Used books

I like books and to save money I started buying used ones off Amazon. You can find some really good deals and even though it takes a few days or weeks to arrive you never really know what you are going to get.

Today, Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson arrived and when I opened it I found tons of underlines and markings from the past owner.

To me it doesn’t really take away from the book. Instead it’s like some random person whom I’ve never met is showing me what is important to them. I think it’s rather cool.

I might feel different if I paid a lot but this particular book was only around $5 including shipping, plus it’s only in pencil so I could always erase it if I wanted.

9/11

This year Laracon was back in New York and I had the ability to take the family to the 9/11 memorial and below are some of my favorite photos from that visit.

9/11 such a solemn place and the only attack on US soil that I remember. In fact, I still remember everything about that day. Where I was at when the preliminary news reports came in, watching the second plane, the shock after. It was surreal.

My kids were both born many years after this and they couldn’t really comprehend the importance of it all. I imagine it’s like me as a kid reading about the attack on Pearl Harbor. The farther you are away from the event the less it affects you. Just like today, I can’t comprehend the war and conflict that continues to happen every day throughout the world. It brings perspective to how lucky I am to be born where I was.

Rush hour

This morning I had to drive into the city during rush hour. Having worked remote for the past decade it was eye opening and a little bizarre.

On a high level it’s strange that a million people all get in their cars at the same time and drive to a 20 square mile spot with some buildings. It’s even stranger when half those workers could just be working from someplace else and not having to deal with the stress.

I know more and more companies are moving to a remote workforce which would alleviate a lot of the wasted time but more than anything it reminds me the city planners struggled to plan for the amount of cars on the road.

Personal Blogs?

We all know the mantra, own your space yet we all seem to love our walled gardens. At first it was Medium and we all gave them content only for them to take advantage of it. Instead of learning our lesson now everyone seems to be moving to dev.to or whatever flavor of the month is.

Social media is no better, just today I seen someone on Twitter who had their account revoked because of too many dmca takedown requests and fake complaints. They lost years worth of stuff they posted on it, lost all the followers, etc.

I know creating your own space is hard especially because it feels like your writing and no one is going to read it. Lately, I’ve actually been hunting for personal blogs and I’ve found a lot of great stuff.

If you have a personal blog let me know in the comments as I’d love to give it a follow in my RSS reader. I’m looking for the unique sites, not just programming and tech, but blogs across the board. If you are interested in and write about fishing, raising kids, making art, anything, I’d like to read it. Post a comment below so others can find it.

Breaking Records

Today, with the Laravel 6 announcement the Laravel News site had the single best day according to WordPress stats. It’s fun to see these things even though I rarely look too deeply into stats. Usually I’ll check the month over month stats, or the year trend lines and I like to see them going up, but I’m not to concerned about the day to day traffic.

What I do find funny is in one day that site probably got more traffic than I get here in a month. It makes sense because I tend to just ramble on here and share whatever is on my mind that day, where that site has a true focus and purpose.

If you are getting started with a new site keep it focused on the main topic and eventually the traffic should start coming in, but if you are blogging for yourself and to share with the world just ignore stats. Show up and write, who cares.

Happy Labor Day

Today we celebrate Labor Day, which as a holiday seems to be used to represent different things. The original intend was to celebrate laborers, the backbone of society, but today it seems everyone just uses it to signify the last weekend of summer.

For me, it reminds me that life is a marathon not a sprint. Yes, work is required, and I believe you should strive to be the best you can at it, but it’s only one part of your life. Family, hobbies, interests are all more important and in this day and age when everyone want’s to be “the self made man” those get put on hold.

As the saying goes, no one on their death bed cares about their work. If you got really sick today could you look back over this year and see that your priorities were in the right spot? If not change it. If so, keep it up!