Whelp, the first half of the year has come and gone. The country is heading to authoritarianism, but I'm still kicking.

Another Lap Around the Sun

I made it another orbit of the sun and am now a year older, and maybe wiser...maybe. I don't really care all that much about my birthday anymore. I'm not sure what it is about it. I don't dread them, I recognize getting older is a fact of life, and the alternative is worse. I'm just generally "meh".

My wife and I took off some extra days to celebrate and made a long weekend out of it. We spent some time at a coffee shop/craft distillery, went to some independent book shops, and spent time together. It really was a nice way to spend one's birthday.

Too Damned Hot Too Damned Early

It's not even the dog days of summer and we're already hitting nearly triple digits on the thermometer. I don't do well with the heat. I like it cool. The 50s and 60s are my jam. Having temperatures reaching 95+ is, well, absolutely awful. It's hot, it's humid, it's miserable. I take a step outside and it feels like someone dumped a bucket of water on me.

Thankfully Tess is adaptable. We had been taking her on 3 walks a day. One in the morning right after we get up, once over lunch, and then after work. With her fur coat and the hot pavement, we've given up the mid-day walk and have stuck to before and after work, with the one after work sometimes being pushed to after dinner. I want to make sure she survives the inferno with the rest of us.

Ubuntu as a Daily Driver

After MacOS Tahoe was announced, I decided to finally upgrade my MacBook to MacOS Sequoia. That was a mistake. It's performance since upgrading has been atrocious. It's been constantly locking up and freezing. Oddly, it seems to handle better when undocked. Either way, I haven't felt like trying to troubleshoot it yet. I need to at some point, but in the mean time, I've generally been using my Ubuntu desktop as my primary machine. It's been working well. I've been a fan of Linux since college, but haven't used it extensively for a while. There are still some rough edges compared with MacOS, but none of them are dealbreakers. I've been able to do just about everything I need to with Ubuntu.

Right now, the only thing I can't get working is EntityFramework and the Microsoft SQL Server docker image. Once that is taken care of, I should be in good shape.

"Forcing" Habits

I've recently gotten off the writing and guitar train. Towards the beginning of the year I was writing and playing the guitar more. Over the last week or so, I've set reminders to play the guitar for 15 minutes a day, and to write 30 minutes. I'm hoping this helps prod me to continuing the habits. It can be too easy to fall off the habit, so maybe a todo item in Things might help. So far, so good.

Back in Net in Hockey

The lower league I play goalie in started back up this month. Three games in, we're a respectable 1-1-1 (yes there are ties, yes I'm fine with that). We got some new players and are starting to gel as a team. I recorded my first shutout the other night in a while. I'd say that I was standing on my head all night in net, but I really wasn't. I made some key saves, but the defense in front of me made my job easy.