Tag: travel

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Saturday morning: 4 things I learned from credit card deals to getting great at Photography

Working the travel points system

I did some research to see when I should get two new Southwest credit cards. People look at you weird when you say you play the credit card game but I’ve found them to be worth it. This time I’m working on a Southwest companion pass for 2018 and 2019. This means every time we fly Southwest on vacation, one of us will fly for free. A lot of travel bloggers have written about it. You need to apply for one card by October 1st and the other by October 5th. (And if you froze all your credit, you will need to find out what credit agency they will use to check your credit and unfreeze it first.)

Rey costumes

In anticipation of Krewe of Boo, Halloween and Chewbacchus, I’m working on a Rey costume. I spent a lot of time looking for pictures of her and then when I talked to my 11 year old, he remembered everything in great detail without having to consult any pictures. I should have asked him first. My partner mentioned that I’d need to figure out how to fix my hair and I told him there are tons of YouTube videos on just Rey’s hair.

Photos: Aperature

Last weekend I took pictures at a Crossfit competition and really wished I knew how to make the background blurry so that I could focus just on the people in the foreground — there were a lot of people standing around. So I spent some time learning about aperture and learned how to set up aperture priority mode on my camera. The article that got me started in the right direction was one about taking pictures at corporate events. There are a lot of articles about depth of focus.

Puerto Rico

Three and a half million people without power and running water! No drinking water! With no near term solution in sight. I’m sure money would help but they are also going to need some major logistical help and being an island is an disadvantage. And being a US territory, something few US citizens understand, is also a disadvantage. I read that Tesla is sending powerwalls. And private companies have been flying in medicine and flying out medical patients. It’s going to take a lot to help everyone that needs help.

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It’s true: because you can travel, you have to

I once sat on an airplane for 20+ hours in order to spend a day in Italy. I spent the whole trip wondering why we had to meet in person when we have all this technology like video calls, email, irc. While having my surreal foreign driving experience where a gazillion lanes merged into a few and all the signs were in Italian, I tried not to let my jet lagged brain wander and I wondered what I was doing.

Why, when we have so much technology, do we have to travel so much to work together?

MDN Hackfest, March 2015

And the secret is to flip the question around. It’s because we have all this technology that we have to travel. Because we can communicate and work with anyone around the world, we do. And when you work with people, you need to meet them. You don’t need to see them every day, but you need to understand how they talk, how they hold themselves, what’s important to them, what makes them raise their voice in excitement. Once you meet them, you’ll read all their emails differently. You’ll get what they are trying to say in that pull request so much faster. You’ll be a team.

Once you’ve met them, had a beer with them and learned that they too have a five year old kid, you’ll be more likely to be willing to get up at 6:30am for a meeting with them. You’ll be more likely to tell them you think something’s wrong with their idea and believe that they’ll really listen to you. You’ll be more likely to ask them for help. Because of how the human brain works, you’ll be more likely to remember them in another conversation where something they are working on will go together wonderfully with the idea a new friend is talking about.

Meeting in person is key to working well together. Technology lets us work with more people in more places and so now we travel further to meet each other.