Category: General

I never knew you could do this before, but it will for sure come in handy the next time I need to ship something.

A little humor for your Wednesday.

My RSS reader of choice is Feedbin, but occasionally I like to login to Feedly and see how my feeds look using it. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this and this was the login screen:

Talk about analysis paralysis I have no idea what I originally used to login or to create my account. So now I’ll choose nothing and go back to work.

As creators we need to remember that less options is usually better. Don’t make me think especially when it’s a core tenant to actually using your app.

I think we can all use some good news in our lives right now, which is why this is number one trending thing on YouTube. Also because Steve Carell is a guest and The Office is the greatest sitcom ever.

It’s the first weekend of a mandatory “stay home” order in my state due to covid-19 and the kids are ready to go stir crazy. Luckily I got a new pack of Field Notes that allow you to customize them with your own circle image. So we had art day…

The end results turned out pretty well…

I’m a big fan of doing things away from screens and this was a perfect activity.

Today I played golf for the first time since the social distancing due to COVID-19 started in my area. Here was the rules:

• Only one person per golf cart or walk
• Leave the flags in
• No rakes in or around the bunkers
• No water from coolers on the course

Simple rules and I think it worked well. My group was able to play with no one getting too close to each other and we all had an enjoyable time.

Hopefully, the curve will be flattened soon enough and we can go back to normal life. Until then little things can go along way.

Stay safe!

Every so often we do family art night. It’s fun, the kids enjoy it, and we get free drawings to decorate our house with. Winning all around!

I will say painting is hard without practice. Just like this one I created tonight that was supposed to be black panther eyes. I knew how I wanted it to end up, but couldn’t get the paint to do what I wanted. Just makes one realize how good the professionals are.

I think reading is essential, and I want to pass on the love of it to my kids. Last year I had the idea of a new program in our household, every first day of the month I would buy them a new book, and it could be 100% their choice. I didn’t care if it’s the Very Hungry Caterpillar or an autobiography of Gandhi. Any book they want, I’ll buy it for them.

It gives us something to look forward to every month, and I think it’s pretty exciting seeing their choices. Right now, one is loving illustrated books, and the other is into fiction.

This month my oldest wanted the Hunger Games, so I got her the box set. I’m pretty sure that she is attempting to beat the system, but I’m not going to complain that it’s three instead of one.

We’ve all seen models of the solar system and they do a good job of representing the sun and the planets, but it’s hard to get a representation of the sheer vastness of space. If the moon were only 1 pixel by Josh Worth he creates a scale model using the moon as 1 pixel. It’s crazy how much scrolling is involved to reach the first planet, and be sure and click the light speed button in the bottom corner.

“Most space charts leave out the most significant part – all the space”, and now I’m tired of scrolling.

I just got this awesome old school Ebbets Field Flannels baseball hat from my buddy Joel Kuehn with his company logo on it. I love the early 1900’s feel to it and the style. Very memorable company swag that stands out. 

Today I received the following email…

As I was blazing through my inbox, my first reaction to fire off a quick yes, but then just as I started to reply I noticed the “There” was capitalized. That threw up a flag to my brain, then as I thought for 10 seconds I came to the conclusion that no one with good faith would email this question. Instead, they would say you have a broken link on this page.

I deleted this email and didn’t reply, but they almost got me. Of course, now I’m going to spend all day wondering what the goal of this email actually was? Maybe they just wanted to see if the email address they sent it to was active. Who knows.

Just before the holidays, I received an opensource donation from the nice folks at Algolia.  They sent the money via Paypal and also included their office address. As a way of saying thank you, I wrote them a quick thank you letter, went to the post office and bought a global stamp (they are in Paris), and mailed it off.  Then yesterday I woke up to this nice message on Twitter:

It took me all of about 30 minutes which included the trip to the post office to make this and I want to believe this stands out because no one takes the time to write a thank-you letter anymore. Instead, we’d rather use email, social media, text message, or a DM.

The next time someone does something nice for you, send them a thank you letter. It just might make their day memorable.

A few weeks ago Slack made a change to the app and added a new WYSIWYG toolbar. This alone didn’t bother me, but they also started doing weird things with markdown style code blocks using the three ticks. Thankfully they just announced you can turn this feature off.  Just hit “Preferences -> Advanced -> Input Options” and then check the following option:

I’ve been watching the impeachment testimony every day and I’m thankful the Republicans pushed this to be a public hearing. I love watching it and I find the chess match between the two sides in this exhilarating. So far I’ve stayed away from talking-head commentary and only watched the proceedings through my own lens and I wanted to share my thoughts after Sondland’s testimony yesterday. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to watch the night session so I’m not sure if they had a lot of other new information.

In his opening statement, Sondland threw everyone under the bus and it was damaging to the defense. He said everyone knew what was going on from the POTUS, the VP, and down, and there was definitely a quid pro quo. It was a bombshell.

Really the only recourse the Republicans had was to discredit him and he’s had a lot of changing stories, so it shouldn’t have been very hard. However, I think the Republicans made a huge mistake when they didn’t allow him access to the transcripts of his calls and meetings. Yes, he should have taken notes, yes he changed his story, but for me holding these back had the reverse effect. It gave him more credibility and made them look weak.

In the end, none of this really matters. It will be a party-line vote and he will be impeached, then nothing will happen in the Senate. I think the same happened to Clinton if my memory is correct.  People will scream about fairness, witch hunts, and moving goalposts, but it’s just noise. The impeachment has been decided and they have the votes.

His description of this was so perfect and I was nodding in agreement the whole time. I haven’t done a lot of night riding and I just did my first one of the season last week on trails that I know. It was a ton of fun, but not sure I’d be comfortable taking a beginner. Although, they would have some great stories from the adventure.

Someone I follow on social media shared a quote this morning and I disagreed with it.

Instead of quickly replying with my smart remark, I researched the quote, found the book it came from. Then, as luck would have it, I had a free Kindle credit so I bought the book and read the entire chapter to get the complete context. Now I agree with the quote.