An Inside Outside Work Day
Liz, braving the space beneath the front porch to retrieve some gardening supplies. Given how much she dislikes scampers, this really was a bold move for her.
Blog
Windy Morning in the Windy City
My joke is that I’m a guy who loves his wine and pasta. And there’s really not a chance that an errant breeze is gonna pick this guy up (imagine me patting my belly right now). But still, that worry is there – that I’ll get swept away, and lifted off the earth up into the sky.
Clickety Click
Since I’ve worked on a Mac, I’ve been a fan of their keyboards. But lately, I’ve been wondering what a mechanical keyboard would be like. This feels weirdly indulgent to me, even though my computer is a tool I use with great regularity. It just seems overkill. Maybe that’s what I’ve gotten so intrigued by the notion.
Plans for the Morning
As you can guess, I have plans but haven’t been super successful. Looking at these alarms, I like to think of myself as both an optimist and a realist.
Complaint Surprise
Ha – I was complaining so much, I forgot why I even posted this photo in the first place. This photo was meant to document the bad flooding, but on looking at it just now… I missed how lovely the reflected houses looked. Felt like a nice surprise.
Remembering Notre Dame
Six years later, I got to see it again when I visited Paris with friends.
Long Coding Day
I’m surprised to say that I made a lot of progress, given just one day. And that I got a lot of distance covered, with data being fetched from Twitter, stored in a local db, and then retrieved and displayed again. There are still gaps in my understanding, but getting ramped up again seemed to take a lot less time, this time around. Which feels really nice.
Partial Office Floor Demo
A few more tools in the mix. I now have a standard kit for pulling up floorboards. The sawzall keeps the pieces a certain length. The crowbar is for popping up each piece. The hammer is to pull out the nails. And the Channellocks are for when the nail heads pop off, and I need to try to pry the nail out manually.
Bright Lights
I guess at some point, in the last day or so, the city upgraded our street lights. I saw some of the lights (a block south of us) were using these newer, brighter bulbs – but it looks like our street just got the upgrade!
Laundromat Triptych
The odd thing was, the closer the machines were to the entrance, the newer they looked. Suggesting to me that most folks walked further in, and the interior machines got the most use and wear.
How to Avoid Catastrophe
“For the past seven years, we have studied near misses in dozens of companies across industries from telecommunications to automobiles, at NASA, and in lab simulations. Our research reveals a pattern: Multiple near misses preceded (and foreshadowed) every disaster and business crisis we studied, and most of the misses were ignored or misread. Our work also shows that cognitive biases conspire to blind managers to the near misses.”
Found Notes
The couple had some kind of “emotional support animal” certificate, and their dog apparently had some kind of anxiety thing as well? To the point where they had Xanax for the dog? I’m not sure what the deal was.
Taking Turns
“I pass a woman on the beach.
We both wear graying hair,
feel sand between our toes,
hear surf, and see blue sky.”
The Distant and the Near
All is not lost, if things don’t work out. I could always use this newer pair for driving and things that require distance. And use the other pair for closer work, like coding and whatnot. That just feels like such an old person thing to do, switch between glasses. It’s a little disheartening.
Digging Out Some Space
Another odd and slightly unsettling discovery: this bit of heavy plastic. At first it seemed like a small bag – but on tugging it, I encountered a decent amount of resistance. The more I pulled, the more plastic that was revealed.