striking a balance
between building websites and real life experiences, we always have to think about balance
Yesterday, I was working on some updates to how our website makes loads information on the site. The reason I’m looking into this is to make our website load as fast as it can.
The data that is responsible for populating our website is from a variety of different sources. Our website makes it easy for individuals and friends to buy and sell NFTs. An NFT, also known as a non-fungible token, is a financial security consisting of digital data stored in a blockchain. The user experience around buying and selling NFTs is challenging and complicating so our team is working on simplifying that process.
Our website uses data from a number of different places. Some information is directly from the blockchain, other information is from a database that we manage, and the rest of it is from companies that make blockchain and NFT data readily available.
Each data source has its benefits and drawbacks. Some sources have too much information, others have too little. One of the solutions we are working on right now is to start capturing the information that is relevant to our website. Hopefully this can help us reduce the number of calls we are making to external sources and we can reliably load the site quickly for all users.
In the evening, I received a call from my good friend Ivan. Ivan and I used to work together at Deloitte. After I left Deloitte, we started working on a start-up together in the evenings and weekends. Though the start-up did not do well, we ended up becoming better friends because of it. We hadn’t caught up in a while so we talked for a few hours. He was in the middle of getting a COVID test and I was catching him up with all the successes and perils of my days for the past few months.
A bit later in the night, my roommate woke up from a nap and we then went to a birthday party for one of his friends. The friend’s name was Natalia. We ventured deep into Brooklyn to meet her and her friends. They were a great group. I met some cool people. Some had similar backgrounds to me, others had similar travels to me. It was great being able to share and talk about these common experiences. Hope to see them in the future again.
Once we wrapped up at the bar, we went to another bar for about an hour or so. The bar was a dance-y bar so we danced a bit and then my roommate and I decided to head home. The bar was called Friends and Lovers (a take on the song my Lil Jon, Ludacris, and Usher’s Lovers and Friends?). They had some awesome music (Soca, Reggaeton, and Hip-Hop). I find that a lot of places in Manhattan shy away from playing this kind of music so it was a pleasant surprise.
We were waiting in the subway for a long time and so we started looking up “best fried chicken spots in New York” while we waited for our trains. Upon this search, we found that there was a new spot called Scoville Fried Chicken on the way to our home. We decided to make a quick spot (since the place was still open at 12:30 AM) and we picked up some chicken sandwiches. The store welcomed us with bright neon signs and some cool employees. The two dudes that were working there spoke mostly Spanish so I brushed up on a bit of my Spanish to ask them when the restaurant opened. That’s when I learned that it had only been a month since it’d been open.
Yesterday was a fun New York night and I look forward to having more this weekend!