Lately I’ve been buried in .NET Aspire, Blazor, and EF Core. All the shiny stuff I’ve wanted to dig into for a while. It’s been equal parts exciting and overwhelming. There are so many moving parts that it feels like a puzzle I get to solve one piece at a time. Every time something finally clicks, I catch myself grinning like an idiot.
I’ve been living in Postman a lot, building out collections and scripts to test everything. It’s tedious work, but I kind of like it. I did try automating some of it, but funny enough, the “manual way” turned out faster in a lot of cases. Finding that balance between useful automation and wasted time is a skill on its own. I did some simple Excel magic to auto-format some of the endpoints with variables to make copy/paste more efficient, and I got the collection setup with around 100 endpoints.
Over on the Encompass side, I ran into one of those situations that forces you to get creative. On loan open, we can read and write fields, but running certain actions wasn’t working because of how the object gets built. It only took a minute to find a workaround; I moved the call to happen when any form closes. Not perfect, but it worked. It’s one of those fixes that makes you feel like you tricked the system, and you always feel a little dirty afterward.
Outside of code, I finally did something I’ve wanted to do for twenty years. I bought a Harley. And wouldn’t you know it, the day after I buy it, winter shows up. It’s got some wear and tear, but it runs great. The first time I took it out, I remembered exactly why I love doing what I do. Coding pays the bills, sure, but it also opens doors to things that make life worth living.
It’s easy to get caught up in constant improvement, always chasing the next skill or project. But some weekends are for slowing down. Family time matters. Phones get put away. Dinner’s a conversation, not a scroll session. Be intentional with it. The work will still be there on Monday.