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Kent OOO (Out Of the Office)

May 31st, 2016 — 4 min read

Some of the s I took for my wife to help me choose what hat to get (we chose the one on the_left)
Some of the s I took for my wife to help me choose what hat to get (we chose the one on the_left)
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This week's episode of JavaScript Air is canceled. I will be out of town and I didn't plan far enough in advance to have someone fill in for me. I've had this thing planned for several months and I only just realized last week that I leave before the normal show time. This also means that my normal #eggheadADay will miss a few days and I'll not be responding to emails, GitHub notifications, or AMA questions.

So, TL;DR: I'll be unavailable from June 1 - 4 (Wed - Sat). If you're interested in why, read on:

Where I'm going, and why JS Air is canceled this week

I'll be down in Southern Utah, trekking across miles and miles of desert with a few dozen teenagers dressed in 19th century pioneer clothing for four days. Sound like fun? We'll see! I think it will be an amazing experience.

me wearing an awesome hat with a superman logo

I'm a youth leader for 16 - 18 year old young men in my church (the technical term is "Priest Quorum Advisor"). My church has a rich pioneer history, so many of the congregations will go on what's called a Pioneer Trek for a few days. It gives them an opportunity to experience firsthand the faith and determination of the pioneers. It gives them a taste of what it was like for pioneers to cross the country with nothing but a handcart holding all of their worldly possessions they could fit and cary.

Records of the Mormon pioneer handcart companies are included in the Overland Travel database

I never went on a pioneer trek when I was growing up, so I'm excited to experience this myself. While I'm out there I will have just as much access to modern technology as the early pioneers had: none.

So, why cancel the JS Air episode?

I have yet to miss a broadcast of JavaScript Air. There were a handful of times that I couldn't make it to an Angular Air broadcast. With those times I generally had one of the panelists fill in. This took a bit of planning and a little training (you'd be surprised how much work it takes to put on one of these shows).

This pioneer trek was scheduled months ago. But for some reason I thought we were leaving on Thursday morning and fully expected to be able to make it to the broadcast. It wasn't until last week that I realized we're leaving Wednesday morning which means that I'll not be available for the show.

I didn't want to miss the webpack show, so I rescheduled that for next week. There wasn't enough time for me to find guests and schedule another show and ask a panelist to host a show for the first time. So I've decided to cancel this week's show.

My apologies! Maybe you can take the time you would have watched/listened to the show to learn more about your own heritage (or mine if you're interested) :-)

Edit: I decided to rerun a previous episode this week. If you heard it before you'll still learn something, I promise. It's one of my personal favorites and the most popular show: jsair.io/2016-06-01

See you next week!

P.S. Often in a trek like this one, participants walk in honor of someone specific. I will be representing Arza Erastus Hinckley who was among the heroes of the time who went out to help rescue suffering pioneers.

Kent C. Dodds
Written by Kent C. Dodds

Kent C. Dodds is a JavaScript software engineer and teacher. Kent's taught hundreds of thousands of people how to make the world a better place with quality software development tools and practices. He lives with his wife and four kids in Utah.

Learn more about Kent

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