Organic fireworks.

Explained Independence Day to my inquiring 5-year-old son today, as best I could. He responded:

But dad, war is not good. People get hurt and that’s not something that we should be remembering.

Couldn’t argue with that.

I just want Apple to allow me to choose “natural” scrolling for the trackpad, and regular scrolling for the mouse wheel. Is that too much to ask?

I love that my personalized radio station played me Ja Rule - Mesmerize on my drive home today.

I’m 43 and just now feel like I have enough PTO to stay somewhat sane, yet enough responsibility to feel guilty using it.

We’ve got a camping trip with friends this weekend that we booked in January (you have to do that here), and now it’s supposed to be around 100 degrees each day. Seriously considering sleeping in the Tesla and testing out Camp Mode.

Several days later, all 20 years of emails — 117,006 messages at 11 gb — have been imported to iCloud. After setting up mail forwarding, I no longer need to keep Gmail in Mail via IMAP because it’s all searchable. Delayed retrieval is also solved by forwarding. Perhaps the most boring post ever.

Can I filter words out of the timeline with Micro.blog? I don’t like unfollowing people just because of occasional content, but I also try to throttle certain political posts.

Sometimes I’ll be on my back deck and hear some kid scream at a video game, or someone practicing the trumpet, and I think: “how dare they disrupt my peace!” Then I remember what it must be like to live next to us.

Sure seems like everyone around me is getting Covid these days…

4 minutes of a day in the life.

Casimir Pulaski Day - Sufjan Stevens

Took the kids out in the canoe on the Willamette this afternoon with our friend P, who brought her paddle board. Great drop-in point in Newberg. Beautiful, calm day for it. The old 18.5’ Wenonah is still a champ. 🛶

Remembered a lyric that has nothing to do with my current situation but is just so simple and clever, I wanted to write it down.

The sadest part of a broken heart isn’t the ending so much as the start. — Leslie Feist

I slept in today because of the sleeping pill I took in the middle of the night, but I was productive despite how groggy I felt when I woke up. I took 5 big bags of bottles back for the deposits, picked up groceries, and vacuumed my car. I picked up the backyard a little bit and blew the leaves off the deck.

S’s dad came for a visit today, who was in town for work. It’s been nice having him swing through more often the last year or so, but sometimes the heads-up is short, and there’s a lot to do to make the place presentable. S worked her butt off yesterday and today getting the place cleaned …

Considering putting my big in scouts this year and of course I ended up on an Etsy page for alternative merit badges. Link

I’m slowly getting better at this.

Uploading 20 years’ worth of email to iCloud. Hoping for a completion date sometime before 2027.

Ice cream truck audibly enters the neighborhood…

2-year-old daughter: “what’s that noise?!”

Wife: “it’s an ambulance.”

The candidates are very bad, but worse still is the media manipulation and corruption. Between the 2016 and 2024 elections, I’ve lost all faith in this system. The only reason I even vote anymore is because of SCOTUS.

I’m excited about the possibilities for music discovery with AI. Imagine being served up recommendations, not just in terms of genre or by other listerners’ tastes, but instead based on analysis of tempo, mood, time signature, key. Maybe even by characteristics of the musicians themselves.

Finished reading with my son: The Stonekeeper’s Curse: A Graphic Novel (Amulet #2) by Kazu Kibuishi 📚

Not sure why I never thought of this until now, but you can use Ghost as a sort of headless CMS for Micro.blog via RSS. There are of course limitations (e.g. editing mistakes), but it can even handle your newsletter with an embed while Micro.blog handles the static site, cross posting and comments.

Here’s some Detroit style pizza I ate at the new Ranch location. 🍕