One thing I really wish Apple would do is force in-app browsers to follow rules you’ve setup within Safari on iOS.
For example, if I have my local news outlets set to automatically convert to Reader mode when opening an article, it should also do that when I click an article in Google News.
Rule No. 1 as a land use planner: be very careful what you tell real estate agents.
>Remember that the biggest predictor of work happiness is nonwork happiness. I have witnessed this throughout my own career, in myself and in others: When things are good in the rest of your life, they seem more stable and less bothersome at the job.
[The Happiest Way to Change Jobs – The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/happiness-careers-change-jobs/674309/)
Despite getting a lot of rain 8 months out of the year, the PNW gets virtually zero precip during the 4 hottest months.
With worsening droughts, I’ve become a big water conservationist. 5 years ago, I had a 3,100 gallon rain cistern installed. I can burn through this in 2 mos. on just 3 raised beds.
People are often surprised to learn that I have Italian citizenship because I don’t look like a stereotypical Italian.
My great grandmother was fully Italian, but she and her family were from the Veneto Region, specifically Cadore in the Dolomites. She had blue eyes and blonde hair.
I created some iOS shortcuts awhile back that check Pitchfork’s Best New Music RSS feeds, presents a menu of recent items, and opens your selection in Apple Music if available.
Here’s the Best New Albums Shortcut I made, if anyone is interested: [iCloud Shortcut Link](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/7e89413692cf4f72a7882c9c80353930)
A peaceful morning walk with my first-born.
Current home improvement project: removing a soffit in my kitchen. It only took me 7 years to get this far after removing the cabinets when I moved in. Check back in 2026 when I have this thing patched.
Any other eldest siblings of the 80s and 90s wish they would’ve had some musical *guidance* during that time? Like, I should’ve been listening to Sonic Youth and New Order but instead it was Bon Jovi and Boyz II Men. I mean, I *do* appreciate the comedy of it all.
On the drive to school this morning, the kids were being unusually quiet, so I asked my 4-year-old son if he’d thought anymore about what he wanted to be when he grows up.
He’s been really interested in Spider-Man lately, so I was expecting to hear the usual stuff like ‘super hero’ or ‘fireman’. But he flipped the script and said he wanted to cut tumors out of people. That caught me off guard and tugged at my heart strings a little.
Unfortunately, I’ve had to have some tough conversations with him from a pretty young age. One of my younger brothers (his uncle) died in 2021 of a brain tumor at age 37. It was a mixed glioma he had been dealing with for 7 or 8 years, the incurable kind. It was a terribly sad time in my life, one that no doubt impacted my family life. As a result, my son has asked us a lot of questions about my brother and the circumstances surrounding his death.
These are not topics I ever expected to discuss with him at such an early age, and I hate having to tell him about these realities of life. My natural inclination is to shelter him, and I’ve tried to avoid the topic when possible, or to reframe the discussion, but he is very perceptive and can be quite persistent.
I try to wrap these conversations up within feelings of gratitude for the lives we have, or in celebration of the life he lived, or with a focus on being in the present moment. But I also don’t want to deny his real feelings on the issue. It’s a lot for a kid to process, coming into awareness of our finite nature, but it’s clear he knows when I’m not being completely transparent with him.
This morning, he didn’t mention my brother directly when he brought up the tumor comment, but I’m certain that’s where the idea came from. I used this as an opportunity to talk to him about what a surgeon does, how they help people, and that it requires learning a lot of science and how our bodies work. I told him that he could absolutely be a surgeon one day.
I didn’t have a dad at his age, so I’m especially sensitive to how my words and actions might influence him. Whether he becomes a surgeon or a mechanic, I hope more than anything that I can be a good role model for my kids, and to do a decent job preparing them emotionally to recognize their blessings, weather the difficult times, and have the confidence to go after their dreams.
Hard to believe I’ve had my car for 10 years, almost a quarter of my life. Just waiting for that head gasket to go. (Photo from 2013)
Can someone create a guitar tuner app that’s accessible from iOS control center?
I did a Barre3 class with my wife this morning and it really helped me understand how my personal health has taken a backseat the last couple of years. I get out a lot, but rarely do full body workouts. Hope this helps motivate me moving forward.
I’ve started selectively blocking JavaScript with a Safari extension, mostly on news sites. Just can’t take the garbage anymore, like banners and auto-playing videos. Most of the web is just unusable anymore, in my experience. Can we start over?
Is participation in the Micro.blog timeline an all or nothing affair?
I saw the update about post-specific sharing for cross-posting, but what about right here on the Mb timeline? [@help](https://micro.blog/help)
Yesterday at the park.
I experience this thing where people talk over me all the time at work and it causes me to not want to speak up very often.
I work overwhelmingly with women and I find my experience ironic given that the media has focused on men dominating work discussions in recent years.
I had some issues with incompatible pickup screw sizes, but I got most of my Telecaster build put together yesterday. So far, I’m happy with how it is turning out.
Every once in a while, that sentimental feeling creeps in, and I miss the friendships and relationships that have come and gone.
I know those relationships wouldn’t be the same today, even had we stayed in touch. I’m not the same person that I was. But I’m still in there, even if just a little.
Folks on the East Coast are getting a small taste of what the West Coast has experienced every year since I moved here in 2015. Here’s a screenshot I took in September 2020. At one point we were over 1,000 ppm here in the Tualatin Valley.
This is what I mean about men’s sizes not making sense to me anymore. This is a 2XL. I realize I’m not exactly a small man, but this is cotton and will shrink. In what universe should a 6 ft’ tall, fairly average-built man, be wondering if maybe he should be buying a 3XL?
As humans, we get so easily accostomed to things. Whether great or awful, almost anything can become normal.
If I could talk to my teenage self, I would try to convey just how much value there is in being in a field that’s in high demand, and to maybe try to focus on getting a creative role in such a field.
For the most part, I like what I do as a planner, but there is very little creativity, and the options are extremely limited in terms of where we can go. It hamstrings your ability to move about the country or world, or work remotely for yourself, when you have a career in a field that is so competitive and tied to locations.
When looking for a job as a planner, not only does there have to be an opening where you want to live, but also the competition is incredibly high for these jobs. Hundreds of people applied for several of the jobs I’ve held. It took me 5 years of applying to land a job in the Portland region because I didn’t live here already or know the state and local land use policies. I had to take a job in an allied field for a few years in order to make my way into a planning role within the same organization.
The universities just produce too many of us land use urban planners, selling it as a much more interesting and desirable role than it actually is. What we’re sold is this idea that we’ll all be designing livable cities and helping communities become better places. But in reality, It’s mostly thankless work, often viewed as obstructionist to people’s hopes and dreams, and very bureaucratic. We are blamed for things beyond our control, when in reality we implement plans driven by elected officials and their constituents in the community. Too much of our jobs are dictated by accommodating the automobile, too.
It took so much struggle and hard work to get where I am now, in both my career and in getting to my current location. I am only now at a senior level in my 40s when many of the people with whom I went to grad school left the field altogether long ago to chase better jobs, in better locations.
Right now, my wife and I are still pining to move abroad for a couple years with our small children. But I am struggling thinking of anything I could do to make a living. There really is no way for me to do my current work and go on such an adventure. I can’t help but think that if I had gone into another role, I would have a lot more flexibility. I am having some regrets about my life choices in this respect.
One bummer about not being an early adopter of Micro.blog is that my first name is taken as a username by someone who posted 4 short updates in 2017/2018 and hasn’t posted since. Fists to the sky, [@bryan](https://micro.blog/bryan).
One of my favorite lyrics:
A good woman will pick you apart
A box full of suggestions for your possible heart
But you may be offended and you may be afraid
But don’t walk away, don’t walk away
“Land Locked Blues” by Bright Eyes
One thing I really wish Apple would do is force in-app browsers to follow rules you’ve setup within Safari on iOS.
For example, if I have my local news outlets set to automatically convert to Reader mode when opening an article, it should also do that when I click an article in Google News.
Rule No. 1 as a land use planner: be very careful what you tell real estate agents.
>Remember that the biggest predictor of work happiness is nonwork happiness. I have witnessed this throughout my own career, in myself and in others: When things are good in the rest of your life, they seem more stable and less bothersome at the job.
[The Happiest Way to Change Jobs – The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/happiness-careers-change-jobs/674309/)
Despite getting a lot of rain 8 months out of the year, the PNW gets virtually zero precip during the 4 hottest months.
With worsening droughts, I’ve become a big water conservationist. 5 years ago, I had a 3,100 gallon rain cistern installed. I can burn through this in 2 mos. on just 3 raised beds.
People are often surprised to learn that I have Italian citizenship because I don’t look like a stereotypical Italian.
My great grandmother was fully Italian, but she and her family were from the Veneto Region, specifically Cadore in the Dolomites. She had blue eyes and blonde hair.
I created some iOS shortcuts awhile back that check Pitchfork’s Best New Music RSS feeds, presents a menu of recent items, and opens your selection in Apple Music if available.
Here’s the Best New Albums Shortcut I made, if anyone is interested: [iCloud Shortcut Link](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/7e89413692cf4f72a7882c9c80353930)
A peaceful morning walk with my first-born.
Current home improvement project: removing a soffit in my kitchen. It only took me 7 years to get this far after removing the cabinets when I moved in. Check back in 2026 when I have this thing patched.
Any other eldest siblings of the 80s and 90s wish they would’ve had some musical *guidance* during that time? Like, I should’ve been listening to Sonic Youth and New Order but instead it was Bon Jovi and Boyz II Men. I mean, I *do* appreciate the comedy of it all.
On the drive to school this morning, the kids were being unusually quiet, so I asked my 4-year-old son if he’d thought anymore about what he wanted to be when he grows up.
He’s been really interested in Spider-Man lately, so I was expecting to hear the usual stuff like ‘super hero’ or ‘fireman’. But he flipped the script and said he wanted to cut tumors out of people. That caught me off guard and tugged at my heart strings a little.
Unfortunately, I’ve had to have some tough conversations with him from a pretty young age. One of my younger brothers (his uncle) died in 2021 of a brain tumor at age 37. It was a mixed glioma he had been dealing with for 7 or 8 years, the incurable kind. It was a terribly sad time in my life, one that no doubt impacted my family life. As a result, my son has asked us a lot of questions about my brother and the circumstances surrounding his death.
These are not topics I ever expected to discuss with him at such an early age, and I hate having to tell him about these realities of life. My natural inclination is to shelter him, and I’ve tried to avoid the topic when possible, or to reframe the discussion, but he is very perceptive and can be quite persistent.
I try to wrap these conversations up within feelings of gratitude for the lives we have, or in celebration of the life he lived, or with a focus on being in the present moment. But I also don’t want to deny his real feelings on the issue. It’s a lot for a kid to process, coming into awareness of our finite nature, but it’s clear he knows when I’m not being completely transparent with him.
This morning, he didn’t mention my brother directly when he brought up the tumor comment, but I’m certain that’s where the idea came from. I used this as an opportunity to talk to him about what a surgeon does, how they help people, and that it requires learning a lot of science and how our bodies work. I told him that he could absolutely be a surgeon one day.
I didn’t have a dad at his age, so I’m especially sensitive to how my words and actions might influence him. Whether he becomes a surgeon or a mechanic, I hope more than anything that I can be a good role model for my kids, and to do a decent job preparing them emotionally to recognize their blessings, weather the difficult times, and have the confidence to go after their dreams.
Hard to believe I’ve had my car for 10 years, almost a quarter of my life. Just waiting for that head gasket to go. (Photo from 2013)
Can someone create a guitar tuner app that’s accessible from iOS control center?
I did a Barre3 class with my wife this morning and it really helped me understand how my personal health has taken a backseat the last couple of years. I get out a lot, but rarely do full body workouts. Hope this helps motivate me moving forward.
I’ve started selectively blocking JavaScript with a Safari extension, mostly on news sites. Just can’t take the garbage anymore, like banners and auto-playing videos. Most of the web is just unusable anymore, in my experience. Can we start over?
Is participation in the Micro.blog timeline an all or nothing affair?
I saw the update about post-specific sharing for cross-posting, but what about right here on the Mb timeline? [@help](https://micro.blog/help)
Yesterday at the park.
I experience this thing where people talk over me all the time at work and it causes me to not want to speak up very often.
I work overwhelmingly with women and I find my experience ironic given that the media has focused on men dominating work discussions in recent years.
I had some issues with incompatible pickup screw sizes, but I got most of my Telecaster build put together yesterday. So far, I’m happy with how it is turning out.
Every once in a while, that sentimental feeling creeps in, and I miss the friendships and relationships that have come and gone.
I know those relationships wouldn’t be the same today, even had we stayed in touch. I’m not the same person that I was. But I’m still in there, even if just a little.
Folks on the East Coast are getting a small taste of what the West Coast has experienced every year since I moved here in 2015. Here’s a screenshot I took in September 2020. At one point we were over 1,000 ppm here in the Tualatin Valley.
This is what I mean about men’s sizes not making sense to me anymore. This is a 2XL. I realize I’m not exactly a small man, but this is cotton and will shrink. In what universe should a 6 ft’ tall, fairly average-built man, be wondering if maybe he should be buying a 3XL?
As humans, we get so easily accostomed to things. Whether great or awful, almost anything can become normal.
If I could talk to my teenage self, I would try to convey just how much value there is in being in a field that’s in high demand, and to maybe try to focus on getting a creative role in such a field.
For the most part, I like what I do as a planner, but there is very little creativity, and the options are extremely limited in terms of where we can go. It hamstrings your ability to move about the country or world, or work remotely for yourself, when you have a career in a field that is so competitive and tied to locations.
When looking for a job as a planner, not only does there have to be an opening where you want to live, but also the competition is incredibly high for these jobs. Hundreds of people applied for several of the jobs I’ve held. It took me 5 years of applying to land a job in the Portland region because I didn’t live here already or know the state and local land use policies. I had to take a job in an allied field for a few years in order to make my way into a planning role within the same organization.
The universities just produce too many of us land use urban planners, selling it as a much more interesting and desirable role than it actually is. What we’re sold is this idea that we’ll all be designing livable cities and helping communities become better places. But in reality, It’s mostly thankless work, often viewed as obstructionist to people’s hopes and dreams, and very bureaucratic. We are blamed for things beyond our control, when in reality we implement plans driven by elected officials and their constituents in the community. Too much of our jobs are dictated by accommodating the automobile, too.
It took so much struggle and hard work to get where I am now, in both my career and in getting to my current location. I am only now at a senior level in my 40s when many of the people with whom I went to grad school left the field altogether long ago to chase better jobs, in better locations.
Right now, my wife and I are still pining to move abroad for a couple years with our small children. But I am struggling thinking of anything I could do to make a living. There really is no way for me to do my current work and go on such an adventure. I can’t help but think that if I had gone into another role, I would have a lot more flexibility. I am having some regrets about my life choices in this respect.
One bummer about not being an early adopter of Micro.blog is that my first name is taken as a username by someone who posted 4 short updates in 2017/2018 and hasn’t posted since. Fists to the sky, [@bryan](https://micro.blog/bryan).
One of my favorite lyrics:
A good woman will pick you apart
A box full of suggestions for your possible heart
But you may be offended and you may be afraid
But don’t walk away, don’t walk away
“Land Locked Blues” by Bright Eyes