johnro

Category: Me

Me and only me

  • Staying Professional When It’s Easier Not To

    Staying Professional When It’s Easier Not To

    Early in my career, I worked closely with a colleague who, for reasons I’ll never fully understand, decided I was “their person.” Whenever something came up — a bug to chase down, a query to run, data to pull — they’d come straight to me. At first, it felt flattering. Being needed always carries a certain weight, especially when you’re new. But over time, the relationship started to drift into something a little more complicated.

    This colleague grew comfortable enough with me to share their unfiltered thoughts about others on the team. They would complain when people spoke up too much in meetings or grumble about how slowly someone worked. One day, they sent me a message complaining about a teammate taking too long to finish a task. And for the first time, I pushed back.

    I said: “She does take time, but she does complete her work.”

    Not exactly a bold speech, but it was enough to draw a line. The response I got back was a crunchy face emoji — one of those moments where you know instantly you’ve embarrassed someone. From that point on, they stopped venting to me about other people. But they also went cold. Conversations turned short. The easy rapport we’d built evaporated.

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  • Caffeine Detox: What I Learned After Two Months

    Caffeine Detox: What I Learned After Two Months

    It’s been a couple of months since I started detoxing from caffeine, and I wanted to share how it’s been going. For most of last year, my mornings started with a can of Celsius — my favorite energy drink brand — and usually didn’t end there. At work, caffeine is everywhere. Cold teas, sodas, and even decaf from Bilgewater (Riot’s campus version of Starbucks). I’d often grab one or two more throughout the day.

    Caffeine was just part of my routine. About 200mg every morning to kick things off, then whatever I felt like grabbing later in the day. Before Celsius, it was regular coffee, or the occasional Red Bull. It became normal. Almost invisible.

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  • Hello World indeed

    After months of contemplating coding my own blog site, I managed to get together a nice CI (codeigniter) + doctrine bundle to get started, but got lazy and so I never got past finishing the header.

    If it wasn’t for work, I probably wouldn’t have bothered with wordpress either. But here I am, in a situation where I needed to get familiar with the open source app. So far my impressions have been great. Had I had known such app existed, I probably would have started using it a long time ago.

    Hello World!