It’s been almost six years since my last “Technologies I Use” article. Since I’m about to leave my job, forfeit my work laptop, and start a new chapter of life, it’s probably a good time to document the stuff I’ve been using and the workflows I’ve been following over this last stage of life. All of these are in the order in which I thought of them.

Physical things I use often

  • iPhone Xs - ironically, phone choice is one of the things I’ve thought about least on this list. I’m pretty locked into the Apple ecosystem
  • Macbook Pro 16” / Macbook Air 13” - for work and personal respectively; though I’m about to send back the former and I’m intending to replace the latter because I’m at the point where I’m deleting things in a futile attempt to free up memory
  • Garmin Fenix 6 GPS Watch - Suzi got this for me on a Black Friday! It can give me info on heart rate, cadence, sleep health, in addition to things like distance/pace (and things I care less about, like step count or stairs climbed). It has a virtual coach that suggests runs to do (that’s kinda interesting). I think it can do more than I know, like I think you can download routes and it can help navigate you; I think maybe you can also use it to listen to music? I’ve had it for a while, but haven’t spent time exploring what it can actually do
  • Brooks Adrenaline GTS 22
  • AirPods - took me a while, but not having to deal with wires is actually really nice, and it gets first class support from all of my Apple devices, onboarding was surprisingly delightful
  • MagicForce compact mechanical keyboard, brown switches - thanks to my friend Kelvin for the birthday present from many years ago. I still bust it out whenever I need to get in the mood to do heads down work
  • CityMini stroller - this is actually a really nice, compact stroller
  • Bob running stroller - a nice running stroller, though one time I definitely hit a bump on Lake Washington Boulevard and the front wheel came off (fortunately, Nora was okay - that could have been really bad!)
  • A Caffe Vita Supersonic mug
  • Spiderman Jordans - there’s something here about culture, but wearing these inspire me to do better
  • Pretty much any notebook - I love taking notes in physical notebooks; it’s not like I even go back to read through the notes, but the act of doing it helps me process information or formalize my thoughts. If you want to get me a present, a notebook is always much appreciated!
  • Baratza Encore + Hario v60 + beans from Onda Origins - The Baratza Encore grinder was a Father’s day present right after Nora was born, and Hario v60’s are super cheap, but also have generally fewer steps than a Chemex, which I only pull out for larger brews. Onda Origins is my local go-to shop for beans; sometimes I’ll venture out to a Victrola or Olympia Coffee if I need a change, but all of the prices are comparable ($18-$21) now

Software / apps

  • Spotify - for music and podcasts. We have a Family Premium account so we don’t have to listen to ads; I use it when I’m away from home, but if I’m home, there’s a better chance I’m using Youtube to listen to music
  • iCloud + Google One - for photo storage. We pay for both iCloud storage and Google One (because… redundancy?)
  • Chrome - web browser, on both laptop and mobile
  • Messenger - for sending messages. Also because there’s messenger.com and I typically want to spend time on my laptop compared to my phone
  • Google Suite - for email, the calendar, and note taking. I tried Notion and Obsidian as well for note taking / work tracking, but I’m doubtful that I’ll keep going with either going forward
  • Alfred - it’s like Spotlight for macOS, but was more complete and customizable (at least historically - Spotlight may have improved)
  • Spectacle - window tiling manager for macOS
  • 1Password - we pay for this, to store and share passwords
  • An Ad blocker - AdBlock
  • Venmo - to send money
  • Zoom - to video chat. Apparently Zoom apnea is a thing. When I was a manager, I spent a lot of time within Zoom, and by the end of the day, sometimes I’d have the hardest time focusing on a screen within it
  • Slack - used at work..
  • Strava - a place to see my runs, where you can also discover running groups and other places to run. For some time, I was also using this as a sort of microblog, where I’d write a short paragraph about how I was feeling or what I had going on after each run, since I used to run at least a few times a week
  • Youtube Premium - if the TV is on, it’s probably running the Youtube app. Since Nora watches, but some of the ads can be inappropriate, we got Premium so that we don’t have to watch ads
  • Instagram - this is the main social network that I’m on. In some ways, this started to replace my blog - I used it for book reviews and some personal updates (I have a pretty private account, so I’m a little more comfortable sharing personal details). I still have a Facebook account, but check it rarely (once every few weeks); I deleted my Twitter account, and I don’t use Tiktok

Software to make software

  • VS Code - pretty standard IDE for web developers
  • iTerm - I’ve just used this for a long time, but I honestly have little customization
  • Git / Github - pretty standard; Github also gives unlimited private repositories now, so that’s cool. And they have some nice integrations like Github Pages (which is how davidandsuzi.com has been hosted for a long time, via Jekyll)
  • Github Copilot - was using this VS Code extension at work for some smart code generation, and it was actually pleasantly helpful, especially when it came to figuring out how to write TypeScript definitions
  • TypeScript / React / Apollo / Eslint / React testing library - pretty standard React stack in my opinion. State management is probably Apollo + React context (though are signals a thing? I need to do some learning…). I haven’t seriously ventured into any of the server side frameworks like Next
  • Expo for React Native - I think it’s 100% worth it, all of the nicer-to-use APIs, tools for developer experience, docs and tooling around publishing, along with out-of-the-box over-the-air updates support
  • DigitalOcean - for a server 🤷
  • AWS - for S3 and RDS (Postgres DB), though the next project I work on, I want to try out SQLite for the backend

Services

Rainier Health and Fitness - my local gym, though I seriously haven’t gone for like the last 4 months. I renewed my membership a while ago after I pinched a nerve in my leg and the sports medicine doctor said I needed to get back in the gym to keep things balanced for running Airbnb - probably no surprise here, though I’m less bullish on it now that I’ve left the company. But getting an Airbnb when traveling with a family still makes way more sense than trying to stay in a hotel Doordash - because saving time is sometimes more valuable than saving money Lyft - for when we need to be in 2 places at once, but we only have 1 car. (It is ridiculously fast to get a Lyft from where we live.) Or public transit if we’re going downtown Pacific Science Center Woodland Park Zoo Museum of Flight

How I consume content

  • Youtube - a wide range of things - music, tech, running, smash bros, etc.
  • HackerNews - tech news, though I don’t think it’s as good as it used to be
  • TechCrunch - tech news
  • LetsRun - running news
  • ESPN
  • r/smashbros
  • The Holy Post podcast - a podcast with Phil Vischer/Skye Jethani. I think they do a great job of covering current events from a Christian lens that imo is faithful to Jesus, but often draws criticism from both the left and the right
  • “Bytes” newsletter - this is actually a very entertaining JavaScript newsletter, probably the only one I actually read (so I prefer it to JavaScript Weekly and all of the other React newsletters I’ve subscribed to)
  • “The Hybrid Hacker” newsletter - I think this one is actually pretty good and applicable to folks who want to grow their career within tech. It is less about tech itself but about career advice and tips, especially around eng management
  • Physical books - I still have yet to really get into audio books. Not sure anything beats sitting down with a softcover and a pen at a coffee shop
  • Christianity Today - my only current magazine subscription, which did come after listening to their podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill