https://joshmeek.com/ Recent content on Josh Meek Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Thu, 05 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://joshmeek.com/now/ Thu, 29 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://joshmeek.com/now/ (This is a now page, and if you have your own site, you should make one, too.) Life My daughter Hattie is now 18 months old. She’s funny, adventurous, loves being a helper. Playing with Hattie is the highlight of each day. We sold our current house and bought a new house, and will be moving in July. We’re extremely excited, as the new house will give us separate offices and a yard for Hattie to play. https://joshmeek.com/posts/making-better-estimates/ Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://joshmeek.com/posts/making-better-estimates/ Humans are inherently bad at estimating how long things will take. Seriously, just ask my wife: “I’ll be there in 15 minutes” can easily become two hours if I get distracted by some new idea or project along the way. Moreover, humans always estimate for the best-case scenario “happy path”, typically failing to account for additional time should issues arise, even if those issues are incredibly likely. We’re overly optimistic in our estimations. https://joshmeek.com/posts/building-this-website/ Sat, 07 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://joshmeek.com/posts/building-this-website/ This is a quick explanation of how this website is built, which will serve as a “living document” that will be updated as changes and additions are made. I’ve been making websites for years. I used to be a fan of self-hosted Wordpress blogs, however Wordpress sites are increasingly the target of malicious attacks. A nefarious party can gain access to the backend of your site, deleting files, changing content, and even locking you out. https://joshmeek.com/about/ Thu, 05 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://joshmeek.com/about/ I’m a development team lead at Orchard Software, a dual job that lets me guide the direction of my team and our products while still taking a hands-on approach as a developer. I got my B.A. in Computer Science from Hanover College and my Masters of Computer Science from Ball State. While in grad school, I worked as a research assistant in S2ERC. After grad school, I taught an introductory CS course at Ball State. https://joshmeek.com/posts/resumes/ Sun, 01 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://joshmeek.com/posts/resumes/ Writing a good resume, much like software development itself, is often more art than science. Most people use the limited space in their resume to simply hit the required bullet points of contact information, education history, work experience, and a generic list of skills they purport to possess. This, however, does nothing to make you stand out from the sea of other potential jobseekers who have crafted shockingly similar resumes to your own, and doesn’t get anyone excited about calling you for an interview. https://joshmeek.com/posts/deep-work/ Sat, 31 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://joshmeek.com/posts/deep-work/ I recently read Deep Work by Cal Newport, after becoming increasingly frustrated with how often I’m pulled out of my deep development work for other “shallow” work tasks. At Orchard, development team leads are both developers and managers, so I need to balance both completing development work with attending meetings, performing administrative tasks, fielding questions, and mentoring employees. So while these tasks might be “shallow” compared to diving into a development problem, they are still an important part of my daily work and can’t simply be ignored.