Justin Vollmer

Weekly Notes 2026.07

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 11:15:00 -0500

Short entry this week; I’ve been busy with work/personal projects and I don’t have much to share…

Weekly Notes 2026.06

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 11:15:00 -0500

At long last, my schedule started slowing down this week! 🎉

Weekly Notes 2026.05

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 11:15:00 -0500

This week actually ended up busier than the last, though unlike last week it was primarily during office hours. 🤔

Weekly Notes 2026.04

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0500

This week’s update might be even shorter than last… with Winter Conference going on, my week was heavily consumed by work discussions and dinners. But I’ll make up for it with more photos than normal. 😉

Weekly Notes 2026.03

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0500

Shorter post this week… a lot has been going on, but mostly work-related, and therefore not much to share here…

Weekly Notes 2026.02

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 11:15:00 -0500

One full week of 2026 over already? 😐

App Defaults 2026

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 11:30:00 -0600

All the cool kids, or at least Robb, Matt, and Jan-Lukas are updating their app defaults, something that started in the blogosphere back in 2023. And I can’t resist jumping on a fun bandwagon when I see one, and so… here’s mine! (honestly not much has changed since 2023 and 2024)

Weekly Notes 2026.01

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 11:30:00 -0500

First weekly note of the new year! 🎉

I’m trying out a new format for my weekly notes this year; we’ll see how long it lasts. Instead of a giant run-on list mixing personal and professional, I’m splitting the two, and throwing in a “notable” section, which is for events, and may sometimes be omitted. Additionally, I think I’m going to try keeping track of my goal progress, though I may pull this into a monthly note in the future.

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 18:30:00 -0500

Happy New Year! 🎉

At dusk this evening the moon was bright in the eastern sky, and I decided to have fun taking photos of it. Here’s one of the better shots, taken with some old Minolta glass on my GH5. 📸

2026 Goals and Aspirations

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0600

I did a little review, and unless I’ve missed a post somewhere, I’ve only once written a public “New Year’s Resolutions”. I considered titling this post my “2026 Resolutions”, but that doesn’t exactly capture what I’m going for. Rather, these are intended to be goals and aspirations that I can measure myself against at the end of the year, and if I chose to ignore, change, or rewrite them throughout the year, then so be it. 🙂

2025 Year in Review

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 21:00:00 -0600

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” - Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings

That remains one of my favorite quotes. I’ve used it before, and decided instead of as the ending quote, it would be my opener. Anyhow… on to my year in review!

Another year in the books! As has become my yearly routine, I’m taking time to reflect on the major changes and areas of focus across different parts of my life, rather than walking through a purely chronological recap. 2025 brought some meaningful shifts - some intentional, some just… life happening? - and it’s worth documenting (if only as an exercise for myself).

Books I Read in 2025

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

I’ve seen a number of other bloggers writing year-end book reviews and commentary on what they read (shoutout specifically to Manu, SuperBetsy, and Jeremy Keith), and I decided to join the fun!

Weekly Notes 2025.51

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 20:00:00 -0500

Week in Review

It’s the last full week of the year! (Yes, I know, next week is 50/50… I will probably start my week numbering over for 2026 next week though.)
Sunday afternoon, after posting my weekly update, I headed home to visit family for the holidays.
Sunday evening I gave my sister one of her gifts: a cold brew coffee maker, which we promptly had to try. Spoiler alert: she loved it. 🎉

2025 Christmas Hymn: From Heaven Above to Earth I Come

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:00:00 -0500

Following my pattern from yesterday, for Christmas this year, I thought I’d take the opportunity to post the lyrics of one of my favorite Christmas hymns:

From Heaven Above to Earth I Come (LSB 358)

1 “From heav’n above to earth I come
to bear good news to ev’ry home:
Glad tidings of great joy I bring,
Whereof I now will say and sing:

2 “To you this night is born a child
Of Mary chosen virgin mild;
This little child of lowly birth
Shall be the joy of all the earth.

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 07:15:00 -0600

Merry Christmas to all!

The pictured ornament is a gift commemorating a project I contributed to at work, the 20|20, given out a few years ago. 📸

2025 Christmas Eve Hymn: What Hope! An Eden Prophesied

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 15:00:00 -0500

For Christmas Eve this year, I thought I’d take the opportunity to post the lyrics of one of my favorite Advent hymns:

What Hope! An Eden Prophesied (LSB 342)

1 What hope! An Eden prophesied
Where tame live with the wild;
The lamb and lion side by side,
Led by a little child!

2 A shoot will sprout from Jesse’s stem,
A branch from David’s line,
A Prince of Peace in Bethlehem:
The fruit of God’s design.

Weekly Notes 2025.50

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 12:15:00 -0500

Week in Review

It’s the last week before Christmas!
I was in-office every day this week, though my schedule became more focused on wrapping up small projects, cleaning, and preparing for the new year than usual.

Weekly Notes 2025.49

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 17:15:00 -0500

Week in Review

Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal, with meetings scattered throughout the day. As I did last week, I worked remote Monday morning, then drove to the office for some in-person work in the afternoon.
Tuesday evening was our R&D Christmas party at a local establishment. For the… fourth year in a row, I was on the planning committee, so I arrived slightly early to set up, and stayed afterwards to assist with some minor cleaning. The food and festivities were fantastic, and I think everyone had a good time! 🎄

Weekly Notes 2025.48

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 20:10:00 -0500

This past week largely saw a return to my normal schedule.
I worked remotely Monday morning, then headed to the office for some in-person meetings later in the day.
Monday evening as I prepared to leave work, a coworker asked me about my photo backup strategy, something I’d mentioned in passing before, but never in detail. She asked me to send her my recommendations, and instead of just a text, I ended up writing a blog post, which I published the next day. LINK

My Photo Backup Strategy

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 10:15:00 -0500

Yesterday afternoon in the office, one of my coworkers asked me (paraphrasing) how I back up my photos so that everything isn’t only in iCloud, and what I would recommend that she do. And, because I’m a geek (and a bit extra at times), instead of just sending her my recommendations, I decided to turn this into a full blog post that I can point others to in the future. 😁

Weekly Notes 2025.46 & 2025.47

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 15:10:00 -0500

This week I’m combining two posts into one (25.46 and 25.47), as I was a) delayed writing last week’s post, and b) it was looking short anyhow.
I mentioned last week that I was heading to a game night after my post, which I did! This time, instead of just games, we also did a puzzle (in only… 3-4 hours?).

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 07:15:00 -0600

Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃

The Scientific Classification of Christmas Music

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 15:30:00 -0500

Over lunch, some colleagues and I were discussing why Christmas music is its own genre, with specific sounds. For fun, I asked an LLM to generate a plausible but fictitious explanation, and a few seconds later, this amusing anecdote was born…

The Scientific Classification of Christmas Music

The Temporal Frequency Hypothesis

Christmas music constitutes its own genre due to a rare phenomenon known as Yuletide Acoustic Resonance (YAR). When temperatures drop below 45°F and decorative lighting exceeds 10,000 lumens in a given radius, the human ear undergoes a temporary recalibration that makes jingling bells neurologically indistinguishable from traditional percussion instruments. This is why the same person who despises tambourines in July will enthusiastically tolerate “Jingle Bell Rock” in December.

Weekly Notes 2025.45

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 13:30:00 -0500

Welcome to weekly note number 45 for 2025!
Not much out of the ordinary occurred in the office this week. I was in all 5 days, including a longer-than-normal Friday, due to me shifting some meetings that needed to occur but that I couldn’t find a place for to Friday.
Tuesday evening, a coworker that is primarily remote was in town, so a group of us went out to dinner in the evening at the venerable 208 House. I tried pasta this time, which didn’t disappoint, and finished off with gooey butter cake (yes, it’s a lot of sugar, but it’s also quite tasty!).

Weekly Notes 2025.44

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 18:30:00 -0500

This week’s post will be fairly short. I was in the office Monday - Thursday, with a slightly higher volume of meetings than normal.
Wednesday morning I met a coworker at a local restaurant for breakfast and to catch up, which was a nice way to start the day!

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 10:55:00 -0500

Apparently, moving projects between groups in GitLab can have unintended side effects on pipelines and deployments. Which makes sense, but wish I’d have thought of that ahead of time… 😬

Weekly Notes 2025.43

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 02:30:00 -0500

Welcome to my 43rd weekly note post!
I referenced in last week’s post that I was heading to play games with a colleague & her daughter (M) while they were in the area. Obligatory photo below. 🙂

Weekly Notes 2025.42

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 02:30:00 -0500

This week’s update might be even shorter than last week’s, although with a few twists!
I worked from the office all week, with a majority of my meetings taking place on Monday (other than standard cadence meetings throughout the week).
This week was a little quieter than normal, as a number of close colleagues were traveling for meetings…

Weekly Notes 2025.41

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 17:00:00 -0500

I think I’ll keep this week’s update short and sweet. 🙂
A majority of this week in-office was spent in user acceptance testing of the new systems. My time wasn’t needed quite as heavily as last week though, so I started to get back to a normal work schedule.

Weekly Notes 2025.40

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 16:30:00 -0500

After being gone all of last week, it was nice to be home and in a little bit more of a normal routine this week!
However… as luck would have it, I had actually moved my Fargo trip from last week forward, as this week’s schedule needed my attention in-office for training on some new systems.

Weekly Notes 2025.39

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:00:00 -0500

This week was one of my busier in a while, as I was in-office on Monday morning, then traveled Monday afternoon/evening to Fargo, ND for some meetings with colleagues based out of our office there.
Tuesday morning through Friday mid-afternoon was spent in meetings, some planned, some impromptu, and enjoying interacting in-person with team members that I normally only see virtually. I don’t have much to share publicly from my time in-office in Fargo, so insetad I’ll include some food photos! 🙂
Tuesday lunch: ThaiKota

Weekly Notes 2025.38

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 20:15:00 -0500

This week will once again be a shorter post, as a majority of the week followed my normal patterns work/life patterns.
I was in-office all week, splitting time between meetings and continued deployment work on the aforementioned ECAD tool.
Wednesday, a group from work visited Jonah’s Oyster Bar for dinner, where I enjoyed my standard spread of Salmon, New England Clam Chowder, and a delightful Old Fashioned.

Weekly Notes 2025.37

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 20:10:00 -0500

This week’s post is a bit shorter than the last few (which in general isn’t bad in my opinion).
I was in-office every day this week, and split my time between meetings & email (as usual), and continued work on deployment of the ECAD tool I referenced last week, which consumed a majority of my time.
On Monday, the RuneScape Catalyst League went live, and I spent some time (normally an hour or so) every night this week playing it, enjoying reliving the early stages of the game. It’s also really fun to see a lot of players all in the same areas at once, which hasn’t happened in years that I really recall.

Weekly Notes 2025.36

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 17:00:00 -0500

This week turned out to include a nice mix of work projects, local events, and some quality time experimenting with new tools. The weather has been all over the place though… enjoyably cool early in the week, then warming back up to obnoxious for September by Thursday.
Monday was a pretty standard day in the office. After work (and dinner), I decided to experiment with having Claude help me write a status update for my blog (not because I needed help, more because I was curious to see what it would do). I ultimately wasted way more time than it was probably worth, but it was interesting to see what an LLM thought a status update should look like, vs what I would normally post.
Speaking of my status update… it was actually about the weather. 😬 The weather was perfect Monday evening for a longer walk through the neighborhood, and I wanted to remember that when perusing my website in the future.

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 21:15:00 -0500

I decided to enjoy some of the last of the cooler weather for a while, and go for an evening walk… And was pleasantly surprised by a mostly-cloudless sky, and a bright full moon to keep me company tonight! 🌕

Weekly Notes 2025.35

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 12:45:00 -0500

This week turned out to be an interesting mix of holiday productivity, server upgrades, good food, and diving deeper into some AI tools (a phrase I never thought I’d write).
Since Monday was Labor Day here in the US, I had the day off, and spent it doing some small personal projects around the house, plus working on another work-related project that I’ve not had time for in the office (see the next point - and yes, I know it was a holiday, but it was a project that I both needed to spend time with and that I was enjoying experimenting on). Nothing too exciting, but it felt good to catch up on things I’d been putting off.
While I’m not going to go into detail on the work project, I did find it as an interesting excuse to attempt some “vibe coding” on a little one-off Java app to manipulate Excel files (reformatting columns, adding new data fields, combining data from other files into a final export, etc). I got the first part working with Apache POI, though I still need to finish the combination logic. I do appreciate how quickly I was able to get to a functional solution, and the code is readable/modifiable, but I’m not entirely sure how comfortable I am with the overall vibe-coding concept. It still feels potentially perilous to me.

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 13:10:00 -0500

The downside of getting my vehicle’s oil changed at a dealership is that I’m really tempted to start looking at new vehicles… A small test drive couldn’t hurt, could it? 🤔

Weekly Notes 2025.34

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 18:00:00 -0500

It’s been another week already? Well, I guess that means it’s time for another blog post!
Monday was fairly routine – nothing particularly noteworthy to report. Just the typical start-of-week meetings and catching up on projects.
However, Tuesday brought a fun change of pace as I headed down to the Farm Progress Show in Decatur with some coworkers. For those not familiar, it’s the nation’s largest outdoor agricultural event, and this year marked its 20th anniversary at the permanent Decatur site. The scale of the show is always impressive, and it’s fascinating to see all the latest innovations in farming technology, both from our company and competitors.

Weekly Notes 2025.33

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 18:00:00 -0500

This week was mostly back to my normal routine, with a few bright spots that made it memorable.
Monday started off on a high note when one of my coworkers brought in homemade blueberry pie to celebrate a team member’s birthday. There’s something about unexpected office treats that just makes the whole day better – and this pie was no exception!

Weekly Notes 2025.32

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 18:15:00 -0500

After a week away, this week it was back to the office, and a semi-normal schedule. Well… okay, half-normal. I had a coworker from Fargo visiting this week, which meant a few extra meetings, and a few extra meals out!
Monday was pretty standard, preparing for the week ahead and catching up on a few things I’d missed while out.
Tuesday we had multiple vendors meeting in for meetings, so I was barely at my desk all day. In the evening we took our coworker out to La Fiesta for dinner and drinks.

Weekly Notes 2025.31

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 11:15:00 -0500

The past week was both more and less eventful than normal. How’s that possible, you ask? Let me explain…
Sunday afternoon I packed up and drove to visit family for the week, doing a remote work/vacation hybrid.
Monday through Friday I spent working during the morning/afternoon, with lunches and dinners with family.
Monday evening my mom, sister, and I baked pizzas for the family, and experimented with a few different flavors. The traditional/meat lover’s was my favorite, but everything turned out well.

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 20:15:00 -0500

I once again decided to get my M4/3 camera out when I saw some interesting light & cloud patterns this evening. Instead of darktable, I experimented with using a 3rd party tool overlay in Apple Photos to process the file, which should be non-destructive. 📸

Weekly Notes 2025.30

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0500

I promise I’m not a food blogger, nor am I aspiring to be one, but I like to take photos of tasty food when I’m out, and I was out to eat with coworkers a few times this week, and so… this week’s update is going to include some food photos. 😂
Monday was overall a pretty normal day, not much to report.
Tuesday through Friday I had a coworker from Sunnyvale in town, for some internal meetings on tool consolidation and workflows. This meant a) a lot of our time was taken up in meetings, and b) you guessed it, some food!
Tuesday evening a local coworker and I took our Sunnyvale counterpart out to eat at The 208 House, one of my local favorites. After a long series of discussions during the day, it was great to relax and talk shop without as much pressure to settle on anything specific.

Weekly Notes 2025.29

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 20:30:00 -0500

Overall, the past week has been pretty standard, without much to write about.
During the week I largely worked on catching up after being remote for the previous week while visiting family.
I don’t use LLMs much, but a few times during the work week I experimented with various ways to use them, primarily around data summarization. One example: I had a PDF of a presentation that I wanted to summarize in an email, and instead of manually authoring the entire email myself, I opted to see how well an LLM do at converting it into a semi-formal email. And I must say, I was surprised. The phrasing didn’t feel like how I would word things at times (unsurprisingly), so I did a lot of tweaking prior to actually sending the email, but it did help breeze past the monotonous part of the work. Whether that’s good or bad I have yet to decide…
During my off-hours (evenings/weekend) I mostly worked on my family genealogy. I had received a large chunk of information from my great-uncle while in Ohio that I did not have incorporated into my database, so I spent probably 8-12 hours poring over the data and corroborating everything with records online when possible.
- For those interested - I use Family Search for most of my initial research, and Gramps as my software/database.
Speaking of which - if you’ve never worked on family history before - the amount of records that have been digitized that you can now access for free online is staggering.
The weekend of course also included yardwork, housework, and Divine Service on Saturday (all as normal).
And with that, we’re to the end of my week!

Weekly Notes 2025.28

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 13:50:00 -0500

This week we had a coworker from Fargo visiting our office, so Monday saw an earlier morning than normal in the office, anticipating their arrival.
For lunch we catered a meal to the office and had a lunch & learn to give the team an opportunity to learn more about a project that the visiting coworker has been involved with.
Monday evening was filled with preparations for travel, as I planned to visit family Tuesday - Sunday.
Tuesday morning I met coworkers for breakfast, then headed the office for a morning of meetings. By around 1p I was done, and then it was last minute packing, and off to Ohio!
I worked remotely from Ohio Wednesday - Friday, taking time over lunch to visit with family, and enjoying time together in the evenings.
Thursday evening we invited my paternal great-uncle over for dinner (brisket - yum!), and afterwards some reminiscing on family history, followed by a few games of Pepper (a Euchre variant popular where I grew up).
Friday evening our family went to Two Bandits for dinner & drinks (see pictures below), and afterwards my sister and I went for an extended walk (I thought it was going to be a little over a mile… pretty sure it was over two).

Weekly Notes 2025.27

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 20:30:00 -0500

This week’s update will be a little shorter than normal, as nothing overly eventful occurred.
I was in-office for the entirety of this week, mostly focusing on meetings and my standard workload.
Tuesday evening a group of coworkers and I went out for dinner and drinks to La Fiesta, one of our local favorites.
Wednesday evening I went out to another local restaurant, The 208 House, with a different group of coworkers who visiting our office from out of town.
Friday evening, after work, I got distracted for a while watching the Sorted Food channel on YouTube. I ran across their videos a few weeks ago, and find the team enjoyable to watch, and occasionally I learn a thing or two as well!
Saturday was a bit rainy, and so I spent most of my time indoors, split between some light gaming, working on family photos, and then Divine Service in the evening.
Sunday saw better weather return, and so my morning was spent outside working on yard work, followed by house work after lunch, a little more gaming, and continued photo restoration efforts.

Weekly Notes 2025.26

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 20:30:00 -0500

With a shortened week this week (thanks to Independence Day on Friday), my normal work week was both shortened, but simultaneously filled with a few extra meetings as everything was compacted into 4 days.
Monday through Thursday saw roughly my normal schedule of in-office work, without a lot to report.
Friday, being July 4th, meant time off, which I spent largely relaxing and working around the house.
I also picked up a new game, Northgard, on Friday, which I would continue to play occasionally throughout the weekend. I was looking for a different RTS that I hadn’t played before, and Northgard fit the bill nicely. It’s a different take on a strategy game than I’ve played before, and it’s a little hard to describe verbally… I’d strongly recommend taking a look at gameplay videos if interested to get a better understanding of how it works.
Saturday morning was once again consumed by yardwork… there hasn’t been a lot of rain in this area, but just enough to keep both grass and shrubs growing.
Saturday afternoon I continued working on scanning and restoring old family photos, and then went to Divine Service in the evening, followed by shopping for the upcoming week’s groceries.
Sunday then was left as my final day of rest prior to the start of the next work week. I slept in a little (which for me still means up before 8), and worked on housework, along with some additional gaming (Northgard) and continued photo work.
And with that, this week’s post is concluded, and it’s time to finish preparing for the week ahead!

Weekly Notes 2025.25

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 20:30:00 -0500

Monday of this week I opted to work remotely, mostly due to remote meetings, and a single in-person meeting at our manufacturing facility, which is closer to my house. It was a nice break, instead of traveling to the office.
Tuesday, after an early dentist appointment, it was off to the office, for a day largely filled with meetings. That was the story Wednesday through Friday as well, and my evenings were mostly spent either reading interesting articles online, or watching YouTube videos.
Saturday morning, before it got too hot, I spent time outside trimming shrubs, and catching up on some mowing that (if I’m being honest) probably needed done a few days ago, but… this is when I had time 🤷‍♂️
Saturday afternoon I worked on some odds and ends around the house, and then attended Divine Service in the evening.
Sunday morning I slept in, since I’d be to church the night before, and then spent time reading, exercising, and enjoying my coffee in the morning (not necessarily in that order!).
In the afternoon I decided I felt like playing a game, and ended up playing some Age of Empires II, which I haven’t played in years. It was a fun trip down memory lane. In the later afternoon/evening I called my family to check in, since it had been a few days since I called.
And now, after I post this, it’s off to finish preparations for the week ahead!

Weekly Notes 2025.24

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 20:40:00 -0500

Wow… it’s been another week already?
This week started out with me getting an opportunity at work to use a skill that I’ve not utilized in a long time: video editing. We had some onsite meetings later in the week, and my team members asked me to assist in editing two “hype” videos for upcoming product launches. So of course, I obliged! That took up most of my time Monday, and a bit of Wednesday.
Tuesday (the odd-day out in the above paragraph) was our department offsite, so instead of heading to the office I instead headed to nearby Bloomington for some team building activities, and of course, tasty food! (No, no pictures of it this time.) I was ostensibly on the team helping to prepare for and set up the offsite as well, but with everything else going on, my assistance narrowed down to transporting and setting up the tech for our over-lunch presentation from our department head. Overall it was a great day!
Wednesday was back in-office in the morning, finishing the second video. I headed home around lunch then, as I saw some bad weather approaching and decided I’d rather take calls from home rather than potentially having to sit out a storm in a restroom. Thankfully, none of the tornadoes touched down where I live (or at work), though there were at least three in our county!
I rounded out the week (Thursday/Friday) with mostly normal work in the office: a handful of meetings, and catching up on emails, messages, etc.
Saturday began a heatwave (well, at least what I’m calling a heatwave… low to mid 90s F) here in Illinois, and so my mowing happened much earlier than normal.
For most of Saturday afternoon I worked on scanning and editing old family photos and slides, and uploading them to both my own photo management system, and to my parents, so that we have two separate copies. In between, I of course added in laundry, dishes, and general housework (inside!).
Sunday morning started with Divine Service, during which we had the induction of our new DCE intern, as well as his wife, who will be serving at the Lutheran school associated with our church.
After church, it was off to do my normal grocery shopping, and then back home, where I once again began working on editing old slides. I enjoy both seeing bits of family history, and getting to “be a part” in some small by archiving and editing the photos.
And now… it’s almost time for me to call it a day, so I’ll post this and finish up some last minute chores! Till next time!

Weekly Notes 2025.23

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 13:50:00 -0500

I haven’t done this often, but I’m going to include a few photos in this update, because… why not? It’s all just food from my trip (which you’ll be reading about shortly). Anyhow… on to the update!

Monday morning I headed to ORD with some coworkers to fly to Fargo, ND for work. We were originally going to fly out of PIA, but the United flight was delayed enough by early in the morning that we decided to drive instead.
This was my first time parking at and navigating the external portion of ORD. Overall it went well, but I definitely prefer to fly into O’Hare, not drive…
Monday evening after we arrived we met our Fargo-based coworkers at Lucky’s 13 Pub, and had an enjoyable few hours catching up.

Rethinking My Note-Taking App Decisions

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 16:35:00 -0500

Intro

Over the past 48 hours I’ve once again been on a journey to rethink how I take notes. Why? I’ve actually been struggling to answer that question for myself, and I’ve boiled it down into a few potential reasons:

I’ve never felt fully at home in Obsidian ever since moving to it, even though I’ve been using it for over 2 years now.
I miss the seamlessness in my life of old Evernote, and constantly wish that there was an alternate that filled the same role in the same way.
I have liked Bear from the time I first saw it, and wish that I could convince myself that it fills all of my use cases.

What Do I Miss From Evernote?

I started using Evernote back in the early 2010s (I think 2014; I’ve not checked the exact date while writing this post), both as a way to store personal notes and documents, and for some work-related project notes.

Weekly Notes 2025.22

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 16:45:00 -0500

The first part of this week I spent working remotely while visiting family (meetings during the main part of the day, helping on the farm in the morning and afternoon/evenings).
Monday was my sister’s birthday (Happy Birthday Hannah!, and so in the evening I spent some time after farming celebrating with family and friends.
Tuesday was largely a repeat of Monday from a work + farming perspective.
Wednesday morning I started out the day helping do a final fill on the air seeder, and then preparing to travel home, along with a few meetings. For lunch my sister made cocktail meatballs (delicious!), and then all to soon it was time to get in my truck and start driving.
I drove into rain on the way home, and ended up spending about half of the trip with some level of downpour occurring. Thankfully it didn’t slow me down too much, and the fields definitely needed the water!
Thursday and Friday I was back in the office. Both days were spent catching up on some meetings and email from being gone, and then for lunch on Friday we went to a local town festival for some turkey sandwiches.
Saturday and Sunday were largely spent working around the house, catching up from being gone for nearly a week. I also ran into an issue with one of my photo backup solutions, and so I spent a non-trivial amount of time putting a workaround in place.

Weekly Notes 2025.21

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 21:00:00 -0500

Monday was Memorial Day for the US, and I mostly spent the day relaxing at home, not really working on anything in particular.
Tuesday through Thursday noon I was in office, with largely a normal schedule/workload. However…
On Thursday afternoon I headed to Ohio to visit family, and work remote for a few days while also helping out on the farm. Northwest Ohio was running slightly slower on getting crops in due to weather delays than is normally preferable, and the timing worked for me to be in the area for planting.
Friday and Saturday were spent mostly helping prepare the planter and seeder to run, and starting a few fields that had already dried to an acceptable level.
On Sunday I went to Divine Service with family, and then visited a local Mexican restaurant for lunch, after which it was (you guessed it) back to farming!

Weekly Notes 2025.20

Sun, 25 May 2025 21:00:00 -0500

I was once again in-office the entirety of this week, and it was a pretty standard schedule for me. Over the summer I’ll probably move back to remote on Fridays, but it hasn’t worked out yet.
Friday I started out the day with breakfast with coworkers at a local diner. The food was good, but honestly… I think my homemade breakfasts might be tastier!
I spent a large portion of the weekend rethinking my personal document management system. I’ve been scanning and storing digital copies of most paper documents in my life for over a decade now, but have not been completely happy with my setup for over a year.
- Initially I used Evernote for this purpose, and was fairly happy with the system, until I decided to migrate away from Evernote.
- I experimented with multiple options for the next couple of years, but never found one I liked, including Joplin (which worked ok, but felt like the wrong approach), DEVONthink (which was nice, but was iOS/macOS only, and rather expensive), and just the file system (which was not as searchable and ubiquitous as I wanted).
- Finally this weekend I settled on Paperless-ngx, running on my own server, accessed via Tailscale. I wish there was an offline/native app option, but for now it meets the easy search, ubiquitous, and easy maintenance requirements, so I’ll give it a shot.
When not migrating and filing documents, I also spent some time working on editing and restoring some older family photos. My current workflow is VueScan for scanning/ingest, a markdown file for keeping notes about each image, Affinity Photo for cropping + setting the created date, and Photoshop for final edits, and cleaning up the image. I’m not entirely happy with all of the tools, and have been looking for an alternate to Photoshop (including GIMP, which is how I normally process slide & negative scans), but I haven’t yet found anything that I like better.

Weekly Notes 2025.19

Sun, 18 May 2025 21:00:00 -0500

This week, I was in the office all five days, though I headed home after lunch on Friday to work remotely in the afternoon. I was fairly busy all week, but nothing specific stands out as something to write about…
…Until Friday, that is! I was slightly surprised (and then both humbled and grateful) to get mentioned by Shellsharks on Mastodon, in the announcement of Volume Sixteen of the weekly IndieWeb, Fediverse, and Cybersecurity Scroll! I’ve been following Shellsharks’ blog ever since I first found it a few months ago, and I’m honored to have been one of the posts linked to this week!
Also, Friday for lunch, in a first for me, I tried Chicken & Waffles at Dac’s Smokehouse. I’ve been to Dac’s many times, but as I’ve never had Chicken & Waffles before, I always ignored it and selected a burger or meat plate. However, for whatever reason it sounded interesting this week, and I must say, I’m glad I tried it! It’s not a dish I’ll probably order often, as it’s a little heavy, but the flavor was fantastic!
Saturday morning was spent doing yard work, followed mostly by relaxing in the afternoon/evening.
One way I spent some of my time was playing Voxel Tycoon again. It’s been almost a year since I really spent much time playing it, and I had fun starting a new game from scratch, and then slowly expanding tech trees, into new zones, and improving delivery throughput.
I also spent time Saturday working on scanning and editing some old photographs. I’m still not entirely happy with my workflow - it seems to me that it takes me more time to edit the photos than I’d like, but I’m too picky to just upload the scans directly to my server.
And on top of photographs, I also worked on some more of my genealogy on Saturday afternoon. Every couple of weeks I try to either add some new data that I haven’t gotten around to yet, or do general maintenance (add supporting documents, clean up locations, etc).
This weekend I also took a hard look at some of the projects in my Todoist lists, and spent time cleaning up tasks that were completed but that I’d missed checking off, adding plans where needed to move other projects forward, etc.
On Sunday, my pastor made a reference to Touchstone Magazine in his sermon, which caught my attention, as I’m always on the lookout for interesting articles and magazines. I haven’t chosen to subscribe yet, but I’ll probably pull the trigger soon.
Sunday has also been a day to do some laundry, and to do some cooking for the week ahead, including a tasty stir-fry that should last me until mid-week.

Tue, 13 May 2025 06:10:00 -0500

I decided to get my M4/3 camera out last night as a storm came through the area from the east, and took this photo of some of the clouds. And because I’m me, I took the raw image and processed it in darktable, instead of just using the jpg. 📸

Weekly Notes 2025.18

Sun, 11 May 2025 14:00:00 -0500

First off: Happy Mother’s Day to both my amazing mother, and all of the other mothers around the world!
This week’s notes will be a little on the lighter side. It’s a tad out-of-order, but as I type this, I’m working at my home Linux workstation (Arch, btw), which rarely sees much use these days. I should correct that…
A majority of the week at work was consumed by meetings, preparing for some data migrations, and resolving how various integrations would work.
Tuesday evening I enjoyed a dinner at Jonah’s Oyster Bar with some colleagues. As is becoming my normal when I visited, I enjoyed blackened salmon, and a nice Old Fashioned. If ever visiting the Peoria, IL area, I strongly recommend checking it out.
Friday I had flowers delivered to my mother for Mother’s Day. I’m not in person this year (which is not entirely abnormal), but thankfully it is quite possible to coordinate and have flowers delivered to surprise my mom!
Saturday morning was consumed largely by yard-work, mostly mowing and trimming.
Saturday afternoon & evening I focused heavily on chores around the house; laundry, dishes, planning the next week of meals, etc.
I attempted to watch a tv show or two over the weekend as well, but so far my mind hasn’t been in it.
And that brings us to Sunday (today)! So far today I’ve mostly been relaxing, working on odds and ends after I got home from church + grocery shopping.

Mon, 05 May 2025 12:55:00 -0500

For the last ~16 hours I’ve been trying to figure out a weird issue with some of the pages (/tags, /series, etc) that are autogenerated by Hugo for my site. Turns out maybe I shouldn’t upgrade Hugo versions quite so quickly…

Weekly Notes 2025.17

Sun, 04 May 2025 19:00:00 -0500

To get it out of the way… May the Fourth Be With You! (Happy Star Wars Day!) And now, on to the rest of my week!
Monday I started out the week in the office, mostly with some standard meetings. In the evening I started digging into a software-related issue for work, which I knew would consume most of my time Tuesday as well.
And I was right! Tuesday I ended up working remote, as that is one of the best ways to focus on a problem for me. I actually woke up early and spend a lot of the day focusing on the issue, since it was top of mind, and fairly urgent.
Wednesday I was back in the office, though still spending some time in software development, attempting to wrap up my work from Monday/Tuesday. I ran into an interesting issue where two peripherals are sharing a FIFO, and though I’ve read the datasheet and understand what’s occurring, I’ve yet to figure out how to remedy the situation. However, I finished the rest of the work, shelved everything on a branch, and moved on.
Thursday morning I had a planned meeting with a colleague from Germany that was onsite, which ended up blowing past the original time and extended nearly to two hours. All in all it was good to meet someone from a different part of the org though, and I think it was time well spent.
Friday I debated whether to work in-office or remote, and ultimately decided to go in. Most of the day ended up spent on small tasks, and I headed home slightly early (well, early for me, not by normal standards), as my brain was running out of steam it seemed.
However, Friday was also yard work day, and so after I got home I promptly mowed my yard before I was able to actually relax! 😂
Since my mowing was done, Saturday I spent the day working almost exclusively on side projects. I did quite a bit of work throughout the day scanning and editing old photos, and in between added in a little gaming (once again trying RuneScape: Dragonwilds, though it hasn’t really stuck yet), as well as began the effort of porting my Mastodon and Instagram posts to my website.
Speaking of data migration to my website: on Saturday, my obsession with consolidating old posts from social media to my website hit a critical point, and so I started out the day by migrating a majority of my old Mastodon posts as status updates. I then followed suit in the afternoon/evening by beginning to migrate my old Instagram posts as well (in the same fashion), and by the end of the day I had most of them ported over.
Sunday, after Divine Service and grocery shopping, I continued the work of migrating my Instagram posts, and by lunch the work was done. But of course, I couldn’t stop there…
Sunday afternoon I realized that I could also post the show notes, along with links to the Archive.org archived audio, of my now-defunct podcast that I did with my sister to my website. After about 30 minutes, I had that done, and now almost everything that I posted online since 2014 is hosted here. The only things missing are my videos (maybe I’ll post them, we’ll see), Facebook posts (I no longer have my archive), and Twitter posts (same - I didn’t keep the archive, unfortunately).
On Sunday I also started listening to a new (to me) audiobook: We are Legion (We are Bob), Book 1 of the Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor. It’s proving to be interesting so far, and I kind of wish I would have started it sooner!
And with that, my update for the week is done! 🙂

Sun, 04 May 2025 17:00:00 -0500

Continuing in the vein of making my website my “virtual home”, I’ve now also copied the 9 episodes of my sister and I’s now-defunct podcast, Sibling Summit, to my website, replicated as blog posts with shownotes + links to the Archive.org audio, all sharing a common tag.

Sun, 04 May 2025 11:35:00 -0500

After another hour of work, all of my historical Instagram posts are now also replicated on my website as status updates! At some point I’ll probably make them easier to browse, but for now the /status feed will have to do.

Sat, 03 May 2025 21:30:00 -0500

My goal for a while now has been for my personal website to be the primary source for anything I post online, past or present, and today I finally began adding historical entries. So far, all of my Mastodon posts have been copied over, and about half of my old Instagram posts. ☑️

Sat, 03 May 2025 16:40:00 -0500

… and done! I’ll re-enable syndication to Mastodon/Bluesky this evening.

Sat, 03 May 2025 15:30:00 -0500

I’m going to be pulling many of my older Mastodon posts onto my website over the next hour or so. I’ve disabled posting via EchoFeed while I’m working on this, so hopefully this doesn’t create too much spam. Apologies to anyone whose RSS feed gets inundated…

Fri, 02 May 2025 07:15:00 -0500

This morning I was thinking about how much I wish there was a full FOSS (or even proprietary but self-hosted) replacement for Evernote. I’m mostly happy with my current note-taking setup, but nothing has yet fully replicated the “everything app” nature of Evernote for me (notes, important emails, web clippings, pdfs, etc)…

Weekly Notes 2025.16

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 20:00:00 -0500

This week was my first week back in the office after spending the last week and a half visiting family.
Monday was mostly spent either in airports, in the air, or preparing to fly… for the first time ever, I flew home from visiting family in Ohio instead of driving, which meant I had to go through ORD on my way back to central Illinois. Overall the flights went well, but I definitely don’t enjoy sitting in airports. I was ready to be home.
Wednesday morning I had the pleasure of giving a tour of our ops center to our AWS reps while they were onsite for a visit. I’ve given tours off and on to various vendors over the past year, and was requested to step in once again. I find it fun and engaging to explain what our products do, and how they are manufactured.
Thursday and Friday I primarily spent helping a team at work track down a customer issue. I think by Friday evening/Saturday morning we came up with a good solution, and I spent part of the day Saturday doing testing from my work-from-home setup (I never fully tore down my test equipment from during 2020-2022).
Saturday morning, after coffee, it was time to start catching up on yard work, followed by work around the house. A downside of travel is definitely the number of things that pile up!
Over the weekend I also decided that I need to watch my diet more closely again. I noticed myself gaining a few extra pounds over the past two months, and I want to get back to what I consider a healthy, comfortable weight.
Sunday, after church and shopping, I decided to try out RuneScape: Dragonwilds. I’ve been an on-again/off-again player of RuneScape (now RS3) for years, and whenever Jagex offers a new game I normally at least try it out. I can see how Dragonwilds could be fun, but I’m not sure if it’s a game I’ll keep playing longterm. It seems to me to take longer to progress than I really have time for with my current workload.
Inadvertently, Sunday afternoon I also found a useful new piece of software. I was planning to use my trusty ScanSnap to scan and file mail from while I was gone, but the scanner refused to work right on my Mac. I could have attempted to use my Windows machine, but let’s face it, I try to use that as little as possible, and primarily for gaming if anything. So I did some research, and after a little experimentation, landed on using NAPS2 on Arch LInux, which worked like a charm. I may actually move to using my Linux laptop for this work going forward, as I’ve been unhappy with my macOS-based workflow for a while (ScanSnap -> File System -> DEVONThink).
… And, it looks like we might be getting some bad weather this week (hello Spring storms)… 😞

11 Years with Todoist

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 19:30:00 -0500

Today is an interesting anniversary for me, one that I never thought to keep track of until about a year ago. You see, on a fateful (but otherwise mostly forgotten) day 11 years ago, I began subscribing to Todoist Pro.

I don’t entirely recall at this point how I stumbled upon Todoist, though I do generally remember why. At the time, I was working for InSource Technologies as an embedded software developer, and I was finding that the amount of tasks & projects that I was keeping track of at work, along with those at home and at church (where I was heavily involved as a volunteer), were making me feel like I was constantly forgetting things.

Weekly Notes 2025.15

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 18:00:00 -0500

Monday morning was spent hiking with my sister and second cousin, followed by some meetings, and then some afternoon canoeing! I definitely did not pack appropriately for warm weather and canoeing, which means I was definitely wearing a polo and jeans. I’m sure I was a sight to behold!
Tuesday morning, my brother, sister, and I flew out of Charlotte to Fort Wayne, so that I could spend the rest of Holy Week with my family. Tuesday afternoon involved a little work, but mostly shopping for groceries for the remainder of my stay, and unloading my suitcase. My sister is (thankfully) kind enough to let me stay at her house when in the area, which is much nicer than a hotel (and more cost effective!).
Wednesday was pretty standard; remote work, combined with laundry. I normally prefer to not do laundry while traveling, but since I only used a carry-on for the trip, I had to make an exception.
Thursday and Friday included additional remote work during the day, combined with services in the evening.
Saturday was overall fairly chill for me. I went with my sister to color eggs with some family friends in the morning, and in the afternoon my dad and I worked to troubleshoot a computer at my sister’s business. It took us a while to find the issue, though eventually we realized that somehow a RAM stick had come unseated. Problem solved!
Saturday evening I also started showing my brother how to use Hugo to create a basic website. So far it’s mostly just a landing page, but I’m hopeful that he’ll eventually come to enjoy working on his site as much as I do mine!
Sunday was Easter, which meant being up very early for sunrise service! My sister (and mother) convinced me to sing in the choir, which my sister is the director of, which meant I had to be to the church even earlier than normal… but, it was fun! And afterwards, we got to enjoy an Easter breakfast!
Sunday for lunch we had smoked chicken, which was delicious (thanks mom & dad!), and then followed up with a fairly relaxed afternoon. I spent some time assisting with IT-related efforts at my parents’ and sister’s house, as I normally volunteer to do when visiting.
And that brings me to Sunday evening (now) as I’m writing this! I think we’re going to play a few games this evening, but otherwise we don’t have much planned.

2025 Easter Sunday Hymn: I Know That My Redeemer Lives (LSB 461)

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 04:30:00 -0500

This post is the fourth and final of my 2025 Holy Week posts, this time with one of my favorite hymns for Easter Sunday:

I Know That My Redeemer Lives (LSB 461)

1 I know that my Redeemer lives;
What comfort this sweet sentence gives!
He lives, He lives, who once was dead;
He lives, my ever-living head.

2 He lives triumphant from the grave;
He lives eternally to save;
He lives all-glorious in the sky;
He lives exalted there on high.

A Digital Home

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0500

Yesterday, in my post on Blogging Expectations, I mentioned the concept of a website as a virtual home, and wanted to expand on it.

I like having a singular place on the internet that I can point people to and say “This is Justin’s virtual home. You want to know what Justin is thinking, or what’s going on? Start here!” And I hope that’s been reflected in my blogging and my site design…

2025 Good Friday Hymn: Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted (LSB 451)

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 15:00:00 -0500

This post is the third of my 2025 Holy Week posts, this time with one of my favorite hymns for Good Friday:

Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted (LSB 451)

1 Stricken, smitten, and afflicted,
See Him dying on the tree!
‘Tis the Christ, by man rejected; Yes, my soul, ’tis He, ’tis He!
‘Tis the long-expected Prophet,
David’s Son, yet David’s Lord;
Proofs I see sufficient of it:
‘Tis the true and faithful Word.

Blogging Expectations

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 12:00:00 -0500

A few days ago I ran across the post Blogging Expectations by Kev Quirk, and a quick read told me that it was something I wanted to add my commentary to.

…Okay, I just glanced at the date on Kev’s post. “A few days ago” was over a week ago. Apparently my backlog of post ideas is taking longer to review than I anticipated.

Anyhow, today I re-read Kev’s post, and (of course) followed the links to the posts his thoughts were based on, and a few thoughts stuck out to me.

Operating Rules for Email Collaboration

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 16:00:00 -0500

Today, while following a blogger/IndieWeb rabbit rail (when I click on a link from someone I follow, and then promptly begin following other links to other sites that interest me), I ran across an excellent post by Naz Hamid on Operating Rules for Email Collaboration, and promptly decided I needed to link to it with light commentary on my site.

I’ve slowly been improving my email usage over time, since my tendency left unchecked is to be verbose. However, I’ve learned that verboseness should not be the norm when communicating via email, as it can cause your thoughts to be lost in the weeds. And now that I am using email much more than earlier in my career, learning to use it well is important.

2025 Maundy Thursday Hymn: Draw Near and Take the Body of the Lord (LSB 637)

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 15:00:00 -0500

This post is the second of my 2025 Holy Week posts, this time with one of my favorite hymns for Maundy Thursday:

Draw Near and Take the Body of the Lord (LSB 637)

1 Draw near and take the body of the Lord,
And drink the holy blood for you outpoured;
Offered was He for greatest and for least,
Himself the victim and Himself the priest.

2 He who His saints in this world rules and shields,
To all believers life eternal yields;
With heav’nly bread He makes the hungry whole,
Gives living waters to the thirsting soul.

Weekly Notes 2025.14

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 18:00:00 -0500

Sunday and Monday I had a chance to once again delve back into embedded software development. Nothing overly complicated, mostly data piping, but it was nice to have an opportunity to code again.
Wednesday morning was spent with two coworkers preparing for our summer offsite. I haven’t been heavily involved before, but it’s the same team that I’ve worked on Christmas events with in the past, so we are used to working together.
Wednesday evening and early Thursday were spent finalizing preparations for some upcoming travel. Thursday afternoon I hopped on a plane and headed south for a few days to visit family!
The final few days this week were spent visiting my extended family in the Carolinas. Some of my extended family lives in the Charlotte area, and so my entire immediate family headed down to visit over the weekend.
Friday was mostly spent working remotely, and in the evening I went with my uncle to pick up my sister at the airport.
Saturday, we spent the morning helping to prepare for one of my second cousin’s graduation party, and then went to her senior violin & viola recital in the afternoon, followed by the party at their house in the evening.

2025 Palm Sunday Hymn: No Tramp of Soldiers‘ Marching Feet (LSB 444)

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 15:00:00 -0500

For Holy Week this year, I had the idea of posting some of my favorite Lenten/Holy Week/Easter hymns. My plan is to post for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, though we’ll see how that goes. And so, without further ado…

No Tramp of Soldiers’ Marching Feet (LSB 444)

1 No tramp of soldiers’ marching feet
With banners and with drums,
No sound of music’s martial beat:
“The King of glory comes!”
To greet what pomp of kingly pride
No bells in triumph ring,
No city gates swing open wide:
“Behold, behold your King!”

Weekly Notes 2025.13

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 11:00:00 -0500

Saturday night/Sunday morning I didn’t sleep well, and had a few odd health symptoms. I ended up going to prompt care on Sunday, and was put on antibiotics.
Monday, though I was feeling overall fine, I worked from home. It happened to be a day where I had a substantial number of meetings, and I can take them just as easily from my home video conferencing setup as I can in the office.
The rest of the work week was mostly uneventful, thankfully. The weather dipped again this week, and by mid- to late- week it was again on the cooler side for Spring.
Saturday I finished and submitted my taxes, to ensure that I had everything completed before the deadline. This was one of the easier years in recent memory, thankfully!
On Saturday afternoon I also played RuneScape for the first time in a while, including a little skilling, and playing through the Contact! quest line. I eventually want to finish all of the in-game quests so that I can follow new storylines when they are released, but I don’t spend much time playing, so it’s going to take me a while…
Saturday afternoon/evening I decided to watch The Imitation Game (movie) about Turing and the Enigma machine. I’ve seen clips online for years, and finally dedicated time to watch the entire movie. Overall, I enjoyed it, and would recommend it to others!
While watching the movie, I also spent a little time fixing links on my sister’s website. I converted it to a static site for her a few months ago, but had not done an exhaustive review of internal links, and earlier this week I realized that some pages didn’t navigate correctly (thanks to a 404 seen on GoatCounter!).
I spent a little time looking for my old Facebook and Instagram posts today, with the hopes of adding them to my website. Alas… I no longer have the exports that I downloaded when I shuttered my accounts.
This afternoon I will probably mow my lawn, for the first time this season. The grass is getting just tall enough that it’s time to even everything out, and even though it’s still on the cool side, I’m ready for the lawn to look nicer.

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 14:40:00 -0500

About a week ago, I set up a new RSS feed in my feed reader, which is tied to a GitLab-based project I want to keep up to date on. So now, instead of via email, I can comfortably skim through release notes for the product in the same way I catch up on news, blogs, etc. 🎉

Weekly Notes 2025.12

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 21:00:00 -0500

This week is even lighter (on content) than last week!
Early in the week, I finished reading Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Overall, very interesting read, and I’d definitely suggest it to others!
At work, we released a new product documentation website that I’ve been lightly involved in, based on Docusaurus, a FOSS project from Meta that I’ve been pretty impressed with.
- We built this in a very similar way to how I deploy my own website: markdown files in a git repo, with a build & deploy pipeline on push to AWS (S3 + CloudFront). I’ve been pretty happy with the overall design!
Personally, I’ve spent some more time playing piano again this week, and even started working on learning some new songs!

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 19:35:00 -0500

I wish I still had a copy of my original MySpace and Facebook profiles and posts. Not because of anything overly interesting, but because I often feel like there is a whole portion of my youth and early adulthood that is just “missing”, aside from some photos, even though I was online. :(

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 09:15:00 -0500

Saturdays are (once again) perfect days for relaxing on the couch with a cup of coffee while updating my various computers & servers (both local and remote), and reflecting on the past week. ☕

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 06:30:00 -0500

It’s interesting, and somewhat unsettling, seeing photos from 5 years ago surfaced in memories. 5 years ago today I had recently pivoted to remote work for an indeterminate amount of time due to Covid-19, and apparently was working on improving my video conferencing setup, which is pale in comparison to the system I use when taking calls from home today!

Weekly Notes 2025.11

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 21:00:00 -0500

I don’t have much to report on from work this week. I was in-office every day, and ended up doing some remote work on Saturday/Sunday too to catch up on an issue.
Part of my work for the week included getting back involved in a software project that I’ve worked on historically, but have not had as much time for in the past few months.
Over the weekend, when not working, I listened to this month’s ATP Member’s Special, which was all about both why the three hosts have websites, and how they create their respective sites.
- I won’t spoil it, as this podcast is intended to be a perk for members who support the show, but I did have two takeaways: I have a website for similar reasons to the hosts, and my posting setup is simplistic by comparison!
On Sunday, I became curious to see if I could get screenshots of not only what this website looked like over the years, but also what other websites I worked on looked like. This involved using the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine, and I was surprised to find just how far back their database ran!
- I added some of the screenshots for this website to my About page, for those interested.
- At some point, I’ll post images of how I got started in web development, but I haven’t decided the place or the format yet.

Weekly Notes 2025.10

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 14:45:00 -0500

Wow… it’s already been another week? 😮
On Monday, I was scheduled to help some friends at a local church with some minor electronic repair after work. It took a little longer than I initially expected, but it was good to catch up, and it’s a skill I enjoy using.
The middle of the week was pretty normal, and there’s not really much to report. I was in-office every day for a combination of meetings and catching up on some projects.
Friday I worked remotely. I wanted to enjoy the last very nice day (for at least a little while), and so used my breaks to take walks around my subdivision.
Friday evening saw some pretty strong storms come through the Midwest; thankfully, nothing more than rain and wind near me!
Saturday was a pretty relaxing day at home, where I didn’t do much outside of reading and going for a few walks. The weather started cooling off, though it was still nice enough to be outside in a short-sleeve shirt.
- My book of choice on Saturday was Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. I heard about it earlier in the week, specifically because of Meta’s attempt to limit its promotion, which of course had the effect of making me curious about the book. I’m about half-way through, and so far it’s a captivating read.
On Sunday, by the time I left for church, there was snow on the ground! It’s amazing how fast weather can change in the Midwest this time of year.
For the first time in a long time, I decided to make stir fry on Sunday. I think it was a success… I enjoyed the taste, though I definitely wasn’t as fast at preparing the food as I thought I would be.
Over the weekend I also played piano for a little while at home. It’s been quite a while since I really did that either, outside of a few times when visiting family.

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 09:40:00 -0500

Over the last few days, I noticed that something seemed off with my website… zero traffic reported by GoatCounter (I use the analytics soley to see general trends and traffic), and some IndieWeb functionality didn’t seem to be working. Turns out I accidentally switched to the upstream version of my theme instead of my fork with custom tweaks a week ago. 🤦‍♂️ Fixed now!

Weekly Notes 2025.09

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 16:40:00 -0500

Another week, another weekly notes update!
This week I ended up working from home for 4 days. When I returned from my trip last week, I ended up catching Covid, and so stayed home until symptoms had resolved.
Ultimately, working from home worked out well anyhow, as many of the days I was in remote meetings. My home video conferencing setup is at least as good as in the office, and it’s more comfortable!
Late this week, the weather started getting nicer, and it looks like the trend will continue into the coming week, with highs potentially reaching 70F, which is almost shocking for early March.
Over the course of the week, and finishing on Saturday, I re-listened to Team: Getting Things Done with Others by David Allen and Edward Lamont. I am definitely not an expert when it comes to GTD, but I’ve found that as my roles and responsibilities continue to change, the concepts taught in the original Getting Things Done book, along with the team-based corollaries discussed by David and Edward in Team, are a valuable way to keep myself sane, and keep projects on track.
- At some point, I would like to do more official training. I feel like my self-training has kept me afloat, but that there are practices I’ve struggled to put into use that an official training or seminar might help with. I also may just be idealizing the concept of training in this case, so… 🤷‍♂️
A good portion of Friday, and this weekend, was spent catching up on emails that from when I was traveling, and that I was unable to finish dealing with over the past week due to meetings.
The weekend has also included a lot of work around the house, cleaning, and getting back into the swing of things here at home.
I briefly looked at the app Tapestry this weekend, from the team at IconFactory. I like the concept, but haven’t decided where it fits into my workflow. For Mastodon I prefer using Ivory (I think), and I already have an RSS reader, though I do like the timeline-based approach. 🤔
Today was also the switch to daylight saves time, which means I’m running on slightly less sleep than I prefer…

Sat, 08 Mar 2025 15:20:00 -0600

There are a handful of books that I find myself rereading with some consistency, both to glean new ideas I’ve missed in previous read-throughs, and to refresh myself on some concepts. Getting Things Done by David Allen has been one such book, and it looks like Team by David Allen & Edward Lamont will be another!

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 06:10:00 -0600

A memory surfaced by Immich reminded me that today, 17 years ago, I got my 2nd Mac, and my first MacBook Pro! 😳 How time flies… I used that computer all throughout college!

Weekly Notes 2025.07 & 2025.08

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 18:00:00 -0600

I originally had this written up as two separate posts, but ultimately opted to combine it into a single update (you’ll see why shortly - I think it works better as one large update).
Monday I spent mostly in airports, and flying… I decided a few months ago to take a week-long trip to Brazil to visit some friends. The trip was supposed to start on Sunday, but inclement weather caused my flights to be delayed enough that I didn’t make the flight to Brazil. So, I went 24 hours later!
Tuesday through Saturday morning were spent at Maresias, a lovely city and beach a few hours away from São Paulo. My time was largely spent enjoying the wonderful environment, amazing beaches, delicious food, and fantastic company! For the first time in a while, I almost completely checked out of work (including email/Slack).
On Saturday, we returned to São Paulo, and spent time visiting my friends’ family, and the local community.
Sunday and most of Monday were spent in central São Paulo, which included shopping, more amazing food, lots of traffic, and even a Tchaikovsky concert!
And then, all too soon, it was time to return to the US. My flight left around 10p local time, and I arrived back in the States early Tuesday morning, then flew back home in the later morning, arriving at my house by ~11:30a.
Tuesday afternoon I spent attempting to get back into the swing of work, and catching up on emails and conversations.
Wednesday and Thursday were spent in the office, with a combination of meetings, work, and continuing to catch up on things from my time away.
On Friday, I only had one meeting, and so I opted to stay home. I also had some work that required dedicated time and thought to complete, and working remotely has been the best way for me to actually make time for such an effort.
Saturday and Sunday were spent almost entirely at home (with a quick walk as weather allowed), mostly relaxing, with some light housework included.
- I rewatched Black Blood Brothers on Saturday. I’m not really into anime, but this show I enjoy for some reason.
- On Sunday I was debating what to watch, and recalled that Beast Games was on Amazon Prime. I’m not a huge MrBeast fan, but I was curious to see what the show was like, and ended up watching the entire season.

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 12:25:00 -0600

Unfortunately, after some personal travel over the last 2 weeks, I managed to get sick. But on the positive side, I now have a good excuse to relax this weekend, and I’m loving using my iPad as a lightweight computing device while sitting on the couch!

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 10:30:00 -0600

It’s really nice to be able to take a day to work remotely every once in awhile, and focus on a specific problem with fewer interruptions. Not that I don’t love my coworkers, but sometimes I’m more productive at home!

Weekly Notes 2025.06

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 13:15:00 -0600

Not too much to report on this week… my time at work was focused on two primary projects
Project #1: ensuring that a device intended for limited commercial release is successfully being manufactured. There were a few issues that I didn’t really have time to troubleshoot until within the past week, but by week’s end everything was up and running 🙂
Project #2: tool selection and working groups for the broader organization. We had a number of national and international colleagues in this week to kick off some tool selection and migration activities, which consumed a large portion of the week. I think we have a path forward though!
I also got to meet some colleagues that I’ve only worked with remotely before now, and go out to dinner with them on two separate occasions. Overall, it was a good experience, and it’s good to put a personality to a face on my computer!
This weekend has been fairly uneventful - the weather is turning colder this week, so I enjoyed a little time outside clearing off snow before everything freezes again.

Weekly Notes 2025.05

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 21:00:00 -0600

The weather continues to shift in Central Illinois, sometimes daily. Monday had highs in the 60s, followed by highs in the 30s-low 40s for the rest of the week. And next week looks to be even cooler, with highs in the 20s-30s. I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much, as it is still Winter. 😬
My schedule calmed down somewhat at work this week, which was good, because I had a few projects that I needed to be able to devote working hours to.
There have been a number of meetings and discussions at work over the past week (and extending back to early this year) regarding tool consolidation and/or selection for a number of disparate teams within the organization that will be working more closely together in the future. In my current role, I get the opportunity to speak into some of those decisions, which is interesting, but also somewhat time consuming.
I’ve been wanting to set up my iPad to be able to function as a light-weight computer replacement while traveling. After an hour or two of work over the weekend, I think I a) like most of the apps that I’ve set up with, and b) have a working solution (combined with a keyboard) for my use cases. I’ll be able to answer email + messaging questions, but that’s about it.
I really like using emojis as part of my pattern for written communications, and the fact that I don’t have Rocket on my iPad is kind of really bothering me. I have a dedicated emoji button on my keyboard, but it’s really not as seamless as just typing : and typing the name of the emoji I want.
I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned VueScan on my blog before… I primarily use it for scanning old photographs, but it also has come in handy for general purpose scanning with my flatbed scanner as well. Today (Sunday) I had a document to scan and submit to a website, and it was an awkward form factor which didn’t work with my ScanSnap, and the combination of VueScan plus my (very) old flatbed worked fantastically!

App Selection

This started out as just a set of bullet points, but quickly became too nested, and so I spun it out into a separate section…

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 11:30:00 -0600

I think I now have my editing and publishing workflow duplicated on my iPhone & iPad (currently writing from my iPad) - Working Copy for git + barebones editor, Obsidian for long-form authoring. 🤞

Weekly Notes 2025.04

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 20:00:00 -0600

The work week for me was very busy, but most of my time was spent planning for the part of the org/team I work with, so there’s not much to share.
We had some international colleagues in town this week, so in addition to my normal work, I had some meetings with them to work through issues that have come up in their territories.
Thankfully so far I’ve avoided any of the illnesses that seem to be floating around! I’ve had a LOT of coworkers out sick in the last week or two.
I apparently have nearly hit my GitHub storage limit (500MB?). I think that it’s due to the cache of my deployments being saved, but I’ve not spent much time investigating yet.
Friday I worked remotely, as I had a lunch scheduled with a friend in town that I don’t get to catch up with as often as I’d like. It was great sitting down for an extended meal, talking about each other’s lives, and the broader community that each of us are involved in.
The weekend involved a bit of work, which I’ve been trying to avoid. However, there is a project I needed to make headway on, and Saturday/Sunday were the best times to do it. I also got to spend some time soldering and debugging software, both of which I enjoy but have been doing less of recently.
On Sunday, I ran across Kev Quirk’s question on month in review posts, which got me thinking… does anyone find my weekly review posts interesting?
- My immediate thought is that a) I hope someone does, although if no one does, it’s not really something that bothers me, because b) the posts are only partially for others. They’re also a public journal of sorts for myself, so as long as I think they’re important, it’s worth me writing them!
- As I also told Kev in an email, I do genuinely find other’s posts interesting, not only to see what others are up to, but also because I enjoy seeing what tools they are using, etc. It’s another place for me to learn.
Sunday also marked my first full month with Kagi search. I was curious exactly how many searches I used in January, and was slightly surprised to see that for the month I was at 949 searches. I didn’t actually start using Kagi until a few days into 2025, but that’s an average of around 30 searches a day.
- I’m actually not sure if I’m surprised that it’s that high, or that it’s that low. I know I use search a lot, which is why I instantly went for Kagi’s unlimited plan. I should note, that does include searches from my computer(s) and my phone.

Weekly Notes 2025.03

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 20:15:00 -0600

This year was Precision Planting’s annual Winter Conference! I had very little to do this year, but attended a number of the sessions on Tuesday, and then met with colleagues from other offices + vendors & suppliers throughout the rest of the week!
Some of the meetings included dinners out, which means I had the opportunity to try a few restaurants I’ve not been to before: Joe’s Original Italian & Martini Bar in Peoria and the newly-opened 208 House in Morton, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed!
- Both restaurants had unique takes on Old Fashioned’s that I greatly enjoyed. I don’t recall the name of either, but Joe’s was some like “Rye Not Coffee Old Fashioned”, and I think The 208 House had an Apricot Old Fashioned? Either way, strongly recommend both, if those are flavors you might enjoy!
I attempted to switch a few coworkers to Kagi this week. I’ve been using it nearly exclusively for almost a month now, and I continue to be thoroughly impressed with it!
I spent the weekend largely relaxing, and taking some down time after a fairly hectic schedule during the week.
One of the topics I spent time on this weekend was game design - I’ve been hooked on a few different YouTube channels with game-design-specific content, and while I don’t think I’d ever devote much time to it (as it’s a very time-consuming project), some of the concepts are interesting to me!
I also managed to get distracted watching some more of The Office again… I’m now through Season 5.

An Amusing Incident at the Office

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 05:35:00 -0600

I’ve shared this story with a few coworkers and family members, and decided to write up a short post to share with y’all as well. I’ve left out the names of those involved, purely out of a respect for their privacy, and used only titles as descriptions for the story.

As a part of my current job, it is fairly common for me to have meetings with various vendors, and this past Thursday was no exception. As I was walking between buildings to get to a meeting with a vendor that had stopped by our offices while in town, I met one of my coworkers, the IT manager, and we stopped to chat briefly.

Weekly Notes 2025.02

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 14:45:00 -0600

I enjoyed reading Manu’s On the importance of friction this week. I don’t really intentionally create friction anywhere in my personal life, but I am somewhat intentional with where I introduce automation.
I’ve been working on restarting my daily notes habit in Obsidian. I slacked off some during the holidays, and it’s taking effort to remember to jot down my thoughts. I mainly do it for the ability to review what was occurring at a later date, as life can get insanely busy at times.
This weekend, and into early next week, are very cold. Not the coldest I’ve ever seen, but with windchills that definitely make me appreciate the indoors!
I spent some time Saturday working on distant portions of my family tree. I enjoy continuing to make progress as I have time, and it’s a project that’s easy to pick up for an hour at a time.
I keep thinking that the idea of doing a simple Roguelike game for fun & learning sounds interesting, and I spent some more time poking at the idea on Saturday. But I didn’t make much progress…
Since I’m spending time indoors, I spent a bit of time this weekend looking into markdown-based documentation solutions (web-based). No idea where I’ll land, but the top three contenders currently are:
- Hugo with the Hextra theme, which I’m quite familiar with, and have been playing around with for over a month now.
- Docusaurus, which is completely new to me. It takes the static site approach as well, but has some added niceties over Hugo, though with some added complexity in design.
- Quartz, which looks very similar in many ways to Obsidian Publish (and, to be fair, that’s how I found them - I was looking for a similar offering).
I very briefly played with adding link posts to my website, and promptly deleted them. The concept didn’t work as well as I thought it might. 😂

Weekly Notes 2025.01

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 18:30:00 -0600

I decided to try out weekly notes again this year, and attempt to find a happy balance between whatever caused me to avoid them by mid-ways through last year, and the alternative, which is going for months at a time without posting, if I’m not careful. 😂

This was the first full week back at work after the holidays. I worked Jan 2/3 as well, but neither day felt particularly productive, as it was the first time seeing coworkers since before the break.
Jan 6 marked the 11 year anniversary of my website. I have some ideas for a blog post around recent changes, but it’s still on the back-burner.
Jan 7 marked my 20 year in-game anniversary for my oldest RuneScape 3 account. I don’t play very often anymore, but I logged in long enough to pick up my 20 year cape. 🎉
I got obsessed with planning out how to manage my photo library. I think I’ve settled on Immich as my primary location, with Backblaze backups, as it gives me better overall control than Synology, and allows me to store files locally. I like iCloud Photos in general, but I get annoyed at some of the behavior (especially around uploads), and I like having multiple copies of things I find important.
It’s snowed a few times, so I’ve added “shovel driveway” to my workout routine. 😂

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:30 -0600

Happy New Year! 🎉

2024 Year in Review

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:50:00 -0600

I know that they say time flies by faster as we age, but this year I’ve noticed it to be true more than in recent memory! For my yearly review, I’m once again attempting to highlight major changes or areas of focus in my life, instead of doing a chronological review of the past year.

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 06:05:00 -0500

Merry Christmas! 🎄

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 19:25:00 -0600

Looks like an evening of gift wrapping ahead, with the Christmas stylings of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops for accompaniment! 🎶

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 08:30:00 -0600

Steaming mug of coffee: ☕ ☑️
Christmas lights on and twinkling: 🎄 ☑️
Run weekly server updates… ⏳

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 07:05:00 -0600

It’s completely normal to reread someone’s blog post and decide to write up a post of your own in response while sipping your morning coffee before work, right? 🤔

You’re a Blogger, Not an Essayist

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 07:00:00 -0600

Earlier this week I ran across You’re a Blogger, Not an Essayist by Barry Hess, and a couple of points stuck out to me. Here are my thoughts inspired by Barry’s excellent blog post.

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 06:35:00 -0600

Random idea of the morning… I wonder if distcc works reliably/robustly over Tailscale? That would give me some additional options for laptops in the future, prioritizing battery life/portability over built-in CPU/RAM specs… 🤔

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 20:35:00 -0600

Better late than never, this evening I finally finished decorating for Christmas! 🎄 Now it’s time to sit back, relax, and sip on a festive tea while enjoying the lights. 😊

The Colbert Questionert

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 09:00:00 -0600

I enjoyed reading Hyde/Lazybear’s answers to the Colbert Questionert earlier this week, and thought it would be a fun little exercise + post for my Saturday morning. And so, without further ado…

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 20:30:00 -0600

I learned this evening (via DTNS) that 20 years ago this month, Merriam-Webster chose “blog” as its word of the year. Interesting to read articles from that time, and see how much has changed!

On Blogging and Substack

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 19:15:00 -0600

“If you care about the web, get off social media platforms and get yourself your own piece of digital real estate.” - Manu

You Should Have a Website

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 20:45:00 -0600

You should have your own website. Why? For many reasons, of course, but partially because you control your website, it can be a fun undertaking and a challenge, and you will feel better if you have control over your technology, among other reasons that Nora Reed discusses in A Website Manifesto.

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 09:45:00 -0600

I’ve been following recent updates from Simon Støvring as he developed a new fun macOS app, and it’s finally out! If you’d like to add some holiday cheer to your Mac, check out Festivitas! 🎄

Seconding the Call to Blog More Often

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 19:55:00 -0600

Adding my second to Cole’s call to blog more often, plus my commentary on his post. Blog more often, and blog consistently! Your readers, such as myself, will greatly enjoy and appreciate it!

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 19:02:00 -0600

Most people: The long Thanksgiving weekend is a time to relax, eat, & enjoy time with family.

Me: That all sounds great, but maybe I should migrate my site to a new host & new CDN during that time too! And completely change the build process! 😂

App Defaults 2024

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 18:40:00 -0600

An update to the apps I use in across multiple categories, based on Hemispheric Views episode 097: Dual of the Defaults.

Truth Is, I Don't Need an Excuse

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 19:40:00 -0600

“I fancy a change… and truth is, I don’t need an excuse. I’m switching just because I want to.” My thoughts on Kev Quirk’s recent blog post regarding switching to Android…

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 14:52:00 -0600

Completely by accident, my last test worked… but the rules weren’t right. Now I should be blocking metadata for only status posts when syndicated. 🎉

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 13:55:00 -0600

After a lot of trial and error, I think I have my settings correct so that upon syndication, this post will include a link, but won’t include an image or metadata… 🤞

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 14:10:00 -0600

Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃 So far today I’ve baked pies, enjoyed a delicious lunch with family, and played piano duets with my sister. And shopped (online). What’s next? 🤔

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 16:05:00 -0600

I’m disabling original post link inclusion on my syndicated posts for now… I strongly prefer to include the link back to my original post long term, but until I figure out how to disable link previews, it’s making for a poor reader experience.

That being said, if anyone has a recommendation of how to block link previews on social media only, for a Hugo site hosted on the DigitalOcean app platform, I’d love the input!

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 14:20:00 -0600

Finished re-listening to The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson this afternoon. I love reading his books, but I also especially enjoy the audiobook narration by Michael Kramer!

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 11:20:00 -0600

Step two of setting up POSSE-style microblogging… connect status updates to Mastodon via EchoFeed. Check, Check, is this thing on?

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 09:55:00 -0600

Assuming everything is hooked up right, thanks to EchoFeed, I should now have cross-posting from my website to BlueSky working… This marks my first attempt at POSSE, posting updates to my own site, and syndicating to other platforms.

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 19:52:00 -0600

Sometimes it’s really hard for me to gauge if I’ve spent a weekend (or just a day off) “well”. In the back of my mind are always the innumerable projects (both personal and professional) that I could be working on, and when I don’t make noticeable progress on one or more of them, it’s easy to feel as though I’ve failed, even though I know that perspective is skewed…

Bluesky and Enshittification

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:00:00 -0600

My thoughts on Cory Doctorow’s recent Pluralistic post regarding Bluesky and Enshittification, POSSE, and owning my own content.

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 20:12:00 -0600

I’ve commented on this to coworkers before, but I’ve once again found a case where my past self spent a little extra time designing an abstraction that is allowing my current self to very quickly and easily make some software changes to support a new hardware revision. Thanks, younger Justin! 🎉

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 15:53:00 -0600

It’s still very much a work in progress, but I’ve completed the first major change to my website since 2020! The work included migrating to a new theme (which I promptly forked to add changes to), adding a new content type (which I hope to eventually have auto-post to Mastodon), and doing a substantial cleanup of posts, folder structures, etc.

😌

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 15:22:00 -0600

The conversion of my site to the Bilberry theme is complete! And I once again have favicon support! I forgot to finish that work last night, and only realized once I pushed and merged my changes… Oops!

Site Redesign

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 13:46:02 -0600

After weeks (or maybe even months) of consideration, I decided to migrate my website to a new theme, and add some extra functionality.

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 14:30:00 -0500

I migrated this site to use the Bilberry theme, which includes support for statuses. And so, this is my obligatory test of that feature! :)

Removing giscus Comments

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 10:30:00 -0500

Back in January, I added giscus comments to my blog, as a potential way for readers to comment and react to my posts. At the time, I didn’t necessarily have expectations that anyone would, and that has borne out over the past few months.

And so, I’ve decided to bring the giscus experiment to an end. It’s one extra thing my website doesn’t need, and as I continue to reconsider how I use my website, removing cruft and visual clutter is high on the list of potential improvements.

Quiet Weekends

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 16:30:00 -0500

As I’m typing out this blog post (in Obsidian, if you want to know), I’m sitting quietly in my living room, listening to the occasional sounds of vehicles passing by, and sipping on my final mug of coffee for the day. It’s Saturday, and while that has meant a day off from work for years, and often a day to relax, I’ve increasingly turned it into a day where my only interaction with others is virtually, and even that is limited.

Bad Days in History

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 19:05:00 -0500

A couple of weeks ago, while browsing through the book selection at my local Barnes & Noble (yes, they still exist!), I ran across a type of daily reading that I’ve never considered before: Bad Days in History: A Gleefully Grim Chronicle of Misfortune, Mayhem, and Misery for Every Day of the Year. My normal choice for daily reading is generally either a devotional, or some kind of thought-provoking or inspirational reading, so I picked the book up with the intent of a quick glance… but definitely not a purchase.

My Software Stack is (Mostly) Old Too

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 05:45:00 -0500

After reading My software stack is old by Manu (Manuel Moreale), I became curious about the age of the software I use day in and day out as well. So, I spent a few minutes making a note of what tools I use daily, and found that I have an interesting mix of tools from basically two distinct time periods.

I’m writing this post presently in Obsidian (2020), which replaced Evernote (2000) a few years ago, and is the newest software I use daily. I’ll then be publishing to my website via Hugo (2013).

Monthly Notes 2024.05

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 18:00:00 -0600

Wow, it’s already been a month since I last posted here (or, well, nearly a month - I’m rounding up slightly).

As you’ll notice if you’ve followed my blog within the past half-year, previously I was attempting to do one post a week, my “Weekly Notes” series. That started to fall apart in April, and in May completely collapsed. Why? Probably for a few reasons. First of all, I realized that I often only have one or two really interesting things to mention a week, and that doesn’t feel like a good post at times. Secondly, there are weeks when I’ve been busy enough with work that I really don’t want to write on the weekends about what I’ve been up to, as it boils down to “work, and related topics I won’t discuss publicly”. And third, if I’m going to write, I want something interesting for at least friends and family to skim, if not the broader internet.

Weekly Notes 2024.17 & 2024.18

Sun, 05 May 2024 12:00:00 -0600

Once again, this is a combined post! I didn’t have much occurring during the week of 2024.17 noteworthy, outside of work.
This past weekend, when I would have normally posted my weekly notes, I was busy working to finish off some projects that were piling up both at home and in the office. So I held off, instead of forcing myself to write.
This week was shortened for me; the first 3 days were in-office, then I was traveling to visit family (more on that ahead). The trip itself was long, but I finished off a re-listen to a book I was working on, so the time flew by relatively quickly.
My primary reason for traveling? This weekend, I had the joyful privilege of attending the wedding of two of my cousins! My cousins (brothers), Seth & Josh, married sisters (Katie & Gloria), on the same day, in a joint ceremony. It was great to be able to celebrate with them, and congratulate them as each couple begins their new journeys in life together!
Today (Sunday) also included a special event: Lori, the director of the choir at the church I was raised in, retired after 33 years, and many former choir members (including myself), joined in to surprise her, and celebrate her service in song during the Divine Service, and again afterwards at a potluck. 🙂

Read

Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock

Listened To

The Talk Show With John Gruber: 399: ‘I decapitated the MacBook Air’, With Federico Viticci

Weekly Notes 2024.16

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 20:00:00 -0600

At this point, I should just summarize every week this Spring with “work is very busy, and I haven’t done much besides that of note.” 😂 (Of course, that’s boring reading though, so I won’t do that.)
I continued my meal planning this week, which included running across a tasty and easy Chili recipe. I was tempted to make it again next week, but I probably should have some diversity in my meals.
As you’ll see in my Read section (below), I went on a kick reading how others use OmniFocus, and I pulled a few ideas from Scotty Jackson’s article that I’ve implemented into my own system.
This weekend, I removed my /now page from my website. It was a fun idea, but I found updating it tedious, especially when I’m busy. And a /now page that doesn’t get updated isn’t particularly useful…
I also spent some time playing Voxel Tycoon, a game that I’ve played on and off for a few months. Something about this type of strategy game can be very fun for me.

Read

Listened To

ATP Insider: Computing Origin Stories
Mac Power Users: 740: “From The Beatles to The Libertines,” with Lee Garrett

Watched

The Beekeeper (2024)

Weekly Notes 2024.15

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 20:00:00 -0600

The past week was pretty busy at work, with a combination of meetings, project kickoffs, and Spring beta testing/troubleshooting. And this weekend, as I publish this update, I’ve been crunching on a project as well, so I don’t feel like taking much time to write…
I did, however, make a bit of a change to something personally though… For the first time in years, I designed a weekly menu, and actually roughly stuck with it. This got me both purchasing a few foods I am not used to at the store, and also being a bit more conscious of exactly what I was eating day to day.
Speaking of changes… During the week, for some reason, I got very annoyed at Todoist and am back on OmniFocus. I’m not sure if it’s a coping mechanism for when I feel overwhelmed, or if there are features of OmniFocus I was missing in Todoist… 🤷‍♂️
I’m also strongly considering changing the format/content of these posts. I enjoy having a short outline of what I’ve done, interesting things, etc, but the time commitment to write it up discourages me if I’m at all busy. And there are times of my life when I am, in fact, pretty busy. Perhaps I’ll switch to just notable podcasts vs every podcast I listened to?

Listened To

Issues, Etc.: 1033: The Teaching of Limited Atonement - Dr. Jordan Cooper
Mac Power Users: 739: Checking in on Freeform

Watched

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)

Weekly Notes 2024.13 & 2024.14

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 20:00:00 -0600

The last week in March (Holy Week), I was traveling for both work and to visit family, and didn’t take the time to write up my weekly notes. So this post is going to include two weeks.
On the Wednesday of Holy Week, I was in the office for a few hours, then headed to Ohio to visit family, and to do some heads-down remote work. I’ve found that for certain projects, I really need to have dedicated time away from the office to focus if I want to complete the work in a reasonable amount of time…
Thursday through Sunday were a mix of church services for Holy Week (which included some of my absolute favorite hymns), along with a fair amount of remote work, in an attempt to finish the aforementioned project.
Monday started early with some travel for work, followed by a late afternoon/early evening trip back to Illinois. Then, Tuesday through Friday were back in the office for a fairly busy week of work.
Thankfully, this weekend I’ve had some downtime, which have included some reading, some catching up on chores and projects around the house, and a little gaming.
Speaking of gaming… I’ve enjoyed playing RuneScape over the years, and on Saturday (4/6) I finished the 2024 April Fools event, which brought Benchsitting as a new skill to the game.

Weekly Notes 2024.12

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 20:00:00 -0600

The past week was once again relatively uneventful, with work consuming a lot of my time.
I found out mid-week that you can right click on a contact’s name in Slack, and copy the link to a Slack Huddle with them, then paste that to a meeting invite, so that scheduled meetings can take place directly in Slack. I won’t have a use for that often, but I may use it for scheduled lightweight meetings on occasion.
Over the weekend I worked on setting up a computer I need for a work project with Ubuntu, and decided to go ahead and pay for/set up Ubuntu Pro on it as well. I’ve gone back and forth on whether I like the idea of a paid subscription, but live Kernel updates and 10 years of ESM seems worthwhile for a system that I’m not touching on a day to day basis.

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 579: Use Your Words
Clockwise: 546: Taco iPad
Congressional Dish: CD289: The Not A TikTok Ban Bill
Connected: 494: Esse Tiere
Cortex: 153: What Even Is an Office?
DTNS/Good Day Internet: How Do You Keep Listener’s Interested? - Editor’s Desk
Getting Things Done: 250: Projects and Someday Maybe Lists
Issues, Etc.: 0782: The Bible and Gender Ideology - Dr. Mark Rockenbach
Issues, Etc.: 0802: Dealing with Pornography’s Temptation - Daniel Weiss
Just and Sinner: Is the Christian Forgiven of Past, Present, and Future Sins at the Moment of Conversion?
Just and Sinner: Sola Fide: Justification by Faith
Just and Sinner: What’s Wrong with the Modern Conception of Rights?
Just and Sinner: Sola Scriptura: Scripture Alone
Just and Sinner: From Reformed to Lutheran
Late Night Linux: 273
Linux Matters: the Joy of Linux Torture
Mac Power Users: 736: Maintaining & Caring For Your Apple Hardware
The Rebound: 487: Have You Tried NOT Going Viral
Upgrade: 504: Tone 47
We’re Not Wrong: About Sonia Sotomayor retiring and the death of Electric Vehicles

Watched

Friends, S01E05 - S02E01

Weekly Notes 2024.11

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 18:00:00 -0600

This past week was pretty uneventful. Work has been busy enough that I haven’t devoted much time to personal projects.
Over the weekend I replaced a failing drive on my media/backup server, which required a pretty small amount of my direct time to get resolved, but took well over 12 hours to rebuild the array.
Over the weekend I also watched the first part of Dune. I quite enjoyed it, and am looking forward to seeing the sequel sometime soon (probably when it’s out on BluRay).

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 578: Weird Can Be Beautiful
Ask Noah Show: 380: Open Source Task Management
Clockwise: 545: Cake and Cookies
Connected: 493: Ends in Potify
Dot Social: Moving the Fediverse Forward at FedifForum and Beyond, with Johannes Ernst of Dazzle Labs
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Why is DTN’s Twitch Channel called GDI? - Editor’s Desk
DTNS/Good Day Internet: About ByteDance (Narrative)
Issues, Etc.: 0743: The Book of Mormon - Dr. Jordan Cooper
Issues, Etc.: 0753: This Week in Pop-Christianity: A Jesse Duplantis Easter Sermon - Pr. Chris Rosebrough
It’s a Thing: 308: Living in a World of Fandom
Late Night Linux: 272
Mac Power Users: 735: Catching up with Ryan JA Murphy
The Rebound: 486: I’m Eating a Turtleneck
Upgrade: 503: We Own the Refs, the Stadium, and the Field
We’re Not Wrong: About the TikTok ban and Boeing

Watched

Dune (2021)
Friends, S01E01 - S01E04

Weekly Notes 2024.10

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 16:00:00 -0600

This week was, for some reason, slightly exhausting for me, though I can’t point to any one specific event or series of events that caused the exhaustion. I had a fairly standard work week, and then enjoyed a visit from my sister this weekend.
While she was visiting, we played World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - A Pandemic System Board game and Small World of Warcraft, two games I picked up a few years ago but hadn’t had time to play. Both proved fun, and I hope to play them again sometime soon!
Also this weekend, I had the pleasure of watching an amazing performance by the Concordia University - Chicago Wind Symphony. It’s been many years since I attended an event of this nature, and I didn’t realize until afterwards how much I’ve missed it. All of the performers did a fantastic job, and it was a delightful way to spend an evening.
In the generally-interesting category, I ran across DropDMG when reading through a blog earlier this week. While I don’t have an immediate need to distribute macOS applications, knowing that such a tool exists could be useful in the future.

Read

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 577: Colorful Criticism
Clockwise: 543: I Hear The Boxes Are Much Bigger
Clockwise: 544: I Would Like It To Actually Be Good
Congressional Dish: CD288: Government Funding 101
Connected: 492: What is the But For?
Darknet Diaries: 143: Jim Hates Scams
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Tom Has a New Book - Editor’s Desk
Getting Things Done: 249: GTD and Personality
Late Night Linux: 271
Linux Matters: A Mini Swap Adventure
The Omni Show: How Michael Darius Uses Omni Software
The Rebound: 485: EeeeeeeUuuuuuuu
Upgrade: 502: It’s the Way Towards Colour
We’re Not Wrong: About Nancy Pelosi’s Stock Portfolio and California’s Minimum Wage Law

Watched

The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, S01E01-S01E03

Weekly Notes 2024.09

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 20:00:00 -0600

Last week I referenced to trippy, a handy networking tool that I had run across but hadn’t had a use for yet. This week I ended up having a use case… and I can definitely report that it’s handy for tracking down routing issues!
Mid-week, I got annoyed at the amount of effort that I was putting into OmniFocus, and reverted to using Todoist. In general I like a lot of features of OmniFocus more, but it has a few extra steps required for virtually every action I want to do, and it doesn’t feel fast on my iPhone. Todoist both has features I don’t want, and is missing features I’d like, but it works at the speed I think, and more often gets out of my way. We’ll see how long this lasts before I’m tempted by another tool again. 😂
On Saturday, I decided to quit using a self-hosted FreshRSS instance for my RSS aggregator, and migrate to Newsblur. It costs about half as much as what my DigitalOcean droplet was costing me to run FreshRSS, works at least as well (if not better), and reduces the number of computers that I’m managing. And in the grand scheme of things, I’m not sure that I care if I self-host my RSS aggregator. It’s a cool thing to say “I did it”, but I don’t think it provides me many benefits presently.

Read

Super-Resolution iPhone Panoramas for Vision Pro
- I haven’t actually tried this yet, but after trying the Vision Pro a few weeks ago, I am convinced that capturing photos & video for a future where I use one is a worthwhile endeavor.

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 576: Quiet Little Leech
Bad Voltage: 3x65: Not Evenly Distributed
Congressional Dish: CD287: War Money
Connected: 491: Improper Work Attire
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Are We in A Dot-Com Bust? - Editor’s Desk
Focused: 198: Revisiting Journaling
Getting Things Done: 248: Workplace Challenges - Improvements
Issues, Etc.: 0584: Worshipping with the Church Triumphant – Pr. Andrew Packer
Issues, Etc.: 0612: This Week in Pop-Christianity: Joel Osteen on the Whispers of God – Pr. Chris Rosebrough
Just & Sinner: Luther’s Contribution of the Two Kinds of Righteousness
Late Night Linux: 270
Mac Power Users: 733: Our Favorite iPhone Apps
Mac Power Users: 734: I Got to Be the Hero
The Rebound: 484: What Breed Of Dog Is Biting Me?
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 396: ‘The Essence of Stealing’, With David Barnard
Upgrade: 501: The Perfect Noodling Computer
We’re Not Wrong: About IVF and Fani Willis

Weekly Notes 2024.08

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 17:00:00 -0600

This week I ran across trippy, an interesting little networking tool that combines the functionality of traceroute and ping. I don’t have a current use, but am filing it away for when I need it.
Much of my in-office time this week was focused on troubleshooting new products. I experimented some with using SSH from a Java app, which I’d not done previously. Once I figured out the basic requirements, it was pretty seamless!
This weekend once again included ripping some new-to-me Jazz & Swing CDs to my Plex server, along with some albums of hymns from CPH. I continue to enjoy using Plexamp, combined with my own library, to stream music, instead of one of the major streaming services.

Read

JavaScript Bloat in 2024
- And interesting look at the amount of bloat in current (popular) JavaScript-based pages…
iMessage with PQ3: The new state of the art in quantum-secure messaging at scale
- As someone who is both privacy- & security-conscious, and an iMessage user, enhancements to the security of the iMessage platform are always welcome!

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 575: Walk a Little Faster
Ask Noah Show: 377
Clockwise: 542: You Should Not Toss Leprechauns
Connected: 490: Ivy League Ferret
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Are We in A Dot-Com Bust? - Editor’s Desk
Focused: 197: Feel Good Productivity
Getting Things Done: 247: David Allen talks with Keven Kelly
It’s A Thing: 305: This Thing Literally Slaps
Late Night Linux: 269
Linux Matters: An Exodus of Bitcoin
Mac Power Users: 732: Catching up with Mike Vardy
The Omni Show: Omni Group’s 2024 Roadmap
The Rebound: 483: Dial the 9 and the 1
Upgrade: 500: Core Face/Peripheral Face
We’re Not Wrong: About the Border and Trump’s NY Business Trial Penalty

Watched

Wonka (2023)

Weekly Notes 2024.07

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 19:30:00 -0600

A large portion of this week in the office was spent working through some interesting networking configuration to allow test devices at remote sites to securely access a cloud database… thankfully people much smarter than I were able to assist!
Precision Planting’s 20|20 Display was featured this week in a story on the Qt website, which included an interview with my coworker Dave. It’s a nice view into some of the products we work on, along with some of the technical decisions we’ve made over the years.
While working on a project in the office, I was reminded that, sometimes, slightly over-engineering is not a bad thing. I had forgotten that I built a safe-guard into a product’s software so that it wouldn’t install updates that didn’t explicitly include support for its hardware revision. While it was an annoyance this time, it also has saved many headaches in the past.
This weekend was spent ripping some new (to me) Jazz CDs to my Plex server. I’m really enjoying some of the new albums, and am currently listening to The Best of Miles Davis: The Capitol/Blue Note Years while writing this post.

Read

The Missing Semester of Your CS Education
- There are a number of useful courses here for developers, covering all of the tools that we use daily but that don’t get taught.
Firehouse Five and the Cinderella Surprise
- Very interesting blog post by Cabel Sasser about a Dixieland jazz band that I’d never heard of before.
Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo
- I hope this is a net positive for Mozilla. I love using Firefox, and want it to thrive, and continue to grow in market share.
Backdoors that let cops decrypt messages violate human rights, EU court says

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 574: Weird Forking Scenario
Clockwise: 541: Peripherereral Free
Connected: 489: The Birds Chirp in the Black Void
Darknet Dairies: 142: Axact
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Where Do You Draw the Line? - Editor’s Desk
DTNS/Good Day Internet: 4708 Extended: Don’t Pass on Passkeys
Getting Things Done: 246: Slice of GTD Life with Rene Lie
Issues, Etc.: 443: Dechurching in America, Part 2 - Michael Graham
Issues, Etc.: 472: The Presence of Jesus’ Body and Blood in the Sacrament - Dr. Jordan Cooper
It’s A Thing: 303: Tom fought in the Rumi Wars
It’s A Thing: 304: Men Are Welcome Until They Die
Late Night Linux: 268
Mac Power Users: 731: “Tears Rolled Down My Light Seal”
The Rebound: 482: Two Out of Three Hosts Say Yes
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 95: ‘I’m a Real-World Man’, with Adam Lisagor
Upgrade: 499: We Have All the Cushions
We’re Not Wrong: About Libertarian RFK Jr. and the Monoculture

Watched

So You Think You Know Git - FOSDEM 2024

Weekly Notes 2024.06

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 12:30:00 -0600

Early this week I set up an old Lenovo ThinkCentre to run a headless install of Ubuntu, and started playing around with some projects I’ve heard of from others, but never used myself. First up: Pi-hole, a network-wide ad blocking option. It took a little while to get everything configured the way I wanted, and I’m still working through some odd behavior, but overall I like it. Most of my browsers already have some form of ad-blocking enabled, but this works even with devices I don’t have as many options on (phone, iPad, etc).
I’m still sticking with OmniFocus, and actually started using one of their slightly more advanced features, Mail Drop. I’ve used similar functionality on Todoist to auto-forward certain types of emails as tasks to my inbox, and I’m happy to now have the same workflow set up with OmniFocus.
I spent some time digging into Tailscale’s permissions management options, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to configure. I wanted to start limiting certain connections on my tailnet, instead of leaving settings wide-open, and within minutes I was able to set up a few simple rules that put things in a much better (and arguably more secure) state.
A few weeks ago I heard about LocalSend, an app that gives you an AirDrop-like experience between virtually any two machines, on the Linux Matters podcast, but didn’t have a reason to use it at the time. Fast-forward to this weekend, and I needed to transfer some large files between two machines on the same network, but didn’t have another mechanism set up. In almost no time at all, I was able to download the app on both machines, and send the files… it was one of the most “it just works” experiences I’ve had in a while. I highly recommend checking it out.

Read

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 573: Look at It Harder
Clockwise: 540: I Did Something Bad
Connected: 488: hot guy, incredible actor, hot dude
Cortex: 152: Apple Vision Pro: The Future is Here
Issues, Etc.: 363: Women’s Ordination, Empathy and Feminism - Dr. Joseph Rigney
Issues, Etc.: 393: Baptism and the Giving of the Holy Spirit - Pr. Mark Surburg
Late Night Linux: 266
Late Night Linux: 267
Linux Matters: Magazines Reloaded
Mac Power Users: 730: “Treat it as an Intern,” with Jeff Richardson
The Rebound: 481: You’re Doing A Great Job (Abridged)
Upgrade: 498: Leap the Uncanny Valley
We’re Not Wrong: About the Tucker/Putin Interview and the Arizona GOP

Weekly Notes 2024.05

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 14:00:00 -0600

News articles are continuing to be published regarding Precision Planting’s 2024 announcements. This post from AgriNews had a good overview, and (in my opinion) nicely combined comments from yours truly with those of Justin McMenamy, Vice President - Disruptive Products.
Friday was the release of Apple Vision Pro, so I’ve been watching and reading reviews of it all week. I’ve linked some of my favorites below in the Read and Watched sections. I’m not yet convinced to drop $3500 on it, but I’m also still considering it…
I’m still actively using OmniFocus 4, and did my first (abbreviated) weekly review with it today. While I still wish there was some more natural language processing built in, similar to Todoist, the overall experience is growing on me.
A project at work has me dusting off my Python skills (meager though they are), and also relearning how documents in MongoDB work. It also gave me an excuse to play with Python packages in Nix, which I’m still finding extremely useful for software development.

Read

Why Tim Cook Is Going All In on the Apple Vision Pro

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 572: Cryptofarts and Copyright Infringement
Clockwise: 539: You Folks Need Some Help
Connected: 487: Mr. Fake John Voorhees Goes to Europe
Focused: 196: Focus & The Reading Life, with Maryanne Wolf
Getting Things Done: 242: Slice of GTD Life with Richards and Spurgeon
Issues, Etc.: 293: Countering Technological Liturgies - Joshua Pauling
Issues, Etc.: 311: Responding to Roman Catholic Proof Texts: Protestants Deny the Real Presence - Dr. Steven Parks
Issues, Etc.: 332: Evangelical Cliches - Bryan Wolfmueller
It’s a Thing: 301: Little Treats Mission Creep
It’s a Thing: 302: Spray Candy Is My Roman Empire
Mac Power Users: 729: Don’t Hear What We Aren’t Saying
The Rebound: 480: You Like Developers? Name Three
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 394: ‘An Impossible Balcony’, With Matthew Panzarino
Upgrade: 497: The Poison Pill
We’re Not Wrong: About the Border and Gen Z’s Gender Split

Watched

Weekly Notes 2024.04

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 14:30:00 -0600

Overall, this week was relatively uneventful (outside of some stuff at work). I didn’t focus much on personal projects, except for…
Only a few weeks after claiming that I was sticking with Todoist for the foreseeable future for as my task manager, I once again got curious about OmniFocus, and ended up switching my entire task list over mid-week. Todoist has been implementing more team-based features recently, which I don’t need. And something about OmniFocus keeps drawing my attention… We’ll see how long it lasts.
On Saturday, I spent a substantial amount of time becoming familiar with the Nix package manager, which I am interested in using for reproducible builds of a project at work. The basic premise was easy to learn, though it took most of the day to get a fully functional solution.
Sunday so far has consisted of Divine Service in the morning, some cooking over lunch (which included prep for the week ahead), and some small amount of time focusing on a work project.

Read

Using nix-shell to create and share reproducible embedded development environments

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 571: Adding Some Carrot
Clockwise: 538: If I Lose It, I’ll Die
Connected: 486: Elden Widge
Getting Things Done: 242: Slice of GTD Life with Richards and Spurgeon
Late Night Linux: 265
Linux Matters: Fetch Is Going to Happen
Mac Power Users: 728: All About AppleCare
The Omni Show: How Kaitlin Salzke uses OmniFocus - Part 2
The Rebound: 479: $3500 Worth of FOMO
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 393: ‘An Asterisk on the Bento Box’, With Marco Arment
Upgrade: 496: 40th Anniversary of the Mac Draft
We’re Not Wrong: About the New Hampshire Primary (Live from Manchester)

Watched

Reacher (2022), S2, E05-08

Weekly Notes 2024.03

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 14:30:00 -0600

Even though it’s technically a holiday, I had work on Monday, preparing for our conference, and will instead use it as a floating holiday sometime later this year.
Tuesday through Friday of this week was Winter Conference 2024 for Precision Planting. The following links include coverage from various agriculture-focused outlets, a few of which quote yours truly, and I’ve thrown in a picture of one of the show stands as well:
Over the weekend I spent some time improving my Obsidian daily note setup, mostly adjusting the file location(s)
To automate some of the work, I used zmv, which was a new tool to me… it’s shockingly powerful

Read

Author Clock
- I’m very tempted to either buy one of these, or set up a screen at my home showing off the web version 🤔
Long Live Webpages
What Even is a Webmention?
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (finished)

Listened To

Accidental Tech Podcast: 570: The Local Mooching Situation
Clockwise: 537: All I Found Were Three Apple TV Remotes
Connected: 485: A Mobile Hamburger Menu Three Feet Wide
Cortex: 151: The Second Best Time is Now
Dot Social: Pivoting Out of the Attention Economoy, with medium’s Tony Stubblebine
Focused: 195: The Productivity Field Guide
Late Night Linux: 264
Mac Power Users: 727: The Productivity Field Guide
The Rebound: 478: Skizzy
Under the Radar: 285: Recreational Computing
Upgrade: 495: Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong
We’re Not Wrong: About the Iowa Caucus

Watched

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023), S1, E10
Reacher (2022), S2, E01-04

Weekly Notes 2024.02

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 14:30:00 -0600

Early in the week, I spent a little time to make my Mastodon account discoverable by searching for this domain.
This week’s office time was primarily devoted to preparation for our annual Winter Conference.
On Thursday, I cleaned up the post structure on this website, which accidentally led to me spamming my RSS feed with old posts.
Friday morning I woke up to the sounds of my battery backups all going off at 3a, due to the loss of power in my neighborhood (really the first time this has happened since I moved here). Thankfully, the local power company was able to find the issue and restore power by about 5:30a, and so I was able to go about the rest of my day as planned.
This weekend, in my free time, I’ve been playing some of Tavern Master and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, both on PC via the Steam store.
- Tavern Master is a style of strategy game that I normally enjoy, though I’m currently finding it a bit tedious. We’ll see if I continue to play it or not…
- Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is an action game that is definitely outside of my normal gaming style, but it’s proving to be interesting so far. I expect that I’ll keep playing it occasionally.
This weekend also saw a cold snap to negative temperatures in the Midwest, along with some of the first real snow I’ve had to shovel this season. I’m happily staying indoors as much as I can.

Read

Listened To

Mac Power Users: 726: Journaling Update: Apple’s New App, Day One Updates & More
Focused: 194: I’d Like to Take a Mulligan
Upgrade: 494: Copyright Violation Machine
The Omni Show: How Kourosh Dini Uses OmniFocus - Part 2
Dot Social: Moderation and Migration for a Better Social Web, with Fediverse Leader Tim Chambers
Linux Matters: 20: Unfold Your Coding Potential
Late Night Linux: 263
Connected: 484: The Rickies (January 2024)
The Rebound: 477: Brrreeeeoooooouuuuuuuggghhh
Clockwise: 536: Spay and Neuter Your Pets
We’re Not Wrong: About the Secretary of Defense Going Missing and DEI
It’s a Thing: 299: Smut Rising
Accidental Tech Podcast: 569: Do Grasshoppers Have Tongues?

Watched

January 13th: A Somber Day In Lithuania
xXx (2002)

Sorry for the Spam in the RSS Feed This Morning

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 08:39:02 -0600

This morning I made some changes to the permalink structure of my blog posts, which inadvertently caused a number of my older posts to reappear in the RSS feeds. Sorry for the spam!

Enable Mastodon Discovery by Domain

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 15:15:00 -0600

While doing some reading on integrating Mastodon and Hugo this afternoon, I ran across a handy little project by Francesco Maida.

In the past, I’ve considered running my own Mastodon server, but that’s not yet an endeavor I’m ready to take on. However, being discoverable by anyone looking for me on Mastodon using my own domain? Thanks to this python script, that’s easy! Sweet!

For more information on how this all works, see either the README in the GitHub link above, or this blog post by Maarten Balliauw.

Weekly Notes 2024.01

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 12:30:00 -0600

I decided to try something a little different this year. I’ve seen other bloggers (for example, Jamie Tanna) implement a weekly review of sorts on their blogs, and thought it might strike an interesting balance between daily, monthly, and yearly posting, all of which I’ve tried at one point or another. I’ve also attempted weekly posts in the past, but often with some specific topic in mind. These notes will be simple recaps of my week.

Adding giscus Comments

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0600

One day after the tenth anniversary of this blog, and I’m already making changes?!?

Yes, you read that right.

In both of the original incarnations of this website, via Squarespace and WordPress, I had a commenting system available and enabled, although I never received much feedback from it. If I’m honest, it was mostly spam, actually. And so, when I migrated to Hugo, I didn’t make finding a comment solution a high priority.

10 Years of JustinVollmer.com

Sat, 06 Jan 2024 12:30:00 -0600

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of this website. It’s really, really hard to believe that I’ve been posting to and updating the site for a full decade already, and even crazier when I look back at how things have changed over the years, both in terms of the website, and in terms of me as a human as well.

Reflections on JustinVollmer.com

January 6, 2014, was supposed to be a work day for me. However, where I was living at the time was under a Level 3 snow emergency that day, and so instead of driving to the office, I stayed home. Back then, I was much less equipped to work remotely than I am now, and so I didn’t have anything pressing to work on, and decided to set up a website. I had heard of Squarespace, and after taking a quick look at its features, decided it was probably the easiest way to start out. And so, with that, JustinVollmer.com was born! 🎉 If you want to get an idea of my thought process at the time, check out my Welcome blog post, left up for posterity.

2023 Year in Review

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 13:50:00 -0600

Wow, this year has seemingly flown by! Somehow, it’s already December 31st, which means, it’s time for me to publish my year in review! I’ve decided once again this year to focus on major changes (or how things have stayed the same) in the last 12 months, instead of writing a sequential highlight reel.

Not a lot has changed in my personal life over the past 12 months, which is largely fine with me (I’m sure that will come as a shock to those who know me well… sarcasm). I am still attending the same LCMS church that I referenced in last year’s review, and continuing my study of theology, though at a slower rate than in 2022.

My Default Apps at the End of 2023

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 14:20:40 -0600

I first saw this trend a little over a month ago from Kev Quirk, and soon after, most of my favorite bloggers had joined in. Robb Knight has even been compiling a list, and I really wanted to jump on the bandwagon. But, unfortunately, I was busy enough that I didn’t have the time to write up my own post. That is, until now…

And so, without further ado, here’s a list of my default apps at the end of 2023:

Linux Kernel Security Demystified

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 18:30:00 -0500

Almost all bugs can be a “security” issue.

As both a Linux user and a software developer, I’ve followed the Linux Kernel development process and talks over the years. Recently, Greg Kroah-Hartman gave a talk on security at Kernel Recipes 2023 which I think is worth checking out. Most of the information is not new to me, but their approach to handling “security” bugs is somewhat novel in the industry, and I would argue is a good model to consider using across the board.

Experimenting with Immich

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 16:00:27 -0500

Something that’s been on my tech to-do list for a number of years is to set up a self-hosted photo/video storage solution for myself that utilizes my home server, and can be easily backed up to an external storage solution if/as needed. My plans have been for this to initially not be a replacement for something like iCloud Photos, but rather a complimentary solution, archiving photos in case something ever happens to my iCloud Photo library. This weekend, I took the first step in implementing such a solution.

Mercury Weather

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 21:26:49 -0500

There is something special about using an app that the developer has clearly put a lot of time and effort into, and it shows in the small details, the little finishing touches that make the app a delight to use.

A few weeks ago I ran across a post on Mastodon by the developers of Mercury Weather showing off screenshots of their upcoming (now available) macOS version. I liked what I saw, and went and downloaded the iOS app to play with.

Use a Custom Domain Name

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 19:38:50 -0500

From a blog post by Manuel Moreale:

Please, for the love of all things web-related, if you decide to do anything online, get yourself a domain name. Don’t rely on the 3rd party domain provided by services like Blogger, Substack, Tumblr, whatever. Yes, it’s an extra cost but owning your URLs is important. If Substack dies tomorrow, all your fancy-cool-name.substack.com URLs are gone. And all the links scattered across the web that were pointing to them are now broken.

Asus ZenBook 14: One Year Later

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 19:04:44 -0500

A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog post on a new laptop I had recently acquired to use for embedded development. At the time I was preparing to travel for work, and wanted a machine that would be able to handle my normal workload, even if it was a bit slower than my desktop(s). I’ve used it on and off since then, and decided to write up a quick follow-up post to detail some of my thoughts.

An Update to My Reading List

Sun, 27 Aug 2023 16:01:47 -0500

This afternoon I updated the format of my reading list. For those who haven’t looked at it before, I’ve kept a public list of the books that I’ve completed reading since around 2016. Originally, I modeled it heavily on a similar concept from essayist Jamie Todd Rubin, and included notations for the format I the book was in (e-book, physical book, or audiobook), if it was a reread, and whether I recommended the book or not.

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 16:18:00 -0500

Until today, I thought that more or less everyone/everything I cared about was on Mastodon now…

…everyone except the local National Weather Service, that is. And on a day full of tornado warnings, I want to see what they have to say. And they’re only on Twitter. 😞

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 21:15:00 -0600

Okay, I normally don’t really pay close attention to app update sizes…

… but why the HECK is the Microsoft Outlook for macOS update 974 MB, and the installed size over 2 GB? For comparison, Thunderbird is a 124 MB download, with a 362 MB installed size.

(For the record, I have it installed for work, not for personal use.)

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 20:46:00 -0600

I realized today that I’ve been enjoying the Ivory experience on my phone to such an extent that I’m only really viewing Mastodon in the browser once or twice a week now.

To put that in perspective, in the years that I’ve been on Mastodon, I’ve never stuck with an app for more than a few days, and have always just used the web client. Huge props to the team at Tapbots for their work so far!

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 14:22:00 -0600

Excited to be checking out Ivory! Pretty sure this is going to instantly become my go-to Mastodon client on iOS!

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Bring Back Personal Blogging

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 12:30:00 -0600

From Monique Judge, writing for The Verge:

In the beginning, there were blogs, and they were the original social web. We built community. We found our people. We wrote personally. We wrote frequently. We self-policed, and we linked to each other so that newbies could discover new and good blogs.

The best blogs gave us a glimpse into the life of someone we “knew” online. Good storytelling, coupled with a lively discussion afterward, kept us coming back for more day after day.

2022 Year in Review

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 14:52:08 -0600

It’s December 31st again! Every year, it seems like things move faster and faster. I could have sworn that it was just summer, but Christmas has already come and gone, and we’re almost to a new year! And that means, following a tradition I started in 2017, it’s time for my yearly review!

A brief note before I begin: instead of walking through the highlights of my year in sequence (as if on a timeline), I’ve decided this year to talk about some major changes I’ve made/implemented over the past year.

Sun, 25 Dec 2022 08:00:00 -0600

🎄 Merry Christmas everyone! 🎄

“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:10–11

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 08:01:00 -0600

Just completed reading my 30th book in 2022, Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow. 📖

It’s been a few years since I read any books related to cybersecurity, fiction or otherwise. I probably should more often, if for no other reason than to keep myself from becoming too lax by not thinking of the implications of the decisions I make, and/or the tools I use.

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

My Search for the Perfect Note-Taking Solution

Fri, 09 Sep 2022 20:30:00 -0500

Warning: I have no conclusions in this blog post. These are just my somewhat-rambling thoughts on a topic that I spend way too much time thinking about.

Introduction

I have a love/hate relationship with note-taking apps. I’ve been trying out different solutions for over a decade at this point, but have yet to ever feel perfectly at home with any system I’ve tried, which leaves me constantly looking for improvements instead of just settling in and using my system.

Mon, 05 Sep 2022 14:11:00 -0500

Somehow, even though I’ve known of it for years, I never actually tried TiddlyWiki until today…

… and I’m kind of hooked on it now. It’s quite different than any other tool I’ve used before, but it’s flexibility and performance (so far at least) are rivaling anything else I’ve tried. And it’s a simple file I can sync between devices with ease! 🤯

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

A New Linux Laptop...

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 19:07:11 -0500

I told myself this day would never come. There was no reason for me to own a Linux laptop. My M1 MacBook Pro was the perfect mobile computing option: fast, nearly-infinite battery life, and extremely capable. Linux laptops always need babied, and never seem to work when you need them to. My MacBook was always functional whenever I needed it…

…And I’m writing this post from a laptop running Linux that I’ve now owned for a little over 24 hours. Why?

Thoughts on Hugo after 21 Months

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 11:09:54 -0500

A little over 21 months ago, I finally scratched the itch that I’d had off and on for years to migrate my website to a static site generator (SSG). I wrote about migrating from Wordpress to Hugo when I made the change, and overall, I’ve been pretty happy with the results. My website and blog feel more responsive than they have in years, everything has been very reliable, and I know that all of my content is safely stored in a version control system I trust (Git), and in a format that is relatively portable (Markdown).

The Apple Store Time Machine

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 16:00:56 -0500

Michael Steeber:

The Apple Store Time Machine is a celebration of the places and products that have shaped our lives for more than twenty years. This interactive experience recreates memorable moments in Apple history with painstaking detail and historical accuracy.

I spent some time exploring the Time Machine Michael created this afternoon, and the level of detail is absolutely astonishing. I highly recommend downloading this and reliving some of Apple’s history.

Tag Update

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 13:49:44 -0500

For a while now I’ve been considering splitting posts on my site into different categories, primarily to allow myself more freedom in the type of content I author, while also allowing readers to filter out only the posts they are interested in seeing. To that end, moving forward, I will be attaching one or more tags to each of my posts.

If you are interested in only following a specific type of content, you can navigate to the tags page (also now located in the site menu), where you will find posts separated by the tags I’ve assigned. For those who use RSS, you can navigate to the tag you are interested in, and then add /index.xml to the end of the URL to get the feed for only that tag.

Preserve and Play the Original Wordle for Decades with WordleForever

Tue, 01 Mar 2022 19:32:02 -0600

Federico Vittici, writing for MacStories:

With WordleForever, you can put the original Wordle on your iPhone or iPad Home Screen and play the original game (with the same words as everyone else) for years to come.

WordleForever is made possible by the fact that the original Wordle consists of an HTML page and a JavaScript file containing thousands of words the game will use in the future. That’s all there is to it.

Brief Thoughts on the First Article of the Apostles' Creed

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 05:20:33 -0500

Author’s note: This post is a deviation from my standard posts which have historically been mostly technology-related. I have been a Christian for effectively my entire life, though I rarely talk about it in depth on my website. However, I like to use my website as a way to link others to my thoughts on various topics, and this post felt like one I both needed to write, and that I may want to share.

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 13:29:00 -0600

Randomly found out that NetBSD and DragonflyBSD now have COVID-19… as in, they both now have the “covid” utility that prints out the well-known COVID-19 genome to the terminal…

…which made me curious if Arch has it. I shouldn’t have questioned… of course, it’s in the AUR already! And, being the geek I am, it’s now also installed on my PC 🙂

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/covid

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

May '21 in Review

Mon, 31 May 2021 12:00:00 -0600

Happy Memorial Day!

Wow, the month of May (and 2021 in general) has flown by! It’s really hard to believe that tomorrow is already the first day of June.

First of all, website updates! I’ve not taken time to do any major work on my website as of late, but over the past few months I’ve made the following small enhancements and/or changes:

Updated my Blogroll with a few new blogs I follow
Added a podcasts section to my Blogroll
Pulled the Hugo theme I use forward (mostly minor visual enhancements)

My reading time has also been somewhat limited, but in May I also managed to complete the book The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Waltar Isaacson, which turned out to be a fascinating look on RNA, CRISPR, and the use of mRNA technologies in SARS-CoV-2 testing and vaccines.

iOS 14.5 with App Tracking Transparency + Apple Watch Unlock

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 20:18:59 -0500

iOS 14.5 was released yesterday (2021/04/26), bringing a whole host of changes that have been heavily covered on all of the major tech news outlets. Two of the changes, App Tracking Transparency and Apple Watch unlock for iPhone, caught my eye.

I’ve read the details on App Tracking Transparency, and I like what Apple is doing, though I’ve not actually experienced any of the changes myself yet. The TL;DR version is that companies are now blocked from tracking you across other apps by default, and you have to explicitly give them permission to do so, whereas before it was enabled by default, and you had to manually disable tracking. I don’t use many apps that this would apply to personally (from what I’ve seen at least), but I think this is a win for privacy-conscious individuals everywhere. For more details of the changes, see Why Apple’s new privacy feature is such a big deal by The Verge.

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:51:00 -0600

Anyone else here on Fosstodon use Nextcloud News as their RSS feed reader? Been running into a few weird issues of late where a feed will suddenly show 10+ new articles, when only the latest post is new. It’s starting to get aggravating enough that I’m wondering if it’s time for me to look at other solutions…

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:54:00 -0600

I normally operate all of my devices/apps in light mode, unless it’s after dusk (I use auto switching where possible). However, every once in a while, I use dark mode during the day too, for specific circumstances where for some reason the normal mode is hurting my head.

Today is one of those days. And I’m VERY thankful for the desktop environments and applications that make it easy to switch back and forth (esp. XFCE, Sublime Text/Merge, Firefox w/Dark Reader, Todoist, & Slack today 🙂 )

My Typical Day

Sat, 16 Jan 2021 15:00:00 -0600

I first got the idea for this blog post from Kev Quirk, and have since sought out other examples online to satiate my own curiosity on how people spend their days. While the following shift some, this is my mental plan for each weekday, and (with some minor exceptions) is also how I design my weekends as well. As you can see, I’m definitely a creature of habit, and like my daily routines.

Experimenting with Fitness Tracking

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 18:00:00 -0600

Over the last few years, the general population has become increasingly more interested in fitness tracking, health metrics, and other associated smart wearables. Whereas heart rate monitors were once the realm only of fitness enthusiasts and professional athletes, it is now common to see the average individual tracking their heart rate, blood oxygen, and daily steps.

My Early Experience with Fitness Metrics

I first started counting my steps back when it was added to the iPhone 5s, around 2013, mostly as a curiosity. I didn’t pay attention on a day to day basis, but would occasionally look to see how many steps it estimated I had taken on particularly busy days. I continued to track steps through my switch to Android in 2015 (mostly in the background), and I would occasionally check my heart rate and blood pressure using a wrist cuff at home, but never really paid much attention to the results. I also picked up a smartwatch (Android Wear) in the 2017-2018 timeframe, but again, I never really paid attention to the information it could collect other than to note it when I was bored and looking at health information on my phone.

2021 New Year's Resolutions

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 15:30:00 -0600

January 1st. The first day of the new year. Normally a cool, snowy (or icy) day where I live. And also, the day when people traditionally plan out or begin to implement their New Year’s resolutions.

My Thoughts on New Year’s Resolutions

I have an interesting relationship with New Year’s resolutions. I vaguely recall that, during my childhood, I somewhat embraced the idea of setting goals for myself: things that I would quit doing, start doing, improve, etc over the course of the next year. However, try as I might, rarely did a resolution stick. I would perhaps start out strong, but slowly, over the next few weeks and months, I would eventually give up, and settle back into my normal routine.

2020 Year in Review

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 10:51:23 -0600

December 31st, 2020. In some ways, it’s hard to believe that I’ve already reached the end of this year. In others, it seemed like this year would never end. Although 2020 definitely didn’t end up looking anything like what I had planned, there have been so memorable moments. And so, as is my tradition, here’s a look back at the last 12 months of my life.

The first few months of the year looked pretty standard, for those that have read previous iterations of these posts. I kept busy with work throughout most of January and February, along with my usual volunteering at church, and hanging out with friends for birthday parties, SuperBowl parties, and various small-group-related activities.

Sat, 12 Dec 2020 09:37:00 -0600

Saturday mornings are for…

workouts.
coffee.
upgrading DigitalOcean droplets.
all of the above.

If you selected 4, all of the above, you are correct.

😁

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 10:38:00 -0600

Me: attempts to install app on MacBook Pro

Sorry, that app only works on the latest version of the OS.

Apparently I have to update Mac OS now. 😕

Sometimes I wish everything worked like Linux. It feels “simpler” in many respects…

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 20:57:00 -0600

For some reason this THROUGHLY amused me. Probably because it’s so true… 😂

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 16:18:00 -0600

Spent part of the afternoon rebuilding my little Z-Wave network with a new Zooz USB Stick and my Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi 4. I’d been having issues with my old Z-Wave stick not being detected properly (ever since migrating to the RPi4), and after reading through the workaround/“fix” over the weekend, I decided to just upgrade to a better-supported adapter.

Now I can once again reliably control my lights (including Christmas lights) from my phone, as expected! 🎉

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 09:43:00 -0600

Listening to GregKH’s keynote from the recent Linux App Summit while I work this morning.

I’ve heard bits and pieces of this content before, but this is by far one of the most concise presentations of it in recent memory. The biggest takeaway? “Don’t break userspace - we want users to upgrade without worry”.

Definitely worth checking out, both for Linux fans, and even more importantly for software developers.

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 18:37:00 -0600

Has anyone here on Fosstodon gotten their hands on a Raspberry Pi 400 yet? I’ve been keeping an eye on U.S. purchasing options, but so far they’ve all either been out of stock, or are allowing pre-orders/backorders, but won’t be shipping for weeks. 🙁

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Removing Google Analytics

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 13:04:19 -0600

Now that I’ve migrated from WordPress to Hugo, it’s time for Stage 2 of my website redesign. I’ve been wanting to move away from Google Analytics for a while due to the invasive nature of the data they collect, but I’ve never taken the time to set up an alternative. I’ve looked into Matomo in the past, and while it looks promising, at this stage I’d rather not set up a server to host it myself, nor am I prepared to pay for their hosted option. So, after checking that off the list, what other alternatives are left?

Migrating from WordPress to Hugo

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 19:52:41 -0600

A little under 3 years ago I wrote a post entitled Site Redesign and Migration, where I unveiled a full redesign of my website after having moved it off of the Squarespace. Three years before that I started my website on Squarespace, after considering a host of other alternatives. And now, after many months of consideration, and after reading many blogs about why one should or shouldn’t use a Static Site Generator (ex: “Why I Don’t Use a Static Site Generator” by Kev Quirk), I’ve opted to migrate my website from WordPress to Hugo.

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 10:57:00 -0500

I should note: what I’m looking for in an optimal Linux distro for this laptop is one that is relatively easy to use, and has the ability to install recent software releases easily if desired. I like Arch, and continue to use it with KDE on my main desktop. However, I don’t use my laptop as much, nor do I want to have to troubleshoot things if a new software release breaks expected behavior, if I can help it. I want to just grab it and go 🤷‍♂️

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 10:15:00 -0500

My Fedora install lasted all of a few hours. Didn’t like it. This morning, I’ve installed two different operating systems already. OpenSUSE looked promising, but the default install didn’t get my mouse/keyboard to work right under X. I don’t feel like troubleshooting, so… now I’m playing with a stock Ubuntu installation. So far, working pretty well. I’m normally a KDE fan, but I’ll give Gnome a go for a bit at least. 😃

Sun, 23 Aug 2020 14:50:00 -0500

I had some free time this weekend, so what did I do? Being me, I opted to move one of my laptops from Arch to Fedora, to see what the user experience is like.

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

100 Posts in 100 Days

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 19:19:59 -0600

Well, I did it. 100 blog posts in 100 days. Were they of much quality? Most of them, no. There were a few that I think turned out okay.

Did I learn anything? Perhaps. Quality blogging takes a time commitment. And that is a time commitment that I am not prepared to make to turn this into a daily blog. However, I do think that I will aim for writing a single quality blog entry weekly from here on out.

The Making Of...

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 19:18:14 -0600

Every once in a while, I get distracted watching a video that goes into detail on how something was made. Sometimes it’s a movie. At other times, it may be a piece of art, or maybe a video game.

Today was the former: the making of Frozen 2. Was I a huge fan of the movie itself? No. It had some good parts, but overall I was underwhelmed. However, I very much enjoyed the first part of the behind the scenes video that I watched, and I look forward to finishing out that set of videos when I have a chance.

Haircut by a Robot?

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 19:17:28 -0600

Long day, so not many personal thoughts. Rather, since I ran across this article + video earlier today while on a break, I decided to share it. While I can’t say that I would want a robot anywhere near my head anytime soon… it’s definitely interesting!

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/video-friday-haircut-robot

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 97/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Congress and Tech

Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:16:34 -0600

I followed some of the congressional hearings today involving Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. And I must say… I get very worried about the lack of technical understanding by the people that are making the laws. Like, they can’t even keep two different services straight in their head (apparently)!

I didn’t watch enough to have any other immediate feedback, though I’ll probably try to catch up more over the weekend.

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 19:15:32 -0600

I ran across an interesting project today due to an interview on a podcast I listen to: https://aiwriter.app/. My description of it won’t at all do it justice… suffice to say that you should check it out, and it gives you an idea of some of the current capabilities of AI.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 95/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Everything Is an Experiment

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 19:14:02 -0600

I realized today that literally everything in life is an experiment. Or rather, I am constantly experimenting with different aspects of my daily life. Whether it’s tweaking my diet to see if I feel more alert, changing up the type of exercise I do, or trying to build new habits, everything is constantly open to experimentation. That even includes things that are, at this point, habit.

Why experiment? Because I’m sure there’s a better way. I don’t for a moment believe that I’ve “arrived” in any aspect of my life. That is part of what keeps me moving forward, a desire to constantly learn, grow, and improve.

Applying Self-Limits

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 19:13:19 -0600

I’ve talked about this before, but one thing I occasionally find tricky is following through plans or limits that I have given myself. For instance, I try to eat both a balanced diet (in my case, keto, but balanced based on that premise), and to also limit the number of calories I eat per day. Why? Because it’s easy for me to idly just sit and eat, or snack on something. And I don’t like the path that leads me down.

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 19:12:35 -0600

Today was a day that very little got accomplished. I’m not sure why… I was in a bit of a funk part of the day. I wonder if I didn’t get enough sleep or something. I did finish Brave New World though… still deciding my final thoughts on it.

And I think that’s the end of today’s post. I’m going to strive to ensure tomorrow goes better.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 91/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 19:11:36 -0600

It’s already 10:10 PM as I start this blog post. Which means that it is well past my normal blogging time. Today ended up being a fairly busy day, between work and small group at church. This is my first time really sitting down much at all, and therefore I don’t have many thoughts. So, until tomorrow…

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 90/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Living in Response

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 19:10:41 -0600

Note: I no longer recommend listening to Bill Johnson, as I have strong disagreements with his theology, but I’m leaving this up for historical purposes. (2024-11-03)

“I can’t afford to live in reaction to darkness. If I do, darkness has had a role in setting the agenda for my life. The devil is not worthy of such influence, even in the negative. Jesus lived in response to the Father. I must learn to do the same.” Bill Johnson

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 19:10:07 -0600

I spent most of this afternoon and evening preparing for a presentation I’m giving tomorrow. I should have spent more time over the course of the previous week preparing for this, but… I didn’t. So now I’m finally nearing the end, and it’s time for bed.

One of these days I’ll learn to start things ahead of time!

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 88/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Choose Your VPN Wisely

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 19:09:12 -0600

One of the podcasts I listen to daily brought up a recent news article about several Hong Kong based VPNs that were found to expose private user data, even though they claimed that they didn’t.

Frankly, stories like this don’t surprise me anymore. As the saying goes, if you aren’t paying for the product, then you are the product (in most cases). “Free” is often too good to be true. Choose wisely!

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 19:08:43 -0600

Short post tonight. I spent most of the afternoon and evening gaming online with friends that I hadn’t talked to in years. Had quite a bit of fun.

Now, it’s time to get around for the work week!

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 86/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Bison Biltong

Sat, 18 Jul 2020 19:07:57 -0600

Yesterday, I got a delivery of bison snacks, including some Bison Biltong, with Southwest Verde flavoring. And let me tell you, it is delicious!

For those that don’t know, biltong is a form of dried, cured meat that originated in Southern African countries. Think of it as a jerky-type food.

I’ve been considering buying some bison-based snacks for a while, as I’ve heard good things about them, and they’re very high protein, low carb, low/moderate fat, which would work well for me when I need something healthy to munch on after a workout.

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 19:07:26 -0600

For the first time in over four months, I went out with a few friends to eat at a local restaurant. I had a good time, although it was a tad weird. I’m still not sure how I feel about social events, given everything from the past few months. I’m cautiously open to them, though I sometimes feel more of an urge to wear a mask than others my age, I think.

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 19:06:49 -0600

One of these days, Lord willing, I will master self-control. However, today is apparently not that day. Without thinking, I overate by an order of magnitude more than I wanted to. A few days ago, I checked my phone after waking up, and promptly read the news for 45 minutes instead of doing my normal routine.

Why is it so easy to slip up? I don’t have a good answer for that. I’m still trying to understand it myself.

Politics Politics Politics

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 19:06:04 -0600

Today has been another long day, and I don’t have a lot to talk about personally.

However, I would like to take this time to recommend a political podcast that I listen to: Politics Politics Politics (Px3) by Justin Robert Young (JRY).

Why listen to a political podcast? I like to keep up with what’s going on in the US politically, along with some commentary, but I don’t particularly care for either major side’s opinions. JRY is good at covering the important topics with interesting commentary, and doesn’t take any overly extreme positions on most topics.

Long Tuesday

Tue, 14 Jul 2020 19:05:23 -0600

Today was another day where, for some reason that I don’t fully understand, I woke up an hour earlier than I intended to and was unable to fall back asleep. That, combined with doing a slightly harder workout than normal this morning, has left me tired.

Which means, that’s the end of today’s post!

Well, almost. Parting thought: I’ve been quite enjoying Cal Newport’s new podcast (I’m almost up to date with the latest episode). Check it out!

Monday, Once Again

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 19:04:11 -0600

Today wasn’t a particularly bad day. In fact, overall things went quite well. However, as seems to happen to me frequently on Mondays… I’m struggling with coming up with anything useful to write about. I considered a post of a music video, but I’d rather not. I considered some kind of length post, but… once again, I’d rather not.

I’ve read a bunch of things that I think are interesting today, but I’m not sure how much anyone else would care. And they weren’t so impactful that I need to reference them again.

Work/Life Balance

Sun, 12 Jul 2020 19:03:24 -0600

I frequently ponder the same question: if I’m doing what I’m enjoying, does it matter that I’m putting way more time into than is, perhaps, “healthy”? My question is generally specifically around the area of work. I’ve heard a number of arguments for why you should aim to achieve a “balance”, and why thinking about or focusing on work too much is a bad thing.

And yet, my question remains: what if I am actually enjoying what I’m doing? Am I getting paid extra? No. Am I putting in more hours than is perhaps “expected” of me? Yes.

Rain!

Sat, 11 Jul 2020 19:02:48 -0600

It’s raining! Again! We probably won’t get much, based on the radar. But it’s definitely welcome!

I mowed my yard again for the first time in 2 weeks. Parts of it needed a little trimming, while the rest of it is brown. Like… really brown. I’ve considered watering my yard, in an effort to keep everything looking nice, but I decided that the outcome isn’t worth the extra cost, at least at this point.

Too Many Interests

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 19:02:17 -0600

I realized once again today that I have so many interests that I rarely have time to pursue them all. I can choose one to pursue for a period of time, but that unfortunately lets the others stagnate.

And to add to that issue, I constantly add to my interests. I find something new that looks or sounds interesting, and want to study up on it, or buy it (if it’s a gadget), or download it (in the case of apps). And so I frequently have large collections of things that I intend to get to, but in reality probably never will.

App Explorer: Notion

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 19:00:30 -0600

This is my first stab at another new concept post. Basically, my goal is to jot down my first reactions/thoughts on using a new app or tool.

A few weeks ago, I decided to download Notion. I’ve heard a lot about it over the years, and it seemed like an interesting alternative to Evernote/Onenote, with some added Trello/Todoist features as well.

So far, I’ve only used Notion minimally. It is a very good Markdown-based editor, although it hides the Markdown from you. You can use standard Markdown commands though, and export notes to Markdown.

Surprise Storm

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 18:59:45 -0600

I was outside at a friend’s house for the last hour, just standing around and talking. When we started, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. About 15 minutes before I left, there were a few sprinkles. But everything was still sunny.

Then, as I headed to my car, it started to lightly drizzle. A quick glance at the radar showed a few showers building to the west, and heading this way.

Distractions Are Easy

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 18:58:31 -0600

It’s easy to be distracted. It’s easy to sit down at the end of the day, turn on television, and turn off your mind. It’s easy to idly scroll through Facebook, Instagram, and other apps and news feeds on your phone.

You know what’s hard? Choosing to do something that makes a difference in your life and the lives of others. Getting up early to train, knowing you’ll like how you look better if you do. Choosing to read after dinner, because you want to continue learning and growing. Removing distracting apps from your cell phone, because in 20 years time you don’t want to look back at a life wasted.

A Relaxing Weekend With Family

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 18:57:21 -0600

For the first time in many months (due to COVID-19), I finally got to spend a few days with my immediate family! I headed to my parents’ house on Thursday, spent the rest of the extended weekend there just relaxing, and then headed back home today (Sunday).

Honestly, this is probably the first time I really slowed down and relaxed in the last few months. When I’m at home, I am very good a keeping myself busy. I intentionally limited my options for things to do (from my normal routine) when I visited family, and so I spent an entire weekend without doing anything work-related (it’s hard to stop thinking about work entirely).

Happy Independence Day!

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 18:56:03 -0600

It’s the 4th of July, the day that Americans celebrate Independence Day. Historically, in my family at least, it’s a day spent with family, normally with some good food (grilled, preferably), and maybe watching some fireworks in the evening.

That being said, every topic I’ve come up with to write about is much longer than I’m willing to work on tonight. And so, as I have a habit of doing… here’s a video to enjoy!

Initial Thoughts on Google Stadia

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 17:55:06 -0600

I have occasionally described myself as a technophile, due to my tendency to enjoy reading about, buying, playing with, and testing out the latest technology.

For years I was in the Google ecosystem. Name a hardware device, and I probably had it. And even though I am no longer as heavily vested in that world, I still pay attention to new products. And therefore, when Google Stadia was announced (nearly a year ago at this point), I quickly signed up, and purchased a Founder’s Edition kit (1 Chromecast Ultra + 2 controllers). I received it last November, but I’ve honestly only played with it a total of… 2-3 hours since then.

The Upside

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 17:53:31 -0600

Wow. Two days in a row where I don’t know what I want to talk about…

Yesterday I picked up the first 2 comic books from Lindsey Stirling that go along with her latest album, Artemis. After reading through them, I decided to re-listen to the album today. And now I have The Upside stuck in my head. Which, I’m sure, means it’s my duty to get it stuck in everyone else’s head as well.

Early to Bed, Early to Rise

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 17:50:40 -0600

“Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Benjamin Franklin

“It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.” Aristotle

For some reason, both of the above quotes have been cycling through my head this evening. I’m not sure what reminded me of them, but as I have mentioned before, I tend to practice the habit of both rising early (around 4 a.m.), and going to bed early (by 9:30 p.m.).

Movie of the Weekend: 21

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 17:48:48 -0600

I don’t tend to watch a ton of movies. In all honesty, it’s because I have a hard time sitting still and just watching something. But, this weekend, I was struggling to concentrate on other projects, and so… I watched a movie.

Which movie? 21. It’s the story of a group of card counters from MIT. I recall reading about the story it’s based on in the news years ago, and while I’ve been aware of this movie, I never got around to watching it till now.

Sat, 27 Jun 2020 17:48:15 -0600

I finally won a match in 0 A.D. on “normal” difficulty! I’ve been playing around with the game once or twice a week, and I finally managed to win without decreasing the difficulty!

Now, we’ll see if it was random chance, or if I’ve actually learned how to play well enough that I continue winning (at least occasionally).

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 64/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

It's Friday

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 17:47:22 -0600

Short blog today. For some reason, I’ve had very little motivation. Not entirely sure why. I’ve tried a few things to get myself “in gear” to work on projects, and nothing has worked well yet. So, basically doing the minimum today, and planning to push again tomorrow.

Until then, here’s a song that’s currently on repeat in my head. Enjoy!

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 63/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Haircut #2 Post-Isolation

Thu, 25 Jun 2020 17:46:39 -0600

Anyone who knows me knows that I like routine. And one of those routines, for many years now, has been a haircut every 2 weeks (occasionally slips to 3 around a holiday). Today was my second haircut post-isolation, meaning that I’m back to my normal schedule.

Why so often? Simple: it’s one less thing for me to think about.

I’ve learned (slowly) that the more things I can put on “default”, and not have to think about, the more I can focus on work, and other things in life. And for me, having my hair at virtually the same length at all times is one of those things. Is it minor? Sure. But I like never having to think about what my hair is going to look like. It’s always the same length, and I always do the same thing to it every morning.

Know a Little More

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 17:45:41 -0600

There’s a new podcast out from Tom Merritt, one of the hosts of Daily Tech News Show, entitled “Know a Little More“. Each episode is a short deep-dive into a specific topic (ex: 5G). I’ve been quite enjoying it, even as someone in the tech industry who has a general knowledge of most topics (or so I like to think).

Due in part to the recent announcements by Apple, there will be an ARM episode in the public feed in the next few days, which I highly recommend listening to as a quick overview. So… check it out!

Philosophy: Who Needs It

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 17:41:59 -0600

I have a habit of reading before bed. Sometimes I pick up a fantasy novel. Other times I read a cartoon, or something else that requires very little concentration. And sometimes, I challenge myself… as I did last night, when I started reading “Philosophy: Who Needs It” by Ayn Rand.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but after the first chapter, I already had a lot to think on. Favorite quotes/thoughts so far:

Things That Work: Firefox

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 16:55:19 -0600

I’ve used a number of different browsers over the years. In fact, I’ve used more browsers than I realized, once I started compiling idea for this post.

When I first started using computers, my primary browser was Internet Explorer. I don’t recall exactly what year this was, but it was prior to the advent of Firefox and Chrome. And for years, that’s what I used. I vaguely recall using Netscape Navigator, actually, at one point, but I don’t think it ever stuck.

A Lazy Saturday

Sat, 20 Jun 2020 17:37:15 -0600

Okay, so maybe the title isn’t 100% accurate… But I honestly don’t feel like I’ve accomplished that much today (so far). I’m ready to blog though, so… here it goes.

I started out this morning at 4a. After some coffee and reading, it was time for a short workout. I’ve been neglecting doing any substantial training recently, which annoys me, so I’m trying to get back into the habit. After that, time for breakfast, then getting ready for the day ahead.

Does the Mind Need a Break?

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 17:36:39 -0600

I’ve read many articles over the years emphasizing the importance of downtime, of relaxing, and sometimes “turning off your brain” (possibly my translation, but either way, definitely a phrase I’ve heard).

However, I ran across the following in the book “How to Live on 24 Hours a Day” by Arnold Bennett: “One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change – not rest, except in sleep.”

Audio Tweets

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 17:35:57 -0600

I first heard this story yesterday, but didn’t read any of the details until today. Apparently, Twitter is going to allow users to record audio and then… tweet it. And in a throwback to the original 140 character limit, these can be 140 seconds long.

I checked, and I don’t have the feature yet. Which is fine, as I barely use Twitter at all, logging in only once every few weeks.

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 17:35:20 -0600

It’s been quite a while since I waited on a video project to render. And now that I’m in that position again… I want an AMD Threadripper. I’m currently sitting at slightly over a 1:1 render time for the video I’m working on, and that’s with 16 threads (40m video, 55m render time). Which isn’t bad. But… I’m getting impatient…

Oh well. Nothing I can do about it today…

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 54/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

So NOT a Massive DDOS Attack

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 17:33:41 -0600

Here’s an interesting Twitter thread I ran across today from Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare. Apparently the “massive DDOS attack” that I heard about yesterday was actually another series of events. It’s a fairly quick read, but definitely worth it for the tech-inclined, in my opinion.

There’s a lot of buzz right now about a “massive DDoS attack” targeting the US, complete with scary-looking graphs (see Tweet below). While it makes for a good headline in these already dramatic times, it’s not accurate. The reality is far more boring. 1/X https://t.co/4wDIlKnfQg — Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) June 15, 2020

Sibling Summit: Episode 9: Welcome to Linux!

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 12:00:00 -0600

Click here for the audio on Archive.org

What caused Hannah to purchase a new computer? Why did she choose a desktop, and what are her first thoughts on Linux? Do people who are blind also experience aphantasia, and what all does blindness actually encompass ? Join us for disucussions on all this and more!

Discoveries

Hannah: Various computer-related discoveries
Justin: VirtualBox

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Context: Originally posted as part of the now-defunct Sibling Summit podcast

Kdenlive for the Win

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 17:32:53 -0600

Earlier this evening I was attempting to open a 25+ GB mp4 file to edit (1920×1980 resolution, 35 mins long). I tried using Premiere Pro on my Gaming rig (Windows), as I figured that I would get the best performance on that machine, and I’m the most familiar with Premiere Pro out of all of the Non-Linear Editors. However, the program locked up for almost 10 minutes on the initial import, and was pretty much unusable once the video was imported. I could attempt a proxy setup, but I didn’t think that the video should be that hard to import.

Things That Work: Soundiiz

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 17:29:51 -0600

A few months ago, around the time that the COVID-19 pandemic began to affect the Untied States, I began playing a weekly round of Name That Tune with my family. The premise is simple: I create a playlist with a variety of songs, and then the rest of the family attempts to guess, within the first 90 seconds of the song, the song’s title and artist.

Prior to the start of these games, I was primarily using Apple Music for all of my music-streaming needs. It wasn’t perfect, but in general everything I was looking for was present in that ecosystem. However, as I began to put playlists together for the NTT games, I quickly decided that I was going to need an alternative to improve the workflow. Apple Music doesn’t have a good web or Linux client, and I didn’t feel like using my old MacBook Pro for all of the work. Plus, I was getting fed up with Apple Music’s playlist system. I briefly looked at YouTube Music/Google Music, but quickly decided that was also not going to work, and so I switched to Spotify.

The Work Week Ends

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 17:25:22 -0600

As has happened many times in the past few weeks, I had elaborate plans for what to write about today. And… I don’t feel like writing any of them. So instead, I’ll just summarize my day.

Today I worked from home. I had a couple of Zoom meetings, then spent time debugging a few different issues, reading documentation in preparation for another project, and spinning up an EndeavourOS VM to run a test on for a coworker (thanks VirtualBox!). In the late afternoon I went grocery shopping, then I’ve just been relaxing at home. Friday afternoons/evenings seem to be the worst time for me to have motivation.

Just Use the Website

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 17:24:41 -0600

For many years, I’ve heard recommendations from privacy-conscious individuals that if you choose to be on a social media platform, it’s best to just use the web interface, and not an app. That limits the ability of the company that runs the service to track and log data about you. Sometimes I’ve followed this advice, and sometimes I haven’t, depending on my perceived convenience of the app over the website.

Avoiding Temptations

Wed, 10 Jun 2020 17:23:56 -0600

This is a short post that I will probably revisit later. The topic? Avoiding temptations in life. Why today? Because I once again failed, and need the reminder…

I have learned, over the course of many years, that especially at certain points in the day I have very little willpower to avoid temptations. This could be something as simple as avoiding overeating desserts (which I like), to limiting my exposure to social media, to reducing the amount of time I spend watching movies/TV shows/YouTube. To actually achieve my goal in whatever area that is, I often have to completely remove the temptation from my life, or put such severe limitations on it that I cannot easily slip up when I’m tired after work, and I no longer have the willpower to easily keep myself away from whatever the temptation is.

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 17:22:13 -0600

Overall, today was a pretty good day. I was up at 4a, did my normal morning routine, and still made it to work before 7a. Work went fairly well too. This evening I’ve just been working around the house. However, my motivation is lacking, so… that’s as much of a post as I’m going to get in today.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 45/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 17:21:24 -0600

Today was a relatively relaxing day. I worked on a few things around the house post-church, did a short weekly review, and chatted with my sister. As day to turned to evening, I found that I had very little motivation left, so I decided to watch a movie. What movie? Well… Monsters vs. Aliens, an animated film from 2009. It’s not a particularly amazing movie, but it has some amusing moments.

Raspberry Pi 4

Sat, 06 Jun 2020 17:20:46 -0600

I got my first Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB) today, and took a short amount of time to begin migrating my Home Assistant setup to it. Thoughts so far:

I like the increased RAM
I’m a huge fan of the case I bought, which is black metal (like a computer case), and includes a small fan

I have yet to really tax the machine, so I haven’t seen how hot it gets, nor have I seen its full capabilities. I’m hoping to finish the migration from my Raspberry Pi 3 either tomorrow or next weekend, at which point I’ll re-purpose the RPi 3 for another home project.

Finish Work Week: Check

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 17:19:18 -0600

Well, I’ve officially finished my first full week back at work after 2 months of working from home. Overall, not bad. It will take some getting used to again, but I quickly found myself settling into old methods and habits.

Things that I still need to improve:

Re-enforce strict wake time. I was still struggling to be happy about getting up exactly at 4a.
Tighten up morning schedule so I arrive at work at my intended time. Throughout the week this slipped from 15m later than I wanted to 30m. My ideal is 7a.
Reduce television time post-work. I’ve caught myself watching more than one episode of something in the evening, which offsets the rest of my evening plans, or causes things to get missed.
Re-enforce strict phone-down and bedtime. I did pretty good on this overall, but I need to get back to turning off electronics at least 1 hr before bed, and then ensuring I am in bed by my set time for optimum sleep.

Do any of my readers really need to know all of that? No, not really. But it’s good for me to think through this on paper (or the e-equivalent of paper, my blog). And it’s a good way to pressure myself into actually doing it!

Things That Work: Zowie FK1

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 17:16:25 -0600

Inspired by Things that work! by Cliff Brake.

As someone who spends a very large amount of time in front of a computer, over the years I have built up a list of a number of preferences. Today’s post is about the Zowie FK1+, which is my default mouse choice.

I first learned of the FK1+ (and other similar models from Zowie) in 2015 when I took my current position at work. I was looking for a mouse that was comfortable, worked with all operating systems, and gave me the option of different DPI settings in the mouse itself, instead of having to use software. Somehow, during the research, I ran across the FK1+, and I haven’t looked back. It is now in use both at work and at home.

Too Many Topics

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 17:15:44 -0600

Day 40!

Once again, as I sat down to write this evening, I was struggling with what I wanted to write about. I have a host of topics that I have opinions on, and I wouldn’t mind writing about. Anything from the case for owning physical books, movies, etc, to technical discussions on tools I use, to software, hardware, book, and other reviews. But I’m struggling to focus on any one to write about, especially after a day at work.

Back to the Office

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 17:14:10 -0600

Today marks the beginning of working from the office primarily again for me, instead of at home. I’ll still be working from home some, especially if/when I need to concentrate hard. But I expect that over the coming weeks the amount of time I spend at home will continue to decrease.

Somethings felt relatively natural in the office. Others, however, will take some getting used to. I was very much used to my normal routine at home, and lack of talking throughout the day… transitioning back to frequent conversations will be, shall we say, interesting.

Sibling Summit: Episode 8: Introverts in a Post-Quarantine World

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 12:00:00 -0600

Click here for the audio on Archive.org

How do you determine when it’s time to quit a hobby? Do you think of large purchases in terms of cost-per-month? What does life look like for introverts in a post-quarantine world? Join us for disucussions on all this and more!

Discoveries

Hannah: No-Carb Bread from Aldi
Justin: Alienating the Audience, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Revival’s In The Air

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Context: Originally posted as part of the now-defunct Sibling Summit podcast

Update on the New PC

Sun, 31 May 2020 17:10:30 -0600

Yesterday I wrote a brief blog post announcing that I had completed my new gaming PC build. Today… an update.

This morning I decided to run a few benchmarks against the machine (I literally only did initial OS installs yesterday). I very quickly noted during the tests that the CPU was getting much warmer than it should, and so I decided to take the machine apart and replace the CPU fan. I was using the stock cooler that came with the AMD Ryzen 5, but I had a spare CoolerMaster CPU fan that I didn’t end up using in a previous build, so I installed that. In all, it took me about an hour to remove the old fan and install the new one.

Sat, 30 May 2020 17:09:53 -0600

I finished building my new gaming PC this afternoon (AMD processor, NVIDIA GPU, 32 GB RAM, 2 SSDs for storage). So far I’ve finished the OS install (Windows – this is the only Windows machine I keep, since it’s still better for gaming), and I’m working on installing some games. I’ll post more on it at a later date, after I’ve had a chance to use it some more (ie, break it in).

Fri, 29 May 2020 17:09:06 -0600

I ended up spending a lot of time cleaning/tidying up today. It’s interesting how that process simultaneously can feel a little counterproductive (“I’m not getting anything done”), and yet is very satisfying to finish. I think it has something to do with the visualization once the work is complete. Much of what I do is software/computer related, so it’s harder to see the differences I make in the real world from time to time. Clean up has easily visible outcomes. 🙂

It's Been a Day

Thu, 28 May 2020 17:08:11 -0600

I was originally hoping to post a more thought-out blog post today. However, after my normal morning routine, around 10 hrs at work, and just finishing dinner, I’m rather tired, and don’t have anything particularly insightful to talk about.

So instead, here’s a podcast recommendation: if you’ve never listened to Daily Tech News Show from Tom Merritt (and friends), I’d strongly recommend checking it now. It’s a nice daily tech news summary that I utilize to keep up to date with what’s going on without having to read a lot of news stories myself, unless I choose to.

Early Mornings

Wed, 27 May 2020 17:07:19 -0600

Every once in a while, I wake up super early, and can’t fall back to sleep. Today was one of those days. I awoke around 3a, and have been up ever since.

Oddly enough, I don’t mind it that much, other than it messes my schedule up some. I’m normally up at 4a anyhow. I have a rather lengthy morning routine, due in part to the fact that I attempt to fit so much into my mornings before work:

Still Failing

Mon, 25 May 2020 17:05:05 -0600

Yesterday I blogged briefly about reinstalling Windows on my gaming PC. Unfortunately, even after doing so, I’m still having random BSODs and other crashes on the system. Therefore, last night I made the executive decision to replace the system (almost) entirely.

This morning I did a little planning (using the excellent pcpartpicker tool), spec’d out a new machine, and placed an order for the components. I believe that my graphics card (a GTX 1070) is still good, so I only needed the rest of the system. It wasn’t super cheap, unfortunately. But I want to be able to play the occasional game that isn’t supported on Linux with good performance, and maintaining a functional Windows machine appears to be my best solution for that.

Sun, 24 May 2020 17:04:09 -0600

Early and short post today. I’m intentionally spending most of my day away from chat/social media/computers, other than the time required to do a complete reinstall of Windows on my gaming PC (ie, nuke & pave). I dealt with crashes and random memory issues all day yesterday (even though RAM fully tests out), and at this point, I’d rather start with fresh install to troubleshoot than my 4-5 year old install… Wish me luck!

Windows 10 Updates

Fri, 22 May 2020 17:02:28 -0600

Every once in a while I fire up an older Windows 10 PC, mostly to play games. Unfortunately, because it doesn’t get used much, it normally needs to run updates. And I officially hate running updates on Windows machines.

At this point in my life, most of my work is done on Linux. I understand the operating system relatively well, and I generally understand what an update will do to my computer.

Thu, 21 May 2020 17:01:48 -0600

I realized earlier today why I have an aversion to Zoom meetings on weekday evenings (for non-work purposes). After sitting in front of my computer for 10-12 hours (working from home), I’m actually a bit burned out on computer screens… Which surprised me slightly. I consider myself a geek, and rarely get tired of tech. But apparently I do have a limit…

Anyhow. That thought brought to you as I wrap out a Zoom meeting.

Timing Matters

Tue, 19 May 2020 16:58:47 -0600

Short post today. Been a busy day, with more to come…

Professionally, I do a lot of work with microcontrollers and real-time systems. I don’t normally need to focus much on the timing aspect, as the frameworks in place generally have been ironed out, and timing just works.

However, there are times, like today, when I find out that a system is failing to perform correctly because we are missing timing deadlines. When something like that occurs, it’s time to start digging through the code, looking for the point of failure. Sometimes it’s an easy fix; sometimes it’s a design flaw that requires a substantial amount of work to fix.

Musings on Life Habits

Mon, 18 May 2020 16:57:23 -0600

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Romans 7:15 (ESV)

Romans 7:15 has been on my mind a lot recently, though not necessarily for spiritual or religious reasons. Rather, it’s because I constantly find myself slacking in my habits and disciplines, and I want to know why.

I mean, I guess I know the general reasons. The human body and mind tend to shy away from discipline. It’s something one has to work on, constantly. And I know that, and have proven it over and over to myself.

Name That Tune

Sun, 17 May 2020 16:55:19 -0600

I wasn’t sure what to write about today. I didn’t want anything long, but I wanted an actual post as well. So, I decided to write up a little explanation of a game my family and I have been playing remotely!

For the past few weeks, at least once per week, my family and I have been playing Name That Tune via Zoom. The general setup and rules are simple:

Sibling Summit: Episode 7: The Mom Show

Sun, 17 May 2020 12:00:00 -0600

Click here for the audio on Archive.org

In a special (belated) Mother’s Day episode, we talk with our mom about her experiences with blogging, her thoughts on technology, and her first impressions of the new iPad Pro! Join us for disucussions on all this and more!

Discoveries

Hannah: Nutritional Yeast
Justin: Wiki.js
Blogging Challenge: 100 Days to Offload
Procreate for iPad

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Context: Originally posted as part of the now-defunct Sibling Summit podcast

A Quiet Night In

Fri, 15 May 2020 16:53:01 -0600

It’s Friday. Pre-COVID-19 that would normally mean a normal to slightly-longer than normal workday, followed by grocery shopping, and some down time. So what does it mean in a post-COVID-19 world?

Well, pretty much the same, just with a few tweaks. It’s still work most of the day, just from home instead of the office (most weeks). Then, mid- to late-afternoon, I head to the other side of town to do grocery shopping. And finally, down time at home, by myself.

Moving a Git Submodule

Thu, 14 May 2020 16:49:25 -0600

A coworker asked me a question this evening about how to move a Git submodule to a sub-directory, and as it’s something I’ve had to look up multiple times in the past, I decided it would be good to post it here for easy lookup in the future.

How to move a Git submodule to a sub-directory

Delete the submodule reference from .gitmodules (normally 3 lines)
Check .git/config for references to the submodule and remove them, if they exist
Run git rm --cached <submodule name> to remove the submodule reference from the repository
Remove the old submodule folder
Recreate your submodule reference with git submodule add <git repo url> <local path>

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 20/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

100 Days and Over-Saturation

Wed, 13 May 2020 16:47:35 -0600

Earlier today, Kev posted an update to the #100DaysToOffload challenge on his blog. The TL;DR version is that, for reasons that make sense to me, and I generally agree with, instead of 100 posts in 100 days, the challenge will now be 100 posts in a year.

So, what does that mean for my own blog?

My current plan is to continue with the challenge, and specifically with the 100 days/100 posts version. While it is true that only a handful of the posts end up being of much quality, I’ve noticed that I am thinking about blogging more throughout my day, and I think that in general the habit that I’m forming of at least attempting to write a post a day is good for me.

Thoughts from Antigone

Mon, 11 May 2020 16:44:28 -0600

I had grand plans today on what I wanted to write about. It was going to be an impressive post all about the power of clarifying what it is you’re trying to accomplish, and the tools I personally use. However, while I’ve started work on that, I simply do not have the energy to write that post this evening.

So… what am I posting instead? How about a few of my favorite quotes from Antigone by Sophocles that I just re-discovered earlier today while transferring my notes on the play to my personal wiki?

Initial Thoughts on a Personal Wiki

Sun, 10 May 2020 16:39:35 -0600

Approximately two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post where I mentioned that I was interested in setting up a personal wiki, or something similar, as a way to keep an online commonplace book. I’ve been taking notes on the idea ever since, and today, I finally decided to give it a try.

Requirements

I had a few different requirements.

Easy to maintain & use
Markdown support
Accessible and editable on all devices
Web-based, so that I’m not handling syncing between devices
FOSS

Enter Wiki.js

After a decent amount of research, where I looked at pretty much every FOSS solution for a personal wiki, I settled on Wiki.js. There were a couple of features that lured me in.

Distractions and Time Tracking

Sat, 09 May 2020 16:37:07 -0600

Do you ever that weird feeling at the end of the day, when you know you were extremely busy, but you can’t point to any one thing you accomplished? Or do you occasionally wonder where all of your time has gone, and what the distractions were that kept you from accomplishing your tasks & goals?

As someone who loves studying productivity and ways to improve myself, those thoughts come up frequently. As in, on a more-than-once-a-week basis. When the thoughts reach a critical peak I generally try to do something about it, and improve my productivity. Sometimes my changes stick; sometimes they don’t.

VSCode for Markdown

Fri, 08 May 2020 16:34:42 -0600

Short post again today, unfortunately. Today, and this week in general, have been super busy. But a few quick thoughts today.

For most of my software development (C/C++) I prefer to use Sublime Text. I know it’s not FOSS, but it’s one of the better text editors I’ve ever found, and at this point I’m so used to it that it would be a pain to change (not that I don’t still consider it from time to time). And it works equally well on every platform I’ve ever tried.

Thu, 07 May 2020 16:33:15 -0600

Today’s post is once again a short one. I’ve been busy with work projects most of the day, and I’ve got some more to work on this evening.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 13/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Refactoring

Wed, 06 May 2020 16:32:32 -0600

Another short post today.

I’ve spent a large portion of the last few weeks refactoring code at work. For those not in the software industry, refactoring basically means cleaning up/reworking how a piece of software works, without changing the external behavior. Sometimes it’s simplifying the logic. Sometimes it’s renaming things to make comprehension easier. Sometimes it’s removing unused features. Sometimes it’s moving duplicate code to a common implementation.

I’ve been doing all of the above. It’s tedious at times. It’s fun at times. And it normally makes me feel good once it’s done. But it got me wondering… why don’t we use the same word in real life? For instance: if I’m reorganizing stuff in a room to make it easier to access? Sounds like refactoring to me. Or how about migrating from a few different note taking tools/methods to a single format? In other words, all of the small modifications/improvements that I make to my daily life that don’t change the end result, but improve the workflow… is kind of refactoring.

Motivation

Tue, 05 May 2020 16:31:27 -0600

Author’s Note: I want to apologize ahead of time to the reader if this is incoherent. I have a ton of thoughts today on this topic, and they may not translate well to the written page.

Today is one of those days where I’m struggling with motivation. That’s not to say I’m not motivated. I have a number of things that are on my mind that I could happily work on. Unfortunately, none of those include a few projects for work that I really need to work on.

Sibling Summit: Episode 6: Social Distancing as Introverts

Tue, 05 May 2020 12:00:00 -0600

Click here for the audio on Archive.org

What is the #100DaysToOffload Challenge? How are each of us doing at it? And what is life like for us as introverts during this time of social distancing? Join us for disucussions on all this and more!

Discoveries

Hannah: Chuck
Justin: 0 A.D.
Blogging Challenge: 100 Days to Offload

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Context: Originally posted as part of the now-defunct Sibling Summit podcast

Leadership Talks with Banning: Bill Johnson

Sun, 03 May 2020 16:26:31 -0600

Note: I no longer recommend listening to Bill Johnson, as I have strong disagreements with his theology, but I’m leaving this up for both historical purposes, and because the quotes I listed are mostly still applicable. (2024-11-03)

I have been listening to the Jesus Culture Podcast for years. Originally called the Jesus Culture Leadership Podcast, it has evolved over time to include not only leadership talks, but also discussions about topics that apply to the church at large. I’ve been listening/re-listening to a number of them today, and one with Bill Johnson from last year really stuck out to me. Below are a few notes/quotes from the podcast that I found especially profound.

Day 8 Recap

Sat, 02 May 2020 16:24:50 -0600

I had a bunch of ideas for blog posts today. And then I got busy doing other things. So this will just be a short recap of my day.

This morning started with me playing 0 A.D. for a few hours, until I finally won a skirmish on “Very Easy”. Then, off to the store for the week’s groceries. On the way I stopped and chatted w/a friend (while staying 6 feet apart); good to catch up a little.

0 A.D.

Fri, 01 May 2020 13:43:58 -0600

Today’s post will be fairly short, for a few reasons. First, I’ve been busy, and don’t feel like writing a lengthy post. And second, I have been distracted playing 0 A.D., a free and open-source game of ancient warfare, akin to Age of Empires.

I’ve heard of the game prior to today, but it was brought back to my attention via a post by Kev on Fosstodon. And so, after work, I downloaded it and started to play.

RSS For The Win!

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 13:39:36 -0600

I love reading. I have read ever since I can remember. Before I was around computers, I read physical books. When our family got a computer in the early 2000s I continued reading books, but also began reading news online.

Fast forward to the early 2010s. My reading habits had not changed much, although I added some digital books and magazines to my reading collection. But then, I discovered blogs.

Improving My Zoom Audio Qualtiy

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 13:05:03 -0600

Zoom: The New Normal

In mid-March, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to affect daily life, many companies (including the one I work for) began having all employees work from home that could with reasonable efficiency. For me, this meant taking what is a fairly social job (of the 8-9 hours I’m at work a day, 1-2 hours tend to be impromptu or scheduled conversations) and moving it almost 100% online. Fun…

Unwinding

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 13:04:21 -0600

As I start writing this blog post, it’s already 8:50p. Normally I try to at least come up with what I’m going to write about earlier in the day. But today I kept busy enough that I only thought about blogging once or twice.

I started out working from home this morning, but then something came up with work that required me to head in to the office for the afternoon (first time in around 2 weeks). After a few hours of beating my head against a wall, I managed to find the issue, and push a fix. By that time it was already after 5p, and so I headed home, while keeping up with Slack chats along the way (and throughout dinner).

Monday Miscellany

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 13:02:11 -0600

I was struggling a little today with deciding what to write about. So instead of one large topic, I have 4 mini-topics!

Into The Storm

First up, a podcast I’ve really been enjoying recently: Into the Storm. Technically part of the Froning and Friends podcast (made up of Rich Froning and others in the Crossfit community), Into the Storm is currently a weekly podcast where the hosts take a passage/chapter from the Bible, read through it, and discuss it. It’s not highly structured, nor is it deeply theological. Rather, it’s just a good discussion, and is something I am looking forward to listening to every week.

Book Review: Console Wars

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 12:58:43 -0600

Earlier this year I began to renew my interest in video games, the culture surrounding them, and the all of the work that goes into their creation. One of the books that I heard about while listening to a gaming-related podcast was Console Wars by Blake J. Harris. And so, as I have a habit of doing, I immediately pulled out my phone, opened the Amazon app, and ordered a paperback copy of the book.

Turns Out, I’m an Introvert!

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 12:56:49 -0600

I consider myself an introvert. There’s never been a time in my 30 years on this planet where I didn’t think of myself as an introvert. But over the past few years, as I became more and more involved in both work and church, I started to believe that maybe I was some kind of introvert/extrovert hybrid, or that I was evolving into an extrovert. I still enjoyed time by myself, but I was constantly going places with people, chatting with friends (in person and online), etc. And then the COVID-19 pandemic happened.

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 07:24:00 -0500

Good morning Fosstodon, and happy #ScreenshotSunday ! I’ve been following this trend for a while, but never posted my own. So, here it is! 🙂

A few notes:

The wallpaper is not a picture of me
But yes, I do play the saxophone
This is my primary home desktop, a dual monitor setup. At some point I’ll get around to posting a pic from some of the others.

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

100 Days to Offload: Day 1

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 12:48:17 -0600

I sat down approximately 5 hours ago to start writing this post. And then, as often happens anytime I write a blog post, I promptly got distracted making completely unrelated tweaks to how my website works. Therefore, I now have a new theme installed, updated my plugins, and cleaned up my blog post categories. And with that, I am finally starting in on the new post!

I have found over the years that some of the best changes in my life happen when I choose to do something somewhat at random, and don’t put a lot of extra research and planning into it. My switch to the keto diet a few years ago is one good example. Another was the choice a little over a week ago to join challenge to do 2000 lunges in 10 days (1000/leg) with my sister, which turned out to improve my workout habits some while working from home. And that brings us to last night…

Sibling Summit: Episode 5: Slacking or Relaxing

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 12:00:00 -0600

Click here for the audio on Archive.org

What tech do each of us use in our daily lives? Is social media a blessing or a curse, and how do we each deal with it? Is there a way to tell the difference between slacking and relaxing? And what do we each do to relax? Join us for disucussions on all this and more!

Discoveries

Justin: Still Rolling Stones (Social Distancing Version) by Lauren Daigle
Hannah: SomeGoodNews
Justin: Procreate
Hannah: Online Optometry Conference

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 07:57:00 -0500

It’s April 15, which normally corresponds to Spring planting weather here in Central Illinois. Instead, this morning I woke up to… 30 degrees and snow. 😬

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Micro-Update: KDE Konsole and tmux

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 12:33:28 -0600

I ran into an interesting issue this morning after running system updates on my main desktop computer (running Arch Linux with the KDE Plasma desktop). For some reason, although I don’t think any behavior was intentionally changed by the developers (and I’m not blaming anyone), Konsole (a KDE terminal app) started intercepting the CTRL+B key combo that is used by tmux. It turns out that this is a standard “Add Bookmark” shortcut in the Plasma desktop environment.

Micro-Update: Happy Easter!

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 12:34:32 -0600

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 12:29:00 -0500

It’s amazing how an extremely minor software change can cause unforeseen issues…

Spent 10+ hours over the last few days tracking down a bizarre I2C issue that appeared seemingly out of nowhere on a project. Assumed it was due to a tweak I made in a PoE driver that was on that I2C bus. But, turned out to be due to forgetting to initialize a struct to a known state in what I thought was an unrelated driver I was rewriting, which caused a pin to be initialized incorrectly. 🤦‍♂️ #DeveloperProblems

Sibling Summit: Episode 4: The Teleworking Life

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 12:00:00 -0600

Click here for the audio on Archive.org

What does teleworking due to the COVID-19 outbreak look like for the two of us? How do we stay focused day in and day out? And how do we each deal with anxiety and depression when it hits? Join us for disucussions on all this and more!

Plus, Hannah talks about the music group 21 Pilots, and Justin expounds on new software he recently picked up from Rogue Amoeba!

Sibling Summit: Episode 3: The Corona Effect

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 12:00:00 -0600

Click here for the audio on Archive.org

What does life look like in 3 different parts of the US with the COVID-19 outbreak and precautions? Why did we name the podcast Sibling Summit? What does “under the weather” really mean? Join us for disucussions on all this and more!

Plus, Hannah talks about the music group Black Violin, Jonah attempts to explain why we should watch Supernatural, and Justin geeks out about a new tea he discovered!

Sibling Summit: Episode 2: All in the Mind's Eye

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 12:00:00 -0600

Click here for the audio on Archive.org

What does it take to start a podcast, and what did we learn in the process? What is aphantasia, and how do each of us view things in our mind’s eye? And with all of the cool things to learn and do, how do you choose? Join us as we discuss all three!

Plus, Hannah talks about ambient-mixer.com, and Justin explains what RSS is, and the new setup he is using for an RSS feed reader!

Sibling Summit: Episode 1: Hello World

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 12:00:00 -0600

Click here for the audio on Archive.org

If content is free, but you have the option to donate, should you? How much is time really worth? And can openness be a facade? Justin and Hannah discuss all three, plus introduce themselves to the world, and discuss what they’ve been up to.

Plus, Justin talks about autonomus robots, and Hannah reviews the SinglesSwag Box.

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Context: Originally posted as part of the now-defunct Sibling Summit podcast

Micro-Update: Recommended Firefox Extensions

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 12:35:54 -0600

I realized this morning that I frequently give recommendations to friends and family on apps and tools to use, books and blogs to read, podcasts to listen to, etc. And so, instead of constantly pulling up my notes and then sending a list individually to each person, I decided to begin creating pages here on my website briefly listing my recommendations, and why I recommend them.

The first (and only) page so far is my recommendations for Firefox Extensions. However, I expect to add more in short order, at which time I’ll add a blog post announcing them as well. My goal is to keep these pages updated and current, as I personally hate it when I come across recommendations that I think sound useful, and then find out that they are years out of date.

2019 Year in Review

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 12:37:47 -0600

It’s hard to believe, but another year has come and gone. And so, to keep with my tradition (is 3 years enough to call it a tradition?), here’s a look back at the last 12 months of my life.

The beginning of 2019 was relatively bland for me. I was active at work, and volunteering at church, but not many noteworthy events occurred during that time. I did, however, make a small change in one of my habits: I quit listening to audiobooks on Audible. I wrote up a blog post about it in early March, so I won’t rehash the details here. But that change did see me begin to purchase and read more physical books than I did in previous years.

Micro-Update: Quotes and Passages Page

Sun, 29 Dec 2019 12:16:42 -0600

I spend what is probably an excessive amount of time researching the art of studying, reading, and researching, driven by a desire to constantly improve not only myself, my skills, and my knowledge, but to also improve how I learn. Earlier today I came across the idea of publishing a “Quotes and Passages” page to my website while reading an article by Ryan Holiday. I skimmed through his implementation, and decided to begin implementing the same type of page here. My plan is for it to contain quotes from books, podcasts, etc than I find particularly interesting, inspiring, or noteworthy.

Micro-Update: User-Friendly Linux Mug

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 12:25:29 -0600

This is the first of what I’m referring to as “micro-updates”, based on the concept of micro-blogging. I occasionally have a short thought, or something I would like to share, but there isn’t enough content to create a standard-length blog post. So I decided to give this format a try.

Earlier this week, a co-worker sent me a link to an amusing mug on Amazon. I’m a sucker for things like that, and so it was added to my cart, purchased, and arrived on my doorstep in short order. While it’s not “accurate”, per-say, I can at times agree with the sentiment. As much as I love Linux, occasionally when troubleshooting something, it can be a tad annoying…

Asocial? A Life Without Social Media

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 12:27:34 -0600

In November of 2018, I logged out of Facebook and Instagram for the last time, deleted my Snapchat account, and removed the Twitter app from my phone. A few months later, I also shuttered my Twitter account. After debating it for many years, and attempting (and failing) multiple times, I was finally done with social media.

It’s been almost a year since that time, and so I decided to do a quick retrospective to answer the following question, something I wish I would have had to read before making my choice: what’s it like to be 30, in the tech sector, and not on any traditional social media platforms? In short, it’s both amazing, and also sometimes slightly annoying.

Leaving Android Behind

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 12:29:43 -0600

If someone were to have told me that I’d be leaving Android at the start of 2019, I’d have told them they were crazy. After all, when I switched to Android from iOS in 2015, I decided that I would be staying with the platform for the foreseeable future. And the further I got into that future, the more entrenched I became in the Android ecosystem, to the point that switching would be painful on both my pocketbook, and on my daily life. But here we are: it’s September, and I’m officially leaving Android behind, and switching to an iPhone. So… why an iPhone? After all, I’m a Linux user, right? Wouldn’t it make more sense to move to another Android-based system, or a Linux phone?

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 21:43:00 -0500

Spent multiple hours this afternoon/evening debugging an issue that turned out to be caused by simulated data that was too perfect… caught a legitimate software bug, so glad it happened. But man, that was annoying…

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 07:25:00 -0500

Happy #IndependenceDay to all of my fellow Americans! 🇺🇸

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” - Ronald Reagan

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Fri, 28 Jun 2019 16:11:00 -0500

Hello all! I’m a software engineer from the US, specializing primarily in C for microcontrollers, with some dabbling in C++ and Go.

Outside of software development, I enjoy reading, music, and all things tech-related. I’m slowly moving into the Linux/FOSS world, one step (or app) at a time.

Context: Originally posted to my Fosstodon (Mastodon) account

Abandoning Audible

Sun, 10 Mar 2019 12:30:58 -0600

Every year, when it comes time to renew memberships and subscriptions to various online services, I sit down and re-evaluate if they are still worth the amount of money that I am spending. It is relatively rare that something gets added to the yearly subscription list, and even rarer when a service gets removed. I’ve also found that, year after year, there have been a collection of services that I haven’t even considered removing. And up until this year, Audible was one of those services…

2018 Year in Review

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 12:04:26 -0600

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” Gandalf

Well, it’s hard to believe, but another year has come and gone! I was told growing up that time flies the older you get, and I’ve generally noticed each year seeming to go by slightly faster than the one before. However, this year seemed to go especially fast for me. In a recent sermon from my pastor, I was challenged to look back at 2018 and what God has done in my life. And so, with that goal, here’s a brief recap of what I decided to do with the last 365 days!

Mon, 30 Jul 2018 13:56:00 +0000

Sib pic from this past weekend. Because, you know… Tradition. 🙂

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 27 Jul 2018 19:36:00 +0000

Fun game for this evening: Any guesses as to what this is a picture of? 🙂 #pixel2xl

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Thu, 19 Jul 2018 18:12:00 +0000

Shooting video for the final day of VBS 2018 😎🎥

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sat, 23 Jun 2018 17:18:00 +0000

At my first Peoria Chiefs game 🙂

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Wed, 16 May 2018 17:02:43 +0000

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Wed, 16 May 2018 17:02:42 +0000

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Mycroft Mark 1

Sat, 12 May 2018 12:02:54 -0600

I have been dabbling in smart home technology and voice assistants for several years now. I was one of the first people I know to own an Amazon Echo (the original black tube), and used it until November 2016, when the Google Home first came out. Since I am an Android user, and I use Google’s services heavily in multiple areas of my life, I made the switch to the Google Home and never looked back. That is, until mid-2017, when the Mycroft Mark 1 Kickstarter was first announced.

Sat, 12 May 2018 10:54:00 +0000

New addition to my smart home lineup… Finally got my Mycroft Mark 1 Voice Assistant from Mycroft! #opensource #smarthome

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Wed, 09 May 2018 18:30:00 +0000

8:30p. Editing a video while riding shotgun in a pickup truck, heading to a customer 2 states away who’s experiencing some problems with a new product… What a life. 😀

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 13:22:00 +0000

He is risen! Happy Easter from the Vollmer Family!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 03:55:00 +0000

I have joined the exclusive 0.05% of Todoist users! Reaching Todoist Karma Enlightenment!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Reflections on a Year With Linux

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 12:01:37 -0600

A little over a year ago (Nov. 2016), I made the switch to using Linux pretty much full time. I wrote a few blog posts about it during the first month, but I have been relatively quiet since then. So, I thought it was about time that I gave a public update.

First of all, am I still using Linux as my daily driver? For the most part, yes. In fact, I’m writing this blog post on one of my Linux machines. Both my main laptop (the Asus ZenBook) and my main desktop computer (an old Dell Precision T3600) run Arch Linux as the OS, with KDE Plasma 5 for the desktop, and I have had very few issues with them overall. Arch gives me the latest version of pretty much any Linux software I want to run, and KDE gives me a nice, fluid desktop experience that doesn’t feel stuck in the 90s/early 2000s like some other desktop environments do (not to disparage them – just not my preference if I have the option).

2017 Year in Review

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 11:32:40 -0600

Wow. It’s hard to believe that today is the last day of 2017 already. Since this has been a very busy year for me, I thought it would be good to look back at some the major events in my life. This is more for my own benefit than anyone else’s, if I’m honest. It’s always good to remind myself of what God has done in my life over the year, and what he’s helped me to accomplish throughout the year. So, as Ro (from Nerdy Nummies) would say… Let’s Get Started!

Site Redesign and Migration

Sat, 30 Dec 2017 11:31:15 -0600

Note: This blog post is outdated, but left in place for historical reasons.

As you may have noticed if you’re reading this on justinvollmer.com (instead of an RSS reader), my website has undergone some visual changes. This was due in part to my choice to migrate away from Squarespace, where my site had been hosted for the last few years.

So, why the change? Well, for a couple of reasons, the biggest of which was cost. I was paying close to 100 USD a year to Squarespace, and I felt that I could find a cheaper solution elsewhere. Also, while Squarespace is extremely easy to use, it was also beginning to feel a bit limiting. I’ve been looking at using Amazon Lightsail to host my own server for a few months anyhow, and my impending renewal on Squarespace gave me a good incentive to make the switch. And since I had a few days off from work, it felt like a good time to make the changes.

Wed, 27 Dec 2017 15:14:00 +0000

Happy 31st anniversary to my amazing parents!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 24 Nov 2017 16:30:00 +0000

Shooting pool with Dad on Thanksgiving… #thanksgiving2017

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Thu, 23 Nov 2017 18:39:00 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours! #thanksgiving2017

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 15:49:00 +0000

Me: “Smile for a sib pic!”

Hannah had other plans…

#thanksgiving2017

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 09:52:00 +0000

Guess who I caught reading? Hi Dad! #thanksgiving2017

Photo taken with a Panasonic GH5 and a Minolta 45mm f/2 MD Rokkor-X Lens.

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 19 Nov 2017 13:33:00 +0000

Having some fun with vintage lenses. Today’s adventure was using a Pentax K-Mount lens with my lovely little #bmpcc 😎

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 18:55:00 +0000

Borrowed a #canon #5dmarkii to test out full frame cameras. And then had to find something to shoot… 😁

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 19:24:00 +0000

Absolutely amazing performance this evening by The Quebe Sisters! So glad that they included Morton on their tour this fall!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 05 Nov 2017 13:31:00 +0000

Set up a new audio interface for my main Linux rig. Got tired of using the built in ports. I admit, it’s probably overkill. But it was just sitting there begging for me to use it! #linux #focusrite 🎧🎶😎

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sat, 21 Oct 2017 13:51:00 +0000

Mom and dad together in the cab… Just like old times 😃

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 20 Oct 2017 16:25:00 +0000

Off to the next field… #harvest17 #pixel #nofilter

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Wed, 13 Sep 2017 15:32:00 +0000

Woot! Finally got my copy of Twelve Against the Gods! Been looking for a good copy of this for a while now… #bibliophile

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Tue, 05 Sep 2017 03:51:00 +0000

Quote from Antigone that’s been stuck in my head for the last 12 hours…

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 27 Aug 2017 18:14:00 +0000

Blueberries! 😍

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Tue, 22 Aug 2017 04:14:00 +0000

Family “dronie” from this weekend 😊

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 06 Aug 2017 17:12:00 +0000

Delicious pork chop, based on a recipe from Dave Asprey! 🍽

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sat, 05 Aug 2017 16:52:00 +0000

Time for a tasty salad! 🥗

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sat, 15 Jul 2017 16:52:00 +0000

Dinner time! 🥗

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 23 Jun 2017 18:59:00 +0000

C is for cookie… 🍪

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 23 Jun 2017 04:54:00 +0000

Tut-tut, it looks like rain…

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 04 Jun 2017 05:36:00 +0000

Coffee for the road: check! Now, back to Illinois! 😄

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 11:10:00 +0000

The view from my “office” for the week. Aka, field testing!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 09:04:00 +0000

My view this morning 😊. Perks of working in the ag industry! 56 and sunny!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 05:10:00 +0000

Guess what day it is… That’s right! It’s the first day of Precision Planting’s 2017 Winter Conference!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Three Weeks Into the Linux Experiment

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 11:29:29 -0600

Note: This is part 2 of my series on switching to Linux. To see my first blog post, click here.

In “The Long Road to Linux”, published in late November, I wrote a post stating that I was attempting to switch to using Linux full time as my operating system of choice. And so, after spending slightly over three weeks running Linux on my main laptop, I figured it was time to post an update on how things are going.

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 19:19:00 +0000

Goal for the holidays (Tues-Sun): use my Arch laptop exclusively, only falling back to my MacBook Pro as a last resort. Day 1: success! 🐧 #linux #archlinux

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

The Long Road to Linux

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 11:28:33 -0600

In October of 2015, I transitioned to using Linux as my primary OS at work. At the time I was using Ubuntu 14.04, as it was the suggested distribution for compiling and testing one of the main software products my employer creates, and it was (for the most part) compatible with all of the other various toolchains that I needed to use as an Embedded Software Engineer. I got along with it for the most part, and continued to use Mac OS X and Windows 8 in my personal life.

Tue, 08 Nov 2016 05:34:00 +0000

Vote: ☑

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sat, 29 Oct 2016 12:24:00 +0000

Just got my signed copy of Odyssey, the latest album from the amazing Taylor Davis! 😄

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 28 Oct 2016 15:21:00 +0000

Finally got the Oonagh album I ordered! 😊 Direct from Germany 🇩🇪

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 16:15:00 +0000

Birthday gift from my amazing hair stylist, who informed me that, as a resident of Morton, these pumpkin bars are a Big Deal, and that I will understand more the longer I’m in the area. Thanks Dani! 🎂 🎃 😄

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Tue, 09 Aug 2016 15:55:00 +0000

Adventures in Stir-fry. Nom nom nom 😃

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 17 Jul 2016 10:09:00 +0000

Lunch time! 😄

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 17:44:00 +0000

Knee-high by the 4th of July. Around here, that’s the metric for soybeans… 😎

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 19 Jun 2016 18:14:00 +0000

Didn’t get to have lunch with my dad on Father’s Day, but I made a meal that he would approve of anyways 😄

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:05:00 +0000

Team-building Activity w/some of my co-workers at Precision Planting. Beat the challenge in 42m20s (total allotted time is 60m). Fun times!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 12 Jun 2016 12:42:00 +0000

Late, but tasty, lunch 😄

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Sat, 30 Apr 2016 16:17:00 +0000

Two new pieces of artwork and a new storage solution for my Blu-ray collection. Clearly my family has been here… 🙂

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Sat, 30 Apr 2016 16:06:00 +0000

New Blu-ray/DVD storage solution, with layout courtesy of Jonah. Enjoyed spending time with (most) of my family this weekend, & looking forward to seeing Hannah Vollmer before too long! 😊

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Sun, 24 Apr 2016 09:09:00 +0000

Ran across a toad while mowing yesterday. Thankfully, it was smart enough to move… 😊

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sat, 20 Feb 2016 11:04:00 +0000

Lunch time!

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Sat, 13 Feb 2016 17:45:00 +0000

Current temperature outside? 15 degrees. Seems like the perfect time to make some tasty New England Clam Chowder 😊

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Mon, 11 Jan 2016 15:18:00 +0000

Got a small box of Belgian chocolates from a coworker today. Nom nom nom! 😃

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Sun, 10 Jan 2016 15:59:00 +0000

Found this waiting on my doorstep after church today. Apparently, Amazon decided I needed the amazing Lindsey Stirling’s new book a few days early. Oh well, no complaints here! 😊

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 04 Dec 2015 16:27:00 +0000

Having fun with my new toy… 😊 (and yes, I totally took a pic of my sister’s message asking for a pic…)

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Wed, 02 Dec 2015 19:40:00 +0000

Christmas time is here…

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Sat, 21 Nov 2015 05:50:00 +0000

I’m dreaming of a white… Thanksgiving? Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. But the snow makes for some awesome photo/video ops, so I’m good. 😊

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Change: The Only Constant

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 11:26:55 -0600

“Everything changes and nothing stands still.” Heraclitus of Ephesus

That quote could not be more accurate. Since the last time I wrote a blog post, I have gone through almost innumerable changes. I have changed jobs, moved to a new state, rented a house, and begun the process of finding a new church. You could safely say that pretty much every facet of my life has changed.

At the end of September, I accepted a new position as an Embedded Software Engineer with Precision Planting LLC. I summarily left my position as Lead Software Engineer at InSource Technologies, Inc, and moved from rural Northwest Ohio to Central Illinois. While not a drastic move, it was definitely a change of scenery, and is taking some getting used to.

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 10:36:00 +0000

Latest addition to my desk at work…

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Thu, 05 Nov 2015 08:03:00 +0000

Had an unusual visitor at the office today…

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Mon, 12 Oct 2015 18:51:00 +0000

Duck!

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Sat, 10 Oct 2015 16:12:00 +0000

15m to Celtic Woman!

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Thu, 01 Oct 2015 10:26:00 +0000

For those situations where squeezing a star would improve things.. 😐

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Tue, 29 Sep 2015 17:21:00 +0000

Pie time at Grandma’s!

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Thu, 24 Sep 2015 09:00:00 +0000

Lunch time at the Cabin!

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Wed, 22 Jul 2015 06:25:00 +0000

First day with my new Nexus 6 and Project Fi. So far, pretty good experience!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 17 Jul 2015 19:13:00 +0000

Had a good excuse to play around with my #BMPCC this evening… Lovely sunset! 😃

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 28 Jun 2015 08:39:00 +0000

Sound booth discussions with Jocelyn Jurcevich 😜

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 14 Jun 2015 09:12:00 +0000

Took Hannah Vollmer to see the amazing Lindsey Stirling at her Grand Rapids, MI show for her birthday, complete with pre-show meet and greet (where this photo was taken). One of the coolest shows I’ve ever been to!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 16:05:00 +0000

Q & A session before the concert! 😃

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Wed, 03 Jun 2015 09:40:00 +0000

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Sun, 31 May 2015 09:02:00 +0000

Testing a new recording setup this morning at Family Christian Center 😀

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Tech team pic from Saturday’s SHINE conference at FCC… Long day, but lots of fun 🎶

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sat, 11 Apr 2015 08:26:00 +0000

My Garlic Festival order arrived! Finally! Don’t think you can ever have enough of this stuff on hand…

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Sat, 28 Mar 2015 16:30:00 +0000

Pre-show sib pic at the Northwesternaires performance! 😃

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Tue, 16 Dec 2014 15:41:00 +0000

Dinner at JK O’Donnell’s 😃

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Sun, 14 Dec 2014 11:03:00 +0000

The directors team from this year’s Christmas production at Family Christian Center: Crazy Town. 6 months of prep, 3 performances, all for 1 reason!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 18:07:00 +0000

Another still from my test shoot with the BMPCC :)

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 18:04:00 +0000

Playing around with my new BMPCC…!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sun, 12 Oct 2014 06:55:00 +0000

Sunrise on the drive to work (a few days ago)…

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 06:54:00 +0000

The hotel I was at last week… (right next to a river - lovely view!)

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Mon, 06 Oct 2014 07:26:00 +0000

Lovely drive to work this morning…

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Thu, 25 Sep 2014 15:36:00 +0000

Steak time!

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 17:01:00 +0000

A rainbow after the storm…

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

No Earthly Regrets

Sat, 02 Aug 2014 11:25:28 -0600

“What is at the top of your bucket list?”

“What is one thing you want to accomplish before you die?”

While I’ve often heard others talking about their life’s goals, their bucket list, etc, I’ve apparently never given it much thought myself. This became very obvious today when I was in an interview for our company newsletter. I came up with something rather blasé, but it made me wonder: what are my life’s goals?

Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:57:00 +0000

A relaxing Saturday afternoon at the Cabin…

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Fri, 20 Jun 2014 14:52:00 +0000

Out to dinner with Grandma and Hannah Vollmer :)

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The Complexity of Vacation

Thu, 15 May 2014 11:23:59 -0600

Have you ever been in a place where you know you need to take time off work, but you just can’t bring yourself to, because you know that they need you to be there? Or you have a vacation day scheduled already, but you feel guilty about taking the time off? We’ve all been there at one time or another. And on this blustery Thursday in May, that’s the place where I find myself.

Sat, 12 Apr 2014 17:10:00 +0000

Obligatory sunset photo… :)

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Tue, 08 Apr 2014 20:28:00 +0000

The improved “Blue Screen of Death”…it’s the Blue Frowny-Face of Death! (Windows 8 failure at work)

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Sat, 05 Apr 2014 11:43:00 +0000

Is it just me, or do the instruments used by optometrists look a bit like the Cybermen…?

Context: Originally posted to my now-defunct Instagram account

Welcome

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 11:22:35 -0600

First blog post of the New Year (and the first on this site)!

I’ve been meaning to develop a website for a while now, both to showcase the videos I have been producing, and to tie together the various forms of social media that I use. Having heard of Squarespace on the Sword and Laser Podcast, I decided to give it a try. And what better time than on a day when I’m stuck at home, due to a Level 3 Snow Emergency?