Christopher Himes

Week 27

2026-07-05T19:18:01Z

General #

Traveled for work this week seeing the warehouse in Hazleton, PA. Lots of impressive stuff happening there and I got to see the software in use and spend time with someone who uses it all day every day.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes only a few days as I did not travel with it.
Completed final week activities for MBA610 on Tuesday and did all but the final for MBA620 on Saturday.
Swam in the pool for the first time ever with Liam and Leah.

Media #

Leah and I are watching The Traitors Canada season three is off to a better start than season two.
Leah and I are still watching Soap. Things are still dramatic but pregnancy and illness are fairly normal topics.
Played some Overwatch.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

First Day of My Life - Bright Eyes - 2 plays
The Sound of Settling - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Such Great Heights - Remastered - The Postal Service - 2 plays
Manifest - Andrew Bird - 1 plays
My Girls - Animal Collective - 1 plays
Lost In The Light - Bahamas - 1 plays
Lost Cause - Beck - 1 plays
Santa Fe - Beirut - 1 plays
Skinny Love - Bon Iver - 1 plays
Hang Me Up to Dry - Cold War Kids - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Death Cab for Cutie - 6 plays
Run the Jewels - 4 plays
Iron & Wine - 3 plays
LCD Soundsystem - 3 plays
Phantogram - 3 plays
The Postal Service - 3 plays
Vampire Weekend - 3 plays
Bright Eyes - 2 plays
Fleet Foxes - 2 plays
The Shins - 2 plays

This is day 50 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 26

2026-07-03T16:53:43Z

General #

Continued with 1:1s, building a stakeholder map, reviewing the backlog, and started leading a few recurring meetings.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes most days.
Got all the case studies submitted ahead of time and started on Week 7 activities early.

Media #

Leah and I finished watching The Traitors Canada season two.
Leah and I are still watching Soap. It’s getting back to normal but we do have to consider if the alien version of Burt was better in bed so there’s that.
Played some Overwatch.
This week is soo late I’m not going to try and recreate the stats.

This is day 49 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 25

2026-06-20T19:35:50Z

General #

Continued with 1:1s, building a stakeholder map, reviewing the backlog, and discussed my first 30 days.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes most days. Missed a few days due to the combination of work, school, and family stuff just being a bit too much.
Completed all of week six stuff early so I can get a jump on Week 7 and the case studies which are due tomorrow. All case studies are finished today just looking for some proof reading and sign-offs and we are good to go.
Was up a good portion of the night with Tater on Wednesday into Thursday. Every forty five minutes he wanted to go back outside. He had an incident a few weeks ago where we learned he had a mass in his bladder that would be an issue again in the future. It was just a matter of time. By the afternoon he was tired of straining and there were no improvements. Unfortunately, for this sort of thing there really is not anything to be done. After work, Leah and I took Tater to an emergency vet in Rochester where we said goodbye.
I put up the pool today so I think that means it is summer now.

Media #

Leah and I are watching The Traitors Canada season two and these are the absolutely worst faithful of any season of this show we have seen. I am talking US, Australia, UK, and all the celebrity variants. The traitors are not even very good, the faithful are just that bad.
Leah and I are still watching Soap. We’re on to time travel, alien abduction, demonic possession, and cults now.
I watched Caveat and Terrified.
Played some Overwatch. This new character Shion is pretty fun. I think there pixel and cute spray achievements may be too easy though. I unlocked them both in the first match I played the character.
This has been a weird week for music as you’ll see below. Not really listening to much but I will have to change that.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Baby - Ariel Pink - 1 plays
Eyes Off You - Bombay Bicycle Club - 1 plays
Electric Love - BØRNS - 1 plays
Cigarette Daydreams - Cage the Elephant - 1 plays
Helena Beat - Foster the People - 1 plays
Somebody That I Used to Know - Gotye - 1 plays
Tongue Tied - Grouplove - 1 plays
Livin’ It Up - Ja Rule - 1 plays
Go! - Killer Mike - 1 plays
Video Games - Lana Del Rey - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Tenacious D - 4 plays
Ariel Pink - 1 plays
Bombay Bicycle Club - 1 plays
BØRNS - 1 plays
Cage the Elephant - 1 plays
Foster the People - 1 plays
Gotye - 1 plays
Grouplove - 1 plays
Ja Rule - 1 plays
Killer Mike - 1 plays

This is day 48 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 24

2026-06-15T19:35:44Z

General #

Continued with 1:1s, building a stakeholder map, reviewing the backlog, and putting together my 30 day review.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes most days.
Took a midterm, did some homework, took a quiz, submitted a discussion, and weekly reflection.

Media #

Leah and I finished The Traitors Canada season one and have started season 2.
Leah and I are still watching Soap. Amnesia is gone but now your wife is in love with someone else and she thought you were dead.
I watched Send Help and Keeper
Listened to the rest of the new Death Cab for Cutie album.
Played some Overwatch. More than I should have probably. I mean I completed drives so that has to be too much. Thing is Moira does so much work in Stadium still it is ridiculous.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Gently - Tenacious D - 2 plays
Baby - Ariel Pink - 1 plays
Santa Fe - Beirut - 1 plays
Eyes Off You - Bombay Bicycle Club - 1 plays
Electric Love - BØRNS - 1 plays
Cigarette Daydreams - Cage the Elephant - 1 plays
NaNa - Chance the Rapper - 1 plays
How Heavenly A State - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
I Built You A Tower (b) - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
Riptides - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Tenacious D - 8 plays
Death Cab for Cutie - 6 plays
Foster the People - 2 plays
Two Door Cinema Club - 2 plays
Ariel Pink - 1 plays
Beirut - 1 plays
Bombay Bicycle Club - 1 plays
BØRNS - 1 plays
Cage the Elephant - 1 plays
Chance the Rapper - 1 plays

This is day 47 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 23

2026-06-08T18:37:57Z

General #

Really ramped up the 1:1 meetings this week and had lots of good conversations. Grabbed a few reports and created one of my own for reviewing backlog activities.
Leah and I went to Fun City in Lansing for my niece’s birthday party. It was nice to see the fam.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes most days. I missed on Saturday with school, birthday party, and birthday party related travel.
Submitted the case for the midterm for accounting, did all the reading, completed the discussion, reflection, and my portion of the case for Information Systems.

Media #

Leah and I have finished Married at First Sight. Participants are shocked to discover that being on the show is “kinda a red flag.” No kidding?
Leah and I are still watching Soap. Amnesia is gone but now your wife is in love with someone else and she thought you were dead.
Listened to a bit of the new Death Cab for Cutie album.
Played some Overwatch. More than I should have probably.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Wanksta - 50 Cent - 2 plays
Envy the Birds - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Atomic Dog - Dogs Of The World Unite Remix - George Clinton - 2 plays
Perfect - Logic - 2 plays
So Fresh, So Clean - OutKast - 2 plays
hate that i made you love me - Ariana Grande - 1 plays
we can’t be friends (wait for your love) - Ariana Grande - 1 plays
Another Sunny Day - Belle and Sebastian - 1 plays
Expectations - Belle and Sebastian - 1 plays
Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying - Belle and Sebastian - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Belle and Sebastian - 10 plays
Death Cab for Cutie - 7 plays
Tenacious D - 4 plays
Logic - 3 plays
Tyler, The Creator - 3 plays
50 Cent - 2 plays
Ariana Grande - 2 plays
Chance the Rapper - 2 plays
George Clinton - 2 plays
Kendrick Lamar - 2 plays

This is day 46 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 22

2026-05-31T20:32:59Z

General #

Short second week on the job with the holiday on Monday. It was nice to be part of the regular cadence of meetings this week. I was also able to schedule some 1:1 meetings with the US development team as well. Seems like a nice group of folks.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes most days. I missed on Thursday again this week with school and dinner.
Completed homework, written part of the midterm, and coordinated for the next group project in accounting.
Completed my portion of the case, did all the reading, completed the discussion and reflection in information systems.

Media #

Leah has been watching Married at First Sight and sometimes I join her. Turns out the people that would go on a show like that are strange and it is not actually good at matching people. I still find it odd that some producer somewhere said, “Hey what if we did arrainged marriages too.”
Leah and I are still watching Soap. Amnesia, pregnancy, murder, on the lamb, adultry, and more. Confused? You won’t be after the next episode of Soap
Played some Overwatch. I can flip tables now. So that’s fun. Unlocked the Heartthrob achievement for Mauga in a random Mystery Heroes match so that was fun.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Wanksta - 50 Cent - 2 plays
Real Love Baby - Father John Misty - 2 plays
You’ll Be Back - Jonathan Groff - 2 plays
Love Lost - Mac Miller - 2 plays
Stop Playing With Me - Tyler, The Creator - 2 plays
Lazy Line Painter Jane - Belle and Sebastian - 1 plays
I Don’t Fuck with You - Big Sean - 1 plays
Tender - Blur - 1 plays
Please Forgive My Heart - Bobby Womack - 1 plays
We Are Nowhere and It’s Now - Bright Eyes - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Father John Misty - 5 plays
Mac Miller - 4 plays
Tyler, The Creator - 4 plays
Lil Dicky - 3 plays
50 Cent - 2 plays
Jonathan Groff - 2 plays
Kendrick Lamar - 2 plays
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - 2 plays
Vince Staples - 2 plays
Belle and Sebastian - 1 plays

This is day 45 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 21

2026-05-24T15:56:09Z

General #

Started a new job. Monday was onboarding and reading documentation and watching what they call “brown bag” videos. They have recorded some lunch and learns that gave some good overviews of their systems. Tuesday through Thursday I was onsite in Novi to meet with teams during their product design team meetings. Exciting to meet and learn from the team so soon. Friday was home again with a meeting and reading through documentation and inflight stories.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes most days. Tuesday and Wednesday I was in Novi for afterwork activities so I did miss playing a few days this week for the first time since I started.
Managed to complete my portion of two group projects as planned. Week 2 of school was complete on Saturday and Week 3 for accounting will be mostly complete. Just missing the group project and the quiz which I am giving myself more time on.

Media #

Leah and I watched the last show of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and we are sad that it is gone. I think they did a good job of still doing the show while celebrating the show at the same time. We also really liked the Only in Monroe episode they uploaded to YouTube. Paul McCartney is a heck of a guest for the last episode of a show filmed at the Ed Sullivan Theater, the same stage where The Beatles first debuted in America. This show has been a bright spot in a dark time for the news.
Leah and I are still watching Soap. This continues to be a bonkers show andddd I cannot even guess what they throw at us next.
Played some Overwatch. Way less than usual as you may expect.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins) - Father John Misty - 2 plays
With Arms Outstretched - Rilo Kiley - 2 plays
Cracking Codes - Andrew Bird - 1 plays
Landed - Ben Folds - 1 plays
How It Should Be (Sha Sha) - Ben Kweller - 1 plays
In Other Words - Ben Kweller - 1 plays
On My Way - Ben Kweller - 1 plays
Gold Mine Gutted - Bright Eyes - 1 plays
Old Soul Song (For the New World Order) - Bright Eyes - 1 plays
Poison Oak - Bright Eyes - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Tyler, The Creator - 10 plays
Father John Misty - 7 plays
Jesse Welles - 6 plays
Bright Eyes - 4 plays
Elliott Smith - 4 plays
Ben Kweller - 3 plays
LCD Soundsystem - 3 plays
Rilo Kiley - 3 plays
Childish Gambino - 2 plays
Fleet Foxes - 2 plays

This is day 44 of 100 Days To Offload.

The Boring Internet

2026-05-17T11:43:06Z

The Boring Internet via Terry Godier

This has been showing up in a number of feeds I follow and I really enjoyed this read. I agree with this take and I think more people should read it. So if you have not yet taken a look I think you should.

This is day 43 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 20

2026-05-17T11:21:11Z

General #

Did not apply to any jobs but I did fill out some paperwork and meet with my boss to talk about next weeks activities. I’m late on this week’s week notes so I am going to work tomorrow!
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes each day. C chord is getting better but going from C to D remains a bit tricky. D was the first chord I learned and it still trips me up. I probably need to incorporate some more chord transition practice there.
Took time off of studying PMP to do school work. I know I need an operating system that can run the testing software so I went ahead and installed windows in a new partition on my computer. Turns out the Mac partition on my laptop is too old and these systems do not have support for linux. I do not want to risk it with a VM. It is not a big deal to have a partition that I log into to take tests or proctored quizzes.
I managed to get through everything I could in both classes apart from the group work. I am hoping to maintain as much of a headstart as I can to avoid feeling a crunch. I have concerns about what starting work will do to my learning capacity so I want to make each week as long as possible to help with that.
Read a post on r/Detroit where users were posting recommendations for French Bakeries in the area. The top post recommended Chez Pierre et Geneviève and it looked promising. The site says that they import flour which really got me intrigued. Since I was technically still unemployed and could just go, I went to Bloomfield Hills to check it out. The people in front of me in line spoke nothing but French the entire time which I took as a really good sign. I ordered a crossaint for Leah, crossaint ham and cheese sandwich, and a box of macaroons for us to share but mostly for Noah. Leah was able to eat the crossaint with no issues which made me very happy. My sandwich was delicious and so were the macaroons.

Media #

Leah and I are still watching Soap. Spoilers for this 45 year old show but their father goes to prison, breaks out, and hides in their house. The parallels to Arrested Development are just too much now it is a lot of fun. There remains some problematic stuff in here that I do not want to discuss. Some may find it difficult to separate the good from the bad here.
Played some Overwatch. Less than usual but definitely more than next week.
Writing this before I pull the numbers for the section below. Spotify has a twenty years of spotify thing going on now and I have been listening through my top songs. I joined Spotify in July of 2011 and my first song was “Death Cab for Cutie” by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Femininomenon - Chappell Roan - 2 plays
Waltz #2 (XO) - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Backseat Freestyle - Kendrick Lamar - 2 plays
Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe - Kendrick Lamar - 2 plays
i - Kendrick Lamar - 2 plays
King Kunta - Kendrick Lamar - 2 plays
Not Like Us - Kendrick Lamar - 2 plays
Mona Lisa (feat. Kendrick Lamar) - Lil Wayne - 2 plays
Andrew In Drag - The Magnetic Fields - 2 plays
Oh Sheit It’s X - Thundercat - 2 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Kendrick Lamar - 22 plays
Mindless Self Indulgence - 13 plays
Chappell Roan - 10 plays
Yung Gravy - 10 plays
Childish Gambino - 7 plays
Ski Mask the Slump God - 6 plays
Elliott Smith - 5 plays
Death Cab for Cutie - 4 plays
Father John Misty - 4 plays
Thundercat - 4 plays

This is day 42 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 19

2026-05-09T14:42:42Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs. I’m not going to include this in next weeks week notes.
I was offered the position I’ve been interviewing for and I start on 5/18!
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes each day. Still working on the C chord. Getting a bit twisted up moving from C to D but I’m making progress and it’s sounding better.
Still studying for the PMP although I think I may need to take a break as school is starting up. I know they are changing the exam in July but I may not have time to feel confident enough to schedule the exam.
Started school! I’m in MBA 610 Managing Info Systems and MBA 620 Managerial Accounting. I’ve got a week before work starts now too so I’m using my time off to make some progress on these courses.
Made some baguettes this morning and they turned out pretty good.

Media #

Did not get any farther on the appendix for Dune. I’ll finish it later at this point I have enough other things to read.
Finished watching Daredevil: Born Again season 2. I liked this better than season 1. I like the return to more practical effects especially in the fight scenes.
Leah and I are still watching Soap. There are some parts of this show that did not age well at all but it is still mostly enjoyable. So far, we are sticking with it.
Played some Overwatch. Too much Overwatch but I imagine those numbers will be coming down as I go back to work and start school.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

You’ll Be Back - Jonathan Groff - 4 plays
Comme une ombre ft. PEET - Absolem - 2 plays
Can You Get to That - Funkadelic - 2 plays
Hit It and Quit It - Funkadelic - 2 plays
Super Stupid - Funkadelic - 2 plays
You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks - Funkadelic - 2 plays
HEAT - Senseless Optimism - 2 plays
Bonhomme de neige - Sheldon - 2 plays
Blackbird - Remastered 2009 - The Beatles - 2 plays
Make a Picture - Andrew Bird - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Funkadelic - 13 plays
Iron & Wine - 6 plays
The Beatles - 5 plays
Jonathan Groff - 4 plays
Bright Eyes - 3 plays
of Montreal - 3 plays
Senseless Optimism - 3 plays
Sheldon - 3 plays
Absolem - 2 plays
Andrew Bird - 1 plays

This is day 41 of 100 Days To Offload.

40 Questions

2026-05-08T11:02:19Z

Here is my first attempt at answering 40 Questions.

What did you do this year that you’d never done before?

My wife, son, and I went to France last summer. It was the first time I’ve been to Europe.

Did you keep your new year’s resolutions?

I don’t make them so I can’t keep them.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Nope.

Did anyone close to you die?

Also, no.

What cities/states/countries did you visit?

Went to France and also Ohio.

What would you like to have next year that you lacked this year?

A job! I’ve been out of work for a little over a year and I start a new one in about days.

What date(s) from this year will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

5/24 was our one year wedding anniversary. That was a big one. We’re just weds now no newly about us.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I applied and was accepted to grad school.

What was your biggest failure?

To use my time off to get more active. I had lots of time, I just didn’t do it.

What other hardships did you face?

I’m on blood pressure medicatio now, does that count?

Did you suffer illness or injury?

I had a spell where my back was really bothering me and I ended up in bed for a few days and finally ended up in urgent care. It was scary and I don’t recommend.

What was the best thing you bought?

I bought a guitar to learn how to play. Still not sounding great but I’m making progress little by little.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

Stephen Colbert

Whose behavior made you appalled?

Drump

Where did most of your money go?

Home ownership, utilities, necessities.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Musée d’Orsay. This was the place I really wanted to see on our trip to Paris.

What song will always remind you of this year?

Trip to France. It was a big one.

Compared to this time last year, are you: happier or sadder? Richer or poorer? Healthier or unhealthier?

Happier, poorer, unhealthier :(

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Exercise, move, bikeride, etc.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Screentime.

How are you spending the holidays?

Parents house or quietly at home.

Did you fall in love this year?

Yes, again to the same person.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

People worthy of hate are not worth the effort.

What was your favorite show?

The Traitors.

What was the best book you read?

Reread Dune.

What was your greatest musical discovery of the year?

Jesse Welles.

What was your favorite film?

Sinners.

What was your favorite meal?

Leah and I shared a crepe for breakfast in Nice, France.

What did you want and get?

A job.

What did you want and not get?

A mini computer or older device to move my self-hosted services to.

What did you do on your birthday?

Dinner with the family at Howe’s Bayou in Ferndale.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Reversal of some of the items in 36 would be nice.

How would you describe your personal fashion this year?

Shorts, T-shirt, and barefoot. I’ve been unemployed all year.

What kept you sane?

My family.

Which celebrity/public figure did you admire the most?

None of them.

What political issue stirred you the most?

Where do I start this has been one catastrophy after another. Domestic concentration camps, illegal wars, kidnappings and harassment by masked thugs, the gutting of the civil rights act, I could go on.

Who did you miss?

My grandparents.

Who was the best new person you met?

I don’t know if I met anyone new, not yet really.

What valuable life lesson did you learn this year?

I was putting too much of my worth in my job. Have to find a healthier way to think about that relationship.

What is a quote that sums up your year?

This too shall pass.

This is day 40 of 100 Days To Offload.

EDS 2.0 Conversion

2026-05-08T08:26:14Z

Project Objective #

The objectives of the project were to align the setup configuration for door products within Paradigm software to a standard they referred to as Entry Door System 2.0 (EDS 2.0). These changes needed to be completed across five different retail catalogs.

Before #

The previous configuration functioned but was cumbersome to maintain often requiring duplicate effort to add or remove even a single item. This made it error prone. The extra development and testing made releases take longer.

This is the sort of project that is hard to get moving without a high-impact stakeholder. Luckily, the retail customers were driving this initiative and they made it a requirement of doing business.

There is never a good time to do this sort of change. Internal stakeholders were not happy that some of their priorities were being moved around. With an ambitious timeline and the business relationship on the line we prioritized some things and got it done.

Outcome #

The outcome was three retail catalogs were updated to meet this new standard per the requirements of the retail customers.

My role #

My role was the Product Owner.

My responsibilities #

I worked with the retail customers to understand the request both in scope and timing of deliverables. I then worked with internal stakeholders to align on a plan for delivering this request.

This involved reviewing each catalog’s backlog and prioritizing these new items to deliver on time to meet customer expectations. The change is related to how dimensions are used in the set up of product within the catalogs, so I worked with the relevant stakeholders to document the information required to make this change.

I helped resolve conflicts that arose between cross-functional teams. After the initial stakeholder pushback there was some disagreements on dimensions that should be used in the catalog. I was able to get in touch with the right folks and document the standards for implementation.

Changing how dimensions are set up impacted both pricing and integration with ERP systems so it was important to keep communication ongoing throughout the project.

Catalogs that received this conversion first encountered an increase in defects so I worked with the team to change the scope on later conversions to help mitigate this issue. To eliminate compounding difficulties with size changes later catalogs in this process only included things necessary for this change and all other updates were postponed.

This project was complete when the last catalog went live in stores. I used sprint retrospectives throughout to help gather insights in improving the process. The team stayed together at the end as the group is part of a dedicated scrum team.

Deliverables #

The deliverable of the project was the catalogs rolled out in retail stores utilizing the new standard of EDS 2.0.

Reducing setup time and errors also reduced time to market by approximately 30%.

Lessons Learned #

By framing the delay as a necessary step to ensure stability rather than a missed opportunity, we turned the conversation from ‘why aren’t we shipping?’ to ‘how do we ship safely?’ The overhaul of the entry door system was more than enough for a single release. In fact, if it could have been it should have been spread out over multiple releases but the software would not support that sort of phased approach.

I felt the pressure of stakeholder anxiety to roll out the next new thing and didn’t want to disappoint them. For later releases we did a better job of communicating to stakeholders, customer service, and sales about what was going to be in the catalog and when. We did end up having to launch new products without them being configurable in the catalog but we were able to give an estimate of when they would be there.

This is day 39 of 100 Days To Offload.

Love Letter to Bacon

2026-05-07T09:19:43Z

(Not that bacon)

This is my submission for the IndieWeb Carnival May 2026.

Dear Francis Bacon,

I just finished watching this video about your life and how you came to be who you were. I do not think I really appreciated the motivations for the expressive nature of your work prior. The work itself has appealed to me largely due to its deconstructive nature and its implied movement.

Part of the reason it connects so much is that I see in it something I was doing already when we were first introduced. Back in highschool my art teacher suggested I seek out your work based on the work I was doing. The subject matter was different of course, but the almost stop and start blending along with the realistic next to hightened interpretation was there.

I was really happy to see your work a few years ago when my brother Matthew and I saw it at Art Institute Chicago. The scale is wrong in the movie but Joker agrees this is a keeper.

Knowing more about your life leads me to believe that the open mouths are both a gasp for air and a scream. They are dark because the world can be dark.

I think in some way you wanted people to look at things they normally would look away from. There is a visceral reaction to the work in a way very few can achieve. The abstraction, the painterly approach makes these uncomfortable scenes more approachable.

I don’t think most people know your work and that’s a shame. It may be uncomfortable but I think you and your work are worth knowing.

This is day 38 of 100 Days To Offload.

Earth as seen from Artemis II

2026-05-06T16:02:57Z

I was watching a Hank Green video during my lunch today and he shared this animated image a redditor share in this reddit post. This is the combination of about three minutes of travel and you can see a bunch of really interesting details.

Some Interesting Details #

The bright light in the sky to the right is Venus.
There are thunderstorms flashing lightning on the top right of the earth.
This is the earth as illuminated by the moon as the sun is directly behind the earth here.
Since it is night you can see lights from cities along the coast at the bottom of the earth.
Auroras are present at both poles.
Satellites can be seen easiest near the equator. I saw them on the far left of the planet first.

The original post has a larger version of this image and there could be more not listed here. I’m also convinced the bright spot in the middle of the earth is the moon’s reflection off the ocean.

This probably should be a link post but I wanted to make sure I have the image incase of internet decay.

This is day 37 of 100 Days To Offload.

Why Notre-Dame Needed to Burn

2026-05-05T17:55:56Z

Why Notre-Dame Needed to Burn via Engineering The Impossible

This video makes a compelling case that the fire actually saved the cathedral. This place was stunning in person when Leah, Noah, and I visited it last summer.

This is day 36 of 100 Days To Offload.

Happy Cinco de Cuatro!

2026-05-04T15:45:48Z

Cinco de Cuatro is the fictional holiday from Arrested Development started by Lucille Bluth to deplete supplies for Cinco de Mayo. Having just rewatched the show this is the first thing that came to mind about today’s date.

Also, May the fourth be with you and here is some money go see a Star War.

This is day 35 of 100 Days To Offload.

The Secret to Success Is ‘Monotasking’

2026-05-04T12:57:26Z

The Secret to Success Is ‘Monotasking’ via The Atlantic

Even when people are allowed to switch between tasks at their own discretion, the more they switch, the longer everything takes.

Study after study has shown how detrimental multitasking can be but the feeling of productivity that it provides is just to alluring.

This is day 34 of 100 Days To Offload.

The Boil

2026-05-04T10:55:01Z

They have engaged the stove and the temperature will begin to rise imperceptibly for now.

I’ve been thinking about this since Microsoft made changes regarding Copilot fees but the price hikes are here. Vendors will want to keep the pain small so as not to spook anyone but they have to move toward profitability.

This is in reference to the Boiling frog for the uninitiated.

This is day 33 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 18

2026-05-03T20:39:45Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs.
Had the final interview so now I am just waiting to hear the verdict 🤞.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes each day. Spent more time on C chord transitions and playing along with some songs. Getting better at transitioning from a G to a C and back and forth from C to D.
Completed the PMP exam application and was approved. I joined PMI and now I have to figure out how to take the test remotely. I do not currently have a machine running an operating system supported by their software. I think I will install Windows again somewhere just for this test.
Went with Leah and Noah to Hamilton at the Fisher Theatre in Detroit and before that we had dinner at Howe’s Bayou in Ferndale. Both dinner and the show were good.

Media #

Did not get any farther on the appendix for Dune.
Finished rewatching Arrested Development with Leah. The season finale is probably the worst episode in this season which really leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth. The rest of the season was weaker than the previous ones but I’m most annoyed with how they ended things.
Watched this video about Arrested Development and now we’re watching Soap. This show is bonkers and I totally get how it would be an inspiration for Arrested Development.
Played some Overwatch.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Sunshine Of Your Love - Ella Fitzgerald - 2 plays
Such Great Heights - Iron & Wine - 2 plays
Here I Am (Come and Take Me) - Al Green - 1 plays
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - Al Green - 1 plays
Let’s Stay Together - Al Green - 1 plays
Love and Happiness - Al Green - 1 plays
Take Me To The River - Al Green - 1 plays
Tired of Being Alone - Al Green - 1 plays
Colors - Amos Lee - 1 plays
Chain of Fools - Aretha Franklin - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Sunshine Of Your Love - Ella Fitzgerald - 2 plays
Such Great Heights - Iron & Wine - 2 plays
Here I Am (Come and Take Me) - Al Green - 1 plays
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - Al Green - 1 plays
Let’s Stay Together - Al Green - 1 plays
Love and Happiness - Al Green - 1 plays
Take Me To The River - Al Green - 1 plays
Tired of Being Alone - Al Green - 1 plays
Colors - Amos Lee - 1 plays
Chain of Fools - Aretha Franklin - 1 plays

This is day 32 of 100 Days To Offload.

Digital Transformation Electronic Catalogs

2026-05-01T13:58:17Z

Have you ever bought a door? I would venture to guess that most people haven’t and don’t really know where to start. That is why it is really important to make the quoting process in the electronic retail catalogs as simple as possible.

There are two recurring personas that get brought up to help us think about who is the intended audience of these catalogs. First, we liked to ask if your grandma could understand every step of the process. The idea here is to think of someone who may not be handy or technical. If your grandma is either or both of those things I apologize there is no offense intended. Second, is a store associate who just came over from the paint department.

In both cases the people interacting with the catalogs do not know about doors so you should not assume they know these terms. If we can reasonably use common language for things we should. If we cannot reasonably describe millwork things for the public there should be good visual representation and informative links to get folks up to speed fast.

Project Objective #

The objectives of the project were to modernize and improve the user experience of the electronic product configurators used to sell Interior and Exterior doors at large retail home improvement stores (The Home Depot and Lowe’s). This included simplifying the product offering, reducing and rewording questions and answers, creating over 500 hundred new images, recalculating pricing, and ensuring orders received flowed seamlessly into the companies ERP (enterprise resource planning) software. Once execution started the plan was to deliver all this within six to nine months.

Before #

Before this project was implemented the catalogs had a number of issues but chief among them were a confusing set of questions and answers, images that looked like an engineer made them (because they did), and pricing that had got out of alignment with the market and material costs.

Outcome #

The outcome was a simpler and easier to navigate quoting experience with better visuals and a more competitive price point. We saw a 40% increase in sales year over year in the months following the full roll out of these changes.

My role #

My role was the Product Owner of the electronic catalogs.

My responsibilities #

I worked with the project manager and stakeholders to collect requirements and determine the project scope. This involved many hours going through various configuration paths within the catalog and identifying question and answers that needed rewording and images that needed to be redone. Often we would deliberate as a group to find the must customer friendly to relay technical millwork terms.

The number of questions in a configuration was long compared to competitors both in the number of selections that needed to be made and the questions with no choice that you had to scroll past. I worked with the team to decide which questions could be removed, reworded, and in some places hidden until the full description displayed. In some cases the visible questions were reduced by a third eliminating minutes from the time to configure.

I then worked with the catalog team of eight developers and four QA specialists to break down the requests into stories. With my experience doing this sort of work myself I have a pretty good intuition for where to break up tasks but this too was a team effort.

From there I worked with other teams to determine the timing of their deliverables when they were dependencies for the work being done by the catalog team. We cannot implement marketing materials until they have been created or pricing until it has been calculated for example.

Maintaining integration with the company’s ERP was a high priority item, so we first focused on making changes that could impact that integration. This part can be contentious so I helped resolve conflicts that arose and ensure work was getting done on time. Issues arose around availability of resources and your occasional personality disagreements. I find demonstrating an understanding of the difficulties everyone is experiencing goes a long way.

The first release to production included the simplification of product and questions along with some preliminary marketing support. This existed as a soft launch of the new style of catalog and once the initial discomfort with change had subsided the feedback was largely positive.

Once that rolled out and pricing had completed their recalculations we pulled in the new pricing and used automated testing to validate the catalog and ERP were in sync. Some changes to the pricing theory necessitated additional changes to the catalog but this was accounted for in the project plan.

I worked alongside the sales team to discuss the pricing changes with the retailers as this update would change the price of everything. Once we were confident the catalog was pricing things as expected and the customers agreed the catalogs were rolled out in stores and the ERP system was updated to reflect the new pricing.

Before closing out the project I did find a few high priority items that came up after the catalogs had gone live so we HAD a few sprints dedicated to those issues as well as including some additional marketing support.

I finally closed the project by doing one last sprint retrospective where I asked the team to think about the project as a whole. I used the lessons learned from this project to change the way I interacted with stakeholders, establishing a more frequent cadence for priority review and status updates.

Deliverables #

The deliverable of the project was the Interior and Exterior catalogs underwent a digital transformation and were rolled out in over 2000 retail stores where they are were used to quote and sell doors.

The rest of the organization was also supporting the roll out of the retail catalog program with in store marketing materials and territory sales promoting it in stores in person.

Lessons Learned #

Working through this project really highlighted how off the mark we had been previously around communication. By necessity we had built out a communication plan for this project and the next few months of business as usual went much smoother because we had a good process. We met every other week now to review the status of work in progress and priority of future changes. Demos were performed as the work was completed to get confirmation we were still aligned.

I do wish I could have seen the things that had taken shape here applied across the other brands. One thing we had decided early on in this process was we were not just figuring out how to make the JW Exterior and JW Interior catalogs.

We were developing a standard that would then be applied across the board. This included what questions and answers are we asking, how we display the configuration, and high quality artwork when words will just not do.

Find the right way to sell this product and deviate as little from that for the ABS and MMI brands. There is some synergy around image assets for sure but one of the biggest benefits would have been for developers. If there is only one way of doing something it is a lot easier to make changes and to troubleshoot issues. The framework remains the blueprint for the other brands in the JW family.

One thing I am especially proud of is the negotiation I did with the retailers to allow us to deviate from their standard answer size for the door glass option. We had to resize every glass image and code all the necessary rules to make it happen but we were able to set the answer images to the exact piece of glass you were selecting.

Having done a lot of image work prior to this project the team had a tool that allowed us to take the visualization images, that are used for compositing the finished product, and resize them for use as answer images. There were over 400 unique images that needed to be resized and then called correctly based on the context of the configuration that was being built at the time.

No other catalog at the time was doing this, at least not at the scale that we had executed. The merchants liked this so much that Lowe’s actually made this their standard and updated their white papers. My favorite part is that it is just so much nicer for the customer to see the right thing from the start. It eliminated a potential for having to guess and check or click off onto an external PDF.

The world of retail catalogs is not going to stop while you overhaul your offering. The team did all of this while also working on a Lowe’s configurable ecomm project that utilized the retail catalogs to sell custom unit online at Lowes.com.

What I learned #

It was part of the lessons learned but a big takeaway from me has been about the level and quality of communication. It differs by stakeholder but finding the sweet spot with each person makes things go so much smoother.

I prefer to think about something and once my opinion is mostly formed let it out. Others prefer to talk it out from the start. Understanding that the idea is being worked on verbally and may not be formed exactly takes some getting use to but can be very helpful to understand.

This is day 31 of 100 Days To Offload.

First of May by Jonathan Coulton

2026-05-01T11:02:32Z

First of May by Jonathan Coulton via Jonathan Coulton

Post your Justin Timberlake memes and whatnot but I’m going to be listening to this song.

This is day 30 of 100 Days To Offload.

New Post Type - Project

2026-04-29T14:43:12Z

I went ahead and created a new post type on the site for “project.” The goal of this post type is to allow me to tag posts that relate to work related projects. Obviously I am not disclosing any sensitive information but I would like to document some of the things I have accomplished professionally.

This has been something I have been thinking about since starting the site but never committed to fully. I do not want to talk costs or name names but I think I can still lay out some challenges and how we managed to overcome them.

I recently completed my application to take the PMP Certification exam from PMI. Part of the application is detailing some projects you worked on to demonstrate you meet the experience requirements. This has me reflecting on past projects so I thought I would use my examples for that application as the start of blog posts here.

Descriptions of a project require only 200-500 words but there is always more story to be told about any project. For the first few I will follow the recommended structure for the application but going forward I will probably deviate a bit.

With each post type having a unique theme I have also created a new theme for a “project.” I went with grey as the main color as I really wanted the words to be the focus.

EDI Automation is my first project post.

This is day 29 of 100 Days To Offload.

EDI Automation

2026-04-29T10:58:17Z

Project Objective #

The objectives of the project were to create a tool within the companies ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system that would parse orders received from retail customers out of electronic catalogs and create orders using the ERP’s product configurator. Then use that tool to build the relevant mapping to ensure at least 50% of orders are entered automatically without error.

Before #

Before this project was rolled out, all orders received via EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) were printed out and manually entered by customer service. This required selecting the correct answer for over thirty questions with times to complete each line being as high as three to four minutes.

Since questions in both systems were not the same it was possible internayl order entry could take longer than the customer experienced in store. Out of sequence questions between system were causing errors in entry that required customer service to change values that were already entered.

With the volume of sales we were getting this way, automation really should have been implemented much earlier. There always seemed to be a higher priority item for leadership but luckily in this case customer service was heard and this automation was made a priority.

I had been discussing this possibility with my manager and team but we did not really get traction until the folks experiencing the pain were heard. Improvements like this should not require customer service to bring you a stack of orders saying that, “they are drowning in orders down here.” This goes to show the importance of building a full business case for a change.

Outcome #

The outcome was a new tool within the ERP system that was used to automate over 50% of orders.

Previously, a single order with five to six lines could take twenty minutes to enter but when automated could take fewer than twenty seconds. There is still a review component for each order but this is much faster than having to enter the entire order by hand.

My role #

My role was the Product Owner.

My responsibilities #

I worked with the sales team first to understand the pain points they were encountering when trying to enter orders that came from the retail catalogs. Once we had a documented business case I took the request to leadership and then to the ERP vendor for a quote.

The main driver here for the business is the time savings for customer service. The improved accuracy and additional time available to respond to customers were also significant factors in getting this approved.

I translated the business case into detailed technical requirements about how the tool would function, how orders would be processed technically and as a business process, and how the data contained in the tool could be manipulated and viewed.

After the work was approved the ERP vendor developer completed the initial build on the tool. There were a few reviews of progress on this tool which proved to be a positive collaborative process. Once it was testable I worked with the developer to validate the result was working as expected.

Two week sprints were used to load information into the tool and validate against existing orders. It took a few sprints to get enough information into the system and every type of entryway has slightly different parameters that needed to be taken into account.

Interior and Exterior door units use different language within the catalogs handing and jambs for example so there were some types of questions that required slight variations for automation to function. Luckily we hadn an import and export tool that would allow the dataset to be changed in Excel. Often we would have to make the same sort of change across multiple rows of the data and this made things much easier.

I worked with developers on how to add data and resolve minor issues with the vendor as they were encountered. At go-live the automation system only successfully entered about 20% but we worked in two week sprints using the most recent orders to continuously improve the setup.

It was determined a few times that either the retail or internal catalog needed to be changed so those change stories were worked into their respective sprint processes. We maintained both internal and retail catalogs but the retail catalog required about a month delay to the release once submitted. These changes once completed were still subject to their catalogs respective release schedules. This could mean a change to fix automation of a particular type of unit could have to wait months before the in-store update would be in production.

I provided weekly status updates regarding the current pass rate that also detailed the most common error types. This allowed stakeholders to see where the project was but also provided errors for developers to tackle in the next sprint.

Nearly a year and a half later we hit the 50% mark and completed the first major milestone of this project. The project remained ongoing as the final goal is to get the pass rate to as close to 100% as possible.

Technical Details #

The automation used a data set that mapped a question answer pair in the internal catalog to one or more question answer pair found in the EDI of the order.

All entryway types (Exterior, Interior, and Commercial) and configuration types (Single, Double, etc.) lived in the same data set. This is important to consider as additional rows in the data would be required if the types or configurations overlapped or had competing possible answers.

Each retailer returned slightly different results in their EDI so we started by maintaining three unique datasets for the mapping. Eventually they all ended up using very similar data only requiring a few extra lines for one specific retailer.

Deliverables #

The deliverable of the project were the tool within the ERP and the data used to map questions and answers from the order received from the electronic catalog and those contained within the product configurator in the ERP.

Ongoing #

Post the initial 50% milestone we continued to update the mapping ofcourse but the main push was to further standardize the catalogs both internal and external.

There were slight differences in sizing between the internal and external catalogs so I worked with operations to confirm sizes and work any changes into upcoming releases. Slight differences in sizes can cause false positives in the automation reporting where it incorrectly sets a custom size. I believe most of the differences were within acceptable tolerances which is why they had not come up earlier. Sizing is incredibly important and the catalogs needed to have the right values.

There is a real possibility that a line on an order is automated but it is incorrect. This required customer service to alert us to when this is found and these defects were prioritized and added to upcoming sprints.

In the last few status reports the pass rate on order lines was hovering around 80%. Really would have liked to address more issues in the catalogs themselves which were preventing us from having a higher pass rate. The limitation here came down to priorities and the sharing of resources.

Lessons Learned #

I think we did a good job of prioritizing high volume order types but we did not have order types without an internal catalog on our roadmap. These types of orders would always fail since customer service was building the BOM (Bill of Material) on their own. Building these missing pieces would require an operational standard and new sections of the internal catalog to be built.

Another item that was not accounted for is product offered in a retail environment that was not in the internal catalog. Automating orders we received really helped us call into question any instance where the catalogs did not agree. This allowed for some realignment of the product offering.

Initial metrics were written around full orders passing but after we got into it I think it made more sense to talk about lines passing. A single line on a twenty line order would cause it to fail for this metric which does not seem like an accurate representation.

Additionally, I would have been more granular with the metrics and prioritized greater pass rates by product type. Edge cases were really dragging our numbers down for the entire length of the project. If half of your orders are of one type and configuration with a pass rate of over 80% but you report an overall pass rate of less than 50% that is a confusing metric.

Lastly, the project failed to add a tool to help us test the impact of changes to the retail catalog on automation. The team needed to generate orders from the retail catalog’s test environment and confirm these would flow into the ERP system. I did end up creating a Python tool to convert text into order format but this came far to late in the project. We shipped too many changes that required mapping updates post go-live. This could have been avoided if this integration testing was performed prior to release.

This is day 28 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 17

2026-04-26T15:37:41Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs.
Scheduled a final interview next week and I am going to spend some more time next week preparing.
Provided my schedule last week but did not hearn anything this week about a different position.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes each day. Spent more time on C chord transitions and playing along with some songs. I am narrowing the list of songs to learn. There are limited options with where I am at currently.
In the middle of another class for the PMP exam. I am going to complete my application to take the test next week.
Took Tater to urgent care as he was unable to urinate. Once we got in the room he was able to go but there was blood in his pee. He was xrayed and there were no bladder stones. He’s been on pain medication and antibiotics since. Then we took him to his regular vet and they did an ultrasound and found a mass. We’re keeping him happy and keeping an eye on him for now.

Media #

Did not get any farther on the appendix for Dune.
Continued rewatching Arrested Development with Leah. Season is not as bad as I remember but mostly because I am just happy to have more time with these characters.
The Traitors UK ended up being so good. I am glad we finished it. I do not want to include spoilers but some folks ended up playing a very good game. Both seasons 4 of The Traitors (US and UK) ended up being very good.
Been listening back through the Death Cab for Cutie catalog. I really don’t care for Asphalt Meadows still. I have more words for another time.
Played some Overwatch this week. Still avoiding competitive after completing drives. Match quality has had some serious swings though so I might see if comp is any better.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Asphalt Meadows - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Foxglove Through the Clearcut - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Fragments From the Decade - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Here to Forever - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
I Don’t Know How I Survive - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
I Miss Strangers - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Pepper - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Rand McNally - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Roman Candles - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Summer Years - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Death Cab for Cutie - 45 plays
Father John Misty - 16 plays
Tilly and the Wall - 6 plays
Silversun Pickups - 5 plays
Bright Eyes - 2 plays
Broken Bells - 2 plays
Lana Del Rey - 2 plays
The Decemberists - 2 plays
The Hat - 1 plays
The Mountain Goats - 1 plays

This is day 27 of 100 Days To Offload.

Supplemental Questions

2026-04-24T14:17:04Z

I’ve been looking for a job full time for a little over a year now and it is very rarely when I come across a posting with such poor quality control. I feel like I’ve just stared into the face of Boe.

I am not naming names or pointing fingers but this series of questions could really do with another pass for quality don’t you think? I get that “n” and “b” are next to each other and you’re busy but these postings represent the company as well. This is a customer facing survey even if they’re looking for employment.

Supplementary Questions

You are able to demonstrate technical proficiency with SaaS, AppSec, Pen Testing, and Cyber Security solutions?*

no

Yes

You can demonstrate technical proficiency with one of the following: C#, Javascript, Java, Python, TypeScript?*

no

yes

You can demonstrate technical proficiency with CI/CD practices using JIRA, GitLab Azure DevOps, GitHub or similar?*

yes

no

You have 2 or more years experience working on a Product Team?*

yes

bo

You maintain a product owner certification?*

Yes

NO

All questions are yes/no and none of them are the same. Either yes and no changes places or they’re capitalized or spelled differently (i.e. incorrectly). I like “bo” as an answer as mentioned earlier by my favorite is the certification question and how adamant a “NO” response would be. I’m not maintaining a certification and I never would. Also, I actually am maintaining a certification so I answered “Yes” but I hope you get the idea.

Sorta related: Should I continue watching Doctor Who where I left off? I have fallen off from watching the past couple years because I had not really connected with the stories as much as in the past.

This is day 26 of 100 Days To Offload.

Dance Yrself Clean (Theme from Twin Peaks)

2026-04-24T10:44:57Z

Dance Yrself Clean (Theme from Twin Peaks) via Kottke

Sometimes you see a mashup that seems created for you and this was exactly my reaction to this project. I love both of these things and they’ve been combined in a way that is somehow true to both and simultaneously its own thing.

This was initially shared by Kottke which I recommend following if you’re not already.

In the comments someone left this gem.

Through the darkness of future’s past
The magician longs to see
One chants between two worlds
“Come on and dance yourself clean”

When was the last time you laughed out load at a YouTube comment? Mine was today.

This is day 25 of 100 Days To Offload.

Design and Engineering, As One

2026-04-22T12:36:22Z

Saw a couple people mention this post and it did not disappoint. Well worth the read.

Productive friction really stood out to me.

A Website Update

2026-04-20T12:30:30Z

A recurring theme returns with yet another website update. This time focusing on legibility and professionalism. I made a point setting out some specific goals to ensure progress is made in an intentional way.

First, I wanted to increase the legibility of text on the site. This is achieved by swapping fonts. The font Hatori Hanzo font face is replaced by Libre Franklin. Increasing both the size of the font and the line height. While also decreasing the width of long form text. This along with maintaining a good amount of contrast between the text and the background.

Second, was repurposing and incorporating theme changes in a way that a casual viewer of the site will interact with and enjoy. Previous versions of the site had a theme switcher in the footer that was unlikely to be used. Each post type now has a badge with a unique color that once you navigate to the post applies a theme to the site.

The site still maintains both a light and dark mode for general pages as well as the uniquely themed post pages based on type. Light or dark is set based on user settings but can be toggled by the new theme switcher in the main navigation header.

Third, I wanted the site to be more professional. While my professional experience was mentioned in the hero image and was part of the main navigation there was no call to action. The call to action now exists in the form of a button in the hero section that takes you to the resume page. The page has been reworked to look more like a resume including a skill section and timeline flow.

The site in general lacked some polish. I liked the buttons I created but they always just seemed a bit off. For the purposes of the landing and basic navigation of the site I want to stick to conventions.

I do fear that I’ve gone too far in the other direction that the site seems a bit generic. I do not have any real brand identity here and I think there is a need to add some personality back in down the road. That should be easier to do now that some standards have been applied and the first focus on legibility has been achieved.

I need to update the to-do because this work just inspired more changes.

This is day 24 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 16

2026-04-19T16:55:14Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs.
Interview on Tuesday went well and I am hoping for a positive follow up. Had a phone screen Wednesday and will be scheduling some time this upcoming week for a follow up.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes each day. Spent more time on C chord transitions and playing along with some songs. I am narrowing the list of songs to learn. There are limited options with where I am at currently.
Went ahead and merged the change branch and launched the site redesign. Currently in the process of writing up some details on the changes and that post should be out soon.
Completed the practice exam for the PMP certification that was included in my Udemy course. I got a 69% and 70% is required to pass. Now I am going back through and reviewing sections that need the most improvement. I will likely rewatch these portions and take notes for further review. I don’t want to sign up for a test until I can get close to 100% in practice exams.

Media #

Reading through the appendix of Dune. This part is not nearly as interesting as the book proper so it is taking longer than I expected.
Continued rewatching Arrested Development with Leah. Season four was not as bad as I remembered. My expectations were pretty high at the time and what came out was a let down. I still think the season has some serious problems but I am just glad to have more with these characters. The season ends abruptly and even if you were muddling through watching it the ending is a bit of a punch in the face.
Leah and I have finished watching DTF St. Louis. They did exactly what I was hoping they were not going to do. There were some twists and turns through out the season but the big mystery of the show ended exactly as I thought it would. It is a quirky little show with a big depressing ending. I do not think it was worth the time.
Found out Peacock is included in our Xfinity account so I got that added and we’re finishing up The Traitors UK. Some of these folks made some huge swings and it is not turning out well for them.
Been listening back through the Death Cab for Cutie catalog. This is the first time I’ve included music listening that didn’t include ten artists. I am sure I’ll branch out more this week.
I completed drives in Overwatch again. So far this amounts to a 100% completion rate which seems pretty rare from what I’ve seen in game. It does tend to put me off competitive matches for a while after though. I did finish last season off in Platinum 4 on support which is an all time high for me but average in the player base.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Lightness - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
No Sunlight - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
20th Century Towers - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
A Diamond and a Tether - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
A Movie Script Ending - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
Amputations - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
Army Corps of Architects - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
Bad Reputation - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
Bixby Canyon Bridge - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
Black Sun - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Death Cab for Cutie - 81 plays
The Beatles - 3 plays

This is day 23 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 15

2026-04-12T15:54:57Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs.
Interview on Wednesday went well I have a follow up interview next Wednesday.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes each day. Full song practice got a bit derailed by the C chord. Some of the practice I changed to this week involves that chord a bit more and I’m working on my transitions.
More progress on the site rework but it still has a way to go. Not yet in a place where I’m ready to iterate on it while live.
Leah and I went to my nephew Liam’s Birthday party at Zap Zone XL in Lansing. Hard to believe he is 12 years old already.

Media #

Finished Dune but haven’t started the appendix yet. I do intend to read through that before I put the book back on the shelf for next time.
Continued rewatching Arrested Development with Leah. We got through the original three season run and are now into the first Netflix season.
Leah and I have been watching DTF St. Louis and it’s weird. It’s a bit all over the place regarding tone. I don’t think I get exactly what they were going for here.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins) - Father John Misty - 3 plays
Company Calls - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Company Calls Epilogue - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Pictures in an Exhibition - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Sleep Spent - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Your Bruise - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Holy Shit - Father John Misty - 2 plays
Dinner At Eight In The Suburbs - All-Time Quarterback - 1 plays
Farmer Chords - Ben Gibbard - 1 plays
Old Soul Song (For the New World Order) - Bright Eyes - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Death Cab for Cutie - 26 plays
Father John Misty - 8 plays
Bright Eyes - 2 plays
Cursive - 2 plays
Jenny Lewis - 2 plays
Rilo Kiley - 2 plays
All-Time Quarterback - 1 plays
Ben Gibbard - 1 plays
Broken Social Scene - 1 plays
Fleet Foxes - 1 plays

This is day 22 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 14

2026-04-06T10:37:10Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs.
Onboarding information is not coming and the position may now be on hold. So that’s disappointing.
Interview on Tuesday went well I have a full interview on Wednesday.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes each day. I’m going to start working on a full song this week in addition to exercises.
Though I would be done with the rework by now but I keep finding things that need fixing. I am going to spend some more time this week and hopefully go live with it soon. It doesn’t need to be perfect but there are some missing pieces and I am not happy with how some of the features are coded.

Media #

Nearing the end of Dune. May end up finishing it today actually.
Continued rewatching Arrested Development with Leah.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins) - Father John Misty - 4 plays
Holy Shit - Father John Misty - 2 plays
Nancy From Now On - Father John Misty - 2 plays
Rise Up With Fists!! - Jenny Lewis - 2 plays
Oo-De-Lally - From “Robin Hood” (May 31, 2024) - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
Lily - Ben Gibbard - 1 plays
Something’s Rattling (Cowpoke) - Ben Gibbard - 1 plays
In Other Words - Ben Kweller - 1 plays
On My Way - Ben Kweller - 1 plays
Another Travelin’ Song - Bright Eyes - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Father John Misty - 14 plays
Jesse Welles - 14 plays
Led Zeppelin - 9 plays
Bright Eyes - 5 plays
Iron & Wine - 4 plays
Jenny Lewis - 3 plays
Ben Gibbard - 2 plays
Ben Kweller - 2 plays
Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
The Dead Weather - 2 plays

This is day 21 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 13

2026-03-29T12:29:04Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs while documenting them in Obsidian again.
I’m waiting for onboarding information and will follow up tomorrow.
I have another interview on Tuesday.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes each day. Spent a bit more time on days when Leah was at work.
I’m doing it again. This site is getting another update but it’s significant enough I’ve created a new branch for it as it may take some time to get just right. I’m making steady progress converting the existing site into something a bit more traditional. My main motivation is to have the site a bit more professional looking. Trying to strike a balance of a profile and personal site.

Media #

Read more Dune and I’m more than halfway through it at this point. We’re in the desert and starting to fulfill some of the prophecy.
Leah and I started rewatching Arrested Development which remains as funny as ever. It’s hard to imagine how something like this gets made it’s just that good.
Watched When Evil Lurks and I have some thoughts I plan on putting into a full post.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Commerce, TX - Ben Kweller - 3 plays
The Democrats - Carsie Blanton - 3 plays
United Health - Jesse Welles - 3 plays
How It Should Be (Sha Sha) - Ben Kweller - 2 plays
Make It Up - Ben Kweller - 2 plays
The Sweater Song - Ben Kweller - 2 plays
Walk On Me - Ben Kweller - 2 plays
Wasted & Ready - Ben Kweller - 2 plays
Nazi - Live - Chumbawamba - 2 plays
Oo-De-Lally - From “Robin Hood” (May 31, 2024) - Jesse Welles - 2 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Ben Kweller - 21 plays
Death Cab for Cutie - 20 plays
Jesse Welles - 15 plays
Rilo Kiley - 10 plays
Mitski - 8 plays
Elliott Smith - 7 plays
Weezer - 6 plays
Carsie Blanton - 5 plays
Jenny Lewis - 4 plays
The Postal Service - 4 plays

This is day 20 of 100 Days To Offload.

Arch Linux on MacBook Pro

2026-03-25T11:46:29Z

Based on the way some people talk about Arch Linux I may be a glutton for punishment. Fortunately for me though, this proved not to be as difficult as you may expect. If you are unaware the distro of Arch Linux has a reputation for being difficult to install. Add in that this was going on a Mac makes it a bit more complicated.

This is not a tutorial and more of a discussion of my notes while setting this up.

To start I needed to make space for an additional operating system. Apple in their infinite wisdom had their operating system take over as much as it could of the drive and not allow for resizing of the disk. This required a more scorched earth approach than I originally had planned. I cleared off all my information and reformatted the drive, this time limiting the space available for the operating system so two OSs could live on the machine comfortably.

Once I had the space available I booted to the USB drive with the Arch installer. Which of course brings you to a terminal with not so much as a good luck message. From here we have to make some partitions for the OS, boot, and swap to live.

parted /dev/sda
mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sda3  
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4  
mkswap /dev/sda5  
swapon /dev/sda5

We’re now ready to start the actual installation of Arch Linux. Mount your new ext4 system partition to “/mnt”, which is the installers location for new systems.

mount /dev/sda4 /mnt

And mount the boot-partition to the boot-path of your new system.

mkdir -p /mnt/boot  
mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/boot

Now the actual installing-part is pretty easy. The following command installs all packages contained in the base and base-devel package-group of the Arch Linux installer:

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel

Needed the following to install applications after arch-chroot

sudo pacman-key —init

sudo pacman-key —populate

This all looks a bit scary and in most operating system installs the installer application does this for you. The wiki for Arch has lots of recommendations and actually did a good job of hand holding through most of this process.

Right here is where I hit a significant snag. Booting into Arch went fine but the base install did not detect my wireless networking. This Macbook Pro doesn’t have an ethernet card.

I tried a few different things but some of them mentioned editing some config files but Arch did not seem to come with a text editor. But I need to be on the internet to download and install a text editor. Luckily it did recognize tethering my phone and I was able to install nano.

Using the wiki I discovered that broadcom-wl-dkms supported older devices and I got that installed. Once the device was detected I used the following commands to connect to my wifi.

sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager
nmcli device
nmcli device wifi connect SSID password PASSWORD

Once I had a connection I can add a desktop environment. I went ahead and installed KDE Plasma as it appears to be a popular choice. I did end up installing more than I really needed here and in the future I’ll install just the barebones.

I also installed fastfetch to get the results shown in the following screenshot.

I’m really new to Arch so I’m still learning pacman commands and how best to install the applications I want to use. I have managed to recreate my development environment from my main machine which allowed me to convert this site from Jekyll to 11ty. I installed Obsidian and set my sync up so my vault is accessible on my desktop, phone, and now my laptop.

What else should I do on my laptop with a fairly fresh install of Arch Linux?

Should my main machine be on Arch Linux? I’m a little scared about this idea but I keep coming back.

This is day 19 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 12

2026-03-22T16:57:06Z

General #

Applied to a couple jobs. I realize I stopped logging them in my Obisidan tracker and I need to get back to doing that. It’s too easy to feel accomplished doing an Easy Apply or even powering through a brief form. These are less likely to be effective than tweaking my resume for the specific job.
Had an interview that went well and I’m waiting for onboarding information.
Took Tater to the vet to get his nails trimmed.
Practiced guitar for at least 30 minutes each day.

Media #

Watched the reunion of season sixteen of Project Runway. I wonder if the twins ever stopped lying to themselves about their behavior on the show. This season really lives between the almost baking show levels of friendly competition of the early seasons and the real cattiness that is to come in the seasons without Tim Gunn.
Finally gave the new Iron & Wine album Hen’s Teeth a listen. I don’t feel strongly enough about it to write a full post but I enjoyed it. I don’t think it’s as memorable as some of the earlier albums.
Saw the teaser trailer for Dune Part Three. Which I think looks good and I’m excited for the movie. I started rereading Dune again and about a third of the way through if you don’t count the appendix.
Watched the Peaky Blinders movie and I was not a fan. It felt to me like this was a season of television that they made into a movie. Things happen without reason or explanation and we spend far to much time static.
Death Cab for Cutie released a new single that I’ve listened to a few times.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Riptides - Death Cab for Cutie - 10 plays
Cath… - Death Cab for Cutie - 3 plays
Title and Registration - Death Cab for Cutie - 3 plays
Lily - Ben Gibbard - 2 plays
Undone - The Sweater Song Live at Fletchers (Weezer Cover) - Ben Kweller - 2 plays
Wasted & Ready - Ben Kweller - 2 plays
Lightness - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Little Bribes - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Between the Bars - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All - Father John Misty - 2 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Death Cab for Cutie - 26 plays
Iron & Wine - 16 plays
Ben Kweller - 11 plays
Elliott Smith - 10 plays
Father John Misty - 7 plays
The Beatles - 5 plays
Bright Eyes - 4 plays
Fleet Foxes - 4 plays
OutKast - 4 plays
The Shins - 4 plays

This is day 18 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 11

2026-03-15T16:40:17Z

General #

Applied to a couple jobs. Had an interview on Thursday that I think went well. Also spoke with some recruiters about a different job.
Did at least 20 minutes a day practicing guitar.
Played some Overwatch as per usual.

Media #

Watched the finale of season sixteen of Project Runway. They claimed the result was close but I don’t believe that for a second. The winner won by quite a bit I think.
Peacock subscription ended and we did not renew it to watch Traitors UK.
Watched the reunion of Love is Blind. No real surprises here but there was a lot of things that we saw that people in the episode were not mentioning. It was interesting to have some of those details out.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Poison Oak - Bright Eyes - 3 plays
Lua - Bright Eyes - 2 plays
Angeles - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Say Yes - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Somebody That I Used to Know - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Son of Sam - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Real Love Baby - Father John Misty - 2 plays
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel - 2 plays
Left Handed Kisses - Andrew Bird - 1 plays
Tenuousness - Andrew Bird - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Bright Eyes - 15 plays
Elliott Smith - 14 plays
Iron & Wine - 8 plays
Father John Misty - 6 plays
Fleet Foxes - 5 plays
Jesse Welles - 4 plays
Pete Seeger - 3 plays
Andrew Bird - 2 plays
Neutral Milk Hotel - 2 plays
Belle and Sebastian - 1 plays

This is day 17 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 10

2026-03-07T18:46:07Z

General #

Applied to a couple jobs.
Been doing at least 20 minutes a day practicing guitar. Moved on from just working on the A and D chords. I’ve now incorporated E chord practice. This is module 2 of beginner guitar on Justin Guitar. I also completed the 5 day challenge from Tony’s Acoustic Challenge.
Played some Overwatch as per usual.
Did a little extra cleaning this week with a deep dive downstairs for the cat boxes.

Media #

Watched more of season sixteen of Project Runway. The twins are still annoying but there’s only one of them now.
Watched the first two episodes of The Traitors UK. I really like that the players are regular people and not reality TV folks. This has been good so far.
Watched the season finale of Love is Blind. The real finale is next week for the reunion.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Road to Joy - Bright Eyes - 2 plays
Naked as We Came - Iron & Wine - 2 plays
Road to Joy - Dark-Side Mix - Peter Gabriel - 2 plays
The Absence of God - Rilo Kiley - 2 plays
Bowl of Oranges - Bright Eyes - 1 plays
Land Locked Blues - Bright Eyes - 1 plays
Lover I Don’t Have to Love - Bright Eyes - 1 plays
Poison Oak - Bright Eyes - 1 plays
Waste of Paint - Bright Eyes - 1 plays
A Thousand Years (feat. Steve Kazee) - Pt. 2; The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Soundtrack - Christina Perri - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Bright Eyes - 7 plays
Father John Misty - 5 plays
Iron & Wine - 4 plays
LCD Soundsystem - 2 plays
Peter Gabriel - 2 plays
Rilo Kiley - 2 plays
Three 6 Mafia - 2 plays
Christina Perri - 1 plays
Cursive - 1 plays
Electric Six - 1 plays

This is day 16 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 9

2026-03-01T10:55:24Z

General #

Applied to a couple jobs.
Been doing at least 20 minutes of day practicing guitar.
Played some Overwatch as per usual.
Did a little extra cleaning this week with a deep dive downstairs for the cat boxes.

Media #

Started season sixteen of Project Runway. Oh my gawd the twins are so annoying. That’s the full take so far.
Watched the final episode of The Traitors US. I’m just impressed at the game Rob has played. I’m glad Moira handled it like the game that it is. Too many people take this show personallly. The reunion was too much for me. More housewives than traitors unfortunately.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Naked as We Came - Iron & Wine - 6 plays
Angeles - Elliott Smith - 3 plays
The Old Law - Father John Misty - 3 plays
Clementine - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Miss Misery - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Say Yes - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Somebody That I Used to Know - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Waltz #2 (XO) - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings - Father John Misty - 2 plays
Nancy From Now On - Father John Misty - 2 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Iron & Wine - 16 plays
Elliott Smith - 15 plays
Father John Misty - 14 plays
Jesse Welles - 3 plays
Rage Against the Machine - 3 plays
The Moldy Peaches - 3 plays
Three 6 Mafia - 2 plays
Fugazi - 1 plays
Jimi Hendrix - 1 plays
Johnny Cash - 1 plays

This is day 15 of 100 Days To Offload.

Together

2026-02-25T13:19:05Z

Years into their relationship, Tim and Millie find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country. With tensions already flaring, an encounter with an unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love and their flesh.

Media Type: movie
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐

Spoilers ahead!

Starting off hot, the inciting incident bothers me. Drinking the water in the cave because they’ve been there for ten minutes and they’re suddenly very thirsty. This just really took me out of the movie. Please try and not have your characters do something so stupid. They should have just fallen in the water and spit it out or something. This just seemed very contrived.

I don’t really understand what the dreams that he was having have to do with what is going on in the rest of the film. Is it somehow there was something in the house or in the area causing the dreams? They seemed to only appear once they had moved in to this new house and maybe it’s entirely just all in his head. Maybe none of that was real. I don’t know if there’s there’s a real explanation for that. I think it’s tacked on to add scares throughout the movie where it would’ve been more of a character driven movie up until the point where they go into the cave.

I think it’s interesting that the church fell in this cave and you’ve got like this weird naturalistic thing happening. It’s unclear to me why the caves pool of water looks like that it reminded me of the source of darkside energy in the Rise of Skywalker. Really ended up feeling like a set and not real life.

When we first meet the other teacher there is a long enough shot of his hand to notice that he’s wearing two wedding rings. I thought this was a nice subtle detail.

I liked both of the main actors in this film. Obviously they have some chemistry since they are married but that doesn’t always translate to screen. Despite some clunky dialog they have some good tension building scenes and are both quite good when things start going the body horror route.

I think the movie looks good. The color grading and the house seem cozy, but also isolating at the same time. It’s a unsettling combination. Some of the body horror stuff actually ended up looking pretty good. With some of the early stuff that is minor building good tension for larger set pieces like when their hands crisscross into each other‘s arms.

The trailer gave away quite a few too many of this movies tricks so that was that was a little disappointing. If you watch the trailer you basically know what’s gonna happen.

I guess the exceptions are the cult and the monster. The monster was so poorly done that it just didn’t really work for me. The monster from the end of The Substance it was not although I get the comparison. The cult seems to exist only so the other teacher has motivation to turn on them. I don’t know that I needed an explanation for why it is happening. Almost seems less scary knowing.

I think it’s worth watching but I don’t there’s a lot of rewatch potential for me anywayaw.

This is day 14 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 8

2026-02-22T15:10:55Z

General #

Applied to a couple jobs.
Spent some time adjusting the resume again. I am seeing some different suggestions for formatting and the content for the skills section.
Noah made some macaroons and got some good feet on them. I made a parody song to the tune of “Got Some Teeth” by Obie Trice called “Got Some Feet.”
Been doing at least 20 minutes of day practicing guitar.
Played some Overwatch as per usual.
Started playing enclose.horse which I really like. You have limited walls to create an area for your horse. I like the pixel art tyle and the puzzle game play.

Media #

Finished season fifteen of Project Runway.
Watched the next episode of The Traitors US. I’m excited for the finale. This episode was a bit strange with another last minute all in banishment. It is interesting to see what people are convinced by in this show, and also life.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Join Ice - Jesse Welles - 3 plays
Got Some Teeth - Obie Trice - 3 plays
The Great Caucasian God - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
The Poor - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
United Health - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
War Isn’t Murder - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
Say Yes - Elliott Smith - 1 plays
Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins) - Father John Misty - 1 plays
Goodbye Mr. Blue - Father John Misty - 1 plays
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings - Father John Misty - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Jesse Welles - 19 plays
Father John Misty - 8 plays
Sufjan Stevens - 5 plays
Obie Trice - 3 plays
Elliott Smith - 1 plays
Lana Del Rey - 1 plays
Marcus King - 1 plays
Neutral Milk Hotel - 1 plays
Ol’ Dirty Bastard - 1 plays
OutKast - 1 plays

This is day 13 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 7

2026-02-14T14:44:44Z

General #

Applied to a couple jobs.
Made some Étouffée and White Turkey Chili.
Went with Leah and Noah to Le Crepe for lunch on Valentine’s Day.
Need to get better at working on these throughout the week.

Media #

Finished season fourteen and started Project Runway season fifteen.
Watched the next episode of The Traitors US. It is a little crazy that they’re almost immediately on to the new traitor.
Watched Together and have some thoughts. Might put together a full post about it.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

War Isn’t Murder - Jesse Welles - 4 plays
Nazi - Live - Chumbawamba - 2 plays
United Health - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
Walmart - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
Oh Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!) - Sufjan Stevens - 2 plays
Romulus - Sufjan Stevens - 2 plays
Plastic Jesus - Tia Blake - 2 plays
All I Want Is You - Barry Louis Polisar - 1 plays
Poison Oak - Bright Eyes - 1 plays
We Are Nowhere and It’s Now - Bright Eyes - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Sufjan Stevens - 18 plays
Jesse Welles - 15 plays
Chumbawamba - 3 plays
Tia Blake - 3 plays
Bright Eyes - 2 plays
Carsie Blanton - 2 plays
Emerson Woolf & the Wishbones - 2 plays
Ratboy - 2 plays
Barry Louis Polisar - 1 plays
Dave Van Ronk - 1 plays

This is day 12 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 6

2026-02-08T21:29:33Z

General #

Applied to a couple jobs.
Went with Leah and Noah to see the musical Kinky Boots at the Fisher Theatre. I feel like it takes a bit to get going but wow once it does. Performers in this show are really giving it their all. Impressive stuff.
I bought a guitar and have started learning how to play. I do about 20 minutes a day and have been making small progress. I do not have any past musical experience so I am happy to see the smallest amount of improvement. I imagine this may take a long time before I really get anywhere. Nice to start on a new hobby.

Media #

Finished season thirteen and started Project Runway season fourteen.
Watched the final episode of Fallout season two. I think it did a good mix of paying stuff off while also setting up a next season.
Watched the next episode of The Traitors US. I do not remember seeing two weeks in a row with the faithful banishing a traitor before. It has probably happened but this was difinitive. This is the part of the show where the traitors all turn on each other and that is fun to watch.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Walmart - Jesse Welles - 3 plays
United Health - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
Whistle Boeing - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
Anywhere - Ratboys - 2 plays
I Go Out at Night - Ratboys - 2 plays
Morning Zoo - Ratboys - 2 plays
Penny in the Lake - Ratboys - 2 plays
Grandpa Was a Liberal - Sean Tobin - 2 plays
All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! or Forever Hold Your Peace! - Sufjan Stevens - 2 plays
Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid) - Sufjan Stevens - 2 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Jesse Welles - 20 plays
Ratboy - 18 plays
Sufjan Stevens - 17 plays
Bright Eyes - 2 plays
Richard Cheese - 2 plays
Sean Tobin - 2 plays
Carsie Blanton - 1 plays
Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
Fleet Foxes - 1 plays
Jordan Smart - 1 plays

This is day 11 of 100 Days To Offload.

Jekyll to 11ty

2026-02-08T17:45:53Z

I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while now but I finally went ahead and converted my site from Jekyll to 11ty. Reading about other folks experience with 11ty really got me excited about changing.

I had been experimenting with the demo blog site for a little while and it seemed straightforward what would need to happen to recreate the old site using this new system.

When I hurt my back and ended up needing to be more reclined than I would normally at my desk I wasn’t originally planning to make the change. I was just going to clone the repo on my laptop and continue on Jekyll. Well that idea turned into a whole thing. Getting ruby installed and at the right version ended up being way more complicated than I expected. Actually it was so complicated that I ended up deciding to make the conversion rather than make Jekyll work.

I started with the barebones eleventy project and added things in piecemeal instead of starting with the demo blog. Although I did use it as a reference as I’m not a total glutton for punishment.

There were a few things that were not consistent that Jekyll did not care about but 11ty had little fits over. For example I had markdown files that were both “.markdown” and “.md” that I could have accounted for in the config but I took the issue as an opportunity to settle on “.md” everywhere. The tag system similarly had slight differences resulting in breaking the build and building duplicate similar tag pages. Here again I standardized the input to resolve the issues.

The og-image creation I had for Jekyll was a custom plugin I wrote in ruby and I have not ported it over for the new 11ty site. Instead I wrote a Nunjucks file that gets close but is not quite equivalent. I did have some issues with Nunjucks files and getting the og-images to be created but that is mostly solved now. One thing that is left lingering is the inclusion of images in that new og-image which I did not get resolved before putting it into production.

Most of the pages have been converted but I did opt to remove some temporarily while I figure out if I want them going forward. This process took longer than I anticipated but I think I have learned a bit. There were some limitations I did not expect so there will be changes going forward to try and fill in some gaps the conversion created.

Anything to distract from wriging something new here I guess. Anyway this post changes that and I hope to have more frequent posts now that things are a bit more settled on the build side.

This is day 10 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 5

2026-01-31T16:58:44Z

General #

Applied to a couple jobs
Back is still not right but I’m moving around a bit more. I will see what my pcp says about it for next steps.
Made some chicken noodle soup this week so we’ve got a bunch of that I’m going to freeze.

Media #

Started Project Runway season thirteen
Watched the seventh episode of Fallout season two. Really liked this episode and I feel like a lot of things happened. I really enjoy what Kyle MacLachlan is doing.
Watched the next episode of The Traitors US. The people that are traitors in the game are playing it interestingly. I am always excited to watch the next episode.
Watched Black Phone 2 and laughed more than I expected to. Is this a horror comedy?

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Say Yes - Elliott Smith - 6 plays
Somebody That I Used to Know - Elliott Smith - 4 plays
Waltz #2 (XO) - Elliott Smith - 4 plays
Join Ice - Jesse Welles - 4 plays
United Health - Jesse Welles - 4 plays
War Isn’t Murder - Jesse Welles - 4 plays
The Poor - Jesse Welles - 3 plays
When the President Talks to God - Bright Eyes - 2 plays
Alameda - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Angeles - Elliott Smith - 2 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Elliott Smith - 43 plays
Jesse Welles - 31 plays
Tim Minchin - 14 plays
Pete Seeger - 13 plays
Iron & Wine - 7 plays
Woody Guthrie - 5 plays
Say Anything - 4 plays
bbno$ - 2 plays
beabadoobee - 2 plays
Billy Simons Jr. - 2 plays

This is day 9 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 4

2026-01-24T20:17:32Z

General #

Applied to a couple jobs
My back still doesn’t feel right and I’ve spent much of this week lying down and avoiding sitting in one place for too long.
Went to the parents house and exchanged Christmas gifts with Matthew, Leah, and Noah.
This is late because the og-images for this page were not finished. I think I’ll be back on my usual schedule next week.

Media #

Finished Project Runway season twelve. I think Justin should have won.
Watched the sixth episode of Fall Out season two. This one felt transitional. Not bad but it seems like the last and the next will be more interesting.
Watched the next episode of The Traitors US. Some traitors are getting cocky and starting to do too much. It’s that part of the season.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Say Yes - Elliott Smith - 3 plays
Waltz #2 (XO) - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
United Health - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
Doritos & Fritos - 100 gecs - 1 plays
hand crushed by a mallet - 100 gecs - 1 plays
Hollywood Baby - 100 gecs - 1 plays
mememe - 100 gecs - 1 plays
money machine - 100 gecs - 1 plays
stupid horse - 100 gecs - 1 plays
Coming Home - beabadoobee - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Elliott Smith - 25 plays
100 gecs - 6 plays
Jesse Welles - 5 plays
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - 5 plays
beabadoobee - 2 plays
Billy Nomates - 1 plays
Chappell Roan - 1 plays
Cheekface - 1 plays
Cocteau Twins - 1 plays
Couch - 1 plays

This is day 8 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 3

2026-01-20T20:17:32Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs. Fewer than last week but still more than strictly required.
I hurt my back last Saturday and have been nursing that injury since then. I’m late for this and composing it on my laptop as sitting or standing is painful.

Media #

Started Project Runway season twelve.
Watched the fifth episode of Fall Out season two.
Watched the next three episodes of The Traitors US.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

The Model - Big Black - 2 plays
Plans - Billy Nomates - 2 plays
On The Wire - Couch - 2 plays
Join Ice - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
The Great Caucasian God - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
The Poor - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
Everything May Soon Be Gone - Tobias Jesso Jr. - 2 plays
Kerosene - Big Black - 1 plays
Road to Joy - Bright Eyes - 1 plays
Echo’s Answer - Broadcast - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Jesse Welles - 13 plays
Big Black - 3 plays
Billy Nomates - 2 plays
Couch - 2 plays
Pink Floyd - 2 plays
Tobias Jesso Jr. - 2 plays
Bright Eyes - 1 plays
Broadcast - 1 plays
Chino Yoshio - 1 plays
Denison Witmer - 1 plays

This is day 7 of 100 Days To Offload.

Movies I watched in 2025

2026-01-13T12:48:07Z

I feel like I have seen a lot of movies that came out this year. I tend to only go to the movies a few times a year but movies are moving from theaters to streaming services so quickly it is easy enough to still catch them in the calendar year.

Favorites #

These are not in any particular order and unless I mention a review I will not be giving them a rating. There were a lot of good movies in 2025. Of the ones I have seen, here are my favorites.

Sinners #

I did write a review for Sinners so I will not go into too much detail here. The fact that this movie has two (unexpected to me anyway) musical numbers that blow you away is quite an achievement. Having Michael B Jordan play twins and the skill with the way that was handled is impressive. Creature design is just the right amount of otherworldly. The locations an cinematography give you a motivated and engaging way to experience the story. I may have to go rewatch this again.

Weapons #

Recently rewatched Weapons and I still mostly stand by my review. I still wish the cop and unhomed person segments were something else. I am sure it fits with the themes of the movie with the cop being a weapon of the state. But the entire section is just a bit of a “feels bad man” for me. Gladys is a queen and I am looking forward to the prequel which is apparently in the works. When the kids chase her through houses and the neighborhood I laugh everytime.

Wake Up Dead Man #

I think this is my favorite Knives Out story. Like Rian Johnson I was raised Catholic and am no longer practicing. I add this just to say there are things in the movie that feel different if you have that experience. The setting and the mystery are perfect for a Benoit Blanc story. Frankly the solution to the mystery is also perfect for the setting. So there’s a lot of good stuff happening here. Leah and I watched this and were surprised at the runtime as it does not feel like 2 hours and 24 minutes. Glenn Close is really a lot of fun and so is Josh Brolin. This seemed fun to make and it is fun to watch.

Bugonia #

I really enjoy the director Yorgos Lantimos and this movie did not disappoint. As per usual the performances in his films are committed and at times absurd. The visuals are not as out there as Pretty Things but there are certainly moments. It is now out on streaming and I need to watch it again. I like it when a black comedy does at least have some genuinely funny moments.

One Battle After Another #

Seriously, this black comedy had some very funny moments. Leonardo DiCaprio is hit or miss with me but happily I think he is great in this movie. I especially enjoyed the roof running scene and my have said out loud “parkor” when the kids were hopping over things. The fall from the roof is pretty brutal and I was not expecting it at all. The driving scene at the end with the camera close to the road as it goes over hills was cool too. I will just leave you with a “Hail Saint Nick!”

Wicked: For Good #

This one was highly anticipated in this house. Wicked: For Good has been reviewed by me back when Leah and Noah and I saw it in a double feature with Wicked. It does what I expected having seen the musical but with a couple new songs. I liked Alphaba’s new song and did not really care for Glinda’s. There are a few moments of CGI voids that do not really happen in the first one which I thought was a bit disappointing. It is not as fun as the first one which I think is why I did not see it a second time in theaters. Leah bought it as soon as it was out on digital and has seen all the extras the same day.

Bring Her Back #

Talk about a gut punch of a movie. This one is not for the feint of heart. I think it out does Heredetary for that scene that will turn away a bunch of people. I thought Jonah Wren Phillips (the possessed kid) did an amazing job. The effects in this movie while being supernatural are also somehow believable. It does a great job of building tension, setting your expectations, and then subverting your expectations.

Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair #

When we combined our DVD collections Leah and I only had two duplicate movies, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2. We made it a date night and went to see this one in person. It was interesting to see the Crazy 88 fight in full color but I think I like it better switching to black and white. Somehow the original seems more violent to me. The added animation run time doesn’t seem necessary to me so I see why it was removed originally. I think I might like watching the two DVDs back to back better than this movie.

Others #

Saw a few more movies that came out this year but I would not call them my favorites. Not that they are bad by any means.

Frankenstein #

Guillermo del Toro makes beautiful monsters and worlds for them to inhabit. This is a fairly faithful telling of the story. There is a line in the movie where Frankenstein is described as Prometheus and I got a kick out of that. I thought the acting and action was good.

The Phoenician Scheme #

This was a fun quirky film in the typical Wes Anderson style. Benicio del Toro is really fun in this movie but I think I enjoyed him in One Battle After Another better. It’s not in my top three Wes Anderson films though (Which are The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Rushmore)

Heart Eyes #

This was a dumb fun horror movie in the style of a 80s/90s teen slasher. I enjoyed it but I do not think I will watch it again any time soon.

I Know What You Did Last Summer #

Similar to Heart Eyes but with even less rewatchability. Really though it was not dumb or as fun as the trailer. Seriously, skip the movie watch the trailer.

Superman #

Wrote a whole review about Superman where I even go into a bit why I do not really care about Superman as a character. If you are into Superman though I think James Gunn has done a really good job with building out a cast of characters and putting a different spin on things.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps #

This is a perfectly fine Fantastic Four movie with a throwback design that is fun to watch. It is well done I just got a little bored.

Thunderbolts* #

Rounding out the comic book movies is Thunderbolts* which I wrote a review about so I will not add much more. I think Florence Pugh steals the show in this and most everyone else is just kinda there.

28 Years Later #

It was beautiful at times but all the hype about using cell phones to film scenes did not really do anything for me. I thought Alfie Williams, the young boy in the film, did a really good job. Especially, later in the film after he’s encountered some tragedies. There are some more out there moments which have not been paid off yet so I am interested to see where they are going with this in The Bone Temple.

Until Dawn #

Matthew and I saw this and we knew it was going to be bad going in and it did not disappoint. Timey-wimey stuff is an interesting way to play with the multiple possible endings of the game. It probably is the best you could expect from a movie version of this game.

Companion #

I am glad I did not see the trailer before this movie. Why do movies give away the entire plot of the movie in the trailer? They put all the best parts in there to the point that if you see it I do not think you need to watch the movie. The marketing really hypes up something crazy happening here but I think once you know what is going on the film just overstays its welcome. It happens so early that you have about an hour of just padding out the runtime. It is not bad but I would have kept people in the dark longer about what is going on.

This is day 6 of 100 Days To Offload.

Music Scrobbles 2025

2026-01-12T12:37:28Z

According to Last.fm it logged 4,839 scrobbles for my listening in 2025 which is up 16% from 2024. What would amount to 12 days, 19 hours if it took place all at one time. It was really the year of DON’T TAP THE GLASS and the Wicked Soundtrack.

Artists - 629 #

Tyler, The Creator - 256
LCD Soundsystem - 240
Chappell Roan - 198
Death Cab for Cutie - 177
Wicked Movie Cast - 155
Cursive - 147
Run the Jewels - 126
Bright Eyes - 115
Fall Out Boy - 114
Father John Misty - 95

I think it is pretty neat that I saw four of my top ten artists live this year (Cursive, Run the Jewels, Bright Eyes, and LCD Soundsystem). Relatedly, I saw Wu-Tang Clan this year but they didn’t make it into the top ten (they were 34).

Albums - 1,249 #

Wicked: The Soundtrack - Wicked Movie Cast - 205
DON’T TAP THE GLASS - Tyler, The Creator - 172
The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess - Chappell Roan - 131
This Is Happening - LCD Soundsystem - 67
Transatlanticism (10th Anniversary Edition) - Death Cab for Cutie - 56
Chromakopia - Tyler, The Creator - 53
Sound of Silver - LCD Soundsystem - 51
Run the Jewels 2 - Run the Jewels - 47
I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning - Bright Eyes - 46
Either/Or - Elliott Smith - 40

Tracks - 2,528 #

Mommanem - Tyler, The Creator - 24
Ring Ring Ring - Tyler, The Creator - 24
Stop Playing With Me - Tyler, The Creator - 23
SUGAR ON MY TONGUE - Tyler, The Creator - 22
Casual - Chappell Roan - 20
Red Wine Supernova - Chappell Roan - 20
Popular - Wicked Movie Cast - 20
Good Luck, Babe! - Chappell Roan - 18
Sucka Free - Tyler, The Creator - 18
My Kink Is Karma - Chappell Roan - 17

For this year I would like to cast my net a little wider and listen to more new artists. Seems like a good idea too that I experience some things from other decades as my music listening is overwhelmingly from the 2000s.

Anyone got any suggestions?

This is day 5 of 100 Days To Offload.

The ultimate hidden truth

2026-01-12T12:19:57Z

The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently.

The ultimate hidden truth via Nick Simson

This is day 4 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 2

2026-01-10T16:03:32Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs. A few more than usual this week. Seems like there have been more posted since the first of the year.
Experimented with different versions of Proton to run Overwatch and ended up on the latest GE version with a rather lengthy command. This makes the game run so much better than what it was doing before. It’s definitely more taxing on my GPU but it’s producing as many frames as my monitors can handle and there is no stutter.
Worked on a small project that I’m not ready to say more about yet at this time. It’s entirely unnecessary but I like digging into how other examples of this sort of thing function. So I am learning if nothing else.
Added a Jekyll collection for “kin” which I will be using to tag people I mention on the blog. This is something I have admired from others so I thought I would spend a few minutes to implement here as well.

Media #

Completed Project Runway season eleven. There wasn’t a clear winner throughout but it remained interesting enough not to jump to the end which was nice.
Watched the fourth episode of Fall Out season two. Thought this episode was okey-dokie.
Watched the first three episodes of The Traitors US. Despite being so reality TV show dependent (The UK version has everyday people), Leah and I really like this show.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Trouble With My Lover - Betty Harris - 3 plays
Cath… - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
If I Were a Carpenter - Eldridge Holmes - 2 plays
Sealion - Feist - 2 plays
Cobra - Geese - 2 plays
Little Ba-by - Lee Dorsey - 2 plays
What You Want (Is What You Get) - Lee Dorsey - 2 plays
Go to the Mardi Gras - Professor Longhair - 2 plays
Good Lady - Sir Woman - 2 plays
Highroad - Sir Woman - 2 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Geese - 20 plays
Lily Allen - 14 plays
Sir Woman - 12 plays
Lee Dorsey - 10 plays
Betty Harris - 8 plays
Eddie Bo - 7 plays
Jesse Welles - 7 plays
Allen Toussaint - 5 plays
Bobby Charles - 5 plays
Eldridge Holmes - 5 plays

This is day 3 of 100 Days To Offload.

Advent of Code - Day 12

2026-01-04T13:37:13Z

Day 12: Christmas Tree Farm

Given the following type of input we are asked to parse the data and determine whether or not the presents could fit under the tree. First we are presented with present ids and shapes defined by “#”. The final section describes each tree with the “widthxheight” specified followed by the present counts by id listed left to right. The first number is the count for index 0 and the second is the count for index 1 and so on.

0:
###
##.
##.

1:
###
##.
.##

2:
.##
###
##.

3:
##.
###
##.

4:
###
#..
###

5:
###
.#.
###

4x4: 0 0 0 0 2 0
12x5: 1 0 1 0 2 2
12x5: 1 0 1 0 3 2

Part 1 #

This puzzle seems more difficult than it actually is. The most work here was parsing each line as the solution did not actually require any tiling as was implied by description of the problem. If the area of the presents was greater than the area under the tree they would not fit and would need to be excluded from the count.

Once I got the parsing done I wasn’t sure how to approach the next bit and scanned the subreddit where someone had just came out and said the total of the areas worked. I tried this approach and it indeed worked.

Now I have to go see if anyone found a solution that involved any tiling.

Part 2 #

There really isn’t a part two for this puzzle.

This is day 2 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 1

2026-01-04T13:21:42Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs.
Went with Matthew to Mexican Village for dinner and the WWE Holiday Tour at Little Caesar’s Arena on Tuesday.
Stayed up late with Leah on New Years and texted family to wish them a happy one.
Shoveled some snow since we keep getting just enough to get me out there to move it around.

Media #

Completed Project Runway season ten.
Watched the third episode of Fall Out season two. I liked this one better than the previous episode. It was fun to see Macaulay Culkin if only briefly.
Watched the finale of Stranger Things. I think I’m going to write a retrospective having recently rewatched the entire series.
Watched The Phoenician Scheme and One Batle After Another with Leah

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Thinking Clean - Blood Orange - 2 plays
United Health - Jesse Welles - 2 plays
Dead! - My Chemical Romance - 2 plays
Girl’s Not Grey - AFI - 1 plays
Silver and Cold - AFI - 1 plays
Roma Fade - Andrew Bird - 1 plays
Sisyphus - Andrew Bird - 1 plays
Fluid Mechanics - Barker - 1 plays
Certainty - Big Thief - 1 plays
Incomprehensible - Big Thief - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Tyler, The Creator - 15 plays
Jesse Welles - 7 plays
Wet Leg - 7 plays
Steely Dan - 5 plays
Blood Orange - 4 plays
Father John Misty - 4 plays
Big Thief - 3 plays
Bright Eyes - 3 plays
Fleet Foxes - 3 plays
Neutral Milk Hotel - 3 plays

This is day 1 of 100 Days To Offload.

Rowdy Riveting Empress Rosalind (Rosey)

2025-12-31T13:25:54Z

I admit I don’t know where to start this post. Today is the anniversary of Rosey’s passing and I wanted to write something to mark the occasion. We spent last New Year’s Eve quite a bit differently than we will today. We’ll get to that but lets start from the beginning.

Rosey was born on the fourteenth of November in the year 2012. Her parents are my sister’s dog, Bella, and my sister’s brother-in-law’s dog, Vince. Her AKC registered name is Rowdy Riveting Empress Rosalind but we mostly called her Rosey or Rose.

A few days after Bella had her litter, the family drove out to the Lansing area, about an hour and a half away, to see them. That’s where we met the whole squad and you can see a picture below, of me holding our little Rosey, for the first time.

Yeah, so we did that, and then after Christmas we came out again to see the pups. They had already gotten quite a bit bigger. Great Danes are puppies for a long time, but physically they’re not puppies for very long.

And then a week after that, we came out to pick her up. Some of the litter had already gone to their forever homes. Rose rode with me on my lap for the entire car ride back. I remember being nervous even just a carrying her in the car with me.

It was late enough in the year that I decided that I was going to adopt Rosey that I didn’t have my yard fenced in. So for a while there, for probably too long, it was like living in an apartment, taking her out any time to go for a walk. And I just love this picture of me and Rose enjoying her first snow.

We were both pretty tired after such a big day. I do remember her crying a lot that first night which was pretty sad. I do not believe it lasted more than a night or two though.

The cats were not too happy to see her. She pretty much took over as a puppy would often do, I suppose.

You do have to be careful with a Great Dane, though. If you get too cuddly, they don’t know their size. As they get bigger, then it becomes an issue.

I know there were probably accidents, but at this point it’s been so long that I don’t even remember any difficulty getting her house trained. When I wasn’t home, she was crate trained. That was her bed, you can tell her it’s time for bed and she would put herself to bed.

For at least the first year, my mom would come at lunchtime to let her out, so she never went the full day for over a year.

For a while there, she was getting Blue Buffalo for large breeds, but that was too rich, so we ended up switching her over to Holistic Select.

One of her sisters didn’t get adopted. So my sister would bring her over periodically. We’d usually meet at my parents’ house, and we’d bring two Great Dane puppies and watch them run around, which was fun.

Pretty crazy to see that you’re six months into life and this dog is bigger than most dogs you’ll see on the street.

Like there’s there’s some pictures of her where she looks like a full-grown dog but she’s only six months old. I did find that you tend to get noticed when you’re walking a great dane.

It’s nice that she tended toward her mom’s size, which maxed out around 110 pounds. Which is a lot for a dog, but undersized for a great dane. She was a healthy weight for her body, but being a little bit leaner helped keep some health issues at bay a little bit longer. We got some extra time with her because of it.

For the first few years we went to my parents house frequently but she didn’t really love the car. I never let her put her head out the window when we were driving and she never sat down either, so she was always back there standing up. Pacing around whenever she could she didn’t ever really relax when she was in the car although I guess we were only ever 20 minutes away from wherever we were going so it wasn’t too bad really.

Within the first year she got microchipped and fixed before she got too big. I remember that she came home and it was like she was drunk and tired. This dog that barely settled slept on the floor with her head on the marble of the fireplace. She owned the couch so this was especially weird.

She never ended up with any kind of bloat issues, which can occur in Great Danes. So I was thankful for that. Reading through information about Great Danes this tends to come up a lot and I was concerned.

She was free-fed and never would not scarf it. So I think that made our lives easier, both hers and mine. I tried to keep her fairly inactive for the next 30 minutes or so after eating, just to make sure that things have settled.

In early 2019, she started exhibiting some discomfort around her eye. She would rub on it with her paws and clearly it was bothering her, so it took her to the vet. We ended up having to go see a specialist at Blue Pearl. We tried drops to treat the inflammation in her eye. Even with medication we just couldn’t get to come down. The vets recommended to have one of her eyes removed.

So May of 2019, she had surgery to have her left eye removed. That is something that you’re never quite prepared for. It’s just hard to look at. It breaks your heart a bit to see. She’s scared going in and confused/disoriented coming out. It took some time to recover. She’s a large dog and she needed to wear a huge cone so she couldn’t scratch at herself. She ran that thing into everything including me.

I did fin this photo from about a year later which I’m including because I can’t stand to include anything sooner after the surgery.

In the first few months of 2020, before the world shut down, I had renovated the kitchen and bathroom at my house. So I’d go to work all day and come home in various states of demolition and then construction. During this time Rosey spent time with my parents. So I’d alternate days between going to see Leah and Noah and going to see Rose at my parents’ house. That was tough being away from her for so long.

Eventually did get the yard fully fenced in, but not until it seemed like Leah and Noah might be moving in. With this new freedom she could be let out without having to walk out to the fenced in section. We liked to go in the backyard and throw the ball around. She had enough space to get up to full speed at which point you needed to stay out of her way.

By the end of 2020, Leah and Noah moved in bringing with them their dog Tater, Leah’s Mom’s dog Dusty, and their two cats Phantom and Queenie. We got our blended family up to seven pets. At this point Rosey was still pretty curious so that sent Queenie into hiding but Tater was an old friend already and Dusty didn’t really mind anyone.

We fairly quickly realized that a queen bed for the three of us, meaning Leah, Rosie, and I wasn’t going to cut it. So we ended up getting a California King sized bed and Rose still managed to spread out and take as much room as possible.

As she slowed down and got use to the other animals being around Queenie and Ophelia started being seen more often and everyone was a bit more comfortable. It was a good thing we had two couches because with two couch potato dogs we needed all that room. She definitely had a preferred spot so I included a photo of her there here.

You can see Phantom in this photo too and he’s still not quite sure about her. Also, it’s remarkable how white her face has gotten compared to when she was younger.

She was a close talker and I think I may have spent too much time letting her have her face near mine. I didn’t mind but a dog that wants to rest her head on your shoulder isn’t for everyone.

In her old age she began exhibiting joint pain that made it harder for her to move. We kept her on Cosequin that helped her maintain her mobility for the last few years.

For the days leading up to her passing no amount of Cosequin would help her discomfort. More than that the strength in her back legs was going and quickly. What we later would learn was likely an acut onset nerve issue first presented in the inability to to do stairs or get up on a couch. She started not being able to communicate that she had to go to the bathroom and eventually had to be carried outside to do her business.

We had scheduled an in house vet to come out after the new year but she was so bad when we woke up on December 31st 2024 that we had to go in that day. I carried her to the car and we had called ahead so they met us in the parking lot with a stretcher.

Leah and I sat in a room at the vet with Rosey still in the back when they let us know what was going on. As with most things health related there are options but the situation was that nothing they could do was very likely to succeed. After discussing the options with Leah it was then that we made the decision to say goodbye. We told the vet and they prepared a room for us to spend some time with her. Before they moved us I called my Mom to let her know what was happening and texted my siblings too.

They gave her something to keep her comfortable and we laid on the floor in a more comfortable dedicated room they have for this sort of thing. After awhile we said our goodbyes and the vet gave her the injections and she was gone.

We kept her collar and the vet sent a condolences card with some paw prints they took after we left. It was a sad way to spend the last day of the year.

I spent weeks expecting her to be in her spot on the couch or on the bed. I’ve been working remotely for years and she had always been on the bed near me. Now when I get up to leave the room nobody follows behind.

I miss my girl.

Paperless-ngx

2025-12-30T10:04:29Z

New experiment with self-hosting, this time with Paperless-ngx. It has OCR and can make your documents searchable which I think is pretty cool. Going to go through my old files and get things loaded in here.

As I’m doing this I ran into a snag where for some reason my gas bill has PDFs attached but they’re password protected so I had to use the following to unlock them in mass.

find . -iname '*.pdf' -exec qpdf --password=PASSWORD --decrypt {} output/{} \;

I’m using Thunderbird to view and save locally my email so I added an extension to download attachments from multiple files at once which has come in handy.

There appears to be a few iOS options that can export to paperless-ngx which will make scanning documents into this system easier. For now I’m testing out QuickScan.

Advent of Code - Day 11

2025-12-29T15:59:59Z

Day 11: Reactor

At this point I believe day ten had got into my head rendering day eleven way harder than it actually should have been. This section you’re in a reactor with a diagram like the following example.

aaa: you hhh
you: bbb ccc
bbb: ddd eee
ccc: ddd eee fff
ddd: ggg
eee: out
fff: out
ggg: out
hhh: ccc fff iii
iii: out

This is a list of devices and where the outputs are attached.

Part 1 #

Here we are asked to count the paths from you to out.

Splitting the input on the contents to the left and right of the “:” was straight forward enough. I stumbled quite a bit on getting the path count here partially due to the aforementioned block. I found a solution that used a recursive function starting at “you” and following every path and counting each one.

Part 2 #

Now with a new set of data we must find how many paths start with “svr” end at “out” and visit both “dac” and “fft”.

svr: aaa bbb
aaa: fft
fft: ccc
bbb: tty
tty: ccc
ccc: ddd eee
ddd: hub
hub: fff
eee: dac
dac: fff
fff: ggg hhh
ggg: out
hhh: out

The solution involves creating a dictionary item of a location and the ways to get to it. This is processed first with the initial state of starting with “svr” and going through “fft”. Because we don’t care which order “fft” and “dac” are accessed a similar count is performed from “dac”. From there we count how to get from “dac” to “out”.

I wish the example was a little more complicated as the jump from example to input is a bit larger than I’d like.

Advent of Code - Day 10

2025-12-29T15:52:35Z

Day 10: Factory

In this challenge we need to turn some machines on and get them to use the correct joltage.

The manual describes one machine per line. Each line contains a single indicator light diagram in [square brackets], one or more button wiring schematics in (parentheses), and joltage requirements in {curly braces}.

[.##.] (3) (1,3) (2) (2,3) (0,2) (0,1) {3,5,4,7}
[...#.] (0,2,3,4) (2,3) (0,4) (0,1,2) (1,2,3,4) {7,5,12,7,2}
[.###.#] (0,1,2,3,4) (0,3,4) (0,1,2,4,5) (1,2) {10,11,11,5,10,5}

Part 1 #

In this part we are asked, “What is the fewest button presses required to correctly configure the indicator lights on all of the machines?”

I do not like admitting that the first part of this one tripped me up. Parsing the text was easy enough but frankly I was not sure how to hnadle that information once it was read in and split apart.

I tried a few things but my solutions ended up overcounting and I could not track down why. For this reason I sought someone elses solution that I could learn from. On the subreddit there was a vanilla Python solution that used sets and bitwise operators.

First the lights are converted to be a decimal representation of the binary value where “.” is a 0 and “#” is a 1. This is done from left to right so the second light in the example of […#.] is read as 01000 = 8.

Next each of the button presses are translated to a decimal representation of the binary value communicated. For the buttons [‘(3)’, ‘(1,3)’, ‘(2)’, ‘(2,3)’, ‘(0,2)’, ‘(0,1)’] where the number is the index for the lights. As an example (3) = 1000 = 8 and (1,3) = 1010 = 10.

I’ve spent a bunch of time staring at this bit of code but I think I’ve got it now.

current_lights = set(lights ^ btn for lights in current_lights for btn in buttons)

This is contained in a for loop that iterates the number of button presses and followed up by an if statement that checks if the target (desired light combination) appears in the resulting set. A set is used to make sure each of the values added are unique. If there are multiple ways to get to the same number we don’t care since we’re counting presses and not button press combinations.

This creates a set of (lights XOR buttons) for all lights in the current set. Each successive loop of this operation applies all button presses to each possible light state. This works since the lights work like binary operators. If a light is off “.” and the button press would interact with it then it turns on “#”. If the light is on “#” and the button press would interact with it then it turns off “.”. This exactly how XOR works and since integers compared with “^” are compared as binary this setup generates light possibilities in the form of the decimal representation of binary interactions.

Part 2 #

This part asks, “What is the fewest button presses required to correctly configure the joltage level counters on all of the machines?” The light state is ignored and instead the button presses changes the joltage as communicated in the curly braces.

This is the first time I had to install another library to get this to work. I did not come up with this solution but am instead writing to make sure I have some understanding of what’s happening here.

The solution I found used SciPy and specifically LinearConstraint, milp, and Bounds. Once the variables for this function are set milp (Mixed-integer linear programming) function can return the desired value.

result = milp(c, constraints=constraints, bounds=bounds, integrality=integrality)

This is run for each line and the sum is calculated. I need to dig into exactly how this one works as I’m not sure what is happening under the hood.

Week 52

2025-12-28T15:16:26Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs. Created a better flow for tailoring my resume based on the position.
Made apple pie, pumpkin pie, and dressing/stuffing for Christmas Eve dinner with the family.
Met Matthew’s girlfriend!
Gave some kids presents and I think they liked them. Noah said the Mitski album I got him was his favorite gift this year so theat felt pretty good.

Media #

Working our way through Project Runway season ten.
Watched the first two episodes of Fall Out season two.
Watched volume two of Stranger Things season five.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Have You Ever Seen The Rain (feat. Mt. Joy) - Jesse Welles - 4 plays
The Poor - Jesse Welles - 4 plays
United Health - Jesse Welles - 4 plays
Walmart - Jesse Welles - 4 plays
My Neck, My Back - Richard Cheese - 4 plays
Friends - Jesse Welles - 3 plays
Join Ice - Jesse Welles - 3 plays
The Great Caucasian God - Jesse Welles - 3 plays
War Isn’t Murder - Jesse Welles - 3 plays
bugs - Jesse Welles - 2 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Jesse Welles - 68 plays
Sufjan Stevens - 32 plays
Richard Cheese - 16 plays
Petey USA - 7 plays
Elliott Smith - 4 plays
Fleet Foxes - 3 plays
Neutral Milk Hotel - 3 plays
St. Vincent - 3 plays
Cameron Winter - 2 plays
Chappell Roan - 2 plays

Week 51

2025-12-20T10:32:20Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs.
Learned how to do day 10 of Advent of Code and am writing something about it for next week. Once done I’ll start on day 11. I haven’t given up yet.
Took Noah and Phantom to the vet for a lengthy nail issue the poor guy.
Setup Koito and Multi-Scrobbler to try and replace Last.fm in the future.

Media #

Working our way through Project Runway season ten and this one we seem to be sticking with
Rewatched Stranger Things in anticipation of the finale later this month. I have some theories friends.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Chateau (Feel Alright) - Djo - 2 plays
Love Like Winter - AFI - 1 plays
The Lost Souls - AFI - 1 plays
This Celluloid Dream - AFI - 1 plays
Totalimmortal - AFI - 1 plays
First Day of My Life - Bright Eyes - 1 plays
The Ghost Inside - Broken Bells - 1 plays
I Won’t Let You Down - Curtis Harding - 1 plays
Vindicated - Dashboard Confessional - 1 plays
Strange Overtones - David Byrne - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Fall Out Boy - 6 plays
AFI - 4 plays
Say Anything - 4 plays
Djo - 3 plays
Motion City Soundtrack - 3 plays
OutKast - 3 plays
Panic! at the Disco - 3 plays
The Format - 3 plays
Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Elliott Smith - 2 plays

Advent of Code - Day 9

2025-12-15T11:58:50Z

Day 9: Movie Theater

In the movie theater we’re looking at a red and green tile floor. The example looks like this where other tiles are “.” and red tiles are “#”.

7,1
11,1
11,7
9,7
9,5
2,5
2,3
7,3

But it can be visualized in a grid as follows:

..............
.......#...#..
..............
..#....#......
..............
..#......#....
..............
.........#.#..
..............

Part 1 #

This first part is to calculate the area of the largest rectangle. This was fairly straightforward to brute force. For every red tile loop through all other red tile positions and calculate the area. Then sort the results so the largest is the first value. This is your answer.

Part 2 #

In this part the tiles contained within the shape of the original example are green. Now using only red and green tiles return the largest area.

..............
.......#XXX#..
.......XXXXX..
..#XXXX#XXXX..
..XXXXXXXXXX..
..#XXXXXX#XX..
.........XXX..
.........#X#..
..............

This part seemed similar to the first and initially I tried to solve it by adding some additional checks for the contents of each area. This proved to be computationally expensive on the actual input and frankly it didn’t work.

Instead of solving this challenge myself I decided to review others solutions and learn from them. One such solution included itertools for more efficient iteration.

candidates = []
for square in combinations(tiles, 2):
    if not intersects(square[0], square[1], sliding_window(tiles, 2)):
        candidates.append(square)

print(max([sq_size(a, b) for (a, b) in candidates]))

The combinations function is used to generate all possible combinations of elements. This was the part that was tripping me up the most with manipulating part 1 to solve part 2. From there we have the sliding window that returns the elements of the input.

The intersect function returns False if the rectangle we’re checking is contained within the shape created by red and green tiles. That square is then added to the list of candidates and we eventually take the max like in part 1.

Again this was a solution found on the subreddit that I found. I learned some new techniques from this solution.

Week 50

2025-12-15T10:32:20Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs and certified unemployment.
Fell behind in Advent of Code after taking some time to learn about how to solve one of the later challenges.
Completed drives in Overwatch (8 times in total) after last weeks update.

Media #

Skipped a bunch of Project Runway season nine and started season ten on Amazon Prime.
Been rewatching Stranger Things in anticipation of the finale later this month.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Gold Tooth - Lettuce - 2 plays
Girl’s Not Grey - AFI - 1 plays
The Boy Who Destroyed the World - AFI - 1 plays
The Leaving Song Pt. II - AFI - 1 plays
One Armed Scissor - At the Drive-In - 1 plays
Nothing From Nothing - Billy Preston - 1 plays
The Recluse - Cursive - 1 plays
I Won’t Let You Down - Curtis Harding - 1 plays
Marching Bands of Manhattan - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
Pictures of Me - Elliott Smith - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Lettuce - 11 plays
My Chemical Romance - 5 plays
AFI - 3 plays
Elliott Smith - 3 plays
Panic! at the Disco - 3 plays
The Format - 3 plays
Tyler, The Creator - 3 plays
Father John Misty - 2 plays
Leon Bridges - 2 plays
Say Anything - 2 plays

Advent of Code - Day 8

2025-12-08T10:08:54Z

The Elves are trying to figure out which junction boxes to connect so that electricity can reach every junction box. They even have a list of all of the junction boxes’ positions in 3D space

Part 1 #

Provided the following diagram with the beam moving down from the S, how many times will the beam be split?

162,817,812
57,618,57
906,360,560
592,479,940
352,342,300
466,668,158
542,29,236
431,825,988
739,650,466
52,470,668
216,146,977
819,987,18
117,168,530
805,96,715
346,949,466
970,615,88
941,993,340
862,61,35
984,92,344
425,690,689

I got as far as generating an array of distances and indexes for use with generating the circuits but everything I tried from there did not work. Eventually I allowed myself to take hints form other peoples solutions.

One solution I found used a union find algorithm. This seemed useful to understand better so I spent some time learning about how this works and how to use it.

After creating an array distances that has (distance, i, i+j+1) where i and j are both indexes for lines in input the following for is used to create the circuits.

def find(x):
    # print(x)
    while x != parent[x]:
        x = parent[x]
    return x

def union(a,b):
    a, b = find(a), find(b)
    if a == b:
        return 0
    parent[b] = a
    size[a] += size[b]
    return size[a]

for _, a, b in distances[:1000]:
    union(a,b)

Part 2 #

For this part the answer is the result of multiplying together the X coordinates of the last two junction boxes you need to connect. This removes the 1000 connection limit from the first part so we just need to do about the same thing making sure to break out of the while loop having capture the last two points so we can multiply the X coordinates of each for the answer.

while True:
    _, a, b = distances[k]
    if union(a, b) == line_count:
        break
    k += 1

x1 = int(Lines[a].split(',')[0])
x2 = int(Lines[b].split(',')[0])

Once I got past the knowledge gap of the first part the second was fairly easy.

Advent of Code - Day 7

2025-12-07T10:08:54Z

Analyze your manifold diagram.

Part 1 #

Provided the following diagram with the beam moving down from the S, how many times will the beam be split?

.......S.......
...............
.......^.......
...............
......^.^......
...............
.....^.^.^.....
...............
....^.^...^....
...............
...^.^...^.^...
...............
..^...^.....^..
...............
.^.^.^.^.^...^.
...............

I bruteforced this one by validating an incoming beam above each of the splitters and counting that value. I generated the entire diagram and then rewalked each value to complete the count.

Part 2 #

For this part we needed to calculate the total number of possible paths. I’m creating a grid with path counts and increasing the count every time the splitter is encountered.

for i in Lines[1:]:
    for col in range(len(curr)):
        if curr[col] > 0 and i[col] == '^':
            p2 += curr[col]
            curr[col-1] += curr[col]
            curr[col+1] += curr[col]
            curr[col] = 0

I spent a lot of time doing something similar to this but needed some help switching the grid to a count versus tallying things in separate variables. This is a much cleaner approach which I like.

There were some fun animations of this happening in the subreddit.

Week 49

2025-12-06T16:33:45Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs.
Got caught up in Advent of Code 2025 and Overwatch drives this week.

Media #

Finished season seven of Project Runway and started season eight on Amazon Prime.
Leah and I went on a date to see Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Somebody That I Used to Know - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Speed Trials - Elliott Smith - 2 plays
Holy Shit - Father John Misty - 2 plays
Crying Laughing Loving Lying (From “The Holdovers”) - Labi Siffre - 2 plays
Do You Wanna Do Nothing with Me? - Lawrence - 2 plays
With Arms Outstretched - Rilo Kiley - 2 plays
Talk It Up - Sammy Rae & The Friends - 2 plays
Will I See You Again? - Thee Sacred Souls - 2 plays
ARE WE STILL FRIENDS? - Tyler, The Creator - 2 plays
Guilty Conscience - 070 Shake - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Elliott Smith - 7 plays
Death Cab for Cutie - 5 plays
Father John Misty - 4 plays
Jenny Lewis - 3 plays
Rilo Kiley - 3 plays
Chappell Roan - 2 plays
Fall Out Boy - 2 plays
Labi Siffre - 2 plays
Lawrence - 2 plays
Sammy Rae & The Friends - 2 plays

Advent of Code - Day 6

2025-12-06T10:08:54Z

Cephalopod math doesn’t look that different from normal math.

Part 1 #

Here is the thing with text that looks like this:

123 328  51 64 
 45 64  387 23 
  6 98  215 314
*   +   *   +

The requirements for this part of the puzzle allows for you to assume some spacing to get the answer knowing full well that’s not going to cut it in the next one. My strategy, as it has been with most of these is to get the lines into an array, and traverse that grid to rearrange the data and find the answer.

With a grid (2-dimensional array) in place I read it column first to build the equation and assuming the last row in a column is the operation. I ignored spacing as much as I could which absolutely will come back to bite me in the next part.

Part 2 #

As you can see in the above each column of data has a number with three characters so the columns are all of uniform width. The input data for this does not have that characteristic so it is a bit harder to parse. I ended up using the very last row to determine spacing of the rows since numbers that are less than the with of the column can have a space at the front of back of the number.

Since the numbers were written vertically I decided to translate the grid so the width is the height of the original and the width is the height. The right column above reads like 4 + 431 + 623 = 1058

I’m sure this is doing too much but it completes relatively quickly.

Advent of Code - Day 5

2025-12-05T10:08:54Z

If only we hadn’t switched to the new inventory management system right before Christmas!

Part 1 #

In this part we’re asked to check if an ID is within a range and count the number where this is true. This was not very difficult. Similar to other challenges read in the lines, split them along the “,” delimiter, and use these ranges to confirm if the later list is fresh or not.

Got a comment about this possible syntax so I used this instead of two expressions with and inbetween.

 if fresh[0] <= id <= fresh[1]:

This is a pretty useful simplification where I think some other examples I’ve seen can be a bit obfiscating and confusing.

Part 2 #

The second part is a count of all ingredient IDs that are fresh. I spent a bunch of time overcomplicating this problem. Eventually I threw it all out and started blank and eventually got there. The solution isn’t even interesting to share here. Just a reminder for myself to not complicate things.

Advent of Code - Day 4

2025-12-04T10:08:54Z

If you can optimize the work the forklifts are doing, maybe they would have time to spare to break through the wall.

Past puzzles have involved some grid traversing so I had a good start on this one. Similar to minesweaper you need to go through the grid and count the neighboring rolls(mines) and if there are fewer than 4 in the surrounding squares that roll can be marked for removal.

Part 1 #

This part only required doing the evaluation once and returning the number of rolls that can be removed. For most positions within the grid there are eight adjacent positions that need to be checked. I did spend some time doing this the long way, writing out each position that needed to be evaluated.

if grid[r-1][c-1] == "@":
    count += 1
if grid[r-1][c] == "@":
    count += 1
if grid[r][c-1] == "@":
    count += 1            
if grid[r-1][c+1] == "@":
    count += 1
if grid[r][c+1] == "@":
    count += 1
if grid[r+1][c-1] == "@":
    count += 1
if grid[r+1][c] == "@":
    count += 1
if grid[r+1][c+1] == "@":
    count += 1

This of course is the wrong way to do this check but I think it helped me identify the right way if that makes sense. Sometimes I need to do it the wrong way first for some reason.

Instead of identifying all the conditions I do want to check I wrote the following that will go through all of the above and I just needed the specify the one position I did not want to check. Which of course is the position I’m currently on. The other conditions are making sure not to evaluate outside the grid area.

for i in range(r-1,r+2):
    for j in range(c-1, c+2):
        if (i >= 0 and j >= 0) and (i < len(grid) and j < len(grid[r])) and (r != i or c != j):
            if grid[i][j] == "@":
                count += 1

I feel like there has to be a better way to do this but I have the above running in another series of for loops just to go through the grid. As that happens a new grid is being built with “x” replacing any “@” if it can be removed. This way you’re not updating a grid as you’re traversing. This also helped with part 2.

Part 2 #

This part basically says repeat part 1 on the new grid until you cannot remove any more rolls. This sounds like a recursive function to me. So that’s what I did. I don’t know if this is necessary but I added the number of removed rolls to the function call. I decided this function should return the count of removed.

The exit condition for the function is if there are no more rolls to remove. If there are more to be removed the function is called again.

if removable == 0:
    return removed
else:
    removed += removable
    return freeRolls(marked_grid, removed)

For fun I added some print commands and grid updating so the examples provided in the description of the puzzle can be recreated. This just involves updating “x” to “.” once the rolls are removed.

With all the printing remove this returns the correct final result in 0.55 seconds. I’m interested to see some better solutions here and will be looking into that after posting this now.

Advent of Code - Day 3

2025-12-03T12:50:25Z

Now that I have a template for these challenges things are going a bit faster. Maybe I’m just getting back into it now but this seemed easier than the past two.

Part 1 #

Here we need to create the largest number from a string of numbers representing the joltage of a battery in a bank of batteries. An example provided is, 987654321111111, you can make the largest joltage possible, 98, by turning on the first two batteries. This is done with a series of banks and the total is the answer to the puzzle.

For this part I chose to ignore the fact that a second part was coming and write the solution in a way that would definitely have to be reworked for part two. The moment when you’re writing a for loop next to another for loop that does the same thing is one that should give you pause.

Anyway, this inflexible setup worked fine for the first parts example and input text so I got away with this short sighted decision temporarily.

Part 2 #

This part expands the number of batteries you need to enable to 12 so completing it with the same sort of code would be a bit of a nightmare. So I kept some of what I had but the series of for loops had to go.

What I ended up creating is a for loop that determines the maximum number in the string but always ensures there are enough values remaining to the left so we can create a jolgate string of length 12.

for i in range(0, len(bank)-(JOLTAGE_LENGTH-len(joltage)-1)):
    if int(bank[i]) > int(max):
        max = bank[i]
        index = i
joltage += str(max)
new_bank = bank[index+1:len(bank)]
return highestJoltage(new_bank, joltage)

One nice thing about this solution is the global variable JOLTAGE_LENGTH which is set to 12 to solve this puzzle but could also be set to 2 to solve part 1. This is not always the case for these sorts of puzzles but if I wrote the first part the right way the first time part 2 would just be changing the value to this variable (and running it of course).

This solution runs in 0.02 seconds which I’m pretty happy with.

AOC 2025 Day 2 Revisit

2025-12-03T10:24:11Z

Spent some time yesterday reviewing other people’s solutions to day 2 and I do not recommend my solution.

I found Juhis’ solution and made a part 3 to implement regex instead of my solution. The only changes were importing re, setting the pattern, and using a new function to do the comparison.

import re
INVALID_ID_PATTERN_2 = r'^(\d+)(\1)+$'

def is_invalid(product_id: int) -> re.Match[str] | None:
    return re.search(INVALID_ID_PATTERN_2, str(product_id))

This new setup got the solution so fast that I spent some time today to add timers to both part 2 and part 3 to compare.

Part 2 (my solution) got the correct answer in 38.22 seconds.

Part 3 (Juhis’ solution) got the correct answer in 1.62 seconds.

I think it might be time to learn regex folks. Also, part 3 included all my other code so Juhis’ complete solution may be even faster.

Does anyone have a good resource or way to learn regex?

Advent of Code - Day 2

2025-12-02T13:58:04Z

Some younger elf entered a bunch of silly product IDs and we have to identify them and total them up. This is really to ensure we’ve found them all.

Invalid product IDs can be found by finding numbers that are made up of repeating sequences. Examples provided by the puzzle are as follows: 55 (5 twice), 6464 (64 twice), and 123123 (123 twice).

Copied day1 into a day2 folder and update the example and input text files to the new puzzle. Instead of multiple lines this puzzle has a comma delimited list so I needed to use .split(",") on the string to create an array of ranges.

Each range then needed to be split into the beginning and ending value using .split("-"). Now we iterate through the range with a for loop.

id_range = i.split("-")
for n in range(int(id_range[0]), int(id_range[1])+1):

Now that we can see all the IDs it’s time to do some comparisons.

Part 1 #

For this part the sillyness made up half of the ID like the examples before. I checked if the ID was even and then compared one half to the other. If the ID was invalid I added it to an array and after all ranges and IDs were checked I summed all entries in the array. Completing the example portion was enough to parse the entire input text file.

Part 2 #

Instead of being able to break an ID into half this part expands the scope to include IDs that are the result of a repeating sequence of numbers. Examples are 12341234 (1234 two times), 123123123 (123 three times), 1212121212 (12 five times), and 1111111 (1 seven times).

Immediately I knew I wanted to check segments of each ID that went into the array a whole number of times. The below loop goes through every number from 1 to the length of the ID.

id_len = len(i)
for x in range(1, id_len):
    if id_len % x == 0:

If id_len % x returns 0 there is no remainder and we can check if each of the sections of the ID are the same. So 123123123 has 2 numbers that divide into the length(9) evenly (1, 3).

The pattern has to repeat so we can ignore any x value greater than half of the length of the ID. I could speed this whole thing up by making that change.

I tried and failed for a while to create dynamic indexes for parts of the string. I could get it to work partially but it was too complicated and didn’t work for all cases.

if id[s:s+segment_length] == id[s+segment_length:s+segment_length+segment_length]:

This actually worked fine but writing a condition to ensure it stopped before the end of the array was tripping me up. After a while I decided to look into breaking a string into defined lengths.

from textwrap import wrap
x = 3 
i_arr = wrap(id, x)

The above will split a string into an array of three equal pieces. This wrap() function applied to the ID results in an array we can iterate through more easily.

Look at how much simpler this is:

if i_arr[s] == i_arr[s+1]:
    if s+1 >= len(i_arr)-1:
        return True

This code is part of a for loop that goes through all segments of the id array and checks that they’re the same. If we’ve reached the end of the array and all segments are equal then we have found a silly ID.

This is one of those situations where I spent too much time doing something the wrong way only to do a quick search and find a better function.

Again once the example could be completed using this method the import text file went smoothly.

Advent of Code - Day 1

2025-12-02T08:48:50Z

The elves have discovered project management and this bit hit a little close to home.

The bad news is that they’ve realized they have a different emergency…

Both parts of this challenge are related to using the movements of a dial (with didgets 0-99). The movements are either to the left or right (L or R) and the number of places to move.

The example file I received looked like this:

L68
L30
R48
L5
R60
L55
L1
L99
R14
L82

Part 1 #

This part simply asked to count the number of times you land exactly on zero. So once we make the movement check if the dial is on zero and increment the counter if we are. This is simple enough so most of the activity here is setup.

I participated last year using Python so I grabbed day 1 from last year so I could read a text file and pretty much everything was scrapped. Once I confirmed I could read the example I printed the results and started string parsing. Python makes this activity easy since you can use a string like an array. This is not the code I used but you can do the following:

move = str(line) # bring in the new line
direction = move[0] # capture the movement L or R
distance = int(move[1:99]) # capture the distance of the move

Then I translate the direction into a multiplier L=-1 and R=1. The distance has the multiplier applied and then is added to the current value of the dial.

Next we must determine the new value of the dial. To do this I used the following code. The % is modulo (mod), or remainder, in Python. This way the result of the dial is always between 0 and 99.

if dial < 0:
    dial = dial + 100
elif dial > 99:
    dial = dial % 100

Once the dial position is set I check if it is zero and increase the counter any time it is.

This method worked well for the example but did not return the correct result on the full import. This is the nature of these puzzles where the full input includes some cases that the example will not expose.

The issue was caused by some moves with distances greater than 100. This is actually okay in the positive direction but as you can see we’re adding 100 if the dial is < 0 so you will end up with large negative numbers if you move hundreds of places to the left.

Since rotationally moving 100 is like not moving at all I decided to mod the distance by 100 and only do the remainder distance.

distance = int(move[1:99])%100

This worked well and got the correct answer allowing me to make it to part 2 where Eric must have expected this exact solution and set it as a trap.

Part 2 #

Now we need to know how many times any click on the dial would be set to zero not just landing on zero. So immediately the shortcut from the first part of mod 100 on the distance is out or at the very least needs to be tweaked.

I moved the mod to later and inbetween added the whole number divisions to the running count of the dial hitting zero. In python int(a/b) will return the whole number of that division.

distance = int(move[1:99])
hits_zero += int(distance/100)
distance = distance%100

There was another edge case that I needed to accommodate which is if the dial starts on 0 prior to the move but that was easy enough to check. From there I was able to calculate the new value for the dial passing or landing on 0. In the world of the puzzle the elves can get in the door.

I’m glad this puzzle was so straightforward I know there are more challenging things to come.

Cornbread Dressing

2025-11-30T13:32:09Z

This recipe is a hit every time I make it. Technically not stuffing because it does not make in the bird.

Cornbread #

2 boxes of Krusteaz Gluten Free Honey Cornbread & Muffin Mix
2 Cups of Milk
2/3 Cups of Vegetable Oil
2 Eggs

Dressing #

1 Large Onion, finely diced
3 Ribs of Celery, finely diced
3 Cloves Garlic, smashed and finely diced
1 Pound of Italian Pork Sausage
1 Cup of Apple Cider
1/2 Bunch of Sage, finely chopped
3/4 Cup Coarsly Chopped Walnuts
2 to 3 Cups of Chicken Stock
1/2 Head of Fennel
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled and cut into cubes

The day before make the cornbread as instructed on the box. Once cool cut into half inch squares and leave out to get a bit stale.
In a large saute pan set over medium-high heat, melt 2 tablespoons butter. Add the celery, garlic, onions and fennel, sprinkle with the salt and cook until the vegetables are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the mixture to the bowl of bread and mix.
In the same saute pan, add the remaining 2 tablespoons butter and let brown for 30 seconds. Add the apples and nutmeg and saute until the apples are tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the apples to the bread bowl and mix.
Add the sausage to the pan and cook, breaking it up as it browns, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the apple cider and transfer the sausage to the bread bowl and mix. Mix in the parsley and sage.
Transfer the bread mixture to the prepared baking dish. Pour the chicken stock evenly over the bread mixture. Finish with the freshly ground pepper. Put the baking dish on the middle oven rack and bake, uncovered, until golden brown, about 40 minutes.

Notes #

Every so often fennel will be unavailable. I just add an extra cellery rib or two.

Week 48

2025-11-29T16:33:45Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs.
Haven’t kept up on notes much this week.
Spent a bunch of time preparing Thangiving dinner.
Got to see my siblings, parents, and niece and nephew which was nice. Spent some time catching up, seems like it’s been a busy six months or so.
Saw some artwork from Lindsay and watched her make some thing in person which was fun.
Played some Roblox, Dress to Impress, Pet Story, Adopt Me, Jujutsu Shenanigans, Flee the Facility, Pilfering Pirates, Natural Disaster Survival, Survive the Night, and Build to Survive.

Meals #

Spaghetti Monday and Taco Tuesday as per usual.
Ma Su Mun from Sy Thai on Wednesday.
Falafel Sandwich and Hummus from Grape Leaves
Thursday I made Thanksgiving dinner and brought it to my parents house. I did a spatchcocked turkey, gluten free cornbread dressing, gravy, roasted carrots, apple pie, and pumpkin pie. Leah and Noah made mashed potatoes and my sister Rachel brought green bean caserole and mac and cheese.
Pizza Friday from Green Lantern.
Leftovers, so many leftovers.

Site Changes #

Added webmentions to the comment section and it broke almost immediately. I got a single like on a post and it broke but I got it back up and running.

Media #

Finished season four of Project Runway and started season seven because that’s what’s on Hulu.
Watched the fifth episode of IT: Welcome to Derry.
Leah and I went on a date this morning and saw Bugonia.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Wonderful - Jeff Goldblum - 2 plays
Gasoline Dreams (with Khujo Goodie) - OutKast - 2 plays
No One Mourns the Wicked - Wicked Movie Cast - 2 plays
I’m Not That Girl (Reprise) - Ariana Grande - 1 plays
Popular - Ariana Grande - 1 plays
Thank Goodness / I Couldn’t Be Happier - Ariana Grande - 1 plays
What Is This Feeling? - Ariana Grande - 1 plays
War Pigs / Luke’s Wall - 2012 - Remaster - Black Sabbath - 1 plays
As Long as You’re Mine - Cynthia Erivo - 1 plays
Defying Gravity - Cynthia Erivo - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Cynthia Erivo - 8 plays
OutKast - 6 plays
Ariana Grande - 4 plays
Wicked Movie Cast - 4 plays
Jeff Goldblum - 3 plays
Black Sabbath - 1 plays
Jeremy Irons - 1 plays
Jonathan Bailey - 1 plays
Marissa Bode - 1 plays

Advent Of Code

2025-11-26T15:41:20Z

I have been thinking about this since it was announced that this year will have twelve challenges and I have decided to attempt them all. I did just fifteen days last year but didn not post publicly about the process. Similar to Weird Web October this seems like a good way to practice and write.

Web Mention Hello World

2025-11-26T13:02:41Z

Brief reply to indiewebify.me post to confirm it works.

IndieWebify.Me

2025-11-26T12:29:34Z

I’ve been using IndieWebify.Me to get this site setup to post on the indieweb and send/receive comments via webmentions. Technically the site uses webmentions.io but comments can be added to the site that way.

I think eventually it would be a good idea to have a site that can send and receive these requests but for now I am happy to use this third party service.

The header of the site now includes a completed h-card with the following block of text to add author, photo, url, and a brief description.

<div class="h-card" hidden>
  <span rel="author" rel="me" class="p-name">Christopher Himes</span>
  <img class="u-photo" src="https://christopherhimes.com/assets/img/new-face-120x120.webp">
  <a rel="me" class="u-url" href="https://christopherhimes.com/">https://christopherhimes.com/</a>
  <div class="p-note">I'm Christopher Himes (he&NoBreak;/&NoBreak;him), an accomplished tech professional living in Metro Detroit.</div>
</div>

Since this is a Jekyll site I was able to edit the post.html layout to incorporate h-entry values through out. I’ve removed extra items to highlight the areas where new classes were required. I’ve added some conditional items that allow me to make a blog post as a reply and include the necessary u-in-reply-to class.


<div class="h-entry">
    <h1 class="post-title p-name" itemprop="name headline">{{ page.title | escape }}</h1>
    <time class="dt-published" datetime="{{ page.date | date_to_xmlschema }}" itemprop="datePublished">{{ page.date | date: date_format }}</time>
    {%- if page.external_url and page.external_title -%}
    <p>in reply to: <a class="u-in-reply-to" href='{{ page.external_url }}'>{{ page.external_title }}</a></p>
    {% endif %}
    <div itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" hidden>
        <a rel="author" class="u-url p-name p-author h-card" itemprop="name" href="https://christopherhimes.com/">{{ author }}</a>
        <img class="u-photo" src="https://christopherhimes.com/assets/img/new-face-120x120.webp" alt="Photo of me wearing a green suit" width="40" />
    </div>
    <div class="e-content">
    {{ content }}
    </div>
    <a class="u-url" href="{{ page.url | relative_url }}" hidden></a>
</div>

Quick aside: I often forget that Jekyll will render the liquid text in the above code block. You get some lengthy results if raw and endraw are not placed around the code block.

I already have a link type post that I am expanding upon to do reply posts if the person accepts webmentions. If this has been shared on Mastodon I’ve confirmed my posts appear as a webmention. 🤞

Week 47

2025-11-22T13:52:52Z

General #

Applied to a few jobs.
Took Kamala to the vet for some bloodwork. Got some good news that her values are normal so we’re going to continue with what we’re doing now.
Last Saturday we went to the high school to see Matilda the musical and they did a great job. It was written by Tim Minchin so I have been listening to a bit of his other stuff this week.
My notes this week have been poor.

Meals #

Spaghetti Monday and Taco Tuesday as per usual.
Ma Su Mun from Sy Thai on Wednesday.
Falafel Sandwich and Hummus from Grape Leaves
Pizza Friday from Green Lantern and I goofed and had to go pick it up instead of having it delivered…

Site Changes #

Created and added a new logo to the site.
Been working on updates to the comment section of the site to incorporate webmentions. I have things working I just need to figure out the styling. May be live as soon as next week.

Media #

Finished season three of Project Runway and started season four.
Saw a double feature of Wicked and Wicked: For Good at the Birmingham 8 on Thursday. It was nice to see these back to back and I wrote some thoughts about each.
Watched the fourth episode of IT: Welcome to Derry and I had to watch this alone as my wife has DNF’d this show.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

What Is This Feeling? - Ariana Grande - 2 plays
Colors - Black Pumas - 2 plays
Grapevine Fires - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Coming Home - Leon Bridges - 2 plays
Go Ahead - Rilo Kiley - 2 plays
Hoppípolla - Sigur Rós - 2 plays
Ring Ring Ring - Tyler, The Creator - 2 plays
Guilty Conscience - 070 Shake - 1 plays
I’m Not That Girl (Reprise) - Ariana Grande - 1 plays
Popular - Ariana Grande - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Father John Misty - 6 plays
Tyler, The Creator - 5 plays
Ariana Grande - 4 plays
Cynthia Erivo - 4 plays
Death Cab for Cutie - 4 plays
The Format - 4 plays
Chappell Roan - 3 plays
Jenny Lewis - 3 plays
Rilo Kiley - 3 plays
The Beatles - 3 plays

Superman

2025-11-22T13:28:44Z

Superman, a journalist in Metropolis, embarks on a journey to reconcile his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing as Clark Kent.

Media Type: movie
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐

It’s nice to have a Superman film that has some joy in it. The Snyderverse films were all so dark and depressing. This movie is fun and certainly a good popcorn film.

It does a feel a bit like a diet version of The Guardians of the Galaxy though. I think it’s smart to add more characters to the world of Superman because I don’t think he’s that interesting. Similar to Batman the most interesting thing about Superman are the characters around him.

Essentials

2025-11-22T13:00:00Z

In a world that has been discussing “Abundance” we should really be talking about essentials and our shared humanity.

Essentials via Chris Ferdinandi

Wicked: For Good

2025-11-21T10:54:05Z

Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West and her relationship with Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. The second of a two-part feature film adaptation of the Broadway musical.

Media Type: movie
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Let’s talk about For Good, which I’m able to do a review on because we watched a double feature the day before it officially comes out. So that was kind of fun, seeing them back-to-back. It’s a long viewing, having both of these movies back-to-back. Wicked is 2 hours and 40 minutes, and Wicked: For Good is 2 hours and 20.

This movie necessarily has a darker tone. At the end of the first one, you’ve got Defying Gravity, where they’re being attacked. The Wicked Witch mantle has been given to Elphaba, and she runs off.

The plight of the animals is way more in the forefront. We’re less about establishing these two people as being great friends. These are two people who love each other. They’re friends thathave different perspectives on what’s happening in Oz.

So there is a bit of a tonal shift. And frankly, I read a review that said that this movie was not funny enough. And I just, I can’t kind of get that out of my head. I shouldn’t have read that until I put my own thoughts down. But of course, it’s not that funny. The situation isn’t very funny. The Wizard of Oz is this fascistic leader who has scapegoated the animals. Maybe I should find another term for that. But is using the animals as an enemy to get the rest of Oz together and working toward a singular focus. I am not sure what the road symbolizes other than the road needs to exist for when Dorothy comes. But this definitely seems like an authoritarian vanity project to me.

The Wicked Witch, in this instance, is a kind of terrorist trying to prevent the roads from happening. Even if her chief concern is freeing the enslaved animals.

Spoilers ahead!

The Nessa Rose and Bach relationship, which in about a year has taken some dark turns. Turns out you should be with someone because you want to be with them not because you can’t be with a person that you want to be with. She did turn into a bit of a bit of a tyrant. I know that was going to happen, but I still don’t understand exactly why. It’s kind of implied that she’s mad at her sister for not visiting after her dad died and feels rejected by Boq.

I think the biggest problem I have with the second part of Wicked, and this is true for the musical too, is just that the songs aren’t as interesting. One thing I really like is the reprise of I’m Not That Girl. This time sung by Ariana Grande after her wedding is disrupted, is just a completely different tone. So in the first one, Alphaba’s feeling sad about herself for not getting the guy. Singing the same word after you thought you were going to marry the love of your life, only to find out that this person loves somebody else is way different. And the timing of you figuring that out at the altar is rough.

Not to be too down on the music on this this half uh “Wonderful” is great and I like the change from the musical, which my wife mentioned to me, is that Glinda’s not in the original song. It’s like the Wizard is using Glinda and Elphaba’s relationship to manipulate Elphaba into agreeing to peace. I don’t know if this happens in the same way in the musical but I think it’s interesting that behind the portrait of the Wizard are animals. This is similar to what happened at Shiz in the first film.

No Good Deed is pretty great, too, and so is For Good, the title track. Too many of the other songs borrow from songs in the first half of the story and honestly seem a bit like filler. The musical has this issue too.

From here this movie Ttkes place during the events of Wizard of Oz, which is fun. This does require way more location hopping to pull off which can be a bit jarring but it’s honestly not much of a concern.

Bach turning into the Tin Man and Fieyero turning into the Scarecrow are handled beautifully. Both transformations happen off screen, which I’m totally cool with. I don’t know who was clamoring for whatever CGI nonsense would have had gone into making that transformation happen. It’s just not essential to the story you’re telling. So I’m glad they didn’t spend time trying to do that. I thought the Tin Man looked good. I thought that that was a smart way to handle that design. I thought the Scarecrow looked good too, for the little bit that you did see him. I thought the cowardly lion was fine. Looked better than any of the live-action Lion King.

In the musical, the Wizard of Oz stuff happens in the background of the musical. It is in there, but it’s also not a main focus. And I like the way they kind of carried that through, too. Like, you’re here to watch Wicked, you’re not here to watch The Wizard of Oz. If you want to watch The Wizard of Oz, go watch that movie.

So things that would have been like a shadow play in the musical end up being seen from Glinda’s point of view through the crack in the wall. You just get shadows on the wall of the castle. It was just really well handled. They showed you enough to know what was going on, but also not so much that you end up like they’re just recreating scenes from another movie.

I appreciated the amount of time, I think the musical does this too, but there’s a certain level of confidence with keeping the amount of time between when the Wicked Witch is supposedly killed by Dorothy and the reveal that she’s not actually dead. That amount of time in this movie and in the musical is significant. We go through almost the complete run time of both films thinking that Elphaba dies in the end.

It is sad that Elphaba and Fieyero are unable to communicate to Glinda that they’re both alive. I think there is definitely implication that Glinda is going to get her dream. The Grimmery is going to respond to her now, too, and she’s going to be able to use it to make Oz better.

I don’t know that Elphaba got what she wanted. It’s kind of not a great ending for her.

It does seem possible that people could come around and be told the actual story, and it would be fine. But the wizard certainly doesn’t think that’s true. He even tells her during the movie. They’ve bought into this con, and they would rather stick with the wrong idea than to feel like they’ve been tricked. There’s a few political messages in this movie, and I think a lot of people are going to point to how different aspects of this story relate to the world we’re living in. I feel like that line, that idea, is way more relevant and important than almost any of the others. Because that’s really what we’re up against. Everything else is kind of a knockdown effect.

Wicked

2025-11-21T09:52:56Z

Elphaba, a young woman ridiculed for her green skin, and Galinda, a popular girl, become friends at Shiz University in the Land of Oz. After an encounter with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches a crossroads.

Media Type: movie
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

My family and I went and saw a double feature, Wicked Part 1 and Wicked for Good. So I thought I would do two reviews all at the same time, because I just recently watched both movies. So here we go.

So the first movie is amazing. They took this musical, made for the stage, and really made it into a spectacle of a movie. The problem you end up with other musicals that turn into movies is they don’t change enough to be movies. But I think they did a good job of bridging the two. So you’re going to do all of the songs that people want to hear, but you’re going to increase the spectacle. You’re going to use the camera in ways that you just can’t do in a stage production. So you’ve got way more intimate scenes. You can see people’s faces, so there’s a lot more opportunity for telling the emotional side of the story. You don’t have to rely exclusively on the music to tell how people are feeling, which is one of the benefits of it being a movie.

The play and of course this first movie benefit from having so much more discovery and so much more positivity. The musical is really two separate ideas kind of next to each other. The first one is an outcast, becoming friends with a popular person and it’s a bit like “She’s all that.” There’s even a she’s all that moment in the movie where Glinda takes Elphaba’s glasses off and then puts them back on. It’s played as a joke, but this is a trope in those sorts of movies where she has her hair in a ponytail and she wears glasses, but if you put her hair down and you take her glasses off, she’s already beautiful.

This is a movie about acceptance and someone coming out of the shadows while finding themselves. There are references to what’s happening with the animals. But largely this is about a movie about Elphaba gaining acceptance, at least with Glinda. And it’s also about Glinda being less superficial. It’s a completely different tone to where we’ll be going in the next film.

This movie is shot beautifully. I love the sets. There’s so many practical places that really make this movie stand out in ways that other musical films do not. Many rely so much on special effects they end up looking like a CGI nightmare. Since Oz already looks a bit uncanny it’s way more forgiving when youd do the CGI.

Cynthia and Ariana are fantastic, and you can really tell how close they are on screen. One thing I didn’t notice until this viewing is that during Defying Gravity Glinda is, just with her thumb, rubbing Elphaba’s hand while they’re both holding the broom. It’s a really subtle thing that I cannot imagine is in the script or the direction.

One of the things that this film really has going for it is it is clearly referencing The Wizard of Oz, but it is not during the time of The Wizard of Oz. It’s not following that timeline, so it makes it a lot easier to spend the time building the world and getting to know the characters. It also benefits, and we’ll get more into this again in the second movie, the songs in this film are just far superior. I know people love some of the things in the next one, but almost all of the songs in this movie are just fantastic.

Obsidian Git Setup

2025-11-18T09:56:35Z

I need to start writing more things down. I often have things I want to accomplish on my mind and walk through a doorway only to forget entirely what I was thinking about (the doorway effect).

For a longtime I’ve used notion as a second brain and journalling. Lately though they’ve added a bunch of AI stuff and I haven’t been enjoying using their service as much.

So, I thought I would try out Obsidian. I’ve seen a number of posts online discussing how much people enjoy the product so I figured I would give it a go.

So far it has really helped me establish a daily practice of at least documenting a few things about my day. I’ve also used it as the place to log job applications I submit. The nice thing there is I can have weekly documents about the job search and use tools to pull larger reports.

As much as I enjoy the tool I’m not taking on more subscription services at the moment so I wanted to find a way to sync my phone and desktop vaults. I came across this reference and managed to set it up with my particular use case. I have an iPhone and my desktop is running linux. I used iSH to get this setup initially but the git extension for obsidian works once that is done. I’ve not had to use iSH since.

Now my vault is a git repo that I’m able to push from both my phone and desktop to codeberg. I do have to remember to do this but it’s hardly any more complicated than hitting save on a file. Nice to know that while most tutorials would use github other git services are viable here.

Once I got the syncing down I went ahead and did somc customizations setting a different theme, adding templates, and syncing raindrop as well.

FreshRSS Toggle Sidebar Extension

2025-11-17T14:41:50Z

Yeah, so initially, I was frustrated with the layout of FreshRSS. Mostly because I typically use it on my vertical monitor, which means that the dedicated space, the persistent space for the list of your feeds that always appears on the left at a certain number of pixels, no matter what size screen it’s on, means that it’s kind of in the way.

So I’ve been looking for a solution. Initially I thought, “I’m just going to try and change the size on it and write some CSS.” Custom CSS is allowed in a form in the settings you just enter it manually. So I messed around with that for a while, and I could shrink the navigation or even hide parts. After experimenting for a while, it just became a little bit more complicated than I was comfortable doing.

After a little online searching I found an existing solution for just this issue on github. I’m linking to the toggle extension here.

This works beautifully. Download it, put it in your extensions folder, enable it in the extension section in the settings, and it just works.

Now I can load my RSS feeds in FreshRSS in the browser on my portrait oriented monitor, and hide the navigation to the left. This solves the big issue I’ve had since switching from Feedly.

New Logo

2025-11-16T14:43:08Z

I have been thinking about replacing my name in the header navigation with a monagram now for a while. After sketching I landed on a capital C with a capital H centered on top. Now I’m experimenting with exactly how to implement the H. Not currently sold on the current implementation but I’m going to try iterating on it going forward. Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

First idea was to start with the C and use the same forms from that character to build the H. There are certainly some places in this created character that are not as successful as I would have hoped.

Then I was just experimenting with different placement of the H and really liked the way it landed in the current configuration. While not perfect it does have a certain balance that I like. It reminds me of something but I have not been able to place it yet.

This is the tenth version of the logo and I have decided to ship it finally. This required some changes to the header and that was more of a struggle than I expected. The logo is an SVG and a link which caused me some issues. Mainly the padding on the SVG and link were interacting in strange ways causing a taller than expected element on page.

To solve them I created a div that contained the SVG and set the dimensions of that div. The SVG scales to fill the container it is in. This allows for the SVG and link to be one solid object with no bleed from the link. This div is then placed inside another div to set the placement without changing the size of the SVG.

This took longer than I expected. During working this out I created a dynamic way to play with the sizing of the div that contains the SVG.

--multiplier: 6;
--ratio: 0.48362;
width:  calc(var(--multiplier) * 1em);
height: calc(var(--multiplier) * var(--ratio) * 1em);

The --multiplier is the scale factor that can be used to change the width and height of the div by changing one value. The --ratio is the width to height ratio of the SVG. If in the future the SVG changes the ratio will need to be updated. This is probably over engineering for the current situation but I wanted to experiment with calculation in CSS.

Week 46

2025-11-15T14:30:00Z

General #

Updated FreshRSS to have an extension to toggle the left navigation and my experience on desktop is much improved.
Applied to a few jobs. Spoke to my former boss about a possible opportunity crosses fingers.

Around the house #

Brushed Kamala. We’re working through a bunch of mattes while also preventing new ones from forming. This poor girl needs constant maintenance. She’s high maintenance you might say. Also learned “high maintenance” is from When Harry Met Sally. Who knew?
Had some of that chicken noodle soup that I made last week and it did turn out pretty well I must say.

Meals #

Peanut Curry from Sy Thai on Sunday.
Spaghetti Monday and Taco Tuesday as per usual.
I had Orange Chicken from Mui’s on Wednesday again I recommend.
Had someone reach out about the french fry recipe and how they liked it so that was nice.
Free pizza Friday after redeeming my rewards from Green Lantern.

Site Changes #

I’ve been making a lot of changes to the HTML and CSS on the site. Mostly standardizing both the card elements and the round button shapes. Spent a little too much time on the animation for the buttons but I’m happy with it for now. See next weeks notes for more changes I’m sure.

Media #

Finished season two of Project Runway and started season 3.
Watched the third episode of IT: Welcome to Derry and I have some thoughts but they require more space than I’m willing to allow in this update.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Doritos & Fritos - 100 gecs - 3 plays
757 - 100 gecs - 2 plays
mememe - 100 gecs - 2 plays
Torture Me (feat. Skrillex) - 100 gecs - 2 plays
bloodstains - 100 gecs - 1 plays
hand crushed by a mallet - 100 gecs - 1 plays
ringtone (Remix) [feat. Charli XCX, Rico Nasty, Kero Kero Bonito] - 100 gecs - 1 plays
stupid horse - 100 gecs - 1 plays
toothless - 100 gecs - 1 plays
Girl’s Not Grey - AFI - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

100 gecs - 14 plays
of Montreal - 8 plays
The Faint - 4 plays
Cocteau Twins - 3 plays
Elliott Smith - 3 plays
Slowdive - 3 plays
Beach House - 2 plays
Cat Power - 2 plays
Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Father John Misty - 2 plays

What Is In My Inventory

2025-11-14T10:09:03Z

This is not a Bear blog but here is my submission for Bear Blog Carnival for November 2025.

Prompt by Absurd Pirate

My Inventory #

Glasses Microfiber Cleaning Cloth - I wear glasses and despite my best efforts they are dirty most of the time. I have this on me always and am still looking through a fog even now.
Moondrop ARIA IEMs w/Tripowin Zonie cable and 3.5mm to Lightning Dongle - Fell down a bit of an audio rabbit hole during the pandemic but luckily all my purchases still work. I am sure there is a better entry priced IEM at this point but these are still working well. My life was improved by replacing the cable for these with the Zonies. They don’t tangle and I think the dark green color looks nice. I have an iPhone 12 Pro and need need a dongle to use any wired headphones.
Hedley & Bennet Mask - Got this in the early days of the pandemic when masks were hard to come by and this company, that usually makes aprons, used their existing material to make these masks.
Reclaimed Leather Wallet - This slim wallet was purchased off Etsy and is made from left over pieces of leather. It does not have to be this one but I recommend switching to a slim wallet and carrying it in a bag or a front pocket. Your butt will thank you.
Key w/FOB and Yubikey - House key, FOB for my 2022 Chevy Bolt EUV, and YubiKey which is a hardware device for two factor authentication.
Pen - Just a pen my wife and I bought for journalling when we went to France this summer. It has lived in my bag since.
Notebook - Fieldnotes style notebook for quick notes. Honestly, I take more notes on my phone but I like to have this as an option too.
belkin Power bank - This is another purchase for the France trip and it was well worth it to keep all our devices charged. Have not had to use it since being home though, although I do keep it in my bag just in case.
Man-Bag, Dammit by Nutsac - Does anyone else just love how awfully named products for men and companies that sell them are? I wanted a small bag that was more on the casual side (not leather). I like the look of the waxed canvas even if it does look like it needs to be cleaned.

Also Pictured #

beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO 80 Ohms - Not carried with me every day but they are always at my desk. They do have replacement Dekoni Audio ear pads. These sound great but my ears get hot after long sessions so I alternate between these and the IEMs.
Schiit Modi 3E and Magni 3+ w/Mini-Link RCA from Snake Oil Sound - This is a DAC and AMP stack that really helps the audio from my computer sound good. The Mini-Link RCA allows for them to be stacked and not take up extra room with a lengthy cable to go all of an in or so.
Keychron K2 w/Drop MT3 Dasher Keycap Set - Managed not to fall too far down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole. I have a couple keycap sets, the standard, Dasher, and Black/White. I purchased the Dasher keycaps on February 19, 2022 and the first episode of Severance aired the day before. I did not watch the show until after the first season was entirely out. I do not think this means anything I was just curious about the timing. In case you do not know the dasher keycaps look like the terminal in the show.
Logitech MX Master 3 - This is a classic and if/when it stops working I will probably buy another one. There is a new version that I am not really interested in as the new features are not important to me. Not pictured here is a Glorious Model O Wireless for gaming. Just wanted to mention I am not playing games on an MX Master 3 anymore.
Venus Pro XL in Black - They call this a mousepad but my cat lives on this thing. I have to move her all the time. It does give a nice surface for grooming her since she’s not slipping around.

Text Expansion

2025-11-10T13:45:00Z

Another great tool for a job search or really just using a computer in general is a text expander. I use and recommend Espanso.

Ask me again for my LinkedIn profile and I’m typing “:linkedin”. Oh you want my address “:adr”. Then these are replaced with the actual values. Don’t retype the same stuff over and over again.

Job Search Password Manager

2025-11-10T10:14:00Z

Just had the awful thought that there are people out there now applying for jobs without a password manager. Please don’t do this!

I recommend 1Password but there are other great options out there and you never have to remember or reuse a password.

Week 45

2025-11-08T14:30:00Z

General #

Drove our absentee ballots to city hall.
Updated Jellyfin to resolve an issue I encountered yesterday after adding music to the library.
Downloaded 1Password .deb and setup the custom browser for vivladi which appears to be resolving issues I was having with the extension logging out at random.
Used MusicBrainz Picard to update music metadata.
Took some more notes this week so I have more to say now.
Applied to a few jobs. More than I want to say here. I think I’m getting frustrated and not being as selective as I’d like to be.

Around the house #

Cut the remaining railing from the porch and sanded down the screws so everything is flush.
Brushed Kamala. Finally was able to remove all matts related to her shirt wearing when the vet tried to remove matts and nicked. It was small enough to just glue but she needed to wear a shirt for days.
Did some leaf blowing getting things into the street for pickup. I’m about a week early but honestly there will be a bunch more to get out there between now and pickup.
Took down the remainder of the garden for the winter. I’m going to get as many leaves as I can in there to act as mulch so I did this before I started anything with the leaves.
Made enough chicken noodle soup that most of it will be frozen for future meals. It’s already gotten good reviews though, which is nice.

Meals #

Spaghetti Monday and Taco Tuesday as per usual.
Leah and Noah went to Chili’s for Wicked swizzles and I had Orange Chicken from Mui’s.
Made the french fry recipe on Thursday and managed not to set off any smoke alarms this time. The microwave fan over the stove really isn’t enough in some situations it’s frustrating.
The return of pizza Friday after Halloween overwhelmed local pizza places.

Site Changes #

Wrote a few posts about the changes I made around the site this week.

There are a few new pages.

Tags has been improved.
Archive has been added to make traversing blog posts a bit easier.

Media #

Finished season one of Project Runway and started season 2.
Watched Heretic and wrote a review.
Finished the Great British Baking Show. I don’t think there was really any other choice.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Whatcha Want - Lawrence - 2 plays
First Time Feeling - Ripe - 2 plays
The Feeling - Sammy Rae & The Friends - 2 plays
In Heaven - Vulfpeck - 2 plays
Guilty Conscience - 070 Shake - 1 plays
Colors - Black Pumas - 1 plays
I Won’t Let You Down - Curtis Harding - 1 plays
405 (acoustic) - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
Codes and Keys - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays
Coney Island - Death Cab for Cutie - 1 plays

Top Artists - Past Seven Days #

Death Cab for Cutie - 15 plays
Elliott Smith - 13 plays
Lawrence - 6 plays
Leon Bridges - 5 plays
Sammy Rae & The Friends - 5 plays
St. Paul & The Broken Bones - 5 plays
Vulfpeck - 4 plays
Ohio Players - 3 plays
Parliament - 2 plays
Ripe - 2 plays

Heretic

2025-11-06T15:45:00Z

Two young religious women are drawn into a game of cat-and-mouse in the house of a strange man.

Media Type: movie
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐

This is another A24 film and I have to say I’m really impressed with the consistency of what they’ve been doing. This film looks good and is acted well. I really enjoy the world building they do and how economical the story is that they’re telling.

Hugh Grant is fantastic in this film and he does lots of little things throughout his performance that really elevate the story. Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East are very good in this movie as well with Chloe giving a standout performance in her own right. Grant’s performance really does steal the show here and it makes sense that other people online would be gushing about it.

Spoilers ahead!

The whole house is a cage and they willingly entered it as soon as they stepped foot inside. The metal in the walls creates a faraday cage which is why they get no cellphone service. Before they see a cage they’re already in one. Wonder if that has something to do with the themes of the movie.

I do wish something came of the locking mechanism for the front door. It was an interesting idea and didn’t really go anywhere. I don’t understand why they didn’t challenge him on the door locking until tomorrow but they were still trying to just go along.

I’m curious if there is any extra meaning behind the pie being blueberry but I don’t think there is. I suspect it’s just for the resulting visuals from when it is eaten later.

If the poster over the fireplace wasn’t enough of a clue there are some references to Dante’s Inferno in this movie. There has been some attempt online to connect various stages of this movie and parts of the house to the 9 circles of hell but I’m not sure if it’s meant to be that literal.

There is a recurring mention of butterflies which I’m not sure exactly what they mean either. I don’t think anything is meant by the window being six sided where the butterfly is trapped. I suspect it just needed to be a small enough window where they could not fit through it. The butterfly at the end and the dream of a butterfly is a nice thing to repeat but honestly I think it just connects different parts of the story where no other connection really exists.

I only know about The Lesson (which is depicted in another poster in the same room) from what I’ve seen on Wikipedia but the image they use has the tag line of “Who is teaching whom?” which seems like they’ve drawn some inspiration for this film.

It’s such a damning touch to have the elder show up and ring the door twice just to make sure he has a pamphlet. If you needed any indication that the recruitment is more important than the humanity of the sisters I think you’ve got it.

The miracle being called a magic trick made me think of Arrested Development, “It’s an illusion, tricks are what…” But that also made me think of The Illusionist which does this exact sort of thing. Spoilers for The Illusionist (2006) too I guess. I do think it’s interesting that the sister who doesn’t believe in prayer also notices the body is in a different position. This seems like a deliberate choice to highlight that she sees things and rationalizes them even if she remains faithful.

I’m sure there is some commentary on the mysoginy of religion with all of Mr. Reeds victims seemingly being women. The only person not to be negatively impacted by him is the elder that visits looking for them.

Okay, I want to briefly touch on the apologetics of this film. I’ve seen a few reviews and posts about this film talking about how the religious arguments presented in the film are interesting. Maybe this just comes from being in these types of spaces in the past but none of this was new for me and I don’t think they’re very compelling. I’m not sure if the writers of the film deliberately made Mr. Reed have all these books but with a casual rediter’s understanding of the material.

I suspect this was not a deliberate choice in the same way that having him saying that “With great power comes great responsibility” comes from Voltaire (which isn’t true). More over there are similar lines in THE BIBLE. The movie spends a lot of time discussing things that could have been pulled directly from some online thread.

I don’t know that I buy the iteration message around the game Monopoly. The first game was made to illustrate the evils of capitalism and that message is then corrupted by putting you in the shoes of the capitalist and making having a monopoly the goal. This is not an iteration atleast not in the same way he’s discussing the religions in the same scene.

This certainly seems like a movie that wants to be way smarter than it is and is not particluarly scary or creepy. Clearly many people have enjoyed it more than me, so I may be an outlier.

More Site Changes

2025-11-05T19:00:00Z

Expanding on the tag rework I updated the main tags page to present both an alphabetical and post count view. This has exposed some of the strangeness of my tag usage so I will be cleaning that up in the future.

Did some adjustments to the theme switcher so it’s a little more obvious which theme you are on and there is no page flicker when changing pages. This required moving some things into the header and changing around how it gets set.

I finally got around to updating the external url indicator so it has a color that matches the colors of the links. There are some limitations with how you can set this if the SVG a background. It needed to be set using a mask which I didn’t even know existed.

After doing some testing on the site I figured it was time to build out an easier way to navigate blog posts. The typical pagination works well for recent posts but as the history grows on the blog it will be more important to have an easier way to jump further into the past. I would like to make it a little easier to navigate in the future but it is good for now. This is just the next iteration of this page.

Theme Change

2025-11-04T15:00:00Z

I had previously written about this back in August but this site has since then had a toggle between light and dark mode in the footer. In light mode it would present a ☀️ and in dark mode it would show a 🌙.

This worked fine but I could never really get into having emoji there frankly. I do not want to go all Holden Caulfield on you but using them made me feel like a bit of a phony. I may react to a text with a 👍 or a ❤️ but I’m not usually much of an emoji person.

Another limitation of having just a toggle is there is a limitation around how many options you can have. Typically you would want only two as having a cycling toggle isn’t the most user friendly experience.

I have been enjoying a few personal pages that are in black and white and wanted to experiment with that for my site as well. With the toggle in its previous state I was not sure how to incorporate that in a way that I liked. I’ve seen a few other people incorporate drop downs but I wanted something more persistent.

Eventually I ended up deciding on circles within a rounded rectangle shape. This sort of shape is already on the site as the way tags are presented so it did not seeme like an entirely new element to add to a relatively minimalist page.

I knew I wanted to add a black page with white text as I tend to gravitate toward dark mode presentations anyway. Just to keep things even I did go ahead and do a white page with black text. I don’t use #000 or #FFF but I do think I could have made the black darker and the white lighter. We will just have to see how I feel about it in the future.

I did finally add some content to the changelog which is good since I keep forgetting I created the page and added it to the footer for some reason without any information.

French Fries

2025-11-03T16:00:00Z

Ingredients #

2 lb (3 – 4) raw potatoes (Idaho potatoes)
2 tbsp white vinegar
1 tbsp salt
1 quart canola/vegetable oil

Preparation #

Peel and slice the potatoes into ¼‑inch thick French‑fries using a serrated knife.
Soak the cut fries in a bowl of water to keep them from browning.

Pre‑cooking #

Rinse the fries in the water until it runs clear (about 20 seconds). Simmer the drained fries, just covered, in a pot with 2 Tbsp vinegar and 1 Tbsp salt for 10 minutes.
Spread the fries on two tea‑towel‑lined trays and let them steam‑dry for 5 minutes.

First fry #

Heat oil in a deep pot (at least 4 inches of clearance from the rim) to 400 °F. Aim for a depth of about 1½ inches.
Divide the fries into three equal portions.
Fry the first portion: Using a slotted spoon, lower one‑third of the fries into the hot oil, wait ~10 seconds, add another third, wait another 10 seconds, then add the final third.
Cook for roughly 50 seconds, stirring once or twice, then lift the fries onto two paper‑towel‑lined trays, spreading them in a single layer. They will still look pale and soft.

Rest #

Cool the fries for about 30 minutes.

Second fry #

Line a large bowl with paper towels for draining.
Fry each batch again (the three portions) for about 4 minutes, turning the fries twice during cooking.
Drain the finished fries in the lined bowl and toss with salt or your preferred seasonings.

Notes #

Ever since we’ve been back from France, having had some truly fantastic frites, I’ve been making these every other week or so. I don’t have much deviation from the recipe at this point but I would just say that you can scale this up pretty well as the ingredients here are potatoes and oil. I typically get the fries fried up once and then coordinate them with whatever else I’m making. Typically end up with three batches to fry so call it 15 minutes to include time for the oil to get back up to 400 between fries.

I’ve been pairing this with burgers on the stove which isn’t much of a recipe other than to make the patties and then season them (salt and pepper). Typically takes four minutes on each side while at medium high so you can start the frying and the burgers at the same time. My stove has a microwave over it so the ventilation is not the best. I typically open windows and bring in a floor fan to prevent the smoke detectors from going off. Makes for a nice dinner of burger and fries!

Week 44

2025-11-01T20:00:00Z

Applied to some jobs.
Certified unemployment.
Cooked dinner most days.
Brushed Kamala. We’ve been cleaning her up after she wore a shirt for two weeks with stitches. Making progress but we’ve got some way to go.
Completed Weird Web October challenges (31/31)! This was fun and most prompts I had something I enjoyed putting together.
Started watching the 1st season of Project Runway with Leah. This is so weird compared to the later seasons. I’m probably going to write a longer post about it later.
Stayed up to date on the Great British Baking Show as well. I strongly disagree with their decision to send Toby home.
Replaced the flap in the toilet in the basement.
I took apart the condensate pump on the furnace and removed all of the old tubing. Turns out you’re supposed to put some tablets in the pump reservoir every three months to keep it clean and stop it from getting gross. After about a decade of having that furnace, I discovered that it just stopped being able to push anything through that tube. So I threw that tube away and ran new tubes in order to replace the gross ones. I managed to do that all by my lonesome. And it seems to be working.
Reworked the tags system on the site to present better.
Included a section for recent and related posts at the end of each post.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Thunderbird ESQ - The Gories - 2 plays
I’m Different - 2 Chainz - 1 plays
Into You - Ariana Grande - 1 plays
You’re the Sun - Bantam Rooster - 1 plays
1-800 - bbno$ - 1 plays
Ms. New Booty - Bubba Sparxxx - 1 plays
Grindin’ - Clipse - 1 plays
When the Last Time - Clipse - 1 plays
Politicians in My Eyes - Death - 1 plays
Angeles - Elliott Smith - 1 plays

Weird Web October 2025 - Week 5

2025-10-31T15:30:00Z

Looking through some other submissions for Weird Web October 2025 for the fifth week. These aren’t the best or meant to put them above any others. They’re just the ones that stuck out to me at the time.

Surprise - Day 29 #

They just stopped by to say hello
Make it snooooooow

Deprecated - Day 30 #

The beautiful tones of dialing

Spooky - Day 31 #

Enjoyed entering the Haunted Woods
I don’t know what this means but I like the look of flesh.
This is more silly than spooky.
What’s behind these doors.

My weird web october creations can be found on the calendar.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 31 - Spooky

2025-10-31T14:40:00Z

For the spooky prompt I wanted to have some music and some user initiated animations. I took a photo of my house and created some action zones that once clicked would trigger some actions. Browsers don’t seem to want audio to play without the user doing something so the music doesn’t start until you interact with the site.

It’s not that weird but this is for weird web october 2025.

This is day 31 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 30 - Deprecated

2025-10-30T17:00:00Z

For the deprecated prompt I didn’t know what to do so I threw it into a search engine to see if the results would inspire me. I ended up landing on floppy disks and had some other inspiration from some other submissions for this prompt. There should be a knocking sound near the end that I got form zapsplat.

It’s not that weird but this is for weird web october 2025.

This is day 30 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 29 - Surprise

2025-10-29T10:30:00Z

For the surprise prompt I wanted to do my version of an internet classic jumpscare. Back in the day there would be sites and videos with not much happening only for aloud noise and a scary image. There should be a violin sound if you interact with the page before the surprise that I got form zapsplat.

It’s not that weird but this is for weird web october 2025.

This is day 29 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

Weird Web October 2025 - Week 3

2025-10-29T09:00:00Z

Looking through some other submissions for Weird Web October 2025 for the fourth week. These aren’t the best or meant to put them above any others. They’re just the ones that stuck out to me at the time.

Memory - Day 22 #

It’s simon but I had fun. It’s not a memory game which was a popular submission.
It’s a memory game but the styling is fun.

Style - Day 23 #

I know a The Devil Wears Prada monologue when I see one and they’ve made some fun styling choices on the site to tell this story.
There’s an entire configurator of a computer user here and I think it’s great. But I geek out a bit on configurators so it might just be a me thing.

Counter - Day 24 #

I enjoyed this swear jar. They’ve been doing a lot of emoji based things for this challenge and I’ve enjoyed a lot of them.

Empty - Day 25 #

Chris’non-apologies submission for empty has been the most interesting one to me.

Texture - Day 26 #

Currently reading through a post all about dithering so I liked the look and timing of this submission.

Spell - Day 27 #

Enjoyed my time at the spell store and the little creature running it.
I did a spell manifesting employment.

Tables - Day 28 #

Just some table flipping.

My weird web october creations can be found on the calendar.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 28 - Tables

2025-10-28T11:30:00Z

For the tables prompt I wanted to recreate what my current site might have looked like back in the day. In the before times when divs, articles, and sections had yet to be born.

Probably should have put a table inside another table so you could table while you table. But I don’t have that much content on the current homepage.

It’s not that weird but this is for weird web october 2025.

This is day 28 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 27 - Spell

2025-10-27T13:00:00Z

For the spell prompt I knew almost immediately what I wanted to do. It’s spooky times and one of my favorite horror comedies is Army of Darkness. To complete this game you must say the correct spell/incantation. This is for weird web october 2025.

This is day 27 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 26 - Texture

2025-10-26T11:30:00Z

For the texture prompt I immediately thought of a recent article I read about a “dinosaur mummy”. I used the skin texture they found to create this entry. This is for weird web october 2025.

This is day 26 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

Weapons

2025-10-25T16:30:00Z

When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.

Media Type: movie
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The praise for Weapons is well deserved. The movie is an interesting ride and while not very scary there is definitely strong tension at parts. The premise is outlandish but this is more like a modern fairy tale than a straight forward horror film. The acting and cinematography are both good if at times a bit more comedic than scary. I don’t know what counts as a spoiler anymore so lets just get into it.

Spoilers ahead!

I enjoy the different points of view as it’s a great way to provide more context and a tight script can offer multiple meanings for the same incidents. This device is used to varrying degrees as both the cop and unhomed povs seem tacked on for runtime or to explain things to the audience early. I think there is a missed opportunity to put main characters in danger and add agency by having things happen to characters we do not really care about. The town is all mad about the teacher but this isn’t really present apart from the back to school scene and some vandalism on her car.

Part of this I believe has to do with forcing a theme of addiction as the unhomed man appears to smoke meth/crack and the cop is a recovering/relapsing alcoholic. I feel like this is handled better with the boy Alex’s pov where his parents needing him to keep things together could act as a metaphor for their addiction. The movie is confident in a lot of ways but I think these on the nose choices show some areas where the writer/director either wasn’t confident themselves or in their audience.

The other part of this I think is to limit the kill count to mostly include characters that we’ve seen their pov. I just find the officer and the unhomed mans’ behavior in their sections to be odd so it doesn’t work as well. I found some of their choices distracting.

I liked the part where Alex is keeping his family together again I think this as a meatophor for families dealing with addiction really makes sense. I enjoyed Justine’s character as a person struggling with addiction and having a flawed protagonist is always more relatable. I even thought the relationship she had with the police officer made sense and it was a good way to connect these characters. I think it would have been nice if this was also an officer that was still looking for the kids instead of harassing this unhomed guy. James the uhomed guy exists to figure everything out before any of the main characters and I find that odd.

The running style is ridiculous and memorable and I think it’s great. Gladys the antagonist’s design is fantastic and I think she’s an icon. The creepy kid makeup shown in the trailer is just Alex wearing Gladys’ makeup which I really enjoyed. She’s like a lady Pennywise but she does blood magic and knows the best way to stay young is to consume children. The scene where she’s lying next to someone in bed is soo good. It’s not that scary of a movie but come on this is nightmare fuel.

While searching for images to go with this post I saw there is a prequel about Gladys in the works and that sounds fun. It will be interesting to see if they have some meaning behind her visuals or if it’s just meant to walk as close to being a clown without actually having a clown.

I hated the gun in the sky. It doesn’t make any sense to me and I don’t recall anything happening with it later. Didn’t need it.

I hated that up until the climax the only people to die are the gay principal and his husband (see Bury your gays). The other non-antagonist characters to die are an unhomed junkie and a recently relapsed alcoholic. Seemingly not a movie that has a lot of love for marginal people.

I loved that the children chase Gladys through the town like zombies and eventually tear her apart in broad daylight. The visual of children bursting through windows and running in that pose after her is great.

I recommend this movie and am frankly happy that no kids are hurt.

Week 43

2025-10-25T16:00:00Z

Applied to some jobs.
Cooked dinner most days.
Brushed Kamala.
Took Noah to singing with Leah.
Drove a bit more this week as Leah’s car was in the shop for a few days. Not use to the commute or the other drivers. I don’t miss it.
Completed Weird Web October challenges for the week (25/31).
Played catch up on posts about the Weird Web October project. Back up to date but if anyone saw the flurry of toots on Mastodon might be a little annoyed. Sorry.
Finished watching the 19th season of Project Runway with Leah.
Stayed up to date on the Great British Baking Show as well. We were sad to see our short king Ian go.
Watched Weapons and I have some thoughts.
Bought a dremel and tried removing the porch railing. It’s still a work in progress.
Did some leaf blowing and had to take a shower immediately after.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Good Luck, Babe! - Chappell Roan - 2 plays
A Lack of Color - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
I Will Follow You Into The Dark - Death Cab for Cutie - 2 plays
Someone Great - LCD Soundsystem - 2 plays
One Girl / One Boy - !!! - 1 plays
mememe - 100 gecs - 1 plays
7 rings - Ariana Grande - 1 plays
bloodline - Ariana Grande - 1 plays
Break Free - Ariana Grande - 1 plays
bye - Ariana Grande - 1 plays

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 25 - Empty

2025-10-25T11:30:00Z

For the empty prompt I thought of space again. This appears to be a trend for weird web october 2025. Turns out space isn’t as empty as you might expect.

This is day 25 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 24 - Counter

2025-10-24T11:30:00Z

For the counter prompt my first thought was a memory game so here is my version for the weird web october 2025

This is day 24 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 23 - Style

2025-10-23T11:30:00Z

For the style prompt I decided to let the visitor set the style. You can use the form to enter your own custom css to style the page. This is part of weird web october 2025

This is day 23 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

Weird Web October 2025 - Week 3

2025-10-22T14:00:00Z

Looking through some other submissions for Weird Web October 2025 for the third week. These aren’t the best or meant to put them above any others. They’re just the ones that stuck out to me at the time.

Unicode - Day 15 #

Simple but I like it anyway.
What character are you?

Transition - Day 16 #

Really like these line transitions.
Winter is coming.

Illumination - Day 17 #

Simple bit of light.
I like The Magnetic Fields and I don’t know if I’ve heard 100,000 Fireflies before.

Trading - Day 18 #

Interesting demonstration of the yard-sale model.

Bounce - Day 19 #

Just a classic dvd screen.
A lot like what I made but with pizza and all the flashing sky.

Hidden - Day 20 #

Enjoyed the red lens glasses and the hidden messages.
Okay I think this is hard.

Language - Day 21 #

May the force be with you.

My weird web october creations can be found on the calendar.

Weird Web October 2025 - Week 2

2025-10-22T13:00:00Z

Looking through some other submissions for Weird Web October 2025 for the second week. These aren’t the best or meant to put them above any others. They’re just the ones that stuck out to me at the time.

Containers - Day 8 #

Drag and drop webpage containers. I ended up putting everything into rain boi.
I put a div in your div so you can div while you div.
After a bit of chomping a winner is me!

Blink - Day 9 #

I thought of doing something like this for mine and I’m glad the weeping angels were included here.
I like the design pattern that this creates quite a bit.
There were a couple with cats today but this had the most pictures of cats.

Warning - Day 10 #

I struggled with warning and I think others did as well. I do think this is compelling though.

Camera - Day 11 #

I’m not on calls all day but this stressed me out as if I was.
Okay this I think is my favorite for camera just a fun implementation of the camera.

Battle - Day 12 #

This was fun to see too armies fight and I think I’m going to dig into what was done here.
I’m still terrible at battleship.

Upside-down - Day 13 #

I agree. Yikes.

Doubles - Day 14 #

I just really like the look of this site.
This was an interesting take on the double meaning of words.

My weird web october creations can be found on the calendar.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 22 - Memory

2025-10-22T11:30:00Z

For the memory prompt my first thought was a memory game so here is my version for the weird web october 2025

This is day 22 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 21 - Language

2025-10-21T13:30:00Z

Binary is considered to be such a universal language it was used to communicate how to play the golden records on the Voyager spacecraft. Inspired by this fact my entry converts binary into unicode.

So here is my entry for the language prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 21 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 20 - Hidden

2025-10-20T13:30:00Z

I like how this one turned out. Made a dedicated page with some information from Wikipedia about the women featured in the book turned movie Hidden Figures.

Additionally added some generated stars and rockets for fun.

So here is my entry for the hidden prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 20 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

One Hundred Offloaded

2025-10-19T17:00:00Z

When I started this challenge I was not sure if I would be able to complete it in one year. I’ve historically not posted much on this blog so it seemed a stretch even if one hundred is not that much exactly. It took me 192 days to make 100 posts having started this on April 11th of this year. During which I took about two weeks off to travel to France.

Twentyseven of the 100 posts were weekly notes. Eighteen were Weird Web October posts. Three were recipes and six were reviews. I’d like to increase the amount of both of these types going forward.

I do plan to try this again next year and see if I can complete it in less time. I’m going to see if I can get myself added to the Hall of fame at 100DaysToOffload.com

This is day 100 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 19 - Bounce

2025-10-19T16:30:00Z

I don’t really like saying in each of these posts that I didn’t have many ideas but that does seem to be a trend. I think part of these prompts is that tension you feel when you have to make something of a prompt that you don’t have anything.

I just wanted to create a ball that bounced around the screen but that was a bit boring so I added a tail. I had some other ideas but I don’t have the skills to make them happen so you can just imagine what that would have looked like.

So here is my entry for the bounce prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 19 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 99 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 42

2025-10-18T13:00:00Z

Applied to some jobs.
Cooked dinner most days.
Brushed Kamala.
Took Noah to singing.
Completed Weird Web October challenges for the week (18/31).
Installed Arch Linux on my old Macbook Pro which I will post more about soon.
Finished watching the 18th season of Project Runway with Leah.
Stayed up to date on the Great British Baking Show as well.
Finished Peacemaker which I thought really ended the episode previous but whatever.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

The Ghost Inside - Broken Bells - 1 plays
7/4 (Shoreline) - Broken Social Scene - 1 plays
Sweetest Kill - Broken Social Scene - 1 plays
French Navy - Camera Obscura - 1 plays
Tears For Affairs - Camera Obscura - 1 plays
Journal of Ardency - Class Actress - 1 plays
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings - Father John Misty - 1 plays
All I Want - LCD Soundsystem - 1 plays
All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem - 1 plays
Dance Yrself Clean - LCD Soundsystem - 1 plays

This is day 98 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 18 - Trading

2025-10-18T12:30:00Z

The first thing that came to mind for this prompt was a neal.fun game about trading on the stock market. I believe it appears in both stimulation-clicker and not-a-robot.

Next, and ultimately what I went with I thought of the One red paperclip story. This is a true story of Kyle MacDonald who over a series of trades turned his red paperclip into a house.

For my game you start with a paperclip and try to repeat his feat of getting your way to a house.

So here is my entry for the trading prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 18 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 97 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 17 - Illumination

2025-10-17T11:00:00Z

For this one I knew immediately after reading the prompt that I wanted some text to be hidden until it was hovered over by the cursor and lit as if by a candle. The text is a poem called illumination that I found on The Poetry Foundation.

So here is my entry for the illumination prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 17 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 96 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 16 - Transition

2025-10-16T11:00:00Z

Played a little with transitions for the maps prompt so I wanted to see what else could be done there. Threw a bunch of animations together for this one and then started doubling up to see how they turned out.

So here is my entry for the transition prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 16 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 95 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 15 - Unicode

2025-10-15T11:00:00Z

This was a bit of a struggle as well as far as ideas go. It happens. It will take some time but this example will go through the entire set of unicode characters.

It’s kinda boring but it is doing something different anyway.

So here is my entry for the unicode prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 15 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 94 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 14 - Doubles

2025-10-14T11:00:00Z

I didn’t have a strong reaction to the doubles prompt. The first thing came to mind was doubles in tennis. The closest web approximation for me was pong so now you can a friend can play pong together. Unfortunately the computer only gets one paddle.

So here is my entry for the doubles prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 14 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 93 of 100 Days To Offload.

Close encounters, Keiji Ito

2025-10-13T12:00:00Z

Went on a family trip where we visited Devils Tower and this painting made me laugh.

via

This is day 92 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 41

2025-10-13T12:00:00Z

Applied to some jobs.
Cooked dinner most days.
Played some Overwatch 2 with and without Matthew.
Brushed Kamala.
Made a remix.
Took Noah to singing.
Feeling better but still not 100% somehow. Thought I would be back to normal by now.
Completed Weird Web October challenges for the week and made a post about the first seven days of submissions from other people.
Completed drives for this season of Overwatch and prestiged my signature.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Cause = Time - Broken Social Scene - 2 plays
Dry the Rain - The Beta Band - 2 plays
I’ll Believe in Anything - Wolf Parade - 2 plays
Y Control - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - 2 plays
Behind the Clock - AFI - 1 plays
Ice Cream - Battles - 1 plays
7/4 (Shoreline) - Broken Social Scene - 1 plays
Stars and Sons - Broken Social Scene - 1 plays
Sweetest Kill - Broken Social Scene - 1 plays
Kaputt - Destroyer - 1 plays

This is day 91 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 13 - Upside-down

2025-10-13T11:00:00Z

For this challenge I wanted to create a game that simulated a battle if even a simplistic one. I’m pretty happy with the basic setup of this one. I think there could be something fun if explored further.

So here is my entry for the upside-down prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 13 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 90 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 12 - Battle

2025-10-12T12:00:00Z

So here is my entry for the battle prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 12 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 89 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 11 - Camera

2025-10-11T12:00:00Z

Having used the camera for filters and for blink I was a bit out of ideas for camera. My idea was to recreate a camera obscura which is kinda underwhelming so I distressed the result a little. Not my favorite for sure.

So here is my entry for the camera prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 11 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 88 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 10 - Warning

2025-10-10T11:00:00Z

I’ll admit I don’t have a strong feeling about the warning prompt. Maybe tomorrow will be more interesting for me.

So here is my entry for the warning prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 10 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 87 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Week 1

2025-10-09T12:00:00Z

Looking through some other submissions for Weird Web October 2025 for the first week. These aren’t the best or meant to put them above any others. They’re just the ones that stuck out to me at the time.

Transparency - Day 1 #

I really like this ghostly example. Maybe I should do some pixel art. I like the calendar they put together too.
This musical example is fun and I like the glass audio player.
The elephant is quite good.
This face one made me laugh. I’m feeling froggish I guess.

Maps - Day 2 #

A few of us landed on the yeah yeah yeahs for this maps challenge but I really like this one.
Steam says I’ve played 362 hours of CS but I cannot identify the maps.
I found some deadpools around their living room.

Scramble - Day 3 #

Eggsecute got some orbital motion.
Went ahead and [cooked] up something too.
This is not a word scramble apparently.

Filters - Day 4 #

It’s simple but I enjoyed the They Live example.
Also enjoyed this color version.
Sorted out the tricks from the treats for halloween.

Remix - Day 5 #

Create your own beastly beat.
Generate your next sites layout.

Solids - Day 6 #

Make sure your house is on a solid foundation.
Check out the sounds around the house.
Archimedean solids instead of Platonian. I like!

Sub-optimal - Day 7 #

~~graphic design~~ typography is my passion too!
weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Sub-way is sub-optimal for sure.

My weird web october creations can be found on the calendar.

This is day 86 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 9 - Blink

2025-10-09T11:00:00Z

After the [filters] challenge the first thing that came to mind for blink is what I went with. If we can detect your face we should be able to tell if you have blinked. So that’s what it does, it takes your camera, detects your face, and determines if you blinked. If you do blink it updates the counter and changes the background to a random color. If you blink a bunch the background will flash through a number of different colors which I think is fun.

So here is my entry for the blink prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 9 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 85 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 8 - Containers

2025-10-08T20:00:00Z

Was kinda at a loss for containers. Ended up making a game that you play as a container ship and you have to catch containers falling from the sky.

I don’t feel like any of these have been weird enough.

So here is my entry for the containers prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 8 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 84 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 7 - Sub-optimal

2025-10-07T17:00:00Z

I read sub-optimal and thought Subnautica and since I can’t make a game like that in a day I used Lumo Proton’s AI to create a fast and not at all optimal game. In it you play as a submarine sandwich as you explore the depths of the ocean. It’s twice the sub and not at all optimal.

So here is my entry for the sub-optimal prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 7 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 83 of 100 Days To Offload.

Design Postcard: Paris, Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2G

2025-10-07T13:00:00Z

via

We took a flight out of Terminal 2G at Charles de Gaulle in Paris over the summer. This is a nice write up about the design choices. I enjoyed the brief time I was there and it’s worth the read.

This is day 82 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 6 - Solids

2025-10-07T10:39:00Z

I haven’t looked yet but I’m sure I’m not the only one that went with Platonic Solids for this challenge. One thing I did enjoy is experimenting with P5.js to draw the shapes. I think it turned out pretty well with some assistance from wikipedia for the descriptions.

So here is my entry for the solids prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 3 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 81 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 5 - Remix

2025-10-06T14:00:00Z

So here is my entry for the remix prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

I made a cat remix of LL Cool J’s Doin’ It and I’m sorry.

This is day 5 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 80 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 40

2025-10-05T15:45:00Z

Applied to some jobs.
Cooked dinner most days.
Wrote to my senators about the budget and the threat to transgender rights.
Updated to the beta of Pop_OS Cosmic
Redid my resume making sure each bullet had some stat, removed lines from it simply because the formatting was annoying, tabbed dates for employment history, and added my full address because entering it every time after an auto-fill is just irritating.
Added Raindrop bookmarks to Obsidian using this plugin
Played some Overwatch 2 with and without Matthew.
Returned some CDs and a DVD I had on hold at the library.
Was sick for a few days and made lazy fries on Thursday to go with burgers.
Watched 28 Years Later and Superman while recovering on the couch.
Brushed Kamala.
Had a nice dinner out with Leah and her cousin Justin.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - 4 plays
Dumbest Girl Alive - 100 gecs - 2 plays
Good Luck, Babe! - Chappell Roan - 2 plays
Cheeks - Sam Greenfield - 2 plays
Mr. Sandman - The Chordettes - 2 plays
Animal Spirits - Vulfpeck - 2 plays
757 - 100 gecs - 1 plays
Doritos & Fritos - 100 gecs - 1 plays
Hollywood Baby - 100 gecs - 1 plays
mememe - 100 gecs - 1 plays

This is day 79 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 4 - Filters

2025-10-04T20:00:00Z

I wanted to learn about how snapchat type filters work and see if I coundn’t come up with something like that for this challenge. I found some good resources including a demo that I was able to tweak a little to offer a different type of filter. Since the challenge is filters I added another variation just so there are two.

Here is my entry for the filters prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 4 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 78 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 3 - Scramble

2025-10-03T20:00:00Z

I spent a bunch of time getting Day 2 to work in catch up and didn’t spend too much on this one. I do like the end result if it is just simple.

So here is my entry for the scramble prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 3 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 77 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 2 - Maps

2025-10-02T20:00:00Z

I’m late posting this as I’ve been under the weather the last few days and it really hit me yesterday. As soon as I saw this prompt the song Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs popped into my head. So I had to do something with that.

I spent too much time getting the background to work so the lyrical element is kinda boring. The background however is drawn differently every time the page loads and uses the same SVG at different scales, in different colors, and with different rotations. My thought was to mimic the cover of the album.

So here is my entry for the maps prompt as part of the weird web october 2025

This is day 2 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 76 of 100 Days To Offload.

Weird Web October 2025 - Day 1 - Transparency

2025-10-01T19:00:00Z

Weird Web October is a challenge to try and make a website every day of October, based on the theme for each day, inspired by Inktober.

I found out about this today and immediately signed up. I think this would be a fun thing to try even if I’m not sure I’ll be able to complete it.

Ended up making two sites today. One for the calendar that lists out each of the days of the challenged and enother for transparency the first prompt. I spent so much time on the calendar I think I lost steam getting to the actual prompt for the day. Hoping for something more interesting tomorrow.

This is day 1 of #WeirdWebOctober2025.

This is day 75 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 39

2025-09-28T13:40:00Z

Applied to some jobs.
Cooked dinner most days.
Got Obsidian syncing with Git to Codeberg but it is still not as smooth as I’d like.
Played some Overwatch 2 with and without Matthew.
Gave Leah her birthday present and went out to dinner with her and Noah.
Picked upt some CDs and a DVD I had on hold at the library.
Took Kamala to her appointment, got 3 months worth of medication, and some lab results that require additional attention.
Went to the container store and got the drain cover I purchased last week.
Took Noah to school for a late start as Leah was about to start a session.
Created a version of my resume that works if I was using product owner skills to apply for an exorcist role.
Cut potatoes into fry shapes and made french fries and burgers for dinner.
Took down hops and planted Leah’s tulip.
Brushed Kamala.
Made some progress on the music page and added it to the footer. Thinking about adding music as a recurring element to these notes.

Top Tracks - Past Seven Days #

Say Yes - Elliott Smith - 3 plays
Don’t Say Nuthin’ - The Roots - 3 plays
What They Do - The Roots - 3 plays
Da Rockwilder - Method Man - 2 plays
She Is Afraid - Motion City Soundtrack - 2 plays
Hate Me Now - Live at Webster Hall, NYC - Dec. 17, 2002 - Nas - 2 plays
Rewind - Live at Webster Hall, NYC - Dec. 17, 2002 - Nas - 2 plays
You’re da Man - Live at Webster Hall, NYC - Dec. 17, 2002 - Nas - 2 plays
36 - 2 Chainz - 1 plays
Dope Peddler - 2 Chainz - 1 plays

This is day 74 of 100 Days To Offload.

Chocolate Decadence Cake

2025-09-26T19:30:00Z

Ingredients #

12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
4 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate
1 ½ cups butter, melted
1 ¾ cups white sugar
½ cup water
7 eggs
2 cups whipped cream

Instructions #

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 10 inch round pan and line bottom with parchment paper.
Chop chocolate squares and place in a large bowl with chocolate chips. Add melted butter. Heat water and 1 1/2 cups sugar in a saucepan until boiling, then pour over chocolate. Stir until smooth.
In a separate bowl, whip eggs with remaining 1/4 cup sugar until thick. Fold into chocolate mixture. Pour batter into 10 inch pan.
Place 10 inch pan on a cookie sheet in the oven and fill the cookie sheet with water.
Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 40 to 50 minutes. Remove from oven. Cool and refrigerate for several hours. Be extremely careful not to burn yourself on the hot water when removing the sheet pan from the oven.
Dip the pan in hot water to remove cooled cake. Garnish with whipped cream and serve.

This is day 73 of 100 Days To Offload.

On the Architectural Hostility of Doorknobs

2025-09-25T19:00:00Z

via

Really enjoyed this exploration of the hostility of doorknob design. Robert is a good writer and accissibility concerns are everywhere.

This is day 72 of 100 Days To Offload.

Name SVG

2025-09-22T14:00:00Z

I follow a bunch of different things in my RSS reader FreshRSS. An area that has a lot of subscriptions is web development. One Page Love is a site that I consistently enjoy their posts as it is a fun way to see what people are doing on single page sites. Having a single page is an interesting restriction and there is a lot you can do in that space.

Recently they posted the site for Jeff Wall and I really liked the unique look of the site. With a special fascination for the way the text of his name is drawn.

Your browser does not support the WebM format.

It kinda reminds me of the sort of thing you would see on a workout video from the 80s. Or maybe The Substance is still with me a little bit.

I thought this would be a fun project to try and recreate without digging into exactly how Jeff did it.

Your browser does not support the WebM format.

For my last name I used the current header on the site which is ‘playfair_displayregular’. Each of the letters have a slightly different starting animation using :nth-child().

#last-name.animate tspan:nth-child(1){ animation-delay: calc(10s + 0s); }
#last-name.animate tspan:nth-child(2){ animation-delay: calc(10s + 0.4s); }
#last-name.animate tspan:nth-child(3){ animation-delay: calc(10s + 0.8s); }
#last-name.animate tspan:nth-child(4){ animation-delay: calc(10s + 0.16s); }
#last-name.animate tspan:nth-child(5){ animation-delay: calc(10s + 0.32s); }

The stroke and fill animations are accomplished by starting with a rgba value with the alpha set to 0.

--last-color-hidden: rgba(76, 252, 184, 0);
--last-color: rgba(76, 252, 184, 1);

And then changing the fill to the same color with the alpha set to 1. Thus --last-color-hidden to --last-color. This is done with keyframes.

  @keyframes draw{
    to{ stroke-dashoffset:0; }
  }

  @keyframes fillLast{
    to{ fill:var(--last-color); }
  }

The stroke animation is achieved by moving the offset from 1000 to 0 also via keyframes.

  #last-name{
    stroke: var(--last-color);
    stroke-width:1;
    fill: var(--last-color-hidden);
    stroke-dasharray:1000;
    stroke-dashoffset:1000;
  }

  @keyframes draw{
    to{ stroke-dashoffset:0; }
  }

The first name is an SVG I created by scanning my signature and converting it to SVG in Inkscape. This was done originally to add a personal element to cover letters but I had it lying around so I figured why not use it here.

The current state of this experiment is available so you don’t have to just watch the brief video I recorded.

I like where it is at currently but I do think they timing should be tweaked to have a greater impact. I think the fill on the last name happens too early and really should wait until the stroke is almost complete. I think the first name effect could be a little later as well. In general I think it should be a bit slower but I don’t know if I’m going to use it for anything so I haven’t dialed it in yet.

This is day 71 of 100 Days To Offload.

Custom Mastodon Domain without Self Hosting

2025-09-22T12:00:00Z

Going through my bookmarked items in Raindrop and discovered this post by Scott Hanselman about making yourself discoverable on Mastodon using WebFinger. Now if you search for @ANYONE@christopherhimes.com in Mastodon my profile will appear.

This is accomplished by adding the following at /.well-known/webfinger

{
  "subject": "acct:eeentropyyy@hachyderm.io",
  "aliases": [
    "https://hachyderm.io/@eeentropyyy",
    "https://hachyderm.io/users/eeentropyyy"
  ],
  "links": [
     {
      "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page",
      "type": "text/html",
      "href": "https://hachyderm.io/@eeentropyyy"
    },
    {
      "rel": "self",
      "type": "application/activity+json",
      "href": "https://hachyderm.io/users/eeentropyyy"
    },
    {
      "rel": "http://ostatus.org/schema/1.0/subscribe",
      "template": "https://hachyderm.io/authorize_interaction?uri={uri}"
    }
  ]
}

To get this folder to show up in the site folder for this jekyll site I had to add the /.well-known folder to the include.

You can search for me now using anything before @christopherhimes.com which looks like @ANYONE@christopherhimes.com where ANYONE is replaced with whatever you want. I can also be tagged the same way with @ANYONE@christopherhimes.com getting @eeentropyyy swapped in after posting.

Here is an example post I made testing it out.

Post by @eeentropyyy@hachyderm.io

View on Mastodon

This is day 70 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 38

2025-09-20T13:40:00Z

Applied to some jobs.
Cleaned and reorganized the garage.
Cooked dinner most days.
Tried and failed to get Obsidian syncing with Git.
Experimented with a name SVG.
Installed Open Sans and set Open Sans Regular as my default font to address some font rendering issues in the latest Vivaldi update.
Played some Overwatch 2 with Matthew.

This is day 69 of 100 Days To Offload.

YouTube Subscriptions

2025-09-18T16:00:00Z

I followed the directions provided by Leonid Shevtsov to export my YouTube subscriptions into an OPML file. Then I imported the file into FreshRSS so I can view updates from my subscribed channels like any other RSS feed. You could use this file to import into FreeTube or your RSS feed reader of choice.

This is day 68 of 100 Days To Offload.

Thunderbolts*

2025-09-15T15:30:00Z

Media Type: movie
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐

I liked Thunderbolts* more than I thought I would. I’m not big into Marvel films to start and I don’t really have much experience with these characters. That being said I thought there were some interesting set pieces and I enjoyed some elements of the film that I’ll go into greater detail in the spoiler section.

This is a movie about a bunch of minor characters from other movies and shows coming together to defeat a big bad that they’re not equipped to defeat. It’s a little like Suicide Squad for that reason and also you’ve got a team that does not want to be a team. Unlike those movies however, this movie doesn’t spend much time explaining who these characters are. They don’t know each other so all the audience gets is what they tell each other about themselves. This helps the movie not get bogged down with exposition which I appreciated.

I really enjoy Julia Louis-Dreyfus in this movie. I do think her performance is a bit cartoony and over the top but I just put it up to her chewing the scenery. I think she’s great.

Spoilers ahead!

I liked how Florence Pugh’s character’s state of mind related to Lewis Pullman’s character’s state of mind. I liked that there was not a mcguffin and instead they talked their way out of the situation. For a movie so branded with fighting, I mean look at the poster, they talk it out.

I thought the Bucky Barnes parts were boring and the fact that Task Master is on the poster is a little wild. I feel like they could have done something better for Task Master is all. I appreciate the willingness to kill off one of the poster characters though. Although I do like that Bob is on the poster and you don’t know why until you see the movie.

The look of the Void reminded me of Brightburn with the silhouette and glowing eyes. Or I did also have New Mutants, a movie I haven’t thought of in a long time, pop into my head during these scenes. These are both movies you definitely want to be thinking about.

I enjoyed the creeping darkness and the shadows of people that were captured.

These movies are best when they are character driven and the stakes are elevated because of the character motivations. A troubled person gets godlike powers and struggles to do the right thing. A team outmatched by the villain finds they had what they needed all along.

I’ve seen reviews that called this movie dour but I disagree. I think there’s darker elements but there are jokes and action making for an enjoyable viewing.

This is day 67 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 37

2025-09-14T13:40:00Z

Applied to some jobs.
Tried to get some Ariana Grande tickets.
Returned some things to the library.
Made burgers and homemade french fries. Again a big hit.
Went to the doctor for the yearly physical.
Watched more Mr. Robot.
Did a deep clean on the shower and mopped some floors. Wife and son are out of town so they’ll be coming home to a clean house!

This is day 66 of 100 Days To Offload.

Shoe Cat

2025-09-12T13:00:00Z

This is Kamala and she is so tiny, she’s about the size of one of my shoes. Last time she was weighed she was 5.5 pounds. She is more floof than feline.

She’s old enough now that you can tell she’s getting older. The grey hair has started to come in and she’s slowed down. Part of the slow down is due to thyroid medication to treat a condition that had a side effect of making her hyperactive.

This tiny one is 16 years old and has been a tripod for coming up on a year. She got a broken femer and had to have her back left leg amputated. Afterwards she spent weeks in a crate in the living room before the stitches came out and she could move about freely.

The speed at which she was able to switch to only three legs was impressive. She’s a bit more careful than she was previously but I’m not sure if it’s the one fewer leg or the thyroid medication that has reduced the zoomies. It’s probably a combination of both.

She’s still the most dog like cat I’ve ever met. She follows me around the house and greets me at the door when I come home. She often sleeps at my feet or right where she is in this photo.

She’s super friendly and will greet just about anyone who comes over. When I had to get a new furnace I was sitting at the kitchen table with the sales guy and she jumped onto the table and rolled around.

She does seem to like shoes for whatever reason. Sometimes she’s next to them, sometimes she’s on them, and sometimes she’s rubbing her face on them. I don’t understand.

Now that she’s taking medication she gets tuna for breakfast and dinner. For each of these meal she’ll meow loudly at about that time. She has an impresssive internal clock.

This is day 65 of 100 Days To Offload.

Hydrangea

2025-09-07T12:00:00Z

This is day 64 of 100 Days To Offload.

Pegasus Fountain

2025-09-06T18:00:00Z

Took this picture of the pegasus fountain at Meadow Brook Hall.

This is day 63 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 36

2025-09-06T17:30:00Z

Heard back from the potential job that they’re looking into non-compete stuff and will get back to me.
Applied to some other jobs just incase.
Reapplied for unemployment as I believe I should be qualified now. ugh
Picked up some holds from the library.
Spent a few days cutting the lawn and trimming some things around the fence.
Stored some things in the basement and attic I had been going through.
Made burgers and homemade french fries. Always a big hit.
Finished Dexter Resurrection. Started Great British Bakeoff’s new season.
Watched the first season of Mr. Robot.
Had lunch at le crêpe and then took a family trip to Meadow Brook Hall to see Art in the Elements in the forest. We toured the grounds and the house.

This is day 62 of 100 Days To Offload.

Self Hosting Grocy

2025-09-06T15:00:00Z

I feel like this may just be a little bit extra but I got a little excited that Grocy had a headline element that reads, “ERP beyond your fridge.” This self hosted app enables you to maintain an inventory of your groc(er)y items among other things.

I haven’t populated it with an inventory yet as I imagine filling it up would be quite time consuming so I’m going to start loading it up with what we’re using most often and build out from there. It seems like the sort of thing I would have to maintain myself if I want it as I don’t think I’m convincing anyone else to update the inventory on food they eat.

I am curious if anyone has had this running for any significant amount of time.

Like FreshRSS and Immich, Grocy can be installed via Docker and reverse proxied very easily. The iOS app can be linked via a QR code which I thought was very convenient. After some reading online it does sound like there are some limitations with the mobile app. I’ll follow up with my findings on that and the service in general after some testing.

There is a lot to explore with the way ingredients interact with recipes and expiration dates can be tracked to help prevent throwing away food.

This is day 61 of 100 Days To Offload.

Zucchini Bread Image

2025-09-04T22:00:00Z

I made zucchini bread again and took this picture to update my recipe post with.

This is day 60 of 100 Days To Offload.

Montmartre Painting

2025-09-03T18:30:00Z

I hung a painting my wife bought while we were in Paris yesterday. I think it looks good in the room and I actually really like the mat she picked when she got it framed.

The painting was purchased in Montmartre and features some of that area with Sacré-Cœur in the background.

This is day 59 of 100 Days To Offload.

Keeb

2025-09-02T11:00:00Z

Spilled some water on my keyboard, freaked out, and cleaned it out. It’s fine!

This is a Keychron K2 with an aluminum frame, RGB, brown switches, and MT3 Dasher keycaps.

This is day 58 of 100 Days To Offload.

September Sunflower

2025-09-01T16:00:00Z

I planted a handful of sunflower seeds I bought a few years ago and only this one grew and it just bloomed.

This is day 57 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 35

2025-08-30T15:00:00Z

Harvested some zucchini and tomatoes.
Made the zucchini bread recipe again!
No interview this week. I’ll follow up with them after Labor Day.
Applied to some jobs.
Took a day off job applications to setup some new audio equipment.
Took down the pool this week. It takes about two days for it to drain out and maybe another for me to get the rest of the water out. Then there is folding and drying in the sun to hopefully prevent mold while in storage. This really feels like the end of summer.
Admired the large circular dirt spot in my lawn.
Started rereading Shadow & Claw: The First Half of ‘The Book of the New Sun’.
Bought and received Leah’s birthday present.
Still been on a kick listening to LCD Sounsystem.
Made some changes to the comments section on the site which I have not yet written about.
Did support placements in Overwatch and am currently in Silver 4. Working on Damage placements now. I opened soo many lootboxes at the start of season 18. At least 120 so far this week.

This is day 56 of 100 Days To Offload.

New Audio Equipment

2025-08-30T14:00:00Z

A couple weeks ago I moved my microphone arm and ever since my Bue Yeti mic has been having an identity crisis. This has resulted in it appearing as a generic USB Audio Device in multiple machines. This is already my second of this microphone and I don’t want another one that will break if I move the arm it’s on in the wrong direction. While it still technically works the quality of sound has taken a major hit and it doesn’t work quite the same way every time I go to use it.

I’ve been researching what my next microphone would be for a little while ahead of this incident. There are a number of high quality USB mics that I considered but ultimately decided that not to go in that direction. From in my audio rabithole I’ve determined that the best sound quality would come from an XLR style instead of USB. Lots of people suggest the SM7b or the Procaster.

I ended up going with a SM57 by Shure. This microphone is one of the best selling in the world and has been used for presidential speeches since it came out in 1965. For me it works well due to its small size and smaller price tag.

Moving from the Yeti which is a condenser mic to the dynamic SM57 is going to require me to use it a bit differently. For instance it will need to be closer, probably in the video if I’m on a call, and to speak up. Since dynamic microphones are less sensitive room noise should be less of an issue but if I don’t speak louder and directly into it my voice will be quiet and flatter than it may be with a different microphone.

Since this is an XLR microphone I also had to pick up an audio interface. For this I went with the Focusrite Scarlett Solo 4th generation. I thought about a few others and even the previous generation but ended up going this way in part to have the XLR connection in the back and also because this is a trusted piece of hardware. Just for fun I ended up getting a green XLR cable. This serves no practical purpose but I think it’s fun.

Setting it up is easy, I had to take down the Yeti and plug a few things in. Originally I left the shock mount I was using for the Yeti on but after using it a while I don’t think it was necessary and the shock mount is kinda big so I’m seeing if I notice a difference for a while.

I did encounter some issues using it at first as the recordings were only appearing as a right channel instead of both left and right. I did some digging and found that the Focusrite software doesn’t have a linux version. However, there is a ALSA Scarlett GUI created by Geoffrey Bennet that allows for some software based adjustments. When I got this installed I needed a firmware update that was easy enough to install. With this I was able to access the Scarlett Solo and direct audio from the SM57 to both left and right channels. It would be weird if I was only ever talking in everyone’s right ear.

With that figured out I tried a few recordings just to make sure things were working correctly and experimenting with my technique. One thing I know I needed to do was reevaluate my audio chain and adjust it for the properties of this new microphone. I’m currently using OBS to apply audio filters on my microphone before it ever goes out into Teams, Zoom, or whatever else I might use a microphone for. It’s mostly used to talk with Matthew through Overwatch for example. Anyway, this chain is as follows:

Gain - I try to keep the gain on the microphone or audio interface fairly low and boost the gain digitally. My understanding is that this is to prevent clipping at the start.
Noise Suppression - RNNoise in OBS does a great job in my experience.
EQ (cuts) - Here is where problematic areas in the sound are removed. I can sound nasaly at times so I typically have some cuts in the mid range to try and address this issue.
Compressor - Prevents peaking if I get too loud like when I yell about what our team is doing when playing Overwatch with Matthew as mentioned above.
Limiter - Currently set to ensure sounds never go above -2 dB.
EQ (flavor) - Adds something back in to make me easier to understand. I find I need more presence so there’s a bit of a boost in both the high and low ends.

I ended up boosting the Gain a bit more in OBS with this microphone as even with better technique audio was coming in a bit quiet. I spent a bit more time fine tuning exactly where in the frequency certain aspects were and reducing them. This was all new since previously I was only using the 3-Band EQ that comes with OBS. I managed to install some VSTs that included a parametric equalizer which offers way more control. Below is an image of the cuts that I’m currently doing for an example.

I’ll probably end up doing some tests again in a few days just to see if everything sounds okay still. I don’t think I sound the same every time I try this so I’m hoping for an average that I’m happy with.

One last thing, I glossed over the fact that I’m using OBS in the middle. This is achieved by running a .sh file every time my computer starts up. The file creates a virtual speaker, a virtual mic, and links them together.

# Create a virtual sink that can be set as a monitor in OBS
pactl load-module module-null-sink sink_name="VirtualSpeaker" sink_properties=device.description=VirtualSpeaker

# Link it with a virtual source that is visible in pulseaudio apps like Zoom
pactl load-module module-null-sink media.class=Audio/Source/Virtual sink_name="VirtualMic" channel_map=front-left,front-right

#Link together
pw-link VirtualSpeaker:monitor_FL VirtualMic:input_FL
pw-link VirtualSpeaker:monitor_FR VirtualMic:input_FR

Once this is run I can select VirtualSpeaker as the Monitor device within OBS and as the recording device in conferencing software or games. This is specifically a Linux based solution to this issue. If you’re on Windows or Mac you can just install virtual cables and have a similar experience. I ran this setup on both Windows and Mac prior to moving to Linux.

I find the audio experience is often poor on conference calls and I don’t want to contribute to that. This flow isolates my voice so people just hear me and not my environment. I have a mechanical keyboard that can be quite loud at times, but so long as I’m not talking at the same time as I’m typing, you would never know that I’m typing with an unmuted microphone. I like to mute myself anyway but I wouldn’t have to which is nice.

This is day 55 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 34

2025-08-23T17:00:00Z

Harvested some more zucchini and the tomatoes are starting to really produce as well.
Made some zucchini bread. I posted about the recipe and I’m pretty happy with the modifications.
Moved the site to Codeberg and switched the deployment to netlify commandline.
Had another interview. Seems to be going well.
Applied to some more jobs.
Went to the library to pick up some holds.
Went to see LCD Soundsystem with my brother and wrote about it.

This is day 54 of 100 Days To Offload.

LCD Soundsystem (8/25)- Detroit, MI

2025-08-23T15:30:00Z

Media Type: concert
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Matthew and I went to LCD Soundsystem at the Masonic Temple Theatre in Detroit, MI. According to Wikipedia, LCD Soundsystem is an American dance-punk revival band from Brooklyn, New York. By their own description, “LCD Soundsystem exist at the point of a Venn diagram where the loose grooves of disco bump up against the wiry spikiness of post-punk, and their songs hover between sharp-edged humor and heartfelt emotion.” I include these descriptions because I find it difficult to describe and like most bands that have been around for a while they’re definitely more than just one thing.

Just because it’s available I grabbed the setlist from setlist.fm, recreated below.

Set 1 #

Tribulations
Movement
Tonite
I Can Change
Other Voices
Get Innocuous!
On Repeat
American Dream
Home

Set 2 #

You Wanted a Hit
45:33 Part One
45:33 Part Two
Someone Great
Losing My Edge

Set 3 #

North American Scum
x-ray eyes
Dance Yrself Clean
New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down
All My Friends

Out of curiosity I checked last.fm and the first song I scrobbled by LCD Soundsystem was Daft Punk Is Playing at My House on 3/21/2006. As you can see they didn’t play it last night which makes me a little sad.

Something I enjoyed about the show, possibly more than I should have, was that during one song they interacted with the house lights. I’m not a film the concert I’m attending person but I did grab enough to put together this animation. It was synced with the song and I thought it was fun.

Also, who doesn’t like a disco ball? Their self titled debut major label release featured a disco ball on the cover and has since been featured at shows and their marketing. This happened a few times throughout the show but with most songs featured an led display behind the band. I enjoyed this too and thought I would record just a little bit.

I was excited to finally see them live having been a fan now for almost twenty years. They put on a really fun show with a lot more going on in songs than their original recordings. The crowd was into it which was nice. There was only the occasional white guy dancing and making weird faces at the people around him. It was a loud concert and I need to start wearing ear plugs to these things.

I was really happy to see ‘Dance Yrself Clean’ and ‘You Wanted a Hit’ live. I’m really glad I made it out to this concert and would definitetly go again the next time they’re in town.

This is day 53 of 100 Days To Offload.

The Hand-Painted Storefront Signs of Detroit by Ron Miller

2025-08-22T14:00:00Z

via

Really nice post about Ron Miller who does hand-painted signs around Detroit. Includes links to photography by Andrew Anderson and a map with locations where you can see Ron’s work.

Honestly, did not mean to post this today but it showed up in my RSS feed and I spent a good amount of time exploring the photography and poking around on the map checking out places nearby that I’ve definitely seen before.

This is day 52 of 100 Days To Offload.

An Interactive Guide to SVG Paths

2025-08-20T17:00:00Z

via

Really enjoyed this interactive explainer about SVG paths. I’ve been exprimenting with them lately and this answered some questions I had about them. I highly recommend this article.

This is day 51 of 100 Days To Offload.

Self Hosting Immich for Images

2025-08-20T11:40:00Z

Next up on my list for self hosting is photos. I’ve removed photos from Dropbox, Google Photos, and iCloud. I’ve organized my images and now I want to setup a flow to automatically backup photos. This will also allow family to have an account and backup their photos as well.

Initially started by following the immich docker compose installation instructions.

Creating a new directory in my DockerContainers folder.

mkdir ./immich-app
cd ./immich-app

Downloading docker-compose.yml and example.env files.

wget -O docker-compose.yml https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
wget -O .env https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/example.env

Since I wanted to include a mounted drive in the setup I added the following volume to the .env file.

- /mnt/Photos:/usr/src/app/external

With that setup start the container.

docker compose up -d

Confirmed the site was up and running here http://{machine-ip-address}:2283

Within /etc/nginx/sites-available

sudo nano immich-app.conf

Configure nginx for the new site.

Updated: added section to enable websockets so remote access correctly shows the server is online.

server {
    server_name images.christopherhimes.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass {Public IP Address}:2283;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;

        #enabling websocket
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_read_timeout 86400;
    }
}

Enable the nginx setup.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/immich-app.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

After adding my external IP address and images subdomain to my sites DNS I requested SSL from certbot.

sudo certbot --nginx -d images.christopherhimes.com

Confirm renewing the license works as expected.

> sudo certbot renew --dry-run
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Processing /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/fresh.christopherhimes.com.conf
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Simulating renewal of an existing certificate for fresh.christopherhimes.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Processing /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/images.christopherhimes.com.conf
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Simulating renewal of an existing certificate for images.christopherhimes.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Congratulations, all simulated renewals succeeded: 
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/fresh.christopherhimes.com/fullchain.pem (success)
  /etc/letsencrypt/live/images.christopherhimes.com/fullchain.pem (success)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Test nginx syntax and if test is successful reload nginx.

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

This has enabled images.christopherhimes.com so I can login and backup my photos to my local machine. They also have an iOS app that I was able to download, login to my local machine, and initiate a backup.

This is day 50 of 100 Days To Offload.

Website Carbon Calculator

2025-08-19T17:30:00Z

This site uses less than 0.01g of CO2 every time someone visits. This is an A+ score!

It is, however, on regular energy hosting. I looked into a few options and haven’t found the right fit for something greener. For now I’ll keep it as simple as possible.

Is your site green? Any recommendations for green hosting?

This is day 49 of 100 Days To Offload.

Roller Coaster Trip August 2025 - Cedar Point

2025-08-19T11:00:00Z

After the trip to King’s Island we drove for a little over an hour and stayed at a Best Western outside of Columbus, OH. This would make the ride to Cedar Point the next day about two hours. We showered, slept, and ate some food at the sad breakfast they provided. We stopped and got gas and I got a drink where the lady behind the desk called me “Honey”. You see, Ohio is the south.

When we arrived in the ‘heart-o-Sandusky’ Matthew’s phone was still navigating and playing music so I used my gold pass to get in the partk. We parked by one of the watch towers and headed toward the gate. Almost an hour after opening and they only had one security line open so it snaked to the parking lot and almost to the other security area.

Once we were hurded through security and the main gate we headed to Siren’s Curse. Nothing like starting your day with a 75 minute estimated wait. The new ride has more theming than just about any ride in the park but largely amounts to junk scattered around and red paint simulating rust on some metal parts. There is not much shade to speak of so we spent much of this time standing in the sun on a cloudless August day.

About halfway through the wait time the ride was closed for maintenance which took about fifteen minutes. Many people ahead of us left, so much so we probably recovered ten minutes of the delay due to leavers.

This is the second ride, after Steel Vengeance, to introduce queue lockers and metal detectors. It doesn’t really slow anything down and you don’t have to worry about people sneaking things onto the ride which I actually like.

Siren’s Curse is a tilt coaster ¹ the first of its kind at Cedar Point and the first I’ve been on. It looks like a long time from the ground but the tilt element actually goes quite quickly when you’re in it. From there the ride is incredibly smooth and has some great inversions and airtime hills during its short run time. It’s a fun ride and I look forward to riding it again hopefully with a shorter wait time.

Next we headed to Top Thrill 2 which required placing everything in lockers before entering the 45 minute queue. I’m not a fan of this setup especially if the wait time is this long. There was quite a bit more shade on this queue which was nice.

This new incarnation has new cars and a powered rollback mechanic that is a fun addition. First it shoots you forward and you don’t go over the hill, then you roll back with speed increasing to the second hill where you reach the top and hang for a bit before you descend, having your speed boosted again but just enough to clear the main hill for a twisting 90 degree descent. It’s still over quite quickly but this extra step and the new restraints really help with the experience.

By now it was 2PM and we had ridden two rides so we decided to have something to eat. We ended up walking back toward the front and grabbing some pizza in an air conditioned restaurant.

Next we headed to Matthew’s favorite ride the Millennium Force. This ride was a first of its kind 25 years ago and it is still just so good. Back in the day the station queue maintenance was terrible and everyone would just cram in there and jockey for the lines. It’s not like that anymore, which is good, but it also means you don’t get to listen to this song nearly long enough.

It was almost 4PM at this point and I think we just wanted to pad out the day a little bit so we rode the Rougarou. There was no line basically with us just having to wait for one train to get on before we could ride. I get why as they’ve replaced the bicycle seats from the Mantis with pull down restraints that box your ears. The ride itself is interesting enough but it still requires some defensive riding.

We were heading toward the front and seeing what we could ride so we went to see the wait time on Valraven. It was 60 minutes and a pass from us. I don’t think we’re ever going to enjoy this ride after waiting over three hours when it first came out. Mistakes were made.

The wait times here seemed to be increased due to the Raptor being down. It seems to be down every time I’m there now but that could just be coincidence. This also seemed to impact Blue Streak which is also right there.

Despite the 20 minute wait to ride the Blue Streak we committed to the queue. Matthew was under the impression that like Racer the Blue Streak had been updated. This does not appear to be the case and it was not the best ride. It’s a shame that this ride hasn’t had the maintenance it needs. I hope they keep it around and give it a similar treatment to Racer.

Now it was almost 4:30PM and we were planning on leaving by around 5PM. For one last ride we queued up for an estimated 45 minute wait for GateKeeper. Luckily the line did not take that long. I feel like GateKeeper is underrated as I always enjoy it. It’s not the tallest, fastest, etc but it is a solid fun ride. If we had time I would have liked to ride once on the other side of this winged coaster ².

As is roller coaster trip tradition we stopped at Mexican Village on the way home. I got the Trio Enchiladas, Matthew got The Arizonian, and we both got Fried Icecream. Delicious!

This is day 48 of 100 Days To Offload.

A tilt section is where a horizontal piece of track rotates to a new position. In this case it goes from horizontal to 90 degrees. ↩︎
Winged coasters have riders positioned on either side of the track. ↩︎

Roller Coaster Trip August 2025 - King's Island

2025-08-17T17:00:00Z

It’s been a couple years since my brother and I have gone on a roller coaster trip. Back before COVID we had done a roller coaster trip of some kind every year. This typically consisted of us and some friends spending 4-7 days driving around the country trying to ride as many roller coasters as we could.

This year we decided to make two stops, first at King’s Island (outside of Cincinnati, OH) and second to Cedar Point (in Sandusky, OH). We left on Wednesday bright and early at 5:30 AM to make the almost five hour trip to King’s Island. We timed it well and only took closer to four and a half hours.

Upon arrival we locked most of our belongings in Matthew’s car and applied sun screen. On the way in it was determined that ordering the gold pass for 2026 online was the best course of action so I did that. Matthew had already purchased it online so we used it to have our parking covered. Not an ad but for 125 bucks you get entry into all Cedar Fair and Six Flags (now all are Six Flags) locations until the end of 2026.

When we got to the gate with our digital passes added to our wallets they scanned correctly but we needed to have our pictures taken then and there. This was all very simple and we breezed into the park no longer even having to take anything out of our pockets.

First up on our list was Orion, a giga coaster¹ that came out in 2020 and due to that and other life things I had not yet ridden. Unfortunately we were there early enough that it was not yet open so we had to find something else for the time being.

Our actual first ended up being Diamondback a hyper coaster². It’s not the tallest, fastest, or the steepest drop but it is a lot of fun. Next we walked across from Diamondback to Mystic Timbers and rode that. Mystic Timbers is an aggressive little wooden roller coaster without being inaccessible. This is my favorite ride in the park and I can’t say enough nice things about it. For instance, the ride experience is excellent, the theming both visual and audio is great, and the surprises at the end give me so much joy. #WhatsInTheShed

We rode The Beast which is a classic wooden coaster that seems to have been updated to smooth it out. It was a fast exciting ride through the forest. One of the best wooden roller coaster experiences out there.

From there we decided to head over to Orion and wait the 45 minutes. It was definitely worth it as this new-ish ride is excellent. It’s tall of course but because it is more modern it has a train similar to Diamond back with clamshell restraints³ . Which I prefer to the lapbars on the Millennium Force for example. This ride is made by the same company as Fury 325 at Carrowinds which I think is my favorite roller coaster. This is not quite that ride being a little smaller and just slightly less interesting. I do really enjoy it and it is more than worth the wait. We liked it soo much we rode it again right away.

Next up was Banshee a steel inverted coaster with seven inversions a tie for the most on an inverted coaster. It has vest harnesses which are way more comfortable than over the shoulder ones. For a while The Raptor at Cedar Point was my favorite roller coaster and this is just so much better. It’s smooth, does a number of different things, including a 100 foot long zero-g roll, and is exciting throughout. We rode this three times in a row as there was next to no wait and it is a great time.

This next one is the most uncomfortable ride but has a special place in my heart. Adventure Express is a hybrid (wood and steel) coaster with a train theme. It is not a very comfortable ride and I think it may have gotten more uncomfortable since the last time I was there. The thing that still gets me is the animated figures that are part of the final chain lift hill that takes you to the station. It’s such a weird choice to have them up there throwing bows for some reason. Honestly, and it hurts me a bit to say it but most people should skip it. I’ll ride it again next time just for the memes.

Near there is Racer, a wooden out and back roller coaster that originally debuted in 1972 as the world’s fastest with a top speed of 53 mph. Since I was here last the ride has been retracked resulting in a very smooth ride. This roller coaster is back to its glory. The experience really lets you see why people would have been excited about roller coasters when it came out. Riding poorly maintained wooden roller coasters can make you question why anyone would subject themselves to the experience. This must have been what it was like and it’s a beautiful thing. Since there are two tracks (one for the red car and one for the blue) we had to ride them both. The blue side was the better ride but the red one was certainly not bad.

There was some rain showers at this point but most rides were still going. We made our way back over to Diamondback and rode it two more times. Again just a good sized coaster with some fun airtime hills.

Then the rain started coming down pretty good and we had to wait for it to pass. Once it did, we went back to Mystic Timbers and rode that two more times. After those rides we had heard all three songs that play in the shed and only two of the three monsters. Upon leaving the ride we decided to keep trying until we see the tree. Ofcourse the very next (and third in a row) ride we get the tree. It’s not essential to get them all but it is fun to do as the ride is great and it’s a silly little extra achievement.

When all was said and done we had gone on sixteen rides! I think if we were really trying we could have had quite a bit more. Definitely were not the most efficient in our path through the park.

This was a really enjoyable day at King’s Island and I would recommend anyone who likes roller coasters to check it out. These are some great roller coasters and the riding, queueing, and quality are hard to beat.

This is day 47 of 100 Days To Offload.

Giga coaster is a term invented by Cedar Fair and originally given to the Millennium Force but is generally refers to a complete-circuit roller coaster that is 300 to 399 feet tall. ↩︎
Hyper coaster also a made up term invented by Cedar Fair to advertise Magnum XL-200 refers to a a coaster that is 200 feet to 299 feet tall. ↩︎
Clamshell restraints look like a face down clamshell and sit on your waist ↩︎

Goodbye Gitlab

2025-08-16T18:00:00Z

After posting goodbye-github about moving away from Github I got a comment about Codeberg and liked the suggestion. The big change here is that the site will not be automatically deployed just by syncing to Gitlab or Github. This seems worth it to me to use software maintained by a non-profit that is not selling my data.

This is day 46 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 33

2025-08-16T15:00:00Z

Spent some time in the garden stringing up tomatoes continuing with the Florida method. For this involves three 6 foot tall posts and twine used to support the plants instead of a cage of some type.
Harvested some more zucchini and the tomatoes are starting to really produce as well.
Made some zucchini bread.
Spent some time moving everything off Github and deleting the account.
Wednesday my brother Matthew and I went to Kings Island and rode some rollercoasters.
Thursday we went to Cedar Point and rode a few more.
Scheduled another interview next week.
Applied to some more jobs.
Took the kiddo to freshman orientation at the high school and then 7-11.
Went to the library to pick up some holds.

This is day 45 of 100 Days To Offload.

Goodbye Github

2025-08-12T13:00:00Z

Following the recent Github related news I’ve transitioned this site and other repositories from Github to Gitlab. Once this was all confirmed I went ahead and deleted my repos and then my account entirely. I’ve updated the colophon to reflect this.

I’ve wanted to make this change since the Microsoft acquisition and have just been too lazy to do so. I don’t want to continue to contribute to their AI efforts so I’ll go somewhere else.

I’m open to a better solution but I’m happy with the change for now. I’d like to move off netlify at some point too but the convenience of pushing an update to the repo on Gitlab and it automatically being published through netlify is super convenient.

This is day 44 of 100 Days To Offload.

August Now

2025-08-12T11:00:00Z

Personal #

Leah and I have been back from France for over a month already. Hard to believe it’s been that long after such a long wait to take the trip.

Still looking for a job but hopeful that I’ll have something together before the end of summer crosses fingers.

Movies/TV #

We’ve been watching Wednesday and not really loving it even though we liked the first season. Getting a lot of Harry Potter vibes that I don’t think we got as much the first go around.

We watched The Substance that I reviewed here but TL;DR was amazing. For my birthday I made Leah watch 3 Ninjas which I think is fun.

Music #

I’ve been listening to Don’t Tap the Glass by Tyler the Creator. Today some Sufjan Stevens popped into my head so I’ve been relistening to “Come on Feel the Illinoise”.

Garden #

Tomatoes are to the top of the Florida style trellace so I’m hoping they stop growing taller and start making more fruit. I’m getting three or four good size zucchini every week now. I need more zucchini recipes at this point. Had a cucumber that mostly went into Leah’s lunch.

Baking #

After returning from France I’ve been perfecting a baguette recipe. I’ve also been tweaking a zucchini recipe I have yet to post. Both have been popular amongst testers.

This is day 43 of 100 Days To Offload.

Zucchini Bread

2025-08-11T11:00:00Z

Ingredients #

3 cups all-purpose flour (360g)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
3 large eggs
½ cup packed light or dark brown sugar (110g)
½ cup granulated sugar (100g)
1 cup vegetable oil (240mL)
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups grated zucchini (390g)

Instructions #

Preheat oven to 350 degrees spray 2 loaf pans and line with paper.
Large bowl combine dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon).
Medium bowl beat eggs with both sugars until smooth. Add oil, vanilla, and fold in zucchini.
Pour wet mixture into dry and stir until fully incorporated.
Divide into the two pans evenly.
Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.
Let cool for 10 minutes before moving to a rack to cool completely.

Notes #

The original recipe included walnuts which seem since but I’ve been skipping them for us. Also, the original used a full cup of brown sugar. I followed this at first but my family agreed that it was a little too sweet.

This is day 42 of 100 Days To Offload.

Rework Open Graph Images

2025-08-10T20:00:00Z

Updated the image that is associated with each blog post when it is shared. Previous images looked a bit low resolution and I don’t think they took good advantage of the size of the image.

This was done largely through trial and error within the ruby script that generates these images. I also wanted to update them to match the more recent changes to the style of the site. Now the sharing image looks much more like the site so there isn’t any disconnect between the two.

I was able to specify the same fonts that are used on the website so the images are just that much more like the site itself. I feel like the size and shape may be off still relative to the images used on other sites. I might dig into that more and see if there are better dimensions to use.

Below is a version saved off in case I change this image again.

Originally published this prematurely with the title and blurb section overflowing depending on the characters. This looks to be resolved at the moment but still may need to be revised going forward.

This is day 41 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 32

2025-08-09T15:00:00Z

For some reason Tuesday seems to be baguette day around here. I made some baguettes again and this time left out a little bit of water and made sure to add enough flour to keep it easy to handle. If it started sticking to the counter or my hands I sprinkled a little bit more into the dough. This appears to paid off as these were by far the best baguettes I’ve made yet!
Played some Overwatch 2 with Matthew. Played some on my own and fell from Gold 5 on support to Silver 3. Rewatching a few games to see how I can improve.
Applied for a few jobs each day. I do give myself the weekends though which is nice.
Follow up on the call from last week went well. Excited to continue discussions.
Reworked a bit of this site which I’m going to post more about soon. I wanted something with a bit more color and a bit more personality than the Lato font I was using.
Rewrote the /about page to be more than two quick sentences.
Drow my son to the movies yesterday to see Freakier Friday with a friend.
Caught up with missed episodes of Colbert with Leah this morning.
Made burgers and fries at home this week. Frying up some french fries for the first time in a long while. It’s a bit of work but they are delicious.
Picked some zucchini from the garden. Oh and you can see some baguette in the background too.

Had a Kamala cat headrest for a while this morning. Managed to get up, make lunch, and sit down without disturbing her. Small victories!

This is day 40 of 100 Days To Offload.

The Substance

2025-08-08T20:30:00Z

Media Type: movie
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Substance is a body horror film from 2024 that uses body horror to explore the absurd things that women do to themselves in the of attaining unrealistic body expectations.

The cinematography throughout is spectacular. The later parts of the film are about the body horror but early in the film is just stuning to watch. An incredible looking film which apparently only cost 18 million dollars.

I think the performances in this are incredible. This is one of those movies that if you just described it to somebody, not knowing that it’s an actual thing that exists, you wouldn’t believe it.

The body horror aspect of it, the art behind all of the creature work, the body horror design, is very, very good. I don’t think it’s the point that you’re supposed to feel like this is real. It is convincing enough to gross you out, but it doesn’t feel real to me. I’m sure people disagree with that but I don’t think that’s the point.

There is a level of craft and intention on display in this film that you do not see very often. If you can stomach it rewatching absolutely returns hidden connections not apparent on the first watch.

One thing I did want to mention about this film is there are good portions that you should absolutely not watch while you’re eating food. Your stomach may be turned while watching this film. So, I think it’s best to avoid it, especially in the latter half.

I decided in the last half hour to eat lunch, and I had a couple pieces of pizza. I don’t recommend that to other people. I was fine, but I don’t expect that for other folks.

This is day 39 of 100 Days To Offload.

Self Hosting FreshRSS

2025-08-07T17:00:00Z

I finally did it! I went ahead and setup FreshRSS on my PC to transition away from Feedly. I’ve been using Feedly since Google Reader shut down and have enjoyned it, in part because I was grandfathered into having seemingly unlimited feeds.

What really started this is the incessant advertisement but I’m also interested in doing other self host things like Immich and Jellyfin to name a few.

Anyway, I was seeing a few posts on Mastodon about FreshRSS from Joel and others so I went ahead and did it. I followed this setup to get everything installed including nginx so I can use an app on my phone when I’m away from my computer/house. This is the first persistent docker container I have running on my machine. I think I may switch Jellyfin over to using a container too if just for the portability. Things went mostly smooth apart from when I borked my dns completely and had to undo some things and wait for everything to update.

One of the first things I did once very thing was up and running was to do some much needed maintenance on the feeds I’m subscribed to. After 12 years of being on Feedly without really any clean up it was time. There were a few feeds that had not been updated in a decade.

Then once it was cleaned up and I had read through all the remaining feeds it was time to take the OPML for Blaugust and dump that in and have a never ending list of things to read. I imagine I’ll prune that group list and integrate it with the rest of my setup over time. Until then I’m excited to see what people will be posting for the rest of the month of August.

We’re almost halfway through the year and I’m not even halfway through the 100 Days to Offload. Can you claim completion of Blaugust at the end even if you didn’t sign up? Probably not.

Anyway FreshRSS installation and a little customization has gone pretty well and I’ve learned a bit about Docker, nginx, and the dns required to use a third party app. I’m on iOS and am using NetNewsWire. If anyone has suggestions to other RSS feed apps that support FreshRSS I’m interested in trying them.

This is day 38 of 100 Days To Offload.

Light and Dark Mode Continued

2025-08-04T15:00:00Z

Why are we doing this again and so soon? Well I really wanted a toggle between light and dark so people that visit the site could easily change between light and dark mode. This meant the following light and dark mode setup would need to be tweaked.

:root {
    color-scheme: light dark;
    --background-color: light-dark(rgb(240,240,240), rgb(26, 26, 26));
    --foreground-color: light-dark(rgb(0, 119, 83), rgb(32, 255, 188));
    --link-color: light-dark(rgb(1, 151, 189), rgb(25, 209, 255));
    --text-color: light-dark(rgb(26, 26, 26), rgb(240,240,240));
    --line-color: rgba(211, 211, 211, 30%);
}

I’ve broken out the color schemes and now declare them as follows.

body {
    --background-color: rgb(240,240,240);
    --text-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);
    --link-color: rgb(1, 85, 106);
    --foreground-color: rgb(0, 87, 59);
    color-scheme: light;
}
/* Dark mode styles */
body.dark-mode {
    --background-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);
    --text-color: rgb(240,240,240);
    --link-color: rgb(25, 209, 255);
    --foreground-color: rgb(32, 255, 188);
    color-scheme: dark;
}

This allows for dark-mode to be specified via JavaScript from the button in the footer.

// Set the initial theme
setTheme(initialTheme);

// Listen for changes in the user's preferred color scheme
prefersDarkScheme.addEventListener('change', e => {
    const newTheme = e.matches ? 'dark' : 'light';
    setTheme(newTheme);
});

// Update local storage when theme is toggled
document.getElementById('theme-toggle').addEventListener('click', function() {
    const isDarkMode = document.body.classList.contains('dark-mode');
    setTheme(isDarkMode ? 'light' : 'dark');
});

I do see some flickering with this implementation so I will probably continue or revisit this again in the future to eliminate that and improve the setup in some other ways as well.

You can try this out for yourself by clicking on either the sun or the moon in the footer depending on your default settings.

This is day 37 of 100 Days To Offload.

Baguettes

2025-08-04T13:15:00Z

Ingredients #

3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
2 tsp yeast
1 tsp salt

Method #

Preparation Day 1 #

Combine 1/2 cup of lukewarm water and 2 tsp (or 1 packet) of dry yeast and let sit for ten minutes.
Then combine with the flour, remaining lukewarm water and salt.
This should be kneaded for approximately ten minutes or until windowpane¹ has been achieved.
Roll into a ball and place in a greased bowl covered with plastic for 12-20 hours.

Preparation Day 2 #

At this point the dough should have doubled. Take it out of the bowl and on a floured surface split it into two even portions.
Each portion should be stretched long and each end folded to meet in the middle resulting in a rectangle shape. Then in the other direction fold a third over from either direction. This should result in a slightly narrower rectangle. These should be left for 10 minutes before continuing.
Each rested portion should be rolled into a baguette shape. Roll them out and allow the ends to go to a point.
Once shaped each baguette should be placed on a floured kitchen towel with the towel used as a barrier between the baguettes. Think taco holder at a restaurant. They should be left to rise a final time for 2 hours. Keeping them close but separate should force the rice up versus out.
Fifteen minutes before the 2 hours is up preheat the oven to 450 degrees and boil 2 cups of water. I use a cast iron pan to boil the water so it can go right in the oven with the baguettes.

Bake! #

Once preheated place the baguettes on a baking sheet in the oven and below them the cast iron pan with boiling water.
After ten minutes remove the cast iron pan being careful as it should be steamy in the oven.
Bake the baguettes for another 15-20 minutes depending on your oven. Halfway through rotate them for even color.
Remove from the oven and move to a cooling rack for at least ten minutes.

Beyond #

This has been a little way to bring back France after our trip earlier this summer. I’ve tried some no knead recipes and have not been happy with the way they turned out. This is still not where I want it to be but I think I’m struggling with the wetness of the dough and that has impacted the final results. I think the next move needs to be to switch to more precise measurements to dial this in.

One thing of note my flour choice which is a Canadian flour from Golden Temple, specifically the Durum Atta Flour. Using this flour means my wife who eats gluten free can enjoy these baguettes. Not sure if it’s the durum wheat alone or a combination of that and the pesticides used in the states but American flour is basically off limits for her.

This is day 36 of 100 Days To Offload.

From the center of the dough you should be able to stretch it thin enough that you can see through without it tearing or breaking. Can you read a newspaper through the dough? You’re ready to move to the next step. ↩︎

Week 31

2025-08-02T15:00:00Z

Made some more baguettes this time only formed two instead of three, kneeded a bit more, and remembered to cut them. The texture was much better this time around.
Made some Zucchini bread which everyone seemed to like.
Played some Overwatch 2 with Matthew.
Applied for a few jobs each day.
Had a call with some folks about a possible job opportunity that was exciting.
Worked on a few experiments which aren’t really ready to discuss in depth but they’re coming along.
Watched the substance and have some thought I’m working through for a post later.
Installed FreshRSS and spent some time setting that up.
Listened to the new Tyler The Creator album Don’t Tap the Glass.
Leah got a flat so I did some driving around to drop her off.
Caught up with missed episodes of Colbert with Leah this morning.

This is day 35 of 100 Days To Offload.

A Few Experiments Continued

2025-07-30T16:30:00Z

Toggle #

I’ve added a toggle to the footer of the page that allows you to switch between light mode and dark mode. Not sure if this should be in the main navigation though as it is hard to find. I don’t think it’s working as well as I would like just yet so it’s a soft launch I guess.

Experiments Page #

I created a page dedicated to things I’m experimenting with on the site. As of now there is just one experiment Cat Look but the intention is to continue to add.

Reviews #

I used the media format I discussed in the last a few experiments post to write some reviews. I have a few more in draft that I’m still working on. This seems like an okay way for me to write more without having to invent a new project every few days. Especially when I don’t seem to have much to say in the week notes.

iPhone Ringtones on Linux

2025-07-29T17:36:00Z

I don’t want to use iTunes on a virtual machine to add a custom ringtone. Apple doesn’t make a Linux supported version of iTunes. For these reasons I went looking for a solution to get some custom ringtone files onto my iPhone.

First if you don’t know you can use Audacity to take an MP3 and cut it to ringtone size. This can be done by opening your file in Audacity and selecting the bit of the song you want to use.

Then you go to Edit > Remove Special > Trim Audio. This file should be saved as an m4a and renamed to m4r. There’s no conversion required just change the file extension.

Now that we have the file we need to get it onto the phone. That requires getting file access to the iphone and mounting it so your machine can interact.

To do that I installed both ‘libimobiledevice’ and ‘ifuse’. Then I created a folder ‘mkdir ~/iphone’ and used ifuse to mount the iphone as storage ‘ifuse ~/iphone’.

From here I could navigate to ‘~/iphone/iTunes_Control/Ringtones’ and place the ringtone file I just created.

With the file on the iPhone I needed to tell iOS that it existed. To do this I used a plist editor to add a new record to ‘~/iphone/iTunes_Control/iTunes/Ringtones.plist’.

Here I copied an existing one, updated the ringtone name, updated the file name, changed the GUID and PID to be unique, and saved the file. After unmounting the iphone and restarting it the ringtone was available to select in the settings.

It appears to have worked. I do wonder though if there is a better way.

Week 30

2025-07-25T17:20:00Z

Took our boy Tater to the vet to get a mani pedi. He did great and when we left he did a little strut feeling good.
Made a different recipe for baguettes which went better but was not quite where they should be. I’ll keep making changes to see how I can improve.
Played some Overwatch 2 with Matthew.
Applied for a few jobs each day.
Added a few recurring job application items to the Espanso Text Expander configuration.
Wrote a review of Lake Mungo.
Made some baguettes that turned out pretty well this time around.
Wrote a reviews page that I’ll be making a post about later.

This is day 32 of 100 Days To Offload.

Lake Mungo

2025-07-24T12:00:00Z

Media Type: movie
Stars: ⭐⭐

Spoilers ahead!

Let’s talk about Lake Mongo. This is a movie that made the rounds a few years ago, and lots of people who are into horror films were talking about it around 10 years after it came out. People seem to really enjoy this movie, and I just cannot get into it.

I watched it for the first time a couple years ago, right around the time people were talking about it. I recently re-watched it and I have some thoughts.

The movie is a mocumentary following a family a year after the tragic death of their daughter/sister. It is well acted and none of these people seem like actors. It could just as well be a true crime documentary for huge parts of the film. That part is really well done. It’s when they start getting into the supernatural element of it that if falls apart for me.

Of course, if you’re going to introduce a ghost, you have to have it be a fake-out at least once, right? They double down on that a few times. Which I find a little bit grating, and that’s part of the distaste for it.

I think the thing that really rubs me the wrong way is that essentially the scary part of the movie, apart from the one jump scare, is slowly zooming into photos. I just don’t find that that scary. Maybe I’ve seen too many Creepypastas.

That’s a weird image, but I don’t find it particularly scary. I’m sorry. I think the presence of an image with something you didn’t expect to see in it, like hiding there, I think that’s an interesting idea. I just don’t know if that sort of thing translates into a movie very well.

I mean, obviously that does work for some people, though, which is interesting. But I can’t get out of my cynical head that’s going, enhance, enhance.

I don’t like that they include a bit of a sex tape. In this film, a sex tape with someone who is, in the movie at least, 17 years old. That doesn’t seem like a necessary inclusion. Although I guess 16 or 17, depending on the territory, is the age of consent in Australia (where the film was made).

I think the pacing is perfect for what it is. A mocumentary where the acting is good and there’s a paranormal element. That part is perfect. I just don’t think it’s scary. And if you want me to be impressed with your submission to the Something Awful forums, I think I’d rather do something else, movie-wise, you know?

The cinematography is good. I think the fake-outs feel especially cheap to me. I feel like there’s got to be another way to have that happen. Just off the top of my head, the son had his girlfriend spend the night afterwards, and not that they look the same, but they both have brown hair. The parents didn’t even know that he had a girlfriend or whatever. I don’t know. This is a bad example. But, I think it feels less cheap to me than he’s doing it because he thinks it would help.

He has at an art project where he thinks he’s going to insert her into photos and not realize she’s already in them. I have a hard time believing that. There is a photo that you’ve doctored, you spent the time doctoring this photo, but you didn’t notice there was somebody extra in that photo.

It seems unnecessary. There’s really a ghost. What is the point? If there’s really a ghost, what is the point of the fake-out?

It’s movies like this that make me feel frustrated that there’s not just a slightly different approach to the same thing. But there’s just something there that’s missing for me.

I don’t like most jump scares but I think the jump scare part is actually great. It does this freeze on a thing and linger for a while a lot through out the movie. So you’re kind of primed for the hold on an image to happen and then for them to cut something completely different. So when they don’t and they betray that, that works. It’s not a cliche hand on the shoulder thing. It’s just this still image and then the footage keeps going. Now, was it a pause and play or is that what happened? In-universe, that isn’t a freeze frame. They just stood there and stared at each other for a real long time, or for a considerable amount of time, and then it kept going. I think that’s an interesting approach.

My rewatch was alone in the dark at night and it just wasn’t creepy or scary.

This is day 31 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 29

2025-07-20T20:00:00Z

Weather cooperated so I was able to get out in the garden and clean some stuff up, pulling weeds, and stringing up my chaotic tomatoes.
Cut the lawn and did some weed whacking but I’m less excited about that.
Leah went back to work so I made some dinners.
I surprised Leah with homemade baguettes! They were made from a flour that she was able to eat without any gluten sensitivity issues!
Updated my resume to make sure everything was in my own words versus AI rephrased.
Updated LinkedIn and applied to a few jobs.
I posted a couple reviews that use a template I made about a month ago.
Had to reinengineer the og-image setup to accommodate emoji which was a little frustrating.
Still getting back into a normal schedule.
Had a little bit of a shave.

This is day 30 of 100 Days To Offload.

Phantom Island

2025-07-17T18:15:00Z

Media Type: music
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐

Phantom Island by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard is their 27th studio album and a venture into the psychedelic and orchestretic. This feels like an album from another time with songs like Spacesick sounding like Space Oddity by David Bowie ala Ziggy Stardust. I think this is my favorite song on the album with Silent Spirit a close second.

Sometimes there is too much going on in some of the songs here but it is an ejoyable listen.

This is day 29 of 100 Days To Offload.

Sinners

2025-07-16T15:00:00Z

Media Type: movie
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Spoilers ahead!

Sinners is a 2025 southern gothic vampire horror film produced, written, and directed by Ryan Coogler starring Michael B. Jordan.

I saw this film back in April and it has really stuck with me. It is one of the best examples I’ve seen of how genre films can communicate an idea that is almost impossible otherwise. There are multiple themes and interpretations of this film but the way the narrative and visual language of the film work together is quite an achievement.

This isn’t a scary horror film but the there is a lot of good tension and the implications of the vampirism with the themes of the film are haunting. Vampirism as a metaphor for assimilation as described in How To Write Intelligent Horror — Sinners by The Closer Look is a very interesting view on this story. With this reading the characters also exhibit the implications of the theme and it is not exclusively communicated by the plot. As discussed in this video each of the main characters actions can be viewed by how willing they are to assimilate. This is not a horror film with characters doing things just because the plot requires it of them. Motivated actions, even if they end badly, make for such a better story especially in horror (which seems to suffer from that a lot).

This of course is not the only interpretation for this film, which I imagine will inspire many an essay both video and scholarly. Another video I watched discussing the film is Sinners and the General State of Things by The Morbid Zoo. The thing that surprised me the most about the movie having gone into it mostly blind is just how essential music is to the story. It is a horror movie with musical moments and a lot to say about music, how art creates community, and how humanity creates meaning with art. This is not just a vampire film by the guy who did Black Panther and Creed.

Sinners is a beautiful film from the cinnematography, to the costuming, to the music, to the largely practical special effects. There are lots of striking visuals but the eyes of the vampires that look like wild animals at night are some of the most unsettling.

Just to geek out a little here there is a whole color theory interpretation with the red, white, and blue that reoccur throughout the movie. You can have any color lettering on your sign so long as it’s red. Red seems to be associated with the assimilation discussed earlier while blue is associated with preserving traditions. A movie about assimilation with a red, white, and blue color palate you say?

There’s not a lot of action in the film but the performances more than make up for that. This is a movie with a lot of depth but remains an enjoyable watch if you’re only concerned with the more surface level elements of the plot.

More people should see this movie.

This is day 28 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 28

2025-07-12T17:00:00Z

I was home yesterday to post this I was just working through the other posts I missed while traveling.

Sunday was a bit boring honestly. We had to be out of the AirBNB by 11 AM as they were unable to accommodate a late check out. So we took an Uber to the airport very early.
Once there we were not able to check in until 3 hours ahead of the flight so we hungout in the airport for four hours. We played cards, had lunch, and colored at a table in the cafe.
Once we checked in we figured out our bags would move directly to the next flight that was not leaving until tomorrow morning. Fun!
We got through security and spent three more hours hanging out in the airport. We did grab another bite to eat and make up stories about other travelers which actually was fun.
The flight was delayed about an hour and we didn’t board until the departure time but we did finally manage to make it out of Nice.
The flight had some turbulance and some rain, part of the reason why it was delayed in the first place.
Once in Paris we didn’t have to pick up any luggage so we went right to get a taxi to the Hilton at the airport. This is the only hotel we stayed at on the trip.
By the time we got to the hotel it was 10:30 so we dropped stuff at the room and grabbed something from the restaurant there before it closed.
We needed to be back at the airport for a 9 AM flight so we called it a night.
Woke up and had continental breakfast at 6 AM, with some pain au chocolat, fruits, eggs, and espresso. The spread here was pretty impressive.
There was some drama about taxis from other guests abut we got to the airport just fine. The international terminal was crowded so we actually got out of the taxi early and walked the rest of the way there.
Made it through security and to the gate in plenty of time. Only gave ourselves 2 hours to get there but that was plenty. This flight was delayed too for reasons I do not know. Also we needed to go to the counter and do an additional security check. This was the first time hearing my name on PA at an airport though so that’s something.
Flight was 9 hours long but didn’t seem that long honestly. Watched some movies had some food and listened to some music.
Once in Detroit we got through customs no problem and grabbed our luggage. It was weird to drive after two weeks but we got home fine. Got home and unpacked a little but mostly pet our cats.
Tuesday I went and picked up Tater from my parents and Matthew and I went to the Run the Jewels and Wu-Tang Clan concert.
The rest of the week has been about recovering from the 6 hour difference and enjoying time before Leah starts work on Monday.
The copy of Amelie I reserved at the library came in and Leah and I watched it today.

This is day 27 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 27

2025-07-05T17:00:00Z

I was traveling this week and I don’t like to post about being away while away. Here is a brief run down of the week. I plan to write something about the trip in more detail soon.

Sunday we had planned to start early but didn’t get moving until 11 after a rough night of sleep. Here I think the travel, time difference, and all the going caught up to us.
We ate breakfast in the room with the cafe downstairs closed and not wanting to commit to a sit down cafe experience. Then we caught the bus to the mall to do some shopping.
The mall was seven floors almost all with brands that we were not going to be buying (tres chic). Leah did find some Swarowski earings that she got. Noah liked a t-shirt but it was 450 euros about $600 so we did not get that.
There was a section of souverniers where some shirts were obtained and roof access where you could get some good pictures of Paris.
When we left the mall we took an Uber to Musee D’Orsey. Proper hungry, we had some lunch at a cafe across the street.
Inside Musee D’Orsey we went directly to the impressionist section on the fifth floor in the back. This was a popular place to be and there were a lot of people taking selfies with the paintings.
We did see an entire room of nothing but Van Gogh. Despite the crowd this was great.
For dinner we went to another local cafe and saw a local french woman order the beef tartare which was fun.
Monday we took an Uber to the train station and got stuck in a bit of Paris Fashion Week traffic. We rode the train for about 5 hours to Nice. I saw a castle in the French countryside which I think was pretty cool.
Once in Nice we Ubered to the new AirBNB, were dropped off in the wrong spot, but made it around the block and up some stairs to the new apartment. This one had a terrace that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea. The view was spectacular.
Tuesday we needed some groceries and having tried and failed to use Deliveroo I walked the 20 minute round trip to the nearest Monoprix. The distance to most shops and cafes is the only major drawback of this new location.
This part of the trip was meant to be more relaxing so we spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday eating at the cafe near by and going to the beach.
The water is clear and blue and the beach had rocks instead of sand.
Wednesday in the late afternoon Leah and I went for a walk and found a flea market and a square with some restaurants we wanted to try.
Thursday we rented beach chairs with umbrellas to have some place nice to sit in the shade after a few days of beach towels on rocks and full sun.
At about 4 PM I asked about our seats on our flight to Paris the next day which is when we discovered that the flight had been cancelled. The air traffic controllers were on strike and we had to call and reschedule things.
While on hold we walked to the flea market where Noah got a ring and Leah saw a necklace she was not sure about. When we got through to someone at the airline the news was not good. We were going to be in Nice a couple more days.
We grabbed dinner at a cafe in the square from the night before.
After a truly deranged flight option, Nice -> Paris -> Atlanta -> JFK (NY) -> Laguardia (NY) -> Detroit, we settled on Nice -> Paris on Sunday and Paris -> Detroit on Monday.
Friday we got a late check out from our AirBNB at 1 PM and left our bags while we went to the local cafe and back to the flea market. At 3 PM we grabbed our bags and Ubered across town to a new AirBNB.
This is when I was reminded that 2nd floor in France is 3rd floor in the US. We had some stairs to get up but at least this place had A/C. Having spent over a week without it in a heatwave it was a nice change.
Bummed out from the travel changes and tired from the trip we didn’t go very far for the remainder of Friday or Saturday.

This is day 26 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 26

2025-06-28T17:00:00Z

I was traveling this week and I don’t like to post about being away while away. Here is a brief run down of the week. I plan to write something about the trip in more detail soon.

Sunday we had my parents and brother over to discuss pet care.
Monday was spent making sure everything was ready to go for our trip starting the next day. Finally pulled luggage out of the attic and did a little bit of cleaning so we wouldn’t come home to a messy house.
Tuesday I took Tater to my parents and stayed long enough to see he got situated. Getting around the house seemed fine and soon he was laying on the rug and relaxing after his travels.
When I got home we double checked we had everything and packed up the car. We gave ourselves a lot of extra time to get to the airport. Planning to arrive 3 hours early at the airport and an hour and a half for a 40 minute drive. Glad we did since we left during rush hour and a storm came through causing for some driving delays.
Despite getting dropped off at the wrong terminal we managed to make it to the correct one with at least 3 hours before the flight.
We checked in and made it through security just fine. With some time to spare we grabbed some dinner at Leo’s Coney Island.
Flight left on time (9:20 PM) and took about 7 and a half hours to arrive in Paris. I didn’t get more than a passing few moments of sleep but wasn’t dragging too much considering.
Wednesday was 6 hours ahead of us in Paris so we got a taxi and made our way to our AirBNB which was just a few blocks from Musee D’Orsey and The Louvre.
We spent some time relaxing from our travels and settling in. Soon enough it was time for dinner so we walked a hundred feet or so to a nearby cafe and had dinner.
Thursday we had a bit of a late start with the travel and time difference. We decided to have breakfast at the cafe right outside our apartment.
Then we walked three short blocks to the Siene and boarded a Botabus, a hop-on hop-off boat that would take you to many of the landmarks along the Siene.
First we rode it to the Eiffel tower where we were able to ascend all the way to the top (this would be closed a few days later due to the heat).
We bought some souverniers and had lunch here as well.
Then we boarded the boat and took it to the other end of the loop to see Notre Dame. Inside the organ was playing and my wife lit some candles.
Leah and I crossed the Siene to visite Shakespeare & Co. I got water from the public fountain out front. Once inside we saw the step that says “Live for Humanity” which has special significance to Leah because her mom really like the phrase. Leah got a book about the store and I go a book of a speech from Albert Camus and one of Howl by Alan Ginsburg.
On the way back we took the Louvre exit to get back to the apartment and grabbed dinner at another different cafe.
Friday we had crepes for breakfast at a cafe along the Siene overlooking the Louvre. Afterwards we would head back to the apartment to get ready but then return to cross the Siene to visit the Louvre. We saw the Mona Lisa and Winged Victory but a good portion of the other things on our list to see were in a section that was closed for renovations. I’m just happy the strike happened last week and were able to see what we saw.
Saturday we had breakfast at the cafe next door and took an Uber to Sacre Coeurs. Inside Leah lit more candles and we saw the murals, scupltures, and paintings.
A few short blocks away we made it to Place du Tertre the artists square in Montmartre. Here we stopped for some water, a snack, and looked at the work artists had for sale. Leah and Noah both ended up finding a piece they purchased.
We got some ice cream (vanilla or pistachio) and walked to the Dali museum. They claim this is the largest collection of Dali outside of Spain (second largest in the world).
Tried and failed to get Noah some chicken tenders. Had dinner at a cafe a few blocks away near the Rue de Bac metro station.
We played cards most nights in Paris and avoided TV except for the first night.

This is day 25 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 25

2025-06-21T17:00:00Z

Sent in a few more job applications.
Completed removing duplicate photos from my collection using digiKam. I’m sure I missed something but this is going to be it for now. I removed thousands of duplicate images which is why it has taken so long. Don’t be like me.
Went to the Birthday Party for my niece at Fun City in Lansing. It was good to see the family and the kids in a place they can run around and have fun.
Took Leah to have surgery, Noah to therapy, and went to Coney Island to celebrate.
Bought a travel pillow and a hat for traveling.
Did some laundry and house cleaning.
I’ve been playing Overwatch 2 and trying to get my drives.
Been watching Clarkson’s Farm with Leah and we both really enjoy it.
Watched Companion which I have some thoughts I’m putting together.

This is day 24 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 24

2025-06-13T22:00:00Z

Sent in a few more job applications.
Spent more time removing duplicate photos from my collection using digiKam. Turns out downloading files from Google Photos, Facebook, Instagram, and wherever else you’ve uploaded them is not the best move. Getting down to lowe single digit duplicates but those are in the hundreds.
Bought some Birthday gifts for my niece who is turning 7.
The fact that I set this up did not help [circa last week], “Setting up the draft for next week in the hopes that I have more to report then.”
Bought steel cable to hang patio lights and then I hung them.
Pool is up and running. I’m yet to get in yet but it’s only been about a week.
School is out for summer so we went to Coney Island to celebrate.
Bought a backpack and new shoes for the trip to France.

This is day 23 of 100 Days To Offload.

A Few Experiments

2025-06-08T16:50:00Z

First thing first, I added the post date to the ‘recent posts’ section of the home page of the site to add a little more context. With some of these experiments that section may need to change again but I much prefer this little bit of extra content.

Media #

One thing I’ve really enjoyed reading on other folks personal sites is what types of media they are consuming and how they felt about it. Reviews of books, music, movies, etc, seem like an interesting way to break away from some of the more meta/technical posts.

The nice thing here too would be the lack of required presentation. As in I don’t have to have accomplished anything apart from reading, watching, listening, and forming an opinion.

I’ll have a more lengthy write up when I roll it out completely but for now posts are all tagged with a type and I can use that to communicate the type of content in the blog section and if necessary limit the scope of an RSS feed. For example if you wanted to subscribe to standard blog posts and not movie reviews, there could be separate feed roll for that. For now you’ll see [post] included in the main blog for everything as I haven’t yet posted any other type.

Stats #

As a companion enhancement to the Media section I thought it would be neat to present some site specific stats once there are more posts and types of posts. As of now the site only uses a standard Jekyll implementation with no database.

I’m curious just how far this can be taken and when do the demands of displaying information about what is here require a database. Will probably use a javascript library to display some charts and graphs, but I’m not sure which one as of yet.

Links #

Similar to Media, I’ve seen a few implementations of this idea but I’m working on an implementation of a post that appears in the blog with a quick blurb and a direct link to an article. There would not be any dedicated page for this post so it would require some additional setup to make it work as expected. Trying to decide if this is worth doing or if a small blog post would be a better way to handle this idea. Sometimes you just want to say, “here is an interesting article go read it!”

Webmentions #

Disappointed that I ripped out this implementation. I just wasn’t sure the best way to integrate it with what I’m already doing with mastodon comments. I think it would be nice if folks had another way to comment but I’m just not happy with the way I was handling it. Something to revisit sometime soon.

Portfolio #

It’s on the /todo and I think the steps to implement the Media section can also be used to make this happen. Portfolio pieces hit the blog which is the waterhose of information that happens on this site and since they’re tagged with a type of ‘portfolio’ for example can be filtered and presented in a different manner on a dedicated portfolio page.

Week 23

2025-06-06T17:00:00Z

Converted the VHS tapes I had planned to at the library. They were pretty degraded so they’re not much to look at or anything. I was able to bring one into Kdenlive and EQ away some staticy bits that were making it incredibly annoying to listen to atleast. Still there are many artifacts and I will probably experiment with removing them if possible.
Had my first interview since ~~becoming an unemployed person~~ starting the job search. I thought it went well but two days later I received a nicely worded rejection.
Sent in a few more job applications.
Spent more time removing duplicate photos from my collection using digiKam. Apple Photos really did a number on them so now I’m just trying to make sense of it all. There has to be a faster way for this so I’m open to suggestions.
Wrote and published my longest post to date about my work history on my non-anniversary date of 6/2.
Found my old livejournal and deleted it but not before I saved off one post that will be coming out soon.
Experimented with different ways to post reviews of various media and fell back on adding extra front matter to the markdown posts for now. We’ll see if a more sophisticated solution is warranted.
Felt miserable yesterday so I spent it mostly on the couch.
Setting up the draft for next week in the hopes that I have more to report then.

This is day 21 of 100 Days To Offload.

Work History

2025-06-02T21:00:00Z

I don’t know if it is nostalgia or what but I’ve spent the past few weeks thinking about my previous employment. Maybe it’s just a consequence of job searching while between jobs that will do that to a person. One thing it has taught me is to do a better job of making notes about what you’re doing in the moment. I’m sure I’ve forgot something or will be tweaking this in the future.

I won’t do this non-anniversary thing again but today would have been 17 years at Milliken Millwork/MMI Door/JELD-WEN. There’s a lot that happened over that time and this is no way a list of it all.

2008 #

Start June 2nd - Milliken Millwork.
Product training and onboarding.
Trip to Klamath, OR for training from the developers at JELD-WEN.
Initial catalog build was for Home Depot and it was created by JELD-WEN and the marketing department.
- Had to go to Atlanta to test the catalog at THD’s headquarters. Stage environment testing took place on-site and would continue for both retailers for years.
After returning from training work began on bug fixes via Track-IT and setup to support another retailer. We were already building out support for Lowe’s.

2009 #

Early in the year the Milliken retail catalog is available at both major retailers. Lowe’s required breaking up the roll out by store and product category (Exterior, Interior, Patio).
Wrote a program in Visual Studio 6.0 to monitor a folder that would periodically receive EDI orders. Orders were parsed into Excel documents for formatting purposes, they were then sent to a local printer, and both EDI and Excel files were archived.
Added a Tax Credit question to the catalog and all the filtering necessary to hide products that did not meet the Energy Star requirements which disqualified the items from the credit.
Updates happened more slowly at this time and we were largely just resolving issues without adding anything major to the experience. This was a time that everything offered appeared in the printed price pages. A simpler time.

2010 #

Added Commercial Doors to the offering. A brand new offering to the company and the largest addition I made to the catalog to date. Since this category is heavy on hardware additional layers were added to visualization to include exit devices, closers, and kick plates.
Built a revamped website with branding similar to the new price pages which were also launching. The site included links to brochures, the usual business site pages (About, Locations, Careers), and a combination Dealer Login and Quick Order Info Search. None of the forms work but you can still see most of it.
The Quick Order Info Search was probably the best thing about the site at this time. A customer could go to the site with a purchase order number and their Zip code and see the status of the order. This prevented a call in these situations which mean customer service could be dedicated to new business and resolving issues.
The Dealer Login was a fully custom secure area with registration, password management, and the ability to review all pending orders.

2011 #

Worked with a website company to build a new site with products listed. Using the data from the retail configurators, and enriching it with customer facing terms.
Built a configurator using jquery to allow for custom configurations based on the same data set that drove the main site. Additional information was added to offer painting, staining, and hardware items not mentioned in the general site.
Site also included a dealer locator that required geocoding dealer’s addresses and connecting to google map API to determine location relative to zip or address provided. The distance calculated took into account the curvature of the earth which still amuses me.

2012 #

Home Depot was switching to WTS Paradigm so I spent a week in Atlanta learning the new software. When I got back immediately got started building out the new catalog with the help of a consultant.
Milliken decided to switch to a new ERP system called Ponderosa by Computer Associates Inc (CAi). Flew out with a small team to Rhode Island on the company plane. There we had a week long training session about building the product configurator.
I believe this is about the time we brought on another developer to keep maintenance running on the existing catalogs while the new Home Depot catalog was being built. We needed more developers at this point.

2013 #

Once we got back from training with CAi I got started documenting the required setup within the configurator. Infrastructure was still coming so the first few months were outlining the relationships between answers to ensure the system only offered valid combinations.
Most of the year was spent ensuring items were populated into Ponderosa and that they were utilized in the product configurator.
The timeline was aggressive for a customer facing solution so the initial setup also included image based answers for the web as well as a dynamic visualization of the configured unit.
Stom Doors were added to the offering and were added to both retail catalogs and the website.
Milliken acquired a Millwork company headquartered out of Lancaster, PA so I spent a few days there learning about their setup and offering.

2014 #

Was made the Lead Software Developer in March and made it official that other developers were reporting to me.
No joke, we went live with Ponderosa on April 1st. The first part of the year was spent testing go-live critical configurator items. We had a principal develelopment completion date of the end of 2013 so we were squashing bugs and preparing the items that would launch after the initial go-live.
As part of the setup of the configurator I proposed, and CAi implemented, new functionality to their configurator product to enable the filtering of answers based on previous answers to questions.
Since the Ponderosa configurator is mostly freely typed text I built a number of reports to validate consistency.
Prior to going live with the new Ponderosa web portal the existing portal utilized both the order data from Prism (the old ERP) and used the API from Ponderosa so no interruption took place for the customer.
After go-live we focused on getting the web portal for dealers ready to launch. I believe we went live with what they branded as MMI Design in October with the first high priority customers.
At launch we had product visualization that would apply the customer’s paint or stain options to the product they were building. It took almost 7 years before the same would be true for the retail catalogs in a way that was a reasonable representation.

2015 #

Added another developer bringing the team to three.
Maintaining projects through Trello.
Added 14k special order interior doors to the catalog utilizing ImageMagick for manipulating thousands of unique images.
Added catalog support for selling to Menards.
Transitioned to local hosting for retail catalog including build management and admin duties.
Wrote an Excel based application for the enrichment of e-commerce items for Home Depot online sales. Enabled marketing to maintain their enrichment materials in Excel and run the program that would fill out the documents they needed to send back. This removed copy and paste errors while also saving them hours per batch of products they were onboarding.
Using the data in Ponderosa, I built a PHP script to extract the table and item data. From there it was enriched and relationships were established via a series of tables built to supply additional business logic that would have normally been provided by what Ponderosa calls dependencies. All this was used to populate the product offering and custom configurations offered on DoorBuy.com which launched in October.
Menards releases the first Milliken catalog into all their stores on December 24th.
Met my future wife!

2016 #

Added another developer bringing the team to four.
Helped with building a scaled back version of DoorBuy.com to be used as MMIDoor.com.
Worked with CAi to define a tool that will utilize the Ponderosa configurator to create items for use with e-commerce. This dramatically increases the number of items that can be created.

2017 #

August 25th JELD-WEN acquires Milliken Millwork and MMI Door is born. I don’t recall the use of the MMI Door until the acquisition was announced and I cannot find anything announcing the name. It just shows up in the press release although they had started using email addresses with @mmidoor.com as early as July 2016.
JELD-WEN immediately pulls the plug on DoorBuy.com.

2018 #

Added two Junior Developers bringing the team to six.
Worked with operations and pricing to adjust the way list prices are calculated. This resulted in a 60% reduction in the total number of priced items in the retail catalogs and made it faster to go to market for all customer facing prices (Brochures, Price Pages, Retail Catalogs).
This is a massive undertaking and requires adjusting the pricing in the ERP as well as the retail catalogs at Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Menards.
To better align with other departments we begin managing project releases and communication through Basecamp.
Both Junior Developers leave and are not replaced 😢.
Remaining experienced developers leave or give notice. Scramble to get approval to start the hiring process so we’re not back to just me with three retail catalogs, an ERP configurator, website, EDI automation, and e-commerce support.

2019 #

Traveled to the Home Depot headquarters to discuss configurator future plans. Peers attended virtually with no problem 🤷.
Worked with CAi to build an EDI automation program for retail catalog orders. These orders come over as a series of questions and answers and this new tool matches up the QA from the retail catalogs with the corresponding QA that live in the Ponderosa configurator. This eliminates the need for customer service to hand enter each of these custom orders.
Move ticketing and release management to ServiceNow. Transition away from Basecamp and Track-IT.

2020 #

Like many others we go virtual full time.
Complete a few price increase releases as costs are very volatile.
Twice during the year spend a week on furlow.
Lowe’s announces they are going to switch from Syndigo’s m2o and join Menards and Home Depot on WTS Paradigm. We work to schedule all that work for a release in the middle of 2021.
MMI team starts helping with ABS Talon catalog.

2021 #

Complete required standard changes and a phased release of the MMI catalog at Lowe’s.
Some standard updates for Lowe’s are nice enhancements and can be shared with other retailers so they see some quality of life changes up on their next release as well.
Previous Product Owner for JELD-WEN doors announces his retirement and I put my hat in the ring.

2022 #

The year of EDS 2.0. Each catalog needed to be upgraded to achieve Lowe’s updated standards. This represented a significant change to the base setup of the product and could not really be done in phases.
We also made changes to offer catalogs on the Vendo version of the Paradigm software.

2023 #

Launched the F-4500 folding door, Fiberglass line discontinuation, black hinge addition, and did some cut down tests in select markets.
WAVE project with the McKinsey group started in late October.

2024 #

Year of WAVE initiatives starting with a complete revamp of the Exterior Door catalog with an emphasis on modern marketing materials and a quicker time to quote.
Mid-year saw the roll out of the updated Exterior catalog and the beginning of reworked pricing rolling out into the Exterior and Interior catalogs.
Once we were on to final testing with the JELD-WEN catalogs we turned our attention to the American Building Supply (ABS) catalogs for simplification and to improve the order entry experience.

2025 #

Lowes.com launches interior configurable products where the retail catalog appears in stores for both JELD-WEN and ABS.
End March 13th.
Posted this recap on June 2nd which is 17 years from my start date.

I know I have more that I want to add in recent years but I think it can wait for now. Not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

This is day 20 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 22

2025-05-31T17:00:00Z

Went to the farmer’s market and at 8 am it was already bumpin.
- Bought starters for tomatoes, green bell peppers, cucumbers, and zuchinnis (cukes and zukes as the kids are saying).
- Got two lantanas for my wife. She really loves the small bursts of colors.
- Picked us up some starbys ⭐☕ on the way home.
Planted the starters I got from the farmer’s market as well as some seeds I had from last year. These included lettuce, spinach, beans, peas, carrots, onions, chives, tarragon, and sunflowers.
Doing any kinda gardening directly under an established tree is a bit of a nightmare. I have two garbage cans full of tree roots if you’re interested.
Split some hostas to add more to the freshly mulched front landscaping.
I’ve been on a tear digitizing our DVD collections using MakeMKV. I’m through mine and have made a sizable dent in Leah’s. I’m also using HandBrake to make the files a bit more manageable.
I added accounts for Leah and Noah within Jellyfin so we can have our own watch history.
Pulled out the webmention work for the time being as I haven’t gotten it to a good point as of yet.
Took an assessment an was able to schedule an initial interview next week which is nice.
Made an appointment at the library to convert a VHS tape to digital. They have a media lab and have a number of devices for converting media.
Spent some time removing duplicate photos from my collection using digiKam.
Updated meta data for my music files using MusicBrainz Picard.
Wrote a bit of a a lengthy post I will be publishing on 6/2.
I’m backdating this post please forgive me.

This is day 19 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 21

2025-05-24T14:15:00Z

Pulled weeds and double turned the garden beds in advance of planting the vegetable garden.
Cleaned up the back yard, removing old leaves overgrown trees along the fence, and sweeping out the trampoline.
Made more changes to the resume removing some uses of the word ‘product’ to focus more on product ownership rather than the product that was represented in the retail catalog.
Bought an external CD/DVD drive to start digitalizing some items. I’ve been in a chicken 🐔 or the egg 🥚 situation with getting a NAS so I’m going to use some free time to put together the media that would fill out the library. I’m using the beta Linux version of MakeMKV for this.
Installed and setup Jellyfin on my computer. This required updating the /etc/fstab file as I had some user specific items in there that was preventing Jellyfin from detecting the existing media. After that it was an easy setup and connection to the apps on both my phone and Roku.
Spent some time experimenting with Webmentions. I have a blog post in my drafts folder but I haven’t decided on the exact implementation just yet. I did run a test and confirm it works I just haven’t written all I want to say just yet.
TODAY IS MY ONE YEAR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY! 🎉

This is day 18 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 20

2025-05-19T17:10:00Z

Completed the CSPO class and am now a Cetrified Scrum Product Owner with Scrum Alliance.
Spent a bunch of time in the yard. I’ve got 8 paper bags and four garbage cans full of yard waste this week. I’m exhausted 😴
Trimmed hops up a few feet to make it easy to maintain the few main line.
Attended my sister’s commencements in Mt. Peazy over a week ago now.
Mother’s Day activities at Le Crepe and Sedona.
Painted with a twist.
So, I get this text from my wife, “It’s all or nothing…” We’re watching the latest Married at First Sight on Netflix.
More True Blood. 🩸

This is day 17 of 100 Days To Offload.

Accessibility Day 2025

2025-05-17T15:15:00Z

May 15th 2025 was Accessibility Day. I started this post on the day but wasn unable to complete it in time.

I ran the WAVE test and was happy with the results on the site.

There is a lot more to consider and I’ll be working that into the ongoing changes here.

This is day 16 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 19

2025-05-09T15:00:00Z

Applied to some jobs.
Posted last weeks week notes late.
Took some Coursera classes. I’m currently on a DevOps section of the Scrum Master concentration.
Signed up for the CSPO class next week!
Took some practice tests for the PSPO certification.
Weather was nice yesterday so I spent a few hours on the yard. Cut the grass for the first time this year, trimmed the bushes, and did more cleanup.
Hops are really doing well with all the rain so I moved their lines to the top of the sunroom.
Updated resume on this site.
Getting ready for my sister’s commencements tomorrow in Mt. Peazy.
Very briefly got through my RSS feed.
More True Blood. 🩸
Listening to whatever comes next after 🎵 Poison Oak - Bright Eyes on Spotify.

This is day 15 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 18

2025-05-05T15:00:00Z

Applied to some jobs.
Revisited the lighthouse score for this site and posted about it here.
🎥 Saw Sinners in IMAX with my brother. This is a movie that sticks with you afterward and definitely worth checking out.
Created /hundred a dedicated page for 100 Days To Offload posts.
Created a plugin for jekyll in ruby to count the number of pages for 100 Days To Offload and wrote about it here.
Updated the code highlighter for this site so future posts that include code will be easier to read.
Added Open Graph images that are automatically generated when a post is created.
🍿 watched A Complete Unknown the Bob Dylan movie with my wife. It was an enjoyable watch with Timothee Chalamet doing some incredible work.
Took my wife to urgent care and eventually we missed her graduation to have surgery. Whether she walked or not she’s just completed her Master’s in Social Work and I’m so proud of her.
Marathoned the first season and a half of True Blood with my wife while she recovered from surgery.
Late posting this because I’ve been taking care of my wife…

This is day 14 of 100 Days To Offload.

Hi there

2025-05-01T12:00:00Z

I’m Christopher Himes, an accomplished Product Owner seeking new opportunities for transformation and adding value.

I’ve been working on adding generated open graph images to the site. I think they’re in a good place at the moment but they only apply to blog posts. In order to create a generic one for the site as a whole I wanted to have a simple post that would create one with the correct content. So, that’s what you’re looking at here.

Sorry there is not more here but stay tuned for the details on getting the open graph image together that is coming soon.

The image associated with this blog post in open graph is also the one associated with any non-blog page on the site. I think it makes it a little nicer. Not that anyone is sharing my about section but the the proof of concept is neat anyway.

This is day 13 of 100 Days To Offload.

Updated Code Block Styling

2025-04-30T13:30:00Z

Really didn’t like the look of code on the previous post. This has been on the todo list and I just went ahead and made it happen today. Now code is styled using rouge and monokai styling.

Here is an example of html formatting with line numbers.

<marquee>Hello World!</marquee>

Here is a result of the impressive code.

Hello World!

This was implemented by updating the _config.yml for the site like so.

markdown: kramdown
kramdown:
  input: GFM
  syntax_highlighter: rouge

With the inclusion of styling css in the header.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ "/assets/css/syntax_monokai.css" | relative_url }}" media="print" onload="this.onload=null;this.removeAttribute('media');" fetchpriority="low">

Not a lot to get it readable which is nice. I’m done with same day changes now I think.

This is day 12 of 100 Days To Offload.

Dedicated 100 Days To Offload Progress Page

2025-04-30T13:30:00Z

This one feels a bit like padding but I wanted to post it anyway. I have a few things in mind with the blog but I wanted to test the waters a bit with a dedicated page to the progress of the 100 Days To Offload challenge.

I’ve added a hundred page that will list out all the available posts that have been tagged with ‘100 Days To Offload.’ I’ve removed pagination, descriptions, tags, etc. and will just be presenting the number in the series, title, and original post date.

This of course is not an essential page for the site but what I wanted to focus on with its creation is filtering blog posts with liquid. Which again is the template engine used by jekyll and others for generating static pages.

As of publishing this post the hundred page is generated using the following code.

{% raw %}
{% assign tagged_posts = site.posts | where_exp: "post", "post.tags contains '100 Days To Offload'" %}
{% assign total = tagged_posts | size %}
{% assign tagged_posts = tagged_posts %}

<ul class="💯">
  {% for post in tagged_posts %}
    <li>
      {{ total | minus: forloop.index0 }}. 
      <a href="{{ post.url }}">{{ post.title }}</a> - {{ post.date | date: "%B %d, %Y" }}
    </li>
  {% endfor %}
</ul>
{% endraw %}

Since CSS supports using emoji for classes I had to go ahead and use 💯 to remove the bullets and padding from this unordered list.

.💯 {
    list-style: none;
    padding-left: 0;
}

I thought it was fun anyway.

The nice thing about having an existing tag with posts is that I can use this to experiment with loading pages prior to getting into the next project which is putting together a portfolio of sorts. With the right filtering and tagging the portfolio can be generated based on blog posts rather than a brand new construction. I’m sure I will need to populate these upcoming posts with more details to better support a more visual presentation that I have planned for them.

I’m a bit torn between the simplicity of the site currently and wanting to have some more visual representation. The trade off for now will be a portfolio section that is a bit more visual while keeping most of the site simple. I’m not a front-end developer but I would like to add something here that is a bit more engaging.

I’ve also went ahead and updated every post in this series so I don’t have to keep track of which post is which. Now each post includes a tag number that can be referenced as follows.

{% raw %}
{% include 'tag_count.html' tag:'100 Days To Offload' %}
{% endraw %}

Each post within a series does not know how many other posts are in that series. Because of this a plugin was required to make this happen. Here is the plugin that I created to enable this functionality.

# _plugins/tag_numbering.rb

module Jekyll
  class TagIndexer < Generator
    safe true
    priority :low

    def generate(site)
      tag_map = Hash.new { |hash, key| hash[key] = [] }

      # Step 1: Group posts by tag
      site.posts.docs.each do |post|
        post.data['tags']&.each do |tag|
          tag_map[tag] << post
        end
      end

      # Step 2: Sort posts and assign numbers
      tag_map.each do |tag, posts|
        sorted_posts = posts.sort_by { |p| p.data['date'] }

        sorted_posts.each_with_index do |post, index|
          post.data['tag_numbers'] ||= {}
          post.data['tag_numbers'][tag] = index + 1
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

One downside to this is that GitHub Pages will not support this plugin but I use Netlify so that should not be an issue.

This is day 11 of 100 Days To Offload.

Lighthouse Revisited

2025-04-29T13:30:00Z

One thing about this site that I’m not happy with is I don’t have the necessary tests in place to ensure changes meet the standard of quality I want. Case in point, a few months back I got the site to a good lighthouse score. Not just good, the site was at 100% for performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO on desktop. Mobile had 95% for performance and accessibility.

Desktop (original) #

Mobile (original) #

I had not rerun the lighthouse test in a while. The recent run was not good as pictured below.

First thing that jumps out, and maybe it’s because it’s in red, is the “Largest Contentful Paint element”. My face apparently is just too big. To address this I resized the image to match the dimension it will be displayed. Just to be sure I introduced a little bit of lossy compression using cwebp in the command line. Not enough that you should notice but just enough to reduce the file size a little more.

cwebp -q 85 new-face-325x325.webp -o home-face-325x325.webp

From there I got a lower score than before with the report saying the image was low resolution and it was expecting something around 488 pixels square. I ended up resolving this issue by starting over and providing an image of 650x650 for the 325x325 square. This appears to be a requirement for serving to higher density screens.

One thing I did find interesting is that it appears lighthouse is using the light mode as a default. This of course exposes that I did not do enough testing of color contrast when setting up the light mode. Based on the feedback from the contrast test I’ve updated the light mode to the following.

rgb(240,240,240)

rgb(0, 87, 59)

rgb(1, 85, 106)

As you may expect the dark mode which existed first and was used in the original test meets the contrast requirements.

One more thing I did was to shift some css styling to a sheet that is loaded asynchronously versus the inline critical styling. This has been a bit of guess and check on my part and I’m not sure I have everything where it needs to be just yet. If you see any jumps or restyling when a page loads please let me know.

One thing slowing down the site was font awesome icons for email, mastodon, bluesky, RSS feed, and github. I tried a few different ways to speed this up but ultimately went with doing away with the icons altogether. For now it’s kinda nice not having a company’s logo on my site.

I worked through the mobile score first as this is usually the most difficult to get right. The standards are understandably higher due to the variety of devices and connections. The main issue here was the picture of my face which was either too large of a file or low resolution. These things seem like opposites but there is a balancing act between quality images and file size. Ultimately I ended up recreating the image from its source and working with the compression of cwebp to get to a high enough quality image while having a low load time in the browser.

Here are the results of these efforts!

Desktop #

Mobile #

After a bit of trial and error both the mobile and desktop versions of the site have 100% for all four categories! 🎉

There are some optional items on the lighthouse page that I would like to pursue as well so this will likely get revisited again. For now things are faster and more people can interact comfortably with the site.

This is day 10 of 100 Days To Offload.

Read Time and Tags

2025-04-26T15:00:00Z

Having dramatically scaled back this site to make the restyling easier I have been slowly adding back in some removed features. One thing I’ve wanted to enable for a while is making a posts tags visible. I have continued to add tags to posts as they’re going out but that extra bit of information has not been shared anywhere.

Now I’ve added to each post on the blog page so anyone visiting the site can see how a post is tagged when deciding whether or not to click into read the whole article. These also appear again once you’ve clicked through to the full post.

Below are the current light and dark mode versions of the current stylings.

The tags are styled as buttons which when clicked take you to the tag index page. Initially I had the tags slugified¹ which didn’t take you to the correct part of the page. This has been removed so each link has a # and should navigate you to the part of the tag index page with similar posts. I am also adding a feature to the todo page for related posts using this tagging. As more posts are added the opportunities to link between posts and filter for specific types of posts increases. I think there will be more to come there.

Another feature I’ve added to the site is a read time calculator. The site is using the jekyll_reading_time gem to calculate the average read time of each post. For now I’ve included this information with each post blurb on the blog page as well as at the top of each post. Adding this feature has really highlighted for me that I mostly post short form blog posts. Essentially, each of these could could have just been a tweet/toot (Xitter/Mastodon). The current longest post is about 8 minutes in read time and it’s the personality test results.

I don’t know that I want to be writing novels or anything but I do want to dig into some things more. Thinking that an average of five minutes would be a good amount of time to aim for. That of course is an arbitrary metric and not something I would force. I tend to be overly succinct in my writing so I’ll be working on that.

These are things I’ve liked from other sites I’ve visited and decided to incorporate here. I’m not sure if I like the styling of the tags but that is fairly easy to change. I don’t know if I like the linking or the format of the tag index page either.

Anyway, as with everything else around here it’s a work in progress.

This is day 9 of 100 Days To Offload.

A slug refers to human readable and URL friendly text like the format of the URL for this post. Often this involves replacing spaces with dashes and removing special characters. The term is carried over from the print world. ↩︎

Week 17

2025-04-25T16:35:00Z

Applied to some jobs.
Corrected the deprecated warning in the SASS for the @import command used for comments on this site. Switched to @use.
Weather ☀️ has been nice so I’ve been working in the yard. The garden beds need some serious care so I’m getting them cleaned up and ready for planting.
Had a call about what I’m looking for at a potential employer. Conversation was good but they do not currently have an open position for what I’m looking for. It was nice to talk about my experience either way.
Completed the capstone project for the Product Owner IBM certification on Coursera. I don’t usually post to LinkedIn but I did this time. Nice to celebrate a win.
Today was my wife’s late mom’s birthday, so we went to the cemetery to honor her and place some flowers. The irises we planted last year are looking good which is nice. 💐

This is day 8 of 100 Days To Offload.

Product Owner Certification

2025-04-24T21:45:00Z

Currently between roles and one thing I knew immediately that I wanted to do with the extra time was get a certification. I’ve always been doing more informal self improvement and learning but now seemed like a good time to have a little something to show for it and make it a bit more official.

So I jumped into some Product Owner courses on Coursera. This track had seven classes with a few projects that were graded. I did learn a few new strategies for prioritization and negotiation which I plan to discuss over the coming weeks.

I miss having a team that is building something together but that will come in time. For now I’m bettering myself both because I want to and because it will help with whatever the next thing is.

This is day 7 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 16

2025-04-19T15:00:00Z

Made even more changes to the resume.
Met with the job coach.
Applied to some jobs.
Scheduled a call for next week.
Published a few blog posts.
Installed OhMyZSH.
Completed a few lessons on Coursera and started the final project for the IBM Product Owner course.
Remained stuck on Cicada Detroit puzzle 20.
Went to Hamtramck with my mom and Josie. Where we got baked goods for Easter from New Palace Bakery and had lunch at Polonia. Classic Easter preparation stuff.
Drove my wife around on Friday while her car was in the shop again.
Completed Overwatch 2 drives.

This is day 6 of 100 Days To Offload.

Light and Dark Mode Revisited

2025-04-16T14:30:00Z

I wanted to revisit the light and dark update as the original described some changes but didn’t display how these changes impacted the experience on the site. Now that images are working a bit better I figured I would show exactly what’s happening on the site in its current state.

The dark mode which is the primary way I view the site uses an almost black background with bright green and blue for the headers and links respectively.

rgb(26, 26, 26)

rgb(32, 255, 188)

rgb(25, 209, 255)

The light mode which I imagine will be the way most people view the site uses an almost white background with medium green and blue for the headers and links respectively.

rgb(240,240,240)

rgb(0, 119, 83)

rgb(1, 151, 189)

Additionally, I’ve simplified the setup for light and dark based on a recent blog by James G that was a follow up to his original post that inspired this setup in the first place. Previously the CSS suffered from the same redundancy he discussed in his blog post where every time a color was used it checked light-dark. Now this is baked into the :root variables like so:

:root {
    color-scheme: light dark;
    --background-color: light-dark(rgb(240,240,240), rgb(26, 26, 26));
    --foreground-color: light-dark(rgb(0, 119, 83), rgb(32, 255, 188));
    --link-color: light-dark(rgb(1, 151, 189), rgb(25, 209, 255));
    --text-color: light-dark(rgb(26, 26, 26), rgb(240,240,240));
    --line-color: rgba(211, 211, 211, 30%);
}

This allows h1 to be styled like so:

h1 {
    color: var(--foreground-color);
}

One last thing is the use of gradients which also change in response to the light or dark settings from the user. One example is the site-tile which is just how my name at the top left on desktop or the top center on mobile is classed. The variables plug in just the same here but the added simplicity really helps the more complex -webkit-gradient lines legibility.

.site-title {
    font-family: 'lato-normal', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size: 1.2em;
    background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, right bottom, from(var(--foreground-color)), to(var(--link-color)));
    -webkit-background-clip: text;
    background-clip: text;
    -webkit-text-fill-color: transparent;
    text-decoration: none;
}

These screenshots were taken by me on 4/11/25.

This is day 5 of 100 Days To Offload.

Static Site Images

2025-04-16T11:30:00Z

I was recently reaking this blog post by Kev Quirk about image handling on his static site which inspired me to spend some time fixing the images on this site.

My includes are fairly similar to his but I’m passing a class as well.


{{=<% %>=}}<img class="blogimg" alt="{{include.alt}}" loading="lazy" src="/assets/img/{{include.src}}" /

The image line in each post is identical to his handling.


{% include 'img.html' src:'' alt:'' %}

Fun side note in creating this post I learned that you have to use {% raw %} and {% endraw %} tags so the liquid code wouldn’t run and replace that information. Also, these tags do not stack so you cannot show this code by putting raw/raw/endraw/endraw.

With this at least partially corrected I’ll be adding images to more posts going forward and revisiting the dark and light mode update with some images.

And here just because it would be bad form to have a post about images without including an image.

Photo by [Huang Yingone]

This is day 4 of 100 Days To Offload.

ActivityWatch

2025-04-15T17:30:00Z

ActivityWatch is an app that automatically tracks how you spend time on your devices.

Like I mentioned in a previous post I found some new people to follow in my RSS reader. One of those people is Joel who’s feed introduced me to the service ActivityWatch. This is now currently running on my machine so I can see how exactly I’m spending my time.

My intention for now is simply to use the reporting for self reflection. Not sure if I want to be publishing any stats publicly.

This is day 3 of 100 Days To Offload.

Added a Colophon

2025-04-15T16:45:00Z

Added a colophon.

Wikipedia lists a colophon as:

In publishing, a colophon (/ˈkɒləfən, -fɒn/) is a brief statement containing information about the publication of a book such as an “imprint” (the place of publication, the publisher, and the date of publication).

My intention is to record the site history, technology stack, and other details of the site there. Really though, check that out if you’re interested in what drives this site.

This is day 2 of 100 Days To Offload.

Week 15

2025-04-12T14:00:00Z

Made even more changes to the resume.
Met with the job coach.
Applied to some jobs.
Position I had an interview for and took assessments last week let me know that they’re taking a pause about 30 minutes before an interview. These things happen, just a bit disappointed.
Completed a few lessons on Coursera and last weeks project was confirmed.
Had Taco Bell and went to the Bright Eyes and Cursive concert.
Finished the first season The Last of Us with my wife.📺
Remained stuck on Cicada Detroit puzzle 20.
Heading to the Zap Zone for my nephews birthday party.

This is day of 100 Days To Offload.

100 Days to Offload

2025-04-11T11:45:00Z

This is day 1 of 100 Days To Offload.

100 Days To Offload is a challenge to publish 100 posts on your personal blog in a year.

I’ve been trying to write more so I thought this would be a fun challenge. If you go to the website for the challenge they have a hall of fame for people that completed it. This means there are a number of interesting personal blogs to follow as well. Found a few more for the RSS reader.

Adding Pagination

2025-04-07T19:30:00Z

I don’t remember exactly why I removed the pagination for this site but with the increase of blogs posts I felt that I needed to add it back.

After trying and failing to get the standard jekyll-paginate to work I went ahead and setup jekyll-paginate-v2. This was easier than some had implied and look now there are multiple pages on this here blog.

This was on the todo list so I updated that as well.

First you must install the gem.

gem install jekyll-paginate-v2

Then make sure to update _config.yml. Obviously you don’t need all of these settings but this is what I’m using currently.

plugins:
  - jekyll-paginate-v2

pagination:
  enabled: true
  per_page: 5
  permalink: '/blog/page/:num/'
  title: ':title - page :num'
  limit: 0
  sort_field: 'date'
  sort_reverse: true

One thing that did trip me up is I needed to set two permalinks, one for the page itself and another within the pagination.

---
layout: layout
title: blog
permalink: /blog/
pagination:
  enabled: true
  permalink: /blog/page/:num/
---

From here I added some padding to the pagination and centered it to make sure it was easy to see.

Week 14

2025-04-04T15:30:00Z

Made even more changes to the resume.
Schedule a meeting with my job coach for next week.
File taxes joinlty for the first time. Pay instead of get a refund for the first time 🥳
Applied to some jobs.
Did a test for a position I applied for and have an interview next week.
Completed a few lessons on Coursera and have a project pending review.
Had dinner with my brother Matthew at Mexican Village.
Watched some Last of Us with my wife.📺
Remained stuck on Cicada Detroit puzzle 20.
Cleaned the trap on the dishwasher 🧼.
Did some normal laundry (sheets, my clothes, wifes clothes) and some not so normal laundry (chair covers).
Swept and mopped all the hard surface floors.
Vacuumed the carpeted areas.
Took down the Christmas Tree 🎄(do not check the date on this post 📆)
Picked up some groceries.
Made some chicken noodle soup 🍲.
Found new spots for some things that were on the kitchen counter and coffee table.
Installed MedusaJS locally.
Installed MedusaJS on Railway.

Week 13

2025-03-29T13:30:00Z

I made some additional changes to the resume.
Met with my NextJob job coach.
Applied to some jobs.
Got a call about one of the positions that I applied for and will be following up next week.
Had lunch with my mom at Sy Thai.
Did some classes on Coursera.
Updated the Indeed profile.
Enabled a month of LinkedIn Premium.
Watched some Last of Us with my wife.
Played Uber driver taking Leah and Noah around town while her car is in the shop.
Solved the Cicada Detroit puzzle 19 and am immediately stuck on 20.
Started taking daily notes in service of writing this post.
Fixed the time stamp in the footer of this page.

Job Search Personality Test

2025-03-24T16:00:00Z

As part of the job search and coaching I’ve taken a personality test offered by NextJob. Posted below are the results.

Gold Backup Blue Introvert #

Overall #

Realistic, grounded and practical, you are one of the pillars of your community and seen by others as able to get the job done. Gold/Blues honor “the system”, trust contracts and organize life and work around procedures. Your colleagues and family members all feel secure and stable under your watch - as long as they measure up to your high standards. You can, however, be the classic “Type A” personality, demanding much of others both at home and work. But those demands are never made capriciously; you think things through and always are cautious about changes.

With your highly developed management skills, duty-bound work ethic and ability to concentrate, you rise to top-level positions wherever you invest your efforts. Fierce loyalty to your company cements your status.

When undertaking a task, you bring to it logic, impersonal analysis, common sense and practical experience. Golds gravitate to situations where you have to plan ahead, set goals and control the schedule. Highly observant of details, you are gifted at implementing well-defined policies and ensuring that things remain orderly and on track. While reserved, you communicate in a style that is clear and direct and are seen as fair and consistent when dealing with others. You honor traditions and rituals, observing holidays, religious and cultural events with appropriate fanfare. For you, these times are important symbols of continuity to be passed on to the next generation.

“Appropriateness” is your watchword. Your strong morals lead you to judge others, and speak up if they seem to blur right and wrong. You simply want the world to stay organized and free from the chaos that follows when rules are broken. Even flamboyant dress and unconventional behavior try your tolerance.

Natural Strengths #

You:

Naturally adapt to the role assigned to you, be it leader or follower
Create and enforce policies, procedures, and schedules that keep everyone on track
Are fair with others and earn their respect
Have outstanding logistical skills – i.e. getting the right things, to the right people, in the right amounts, to the right place at the right time
Respect the chain of command
Attend to the practical needs of the organization
Are decisive
Uphold exacting standards

Challenges #

Your potential blind spots may include some of the following. You:

May prematurely dismiss new ideas. (Dismiss nothing until you investigate.)
May see only the flaws in the efforts of others and not give credit where credit is due. (Make it a point of giving some sort of affirmation to colleagues before listing flaws.)
Focus on immediate results and overlook long-range implications. (Invest some time in long-range planning and get more comfortable with it as a tool.)
Are fixed in supporting established ways of doing things. (The tried-and-true contribute much to efficiency. But they won’t keep your company alive when the market is changing.
Are rigid about how others should perform their responsibilities. (Results are the priority, not necessarily the process of getting there. Respect other methods while awaiting results.)

Best Work Environment #

You will be most productive and energized when your work culture:

Has clear rules and expectations and a well-defined hierarchy
Includes hard-working and logical co-workers who pride themselves on doing things right.
Is a stable and well-respected institution with a predictable future. You work hard and want to be rewarded with money and respect.
Rewards dependability and precision. You’re on time, have a well-planned schedule and do your job with consistency. No company runs well for long without a Gold/Blue Introvert
Involves concrete and practical projects and products. Intangible services are tough for you to quantify and measure. Stick with the things you can touch and see.
Is results-oriented. You are skeptical of any work that can’t be evaluated on a spreadsheet.
Values loyalty and commitment. In today’s workplace, however, placing your loyalty with a mentor may be better.
Allows for private space. As an Introvert, your batteries get drained when dealing with people, even if your people skills are superb. You think and perform better in a private space; insist on one as a condition of employment if at all possible.

Entrepreneurial Style #

Setting Goals #

You excel at setting goals and making plans to achieve them. You prioritize, follow through and evaluate progress effortlessly. What you are not good at is modifying your ideas to adapt to changing circumstances. Before casting your business plan in stone, run it by people you respect who are of different from you. Ask them what additional options to consider. Don’t rush into it, even if you are excited and energized. Then, schedule re-evaluations at specific points along the way. Mark your calendar to sit back and reflect whether your goals are being met or you need to readjust them.

At the Start of a Venture #

You are not one of the world’s “dreamers and schemers,” but many Golds have come up with brilliant business ideas and gotten rich from them. At your core, you are driven to be a responsible overseer of people and resources, and this makes you a cautious risk-taker. In your favor, you are not likely to be diverted by other opportunities. You will rely on tried-and-true methodology to move predictably from one milestone to the next. Once in business, your first priority is establishing order. Systems and procedures are in place virtually from Day One. The sooner you can create predictability in your business, whether in sales, manufactured inventory or cash flow, the more comfortable you are. Foreseeing and responding to changes in the marketplace will never be your forte, and handling unexpected crises is downright stressful to you. Make sure you have associates on board to handle emergencies and identify future trends and that might impact your business.

Approach To Money & Compensation #

Finances in general #

Money is important to your sense of security. You are highly focused on saving and long-term planning, and fully in control of your cash flow at all times. You abhor the misuse of money and rarely go into debt or squander the assets you have. Your investments have to be well researched, backed by a solid track record and fully documented with concrete facts. As long as investments meet these criteria, you’ll invest directly in the market; but mutual funds are a popular option for Golds. You want your portfolio to be your passport to a worry-free future, and you are likely to achieve this goal early in life. You have a limited tolerance for risk and volatility, favoring time-tested strategies. Fixed income instruments like bonds and GICs make you comfortable along with a portfolio of blue chip stocks. Meanwhile, you prefer working with well-established firms, insisting upon advisors who are organized, consistent and produce predictable results.

Compensation & Negotiating Style #

You are a focused and tough negotiator, having researched what you’re worth well in advance. Gold/Blues can be prone to “bag person syndrome” - the fear that you will wind up penniless on the streets. Because you feel your security is on the line, you accept nothing less than everything there is to get.

Job Search – Your Strengths and Potential Challenges #

With an interviewer whose style is close to your own, you will feel immediate rapport. However, if your interviewer is different, use the suggestions in parentheses below.

In following your natural interviewing style, you:

Are calm and composed. (This can look like disinterest – make sure to speak more than you normally do, especially at first.)
Present yourself as a capable and competent candidate. (You document your experience well, in an easy-to-follow manner.)
Prefer written communications before face-to-face meetings. (Gather facts from all sources.)
Share few feelings with people. (Interviewers rely on their emotional response to you as a big part of their decision-making process. Prioritize building a personal rapport with such an interviewer by preparing answers to their emotion-based questions. Role play with a friend.)
Focus on the present. (Especially if interviewing for a senior level position, you will need to prepare a position on future planning. Research public statements about the company’s future direction prior to an interview.)
Are patient with the length of the search and the procedures you need to follow. (You’re likely to be the last one standing in a multiple-interview, trial-task type of job screening.)
Follow through with all details; respect deadlines and commitments. (Interviewers respect that you send requested items, call to follow up and send thank-you notes. Your natural career exploration and strategizing strengths allow you to:
Be calm and composed in an interview
Focus on the needs of the present
Provide specific information, especially about the steps involved in completing projects
Present your background in a sequential, step-by-step way
Think before replying
Show confidence in your ability to deal with bottom line issues In order to tone down your potential blind spots, you need to:
Cushion your tendency to be abrupt; rehearse some areas of small talk
Prepare questions to ask interviewer
Prepare to talk about yourself on a personal level
Express enthusiasm and be assertive about selling, not just stating, your accomplishments
Do some thinking about a prospective company’s future direction
Be willing to consider less obvious career opportunities

From here it listed out some possible jobs but I didn’t want to recreate all the formatting so I’ve included a link to it here.

I don’t necessarily agree with all of this but many things rang true which surprised me honestly.

Light and Dark

2025-03-23T18:10:00Z

I’m a fan of dark mode on sites, in development editors, and in the operating system too. Staring at a mostly white screen all day is exhausting and I like the way the content on screen emerges from the darkness with dark mode enabled.

Inspired by this post from James G, I set about creating a light mode for this site. This is the reverse from what James had done as he started with a light mode but the the ideas are the same.

My :root to make this work currently looks like this.

:root {
    color-scheme: light dark;
    --dark-background-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);
    --dark-foreground-color: rgb(32, 255, 188);
    --dark-link-color: rgb(25, 209, 255);
    --dark-text-color: rgb(240,240,240);

    --light-background-color: rgb(240,240,240);
    --light-foreground-color: rgb(0, 119, 83);    
    --light-link-color: rgb(1, 151, 189);
    --light-text-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);

    --line-color: rgba(211, 211, 211, 30%);
  }

The color-scheme term is required to respect the users setting.

With the global variables set it’s just a matter of using light-dark() to set the appropriate colors.

p, li, ul {
    color: light-dark(var(--light-text-color), var(--dark-text-color));
}

I still really prefer the dark mode version of the site, so check that out if you’re interested. It’s just a matter of toggling between light and dark in the browser settings. In Zen browser it’s in ‘General > Language and Appearance’ which means I don’t even have to scroll in the settings.

Which ever mode you prefer I hope you like what you see.

Now Update and Todo List

2025-03-22T21:20:00Z

I’ve updated the now page following recent events.

now March of 2025 #

Personal #

Leah and I have booked AirBNB’s and we’re still going to France.

My position at JELD-WEN was eliminated and I was let go on 3/13/25. So, the job search begins!

Movies/TV #

Just finished Severance and this season hits a little different now. Dylan is literally rejected by a door company in the second episode. Also, we’ve just finished the latest seasons of Traitors and Traitors UK. Those UK folks played a really fun game.

Music #

I’ve still been listening to the Wicked soundtrack and the new Kendrick album. There has also been a bit of indie rock in there again.

Also #

Also, I have a few items I’ve identified and included in the todo list for the site. I don’t believe I’ve linked to this previously so I thought I would do so now.

Week 12

2025-03-21T12:00:00Z

It’s week one of my 12 Week Year but it’s the 12th week of the year so I’m calling it week 12. This is meant to be forward looking to a week note for every week of the year.

I updated my resume to showcase my experience, skills, and accomplishments as a Product Owner.
Signed up at NextJob to take advantage of that benefit from my previous employer.
Scheduled a meeting with a job coach for next week.
Updated my LinkedIn profile and added a few people that I previously worked with in the past.
Originally planned to apply to a few jobs this week but have been saving them for next week and a better resume.
Started documenting some specific projects I’ve had at work over the last few years.
Set resume/cv to appear in the main navigation.

Starting

2025-03-17T13:30:00Z

After 16 years, 9 months and 12 days I’m unemployed. It’s upsetting and scary but also exciting in a way. That’s a long time for anyone to be doing something and it would be nice to do something else.

Already I’m looking for ways to use my time productively. I’ve always been somewhat dubious about self help books and influencers of that type. However, I have found a few things lately that I’m going to try. Looking to add some structure in the near term but maybe they’ll stick around and become habits.

I really like the idea of Week Notes, a concept I’ve only been introduced to recently. The general idea is to post publicly (typically within an organization) what your team has worked on this week. Hopefully, making this information public gives other teams, leadership, etc., a better idea of what is going on. This of course is another silo breaking procedure but as activity more akin to a work journal.

Having sent status emails for years this seems like a nice way to add context to whatever dates may be out there. For example if there is something that comes up unexpectedly this could appear in the weeknote and help avoid future surprises. Of course this is not a replacement for other forms of communication but it may reach people outside of traditional channels. The public forum means not having to guess who should be included on the email chain.

More importantly than that a team can celebrate a win every week. There are things worth celebrating all the time. Too often focus is on a larger deliverable when so many smaller victories happen every week.

What does that mean for me though? I’m going to be working toward my next job every week and documenting these efforts may help me. Having a bit of a self check-in weekly seems valuable.

Which brings me to the rest of the plan I’m starting today. I’m acting with intent over the next 12 weeks implementing a much more casual version of the 12 Week Year after watching this video by Zach Highley. I’ve made a few goals and I’m going to keep track of what I’m doing to try and accomplish them.

To help me keep track of my goals and my planned activities for the 12 weeks I’ve added a template already setup for this sort of thing on Notion. If you’re not famililar with Notion it started as a note taking app like Evernote. But it has turned into a suite of tools for project management, documentation, and collaboration. Random promotion of Notion aside I’ve got the system setup I just need to start the work.

Now Page 2024

2024-12-06T12:00:00Z

While looking at personal sites for inspiration I found the idea of a now page. So I decided to make one for myself. There are lots of examples of this on NowNowNow but my now page is located at /now.

For now it includes a personal, movie/TV, and music section. For the music section I’ve added a line about the latest song I listened to on Spotify via last.fm.

This was a good opportunity to implement api access on the site via a private key. Which is something I understood in practice but had never actually implemented myself. Just not something I had experimented with in the past.

First thing I did was go to last.fm and get an api key. From there I read the documentation they provided and reviewed samples I found just searching ye olde interweb. Using the most barebone page imaginable to use the key and retrieve the information I was looking for. I have to say there was more trial and error than I thought here which I think is largely due to the type of documentation provided in the api docs.

Anyway, with that done I knew I could pull the information I was looking for and format it as needed. Piecing together the song title, artist, and album of the latest song was complete.

Next, I needed to move that private key somewhere to actually keep it private. While the test had hard coded the key onto the page it needs to be stored as an environment variable and accessed in a way that does not expose it to a client.

Luckily for me, my host of choice Netlify has some good documentation and site configuration to make this easier. There is a section for Environment Variables within the site configuration which allowed me to specify the api key.

From there I would need a way to access that information at run time versus having the build of this Jekyll site pull it into the code of the site. This was achieved by the use of Netlify functions which allow for server side Javascript to be run to access environment variables.

Prior to this addition there was not much configuration in the setup of this site for the Netlify build. Now there are a few more requirements and I’m not sure if it could go back to GitHub Pages.

Unfortunately, my compulsive upgrading has delayed the launch of the page a bit as well as a few of the supporting tools to build the site had some cascading dependency issues tied to updating one piece or another.

After the api key was setup, kept private in environment variables, accessed via a server side function call, and used to pull song details, I was ready to build the rest of the /now page. I had originally just setup a HTML page but I went ahead and converted it to markdown to utilize the existing templates.

Then I had to decide what was even happening now which I kept pretty light as it is just a first pass. I think having the page out there and reviewing it periodically would be a good sanity check from time to time.

Simple Silly

2024-11-21T12:30:00Z

I’ve decided not to figure out an image for this post and see if that helps get it together faster. I’m not happy with how the images I have on previous posts work with the latest layouts so I’m considering dropping them all together. I do think I could pull original sources and have the look less terrible.

Recent changes on the site have been focusing on un-bootstrapping the site. This is an excuse in part to experiment with flex box and modern CSS in general. I do not have any projects outside of this site that can scratch that itch. So I figured I would expriment with the site at first and then branch into other things.

I’ve been reading lots of blogs about things to add to personal sites. So I am making a list and will be making chainges and posting more often (he says again).

I’m happy with how much simple the site is now. Not having to provide all of bootstrap has significantly reduced the payload for a first draw.The site does not need a bunch of fancy buttons or styling so the critical css file is small. Frankly, it could be smaller still but I’m not great at css let alone optimizing css.

There was a version of the site that included cards for the blog posts including gradient borders with rounded corners but I decided to scale that way back. I’m not sure about the dashed lines but they work for the moment. I miss cleaner sites so I have been looking at simpler sites for inspiration. There are some fun ideas out there that I plan to incorporate to the site or just as a prompt.

Lighthouse

2024-07-26T12:30:00Z

This site is not big, but it is faster, and more accessible.

As the briefest of lead ins to this project I wanted to learn about modern approaches to speed and accessibility. I’ve spent some time on Mastodon and follow a number of people that post about these topics regularly.

I want this site to function as fast as it can and be accessible to folks who may not be interacting with it the same way I am. With that as a goal I downloaded the Lighthouse extension to analyze this site.

Starting off the site looked good for SEO and best practices but had some room for improvement with both performance and accessibility. Thankfully the score for each section comes with specific problems and ways to improve.

For performance images were the largest issue. They have been resized and converted to webp (from jpg). This brought the score up to 100 on desktop but the mobile version only ever got up to 95%. There remains a bit of css that is load blocking and I have not been able to find a way to resolve it without a significant rewrite.

As far as accessibility goes the usual suspects were the culprits. Images lacked alt tags and contrast was too low with some color choices for links. This is relatively easy to resolve. I updated my color choices in CSS to increase contrast. Here too mobile is at 95% and I cannot figure out why. Out of frustration I set the links to white and the background to black and Lighthouse still reported a contrast issue. Anyway I’ve been updating alt tags but I will probably go back and make them a little better when I have time.

Here are the final scores!

Desktop #

Mobile #

I am happy to have these scores as high as they are but I do not think this is over just yet. Having read a bunch of ways to improve things, now I want to go further. 95% is pretty good on mobile for performance and accessibility but is there any reason why these cannot be 100% as well.

The rewrite I mentioned earlier is incoming. This site is simply more complicated than it needs to be and I really want to experiment with critical CSS being inlined to prevent load blocking.

There is no reason that this site should be a recolor of an existing theme. Especially when that theme is introducing so much unnecessary overhead. Anyway, more on that to come.

The image above is from Photo by Nathan Jennings on Unsplash.

I got married!

2024-07-11T20:00:00Z

It’s been a little over a month now since I got married.

First of all the planning had been going on for a few years and I’m happy to say everything went really well. We benefitted greatly by having the entire event in one location. The Whitney is a really nice venue with an outdoor location for the ceremony and delicious food.

We managed to find lots of great inspiration on Pinterest and vendors on Etsy. There are threats at the moment that Etsy is going in a bad direction but we’ve been very happy with the vendors we found. We spent way too long considering invitations but managed to pick out just about everything else very quickly. It was really nice to know that when planning something my wife and I were so in sync.

We had a first look in the library with just us and her son.The ceremony was in the garden where the weather was warm for May but sunny. It was late enough in the year that everything was green and some flowers had bloomed. It was a small ceremony and dinner with just close family.

Photos took a long time but we’re really happy with the result. I’ve updated my socials with a solo image from the day which I like quite a bit. We’ve got a book being printed and we are going to pick out at least one image to frame.

After the wedding we stayed downtown at The Detroit Club which was a bit fancy but the stay was relaxing. We were within walking distance of a Starbucks and we booked a spa day. The Movement festival was happening downtown so when we rode the People Mover there were some interesting folks making their way around town.

The image above is from a wedding site I made but never showed to anyone but my wife.

Add Comments

2024-01-13T18:00:00Z

My blog has Mastodon powered comments now and this post is really just a test for that.

This is almost completely the Cassidy James implementation of comments via Mastodon. Although I do have plans to do some more specific styling for this site it works well as is. Don’t have much more to say about it other than thanks to Mr. James and if you’re interested in adding Mastodon comments to your site I’ve linked to Cassidy’s post about it.

I may go back and add comments to previous posts but for now this post will be the only one with comments. The implementation requires an API call with reference to an existing post on Mastodon and I’m not sure if I want to be posting about previous entries in this blog.

The image above is from Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash.

A Stream?

2023-12-29T13:00:00Z

I’ve been tinkering around with livestreaming and wanted to document some of the things I found. The experiment has been to stream to both Twitch and YouTube starting with just one or the other and eventually to both at the same time.

First, lets talk audio. I’ve spent far too much time adjusting the audio for both personal streaming and for work. Current setup utilizes virtual cables and obs studio filters to achieve what I think is pretty good sounding audio. I’ve primarily been following EposVox audio quality guides.

I’m using a shock mounted Yeti Blue microphone and passing it throught Noise Suppression using the built in RNNoise method. I haven’t noticed any CPU impact and this works so well. I have the gain on the microphone down very low but I’ve turned the digital gain boosted by 10 dB. This can sound weird without additional filtering but increases my volume without having to be right on top of the microphone.

Next there are a few rounds of correcting for that initial gain boosting and making things sound good. The first round of EQ that uses ReaEQ mostly to cut highs, lows, and a few nasaly places in the mids. This is followed up with a compressor with a 3:1 ratio and a -20dB threshold. From there I do have a Noise Gate set but I’m not sure if it is strictly necessary with all the other things happening. Lastly, there is an additional EQ for some high end and normal speaking range boosting for clarity and to add interest.

For the camera side I have a Razer Kiyo that has most of the default settings but with the white balance manually adjusted. It never quite gets that right and I haven’t found the right filters to counter it consistently. I do typically increase the contrast a little and apply a LUT. This is mostly to add back in some warmth as the default settings can read a bit cold. One thing I wanted to add is that the camera in obs has its own dedicated scene that is then added to other scenes to enable different presentation of the same source. I was running into an issue where changing it on one scene would change it in every scene. This is apparently a known thing about obs but it did cause some confusion.

The baked in streaming setup for OBS is so good it doesn’t typically need to be tweaked. I spent the beter part of the last year streaming exclusively to twitch. This is for a few reasons. First, up until recently it was against twitch’s terms of service to stream to more than one platform. Also, for whatever reason I associate twitch with streaming more than YouTube.

I have been experimenting doing both lately but have determined the only way for me to do that is to use a third party. Specifically, I’ve been using Restream to simultaneously stream to both twitch and YouTube. My upload bandwith is not good so I cannot support both at the same time myself. Setting these up is no more complicated than setting up accounts at each and giving access to Restream. The most complicated piece is setting some of the bitrate and sizing information that will work for both. My current setup is not as good for YouTube as it could be due to the limitations coming from twitch.

I stream infrequently, but when I do it’s at either EntropyGrows Twitch or EntropyGrows YouTube

The image above is from Photo by Raphael Schaller on Unsplash.

Another New Design

2023-08-12T20:00:00Z

It’s a new design, yes it is! This site gets more visual updates than it does blog posts but that’s where we’re at currently. What follows is a brief write up about the decisions that went into reworking the design of this site and what is to come.

The previous template for the site used an altered version of a template that I liked but was never quite happy with. This new version takes a similar approach but is way easier to setup and make adjustments. The other piece to consider is that I never really felt comfortable with leading with a blog as I’m not great about keeping up with it obviously.

There are a few things about this template and the adjustments I’ve made that I’m happy with. For instance there is significantly less visual clutter on any and every page involved. As I mentioned above I don’t want to lead with a blog so now there is an introductory header element that has my face and a tag line introduction. This is preferable to jumping right into a blog for me. My preference is for dark mode reading so the site reflects that. There is some additional adjustment required to get it where it needs to be but I’m happy with it for now. Additionally I’ve added some brand colors that were lacking in the previous site which was all grey.

My next approach is to optimize and make it more accessible. I’ve ran lighthouse on it and the plan is to make as many of the suggested changes as possible. One main problem that I agree with and want to correct first is the level of contrast. Some of the colors I’ve chosen and even the standard text are not easy enough to read. I like the way it looks currently but I do hope I’m not the only one that ever looks at the site.

I would like to follow some tutorials and add comments to my posts. While I don’t suppose I’ll get much in the way of interaction the project to add them using ActivityPub via Mastodon seems interesting.

Next projects will be documented and shared here. I’m not a web developer but I do like to poke around with this sort of thing so I’ll be recording that information in a blog in 2023 and beyond. Imagine that!

The image above is from Photo by Raphael Schaller on Unsplash.

I'm Virtual Now

2022-05-14T20:00:00Z

Guess ‘now’ is relative with working at home for the last two years. As of yesterday I no longer have a desk at an office that I could return to when this whole pandemic blows over.

I have a new role, responsibilities, and more people relying on me than I ever have before. This requires me to make fewer explorations into pet projects. In the past I could find some faster way of doing something work related but now I need to delegate that activity to someone else.

As a Product Owner the daily activities do not typically require much coding so I’m thinking of spending more personal time trying different things out. I downloaded blender again and am thinking of playing with some procedural generation. Last week I wrote some python code to grab some image data so I am thinking about some python projects down the road as well.

Before digging too much into any of that this site’s dependencies are out of control and my plan is to remove them and simplify the entire setup. Not seeing the point in a build process that is broken every time I attempt to build this site. What I mean is the gulp setup will be scaled back dramatically and the patchwork of node modules that build this site will be mostly removed.

The image above is from Joshua Sortino on Unsplash.

Time for a Change

2017-04-04T20:40:00Z

The changes to this site now are strictly cosmetic but it is interesting to play with the capabilities of Sass and CSS. I’ve been unenthusiastic about the previous color scheme for a while so this is a nice brighter setup.

The image above is from Lemuel Butler on Unsplash.

Take it Home With You

2015-09-13T20:00:00Z

The next two weeks are going to be exceedingly difficult not to bring work home. I’m prone to work through things I’m working on at work while I’m at home. This usually stays to the realm of talking through possible solutions or planning my day or week ahead of time.

Today, I went as far as signing into Citrix, Trello, and Slack to plan the upcoming week. We have a fairly aggressive timeline on the current project and I’d prefer to avoid anyone else having to spend time on it outside of work. I think we can make the timing work we just have to stick to the plan and hopefully do away with any unknowns early in the process.

This project is the first big project with the new team. We’ve got everyone up to speed and on the same page, so I forsee a busy but productive week. I’m excited to demonstrate all of what we can do.

The image above is from Roya Ann Miller on Unsplash.