Writing
- To record TV shows watched - Trakt
- Track App Purchases - AppRaven
- To track music - Last.fm
- To record books read - Goodreads
- Private Location Tracking - Geofency
- Location Bookmarking - Rego
- Step Counting - Pedometer++
- Heart Rate Data - HeartWatch
- Sleep Data - Autosleep
- Walking/Running - Runmeter
- To connect different apps - IFTTT
- Journal app - Day One
- Notes App - Obsidian
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐ - Never, ever going on a road trip without a stop by the Circle K for soda and a snack
- That first trip to a bathroom with porcelain after spending days upon days on a hiking trip
- Owning and using fleece lined slippers
- Being able to get the fastest Internet you can get to a residential building
- Car repairs that don't go on a credit card
- Rarely saying no to our favorite charities
- Every pair of Levis blue jeans I've ever owned
- 10% Happier by Dan Harris
- Diet Cults: The Surprising Fallacy at the Core of Nutrition Fads and a Guide to Healthy Eating for the Rest of US by Matt Fitzgerald
- Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister
- Never Let Go: A Philosophy of Lifting, Living and Learning by Dan John
- Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman
- Thinking, Fast and Slow By Daniel Kaneman
- Average walking four miles a day for the entire year, counting only purposeful walks and not steps taken in the course of the day.
- Get a minimum of 10,000 steps every day
- Close the rings on my Apple Watch activity tracker every day requiring at least 30 minutes of exercise, 800 calories burned and no prolonged sitting over 12 hours each day
- Meditate every day in a sitting position, alone using a timer
- Read 52 books
- Deadlift and squat 400 lbs
- Aura Mason WiFi Digital Picture Frame - My favorite gift in ages. All my kids have rights to add photos to is and that's where they share new images of my grandkids. I probably ask my wife to look at the currently displayed picture 50 times a day.
- Plustek Photo Scanner ePhoto Z300 - Our new scanner processes a standard photo in two seconds and automatically straightens any that go through crooked. It was a breeze to set up and configure.
- VENA vCommuteX for iPhone 15 Pro Max Wallet Case (MagSafe Compatible) - I've never used mag safe charging because I like using a case on my phone where I can keep credit cards. This case lets me do both.
- Magnetic Wireless Mag-Safe Charging Station - Cable management and device charging has been a pain in the butt since forever. This is a single stand using one cord and it will charge my iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods.
- Anker USB C Cable, 4 ft 2-in-1 USB C to USB C Cable 140W Max - I've never been let down by Anker products and this two-headed cord will let me charge my laptop and phone from a charger with a single USB-C out port.
- Macally Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard for Mac - I prefer a full sized keyboard when using my iMac. The legacy Apple keyboard I've been using has an oddly placed Fn key and req1uires a USB-A connection. This MacAlly keyboard moves the FN key. It's wiress and it can connect to up to three devices at a time, useful to me since I often set up new laptops for customers while sitting at my desk.
- Wurkkos FC11 EDC Flashlight 1300Lumen Rechargeable - I've been wanting a pocket flashlight to add to my EDC and this one was recommended by several Internet friends. It recharges with a USB-C cable and is remarkably bright and useful for working in dim switch closets and when crawling under desks.
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This Weeks Bookmarks - Wikenigma, Winter Camping, Militia Danger, $30K Tip, Protecting Democracy, Billionaire BS, Legal Weed
Wikenigma - an Encyclopedia of Unknowns - Wikenigma is a unique wiki-based resource specifically dedicated to documenting fundamental gaps in human knowledge.
Outdoorsy Minnesotans: I winter camped and so can you. Probably. - Two winter camping novices spend a night out with an Arctic explorer to learn how to stay warm -- and even enjoy -- camping in freezing weather.
Who Will Stop the Militias Now? - By granting blanket clemency to the January 6 insurrectionists, the president has unleashed violent, and loyal, paramilitaries.
Pizza driver gets 30K More - A pizza delivery driver in the throes of a brutal snowstorm found himself at the center of a heartwarming viral story after a meager $2 tip sparked an outcry that turned into an avalanche of generosity.
10 Things We Can All Do to Protect Democracy - Democracy Docket - The most common question I receive is how everyday citizens can help in the fight for democracy. My advice, take the first step, start with something small and see what works for you. Here are ten things all of us can do.
Billionaires Should Not Exist โ Hereโs Why | Teen Vogue - In a fair society, there would be no billionaires. Bernie Sanders says they shouldn't exist and Elizabeth Warren sells mugs of their tears. I'm talking about billionaires and making the case that an economic system that allows them is immoral.
Legal Weed Didn't Deliver on Its Promises - Not to be a buzzkill, but advocates touted a host of benefits and no real costs. That's proved to be a fantasy.
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How to Degoogle Your Life
I'm traveling this weekend, visiting family and supporting my wife, who is running the Miami Marathon. This is a repost from the spring of 2024.
There is a lot of talk out on the Internet about people trying to increase their online privacy. Folks are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the amount of information harvested by big tech companies, and increasing uncertain about what those companies are doing with all that they know. Who are they selling it to, and what are they doing with it in turn? Google is at the heart of many people's lives, especially if they use an Android phone or a Chromebook. Many of the rest of us are still using Google as our default search engine. We are using Gmail and Google Drive and Google Docs and any of a dozen other tools and services owned by the company. If you've had enough and would like to try to reduce or eliminate Google from your life, you are going to need help. This article by crackerjack tech journalist, Justin Pot, is a good starting place.
How to Quit Google, According to a Privacy Expert
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The Phones of Normal People
Note: I'm still traveling and short on time, so I'm sharing a post from back in May that touched a nerve with many people in the geekspace.
Now, I realize that there are some folks in the geek space who still make use of default apps. Robb Knight's project from the winter of 2023 taught us that. By and large, though, the things that people in tech related fields do with our phones, laptops, and tablets fall far, far outside what normies do with theirs. Even further from the norm is what the professional nerds do. Those folks who make their living from monetized blogs, podcast ads, subscriptions and other forms of content are so far removed from what your Mom does with her phone that they could be living on another planet. I saw many bloggers today venting a little over the vapors the content production machine types are having about the new iPads and the fact that those darn folks at Apple just won't listen to them.
I live at the intersection of normies and tech because I do IT support for a living. I have to talk to your Mom at work in the language she speaks about her computer and her phone. I know, trust me, I really know how much she hates changing her password and how much she really doesn't want to have to download and configure a two-factor authentication app. I know how frustrating it is to search for Microsoft Authenticator in Apple's App Store only to have the number one hit to be a $40 paid app and not the free product from the folks in Redmond. You know what's important to your Mom? That her icons don't move, that's what. Last year, Microsoft had an errant patch Tuesday that ended up removing the Office icons off the desktop of corporate computers.I spent a couple of days explaining to people that, no, we didn't "delete Word off your computer," and talking them through recreating the shortcut. That's a crisis. Not being able to use the Finder on an iPad is not a crisis.
Pete Brown said it well, "the vast majority of iPad owners are using the device to read Kindle books, play Candy Crush, and take bad photos." There are millions of us nerds out there using the best calendar and note-taking apps, but there are tens of millions of people perfectly happy with what Apple or Google gave them. Maybe they have downloaded a few apps (and probably never deleted them) to try out. They might even be pretty good at Instagram, but they are not us. They do not know what version of the operating system they are running on anything. They do not care. They hate updates because they interrupt stuff they'd rather be doing. They don't care about the new features being announced at WWDC because they do not want to learn how to do new things with their already too complicated tech. They are the baseline. We are the outliers.
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The List
I appreciate the people who read this blog. I'm grateful for your attention, your comments and for the great blogs so many of you maintain. I'm currently traveling and spending time with family I haven't seen in 10 years. Tonight's post is from April when I was just getting started. Straight from the heart.
Part of my daily routine is to record three things in my daily journal entry for which I'm grateful. I've been doing it for a long time. I try not to be too repetitive, so I'm always on the lookout for things to identify and add to my list. It helps to ask myself that question multiple times a day. I found a good parking spot? Boom! Grateful. My clothes fit particularly comfortably today? Boom! Grateful. A text from one of my grown kids, a tasty lunch at a familiar restaurant, a good report at the dentist - I'm always on the lookout.
I'm lucky in that I have everything I need even if I don't have everything I want. I learned how to tell the difference between those two things a while back and that skill serves me well. Life is by no means perfect, I weigh too much, some of the people I love the most live too far away to see them as much as I would like. I sometimes regret not getting further along the career path I chose than I did before I retired. All of those things are mitigated by other factors. I've lost weight before. With technology, I can stay in touch with my kids and grandkids fairly easily. I may not have retired as the CIO of a tech company, but I had a solid 8-5, Mon-Fri job that left me plenty of time to do the stuff that really brings me joy.
I battled alcohol for years, sometimes going long stretches without it, years even, only to fall back into bad habits and addiction. I'm forever going to be grateful that things finally clicked one day. I had a moment of clarity that allowed me to see what kind of future I was headed towards and to also see that I could avoid going there. I took my last drink on December 28th, 2008 and have been continuously sober ever since. Being sober isn't my identity. I'm prouder of things I've done than of the simple act of abstaining, but I'm definitely happy not to have that struggle any more.
I've been married since I was 18 - to four different people. Luckily my wife and I have been together a dozen years now and it keeps getting better. I don't suffer from the curse of loneliness or the stress of constant fighting. I didn't go to college. I was a two-time teenage parent, and the workforce was always the place for me. I found the IT field around the age of 30 after having been in the military, working construction and in manufacturing and a stint as a prison guard. Once I got into computers I moved through a couple of different industries before landing in educational technology, the area I made a career. Even post-retirement, I missed it enough to take a low stress job at a local university solving problems for end users.
My wife and I have enough dough that we don't have to worry about the things that used to be terrifying when I was younger: an unexpected car repair bill, medical expenses, the death of a major appliance. We don't have helicopter money but don't have to pinch pennies either. We can afford to help out the kids when they need it. It feels good. I'm not going to lie. At the end of most days, I go to bed pretty happy. I have enough in my life to keep me busy. I still love technology as much as I did when I bought my first computer (on a Sears card in 1993). I have repaired the damage my bad habits caused in my life. I'm fortunate and I'm grateful and I'm glad to make that list every single day.
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Looking for Inspiration? Look to the People!
The Stonewall Uprising
Almost all the rights and privileges we enjoy in our daily lives happened because common people fought for them. I'm a veteran, and I am not being disrespectful when I say that the real fight for freedom happened at home between the people and the reluctant ruling class. The fight for freedom isn't something that only happens on the battlefield. Take some time and read about a few struggles. Get inspired. The time is coming when more of us will be called on to stand up against the fascists and corporations seeking to remake America into some throwback model of ugliness.
Child Labor
What Ended Child Labor in the US - Labor Rights History
Child labor in the United States - Wikipedia
Womens' Right to Vote
40-Hour Work Week, Workers' Compensation, Right to Organize
The history & evolution of the 40-hour work week | Culture Amp
A Brief History of Workers' Compensation - PMC
Labor Movement โ America, Reform & Timeline | HISTORY
Anti-Worker Violence
Bogalusa Labor Massacre, Attack on Interracial Solidarity
Civil Rights
Leaders in the Struggle for Civil Rights | JFK Library
The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change
Stonewall and Beyond
How the Stonewall uprising ignited the pride movement
The First Pride Was a Riot: The Origins of Pride Month
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Mountains I Have Loved
Silent Valley Reservoir, County Down, Northern Ireland
I was sitting in a hostel in Maine with multiple other hikers. I asked this good old boy from Tennessee if he'd taken the side trail the day before to see the spectacular overlook from Spaulding Mountain. He looked at me confused and said, "I wouldn't take a side trail to watch a dragon fight a unicorn." He had one thing on his mind, obviously. He was ready to reach Mt. Katahdin and finish the Appalachian Trail.
Although there are a seeming countless number of beautiful views along what is, after all, called a national scenic trail, most of the journey is spent in what hikers call the green tunnel. You see nothing but trees, rocks and a never-ending footpath. In many places, towering rhododendrons form a literal tunnel, blocking out the sky and any view up or down the mountain you're hiking on.
I'm from the south and I love the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but we can't hold a candle to the beauty one experiences in northern New England. Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are breathtaking over and over. Going above the tree line in the White Mountains is unforgettable. The hundreds of lakes scattered through the dense woods of southern Maine allow you to snap photos every couple of miles worthy of being made into post cards.
I'm partial to mountains when it comes to looking for landscapes to appreciate. One of the most beautiful days of my life was spent driving the high road to Taos, New Mexico from Santa Fe. There is little to no humidity, unlike what we have in the eastern mountains. So there is no haze. The sky is crystal clear and a clear blue that abruptly changes to many shades of green as your eye moves down to the peaks of the mountains. The mountains are taller than what I'm used to. After all, it is ski country. You can return to Santa Fe along the low road which skirts the Rio Grande in high walled canyons.
Fans of America's mountains should visit Colorado Springs. From anywhere in town, you can see Pikes Peak. A train ride to the top is only a few doors and is something to put on your bucket list. Also in there are, the Garden of the Gods provides ample opportunities to capture photographs of the landscape and of the big horned sheep who live there.
For a different kind of beauty, the Mourne Mountains, located in County Down in Northern Ireland are a mostly treeless expanse of grasslands divided by stone fences and few man-made structures. There are a couple high mountain reservoirs that catch the water they need down in Belfast. The few people who do live there are friendly. If you're lucky, you can find a tea shop where you can get a cuppa with a couple of biscuits to sip while you sit beside a peat fire and just take in the wonderful Irishness of it all.
My bucket list includes seeing the Alps in France, Italy, and Switzerland. Recently, as Internet friend told me that there is a trans-alpine railroad journey from east to west on the South Island of New Zealand that provides some of the best views to be seen on planet Earth, and now I want to go there too. I have no great desire to see Kilimanjaro or the Himalayas, even though the beauty of those places in undeniable. I think the altitudes would do me in.
What about you? What mountains have you loved?
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Thoughts on the Quantified Self
I enjoy collecting information about the things I do and looking back over it, just as a form of journaling. Since tech is my jam, I try to automate collecting as much information as I can. There isn't a real point to it. I'm not trying to discover anything or achieve some kind of life hack. Currently, I'm not tracking any sort of health data, even though I've got an Apple Watch. It can collect information on heart rate and sleep quality/quantity, both of which I've been interested in before. I even have a digital scale and a blood pressure monitor, both with Wi-Fi to feed information into Apple's health app.
The type of information I'm interested in these days has more to do with culture and creativity. I use web services that track my television and music consumption automatically. I record the books I read into Goodreads because that information can be exported into other formats. I use a location tracking app that doesn't send the information anywhere other than to my encrypted iCloud account. I also use an app to bookmark notable places I've been, like restaurants, parks, coffee shops and hotels. That app stored its data in a cloud account that only I have access to.
When I was training for long-distance cycling, data collection had a different flavor because I had numerical goals: trying to hit 10,000 miles and get 30 or more rides of 100 miles completed in a calendar year. My Garmin bike computer recorded all of that, along with speed data plus my heart rate and pedaling cadence. Some people even have power meters on their bikes to determine the wattage they generate on rides. I didn't use Strava, but I did use the Garmin website to store my information.
Little Luxuries
I remember vividly when I was finally able to go grocery shopping without having to constantly calculate the cumulative cost of the items in my basket. On more than one occasion I had to reluctantly tell the cashier that I'd decided not to get an item or two when my math was bad, and I ended up short while standing at the register. I remember, too, the inability to afford a full tank of gas in the beaters I drove in my early adulthood. I rarely had more than $10 at a time when to buy fuel. When the day came that I could fill up the tank whenever I needed to, I felt like I'd reached a new level in the game of life.
One of the best mental health practices anyone can adopt is what 12-steppers call an attitude of gratitude. I've been makinga three-bullet list in my journal for well over a decade. Many days I record nothing but the little luxuries life offers. I'd rather have a whole basket of the little things than a big, fancy car.
I lived in a 100-year-old farm house in high school. For air conditioning, we had a couple of window units in the house, but none of them reached my bedroom. Our heat was a wood stove. My first adult jobs were mostly of the outdoor type. When I finally scored employment with the state, it was at a prison constructed decades ago. There was no AC, just giant floor fans to blow the hot air around. Subsequently, I moved to a giant Westinghouse factory with a massive machine shop, high ceilings and shipping bay doors open to the summer weather. I'd already turned 30 before I finally made my way into the white-collar world where I could work at a desk, sitting down in air conditioning.
We didn't eat out much when I was a kid. I'd use my money from whatever little hustles I had going on to occasionally treat myself to some fast food. We lived for a while in Jacksonville, NC and there was a place on the outskirts of town selling three hot dogs for a dollar. I loved that place! To this day, I get more excited than I probably should by the prospect of restaurant food, I don't care how mundane. I'm super happy if I get to go to a taco trailer, and on top of the world if we go to a real sit-down Mexican place with chips and salsa. We could conceivable afford to eat out for every meal, and it's only Wonder Woman's sensibilities that keep from indulging in that.
I've only slept a new mattress a couple of times in my life. One of those times was just a few years ago when we got one of those foam jobs that comes in a box and expands when you take it out. After relying on cheap hand-me-downs, actually having a quality place to sleep was a luxury I didn't know I needed. It's a rare night when I don't feel incredibly lucky climbing beneath the sheets. My super-power is being able to sleep anywhere at any time under just about any conditions. I can now save that skill for when I really require it.
There are plenty of other things that make me feel a little like a Rockefeller:
I'm not a perfect gratitude machine by any means. I despise flying. I am almost always glad to be traveling somewhere, but the miraculous act of hurtling across the country miles up in the sky leaves me singularly unimpressed and grouchy. I also thought email was cool for a while until I realized it was a way other people could add items to my to-do list. Then I didn't like it as much. Still, though, there is enough of that poor kid left in me that any time I buy something and I don't feel forced into getting the cheapest model of whatever it is, I'm amazed on the inside. I feel like I've arrived.
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If You Read This Tiny Apple Rant - I'll Give You Some Good Automation Tips
Apple is both proving to be something other than the romanticized ideal corporation many tech people once thought it to be. It is a ruthless profit machine committed to taking advantage of every legal and close to legal loophole it can to "return value to shareholders." That means extracting capital from the working class to put it into the hands of the investor class. I'm an Apple guy, but I am fully aware that the company decided last year to take 30% of Patreon contributions away from podcasters and bloggers and other creators who downloaded the app from the App Store. There was a god-damned thing anybody could do about it, either.
So, when I mention my love for Apple tech, it is in the context of what the ecosystem allows me to do, which is get work done with tools I enjoy using. I don't feel a kinship with the ghost of Steve Jobs,a miserable bastard if there ever was one. The current CEO just gave $1 million to Donald Trump, so screw him too.
If you use a Mac to GSD - here are a few links with useful information on automating your workflow,
Easily find Raycast Extensions!๐
Coding Bull Junky โ Automation and Personal Productivity for macOS
My Triumvirate of Mac Automation Technology โ Mike Burke
Sync Mac/PC and iOS using Syncthing + Mรถbius Sync
How to Use Karabiner Elements to Get More Out of Your Mac Keyboard - TechPP
How To Use Hazel To Automate Your Repetitive Tasks - Asian Efficiency
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Cooking With Men
My mother believes in participatory humanity. Whatever she's doing, she welcomes you to join right in. Some parents discourage their kids from using household appliances or cooking because I guess they are scared the kids might break something or get hurt. My Mom does not have that fear. I don't remember not knowing how to start a load of clothes in the washing machine, turn on the dryer (after cleaning the lint filter because you don't want the house burning down) and I certainly don't remember feeling helpless or lost in the kitchen.
I remember being tasked with cooking bacon for breakfast. Mom had these distinct tongs used for just that purpose. A few years ago, when I mentioned how I'd never been able to find a set like that for myself, she gave me hers, the same ones I used 50 years ago as a kid. I know for a fact that some food prep tasks she handed off to me were things she hated doing herself. Grating cabbage for coleslaw is a prime example. I'm willing to bet she only has it when I'm visiting her, and she can rope me into doing it. I didn't mind helping, actually. Back in the day, we didn't worry about raw eggs in cake batter and getting to lick the batter from the mixing bowl or the beaters from her handheld mixer was a rite of passage.
I left home as a teenager and got married. My wife could cook and enjoyed making fancy dishes, but I took on the day in and day out food prep duties. She was a military brat and didn't know much about Southern cooking, My grandmother advised her to season vegetables with a little grease, as we do down here. Mema was referring to pork grease, rendered from fatback or bacon, but the young lady I was married to didn't catch that part and soon poured hamburger drippings all over a pot of green beans and didn't understand why they weren't as tasty as she expected.
My kids all managed to make it into adulthood without dying of malnutrition. Their food memories tend to center on things they didn't like rather than all the delicious meals I prepared for them. My son, was the kind of kid who ordered chicken fingers and french fries at Mexican restaurants, has excellent taste as an adult and an adventurous palate, but he swears that the only way he survived his teenage years was by begging me to let him make extra sandwiches to eat in his room. My girls favorite food group was cereal. The happiest days of their lives were the times when I'd buy something apart from raisin bran.
After the kids left home, and I was heavily involved in endurance sports, I learned a lot about nutrition and training. Some of my favorite activities burned massive amounts of calories. I was dedicated to clean eating and went through chicken breasts, sweet potatoes, bags of spinach and cage free eggs like mad. When Wonder Woman and I got married, she was just as dedicated to that diet as I was. She still is, although not quite as rigidly as before. She still prefers brown rice over white rice. I've never known her to eat canned vegetables. For years, she prepared a week's worth of the most colorful salads imaginable every Sunday, and we ate them for lunch during the week,
Since I decided I didn't like being retired and went back to work, we've opted for meals that are quick and easy to prepare so we can have more leisure time at night. I've promised to go back to more cooking from scratch when I finally retire for good. I have a quite nice grill and smoker combo that hasn't gotten a lot of use lately. It does great pork shoulders, beef brisket, whole chickens and turkey breasts. I need to fire that back up soon.
I get the same complaints other male cooks get, primarily centered around being messy, which is true. I am messy. It took me a while to learn how to judge the right portion sizes for my diminutive wife, who, while indeed small, also has to stay fueled up for ultramarathon training. I have also learned that by some miracle of modern medical science, I am to blame for any numbers on the reports she gets after her physical that she doesn't like. Either I'm not serving enough foods rich in vitamin D, or I'm screwing up her HDL and LDL readings.
She still loves me though and readily accepts her plate each night when I deliver hot chow to her after she's waited for me to prepare dinner for us. Few things make me happier than to see her dig into whatever I've made.
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This is Not Nam. This is the Internet. There Are Rules.
Like the memorable scene from the Big Lebowski, I sometimes feel the need to remind people on the Internet that there is some structure to the world and that failing to acknowledge that can leave you entering a world of pain.
Read the Room
Every online community develops its own personality, its in jokes and its taboos. Take some time to learn them. You may not agree with them, and if not that's OK. Stick around, earn some respect and maybe you can play a part in changing things over time.
Gatekeeping Makes You Look Like a Jerk
I've run into some remarkable people online - like a developer who worked on the original version of the Safari web browser, a guy who was coming up with ideas for the Mac OS X dock while the rest of us were still using Classic, the guy who coined the law "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the wordย no." I've read many, many social media and blog posts by these illustrious folks and I have never seen one of them try to throw their weight around or act exclusive in any way. Everyone has been a newb and no one is an expert on everything. Cool it with the gatekeeping.
Unless It is Morally Necessary - Do Not "Well Actually" Folks
Sometimes accountability needs to be the order of the day and fate might select you as the person who has to bring it about, but be honest. That's not going to happen regularly and once you've had a turn calling out something egregious, let someone else do it next time. Don't make yourself the Internet Sheriff. Most of the time, someone making a mistake online can just be ignored. Plenty of people will recognize where they are falling short, You don't get any points for correcting other grown ups.
Resist the Urge to Tell People Why You Hate the Thing They Love
I feel like this ought to be easier than it seems to be. But, it's not. Go some place on the Internet tonight and proclaim your love for your favorite ice cream, car, web browser, vacation spot, sexual position or just about anything elese and it won't be long before someone arrives to tell you why it sucks. I sure would like to start a movement to stop people from doing this.
We Are Living Through A Facsist Takeover of America - Don't Tell People Not to Talk Politics
Lucky me got to live most of my life playing this game on easy mode - straight, white and male. Sure I've had some tough times but none of them were because I'm straight or because I'm white or because I'm a dude. Of all the people that are going to get screwed over in the coming years, I'll probably be in the group that suffers the least real damage and yet I can not shut up about what's happening. People are freaking out and they have every reason to be. I get it that you are bored with it all. That you'd prefer not to be constantly reminded of how horrible things are for people. Just keep that to yourself. Go spend some time alone. Don't try to police what people want to talk about in the Year of Our Lord 2025, because a lot of them want to talk about how an evil bunch of people are attacking some of the most vulnerable members of society.
Chances Are, You Probably Helped Make Internet History
The 20th Century featured the greatest acceleration of science and technology in human history. For hundreds of years, the lifestyles of most societies on earth were not remarkably different than what had been common one, two or even three hundred years or more into the past. Then within a single hundred year period, sanitation, medicine, electricity, air and space flight changed the world so much that no one from 1900 would ever feel at home the night we all survived Y2K. It happened fast.
Many Millennials, Gen X and Boomers types witnessed the birth of the Internet as we know it today and most participated in some now fondly remembered relic of the early days: Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve, GeoCities, StumbleUpon, Digg - the list goes on. Take a look through these collections and see where you were and what your were doing while the Internet evolved right in your own home.
50 Old Websites: A Nostalgic Journey From Our Digital Past
10 Popular Websites: What They Looked Like When They First Started
The Invention of the Internet โ Inventor, Timeline & Facts | HISTORY
18 Famous and Interesting Internet Milestones [INFOGRAPHIC]
The Big Internet Museum | Communication Arts
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What Happens When You Read Too Many Books on Habits
In the fall of 2017 I got the urge to investigate self-improvement in a methodical and purposeful way after reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, an Ivy League educated attorney and former Supreme Court law clerk who gave all that up to become a writer. I wanted no part of any self-help, psychobabble, New Age flavored literature. I decided to come up with a plan based on scientific studies of practices that would improve my life physically and mentally. Some of the other books I read include:
By January 1, 2018, I was ready. I had a list of goals, spreadsheets, apps for tracking various habits and a folder of bookmarks on the idea of the quantified self. My primary goals were:
Out of pure stubbornness, I hit every one of those goals. I once had to go for a walk during a hurricane, but I managed to get my steps that day. I was blessed with good health the entire year, maintaining a healthy weight and dealing with my arthritis successfully.
It was fun, and I am glad that I did it, but it was not the happiest year of my life, which is what I was going for. It wasn't that it was bad, not at all, but it didn't elevate me to a new plane of existence or anything. It was a series of tasks that took self-discipline and dedication, not much different than other challenges I'd given myself through cycling or long-distance hiking. Wonder Woman was her usual awesome self. She never complained about the hours I spent walking or behind closed doors on my meditation pillow or with my nose stuck in a book.
I continued some habits deep into 2019. It wasn't until August of that year that I broke the streak of 10,000-step days and closed activity rings. My arthritis flared up significantly in the spring. Between the uncaring attitude at my orthopedist's office and the weaponized incompetence and malevolence of my insurance provider, I dealt with untreated chronic pain for months while fighting to get the treatment I was entitled to. I ended up as depressed as I'd been in years, and bitter that creating the perfect set of habits hadn't made me immune to the black dog that has hounded me since my 20s.
I'm all for anyone doing the things I did. I believe in the benefits of exercise, meditation and mental improvement. My experience is that none of those things are miraculous cures or preventatives for the slings and arrows that life can throw at you.
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Believe It or Not!
I don't want to brag about my trivia knowledge, but if the British government ever finds out How good I am, they will probably ban me from the country to keep me from showing up and winning all the pub quizzes. I have studiously been assimilating useless knowledge since I was old enough to read. At a young age, I was a recognized expert on Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Bermuda Triangle. I've written previously about my multiple readings of the Guinness Book of World Records. Another series of books from my younger days played a big part with my fascination in knowledge that won't do anything more than give you something to talk about is the Ripley's Believe it or Not books. The series started as single panel newspaper features by American cartoonist and amateur anthropologist Robert Ripley.
Although Ripley died more than 75 years ago, the franchise he started is still going strong with museums, known as odditoriums all over the world and books still in print.
Today on Ripley's Believe It or Not - Comics by Ripleyโs Believe It or Not! - GoComics
Ripley's Believe It or Not! - YouTube
Ripleyโs โBelieve it or Not!โ โ fact check โ Ramblings
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Winning with the Kiddos
Aren't Saturday's amazing? I don't work on Saturdays. I get up whenever I want, usually early and spend my morning writing and doing the kind of tech chores I enjoy: curating photographs, adding entries to Day One Journal, perusing my saved articles on Pocket and via RSS and scrolling through the feeds of my favorite people on Mastodon and Bluesky.
After a couple of hours of that this morning, Wonder Woman and I made a drive across town to pick up the only three of our grandchildren who live close by: 12-year-old Forrest, 10-year-old Harper and 7-year-old Tristen. Despite their age, we still collectively refer to them as "The Babies." When we arrived, they came busting out the front door before our car even came to a complete stop. Obviously, all three of them were standing by the front window just waiting for us to get there. Their Mom came out to say goodbye and then the rest of us were off.
The first stop was Zorba's, our neighborhood diner, which the kids call "The Pancakes," after one of their favorite breakfast choices. Tristen is mostly just a little carnivore, though. When the waitress asked him what he wanted, he looked here in the eye and said "Sausage." She asked if he wanted any grits or eggs to go with it. He thought for a minute and said, "Bacon." That's what he got, too.
We only live a couple of blocks away, so we were home immediately after we ate.Forrest teases me because my preferred perch on the couch is well-worn and obvious. All my electronic gear is on the table beside where I sit, along with coffee cups, screen wipes, and other items he relates to me. Every once in a while, he will jokingly try to climb into my spot, which generally prompts me to ask him if he's lost his mind.
We all just hung out in the living room and talked for a few hours. They told us about school, their Dad's new puppy, and who had been mean to who lately. All of them aspire to be Internet superstars and content creators. Harper already has a private TikTok channel which is shared with just us and a couple of friends. She makes videos of herself doing random things. She disappeared for a while later in the day, and we all assumed she was off in another room making a video.
In a couple of hours they were hungry again, wanting Mexican for lunch, which I was delighted to oblige. I have to work a little on Tristen's cultural sensitivity. Not only does he order chicken fingers and fries, he also complained today because the music was in Spanish and he couldn't understand it. He likes the Latino kids he goes to school with and can correctly use the Spanish pronunciation of their names, so I don't think he has ant budding MAGA tendencies, thank God.
After lunch, we went to see Mufasa: the Lion King, as promised. You have to pass a huge candy store on the way to the theater's front door, and we did not even try to skip past it. We let them get a grab bag and put it in the car before the movie started. We still got popcorn too! The kids all tease me about my proclivity for frequent naps, which I take any time at any place. I didn't know that today they'd already told their Mom they thought I'd fall asleep in the theater with it's soft reclining seats. They were right, or course. Wonder Woman punched me so many times for snoring that my shoulder is sore.
By the time the movie was over, they were ready to go back and see their Mom, who they all adore. We do too. As we pulled into their neighborhood, they pointed to houses for sale and suggested point-blank that we buy one of them because obviously, we want to live closer to them, right? Wonder Woman and I have only been back home for a couple of hours, and I am already looking forward to the next time we can go see The Babies again.
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Tech Product Grab Bag
After discussing it for the last 12 years, my wife decided to begin scanning multiple albums of old family photos so that we could some to our new Aura frame and back them all up to the cloud - in three different places: iCloud, Google Photos and Amazon Photos. Our 12-year-old Scan Snap 1300i was not up to the job of scanning hundreds of snapshots. The images had lines in them and the process was slow. It was time to find a new scanner that could handle the assignment without venturing into pro territory, which we didn't need.
I also had some accumulated gift card credit and took the opportunity to cross quite a few things off my wish list.(These are not affiliate links. I'm not trying to make any money, just sharing gear siggestions.)
This Week's Bookmarks - 2025 Books, Beans and Greens, 10 New Museums, 2025 Movies from Books, Trump's MAGA Makeover, Reddit Bans on X, Roman Emperor with Shortest Reign
Thrilling debuts to big-name authors: 40 of the most exciting books to read in 2025 - From the most anticipated literary debuts to the return of heavyweights like Stephen King and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there's plenty to add to your TBR pile this year.
Barbecue Beans and Greens Recipe | Food Network Kitchen | Food Network - Easy, full-flavored sides are a must for your summer cookout rotation. This side features canned black eyed peas, punched up with spicy barbecue sauce and smoky bacon. Frozen chopped collards are a great convenience product which melt into this saucy side dish.
Ten Must-See Museums Opening Around the World in 2025 | Smithsonian - New institutions dedicated to artificial intelligence, West African art, barbeque and more are expected to welcome visitors this year
The Most Anticipated Book Adaptations of 2025: Movies and TV Shows - The New York Times - Hilary Mantel's "The Mirror and the Light," a new "Bridget Jones" and Michael Bond's Paddington Bear series are some of this year's most anticipated adaptations.
Trump executive orders list: What orders did Trump sign on first day - President Trumpย is carrying out his pledge to give the U.S. aย MAGA makeoverย by signing a slew of executive actions in his first week that erase progressive policies and fulfill his poisonous campaign promises
More than 50 Reddit communities ban X links to protest Musk - The cascade of link bans came after Musk made a a Nazi salute, which many cited in their protests, among other things.
Which Emperor had the Shortest Reign? - by James Coverley - Over the past few weeks, we've looked at some interesting details about Roman emperors - how old they were, on average, how many of them were assassinated and so on - and today, we're answering a reader's question about which of them ruled for the shortest amount of time.
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Time Travelling
The Remains of Ashmont School Where My Mother Went in the 1950s
If you live in Europe, I'd like for you to read this post without laughing at me or immediately going on social media to mock me. I'm going to talk about old stuff. Yes, I know I live in the United States and that we don't really have any old man-made artifacts here. Many of you in Ireland, England and on the continent live in houses that would be museums and tourist attractions if they were transported here. I was in Leeds in the UK a few years back and my host stopped by Kirkstall Abbey on a whim and didn't make a big deal out of it. The place was built in 11152. It blew my mind, but to him, it was just a place on the edge of town.
I live in North Carolina. The First Nations people who lived here when the first English settlers landed included the Cherokee, Tuscarora, Catawba, Lumbee, and various Siouxan tribes like the Occaneechi, Haliwa-Saponi, Waccamaw Siouan, Meherrin, and Coharie. We still have a sizable Native population. One county over from where I live, there are between 40K-50K members of the Lumbee tribe. There are ancient burial mounds in my county located near the Cape Fear River.
There are no remnants of the state's most famous early settlers, known as the lost colony. A group of 117 English men and women landed on Roanoke Island, a few miles inland from site where several hundred years later the world's first airplane flight would occur. All of these settlers disappeared in a three-year period when the organizers of the colony returned to England. Included in the missing was Virginia Dare, the first child of English descent born in the new world. Today, Roanoke Island is home to the community of Manteo, a nice place to visit on the way to the Outer Banks.
We were one of the 13 colonies that declared independence from Great Britain in 1776. There are historical markers a few miles from my neighborhood where the British Army encamped on the way to get their asses handed to them at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge. I could walk to the spot where the state ratified the constitution from my driveway. Because of numerous fires through the years only a couple of pre-revolutionary buildings still exist in town, fittingly, the largest of them was a once a tavern.
My paternal lineage, meaning my ancestors with the same last name that I have, came to the US around 1800. The first of us listed in a US census stated that his father's birthplace was France. I suspect he may have been the son of an English soldier, born to a camp follower. Whatever. I have no real way of knowing the exact story. What I do know that is we've been hanging around this same county now for 225 years.
I am not one of those Southerners with any sort of positive attachment to my heritage connected to the Civil War. Numerous ancestors from all branches of my family were in the Confederate Army, some drafted, some volunteered. One died of disease before ever going into battle at a giant unsanitary recruitment center located on what is now the grounds of the veterinary school for NC State University. Another was wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia. My favorite was an extremely reluctant soldier who served at three different times but only for very short periods. He kept trying to get out of it and come back home. Good for him.
Another branch of the family were Quakers. They didn't participate in the economy of enslaved people, nor did they serve in the Army. They farmed and worked in cotton mills and generally minded their own business.
For you Outlander fans, part of my family were Highland Scots who came here after the Battle of Culloden which ended the Jacobite rebellion in Scotland and placed it firmly under English rule. The family name is McFadyen and they were good Presbyterians who farmed the land on southeastern NC into the 20th century. One of them, my grandmother's brother died in Italy fighting Nazis during World War Two.
Even though we are deep into the 21st century now, there are still signs of the past all around, if you know where to look. There are tobacco barns built from logs and chinked with mud on various farms. That type of tobacco production was last practiced in the 70s. I have hiked all the way through the NC mountains from our border with Georgia all the way to Virginia. Some of the trails today's hikers follow are the same routes Native Americans were using when we got here, I am always amazed when I am following a difficult mountain trail and I come to a stone fence or giant stone piles and I realize that at one time the thickly forested Appalachian mountainsides were clearcut and hardscrabble mountain folks planted crops there and plowed the fields with mules.
I am not a flag waving patriot in the traditional sense. I am not proud to be from where I'm from. I'm not ashamed of it either. We all have a history and I just happen to know mine because I'm curious and sought the information. That information gives me a connection to the past I would not otherwise have.
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Watch People Trying to Do the Right Thing
My people aren't putting up with it, and by my people, I mean those committed to human rights and being active, committed allies to the LGBT community, people of color, women, immigrants and the poor, By "it" I mean the non-stop, relentless attacks by the US government and the people who voted for it. Now is not the time for lukewarm support or just trying to get along. Nope. Now is the time to be more outspoken than ever before. It's time to make your average middle-class liberal friends put up or shut up. It's time to recognize that our society is literally in a war that the right-wing declared on all the people I mentioned above.
The little microcosm of society inhabiting the IndieWeb just went through some growing pains over what supporting marginalized people, in this case, trans people, looks like and what it takes to demonstrate commitment to them. Feelings got hurt. Words got written. Some people experienced growth. Other people exposed their true selves and not always in the best way.
I don't have the forensic skills to unearth every detail, but I would like to share some select and enlightening posts from people involved and on the periphery, so you can see what struggle in the modern era looks like.
The pressure to stay genteel - Coyote Tracks
Let's Try to Always Provide a Dignified Way Forward | Havn
Fuckity fuck fuck - annie's blog
My husband asked me tonight, โฆ | Small Good Things
Adam Newbold: "This is a time to pay close atโฆ" - social.lol
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What A Drag it is Getting Old
Mick and Keef wrote "Mother's Little Helper," a song about a pill addled Mom a whopping fifty-nine years ago. The line that resonates with me is "What a drag it is getting old." For me, the drag is the physical part of aging, much more so than the accumulated years, which in themselves are kind of cool.
Sports scientists estimate that men reach their physical peak somewhere between 26 and 30, That is so patently messed up because it means that you spend the majority of your life slowly deteriorating. In the major spectator sports, it's the rare athlete who can compete past the age of 40. This doesn't mean that you can't be active, though. In my twenties and thirties, my kids were young and I was trying to get established in my career. Sports and hobbies took a back seat. My most physically active year were my 40s. I was 48 when I hiked the AT.
Wonder Woman is 58 and still running ultramarathons. She's a bit of a mutant, though. We have a physical performance lab at the university where we work. They asked her to come in for a study a few years back. In her early fifties, she was tested as having a fitness level compatible to that of a college athlete in their early 20s. During her first year competing in ultras, at age 52, she ran in and won races at the distances of 50K, 50 miles, 100K and 100 miles. Just for a lark, she ran one road marathon with no special training and placed in the top 10 among thousands of entrants. She also completed a 100-mile bike ride after only very light training over a couple of weekends.
My parents were young when I was born, so even though I'm almost 60, I've still got both of them. My mom also has mutant genes, having walked all the way across Scotland in her early 70s and then completing the Camino de Santiago across Spain just a couple of years later. Dad enjoyed a little too much bourbon and Salem cigarettes for too many years to have maintained much fitness, and today walks with a cane.
I feel like I'm kind of wearing out prematurely myself. After dealing with painful arthritis in both knees for years, a drag physically and psychologically, I had them replaced five years ago. Although ai still have my hair, it turned white within the last decade. Wonder Woman insists I need a hearing aid. At least, I think that's what she said. This year, I finally reached the point where I can't function without glasses. Throw in the other aggravations of male aging, like getting up to pee three or four times a night, and it's no wonder that the trope of grumpy old man seems to fit so well on some days.
On the other hand, having lots of life experience is remarkable. I've lived in seven decades and seen 11 US presidents leave office. I'm in the oldest cohort of Generation X so I can be old without suffering the indignity of being a boomer. Not only that, but I've pumped regular gasoline, used a rotary dial phone and bought vinyl records not to be trendy but because there was no other choice. I saw VCRs and DVD players come and go. I had AOL dial up and a fiber connection to the Internet.
I hope to last a few more years. I want to around when Wonder Woman retires. We're probably won't have any more grandchildren. Thirteen is plenty. In a few more years, though, great-grandchildren should start coming along. I definitely want to be here for that. I also would like to see America come to its senses before I'm gone because I bet Jimmy Carter was pissed having to live out his last months after the 2024 election.
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