Keith Wagner - Week Notes

Week Notes for March 29 - April 11 (#94)

2026-04-12T18:32:00Z

I was on vacation last week so this week is a double issue.

Cape May Trip

Cape May is one of my wife and my favorite places to be. Right by the Atlantic Ocean. Salt air and breeze, it's gorgeous and active year round. We decided to spend a long weekend there for my wife's birthday. The weather was mostly cooperative, though it rained on Easter. It wasn't a big deal as the temperature was nice we just sat out on Congress Hall's veranda covered and protected from the rain.

It was a relaxing trip. We didn't do all that much overall. A trip to some wineries, and breweries, but other than than that, we just relaxed, reading, writing, and enjoying some time away from work. It was perect.

Short Work Weeks

Thanks to the long weekend, I had back to back short weeks at work. I felt productive the days I was in, but it's always nice to have a break.

Back to Yard Work

It's spring time here in Pennsylvania, which means we need to get back to taking care of our yards and gardens. I'm finally going to seed the spot in our yard where we had to take down a massive oak tree two years ago. I also want to finish clearing out the brush around one of our trees in the side yard that I meant to do last year but never got around to. And of course, back to mowing the lawn. I want to take care of most of this now before the temperature gets to be too hot. Working outside in the 60s is fine. 80+ out...not so much.

Alton Brown

On Saturday, my wife and I drove out to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to see An Evening of Alton Brown. I'm a fan of his since I watched Good Eats. I appreciate the way he mixes in science, food history, and jokes into talking about food and recipes. He describes his show as Julia Child meets Monty Python and Mr. Wizard. The show matches that, as did his live appearance. He went through some of his thoughts on food and as always did it in an interesting and humorous way with some live demonstrations. It was a fun night and if he by chance goes on tour again, I'd definitely go.

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Week Notes for March 22 - 28 (#93)

2026-03-29T11:51:00Z

It was a mostly quiet week, somewhat productive, somewhat lazy.

Project Hail Mary

My wife and I saw Project Hail Mary Tuesday on IMAX and it was really good. Having recently re-read the book in anticipation of the movie, I was impressed with how well they kept true to the spirit and the content of the book. I'd highly recommend going to see it.

Progress on the Sunroom

I put the first coat of paint on the windowsill and trim on one side of the sunroom. It looks really nice. It might be white paint against primer, but the white pops. Which is what I want. I'm looking forward to getting the paint for the bead board to bring in some color.

Pokémon FireRed

Succumbing to nostalgia, I picked up Pokémon FireRed for the Nintendo Switch. So far it seems to hold the magic the original Pokémon Red & Blue had back in the day.

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Week Notes for March 15 - 21 (#92)

2026-03-22T18:05:00Z

Spent the first half recovering from a cold, then enjoyed the nice weekend weather.

Recovering

I took it easy this week recovering from whatever cold I caught. Monday was crud and I missed hockey, but starting Tuesday I got back on the mend. My nose was like a faucet most of the week, but it's starting to get back to normal...just in time for allergy season. Despite the urge to get right back out exercising, I opted to rest most of the week to put myself in a better position.

Beautiful Weekend Weather

Other than some rain overnight on Friday, the weather has been gorgeous. All weekend I spent time out on my porch going through my RSS feeds, writing, and enjoying the nice weather. I did get back on the exercise train, taking advantage of the weather to run Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Only 3-4 miles each, but it felt good to be out running in shorts and a t-shirt.

Yard Work Season

It's spring, so that means the weather is nice enough for me to do some yard work. It ends up being too hot in the summer, so I try to do most of the necessary work in the spring and fall. This weekend's task was to get some dirt and finally plant grass where the oak tree we had to have taken down two years ago sat. I had to hold off on the grass seed as I realized we need to have a plumber over to fix our outdoor spigot as it snapped off at the end of last year. It'll give us time to see if we need more dirt as it settles, but it's always something with home ownership.

Finally Starting the Sunroom

Last week, before I got sick, I started putting the first coat of primer on the beadboard. Friday, I put the second coat on. Due to the furniture, I'm doing half the room at a time, but it looks nice being all white. I need to do the two coats of paint on the window sill and trim, then two coats on the walls, then shift the furniture and do it all over again. Might not be the most efficient, especially since we'll be revamping the room afterwards, but it's nice to have some progress made.

Cooking

Chicken Pot Pie Pasta

This turned out great. It had a nice creamy texture that you'd expect to find in a chicken pot pie. The egg noodles were a nice touch.

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Week Notes for March 8 - 14 (#91)

2026-03-15T10:39:00Z

It was a quiet week for the most part. The biggest downside is that I woke up feeling crummy Saturday.

Smoke Alarm Mystery

Over the last three weeks, my wife and I have been dealing with a mystery in one of our bedrooms. The smoke detector keeps going off. There's no sight, smell, or hint of smoke in the room. I've tried rotating the smoke detectors around (we have 4 identical ones) and regardless of which detector is in that bedroom, it is the one that goes off. So I suspect there's something in that room causing the problem. The problem is that I don't know what. I've had humidity in our basement trigger the one in our basement, but it's March, it's not humid, and it's definitely not humid in the bedroom. Dust is another potential, but I've blown them out with compressed air, and they're not even three months old. I bought and installed them January 1st! So it's still a mystery to figure out what in that room is causing the smoke alarm to trigger.

Bombers Season Over

Tuesday was my hockey team's final game of the season. We ended up outmatched, losing 6-0. Ouch. It was a bummer of a season. We finished 6-12 so a slight improvement from last season. Either way, it was still a fun season. Good way to get some exercise, socialize and have some fun. Next season starts in less than a month and my other league is still going, so I'll still get plenty of hockey in.

Sick

Saturday morning I started feeling crummy. Feels like a cold. Sore throat, runny nose, and just generally lethargic. Fortunately we had no plans this weekend so I plopped myself down on the couch and relaxed all day. I spent a lot of the day going through my RSS feeds as I was well behind on them. It was a relaxing day that I would've enjoyed more if I was feeling so drained of energy. It stinks too because I was doing well with hitting my workouts this week. Runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday, combined with strength training Tuesday and Thursday. I was in the groove. Hopefully this passes quickly enough and I can get back to it. Rest should do me good.

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Week Notes for March 1 - 7 (#90)

2026-03-08T18:14:00Z

It was a gloomy week with lots of rain. I could've used some sun.

A Lot of Laziness

I don't know what it was this week, but I just felt lazy. After work, I really just wanted to plop myself down and do a whole lot of nothing. I managed to shake off the laziness Friday and Saturday with a 4 and 7 mile run respectively, so that was good, but it just felt like a weird week for me.

Distance Running

One thing I was hoping to do this year was get back into some distance running. The weather cleared up enough on Saturday to give it a go. I was hoping for 6 miles but was feeling good and ended up finishing at 7.04 miles. I'll chalk it up as a success. Let's see if I can continue to build on it.

Solved the Work Frustrations

We finally found the issue with the project I was struggling with last week. Oddly enough it was a new seemingly unrelated bug that triggered the key hint as to what was causing the problem that allowed us to reproduce and eventually fix it.

Bandcamp Friday

Another Bandcamp Friday got me to open up my wallet some. Walked away with 9 new albums.

Refreshing My iPod

I have an 160GB iPod Classic that's been sitting around. I've been struggling restoring it on either my MacBook Pro (it's an Apple device trying to restore an Apple device...seriously?). Finally I decided to try booting my desktop into Windows 11 and try to do it on Windows. Oddly enough, it was pretty easy on Windows. Once restored, I flashed Rockbox on it to give it FLAC support and loaded my music collection onto it. It's working nicely.

The downside of the FLAC support is that the music files are larger which might cause my iPod to run out of space. I wonder how hard it would be to install a bigger storage medium on it.

Recipes

Panda Express Chow Mein

I found this recipe and it turned out well. I did add steak to it. I just got a strip steak, sliced it thin, coated it in corn starch, and started out by frying it before adding the veggies.

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Week Notes for February 22 - 28 (#89)

2026-03-01T10:27:00Z

It was a weird week. Weather was gorgeous at the end of it to counter some frustrations.

Back-to-Back Hockey Games

On Monday night I ended up playing back-to-back games helping out another team who needed a netminder. Talk about a tale of two extremes. The first game I hardly faced any shots, winning 3-0. The second game was me getting hammered with shots. I managed to stop all but 2, and unfortunately, that's all it took as we lost 2-1. I felt good about my play despite the loss.

Some Frustrating Days at Work

We went live in production on one of the projects I'm working on at work with the .NET 10 upgrade. Everything looked good in the lower environments, but in production we've been getting reports of issues. Most of the week has been us struggling to figure out what is going on as we're not seeing any errors to indicate a problem, nor can we reproduce what's being reported. Hopefully we'll find some hints soon.

Struggling to Focus

This entire week I've just been distracted and struggling to focus on whatever it is that I want to work on. I wanted to get more writing done, but just couldn't focus enough to actually put words to paper. Can't really place a reason for it, but I'm hoping I can regain some of it.

Beautiful Saturday Weather

Saturday the temperature hit 60°F (~16°C). For the end of February, it was crazy. I took advantage of that and went for a run and sat out on my porch with Tess catching up on my RSS feeds. I also finally ripped out my Ring doorbell to avoid joining the dystopian surveillance dragnet. I could've done it in the cold, but it's easier to handle tools without my hands freezing.

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Week Notes for February 15 - 21 (#88)

2026-02-22T13:24:00Z

It was a mostly quiet week. Had hockey 2 nights, a nice date night Saturday, and otherwise uneventful.

I-League Starts Back Up

The I-League I play in as a goalie started back up Monday. The roster changed over this season some which often happens. We played a strong game. Outside of trading goals in the first period, that game ended up being a goalie battle. Both me and our opponent's goalie played well and the game ended in a 1-1 tie. I was happy with my performance, didn't feel rusty after 6-7 weeks off from games. Still saw some things I could work on.

Migrated Blog Tooling to Node.js

I have a few .NET console applications that help me build my posts and site. I spent a good portion of this week rebuilding them using Node.js to make switching between my Mac and Linux machines a little easier. More to come on this.

Lazy-ish Week

Outside hockey Monday and Wednesday nights, I didn't work out as much as I wanted to. I did take advantage of the nicer weather Saturday to go for a 5.5 mile run which actually felt good.

Date Night

Saturday night was another date night. We went to Stable 12 for dinner followed by the movies to see Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, which was enjoyable. It was a good way to spend a weekend night.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

I really enjoyed this. It was offbeat, had some good laughs, cast was excellent, and would highly recommend.

Recipes

Miso Chicken

I found this recipe and decided to give it a try. I had never used miso paste for anything and figured this would be a good candidate to first try it out on. The chicken thigh skins crisped up nicely and the flavor was subtle, yet still good. It was also a nice easy recipe to make and a good weeknight meal. The only thing I found was that it took around 50 minutes in the oven at 400ºF rather than the 30-35 mentioned in the recipe. It's not a big deal at all, especially since it's just baking time.

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Week Notes for February 8 - 14 (#87)

2026-02-15T18:15:20Z

The weather is finally starting to warm up some.

Back to Running

Now that the temperatures are no longer in the single digits, I've take advantage to go on some runs. I ran 4.11 miles Wednesday and 4.29 miles Saturday. Both runs felt good and while I'm a little slower, I was able to keep my heart rate in zone 2 mostly and never really felt out of breath.

Cleaning Up Code at Work

The project I was pulled into at work went better than I anticipated. I was able to find the cause of all the urgent bugs and get them fixed and deployed. I also feel like I got the code into a better place. I'm still not thrilled with the UX, and might see if there's an appetite to modernize it a bit, but either way I was able to get things into a working spot.

A Day Date in Ardmore

My wife and I both took Friday off and made a little day date of it. We went out to Char & Stave in Ardmore, PA and had some coffee-themed cocktails and drinks while sitting and working on some of our projects. We moseyed over to Mavey Books (gotta love independent bookstores), and then had an early dinner at Tired Hands. It was a nice way to spend the day and we were able to avoid the Valentine's Day crowds Saturday.

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Week Notes for February 1 - 7 (#86)

2026-02-08T20:48:38Z

This was a mostly quiet week. It warmed up a bit in the beginning, but dropped back into single digits by the end. A lot of time was spent indoors.

Change of Pace at Work

I spent Thursday and Friday working on a different project at work. The project is sort of a mess and finding resources for it has generally been a challenge since not much has been going on with it for a while. A few urgent bugs came in and I got tapped to investigate them. Despite not necessarily being excited about it, I was able to find the issues and started work on a solution.

Staying Warm

Despite the warmer temperatures in the early week, it's still been a little too bitterly cold to do much of anything outside. Tess gets her walks, but they're a little shorter than normal. It's just too cold to be outside for too long.

Bandcamp Friday

Friday was Bandcamp Friday where all the proceeds from music purchases go directly to the bands themselves. I decided to splurge a little. I ended up buying 9 albums and a single.

American Aquarium - Antique Hearts: Revisited
American Aquarium - Slappers, Bangers & Certified Twangers: Volume One
American Aquarium - Things Change
The Menzingers - Hold On, Dodge
Thursday - War All the Time (Live)
Lax Poetic - My Best Impression of Being Okay
Free Throw - Lessons that We Swear to Keep
Microwave - Stovall
Microwave - Let's Start Degeneracy
Jared Hart f/ Ben Nichols - Ready to Go

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Week Notes for January 25 - 31 (#85)

2026-02-01T15:29:44Z

This week started off with a pretty bit snowstorm. The rest of the week was just brutally cold with highs only in the teens (-6 to -12 ºC). Needless to say, I'm happy to be inside with heat.

The Snow

Sunday was full of snow, and then unfortunately, sleet. This meant that while clearing the driveway twice Sunday wasn't too bad with the snowblower, Monday was hell. On Monday, the sleet and snow caused a frozen layer to form on the driveway which meant the snowblower ended up being useless. I had to take a metal shovel to scrape off and break it up and then shovel it off. My hip and back were glad when that was all over.

The layer of sleet has also made Tess very unsure about walking. She's light enough to walk on top of the snow as if it were a solid surface, but heavy enough that she'll occasionally fall through. It's caused her some consternation and she's clearly disconcerted. She's used to snow that she can just plow though and move about. I feel bad for her, but welcome to life in the northeast in winter.

Sinners

I finally watched Sinners Friday night. I see why it got nominated for all the awards. The movie was fantastic.

Coming Down with Something

Towards the end of the week I started coughing. Feels like your run of the mill cold, but I'm spending this weekend being lazy. I've worked on my side project, wrote a bunch, and vegged out on the couch. No use over-exerting myself.

Recipes

Creamy Chicken and Gnocchi Soup

It's soup season and I had some leftover gnocchi lying around so this recipe fit the bill nicely. It wasn't terribly difficult to make. I used chicken tenderloin cuts which worked out well. It prevented me from having to pound the chicken as each piece was roughly the same which made cooking even. It turned out really well.

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Week Notes for January 18 - 24 (#84)

2026-01-25T18:25:42Z

It was mostly a lazy week finished with a concert to finish it off.

More Snow

It snowed again Sunday. Fortunately this time I could stay home and enjoy it from the comfort of our couch. I did have to shovel both Sunday and Monday, but alas, such is the joy of living in the northeast. Tess continued to enjoy the fresh powder.

Lazy Week

I had a mostly lazy week. It was too cold to run outside and between family events and life in general, I had a hard time finding time to lift or get my bike attached to the stationary machine. I did do another double hockey practice Monday and had a game Thursday, but other than that, it was mostly quiet.

Menzingers Concert

With snowmageddon bearing down on us, but thankfully not supposed to start until early Sunday morning, we drove up to Allentown to see The Menzingers play at Archer Music Hall. We had pre-show drinks and dinner at Fegley's and caught a good punk show. Lax Poetic, The Ergs, and I Am the Avalanche all opened for them and it was a good show. The Menzingers opened with America (You're Freaking Me Out) which seemed quite apt with all the hell that's going on here in the states. Thankfully the snow held off and we were able to get home safely before it started.

Recipes

Air Fryer Pork Belly

I've made this recipe before. It's a little messy, but the marinade and pork belly is delicious. I'd also recommend using a toothpick to stick little holes in the fat before cutting the pork belly. It's supposed to help with getting crackled skin.

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Week Notes for January 11 - 17 (#83)

2026-01-18T17:55:49Z

Happy Gotcha Day Tess!

Double Hockey Practice Session

The league I play goalie in does six weeks of practice sessions between the ten weeks of games. I took shots for both practice sessions. Two hours of up and down was quite the workout. My legs were quite happy when I sat down to read a bit before going to bed.

Having Tess for a Year

We celebrated Tess' gotcha day. Feels hard to believe we've had her for one year now. She has taken a little while to get used to us and her new home and routine, but she's the sweetest girl. She's pretty cute too.

Snow

We got more snow this weekend. It feels so peaceful with a white coating on everything. Tess absolutely loves it as well and we spent plenty of time with her in our backyard so she could run around and play in it.

Far Cry New Dawn

I completed Far Cry New Dawn. The gameplay was fun, but the story was shorter and kind of predictable. I got it on sale for $10 though, so for that price, definitely a steal.

Cooking

Slow Cooker Chicken Fajita Soup

This turned out fantastic. It was super easy to make and it gave my wife and I 3 dinners. The only thing I changed was we put the cheese in our individual bowls rather than the entire soup.

Pork Chops with Green Tomato Chutney

I made this recipe Tuesday night. It wasn't bad. I did substitute heirloom tomatoes for the green tomatoes as I could not find green tomatoes so I'm not sure if that had an adverse effect on things. As for the wild rice, I believe you can use regular rice should you so desire.

One Pot Greek Chicken and Orzo

This turned out really well. I think cooking the Orzo in the chicken stock is what really made it stand out. The tomatoes and feta worked as well. The only thing I might change next time would be to bake the chicken thighs. Would probably save some time. Either way though, it works.

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Week Notes for January 4 - 10 (#82)

2026-01-11T16:52:58Z

First week back at work since mid-December. It was thankfully a quiet week.

Monday Night Hockey

The Bombers, the team I captain had a Monday night game. We were playing a team we'd had trouble against in the past but manage to come away with a strong 6-1 win. We played well and other than a late 3rd period goal, we managed to keep them contained.

Writing

I struggled to maintain focus this week unfortunately. I wrote every day, but not as much as I intended. I really should try to better configure my site blockers to help me maintain my focus.

Nice Weather Mid-Week

Mid-week the weather crept up to 50°F (10°C). It was a little strange for January, but I took advantage to go for a run and take Tess for a long walk. I should be concerned about weather this warm this time of year, but I'll take advantage of it.

Cooking

Gnocchi and Steak Hash

I had found this recipe in the magazine a while back, and have been incredibly happy with how it turns out. The only thing is its yield is a little low for just my wife and I. It's more than one meal for the two of us, but not quite two. Maybe I'll double it next time.

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Week Notes for December 28 - January 3 (#81)

2026-01-04T14:28:24Z

A new year, ~~a new~~ same old me.

Writing

I set my goal for 2026 to write 350,000 words. I think it's doable, but I didn't just start on January 1st. I've been trying to write more these last 2 weeks of 2025. I wrote some blog posts, wrote more on my fantasy story, and tried to put more words to paper in general.

Celebrating 15 Years

My wife and I celebrated 15 years together this week. It was New Year's 2011 when we first started dating and now I can't begin to imagine my life without her.

Far Cry New Dawn

I really enjoyed Far Cry 5. New Dawn, a sequel has drawn me in as well. The game play is fun and some of the tweaks they added from Far Cry 5 seem perfect. I've been enjoying it and would recommend it, though I would highly suggest you play Far Cry 5 first.

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Week Notes for December 21 - 27 (#80)

2025-12-28T16:29:32Z

It was a busy week with Christmas and all, but I'm glad the worst of the holidays are over.

Far Cry 5

I ended up completing Far Cry 5. I had heard hints of the ending, but was still a little surprised with how it ended. I ended up starting it's sequel, Far Cry New Dawn. I enjoyed Far Cry 5 and am enjoying New Dawn so far.

Christmas

Christmas was mostly non-stop. Morning with the in-laws and then dinner with my family. I was so happy to be crashed out on the couch at the end of the day. It wasn't a bad day, just busy. I now have a much better appreciation for my parents when I was young.

Ice Storm

Friday night into Saturday we had a lot of freezing rain or sleet. I was kind of hoping for snow as it's easier to deal with. I'm now left with an icy driveway that will take a lot of smashing to clear. I'm hoping the above freezing weather will take care of it for me.

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Week Notes for December 13 - 19 (#79)

2025-12-21T17:07:27Z

It's the final week before Christmas. Thankfully I'm all set, so the next week should hopefully be mostly stress-free.

I-League Season Over

Monday was the final I-League game of the season. Unfortunately I did not play particularly well and we lost 6-5. Oh well, it was still a fun season.

The instructional sessions start right after the new year and the next season will begin in mid-February or so.

Eric Mintel Quartet Concert

On Wednesday, my wife and I went to a local bar for a Christmas jazz concert. Eric Mintel Quartet was playing at 118 North Christmas songs. Some of the songs were originals, but they also played the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. It was a nice evening with good music. They were really impressive.

Phantoms Teddy Bear Toss Game

Saturday was the annual Lehigh Valley Phantoms teddy bear toss game. Many minor league teams have yearly games where they collect stuffed animals for charity. Whenever the home team scores their first goal, everyone throws their stuffed animals they brought onto the ice. It's fun to watch and experience and it's for charity so it's a great time.

We made an evening of it. We went to Fegley Brew Works across the street from the arena for dinner and drinks, and then to the game to cheer on the Phantoms. The game was fun. We got to throw the teddy bears shortly after the start of the 2nd period, and the Phantoms went on to win 2-1 in the shootout.

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Week Notes for December 7 - 13 (#78)

2025-12-14T18:11:54Z

The holidays are fast approaching and it's nice to be able to get things taken care of with time to spare.

Finished Christmas Shopping

I was able to finish my Christmas shopping this week. I try not to wait until the last minute which saves me some hassle later. Now I can mostly just relax for the rest of the season.

My Poor Muscles

My workout routines have been all out of whack over the last couple months. I haven't really been able to consistently hit the gym, which means when I do, I end up with what is called the DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). It's not fun for me for a few days after the workout. My hamstrings, quads and glutes are all screaming at me. I'm fine once I get moving, but I'm hoping I can finally get back into some sort of rhythm.

All Vaccinated

I should've taken care of it in September or October, but I got my COVID and flu shots this week, so I should be protected this upcoming season. I was worried I'd have to jump through more hoops for my COVID vaccine, but thankfully I was able to get it easily enough. Impeach RFK Jr. Now!

.NET 10 and Linux

I've been struggling to get .NET 10 running on my Linux Mint desktop, I've tried various how tos that always seemed to successfully install, but didn't end up showing when running the dotnet --list-sdks command. I finally figured out how to get it work using the --install-dir parameter with the dotnet-install script.

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Week Notes for November 30 - December 6 (#77)

2025-12-07T16:20:32Z

I can't believe its already December. Where has the year gone. The Christmas season is upon me and it already feels like it's going to fly by.

Back-to-Back Hockey Nights

I ended up having hockey games back-to-back nights again. Thankfully the first night was a shockingly-early 7pm game. Those are almost unheard of. We ended up losing Sunday's game 1-0, but we were playing one of the top teams in our division and we held with them all game thanks to a great game by our goalie and defense. Our offense had some good chances too, but unfortunately couldn't get the puck to bounce just so. Monday's game was a tough 5-0 loss. I thought we played well all things considered, but their goalie played well and we struggled to keep pressure going in the offensive zone.

Trying Again to Get Back into a Fitness Routine

I've been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to get back into a fitness routine over the last month. Between being sick, tired after some late hockey games, I've struggled to get into a rhythm. I tried starting my next cycle lifting and found the weight I was lifting to be a little more than I could comfortably handle. I think at this point, I'm going to stick with the routine, but do a reset and drop the weight. When I get into a rhythm, I'm good, but once I get out of it, it's easy to stray.

Cooking

Sausage Tortellini Soup

It's (almost) winter, and it's soup season. I found this recipe online and it tured out really well. I'll definitely make it again, though I might add another cup of stock to help make it a little more "brothy".

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Week Notes for November 23 - 29 (#76)

2025-11-30T16:59:11Z

It was the week of Thanksgiving. It might've been a shorter week at work, but it was a busy weekend at home.

Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving in the US and that means family and a large dinner. We ended up hosting my in-laws for dinner. It was busy, but we were still able to have a mostly relaxing time with them. Sitting down afterwards felt good though.

Black Friday Tradition

One of the things my wife and I have been doing over the last several years has been going to Bluebird Distilling's Black Friday launches. Every Black Friday, they release some new limited spirits and this year was no different. This year I wanted to get their 10 year bourbon and their 10 year rye. I'm looking forward to giving each a taste. It was another fun morning, enjoying some special seasonal cocktails and a nice way to start the holiday season.

Finished Good Eats

My wife and I have been watching Good Eats sporadically over the last year or so. I've enjoyed it, we've found some good recipes, kitchen tips and tricks, and learned plenty about food history and the science behind foods and recipes. Sadly, we've gone through all the episodes. I really liked how Alton Brown made everything accessible and understandable. Maybe he'll reboot the show at some point, but it's sad to see it over.

Gaming

I ended up finishing Jedi: Survivor. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the story and the gameplay. It was a fitting sequel to Fallen Order.

I decided to go with Far Cry 5 as my next game. I had started it several years ago but got distracted by something. Some of it feels a little too close to home given some of the politics here in America. Part of me also chose it since it was recently announced that Rob Mac & Noah Hawley are creating a TV series on the series..

Cooking

Braised Boneless Beef Short Ribs

We had found some boneless short ribs reduced in price at Wegmans and found what looked like a good recipe for them. The short ribs were tender and turned out really well. We had them with some fresh asparagus and mashed potatoes. It ended up working out too because the leftovers were my Thanksgiving dinner.

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Week Notes for November 9 - 22 (#75)

2025-11-24T02:19:42Z

Double week issue here with my trip to New York City last weekend. Though outside the trip, it's been a quiet two weeks.

New York City

My wife and I took a long weekend to the Big Apple last weekend. We stayed in a hotel near Bryant Park and enjoyed a quiet weekend wandering around the city. The weather was a little on the chilly side, but was still enjoyable.

Stupid Cold

This past week I've been battling a cold. A nasty cough has kept me home and resting. Not sure where exactly I caught it. New York is certainly a likely possibility but it made it a quiet week.

Jedi: Survivor

I've been playing a lot of Jedi: Survivor. I loved Jedi: Outcast and this is a good sequel. It is so satisfying force pulling a Stormtrooper towards you and then slicing him up with your lightsaber. The story of the first game was good and the second has been enjoyable so far. I'd highly recommend it.

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Week Notes for November 2 - 8 (#74)

2025-11-09T16:41:56Z

It was a quiet week at home. My wife was away for work for most of it so it was just me and Tess holding down the fort.

Home Alone

It's not very often I have the house to myself for a length of time. My wife was away for work so I was left to hold down the fort at home with Tess. It was a quiet week, but I celebrated Tess' 2nd birthday by giving her extra love and treats.

Hockey

I had back-to-back nights of hockey Monday & Tuesday. Monday's game I was in net and we won 5-1. It was a fantastic team effort, everyone playing well.

Tuesday's game was a rough 4-1 loss. They took advantage of some mistakes in the 2nd period and we struggled to get passes and make good on our opportunities.

Writing and Side Project Distractions

I started out the month well with writing, but have since slackened off a bit. I got distracted starting back up on a side project and have dedicated a little too much time on that.

Completed Expedition 33

I ended up completing Expedition 33 in the nick of time. I enjoyed it but kind of felt like I missed out some on the story since I took such long breaks between play sessions. It was on sale in the PlayStation store though, so I did pick it up. Might do another play through to have a better experience.

Cooking

Impossible Chili

Since it was only me, I was a little lazy and just made chili in the slow cooker. I used Impossible ground beef rather than actual ground beef. I've made it before, but this time around it didn't turn out the greatest. It tasted like it needed a little more time despite it being in the slow cooker for 8 hours.

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Week Notes for October 26 - November 1 (#73)

2025-11-02T15:28:01Z

After a week off on vacation, getting back into the grind of the real world is kind of a letdown.

Back to Work

Had a full week of work. I like my job, but I still miss being on vacation.

Back to Back Hockey Games

After missing 2 games on vacation, I ended up playing twice Monday night. I subbed for another team and had a shutout going until the final minute when they snuck one in. Won 5-1 anyway, though it was mostly because of solid defensive play in front of me.

Second game was for my team. We won 7-6 after a 3rd period comeback. I played like crap most of the game, but got bailed out by my teammates with 6 goals in the final period.

Cracking Down Some

As mentioned, my weight has been ticking up so it's time to be a little more cognizant of my diet. Life's too short to give up everything, but still gotta try to eat a bit healthier.

Site Updates Out

I finished my site update and deployed it. The changes aren't extensive, but I like how the code is organized better. Let me know if you notice anything off.

Halloween

It was a chilly, windy night, but my wife and I sat on our porch to give out candy. We even had Tess out with us for a while until she got bored and seemed to want to go inside. We didn't have that many kids this year so we have way too much candy left over. My goal of cracking down on my diet will be tested.

Novel Writing

I'm going to try again to focus on my novel this November. I tried last year, but Trump's election sort of screwed up my focus. It's not all that great this year, but we'll see how it goes. My goal isn't so much to finish it, so much as it is to write 1,200 words a day with a 36,000 word goal for the month. I figure that's doable and would get a good chunk of words to paper, which is what it's all about.

Cooking

I'm going to try adding some of the things I've been cooking. I've been trying to cook new recipes more and figured maybe share some of what I've been trying.

Ropa Vieja

I tried a new slow cooker meal this week. I tried a Ropa Vieja dish (minus the olives). It was fine. It turned out well but didn't particularly wow me. It was an easy meal though which had that going for it. Made a lot for leftovers as well which is appreciated.

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Week Notes for October 12 - 25 (#72)

2025-10-26T15:55:13Z

I spent the last week in Cape May for my anniversary, so this is a double issue.

Cape May Trip

Cape May, NJ is our happy place. It's our favorite vacation spot, and we felt like it was a good spot to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We stayed in Congress Hall and had a long relaxing vacation. We took it easy for the most part and explored some of our favorite breweries and wineries in the Cape May area. It was nice to sit, enjoy some wine and beer, and read and even get some writing done.

For the wineries, we went to Hawk Haven and Jessie Creek. For the Breweries, we stopped at Slack Tide and Gusto.

It was a much needed vacation. We pushed off vacations this year after adopting Tess. We wanted to get her used to her new home and were hesitant to board her. Thankfully, she's gotten used to us and her new routine and home that we felt comfortable to board her for an extended period. It's her doggie day care location so she seemed to have a good time and is happy to be home.

Everything Else

The Cape May trip basically enveloped these last 2 weeks. The week before I was getting ready for the trip.

My other hockey league started back up. I had to miss one game due to vacation, but the first game was hard fought, but we fell short, losing 3-1.

I did spend some time building a new website for the hockey team I captain. It's a static site built in 11ty and I'm not sure what all will get added to it. I just figured I might as well.

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Week Notes for October 5 - 11 (#71)

2025-10-12T21:28:58Z

It was a quiet week, and a miserable one for my sports teams.

Bad Week for Philly Sports

Woo boy. It was a bad week for Philly sports. The Phillies lost in the NLDS to the Dodgers by deciding that hitting the baseball wasn't all that important. The Eagles dropped 2 to the Broncos and then the Giants, looking bad in both. There's always the Flyers...oh wait, they lost their first 2 games of the season.

This is the Philly sports fandom I'm used to.

Personal Site Coming Together

The last bits of my redesign or rebuild are getting worked on. I feel better about the code base and how things are built. From a design perspective, it won't be a huge change from what it looks like today, so the redesign isn't so much an overhaul as it is a series of what I think are positive tweaks.

Fixing my Acoustic Guitar

Friday I went to re-string my acoustic guitar only to find that the nut (the little plastic piece at the top of the neck that help guide the strings down the guitar) came off the neck. I guess I can't say I'm surprised as I noticed that it had slid out of place earlier. I think the tension of the strings was the only thing keeping it in place.

I made my first attempt to fix it by just super gluing it back on. We'll see how that holds.

It might explain some oddities while playing.

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Week Notes for September 28 - October 4 (#70)

2025-10-05T15:13:50Z

My week notes for the week of September 28 through October 4.

It was mostly a quiet week. Work, some relaxation, reading, then bed...rinse and repeat. Sometimes you need those kind of weeks though.

Music

Friday was Bandcamp Friday. Bandcamp runs a promo the first Friday of some months where 100% of the money spent goes to the artists (the next one is Friday 12/5). I try to purchase an album or two to support artists. This month I ended up buying a few albums from Catbite and Free Throw. They opened for The Menzingers at the concert last week and I liked what I heard. I’ve been enjoying the albums. I might get more of their music down the line.

I also finally got some better speakers for my stereo system. I picked up a pair of Sony SS-CS5M2 Bookshelf Speakers. I had a pair of cheap speakers for who knows how long, so having some nicer sounding ones provides a better experience.

Site Redesign

I’ve been making some good progress this week on my site’s (slight) redesign. I’ve moved onto my media pages. Most of the styling is going to be similar here, but I’m looking into cleaning up the code. Once the media pages are done and cleaned up, the last part will be my notes page. I’m still trying to figure out how to best design and style it. We’ll see how it goes and if it ends up causing me to revisit other pages. It’s been a running trend, build something out, move onto the next and like a slightly different design that needs to be re-applied to other pages. It’s fun to always mess around with my site though, so I don’t mind.

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Week Notes for September 21 - 27 (#69)

2025-09-28T19:42:32Z

My week notes for the week of September 21 through September 27.

Hard Fought Hockey Win

There's a team in my division in hockey that always seems to have our number. For whatever reason, they're able to stymie us, slow us down, and limit our offense. Even when we're otherwise playing well, they just always manage to squeak past us. Well, we played them again Thursday and this time we managed to squeak past them, winning 3-2. It was a fun, evenly matched game.

Back Feeling Better

After tweaking my back last week on my final set of squats (still not sure what happened as I did it lifting the bar off the rack an inch or two in preparation to squat), I was able to feel confident to get back to lifting. The session went well, felt a little weaker than usual, but hit all my sets.

The Menzingers Concert

My wife and I traveled up to Asbury Park, New Jersey to see The Menzingers play at the Stone Pony Summer Stage. We had never been to Asbury Park, or the Stone Pony so it was a first for us. I had heard plenty about it and the outdoor stage was a great place for a concert. The weather was cloudy and it started to rain towards the end of the show, but it was still a great time.

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Week Notes for September 14 - 20 (#68)

2025-09-21T14:49:59Z

My week notes for the week of September 14 through September 20.

Lucero Concert

On Tuesday I went to see Lucero live at the Ardmore Music Hall. They were celebrating the 20 year anniversary of the release of Nobody's Darlings. They played the album front to back and then some of their hits. It was a good show and I got to meet Ben Nichols, their frontman at the end of the show.

Lazy(ish) Week

From a fitness perspective, it was a lazy week. I decided to take a needed rest day on Monday and then with the concert and being exhausted the day after, I didn't do much those days either. Tried to lift Friday and tweaked my back. Nothing major, just wasn't my week to be active.

New Winery & Brewery

My wife and I didn't really have any plans Saturday so we ventured down to the Chadds Ford area to check out Penns Woods Winery. They had some good wines and their property was nice. Plenty of tables in a field with some canopies. The weather was beautiful so it was great to just sit outside and enjoy some wine.

On the way home, we stopped for dinner at the 2SP Tap House. Dinner was delicious and the beers were good too.

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Week Notes for September 7 - 13 (#67)

2025-09-14T17:43:36Z

My week notes for the week of September 7 through September 13.

Fall/Winter Hockey Season Starting

The offseason is over, the fall/winter season has begun. We had our first game of the season. I ended up playing in net, and sadly it didn't go particularly well. I let in a few soft ones and we lost 5-3. Oh well, it's an 18 game season, will work to bounce back next game.

Enjoying the Beautiful Weather

This week ended up having some really nice weather and I took advantage by sitting out on the porch as much as possible. I wrote a lot and just enjoyed the brisk weather. Feels like fall is coming a little early before the temperature started warming again.

Getting My Strength Back

I've been doing a good job of staying in my lifting routine and I'm slowly seeing my strength come back. Part of it might be me resetting the weights I'm lifting a little on the low side, but I'm starting to see the numbers rise to numbers that feel a little more similar to where I was in the past.

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Week Notes for August 31 - September 6 (#66)

2025-09-07T19:09:27Z

My week notes for the week of August 31 through September 6.

More Dave Hause

After seeing Dave Hause at Spruce Street Harbor Park in Philly, we went into Wayne to see him again for a record release show and party. It was at a cool little bar venue called 118 North. It was a good set and nice to hear all the new songs.

Hockey Starting Back Up

It's still technically between seasons, but I rented one of the rinks for an hour for my team to practice and then scrimmage. It was a lot of fun but damn was I gassed after.

Practicing Guitar

I've been practicing guitar more. I still have quite a bit to work on, but the back-to-back nights of concerts, I've been inspired to play more. I also spent an hour-plus removing all the stickers from my electric guitar that I stupidly put on as a teenager when I first tried to pick up the guitar.

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Week Notes for August 24 - 30 (#65)

2025-08-31T18:09:56Z

My week notes for the week of August 24 through August 30.

Notes

Gorgeous Weather

The weather has dipped back into the 70s this week which gave me the excuse to hang out on the porch in the evening since I didn't feel like dying from sweat.

A Blip in My Lifting Routine

I had been doing a good job sticking to my lifting schedule. Every other day, like clockwork. This week I pushed it off twice. I was tired one day and opted to take Tess on a long walk and then beautiful weather made me opt for a run outdoors. Not mad about it, I've been doing a better job of not skipping out and staying on track so I can start seeing progress with my strength again.

Free Dave Hause Show in Philly

Saturday we ventured into Philly to Spruce Street Harbor Park to see a free Dave Hause concert. The weather was beautiful and we were able to walk around, grab dinner, and see a good show. The Tisburys opened and gave me another band's discography to dig into. I talked with a few of them after at the bar and even bumped into some members of Crossed Keys who we saw back in December. It was a fun evening.

Interesting Links

NASA’s Psyche Captures Images of Earth, Moon

NASA

I love seeing pictures of Earth from the reaches of space.

Masters in Business: Mark Zandi

Masters in Business Podcast

A fascinating interview with Mark Zandy, Chief Economist at Moody's Analytics.

Who's a blog for?

Cobb

A nice essay and some helpful thoughts on why we blog.

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Week Notes for August 17 - 23 (#64)

2025-08-24T18:26:44Z

My week notes for the week of August 17 through August 23.

Notes

Spring-Summer Hockey Seasons Over

Monday marked the end of the other hockey league I play in's season. Now, I get a few weeks off before the fall/winter seasons begin.

Continuing Strength Training

I've been doing a good job sticking with my strength training. It feels like most of the year I've been having starts and stops with it, often substituting walks and runs instead, but this time I've been doing a pretty good job of hitting the gym every other day.

Toying with Another Redesign

I've been considering adding more themes to my site for the heck of it, but the CSS for my site has become a little convoluted. I'm playing around with some ideas to simplify the styling, 11ty code and a few other items.

Interesting Links

A Few Things About the Anchor Element’s href You Might Not Have Known

Jim Nielsen

It still kind of amazes me how much one can do in the browser with only HTML and never writing a single line of JavaScript.

Why Semantic HTML Still Matters

Jono Alderson

There's a reason why there are more HTML elements than just <div> & <span>. Using the right ones helps with accessibility and letting the browser know what parts of websites are meant for.

I Know When You're Vibe Coding

Alex Kondov

Code quality matters a lot more than you realize.

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Week Notes for August 10 - 16 (#63)

2025-08-17T19:34:37Z

My week notes for the week of August 10 through August 16.

Notes

New Lifting Routine

I started my new strength training routine on Sunday and I have to say, this is the most excited I've been about lifting since I was going for the 1,000 lbs. club a couple years ago. I don't really have any set goals this time around other than to get more consistent with my strength training workouts.

Halestorm & Volbeat in Concert

Saturday I met up with my best friend in Hershey, Pennsylvania to see Halestorm and Volbeat in concert. Prior to the show I stopped by Midstate Distillery and YAH Brewing in downtown Hershey. It's a nice little town. It was good seeing him and the concert was good too.

Interesting Links

Vibe code is legacy code

Steve Krause

Good luck maintaining your codebase.

The destruction of ESPN isn't ending with the NFL. It's beginning.

Drew Magary

Drew makes some good points about how this could have some very noticeable negative side effects with regards to ESPN's sports journalism and the NFL.

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Week Notes for August 3 - 9 (#62)

2025-08-10T19:01:03Z

My week notes for the week of August 3 through August 9.

Notes

Plenty of Time in Net

I ended up playing in net 3 days this week. Monday was my usual weekly game and I played like crud. We ended up losing 6-3. I got asked by a teammate to fill in for his C2 game the next night. I play in C4 and I-League. Both are 2+ skill levels lower than I’m used to playing in. It was noticeably faster than I’m used to, but I held my own and we won 6-4, although I’m going to chalk most of that up to the team in front of me. Still though, I kept them in it which is my goal.

The week of hockey was finished up with 2 straight hours of open hockey. My legs were killing me by the end of the session. It didn’t help that I did deadlifts the day before.

Changing Up My Lifting Program

I’ve been reading (listening to) A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting by Casey Johnston and it’s inspired me to delve back into lifting more. I’ve often skipped out on strength training lately because it’s legs day and I don’t like legs days. I would opt for a run instead. Now I think I’m going to try to keep myself in an every other day rhythm and make sure I get my lifts in.

Keeping Screen Time Low

I’ve been trying to stay off my phone more for close to 3 weeks now and I feel like I’m generally doing a good job limiting my screen time and endless scrolling. I’m generally hovering around 1.25 hours a day on my phone. I wish I could have a better comparison to where I was prior to my change, but Apple does some weird calculations for screen time where they include time the always-on screen is on, even if all it is doing is displaying the clock.

Regardless of where I was, I generally feel more focused and in the moment now that I’m generally keeping my phone away from me to help limit the temptation.

Interesting Links

We migrated our site to Eleventy and increased performance by 24%

Dan Webb

I’m amazed at how much faster my site now feels using 11ty having switched from Next.js as well. Nice little write-up here of an even bigger site moving over.

Cursor makes developers less effective?

Gergely Orosz

Interesting results from a study developers and AI tools.

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Week Notes for July 27 - August 2 (#61)

2025-08-03T18:42:46Z

My week notes for the week of July 27 through August 2.

Notes

Bombers Season Over

The hockey team I captain, the Bombers had their final game of the season this past week. While the season was less that ideal as we finished 4-11-1, we did finish it up with a nice win. Still have a few games left with my other team, and then a bit of a rest before it starts up all over again.

Media Repository Improvements

I've been on a reading tear this year, already nearing my 2025 book goal. Managing this in my repository has been easy enough, but I wanted to make some of the management easier so I added a quick "Finish Book" button and modal that will allow me quickly mark what I'm currently reading finished. Maybe I'll do something similar for marking a book as started. Small changes, but it makes the little things easier.

Interesting Links

Curate your own newspaper with RSS

Molly White

RSS for the win.

Tech Promised Everything. Did it deliver?

Scott Hanselman

This is a fantastic TED Talk by Scott Hanselman. It's about 20 minutes long and well worth a watch.

Never Forgive Them

Ed Zitron

A good read looking at the history of the web and how much the drive towards growth has ruined it.

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Week Notes for July 20 - 26 (#60)

2025-07-27T18:21:32Z

My week notes for the week of July 20 through July 26.

Notes

Checking Out Some Local Breweries

On Saturday, my wife and I ended up venturing out to try some new local breweries. We started at Levante which we had been to before, but we also went to Locust Lane and then La Cabra, neither of which we had ever been to. The beer was good as was the food.

Lower Screen Time

I wrote about wanting to limit my screen time and so far, so good. After tweaking my screen time settings on my iPhone, my screen time this week was:

Tuesday: 0:12
Wednesday: 1:06
Thursday: 1:06
Friday: 1:09
Saturday: 1:40

Better Diet

Along with the screen time, I want to try to get in the habit of better eating. With the exception of yesterday's brewery tour, I've been doing a better job of not snacking and keeping my food intake at a better place. I went on several runs and got some lifting sessions in as well (my legs still aren't happy with me for that).

Interesting Links

WNBA Players Want To Share In The League’s “Hypergrowth”

Maitreyi Anantharaman

Pay the women!

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Week Notes for July 13 - 19 (#59)

2025-07-20T15:25:42Z

My week notes for the week of July 13 through July 19.

Notes

Tournaments & More Hockey

The tournament finished Sunday. We ended up finishing 2-2 and in 3rd place, which was unfortunately not enough to go to the championship game for our division. It was still a lot of fun.

The 4 games in 3 days was followed by a game Monday and a game Tuesday. I unfortunately pulled my groin making a save Monday, tried to play Tuesday and made it worse. It mostly healed by the weekend, but Wednesday and Thursday were not much fun.

Writing More

I mentioned before that I'm dedicating 30 minutes a day to writing. Whether it's towards a blog post, my novel, or anything else, I've been doing a good job sitting down and doing just that. I turn on focus mode in Raycast, set the timer for 30-60 minutes, and write. I have a few blog post ideas started out as well as several thousand more words down on my novel.

Interesting Links

The Open-Source Software Saving the Internet From AI Bot Scrapers

Emanuel Maiberg

I love this. It would be nice if it could work without JavaScript, but a small price to pay.

React Still Feels Insane And No One Is Talking About It

Mario Brizić

While I'm not necessarily against the use of React, there are probably better options for many new projects. Mario goes through some of the stranger decisions React has made.

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Week Notes for July 6 - 12 (#58)

2025-07-13T23:37:04Z

My week notes for the week of July 6 through July 12.

Notes

Another Short Week

I took Monday & Tuesday off from work to give myself a long weekend. It was nice to have a long break. I was able to clean up a backlog of articles I had saved to read, spent time on my media and fitness repositories, and relaxed.

Hockey Tournament

I've been in a hockey tournament this weekend at my local rink. 4-5 Games over the course of 3 days. I've been having fun through the first 3 games. Another funny thing is that I had a game Wednesday and have a game on Monday & Tuesday which will mean I'll have played 7-8 games in 7 days. My legs will not be happy with me.

Interesting Links

American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

Ethan Siegel

It's somewhat ironic that one of MAGA's common slogans is "America First". This will likely cause so much scientific research that would ordinarily be spearheaded in America, to now be spearheaded elsewhere, if at all. I wonder what next breakthrough is going to be found far later than it could have and how many lives will be negatively affected.

How I build software quickly

Evan Hahn

Prototypes, prototypes, prototypes. It's a good way of looking at things. Build quickly to see if what you're thinking can actually work. Then go back and clean up the code to make it clean, testable, and maintainable.

Writing Code Was Never The Bottleneck

Pedro Tavares

Being able to release good software means being able to maintain the codebase and identify and fix the inevitable bugs. Swapping out "slow" human developers for AI tooling isn't really going to get you where you think you're going.

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Week Notes for June 29 - July 5 (#57)

2025-07-06T16:40:17Z

My week notes for the week of June 29 through July 5.

Notes

Short Week at Work

With the Independence Day holiday, I took an extra day and had a nice, short 3 day work week. I've been working on teaching myself ElasticSearch for the project I'm working on and was finally making some good headway. Hopefully my long weekend doesn't set me back too much.

Running Again

The incredibly hot weather has (slightly) broken and I've dared to try some runs this week. It's still been too hot for me to do real distance, but I've hitting runs in the 3-4 mile range which has felt good.

Interesting Links

Give Footnotes the Boot

Jake Archibald

There's gotta be a better way to handle footnotes. They can be frustrating when reading a physical book, they're annoying too in webpages when trying to go back to the line you were at.

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Week Notes for June 22 - 28 (#56)

2025-06-29T17:26:45Z

My week notes for the week of June 22 through June 28.

Notes

Learning About ElasticSearch

I've been digging into using ElasticSearch with .NET at work. The next big project I've been assigned requires it's use. It's new to me, but I'm hoping to pick it up fast enough to be dangerous.

Revisiting My Photography Site

When I switched from Next.js to 11ty, one of the things that bit the dust was my photography pages. Several months ago, I started rebuilding it as a standalone site (in 11ty of course). That didn't end up going very far, but I've decided to revisit it. I upgraded to the lastest version of 11ty and have started to lay out the pages. I'm going to have to see if I can find the images I had used so long ago, but I'll get there.

MacOS Sequoia Issues

I updated my MacBook Pro to run the latest (stable) version of MacOS, MacOS Sequoia. Needless to say, that was a mistake. My MacBook is consistently crashing and locking up when I have it docked. I've been running primarily off my Ubuntu desktop.

Interesting Links

Quality is a Trap

Eric Bailey

A good post talking about how to best approach quality and good design.

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Week Notes for June 15 - 21 (#55)

2025-06-22T15:56:43Z

My week notes for the week of June 15 through June 21.

Temperatures Rising

It feels too early for this. We're starting to see temperatures increasing to high-80s and low-90s. I got a run in Saturday morning since I'm not sure how much running I'll be able to get in this upcoming week. Running in the 90s is not fun. I miss spring.

Birthday Week

I've completed another orbit around the sun. I don't feel any older...or wiser. Maybe a little more crotchety though. My wife and I took the second half of the week off to spend some time together to celebrate. It was fun, we checked out a coffeehouse distillery we'd been meaning to go to, wandered around a local town visiting some distilleries and breweries. It was a good birthday week and weekend.

Interesting Links

Web Component

Zach Leatherman

This is a cool little web component for rendering code blocks on websites.

The Recurring Cycle of 'Developer Replacement' Hype

Danilo Alonso

We've seen this before with other technology or thought processes. Keep building great systems, AI isn't the answer.

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Week Notes for June 8 - 14 (#54)

2025-06-15T16:32:23Z

My week notes for the week of June 8 through June 14.

Notes

Garden Work

After finding Habanadas at the local farmer’s market last year, I wanted to try planting a garden this year. I’m not sure if I’m late to the party, but I got some raised garden beds and planted some squash and peppers. I hope it’s not too late in the season, but we shall see. I put them in the fenced in area hoping that might stop the wandering deer in our area.

Re-Organizing Week Notes

As I mentioned, I decided to do a little re-organizing on my site, making week notes their own 11ty collection like my notes & reading logs. I’m hoping it will make things a little easier for me organization-wise moving forward.

Lots of Hockey

I had games Monday and Wednesday this week. It’s unusual to have games so close together. We’re also dealing with a lot of players traveling, so playing short-handed is never fun. Both were tight games. We tied 2-2 on Monday and lost 4-2 on Wednesday, but we played hard despite the short bench.

On a Little Bit of a Star Wars Kick

After watching Andor, I'm a little bit on a Star Wars kick. I'm finally sitting down to watch The Clone Wars animated series, which led to my wife and I deciding to re-watch Episodes 1 and 2. So much Star Wars content. I remember growing up and only having the original trilogy. It felt awesome to get the prequel trilogy. Now we have the sequel trilogy, some one-off movies, and countless TV series.

Interesting Links

How to Convince People to Care and Invest in Accessibility

Stéphanie Walter

A good talk about the importance of accessibility in web design.

Webkit’s New Color Picker as an Example of Good Platform Defaults

Jim Nielsen

A nice reminder of how powerful the default controls browsers and operating systems can provide.

A Manufactured Crisis: How A Few Hooligans In LA Became The Pretext For Military Rule

Mike Brock

What's going on in LA might only be the start. Context is important.

It matters. I care.

Molly White

It can be easy to just throw your hands up in despair given everything going on around you. Giving in is what the authoritarian fascist shitheads want you to do. It's nice to be reminded that people do care and pushing back against the lies and deception is important. Don't give in. Don't give up.

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Week Notes for June 1 - 7 (#53)

2025-06-08T19:28:47Z

My week notes for the week of June 1 through June 7.

Notes

Kubernetes

At work, I've been working on getting some of the projects I've been working on migrated to Kubernetes. It was my first time working with Kubernetes and I'm still not sure what it really gets us, but we cutover the projects early in the week with minimal interruptions, so I'll call it a success. I have a few more I'll be working on and will have to dig in a bit once I get some time to learn more.

The Return of the Heat

I knew it would come eventually, but I was hoping for some more time. The temperatures got back into the mid-to-high 80s this week and I'm not a fan.

TopGolf

TopGolf was offering a summer pass offering unlimited daily 2 hour slots (with some caveats) so I decided to pick it up. I suck at golf but generally enjoy being out on the course. I'm hoping to get out more this summer and work on my swing to maybe not be quite as much of an embarrassment as I am right now.

Interesting Links

Erasers are Wonderful

The Oatmeal

I just love the analogy of this and how true it is in so many fields.

You can style alt text like any other text

Andy Bell

It's amazing how much one can still learn in web development and how much customization browsers and CSS support.

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Week Notes for May 25 - 31 (#52)

2025-06-01T18:51:15Z

My week notes for the week of May 25 through May 31.

Notes

Hip Mostly Better

I've gotten to the point where I really don't like going so many days without getting some real exercise in. My hip issues have been hampering me, but I'm slowly getting some light lifting and running in now that it's mostly feeling better.

Writing

I've been able to enjoy the nicer evenings out on the porch and have spent a fair amount of it writing. I want to finish the story I wanted to finish last year. It started out as a short story and it's only grown. I'm making progress though.

Interesting Links

North Korea Stole Your Job

Bobbie Johnson

As if hiring wasn't hard enough, now you have to be aware of North Koreans applying as well. On a side note, I was asked to be a U.S. contact for a developer who claimed they were in South Korea. Wonder if this was a front for North Korea. (I marked it as spam and deleted it)

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Mia Sato

It might be funny if this was satire, but sadly it's not. Maybe the AI industry deserves to die.

The promise that wasn’t kept

Salma Alam-Naylor

This is a great post about the rise of AI code generation tooling that articulates well about so many of the downsides and what we as developers lose with all the new LLMs that write code for us.

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Week Notes for May 18 - 24 (#51)

2025-05-25T18:39:09Z

My week notes for the week of May 18 through May 24.

Notes

Hip Bothering Me

Sunday night's hockey game was an embarrassing loss, but I came out of it with some hip discomfort. It's happened before, though never quite like this. Normally I feel it when I tweak it, but I was fine after the game. It wasn't until Monday morning that it started bothering me. Needless to say, it's bothered me most of the week and has limited my exercise. I haven't been able to run, though with all the rain, I probably wouldn't have run much anyway. It's limited the lengths of my walks with Tess, and I've been hesitant to do my next legs day at the gym. Hopefully some more rest helps it.

Working on My Fitness Repository

I've been making good progress on my fitness repository. Like my media repository, it's going to be a small Node API with an HTML/CSS/Vanilla JS frontend. I'm hoping it could replace my spreadsheets.

Interesting Links

My 'stop doing list'

Sean Voisen

I like this idea. There's always so many things we try to say we'll start doing. Focusing on what we want to stop doing could prove helpful.

Pocket is saying goodbye - What you need to know

Mozilla

Pocket was the first "read it later" service I used. It was good with what it did. I've switched to Instapaper a little while back, but for the life of me, I forget why. It's sad to see this shutdown. It'd be nice if they turned their focus to Firefox, but I'm not holding my breath.

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Week Notes for May 11 - 17 (#50)

2025-05-18T15:54:27Z

My week notes for the week of May 11 through May 17, 2025.

Notes

Strength Training

I lifted a lot more this week than I have the past month or two. It was sort of necessary as we got a lot of rain which made walking and running not a very good option. Needless to say, my muscles hate me right now, especially my legs.

DOOM Guy

I've been listening to the audiobook of John Romero's Doom Guy and have been amazed at listening to some of the things he and John Carmack were able to do with the early video games like DOOM and Quake. It's been a good listen/read so far and I'd recommend it. It's inspired me to get back more into developing my side projects.

Ubuntu

I recently decided to get Linux running on my desktop as a dual boot option with Windows. I started with Fedora and was running into some stability issues. It's been a little while since I've really used Linux so I'm not sure if there was an easy fix I wasn't aware of. I opted to go back to my Linux distro of choice back in the day and so far things are running well. I'm still getting it up and running, but it's been stable.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

I started playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as I heard good things about it and found that it was available with Game Pass on my Xbox. It's been starting out slow, but I've enjoyed the little bit I've been playing it. It reminds me of Super Mario RPG with some elements from Elden Ring.

Interesting Links

This blog is hosted on a Nintendo Wii

Alex Haydock

It's always cool to see people hacking technology to do other things.

License Plate Reader Company Flock Is Building a Massive People Lookup Tool, Leak Shows

Joseph Cox

Our privacy nightmare continues.

In defense of unpolished personal websites

Ana Rodrigues

Ana articulates a lot of how I feel about how I play around and work on my site.

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Week Notes for May 4 - 10 (#49)

2025-05-11T15:29:25Z

My week notes for the week of May 4 through May 10.

Notes

Chuck Wendig and Clay McLeod Chapman

On Wednesday night, I went to the Doylestown Bookshop for an event with Chuck Wendig & Clay McLeod Chapman for Chuck's new book The Staircase in the Woods. It was an interesting event and the two authors were funny and insightful. I walked out with signed books from both.

Weird Week for Exercise

I struggled to really get my normal exercise in this week. It was just a weird week with hockey 3 nights, the book signing, and an oddly timed haircut. I've been trying to get into a rhythm with lifting and running, and currently failing.

Interesting Links

HTML Is Like A Camera

Robb Owen

An relevant quote for web development.

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Week Notes for April 27 - May 3 (#48)

2025-05-04T19:51:58Z

My week notes for the week of April 27 through May 3.

Notes

Spring Cleaning, Outdoor Edition

Every spring since my wife and I bought our house there are various tasks that need doing outside. Some I do every year like spreading mulch around our little flower gardens. Others I mean and want to do, but never get around to it. This week I've started some of the tasks. It definitely makes the house looks nicer from the curb, but my allergies aren't happy with me.

Too Early to Be this Hot

Friday & Saturday had temperatures in the 80s. It's barely May so I'm not ready for this. I want my springtime weather, allergies and all.

Interesting Links

Even Better: Bethesda Gives Full Throat Endorsement Of ‘Skyblivion’

Timothy Geigner

I appreciate when companies support this kind of development. Fans clearly love their games enough to pour the effort into them, It's nice to see companies support that rather than tie up the courts.

CSS Grid Areas

Ahmad Shadeed

A great write-up and tutorial for using CSS grid areas.

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Week Notes for April 20 - 26 (#47)

2025-04-27T19:55:51Z

My week notes for the week of April 20 through April 26.

Notes

Oblivion Remastered

This week Bethesda announced, and then released a remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I didn't play this nearly as much as Skyrim, but figured I'd been considering a play through of Skyrim so I'd start with Oblivion. Sadly, my video card seems to be struggling to play it. I'm going to have to start looking into a replacement it seems as to be fair, my video card is 5+ years old (probably closer to 7-8). I'm looking for a solid card, but not top of the line. Suggestions are welcome.

Seasonal Allergy Hell

I have seasonal allergies, and right now it's prime allergy season. I'm not a fan. Pollen, pollen everywhere. It's also been made less pleasant by the fact that it's now lawn mowing season. I had to mow the lawn on Wednesday which kicked up even more pollen. It just sucks because I love being outside in weather like we've been having.

Interesting Links

Otherwise Objectionable Podcast

Mike Masnick

An interesting podcast series about the history of Section 230 and why it's so important for the internet.

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Week Notes for April 13 - 19 (#46)

2025-04-20T17:43:43Z

My week notes for the week of April 13 through April 19.

Notes

Revisiting the 2017 Houston Astros Cheating Scandal

Over the last week, I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Winning Fixes Everything by Evan Drellich.

As a baseball fan, it’s been an interesting listen as it goes over the different analytical methods the Astros used to try to improve their team. This wouldn’t have been all that newsworthy, except they took it a step further and cheated in 2017 by using a TV in the dugout hallway and a trash can to steal signs and alert batters what pitch was coming in real time.

The book has been interesting by filling in the gaps of my knowledge of what all went down and the fallout from the scandal.

Beer League Playoffs

The hockey team I play in net on made the playoffs and we won the semi-finals game 3-2 in the shootout. It was a little nerve-wracking but also exciting. We have the finals Monday.

Interesting Links

The Best Programmers I Know

Matthias Endler

A good write-up of things that you can do as a developer to improve. Some good advice and thoughts on what makes good developers regardless of tech stack used.

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Week Notes for April 6 - 12 (#45)

2025-04-13T16:56:46Z

My week notes for the week of April 6 through April 12.

Notes

Site Design Tweaks

I’ve been tinkering with the design of my site over the last few weeks. Nothing major, but I was able to finish up and get it out the door. I doubt it will be the last time I tweak things.

Back on Bluesky and Mastodon

I’m back on Bluesky & Mastodon. I’ve set time limits on my phone to keep me honest, so I’m not sure how active I’ll be, but I’m back I guess.

My Poor Legs

With all the running I’ve been doing, I’ve been neglecting strength training. On Tuesday I did my first strength training session in over a month, and it was a legs day. I was feeling fine the next day so I went for a 5 mile run. Thursday and Friday however, my legs caught up with me and are none too happy. I’ll have to make sure to keep mixing in some strength training to limit the DOMS.

Interesting Links

MediatR and MassTransit Going Commercial: What This Means For You

Milan Jovanović

Maintaining open source libraries and tools is a hard and thankless job. It’s important to remember that there are people behind them putting their time and effort into maintaining and supporting them. I can’t really be all that mad about them wanting to be compensated for their hard work. MediatR, AutoMapper, & MassTransit are huge .NET libraries. It’s only fair businesses chip in.

Ductility on the Web

Jim Nielsen

A good little post about resiliency in software development.

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Week Notes for March 30 - April 5 (#44)

2025-04-06T15:55:04Z

My week notes for the week of March 30 through April 5.

Notes

It was a relatively quiet week for me.

Lots of Hockey

A couple weeks ago, the rink I play at lost power and our games were postponed. Well, this week they got rescheduled for Wednesday which meant that we had our normal Monday game, and then on Wednesday, our make-up game. The challenge presented to many though was that all of our games are (almost) always on Mondays. Wednesday many teams were short players, and of course goalies. That meant I had to play a double-header. I do it often enough not to mind as I enjoy playing, but was playing with shorter benches than normal. Either way, it was fun.

Enjoying the Nice Weather and Writing

The last week, despite some rain, had some nice temperatures. I took advantage of it and sat out on the porch and wrote. I wrote about tanking and sports as well as on my novel. I figure it’s only a matter of time until the weather becomes unbearable, so I’m going to enjoy our porch as much as possible.

Interesting Links

Markdown and the Slow Fade of the Formatting Fetish

The iA Team

An interesting look back at the history of Microsoft Word and the rise of Markdown.

Item Flow, Part 1: A new unified concept for layout

Jen Simmons, Saron Yitbarek, Elika Etemad & Brandon Stewart

A good write-up of what the WebKit team is working on with CSS Grid & Masonry.

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Week Notes for March 23 - 29 (#43)

2025-03-30T15:54:31Z

My week notes for the week of March 23 through March 29.

Notes

Always Something Breaking

Our dryer finally bit the dust. Thankfully we were able to find a new washer/dryer set at a good price and fast delivery. Spent my Friday evening installing the new machines.

⚾️ MLB Opening Day

The 2025 MLB season has begun! The Phillies won their first two games. Their first win wasn’t pretty, but a win is a win. Let’s go Phillies!

Interesting Links

If it works, it's right / Grid First, Flex Third

Posted by Andy Bell / Alex Riviere

This is a good read and comparison between 2 approaches to CSS layouts.

DNA of 15 Million People for Sale in 23andMe Bankruptcy

Jason Koehler

Definitely glad I avoided these services. I’d highly recommend you delete your data if you did.

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Week Notes for March 16 - 22 (#42)

2025-03-23T18:43:31Z

My week notes for the week of March 16 through March 22.

Notes

Enjoying Our Porch

One of my favorite features of our house is our little porch. We have some nice wicker rocker chairs and it’s nice to just sit out there with my feet up and write or read. With the nice spring weather, I’ve been taking advantage of it before the weather gets to be too brutal to be out there.

Running More

The beautiful weather has also inspired me to run more. This week I ran almost 25 miles including a 6.42 mile run on Tuesday. I’ve been wanting to increase the distance and I think I’m going to try to start putting in some long runs on Saturdays throughout the spring and early summer. I’m not sure if anything will come of it, but I was able in the past to comfortably run 10-12 miles and would love to get to that point or more again.

Interesting Links

Simplification Takes Courage

Christopher Butler

Nothing makes me happier than to use an interface that is simple and clear in its purpose and how to use it. This is a good piece on how it can be easy to forget this.

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Week Notes for March 9 - 15 (#41)

2025-03-16T21:06:23Z

My week notes for the week of March 9 through March 15.

Notes

Beautiful Weather

This week the weather has been absolutely beautiful sitting in the mid-60ºF temperatures. I’ve taken advantage of it for runs and sitting outside.

Big Release at Work

The project I’ve been working on for the last 14 or so months at work finally launched this week. Thankfully the release went by pretty smoothly. There were a few small issues as there often are on large releases, but nothing major and we were able to square them away pretty quickly.

Interesting Links

Google Being Forced To Sell Chrome is Not Good for the Web

Chris Coyier

A good write-up on the possibility and the downside of Google being forced to sell off Chrome.

Episode 1: The Most Misunderstood Law on the Internet

Otherwise Objectionable Podcast

Only the first episode, but Mike Masnick (from Techdirt) does a great job starting to dig into Section 230 and why it’s so important for the internet.

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Week Notes for March 2 - 8 (#40)

2025-03-09T13:50:49Z

My week notes for the week of March 2 through March 8.

Notes

Trying to Get into a Lifting Routine Again

I’ve been off with my lifting routine as of late. Between nicer weather for runs, walking tess and being busy with work, I’ve been putting off most of my lifting sessions. This week I finally cracked down and put in some lifting sessions. I’m hoping it will end up sticking as I’d like to get some strength work in.

Writing

I’ve been in the writing mood all week and have been spending my evenings writing here and there. I’d been hoping to spend time writing on one of my novels and longer stories, but spent the time on blog posts and notes instead.

New Brewery

Saturday we ventured up and checked out a new brewery (for us). We went to Perkiomen Valley Brewery and while my wife did some crafting with a group meeting there, I enjoyed some beer catching up on my RSS feeds and writing.

Interesting Links

Functions in CSS?!

Juan Diego Rodríguez

Ooo, this feels kind of huge to me. I know it’s early and only (kinda) out now in Chrome Canary behind a flag, but this feels like it could open up some possibilities if/when they get to production.

Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not)

Mike Masnick

Techdirt has been a fantastic source for good, high quality writing about the intersection of tech, free speech, privacy, copyright, and more.

The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan

Marcin Wichary

This is an incredible article with some amazing history of a font we’ve probably seen all over the place without even realizing it.

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Week Notes for February 23 - March 1 (#39)

2025-03-02T15:58:11Z

My week notes for the week of February 23 through March 1.

Notes

A Lot of Hockey

I ended up playing a double-header Monday to help out one of the other net minders. Lost the first game 5-1, but won the second 7-3. I didn’t give up any bad goals so I can at least keep my head up after that, though there is always more to improve.

Tuesday I subbed in net for a team 3 divisions above where I normally play. The pace of play was much higher than I’m used to and ended up losing 5-3. But given the strength of the play and shots, I actually feel good about how I played.

Finally, Friday my other team played and won 8-0 in decisive fashion.

Cory Doctorow Book Signing

On Saturday a local(ish) bookshop had Cory Doctorow come in for a book signing and talk after his book Picks and Shovels came out. It was the first author event I’ve ever attended. Cory provided some interesting insight about both his writing and his activism. If you haven’t read any of his books, I’d highly recommend both his fiction and non-fiction.

Interesting Links

Extract Colors From an Image for CSS Themes

Zach Leatherman

This is a pretty cool tool to match colors with images. Has an 11ty plugin as well.

NHL officials are wearing Apple Watches on ice

Victoria Song

An interesting look at how the NHL is adapting wearables in games.

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Week Notes for February 16 - 22 (#38)

2025-02-23T15:27:15Z

My week notes for the week of February 16 through February 22.

Notes

Hockey League Starting Up

One of my hockey leagues (the one I play goalie in) started up Monday. We ended up losing 7-4. I didn't have a particularly good game, but there's still plenty of season left.

Preventative Care is Important

I ended up getting a colonoscopy this week. The prep for it was not fun, but preventative care is important. Better to catch issues before they become an actual issue. Take care of yourself.

Interesting Links

Amazon now has full creative control over James Bond

Matt Patches

I enjoy the James Bond franchise and am not looking forward to Amazon and Bezos over-saturating the franchise.

Understanding the trade-offs of using Tailwind CSS

Scott Boyle

I'm generally not a fan of Tailwind, but I also recognize that it can be useful. This is a good writeup of the trade-offs you get using Tailwind. The good and the bad.

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Week Notes for February 9 - 15 (#37)

2025-02-16T15:10:38Z

My week notes for the week of February 9 through February 15.

Notes

Go Birds

For the second time in their history, and in the last 8 years, the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl. This year they did it in decisive fashion and dominated Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. My wife and I had a great time with some snacks sitting on the couch cheering them on. As a Philly sports fan, we don't see this too often.

Interesting Links

Nvidia History Part I, Part II, & Part III

Posted by Acquired

An interesting 3 episode look back at the history of Nvidia.

Boring tech is mature, not old

Ruben Schade

There's sometimes something to be said about using technology that's been around for a while. Chances are, someone has run into the same problem you're facing and knows a solution or work-around.

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Week Notes for February 2 - 8 (#36)

2025-02-09T14:46:48Z

My week notes for the week of February 2 through February 8.

Notes

Fence Up

My father-in-law, myself, & my wife were able to get our new fence erected to help keep Tess contained. My wife and father-in-law did most of the work and it looks amazing. Tess loves being outside, so it will be nice to allow her to just hang out outside without us having to worry about her easily escaping.

Going Through My RSS Feeds

I've spent a fair amount of time this week going through my large backlog in my RSS reader. I probably should be more liberal in my use of "mark all as read", but alas I'm more inclined to read the blog posts and articles even if they're a month old or older.

Gearing Up for the Super Bowl

Normally I don't care all that much about the Super Bowl, but the Philadelphia Eagles are in it again so I'm excited to cheer on my team.

Interesting Links

A N D R O M E D A Redux

Philip Plait

A good write-up about what is an amazing image of Andromeda.

HTML Is Actually a Programming Language. Fight Me

Tim Carmody

I don't understand why people think HTML isn't a programming language, at least in the general sense. It takes skill tor write good, well-formed and accessible HTML. Add to that how many people are doing the same thing through JavaScript, I don't get the hate or condescension.

GOG’s New Plan To Weaponize Its Community’s Wishlist Of Games To Pressure IP Holders

Timothy Geigner

I would love to see more classic games being "updated" to run on modern hardware. If this helps game studios open up their back catalog, I'm all for it.

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Week Notes for January 26 - February 1 (#35)

2025-02-02T16:09:24Z

My week notes for the week of January 26 through February 1.

Notes

Back Into Lifting

This month started out good in the strength training department, but then I shifted more towards walks. That only increased when we got Tess. But I'm hoping to get some more sessions in amongst the dog walks.

Starting Work on the Fence

Since Tess has learned she can jump the fence, we've been forced to keep her on a leash and harness. That's not ideal for her as she needs space to run around and burn off energy. The dog park can help, but we can't always take her there. After talking with my father in-law, we were able to get the materials to raise the picket height on our fence to 6 feet. This should be enough to keep her in and allow her to run around in our backyard. We got the permit from our township and have started work.

Trying to Schedule Out My Days

In an attempt to help keep myself organized, I've started to schedule out my days. It might seem a little extreme, but I'm hoping to use it as a way to keep myself focused on the different things I want to do. I have had mixed success with it so far, as things pop up here and there, but I think it's helped me focus in on getting me to sit down and write. I'll count it as a win right now.

Interesting Links

Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

CSS Working Group

A list of various "mistakes" the CSS team wishes could be fixed.

Welcome to Cumberland County, Tennessee, the “future” of the U.S. economy

Kai Ryssdal, Nela Richardson, and Maria Hollenhorst

The start of an interesting series from Marketplace about the changing demographics and the US economy.

Talking Boring Tech

The Breakpoint Show

The podcast episode talks about working with "boring" technology and why it can often be better than working with the latest and greatest framework.

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Week Notes for January 19 - 25 (#34)

2025-01-26T19:17:30Z

My week notes for the week of January 19 through January 25.

Notes

Getting Used to Being a Dog Owner Again

Our previous dog, Otto, passed away in December 2021. Now that we have Tess, we've been getting her accustomed to us, and getting us accustomed to her. We've been doing 6:30am walks every morning (oof), and this week was particularly oofy as it was in the single digits most mornings. We think she's starting to get used to her new home, she's very energetic and playful. We also found out the hard way that she is athletic enough to jump our fence in the backyard. Which means we are now in the process of figuring out the best way to increase its height. Fun.

Dishwasher Installation

Saturday our new dishwasher arrived. I got it installed and was pleasantly surprised with how simple it was to install. There are really only 3 connections needed so I wasn't really anticipating anything too difficult, but with everything else I've had to do around the house over the years, I expected the worst.

Interesting Links

On blogging, substacking (?), and owning digital real estate

Manuel Moreale

If you write with Substack, do yourself a favor and move to your own domain. It'll be far better in the long run.

Developer Creates Infinite Maze That Traps AI Training Bots

Jason Koebler

If AI companies were ethical and actually paid attention to site's robots.txt file, I might feel a little differently. As it stands, mess with them as much as possible.

Introducing o(m)g:image

Jim Nielsen

Good titles and metadata are better than social post images any day of the week.

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Week Notes for January 12 - 18 (#33)

2025-01-19T17:40:24Z

My week notes for the week of January 12 through January 18.

Notes

New Living Room

We bought our old sofa off Craigslist 12+ years ago. It lasted us well as our cats and dog did quite a number on it. We finally decided that it was time to replace it, and our whole living room set (kinda) while we were at it. We threw out our large sectional and replaced it with a couch/love seat and ottoman combo. We donated our coffee and end tables to Habitat for Humanity and the room looks brand new...adult(ish) even. We still need to get new end tables, but it feels so new.

Meet Tess

On Friday, we adopted a one year old Great Pyrenees Mix dog. She’s absolutely adorable. We’re still adjusting to her and her to us. She’s incredibly smart and has tons of energy. We also think she has some husky in her.

Interesting Links

Blue Origin reaches orbit on first flight of its titanic New Glenn rocket

Eric Berger

It’s nice to see another company reach orbit. Good for Blue Origin.

Elon Musk Uses Cybertruck Explosion to Show Tesla Can Remotely Unlock and Monitor Vehicles

Jason Koebler

Tesla and Elon Musk might be the ones focused on in this, but the amount of surveillance being added to cars nowadays is disconcerting.

The Hidden Cost of Unused Code

Frank Delporte

It can be incredibly easy to leave code in place even if it stops being used. Over time it builds and builds causing side effects that you don’t necessarily realize.

The Trans Sports Ban Portends Something Much Darker

Michael Waters

More culture-war bullshit from the Republicans at the cost of the trans community. I fear how many lives will be lost due to the attacks from the right.

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Week Notes for January 5 - 11 (#32)

2025-01-12T15:23:29Z

My week notes for the week of January 5 through January 11.

Notes

Bitterly Cold

This whole week has been bitterly cold out with a couple days of snow. The snow hasn’t been bad, neither day even hit 2 inches, and much of it melted later in the sun, but the wind has been bad. Despite the cold, I did brave it for some walks and a run.

Regaining Focus

I mentioned this past week that I am taking a break from social media. A week doesn’t make a trend, but I have been able to better focus on writing, my side projects, and even tackling my RSS feeds. I just got my weekly iPhone usage report and my average daily screen time is down a full hour.

Audiobooks

At the end of last year, I tried an audiobook for the first time and didn’t hate the experience like I had years ago. I opted to give another a try and had another good experience. I definitely prefer reading books over listening, but I’m happy to know that they’re an option for me which is good since the library has plenty of them through Libby.

Interesting Links

‘We’re Fine’: Lying to Ourselves About a Climate Disaster

Jason Koebler

Scary thoughts from someone in the path of the destructive fires. The situation is only going to get worse.

Who killed Google Reader?

David Pierce

I’m still sad about Google Reader and what it could have been, but I actually think I like Feedbin and my current setup better. This is still a good read about the history of Google Reader and it’s odd place within the company prior to them killing it.

Knowing CSS is mastery to Frontend Development

Anselm Hannemann

Frameworks come and go, the core of web development, HTML & CSS are forever.

CSS Display Contents

Ahmad Shadeed

I didn’t even know display: contents existed. Another good writeup of CSS functionality by Ahmad.

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Week Notes for December 29 to January 4 (#31)

2025-01-05T22:39:23Z

My week notes for the week of December 29, 2024 - January 4, 2025.

Notes

Unseasonably Warm Weather

The weather warmed this week into the 50s and 60s. Sunday I took advantage and went to Valley Forge for a run. Managed to run 5 miles with a sub-11 minute pace which is kind of crazy considering how hilly it is in comparison to what I normally run. I followed it up with another 5 mile run on Monday. This nice weather (probably?) won't hold, so I'm going to take advantage.

Menzingers Concert

The Menzingers, who are one of my favorite bands, were playing back-to-back shows at The Ardmore Music Hall on the 30th and 31st to bring in the new year. My wife and I went to the show on the 30th with Crossed Keys and Gladie. The show was fun and loud. I've started going back through all the concerts I've gone to, and I think the count for The Menzingers is now at 8.

A Quiet New Year’s Eve

My wife and I generally try to stay in on New Year’s Eve. We don’t really want to have to deal with being out with all the crowds, figuring out how we’re getting to wherever it is we want to go to, and also dealing with those who might not be making smart decisions driving home. To make it simple, we just stay at home cuddled on the couch watching a movie or TV series, reading, or just being in each other’s company. It works for us. This year was more of the same.

Back to Work

Whether I liked it or not, my time off ended and I had to go back to work on Thursday. Thankfully there weren’t really any big items that came up while I was gone so I was able to ease myself back in.

Increasing My Focus

One thing I’ve noticed over the last several years was that it’s been increasingly easy to get distracted when I’m trying to get things done. A lot of it comes from my iPhone and social media. After reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, I think I’m going to try to follow some of his advice and try to be more intentional with my use of my smart phone and social media. We’ll see how it goes.

Interesting Links

Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia

Molly White

Yet another assault on the truth from conservatives. Molly does a good job writing about debunking their assaults on Wikipedia as well as the truth behind how Wikipedia operates.

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Week Notes for December 22 - 28 (#30)

2024-12-29T22:22:39Z

My week notes for the week of December 22 - December 28.

Notes

Christmas Eve Dinner

Christmas Eve, my wife and I had her family over for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. Neither of us are Italian, but we both love seafood and it was a good way to spend time with the family for the holidays. I ended up cooking 10 different types of seafood and they all turned out great. I was stuffed...and exhausted after it, but it was totally worth it.

Christmas with My Family

Christmas day we went up to Allentown to spend time with my immediate family. Saw my brother who I hadn’t seen for two years and his little ones. It was hectic but we had a nice time.

Trip into Philly & Dave Hause Concert

My wife and I got tickets to see Dave Hause play at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia on Friday and we decided to make a day of it. We took the train into Philly and got a hotel room for the night.

Friday afternoon we walked around the city, went to the Christmas Village at Dilworth Park and enjoyed the nice, if not a bit chilly weather. We had dinner at a nice whiskey bar (Village Whiskey) and then set off for the concert.

The concert was amazing. Dave Hause played in the chapel which was a small intimate venue. It was an acoustic show and they didn’t use any kind of sound system as the room had great acoustics. It was such a great experience and I wish I had been able to get tickets to his second night as well. Either way, it was fun and I’m so glad I was able to go.

Interesting Links

The couple months of Linux on the desktop.

Mat Marquis

A good real-life look at the options one has for using Linux as a primary machine.

Unsaid

Jeremy Keith

Some good thoughts here by Jeremy after he attended a conference with guests talking about AI.

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Week Notes for December 15 - 21 (#29)

2024-12-22T22:55:18Z

My week notes for the week of December 15 - December 21.

Notes

I-League Season Over

The Fall I-League season came to an end on Monday. We lost 4-3 in a tightly fought game. It was fun and am looking forward to the winter season starting in mid-February.

Last Working Day of the Year

Thursday was my last day of work for the year. I'll be taking almost 2 weeks off to just rest and relax over the holidays. Don't really have much planned, just figured some relaxation was warranted.

Last Minute Christmas Shopping

Friday I spent running errands and picking up some last minute gifts. Stores were crowded and I really should've done a better job of planning ahead more.

Interesting Links

The Lowest Common Denominator: www

Jim Nielsen

Building for the web might not always get you the most power and control, but as Jim points out, it gives you the greatest reach.

Next-level frosted glass with backdrop-filter

Josh W. Comeau

Josh does an amazing job showing how to create another cool effect with CSS.

12 Modern CSS One-Line Upgrades

Stephanie Eckles

Stephanie goes through some great tips with modern CSS.

To Log Into WordPress, You Now Have To Agree Pineapple on Pizza Is Good

Samantha Cole

This is just embarrassing for one of the biggest platforms of the web.

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Week Notes for December 8 - 14 (#28)

2024-12-15T17:30:38Z

My week notes for the week of December 8 - December 14.

Notes

Hockey Playoff Elimination

Monday night I had my worst game in net all season and we were eliminated in the semi-finals. Feels bad, but gotta bounce back for the consolation round Monday.

Furniture Shopping is an Adventure

We're still trying to figure out what we want for our next couch and living room. After doing some searching, we found that the quality of furniture we'd get from 2 out of 3 of the first places we looked at would probably not exactly be all that great. We looked at other places and found some pieces we liked that had good reviews, but a much higher price point. We'll need to figure out how to balance price and longevity...especially since pets will likely be coming into the picture at some point.

Using Linux Again

I recently booted up my LinuxMint partition on my desktop and am using it more. It's been a long while since I've used anything other than MacOS as my primary driver at home and am curious as to how Linux fares nowadays as a primary desktop OS.

New Computer Development Blues

I mentioned how last week my work laptop got bricked by the Windows 11 upgrade. This week I ran into compatibility issues with .NET 9 and the database project within it. Mastodon helpfully saved the day and I was able to get the global.json file to be recognized to force VisualStudio and Rider to use .NET 8 instead.

Interesting Links

New study on moons of Uranus raises chance of life

Pallab Ghosh

It's crazy to think we're still getting data from the Voyager probes, and that same data can be revisited to find even more insights and information.

Spotify Is Using You

Jill Mapes

We already know that streaming isn't really good for most artists and musicians. More reason to buy music and go to shows to support the bands you love.

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Week Notes for December 1 - 7 (#27)

2024-12-08T23:24:31Z

My week notes for the week of December 1 - December 7.

Notes

Work Laptop Dying

Monday after I was done for the day, the IT department at the company I work for asked me to update my laptop to Windows 11. The update ended up bricking my computer and I had to get a new one overnight shipped to me. It's both annoying and satisfying to have a new machine starting over from scratch. The bad news is that it put me in a position where I'll now have to piece together all of the pull requests that I've been documenting over the last year for the big feature I'm working on.

Couch Shopping

My wife and I are in the process of revamping our living room, and the first big piece will be to replace our couch. We got this couch 12+ years ago second hand off Craigslist and it's served us well. But now it's time to find something new. It's our first time buying a piece of furniture too as all our furniture was hand me downs or craigslist finds. It's been an adventure so far.

Phantoms - Bears Game

Saturday night was the Lehigh Valley Phantoms Teddy Bear Toss game. If you're not aware, many minor league hockey teams have a teddy bear and stuffed animal drive in an ingenious way. Everyone brings stuffed animals and when the Phantoms score their first goal everyone throws the stuffed animals onto the ice. It's fun and for a good cause.

Sadly the Phantoms lost the game 3-2 in overtime.

Interesting Links

From Classroom to Calling: How College Students Are Jumpstarting Their Careers

Olivia Sanchez

I went to Drexel and did 3 co-ops or internships during my five years there. They were incredibly helpful getting me acclimated to the jobs I've had throughout my career and helped getting my foot in the door with some real experience.

Your Bluesky Posts Are Probably In A Bunch of Datasets Now

Samantha Cole

Can't say I'm terribly surprised by this.

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Week Notes for November 24 - 30 (#26)

2024-12-01T19:13:41Z

My week notes for the week of November 24 - November 30.

Notes

Progress on my Media Repository Rewrite

I finally was able to break through a few of my hurdles with my repository rewrite.

One hurdle was how to handle a multiselect control. The <select> control supports multiple selection but I can't say I'm a fan of the look and feel of it. It feels clunky. I was looking for a good alternative and couldn't find one that fit what I was looking for. So many of them were built for jQuery and React, neither of which I have or want in this next version. In the meantime, I just kicked the can down the road and stuck with the built-in control for the time being. It works and I should be able to put something in later.

The other hurdle was getting my star rating input control working cleanly in actual form. My star rating control is one of the first real web components I'm trying out, so there was definitely a bit of a learning curve for it.

Short Work Week

With Thanksgiving this week, it was a short three day work week. We're finally on the final stretch of the project I've been working on and we're still finding small pieces we need to account for. I'm looking forward to seeing it out and getting it out and deployed.

Thanksgiving

My wife and I hosted Thanksgiving this year having her immediate family over. I think it went well. We had some delicious food and I was able to make sure there was something other than turkey for myself. I'm just not a turkey fan, so I made a slow cooker brisket. It turned out amazing.

Black Friday Tradition Continues

For the last several years, my wife and I have had the tradition of going to Bluebird Distilling in Phoenixville every Black Friday. For reference, they have a whiskey release every year on Black Friday. This year it was a new variation of their Sportsman Bourbon Whiskey and two other new whiskeys. We bought a few bottles and stayed for a special cocktail.

Interesting Links

Why Is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?

Sarah Scoles

This is an interesting look at some of the challenges NASA is facing with the Artemis lunar program. Some of it is self-inflicted, some is caused by congress, and others is just a change in public perception and tolerances. It's worth a read.

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Week Notes for November 17 - 23 (#25)

2024-11-24T20:48:49Z

My week notes for the week of November 17 - November 23.

Notes

Back-to-Back Hockey Nights

Sunday and Monday I had hockey games. One for the team I captain. We played hard and walked away with a 3-3 tie. The second game Monday was another goalie battle that I unfortunately was on the losing side, losing 2-1. Team played well, just couldn't manage to squeak one more by to tie it up.

Oddly enough, I was invited to sub for another team I occasionally play on Tuesday night as well. I really wanted to, but I was gassed. I ended up going to bed an hour early. Back-to-back late nights are getting harder as I get older.

Started an Audiobook, for the First Time in Forever

Back in high school and early college, I tried audiobooks and they just never took. I much preferred paper books and now eBooks as well. There's something about being able to page back and easily re-read lines or paragraphs as needed.

Cut to this week and I've stuck with that preference. But after listening to a Hardcore History Addendum podcast, I found a book by the author being interviewed as one to add to my reading list. Sure enough my local library had it via Libby. The library had it as both an audiobook and as an eBook. Both were already loaned and I decided to place holds on both. As it turns out, the audiobook became quickly available to borrow, so guess what, I'm giving the audiobook version a try.

I'm now about 35% through it and I don't hate it. I have to be selective as to when I listen because I really need to focus on it, so I've been listening to it while lifting, walking, and running. I definitely prefer reading books over listening to them, but it's nice to know that I can do audiobooks if that's how I can get them from the library.

For reference, the book is called Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen. It provides an interesting, and scary look at how a Nuclear War might start and the machinations behind the US Government's war plans.

Finished The Last of Us, Part II

Saturday I finished The Last of Us, Part II. I think I liked it better than the first in terms of gameplay. The story for both were phenomenal and am planning on starting the TV show soon. I'd highly recommend the games to anyone.

Tweaking My Site Design

Over the week, I've been tweaking the look and feel of my site again, because of course I am.

Interesting Links

Microsoft Volume I

Acquired Podcast

This was a great podcast episode talking about the founding and creation of Microsoft up through the mid-1990s. It's incredible how much history I just didn't know.

The Handmaidens of the Apocalypse

Hardcore History Addendum

This was a fascinating interview with Annie Jacobsen about her book Nuclear War: A Scenario.

Don't Call it a Substack

Anil Dash

Some good insight about the troublesome platform.

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Week Notes for November 10 - 16 (#24)

2024-11-17T23:18:36Z

My week notes for the week of November 10 to November 16.

Notes

Goalie Battle Monday Night

Monday's hockey game felt like kind of a goalie battle. Myself and our opponent's goalie were both shellacked by shots and the game ended in a 1-1 tie. It was a fun game.

Trying to Write

I set a goal this month to write 30,000 words towards my novel. That sadly has not quite gone the way I had hoped. The US election results and news has really messed with my headspace. I'm getting some writing done, but I'm not sure how much I'll end up writing.

House Work & Painting

I got the motivation to get back into painting the trim in the main living areas. Right now, all that's left is the trim around the one window in our dining room, and one 10 foot stretch behind furniture in our living room. Hoping to get to that one night this week. After that, the only trim left will be in the bedrooms, which we're okay with for the time being.

Interesting Links

You can use text-wrap: balance; on icons

Terence Eden

Cool little trick for the browsers that support text-wrap: balance.

Saquon Barkley is Saving Jobs

Ray Ratto

Ray's not wrong here. Saquon Barkley has been fun to watch this year, and he's bailed the Eagles out of several games.

Announcing .NET 9

.NET Team

Looks to be another solid release with some performance and ease-of-life improvements.

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Week Notes for October 27 - November 9 (#23)

2024-11-10T18:10:24Z

My week notes for the week of October 27 through November 9, 2024. A double issue due to my trip last weekend

Notes

Halloween

My wife and I sat out on our porch this year to hand out candy to the kids. Normally we bring out the firepit to the driveway to have a fire going, but with the exceptionally dry fall and burn ban, that was sadly off the table. Either way, we didn’t get all that many trick-or-treaters which felt a bit disappointing.

Cape May Trip

The reason I didn’t post notes last week was that my wife and I spent a long weekend in Cape May, New Jersey. We stayed at Congress Hall which is a beautiful old seaside resort. We checked out the local wineries and enjoyed the nice weather. I was even able to bring out my DSLR and take some photos around town. I’ll have to go through and organize them sometime soon. Maybe it will spur me to finally finish my photography site as well.

Nightmare of Trump’s 2nd Term

The morning after the election, we awoke to the awful, but unsurprising news of Trump getting elected to a second term. The long and short of it is that this is absolutely awful and will likely set us back a generation, if not longer. I’m still numb from it.

Writing

Despite the NaNoWriMo organization buying into the AI slop, I’m still going to spend this month working on my novel. My goal is to hit 30,000 more words by the end of the month. I figure 1,000 words a day should be mostly doable. Though with the election outcome screwing my mind up and distracting my focus, we’ll see how I manage. Mental health is important and I’m not going to make myself more miserable for it.

The Last of Us, Part II

I finally got around to starting this and so far I think I like it better than the first one. I’m enjoying the gameplay and story. I’m about 7 hours into it and it has me hooked.

Interesting Links

Building My Resume in HTML using Eleventy

Michael Engen

I’ve been tempted to do something along these lines on my site. Michael goes through how he built it, and it looks like something 11ty is nicely suited for.

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Week Notes for October 20 - 26 (#22)

2024-10-27T20:26:57Z

My week notes for the week of October 20 through 26, 2024.

Notes

Accessibility Work at Work

I spent most of my week at work fixing the accessibility issues that got flagged in our internal review. I think I got most of them addressed, but a follow-up review is still forthcoming.

Beautiful, if Dry, Weather

The weather over the past week has been amazing and it’s allowed me to enjoy evenings sitting out on the porch with my laptop writing or working on my media repository. I’m not sure how long this will last so I plan on taking advantage of it as much as I can. We really could use some rain though.

Hockey a Mixed Bag

Played two games this week. Tied the first one 2-2 with me in net. Thought the team and I played well, we just couldn’t sneak one more past their goalie, and they got some good tic-tac-toe passes to sneak one past my back side twice. The other game was just a blowout in our opponent’s favor. My sub-par play didn’t help matters. Oh well, shake things off and come back stronger next games.

Used Book Stores are Dangerous

Saturday my wife and I went to our local used book store. That was probably our first “mistake” of the day as I walked out with more than I intended to purchase. Oh well, I’ll read them.

Interesting Links

I am my own legal department: the promise and peril of “just go independent”

Molly White

A good reminder that going independent is not always the end-all-be-all we sometimes think it can be. I appreciate Molly’s writing and would highly recommend subscribing to her work, as well as other independent writers if you are able.

Hire HTML and CSS people

Robin Rendle

If you have a good grasp and understanding of HTML and CSS, the rest can fall into place.

C# Compiler and Language Design at Microsoft with Jared Parsons

Software Engineering Daily

It’s often amazing to hear about how much goes into making the C# language. It’s one of my primary languages and it really is impressive all the work the team at Microsoft puts in to make sure that everything continues to work as they advance the language.

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Week Notes for October 13 - 19 (#21)

2024-10-20T23:44:17Z

My week notes for the week of October 13 through 19, 2024.

Notes

Accessibility Work

My week at work consisted of continuing to go through the accessibility audit of the project I’ve been working on. I was able to take care of most of the low hanging easy stuff, and am now working on cleaning up the custom controls I had to build. Some of it has been tough, but I’m learning and I feel like that’s the important part.

Second Hockey League Starts Back Up

Monday night, my second hockey league started back up. The team I play on started off well winning 4-1. Wish I could say I helped, but I let in one of the only few shots I faced...whomp, whomp. Either way, back to multiple games a week!

Trying to Make a Dent in my Podcast Queue

My podcast queue right now is over 600 episodes long. I’m not sure I’ll ever get through it all with more episodes being added. I was able to listen to a bunch this past week, hoping to make some progress.

Celebrating 11 Years

Saturday Lauren and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary. We spent the day in Phoenixville walking around and enjoying the local distilleries and breweries. It was gorgeous weather and a beautiful day for a nice occasion.

Interesting Links

Where Should the Rays Play

Ray Ratto

Hurricane Milton ripped the roof of the Tampa Bay Rays’ stadium, Tropicana Field. Since the repair will cost a lot of money combined with the owner trying to swindle Florida residents out of tax income for a new stadium, there’s question as to whether it will even be repaired. So that leaves a fun thought experiment as to where the Rays will play? Will they take over Oakland after the A’s left? Will they swoop in with a deal with Vegas to keep the A’s out?

Fighting for Our Web

Molly White

This is a great talk by Molly talking about the wonder that the early web was and how we can hopefully re-claim it.

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Week Notes for October 6 - 12 (#20)

2024-10-13T21:20:31Z

My week notes for the week of October 6 through 12, 2024.

Notes

Accessibility Learnings

At work, the accessibility review for the work I did several months ago came back and I'm going through all the different results and recommendations. Got a decent amount of work to do, but I don’t mind. I’m learning a lot about accessibility in the process, which I appreciate. I'm also appreciative that the company I work for cares enough to do this.

Getting Back into Lifting

With all the running I did over the last two months, my lifting routine has taken a hit. I think I only lifted once, maybe twice in September. While cardio is certainly important, I want to get back into strength training as well. This week I tried to start where I left off and realized that while my strength certainly hasn’t disappeared, it might be better to lessen the weights a tad. I ended up stopping the cycle I was on, de-loading slightly, and starting a new cycle. It seemed to work well enough through the 2 sessions I’ve done so far. I was able to hit most of my lifts. My legs and core muscles are a little sore, but it was to be expected since they haven’t been worked in a little while as they were this week.

Lehigh Valley Phantoms Season Opener

On Saturday, Lauren and I went up to Allentown to see the Lehigh Valley Phantoms season opener. They’re the American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers. We started the evening like we normally do by having dinner and drinks at Fegley’s Brew Works, followed by the short walk across the street to the arena.

The game was kind of a weird one. The Phantoms seems tired and off most of the night. They were playing the Hartford Wolf Pack (AHL affiliate of the New York Rangers) and it always seemed like Hartford was threatening in the Phantoms zone the entire game. Despite that, the Phantoms outshot the Wolf Pack 49-25 and won in a shootout 4-3. (Goes to show you that shots don’t mean much) If you had hidden the shot totals and team goals, I would’ve guessed the results would be reversed. Oh well, a win is a win, and it’s only the first game. Hopefully it’s just a bit of rust they can shake off.

Interesting Links

Web Components are not Framework Components — and That’s Okay

Lea Verou

Lately there’s been a fair amount of debate over the state of web components. Some are arguing strenuously in favor of web components, others not so much. Lea I think does a good job here talking about how what web components are and what they can do, as well as the other use cases are and why the two can’t always be compared equally.

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Week Notes for September 29 - October 5 (#19)

2024-10-06T00:48:03Z

My week notes for the week of September 29 through October 5.

Notes

Back to the Grind

It was nice to have a week off from the real world and I had a good vacation, but damn it sucks to have to start waking up and going back to work.

Media Repository Up and Running on my NAS

I was able to finally get my Node and React version up and running on my NAS. It means that I can now use my PC in whatever OS I need and will still have a good place to store what I'm reading, listening, and watching.

A Weekend in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania

Lauren and I spent the weekend in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania up in the Poconos. We stayed in a hotel right on the main street and were able to walk to different shops, bars, restaurants and breweries. We also ventured out to Silverback Distillery for a tasting. It was a fun weekend.

The Wonder Years & The Menzingers in Concert

The weekend trip's culminated with a concert. Two of my favorite bands, The Wonder Years and The Menzingers played a show together and it was amazing.

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Week Notes for September 15 - 28 (#18)

2024-09-29T22:25:58Z

My week notes for the weeks of September 15 through September 21 & September 22 through September 28. This is a double issue due to vacation.

Week at the Shore

I spent the week down at the shore in Cape May, New Jersey. My wife and I rented a condo for the week and enjoyed the peace and quiet of the shore after the busy season.

Nick Siriani, What Are You Thinking?

Sunday we ventured out to a local bar to watch our Eagles take on the Saints. I’m not quite sure how we walked out of that game with a win, but we did, squeaking past the saints 15-12. The game was frustrating with more Jalen Hurts turnovers and some boneheaded decisions by Eagles head coach Nick Siriani. Our defense played very well though (probably saving the game for us) holding the Saints to only a field goal for most of the game. A win is a win, but I wish I felt better about it.

Finished Node/React Version of Media Repository

I finished up my Node/React rewrite of my media repository. It's a shame I couldn't stick with Blazor, but given my hosting options, it made the most sense. Either way, I'm happy with how it turned out. I made the UI a little bit nicer and added a few niceties I was planning on adding to the Blazor version.

I still do intend on rebuilding it once more using web components and using more standard HTML/CSS/JS rather than React.

Jessie Creek Winery

Monday, we spent the afternoon at Jessie Creek Winery. I spent some of the time writing a few blog post drafts and had a good time relaxing and tasting a flight of the local wines.

Beer Tasting

Tuesday, we stopped by Behr Brewing and then Cape May Brewwing for lunch and some beers. Since New Jersey laws make it difficult for breweries to serve food, most breweries are BYOF (Bring Your Own Food), so we made some sandwiches, grabbed some fruit and spent the afternoon trying some beers at Behr and Cape May Brewery.

Behr we had only been to right after it opened and I didn’t remember much of what I had. The beers I had this time around were good. I really enjoyed their Behrfest, a take on a Märzen style beer.

I’ve had plenty of beers from Cape May Brewery, but they always keep certain brews exclusively at their tasting room. I had their Sea Seeker IPA and it was delicious.

More Beer

Wednesday we ventured further north and had lunch at Ludlam Island Brewing for lunch. Their kitchen does barbecue and it was delicious. The beer was good as well. I had a flight with several IPAs and they were all delicious.

After Ludlam Island, we traveled down to Slack Tide Brewing. I tried their pineapple milkshake IPA and their pineapple, tangerine & coconut fruited sour. Both were delicious.

Our final stop was Gusto Brewing. I had a New England IPA and a black IPA. Both were tasty.

Interesting Links

I think in the future I’m going to share some of the links I’ve read and why I liked them.

Let’s Bring Back Browsing

Christian Heilmann

Chris talks about aimlessly surfing the web at the beginning of the internet age and how we’ve slowly moved away from it. I, like him, remember the early days of the internet and would love to see more of that come back to today’s web.

The Mac is a Power Tool

John Gruber

I haven’t upgraded to MacOS Sequoia yet, but have heard about some of its decisions regarding alerts about screen recording. John talks about alert fatigue and the balance between making sure those less technical can get alerted for permission checks while allowing the advanced users freedom to not have to worry about constantly being nagged by the OS about things they’re fully aware of.

Never Forget What Killed The Oakland A’s

Ray Ratto

The Oakland Athletics are no more. For the next 3 seasons they will be in Sacramento, then who knows. As a sports fan, I feel bad for Oakland fans. In the past several years they went from having 3 major sports teams, to now none. Thanks to greed from the owners, they all left. I guess the one upside is that their tax dollars aren't paying for a new stadium, but it still sucks.

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Week Notes for September 8 - 14 (#17)

2024-09-15T20:01:53Z

My week notes for the week of September 8 through September 14.

Progress on Media Repository

I've been making great progress on building out my media repository in Node.js and React. Books are almost done, and all that'll be left after that will be my music. I'm happy with how it's going, how it's working, and where things are. It's mostly just a direct copy of the Blazor version, but with some niceties added.

Running

I've been running every day this month. I've run at least 3.25 miles every day this month, and this past week is no different. What started as taking advantage of some good weather, and then continued as an excuse to skip legs day at the gym has now turned into a 2-week running streak combined with 24 runs in the last 26 days. I'm running more and it's feeling good.

I did finally do that legs day at the gym Friday and felt it heavily for today's run. My legs are sore and it wasn't even that heavy a day...just the first in a long while...so ow!

Hockey Season Starts Anew

Tuesday was my hockey team's Fall/Winter season opener. We won 5-2, played a solid team game, and I even tallied 2 goals. Which is weird since I was playing defense. I'm still happy about it though, especially with the win to back it up. I did struggle at the position as I'm more comfortable at wing when I skate out. I got caught flat footed a few too many times, but thankfully my defensive partner and our goalie were able to bail me out.

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Week Notes for September 1 - 7 (#16)

2024-09-08T18:29:56Z

My week notes for the week of September 1 through September 7.

Continued Work on Media Repository Rewrite

I spent a fair amount of time working on my media repository rewrite. I was making good progress but stumbled when starting to work with nested queries. I found my way around it, but it makes me miss C#’s way of handling it.

var getGenres = _repository.getGenres();
var getServices = _repository.getServices();

await Task.WhenAll(getGenres, getServices);

var genres = getGenres.Result;
var services = getServices.Result;

// the rest of the processing...

Instead, I have to work through callbacks in Node.js with the sqlite3 library.

repository.GetGenres((error, genres) => {
	if (error) {
		console.error(error);
		return;
	}

	repository.GetServices((error2, services) => {
		if (error2) {
			console.error(error2);
			return;
		}

		// the rest of the processing...
	});
});

I really only have to deal with at most 4 levels deep but I wish there was a better way. If I’m missing something, please reach out.

Either way, I’m making good progress and I’ve already tested it on my NAS. I ran into a few hiccups, but nothing that looks like a deal breaker.

Running

The weather has been nice so I’ve been taking advantage of it and getting out, often over lunch for some runs. It’s nice to get some fitness in while breaking up the work day. I find that my mood for the afternoon often tends to be much better when I can get a workout in. I’ve run around 90 miles over the last month and while my legs are feeling it, it feels good. I really should get back to lifting some though.

Back on the Ice...Kind of

This past week I’ve taken part in some hockey practices and scrimmages. I rented an hour of ice on Wednesday for my team to get some practice and drills in. One of my teammates coaches his kids’ teams and another is familiar with coaching so I asked them to come up with some drills to help out and it was fun and hopefully will help this upcoming season.

Friday I was asked to play in net for a scrimmage between 2 teams in the division I play on and was able to get more practice in with my new leg pads as well as try out my new pants. The leg pads as it turns out, slide much better on the ice which will take more getting used to. I didn’t see it at the practice 2 weeks ago, but I definitely felt it Friday night.

Gorgeous Weather

This past week has had some gorgeous weather and along with the runs, I’ve taken advantage of it by sitting out on the porch in the evenings and afternoons. It’s nice to get some fresh air.

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Week Notes for August 25 - 31 (#15)

2024-09-01T20:51:43Z

My week notes for the week of August 25 through August 31.

House Work

It's Labor Day weekend here in the US and I'm spending part of the long weekend taking care of house projects. I was able to clean out and restart the water softener, and started painting the baseboards in the living room. We figure we'll open our house and heart to pets again, and it'll be easier to paint now than later.

Conversion to Node.js & React

After not being able to get my .NET/Blazor media repository running on my NAS, I started converting my media repository over to Node.js & React. I'm pretty sure Node is supported as I was able to get it installed. I'll have to get an MVP up and running quickly to prove it.

I originally wanted to build it using web components, but I opted to push that to the next version. To free up my desktop and make it easier to do some PC gaming, I want to get the next version built ASAP. Once it's up and running, then I'll worry about stripping out React. It's not ideal, but oh well.

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Week Notes for August 18 - 24 (#14)

2024-08-25T15:23:18Z

My week notes for the week of August 10 through August 17.

Finished My Redesign

If you're reading this on my site, you might notice that it looks a bit different. Along with my media repository being done, I took advantage of the switch of the media files to also tweak the site. I have a few last things I want to tweak, but that's minor.

New Leg Pads

I ended up buying new (to me) goalie leg pads for hockey. After taking the puck off the knee (lucky shot, really) I decided a newer pair would be better. I found a pair on Sideline Swap at a good price and now I'm excited to give them a try Monday night.

Even More Running

The weather this week was amazing...taking advantage, I ran even more this week than last, totaling a little over 19.5 miles. The runs went well and I think the weather really helped allow me to keep a decent pace.

Figured Out My Water Softener Issues (Finally)

Our water softener hasn't been working for the last year or so. It's been an item on my to-do list for a while to try to fix it. Last year I tried completely emptying it and cleaning the filter. That didn't fix it. Finally, thanks to help from my Dad, we tracked the likely issue to be a clogged exit tube. Sure enough, if I had the water softener expel the water into buckets, it worked properly. After digging up the hose outside, sure enough the hose had snapped and got clogged with dirt. I replaced the hose and sured up the hose connector, ran the water softener through a cycle, and it all seems to be working. Last step will be to empty it and replace the salt, but I hope, I found the problem.

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Week Notes for August 11 - 17 (#13)

2024-08-18T22:06:42Z

My week notes for the week of August 10 through August 17.

End of the Hockey Season

The hockey team I captain was sadly eliminated in the playoffs in a tight 4-3 loss. Was definitely a good, fun season, but a disappointing end. Oh well, next season starts mid-September.

Media Repository Up & Running

I got my media repository up and running on my Linux Mint desktop. I can easily access it within my home network which is what I’m going for. It’d be nice to have more global reach, I’m home most of the time and it saves me from having to add authentication to the app.

I’ll need to re-jigger the JSON generator to support it, and I do want to revamp the UI. To start, I just wanted a working system, and I was able to get it up and running quickly with the thought of going back in later and improving it.

Lots of Running

I was in the mood to run this week, ended up running a little over 17.5 miles. The runs went well and I felt like I was able to generally keep a decent pace.

Website Redesign

I've made fantastic work on my website redesign. I have all the major pages rebuilt, and am now just going through some final cleanup. It'll be nice to have it done to limit the differences between the two versions. The new version runs completely off my media repository while the current version still runs off Notion. The build time difference is extreme and I'm looking forward to the quicker builds working off the pre-built JSON.

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Week Notes for August 4 - 10 (#12)

2024-08-11T21:26:05Z

My week notes for the week of August 4 through August 10.

Puck Off the Knee

Monday I was supposed to play 2 hockey games. Unfortunately, late in the 3rd period a puck managed to sneak past my leg pads and nailed me on the knee. My knee pads helped a little bit, but that was still the end of my night. Got a nice bruise from it, but thankfully the damage wasn't as bad as it could've been.

Good Progress on Redesign

I've been spending a good amount of time on my site redesign and am making really good progress. I've cleaned up some code that's been floating around and overall things are looking nice. I've even been able to add some new features that I've been wanting to add. I'm hoping to have it done in the next week or two.

A Hang-Up in my Media Repository

I was planning on getting docker set up on my Synology NAS for my media repository to run on. That got shot down as apparently Docker is not supported on my NAS due to the wrong chipset. I spent Tuesday evening trying to figure out a workaround I felt comfortable with. I found instructions on how to do it, but said there could be unintended side effects so I'm not sure what my next steps are. I've gotten my LinuxMint desktop up and running and have considered hosting it there, but since I occasionally boot into Windows for gaming, it wouldn't be up all the time. Kind of annoyed, but I'll figure something out.

Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War

My wife and I finished this 9-episode documentary on Netflix and thought it was interesting and informative. I'd recommend it.

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Week Notes for July 28 - August 3 (#11)

2024-08-04T21:38:10Z

My week notes for the week of July 28 through August 3.

Site Redesign Underway

I was able to finish up my media repository so I've taken advantage of changing the data for my media pages as an excuse to refresh the look of my site. It's still in the relative early phases, but I like the new look and feel. The other benefit is that now that I'm pulling the data locally prior to my 11ty build is that my build time has gone from 30-45 seconds to under 10 seconds. Turns out having to go to Notion's API takes time...who'd have thunk it.

Plenty of Hockey

My game count this past week was 4. One Sunday night, 2 Monday night and another Wednesday night. Almost played Friday too.

The one thing about playing goalie is you're sometimes called by random teams to fill in when their normal goalie is out of town or unavailable. Sometimes last minute too. I know I can say "no", and will, but I also know how much it sucks to play a game without a netminder so I try to help when I can.

Beat Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart

I ended up beating Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart this week. It my first Ratchet & Clank game I've ever played and I enjoyed it. It was fast paced and fun. Some of the repetitiveness got a tad annoying, but not enough to detract from it. It's light-hearted story was a nice change from the more serious stories of Horizon and Mass Effect.

It was the 5th game I completed this year so far. I have a rather large backlog and I'm hoping to knock some more off this year.

Started The Last of Us

After beating Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart, I needed a new game. I was considering God of War or Spiderman, but at a friend's recommendation, I've given The Last of Us another go. I had tried it in 2020 but was turned off by some of the sneaking gameplay. Which is a shame because I know the story is supposed to be top notch.

I'm giving it another go and I'm still kind of annoyed by the over-reliance of having to sneak around. I know that's a thing, and it's on me, but I've gotten farther this time around and am enjoying the characters and better handling the sneaking around.

Time with Family

Saturday I drove up to my parents' house to celebrate my nephew's birthday. It was a nice time and nice to see my parents and siblings.

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Week Notes for July 21 - 27 (#10)

2024-07-28T19:53:52Z

My week notes for the week of July 21 through July 27.

More Back-to-Back Hockey

I ended up playing 3 games in 2 days Sunday and Monday. Played Sunday night as a skater, then 2 games Monday as a goalie. Played kind of lousy Sunday and lost. Monday's games I thought I played well, but I got hammered with shots and unfortunately couldn't keep them all out. Oh well, I still mostly had fun and got some good exercise in, which is my primary reason for playing.

Adventures in Docker

I'm just about finished with my media repository and I'm hoping to run it locally on my Synology NAS. Docker seems to be the best way to handle go about doing that. The downside is that I have very little knowledge of Docker outside of running a few pre-built image/containers at work. I'm slowly changing that now to hopefully get this thing up and running. I'm still trying to figure out how to get docker running on my NAS.

Artemis Lego

I think there are a lot of issues with NASA's SLS and Artemis program, but damn it does look cool. I recently found that there's a Lego set for it, so of course I had to buy it and then build it.

Re-Organizing My Notes

I spent a little bit of time this week re-organizing my Obsidian folder using the Johnny Decimal System. I'm not entirely sure I'm doing it 100% correctly, but I do appreciate some of the principles.

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Week Notes for July 14 - 20 (#9)

2024-07-21T18:12:53Z

My week notes for the week of July 14 through July 20.

Media Repository Work

I spent a lot of evenings this week working hard on my media repository. I'm just about done with it. I got a lot of the data loaded into it as well. The next step will be one of the more tedious parts. I'm going to have to go through and add a bunch of the data to the items that wasn't stored in Notion. I've developed some ideas for improvements for my site that requires data that wasn't stored in Notion. I've built the functionality to store it in my media repository, but now I need to add it.

Running Again

After 2 weeks of temperatures in the 90s, they've dropped to the low 80s and I've taken the brief respite to go on some runs. It's still hot which might be contributing to my inability to keep my heart rate down, but I'm still happy to be getting some cardio in.

Ratchet & Clank

I've been playing through Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart and have been enjoying it. It's my first foray into the series and the good words I've heard about it so far have been true. It's a fun game and so far I'd recommend it.

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Week Notes for July 7 - 13 (#8)

2024-07-14T17:28:06Z

My week notes for the week of July 7 through July 13.

Continuing Back-To-Back Hockey Games

In the one hockey league I play in, I play goalie. For anyone not familiar with hockey, it is a specialized position. The gear tends to be more expensive than the gear you wear when you’re skating out as a forward or defenseman. Because of this, the position tends to be in relatively high demand due to the lower supply of available goalies. Well, due to some injuries and vacations, the last three weeks have had me playing back-to-back hockey games. Once for my team, and then right after for another team, filling in for their net minder. I don’t mind because it’s fun and good exercise, but man does it feel good to sit down and take off my gear after that second game.

Completed Mass Effect 3

I completed Mass Effect 3 on Thursday. The ending was fitting, but I'm kind of sad by it. I have to admit that I did look afterwards at the different possibilities and I was pretty far off from the ending I would have preferred. It is pretty cool though how the decisions you made in the prior game can come back to either help or hurt you. Either way, it was an enjoyable trilogy.

It was the fourth game I completed this year. Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart is up next.

Battlefield Tattoo Expo

On Saturday I drove out to Gettysburg for the Battlefield Tattoo Expo. Ken Bryan, the artist who did my sleeve wanted to enter me in the tattoo contest. Sadly I didn't win anything, but there were some fantastic pieces so I still don't really count it as a loss per say. Either way, it was a fun experience to walk around and see all the various artists and tattoos.

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Week Notes for June 30 - July 6 (#7)

2024-07-07T20:41:39Z

My week notes for the week of June 30 through July 6.

Short Work Week

Thanks to the Fourth of July holiday, I only had a 3-day work week. It was a nice change of pace to have a 4-day weekend. Work wasn’t too bad. I ended up finishing the initial version of the project I was using Blazor on. For the first time in a long while, I jumped back into React and TypeScript.

Mass Effect 3

This year I’ve been playing through the original Mass Effect trilogy. I plowed through Mass Effect pretty quickly. Mass Effect 2 and 3 have taken more time due to what feels like a lot more content. Despite its shaky start, Mass Effect 2 was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. Mass Effect 3 has been good so far as well. It’s interesting how they’ve built so much into the game and how decisions you make in all the games can come back and affect what options you have as you progress.

Heat Wave Hell

The last several days have all been in the 90s with high humidity. Needless to say, it hasn’t felt pleasant. It has put a damper on my exercise, limiting me to strength training. I wanted to go for some runs, but I’d be more likely to have health issues trying to run in this. I’d say maybe it’ll cool down soon, but it’s July...

Media Repository

I’ve been plugging away on the media repository. I was able to finish up the TV section. The funny part is that I’ve been improving things as I move along and will have to go back and apply the improvements to the other sections I’ve already finished. Such is the way I guess.

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Week Notes for June 23 - 29 (#6)

2024-06-30T18:38:10Z

My week notes for the week of June 23 through June 29.

Back to the Grind

After being on vacation the week before, I had to get back used to early wake ups again. Thankfully it was generally a calm week which gave me a good chance to get back into the swing of things.

Hockey League Starting Back Up

The Instructional League (I-League) I play goalie in started up while I was in New York City. This was the first week I played which means I’m now going to be back to playing 2, occasionally 3 days a week. It’s good exercise and fun. When I have to do the back-to-back games though, I definitely feel my age.

Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me!

On Thursday, we went to a live taping of Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me. For anyone not familiar, it is a weekly news quiz from NPR with plenty of jokes and laughs. It was our 5th time seeing the show live and it continues to be a good time. The podcast is great, but it’s interesting how much more there is in the show when it’s recorded live.

House Work Never Ends

I started working of freshening up the trim in our house. It really just needs some sanding and a fresh coat of paint. Part of the thinking is that at some point my wife and I will adopt new pets. It will be far easier to paint now than wait until we have pets and then find some way to not have the wet paint ruined and many dog and cat baths.

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Week Notes for June 9 - 22 (#5)

2024-06-23T16:43:06Z

Week notes for June 9 through June 22. Double edition due to my trip to New York City.

Continued Work on Media Repository

I’ve continued work on my media repository. Links and video games are in working order. Currently working on podcasts. For a simpler project like this, I love how .NET, Blazor, and Entity Framework all work so well together.

New York City

Wife and I took a trip to New York City to celebrate my birthday. We stayed at the LUMA hotel on 41st street between 6th and Broadway. It was the first time we ever stayed there and chose it since it was right next to Bryant Park. It was nice to grab some coffee and a pastry every morning and sit in the park and read or write.

A lot of the time was spent wandering around the city. We did see Book of Mormon one day. We checked out one of Starbucks’ Reserve Roasteries in Chelsea, a bunch of breweries in both Long Island City and Manhattan. Overall it was a good vacation and a good trip.

Small Utility Created

I ended up building a little .NET console app to create the markdown files with templates for the front matter 11ty needs to build my site. I had been using snippets in VS Code and Sublime, but I decided to get a little fancier. I forget where I got the idea, but it makes things a little simpler.

Works In Progress Page

I added a works in progress page to talk about some of the projects I have cooking as well as others that are inactive. I think I got the idea from Robb Knight.

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Week Notes for June 2 - 8 (#4)

2024-06-09T00:00:00Z

Week notes for June 2 through June 8.

Really Bumping Up My Running Distance

Since I discovered that I felt better keeping my heart rate in zone 2, I’ve been able to run farther. I’ve added more 4 mile runs, and have even crossed the 6 mile mark.

Re-Organizing Content for Site

When I first built my site in 11ty, I didn’t realize how easy it was to define permalinks. Because of this, I built out paths manually. I’ve spent part of this week correcting that and organizing my content files better. It’s not difficult, but it’s tedious.

Back on the Bike

I ended up going for my first bike ride in around a year. Managed a little over 27 miles on the Schuylkill River Trail. It was a beautiful day for it and I hope it won’t be the last this year.

Progress on Media Repository

I spent some time working on my media repository and was able to get the links content functionality built out. Now all that’s left is populating it. I need to figure out a good way to load everything in to the various tables...hundreds of records would be annoying as all get out to backfill manually.

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Week Notes for May 26 - June 1 (#3)

2024-06-02T00:00:00Z

My week notes for the week of May 26 through June 1.

Revamping My Diet

I got some bloodwork back recently that was a little less than ideal. Nothing awful, but gave me a push to revisit my diet. It hasn’t been bad, but I’ve definitely looked back and have been snacking a little more than I probably should. Going to try to cut back on the snacking and really try to get my caloric intake a little lower to hopefully lose some more weight faster.

Adventures of a New Fridge

We got a “new to us” refrigerator for our basement. It came with the doors off and some assembly required. No big deal…right? Well I found the manual for it online and got the doors all put back together only to find that we had a piece that we didn’t know where it went. The manual said nothing about it. Plugging the fridge in, it started beeping. Again, the manual said nothing about that. It took searching the number on top of the random part to find out what it was and where it needed to go. Frustrating since it should have been in the manual.

New Little Personal Project

One of the things I've been trying to do more is make sure I own my media and my data. I decided that I'd build a little tool to keep track of my reading, watching, listening, and playing lists. They're currently stored within my Notion account, but I started a small .NET project to start to manage them locally. I'm building the interface using Blazor and will interact with a Sqlite database using EntityFramework. Still in the early phases, but should be useful.

Upgraded to Eleventy 3.0

This past weekend I upgraded my site to the latest Eleventy 3.0 alpha. Outside of a typo in an import that took me some time to track down, it went smoothly. I was definitely impressed with the ease of upgrading major versions. I remember having issues upgrading Next.js, so Eleventy's ease was refreshing.

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Week Notes for May 19 - 25 (#2)

2024-05-26T13:35:29Z

Week notes for May 19 through May 25

Leegtastic Work

I had taken a break working on Leegtastic to work on a website for my wife. I came back and started questioning how I was doing things based on some of my work with Blazor for my job. Decided to revamp some of the architecture. So while I’m not building new functionality, I’m hopefully putting it in a better place for future work.

Completed Mass Effect 2

I've been playing a lot of Mass Effect 2 and ended up completing it Saturday. I enjoyed it a lot more than I anticipated given how it started. I also kind of felt that the final battle was easier than you'd expect for a final showdown.

Sublime Text

Prior to Visual Studio Code's release, I was a big fan of Sublime Text. I'm giving it a try again on my personal site and seeing how I like it. So far I miss some features of Code, but it feels lighter and slightly more snappy.

House Work

We are getting a refrigerator for our basement, I spent parts of the week cleaning out a spot for it and running a wire for a new outlet. It was a challenge to find an acceptable circuit to use and connect into.

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Week Notes for May 12 - 18 (#1)

2024-05-19T00:00:00Z

Notes for the week of May 12 through May 18

Working on Rebuilding My Photography Site

A while back, when upgrading Next.js on my previous site, I was having issues with my photography pages. I decided that I’d shelve the pages and re-introduce them later. Time passed and I never did. This week, I decided to rebuild it as a subdomain instead. I started laying out the page and figuring things out. Will be built with 11ty as well.

Finding a Lightroom Replacement

For the longest time, I’ve used Adobe Lightroom to manage my photography library. I decided to quit the subscription for it because I want a non-subscription option. I tried my old Lightroom 5 license, but the app is so old, it’s buggy on new Mac hardware. Still trying darktable, but it feels a bit clunky.

Continuing Mass Effect 2

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Mass Effect 2. The game feels so much larger than the original. I’ve been enjoying it. I thought I enjoyed Mass Effect more, but I think that’s changed.

PWHL Playoffs

I’ve been trying to follow the PWHL playoffs. A lot of games with multiple overtimes. It’s nice to see a women’s hockey league having some success. Hope this continues.

New Split Keyboard

I recently picked up the ZSA Voyager mechanical ergonomic keyboard. I can't get over how small it is. It does take some getting used to compared to my Moonlander. Also, I could thankfully remap some of the keys because the default layout was opposite the Moonlander and it was nice to be able to set it up to match.

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