July compressed itself around one lateral move south. Francis—met in 2021 when our Celebrity cruise docked in Curaçao—had been planning his first Puerto Vallarta trip and sent an invitation; the 4th of July holiday handed me the extra days I needed. I landed on a Wednesday, settled into a resort in Amapas just south of the Zona Romántica, and found a former coworker had turned up in town as well—San Francisco has a way of following you. Back home, the vinyl habit crossed 37 LPs and finally justified a turntable.
✨ Updates to My Website
I added a few new features to my personal website this month: a new UI for my Steam game play widget and a Discogs widget, both on the Home page, and an interactive career visualization on my About page.
I've also been working to make the theme for my site reusable, so others can use it for their own sites.
💼 What I'm Working On at Work
Continuing with the theme of last month, AI is still a big focus at work. Both as a product feature and as a way to improve productivity and the quality of our code.
🌴 Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
I met Francis in 2021, docked in Curaçao on a Celebrity cruise ship. We'd kept in touch and a couple of months before July he extended the invitation. I already had two days off for the 4th of July holiday and took one more—a Wednesday-to-Sunday run.
My United flight from SFO to PVR was fast—only 3 hours, 45 minutes. I recommend sitting on the left side of the plane for the best views, because you'll face inland and see the mountains.
I stayed at an LGBTQ resort in Amapas, a neighborhood (colonia) just south of the Romantic Zone (Zona Romántica) and Playa de los Muertos. It's a 10-minute walk to the beach and slightly uphill, making it a good spot to look out over the bay and stay a close walk to the action while having a quiet, private space to relax.
A few frames from around the neighborhood.
🎵 Collecting Vinyl
Vinyl has taken over my friend group — my friends are constantly talking about new records they're litening to, and I've caught the bug too. I've built up a collection of 37 LPs so far and finally bought a record player, an AT-LP120XBT-USB-BK.
I've been using Discogs to track my collection, which is now rendered on a new widget on the Home page. It uses the Discogs API to fetch and render an up-to-date list of my LPs.
📚 What I'm Reading
At the beginning of the month I finished Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. I maintain a list of books that have been recommended by friends when asked for recommendations on what books left a profound impact and stuck with them over the years. My partner recommend this one, and said for them it was a required high school reading assignment.
In Mexico, someone had left a few copies of Finding My Humanity: I Am Because You Are by Ryan Ubuntu Wilson in my hotel room. I took home one of those copies and am now nearly finished reading Ryan's memoir, sharing story as a gay man coming of age in a rural, conservative commmunity in Colorado, and later a private Jesuit institution in Spokane, Washington.