Thanksgiving Tips for Developers: How to Reset, Recharge, and Enjoy the Holiday Break

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Noir podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. We are the Building Better Developers podcast. This is also known as Developer Noir. We are pausing the season of Building Better Foundations to have a little bit of holiday special stuff as we always do. So we're going to do this Thanksgiving week and then also around Thanksgiving, New Year's or I'm sorry about Christmas, New Year's, that kind of stuff. We're going to have a break again, but then we're going to carry on as always. We've got a lot of interviews lined up, a couple in the can, stuff like that. So we've got some really cool stuff that we will be talking about in the upcoming episodes and into 2026. We are actually to that point. First, I'm going to introduce myself. My name is Rob Broadhead. I'm one of the founders of Developing Noir, Building Better Developers. Also the founder of RB Consulting, where we are one of those nice little firms that helps you sit down and help you leverage technology, build a roadmap for success. Good thing, bad thing. Bad thing, good thing is I am currently not home. I'll be home by the time you guys are here, but currently I'm sitting in Las Vegas. I gave up Nash Vegas for Las Vegas and the trip day, the travel day into Las Vegas was one of the most obnoxious of my life. It wasn't because of the things like travel plans or anything like that. It was just like everything that could go wrong basically went wrong from early in the morning. They closed out our flight too soon. And so when we went to check in, they're like, you don't exist anywhere. We went through all, it took a lot of long, a lot of time to get through that. To the end of the day, where we were just trying to sit down and have some food and it was very simple. It was just sushi. I guess that's not the most simple thing, but not that complex. And there was a simple request of don't put the hot peppery crap in my sushi. I'm not going to say who did it. It wasn't me. But said person upon trying it found out the hot peppery stuff was in there and it took them a while to give it to us. And it took them longer to get the second to make it good. By that time said person had actually died of starvation, had to resuscitate them, bring them back to life just so they could eat their sushi. At least it was good. And then we went home and that was just two of many, many things. It was a comedy of errors. If it was a family vacation movie, it would have been actually worse than any of the family vacation movies. But the good thing is we're here, survived, everything worked out okay and working on my digital no madness of a sort and roaming around doing work. One other person that does a lot of this moving around and doing work from different places is my co-host. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Hey everyone. My name is Mike Kamalash. I'm one of the co-founders of Building Better Developers, also known as Developerner. I'm also the founder of Envision QA, where we help businesses build smarter, stronger software with custom development and rock solid testing. Let's see. Good thing, bad thing. Well, we are recording this a little early before Thanksgiving and my wife is currently out of town. So in a way that's a good thing because I'm getting a lot of stuff done. But in a way it's also a bad thing because now I have more distractions of taking care of the dogs, taking care of the farm animals and just general chores in general, which is unfortunately cutting into my work schedule routine a little bit, which breaks that little Pomodoro technique a little bit. Now it's like, okay, 20 minutes here, dog has to go out. It's just one of those words. Little frazzled this week. I'm ready for things to calm down. I'm ready for that turkey. And it being as we push this out Tuesday of Thanksgiving, we think we'll talk about the upcoming holidays and things like that as our special this time around. In the past we've done, you know, we usually do like a businessy one and preparing. You guys probably know that if you've been around for a while, then we get into Thanksgiving, you know, day before Thanksgiving, we do thankful stuff. And then when we did Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Friday would be Black Friday and we talk about the sales and stuff like that. I'm just going to combine some of this stuff together and we'll see where it goes. One of the things that is I always look forward to and rarely actually able to embrace it during the holidays is actually having some holiday time, like sitting down and just saying, okay, nobody's going to bother me. There's no work. There's no nothing like that. So I'm going to chill. I'm going to have an adult beverage. I'm going to hang out with the family. I'm going to eat some food. I'm going to play some games, stuff like that. And as part of that, I have over the years accumulated more than a few like game consoles and mobile things and such like that. One of my latest ones that I enjoy when I, the few minutes that I have each year to do such things is a steam deck. Love it. That's great because I don't do windows. And so a lot of stuff that would be windows games, I don't do, can't do it. Steam deck has allowed me to do some of that. And I was like, you know what? Talking with my kids just recently. And I said, blood bowl three is out. That is an all like long time favorite of mine goes way back. Did it on the, did the tabletop years and years and years ago, way before it was ever a game. And so I'm like, cool, this is great. On my recent flight did that and got almost all the way to the end of the game and the battery died. Basically that ran out of power and it decided to reset everything. So I'm like, okay, cool. I'm just going to go through this again because it's like my first game. This is great. Having fun. And I looked away and the next thing I know it had restarted itself again. So I'm going to see if third time's a charm, but that's one of those things that's like, it's fun how much access we have to like games and all this kind of stuff. But it can also be very frustrating because now it's amazing how much we require like wireless and chargers and things like that kind of stuff. That's just a couple of things to think about as you're, as you're having a little turkey and hanging out is like, make sure you sure you charge your devices. That may be our bonus material there for this one around your thoughts. So first of all, I'll tell you, uh, also an avid gamer like you, uh, I've got the steam deck. If you're running into a lot of resets, uh, ticker settings when you're on portable, like decrease your display stuff, things like that. It'll help you get some of the battery. Um, that'll help you get a little bit more, but yeah, it's a, it's a slog. You get maybe an hour and a half, maybe two hours to ping up on the game. Uh, but it also depends how hot the thing is. If you're in a hot area, it's going to go down faster. Um, my big thing is, uh, I've gotten my hands on the new Pokemon ZA for the switch to, uh, I got to play for my birthday. That was about it. It has now been sitting collecting dust since September. I'm hoping to be able to sit down, uh, dust it off and spin that up a little bit and play it, uh, on Thanksgiving. However, uh, this year I think my daughter's cooking Thanksgiving again. So we're probably going to go over there, have food, uh, and, you know, kick back, relax a little bit. So I'll be able to play a little bit during the day, but then we'll be traveling a little bit and spending time with family. Yeah, I would say, uh, that's one of the things I always recommend, uh, because I'm near and it's near and dear to my heart is while you're doing the traveling and stuff like that for holidays or just sitting there in dead time, great time to catch up on podcasts and things of that nature. Um, I, this is like bonus material again, I guess it's like, if you want to level your game up in a sense, uh, spend a little time, if you're sitting there, you got nothing better to do instead of like doom scrolling, have a conversation with one of the AI engines out there about something. It is, um, I was talking with somebody the other day. It was, luckily, uh, I'd shared this, but in the pregame here, but the pre show, but I was somebody that also failed to hit record, uh, while doing it, recording an episode. Uh, but one of the things we talked about was how many people use AI or actually using it and are actually productive. And it's actually a very small amount. And I think it's one of those things that part of it is because we just, people don't understand how to use it yet. They haven't really used it a little bit. It's like a replacement for a search engine and some stuff like that. But, um, it's worth, uh, in the building better developers since, you know, building better thanksgivings or however you want to look at it. Um, I guess something that is worth playing around with a little bit is see where you can, um, you know, make some changes there. Cause I don't want you to have, you know, I go through all of this and just get done with the holidays and being like, ah, crap, I'm back into the normal slog. And I got all this other stuff. There are some opportunities to make some gains in your productivity and in your business itself and some of the things you're working on. But that being said, also make sure you like, you got to get your like after turkey nap, you got to like spend a little time chilling out, listen to Christmas tunes and all that kind of stuff, which I'm sure you've been listening to Christmas tunes since July 4th, basically like I have because that stuff's out there already or get yourself some really cheap candy and stuff. That's great. Sugar high going. Oh my God. You and my wife with, I will do Christmas in July. We'll watch Christmas movies like the first week in July and then that's it. No Christmas until after, uh, at least, uh, at least Halloween. Uh, however, you know, I find it funny though. Yeah. Oh, kicking back, relaxing, trying to find things to work on. You know, you mentioned have a conversation with AI. So we just talked about, you know, playing games in that. So for those of you that like tabletop games, like Dungeons and Dragons, things like that use AI, you know, play around with AI and try to be the dungeon master or have it be the dungeon master and try to build out some scenarios and some routines or some campaigns with AI, play around with it. I've heard some people have had some great success with it and some people have had some horrible experiences with it, but that's one of those scenarios where you really can control and you know, more or less what you're expecting to get out of it. It's either you're getting a campaign that you like, or you can tweak it, or it's just not working at all. And it's like, okay, punt this AI, go to the next AI and try that. Now for those of you that are developers that do like gaming and want to try taking that to the next level, you could also try to build a, have AI help you build your first like JRPG or just simple like Flappy Bird or whatever that stupid bird game was that was, had really good music and was addicting, but just like had no point. But I think it was like Flappy Bird or something. But anyway, you could. Angry Birds? No, it was like, it was like a little bit of a, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like a little side scroller. You just tap to keep the bird flying and avoid things. And oh, yeah, I missed that one. I was like, how is this game so popular? But that's one of the things you can do. You know, look around, you know, take a pause, do things that you don't normally do in your routine, but they can be fun and still productive, like learning how to game. The other thing too, with that is one of the fun things that I like to do, I've talked about it a lot, but for me, it's fun for you. It might be work, but pick up a new technology or something you haven't used in a while, dust it off, figure out how, what the latest updates are to it. For instance, you know, Java routinely updates, Spring gets updates, you know, Python gets updates, get the latest version of whatever and build a small kitchen sink app and just Google or go out to their sites and figure out what are all the new features and try to do a small kitchen sink app and test all the new features, see how it works, you know, kick the tires and then play around with that. Yeah, I think that's something that's it's always worth it within your doom scrolling and things like that is to check out some of the stuff out there, check some of the new technology, what's out there, what's available. I find that's a great time to do it because you're going to see a lot of it probably, you know, around Black Friday and all the sales and things like that. It's not a bad time to see what's out there. Sometimes you can jump on a couple of deals. There's everybody has them. Sometimes they're not much of a deal. Sometimes they are. Software companies in particular, I've found a lot that will do, you know, you can get a annual subscription for 25 or 50 percent off on Black Friday, things like that, which is not bad for your business or your side hustle side hustling in particular. If you don't have a whole lot of money coming into it, then it's a great time to like stock up on some of the tools that you need or go build your own. That's always in itself a very fun thing. That's something we embrace here fairly regularly. There's a lot of stuff that it's just like, all right, I've seen what I like. I've seen what I don't like in the other tools and scratch your own itch and go build something that works for for you and your company, your business, your your goals and things like that. And don't be afraid to mess around with some stuff. Take some time. It's like that is the best thing about holidays is think about it as it's like it's free time. It's like found money or something like that. So let some of your normal stress disappear and just go hang out, do something fun, things like that, because the the work will be there when you get back. You don't it doesn't just magically solve itself ever. So, you know, when you hop back, do that, like I said, take a nap. Maybe it's because I'm getting old. Feel free to catch up on your sleep a little bit. Get some exercise, whatever it is that you normally don't do. Get out there and give yourself a little time to do so, especially great time to do the things where you're like, I don't do that because I never have the time. Well, now pretend effectively you do have the time. So go do it. Pretend like you're just a normal person and you don't have a billion things on your way and you're down and go out, have yourself a good time doing so. Closing thoughts. Yeah. Also, you know, remember it's a time for thanksgiving. Thanks. If you're working all the time or you're always glued to some type of digital device, take a step away, spend time with your family, spend time with your loved ones. If they're not around, you know, hang out with your friends, you know, kick back, watch some football, watch some holidays, you know, specials on TV, but you know, just spend time with people, disconnect from the technologies and just have a good time and kick back and relax. Yeah. And don't be afraid to catch up on your, uh, your latest Netscape or Netscape latest. Uh, wow. I don't know where I got that one from, but your latest, uh, binging and stuff like that. Your latest Netflix binging of such, because there's a lot of those out. There's a lot of things have come out this year. Um, so check some of those out, whether you're a, uh, uh, stranger things fan or one of the Marvel, any of the Marvel stuff or, you know, all of those good, the Cobra Kai, any of those good ones that are out there, uh, take some time and, uh, you know, catch up to those. Enjoy the time that you've got, uh, and taking care, especially I love this, like, you know, Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I always loved it when I was in an office, cause it was like one of the times that there weren't a lot of people there. Usually people would work Monday and by Tuesday you're already, people are disappearing. So by Tuesday afternoon, it was sort of quiet and you get some stuff done, take advantage of that. Uh, but then also hopefully you'll have a couple of quiet days and you'll be able to take advantage of, I don't know, sleeping in and stuff like that. I hear that happens. I haven't had it hasn't happened to me in a long, long time, but you know, I, I hear it's out there at some mythical beast, like a unicorn. As always go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. This was sponsored by RB consulting, your partner in building smarter, scalable tech from startups to established teams. RB consulting helps you turn tech chaos into clarity with proven roadmaps and hands on expertise. Visit RB dash SNS.com to start your next step forward. Also sponsored by envision QA. They help businesses take control of their software by focusing on what matters most quality, reliability, and support you can count on. Find out more at envision QA.com. Thanks for tuning into the development podcast, where we're all about building better developers and better careers. I'd love to hear your thoughts or feedback. So drop a note to info at develop the new or.com. 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