 2/18 📚 Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️ Work I was only in-office one day this week (Monday). Otherwise, remote meetings were the norm as I visited family for Easter! Wednesday - Friday were choc full of meetings, which is abnormal around holidays. However, everyone was finally back from vacations, traveling, etc, and so there was a lot to discuss. Personal…
Back to a busier week, combined with preparations for Easter! Goal Progress Books: 2/18 📚 Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️ Work Meetings began picking back up this week. Wednesday especially was a full day, with various project and planning meetings, and ending with dinner with a vendor (208 House, if you’re curious 😉). Personal Not many personal events this week; I’m planning to visit…
This was an overall pretty standard week for me… Goal Progress Books: 2/18 📚 Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️ Work Similar to last week, this week at work was also quieter than normal, due to both vacations and work trips. I’m still catching up on some projects that have been languishing though, so I had plenty to fill my time with! Personal Last Sunday, a good friend and coworker was…
Daylight Savings Time has arrived! 🌄 Goal Progress Books: 2/18 📚 Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️ Work Slightly lighter week in the office; a number of coworkers were traveling for work, so I spent most of the week focused on catching up on projects that needed my input, and working through email backlogs. Personal I was finally convinced to order a Nintendo Switch this week. It arrived mid-week,…
For the first time in a while, I got to spend at least one day this week heads-down on a project! Goal Progress Books: 2/18 📚 Photos digitized: 15/500 🖼️ Workouts: 3/7 💪 GTD reviews: 4/7 daily, pending weekly Work A majority of this week was reminiscent of the last few weeks in the office; lots of meetings, focused on a variety of projects. However… Friday was pretty minimal, and I was…
Another busy week, with a fun team dinner on Thursday to break it up! 🙂 Goal Progress Books: 2/18 📚 Photos digitized: 5/500 🖼️ Workouts: 3/7 💪 GTD reviews: 5/7 daily, pending weekly Work Throughout the week, I continued experimenting with ways Claude can assist with my day to day work. The biggest wins seem to be around daily briefings/summaries, and meeting prep. I have a set of prompts…
Another short entry this week; keeping busy at work, and unfortunately not spending a ton of time on personal projects. Goal Progress Books: 2/18 📚 Photos digitized: 5/500 🖼️ Workouts: 3/7 💪 GTD reviews: 4/7 daily, pending weekly Work I mentioned last week that I was exploring LLM usage at work; this week I spent a decent amount of time looking at how to incorporate it into my daily workflow to…
Short entry this week; I’ve been busy with work/personal projects and I don’t have much to share… Goal Progress Books: 2/18 📚 Photos digitized: 5/500 🖼️ Workouts: 3/7 💪 GTD reviews: 3/7 daily, pending weekly Work This week was particularly busy with project meetings at work; nothing specific to report on. I mentioned starting to experiment with Claude Pro at work last week.…
At long last, my schedule started slowing down this week! 🎉 Goal Progress Books: 2/18 📚 Photos digitized: 5/500 🖼️ Workouts: 3/7 💪 GTD reviews: 3/7 daily, pending weekly Work Nothing major to talk about at work this week. With fewer meetings, I had time to sit down and work through some project planning, along with some testing and hands-on engineering work. For the meetings I did have, I…
This week actually ended up busier than the last, though unlike last week it was primarily during office hours. 🤔 Goal Progress Books: 2/18 📚 Photos digitized: 3/500 🖼️ Workouts: 4/7 💪 GTD reviews: 3/7 daily, pending weekly Work Somehow my meeting load at work went up this week, even though fewer people were in the office. I’d say 90+% were genuinely useful, so no real complaints.…
This week’s update might be even shorter than last… with Winter Conference going on, my week was heavily consumed by work discussions and dinners. But I’ll make up for it with more photos than normal. 😉 Goal Progress Books: 1/18 📚 Photos digitized: 3/500 🖼️ Workouts: 3/7 💪 GTD reviews: 5/7 daily, weekly pending Work Tuesday through Friday of this week was our annual Winter…
Shorter post this week… a lot has been going on, but mostly work-related, and therefore not much to share here… Goal Progress Books: 1/18 📚 Photos digitized: 3/500 🖼️ Workouts: 3/7 💪 GTD reviews: 5/7 daily, weekly pending Work This week has been a whirlwind at work. Monday-Thursday were in office; Friday I stayed home for tire maintenance on my truck, expecting downtime, but had…
One full week of 2026 over already? 😐 Goal Progress Books: 0/18 📚 Photos digitized: 3/500 🖼️ Workouts: 3/7 💪 GTD reviews: 3/7 daily, weekly done Work This week, the team and I were back in the swing of things, and I was in office all 5 days. It was slightly belated due to shipping, but this week we also began passing out Christmas ornaments to the team, both local and around the globe. Making…
All the cool kids, or at least Robb , Matt , and Jan-Lukas are updating their app defaults, something that started in the blogosphere back in 2023. And I can’t resist jumping on a fun bandwagon when I see one, and so… here’s mine! (honestly not much has changed since 2023 and 2024 ) ✉️ Mail Service : iCloud, Fastmail , Zoho , all with custom domains 📬 Mail Client : Apple Mail…
First weekly note of the new year! 🎉 I’m trying out a new format for my weekly notes this year; we’ll see how long it lasts. Instead of a giant run-on list mixing personal and professional, I’m splitting the two, and throwing in a “notable” section, which is for events, and may sometimes be omitted. Additionally, I think I’m going to try keeping track of my…
I did a little review, and unless I’ve missed a post somewhere, I’ve only once written a public “New Year’s Resolutions”. I considered titling this post my “2026 Resolutions”, but that doesn’t exactly capture what I’m going for. Rather, these are intended to be goals and aspirations that I can measure myself against at the end of the year, and…
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” - Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings That remains one of my favorite quotes. I’ve used it before, and decided instead of as the ending quote, it would be my opener. Anyhow… on to my year in review! Another year in the books! As has become my yearly routine, I’m taking time to reflect on the major…
I’ve seen a number of other bloggers writing year-end book reviews and commentary on what they read (shoutout specifically to Manu , SuperBetsy , and Jeremy Keith ), and I decided to join the fun! I already keep a reading list of every book I finish (see here ), so the following list is copied from there. Books I Read (Finished) in 2025 Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by…
Week in Review It’s the last full week of the year! (Yes, I know, next week is 50/50… I will probably start my week numbering over for 2026 next week though.) Sunday afternoon, after posting my weekly update, I headed home to visit family for the holidays. Sunday evening I gave my sister one of her gifts: a cold brew coffee maker, which we promptly had to try. Spoiler alert: she loved…
Following my pattern from yesterday, for Christmas this year, I thought I’d take the opportunity to post the lyrics of one of my favorite Christmas hymns: From Heaven Above to Earth I Come (LSB 358) 1 “From heav’n above to earth I come to bear good news to ev’ry home: Glad tidings of great joy I bring, Whereof I now will say and sing: 2 “To you this night is born a…
For Christmas Eve this year, I thought I’d take the opportunity to post the lyrics of one of my favorite Advent hymns: What Hope! An Eden Prophesied (LSB 342) 1 What hope! An Eden prophesied Where tame live with the wild; The lamb and lion side by side, Led by a little child! 2 A shoot will sprout from Jesse’s stem, A branch from David’s line, A Prince of Peace in Bethlehem: The fruit of…
Week in Review It’s the last week before Christmas! I was in-office every day this week, though my schedule became more focused on wrapping up small projects, cleaning, and preparing for the new year than usual. Monday, a couple of coworkers and I went out to Jacks for lunch, where I had a tasty chicken dumpling soup and buffalo chicken sandwich. Tuesday evening, after work, I met a friend…
Week in Review Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal, with meetings scattered throughout the day. As I did last week, I worked remote Monday morning, then drove to the office for some in-person work in the afternoon. Tuesday evening was our R&D Christmas party at a local establishment. For the… fourth year in a row, I was on the planning committee, so I arrived slightly early to set up, and…
This past week largely saw a return to my normal schedule. I worked remotely Monday morning, then headed to the office for some in-person meetings later in the day. Monday evening as I prepared to leave work, a coworker asked me about my photo backup strategy, something I’d mentioned in passing before, but never in detail. She asked me to send her my recommendations, and instead of just a…
Yesterday afternoon in the office, one of my coworkers asked me (paraphrasing) how I back up my photos so that everything isn’t only in iCloud, and what I would recommend that she do. And, because I’m a geek (and a bit extra at times), instead of just sending her my recommendations, I decided to turn this into a full blog post that I can point others to in the future. 😁 My Photo…
This week I’m combining two posts into one (25.46 and 25.47), as I was a) delayed writing last week’s post, and b) it was looking short anyhow. I mentioned last week that I was heading to a game night after my post, which I did! This time, instead of just games, we also did a puzzle (in only… 3-4 hours?). Monday - Thursday I worked from the office, with my normal mix of meetings…
Over lunch, some colleagues and I were discussing why Christmas music is its own genre, with specific sounds. For fun, I asked an LLM to generate a plausible but fictitious explanation, and a few seconds later, this amusing anecdote was born… The Scientific Classification of Christmas Music The Temporal Frequency Hypothesis Christmas music constitutes its own genre due to a rare phenomenon…
Welcome to weekly note number 45 for 2025! Not much out of the ordinary occurred in the office this week. I was in all 5 days, including a longer-than-normal Friday, due to me shifting some meetings that needed to occur but that I couldn’t find a place for to Friday. Tuesday evening, a coworker that is primarily remote was in town, so a group of us went out to dinner in the evening at the…
This week’s post will be fairly short. I was in the office Monday - Thursday, with a slightly higher volume of meetings than normal. Wednesday morning I met a coworker at a local restaurant for breakfast and to catch up, which was a nice way to start the day! By the time I left work on Wednesday evening, it was already dark, and the moon was out. When I got home I decided to grab my GH5 and…
Welcome to my 43rd weekly note post! I referenced in last week’s post that I was heading to play games with a colleague & her daughter (M) while they were in the area. Obligatory photo below. 🙂 Monday morning started with meetings in the office, then lunch with a coworker at our favorite local ramen restaurant (and… maybe the only local ramen restaurant? 🤷♂️). I had a break in the…
This week’s update might be even shorter than last week’s, although with a few twists! I worked from the office all week, with a majority of my meetings taking place on Monday (other than standard cadence meetings throughout the week). This week was a little quieter than normal, as a number of close colleagues were traveling for meetings… The unplanned portion of my week began…
I think I’ll keep this week’s update short and sweet. 🙂 A majority of this week in-office was spent in user acceptance testing of the new systems. My time wasn’t needed quite as heavily as last week though, so I started to get back to a normal work schedule. Wednesday evening I went out to eat with some of my local and international colleagues that were in town. We enjoyed pizza…
After being gone all of last week, it was nice to be home and in a little bit more of a normal routine this week! However… as luck would have it, I had actually moved my Fargo trip from last week forward, as this week’s schedule needed my attention in-office for training on some new systems. Training Tuesday - Friday meant that I moved a majority of my normal meetings to Monday, and…
This week was one of my busier in a while, as I was in-office on Monday morning, then traveled Monday afternoon/evening to Fargo, ND for some meetings with colleagues based out of our office there. Tuesday morning through Friday mid-afternoon was spent in meetings, some planned, some impromptu, and enjoying interacting in-person with team members that I normally only see virtually. I don’t…
This week will once again be a shorter post, as a majority of the week followed my normal patterns work/life patterns. I was in-office all week, splitting time between meetings and continued deployment work on the aforementioned ECAD tool. Wednesday, a group from work visited Jonah’s Oyster Bar for dinner, where I enjoyed my standard spread of Salmon, New England Clam Chowder, and a…
This week’s post is a bit shorter than the last few (which in general isn’t bad in my opinion). I was in-office every day this week, and split my time between meetings & email (as usual), and continued work on deployment of the ECAD tool I referenced last week, which consumed a majority of my time. On Monday, the RuneScape Catalyst League went live, and I spent some time (normally an…
This week turned out to include a nice mix of work projects, local events, and some quality time experimenting with new tools. The weather has been all over the place though… enjoyably cool early in the week, then warming back up to obnoxious for September by Thursday. Monday was a pretty standard day in the office. After work (and dinner), I decided to experiment with having Claude help me…
This week turned out to be an interesting mix of holiday productivity, server upgrades, good food, and diving deeper into some AI tools (a phrase I never thought I’d write). Since Monday was Labor Day here in the US, I had the day off, and spent it doing some small personal projects around the house, plus working on another work-related project that I’ve not had time for in the office…
It’s been another week already? Well, I guess that means it’s time for another blog post! Monday was fairly routine – nothing particularly noteworthy to report. Just the typical start-of-week meetings and catching up on projects. However, Tuesday brought a fun change of pace as I headed down to the Farm Progress Show in Decatur with some coworkers. For those not familiar, it’s…
This week was mostly back to my normal routine, with a few bright spots that made it memorable. Monday started off on a high note when one of my coworkers brought in homemade blueberry pie to celebrate a team member’s birthday. There’s something about unexpected office treats that just makes the whole day better – and this pie was no exception! Tuesday through Thursday were pretty…
After a week away, this week it was back to the office, and a semi-normal schedule. Well… okay, half-normal. I had a coworker from Fargo visiting this week, which meant a few extra meetings, and a few extra meals out! Monday was pretty standard, preparing for the week ahead and catching up on a few things I’d missed while out. Tuesday we had multiple vendors meeting in for meetings,…
The past week was both more and less eventful than normal. How’s that possible, you ask? Let me explain… Sunday afternoon I packed up and drove to visit family for the week, doing a remote work/vacation hybrid. Monday through Friday I spent working during the morning/afternoon, with lunches and dinners with family. Monday evening my mom, sister, and I baked pizzas for the family, and…
I promise I’m not a food blogger, nor am I aspiring to be one, but I like to take photos of tasty food when I’m out, and I was out to eat with coworkers a few times this week, and so… this week’s update is going to include some food photos. 😂 Monday was overall a pretty normal day, not much to report. Tuesday through Friday I had a coworker from Sunnyvale in town, for…
Overall, the past week has been pretty standard, without much to write about. During the week I largely worked on catching up after being remote for the previous week while visiting family. I don’t use LLMs much, but a few times during the work week I experimented with various ways to use them, primarily around data summarization. One example: I had a PDF of a presentation that I wanted to…
This week we had a coworker from Fargo visiting our office, so Monday saw an earlier morning than normal in the office, anticipating their arrival. For lunch we catered a meal to the office and had a lunch & learn to give the team an opportunity to learn more about a project that the visiting coworker has been involved with. Monday evening was filled with preparations for travel, as I planned to…
This week’s update will be a little shorter than normal, as nothing overly eventful occurred. I was in-office for the entirety of this week, mostly focusing on meetings and my standard workload. Tuesday evening a group of coworkers and I went out for dinner and drinks to La Fiesta , one of our local favorites. Wednesday evening I went out to another local restaurant, The 208 House , with a…
With a shortened week this week (thanks to Independence Day on Friday), my normal work week was both shortened, but simultaneously filled with a few extra meetings as everything was compacted into 4 days. Monday through Thursday saw roughly my normal schedule of in-office work, without a lot to report. Friday, being July 4th, meant time off, which I spent largely relaxing and working around the…
Monday of this week I opted to work remotely, mostly due to remote meetings, and a single in-person meeting at our manufacturing facility, which is closer to my house. It was a nice break, instead of traveling to the office. Tuesday, after an early dentist appointment, it was off to the office, for a day largely filled with meetings. That was the story Wednesday through Friday as well, and my…