JUN 29, 2020

Single day pemi loop ✅

It was really satisfying to complete the Pemi loop in a single day. 30 miles, 8 four thousand footer peaks¹, and about 10k in total elevation gain covered in 12 hours and 30 minutes. We went counter clockwise this year and that seems like the right call now that I’ve tried it in both directions.

I went clockwise for my first attempt with some friends on May 25th, 2019. Conditions in late May were rough – lots of ice monorail, lots of mud. It was slow going as we slipped and post holed our way over the terrain. After summiting Garfield we made the difficult decision to bail and cut the loop short to get back to the trailhead before dark. It was the smart decision — even after cutting it short, we were out on the trail for over 15 hours last year.

But the failure lingered. It was difficult last year but it could have been done. We were all carrying too much weight. We wasted time for breaks on the summits. We didn’t have trekking poles or microspikes. So it was stuck in my head that we had messed it up and should have finished, despite the shitty conditions.

Now? I see things in a different light. Conditions were perfect this year. My pack was much lighter. I jogged the parts that were jog-able. And it was still a slog to make good time. It made me appreciate how much ground we covered in adverse conditions last year. It seems more impressive after travsersing those same stretches in favorable conditions. I’m not sure how we covered the stretch between Lafayette and Garfield last year, if I’m being honest. That part of the loop is gnarly on a good day.

All in all, it was a great day this year. I might now be low-key addicted to long trail runs / hikes. I want to plan another one already.

Musings from the experience

Mentality

When I’m on a long run or running a race, I tend to play a lot of mind games with myself to push through the difficult parts. I was hiking with 3 friends² and we fell into a good rhythm of making jokes and keeping spirits up. Just enough bullshitting. You don’t want it to be incessant. Some periods of quiet are nice while you’re out enjoying nature. But long stretches of silence get weird too. Depends on the group but we had it working for us.

I’m only including this section in my recap because I don’t think this gets talked about enough. Whenever you’re doing something hard, you need to find a way to keep your spirits up. If you get broken mentally, it is over even if you have more left in the tank physically.

For me, that’s sarcasm, dark humor, and leaning into all the adversity. Verbally acknowledge and attack the pain before it can sneak up and attack you.

My darkest point was in that stretch from Garfield to Lafayette. My quads were shot. I couldn’t tell if they were cramping or overly fatigued. But they weren’t working very well with a lot of climbling left to do. I started to get dropped by my friends. My stomach was off.

I kept thinking of this quote from Deena Kastor’s book.

There’s good and bad patches in a race and it’s your job to get out of the bad patches as quickly as possible and hang on to the good ones.³

So I stopped for moment. Drank the rest of my water. Choked down some salty honey roasted nut mix. Had a tylenol. Cranked up Run The Jewels 3 and got back to it. I didn’t fully get a second wind until reaching the top of Lafayette but it turned the tide enough to catch back up to everyone.

I had randomly started doing quick “captain’s log” videos whenever we reached a summit. It gave me something to focus on while hiking. What was recap worthy for my next log? They were mostly quick babbling nonsense but, again, having something to occupy your mind helps!

Gear

My pack loaded up with food and water was a little over 10 lbs. I’m pretty happy with that. I could trim weight a bit on future trips but I doubt I’m getting below 7-8 lbs in any scenario.

Here is a quick list of what I took:

• Vagabond Jet pack⁴ with a waist belt, 1L smartwater bottle, .5L powerade bottle, 2L bladder for filling, Sawyer micro filter, food (more on that below), long sleeve layer, Houdini jacket, basic first aid stuff, extra battery, iPhone, ID, small bottle of deet, sunglasses, map.

Here is what I wore:

• Trail running shoes, dirty girl gaiters, injinji socks, Patagonia strider pro shorts, light athletic polo from Uniqlo (I liked having the collar for sun protection), running hat, buff.

Things I’d do differently next time:

• Use a real running vest. A Salomon, in all likelihood. I could probably save a half pound. But more importantly, it seems like a much more comfortable and nimble way to carry the weight. My pack was fine but better weight distribution would be nice on steep inclines or declines.
• Change my hydration supplies. I’d use the soft bottles that come with running vests and bring a Katadyn BeFree .6L filter. The flow rate is noticeably faster than the Sawyer and it’s simpler than carrying all the other stuff.
• Skip carrying the extra long sleeve. Not necessary on a nice day and if the weather turned the Houdini shell would be enough.
• Skip carrying the extra battery. My iPhone battery was fine. I had it in airplane mode and used GPS constantly (Strava and Gaia). I ended with ~35% battery after almost 13 hours.
  • I also might invest in a Coros Apex GPS watch given their insane battery life and I wouldn’t have to rely on my iPhone for GPS tracking.
• Slim down my first aid kit. Not a lot too remove here but I had a bulky leatherman in there. At a minimum, I should bring a smaller, lighter multi tool or skip it all together.
• Bring lightweight trekking poles. I went back and forth on bring poles a lot and decided it against it because mine aren’t that light and I didn’t have a good way to attach to my pack. But lighter poles on a pack with attachments? Yes, please. I could have used the help on the various ascents.
• Keep stuff in dry bag or ziplock. Sweating through my pack and getting everything wet wasn’t ideal.
• Keep empty food wrappers in a separate bag for trash. I ended up with drink powder all over stuff. Meh.

Happy with my supplies and overall weight… but always nicer to be lighter and more nimble. I feel close to having this fully dialed in.

Nutrition

This went okay but not particularly well. I’m not a huge breakfast person but I forced myself to choke down a lot when I woke up at 4am to fill up the tank, so to speak. A coffee, a gatorade, a muffin, a clif bar, and a baby pouch may have been too much. I felt a litle off jogging the first few easy miles but it wasn’t a huge deal. Probably better to have gotten the calories than not.

I tried to map out how much food I needed to carry but I still brought too much.

Here is what I brought (nets to almost 3,000 calories):

• 4 clif bars, 4 GU roctane powder mixes, 4 GU gels, 2 baby pouches, 1 bag of honey roasted nut mix, 1 bag of watermelon gummies, 1 5 hour energy.

And here is what I didn’t end up consuming:

• 2 clif bars, 1 GU roctane powder mix, 2 GU gels.

Things I’d do differently next time:

• Fewer clif bars. They just never seemed that appealing. Carrying 1-2 still seems worth it given that they pack in calories and are easy to nibble on.
• Rely less on powder carbohydrate drink mixes. I thought this was going to be great. Less weight (just add water!) and I’m getting calories and hydrating as I sip. But it turns out, it would have been really nice to have plain old water at certain junctures. I didn’t want the sweet mix but I had mixed all my water with it… 🤦‍♂️.
• More stuff without caffeine in it. My powder mix and gels both had a small amount of caffeine in them. I’d rather have those without caffeine and bring another 5 hour or caffeine pills so I can get a real strong shot when I need it vs. a steady drip.

But the gummies were great. The salty nut mix hit the spot. The baby pouches ruled. I wish they were lighter. I’d just bring a ton of them.

All in all, I don’t need quite as much fuel as I thought. Pure water is good – my sweat was so salty at parts I feel like I may have had too much sodium in me. I need to do a better job of forcing down a solid quantity of water when refilling so I’m not as reliant on only what I’m carrying too.

Misc.

Some random quick hits:

• Bodyglide or other anti-chaffe things are my friend. I mostly think I got burned here because my sweat was so salty but no reason not to be precautious on future outings.
• Take more photos. I was too focused on moving, moving, moving. Gorgeous day in scenic terrain and I don’t have a lot to show for it.
• Start without water if there is a reliable water source within a few miles of the trailhead. I didn’t need the extra weight for those first few miles.
• Jog the easy parts a little faster. I’m a good runner. Cruising flat parts at ~9 minute per mile pace isn’t going to hurt me and it can knock off a good chunk of time.
• Test gear beforehand. My filter was being a little iffy early on. Everyone I was with also had a filter so it wasn’t a big deal. But a good reminder to test important items before you’re out on the trail. I won’t always be so lucky.
• Bring crocs for after. My feet wanted something comfy badly. Yoga toes would have also been clutch.
• Make sure I have access to my own post-run beers. We put a cooler in another friend’s car but then finished before them. Not ideal.

Lastly, I’m definitely going to make the captain’s log videos a thing on trips or runs or hike or whatever going forward. I do enjoy writing up recaps (well… duh) but I don’t always do it. I started recording them as a joke and it ended up being a cool way to relive the experience. I’d like to make that a habit for any noteworthy experiences so I have something around to remember them by when I don’t bother writing it up.

Final thoughts

The people who do FKT (fastest known time) attemps on the Pemi loop are a different animal. The men’s time was recently lowered to 5 hours and 42 minutes by Ben Thompson. I cannot even fathom it. I think if I trained properly, cut some weight, and had a good day… I could probably flirt with going under 10 hours. Sub-6 is so, so fast over that terrain. I don’t even understand how it works or how it is possible.

We also met a woman in the parking lot who informed us that she was attempting a “double single season.” We later learned this meant that she is going to try to get all 48 four thousand foot peaks in NH twice within the summer season. She is already at 21 of 96. So crazy.

This activity was the least quarantined I’ve been during the pandemic. It felt a little irresponsible in some regards. But it was amazing to have a normal seeming day again. The risk of outdoor transmission seems low. We kept a lot of space between ourselves and others. It was needed. It was worth it.

I’m proud of myself for getting it done. My running mileage has been way down since COVID came into the picture. I haven’t really done any hiking or hill work. I’ve gained 5-10 lbs from my usual fighting weight. Basically, there was plenty of evidence to suggest this wasn’t a great time to make the attempt. I’m glad I was able to fight through and finish it in a decent time, all things considered.

Maybe I can find a way to do a Presi traverse this fall??

FEB 17, 2020

"Running errands" 🏃‍♂️

I find myself literally running errands with some frequency lately. This has been an unexpected perk of becoming a single car family since November 2018.

For instance, this morning I needed to drop our car off to be serviced. I dropped off the car at 8:15am and enjoyed a nice 7 mile run home. I was going to run today anyways. Two birds, one stone.

Or when my wife was pregnant with our son last spring, it was often more convenient to run the 4 miles to meet her at the OBGYN offices rather than making her come by and pick me up or spending money on an uber / lyft.

I started out of necessity but now I look for opportunities to pair my run with another chore I need to do. Pick up stamps? Why not jog a few miles first and grab them on my way back to the house? And so on.

It’s a nice little combo when it works.

FEB 15, 2020

Recapping my first winter hike

February 7th, 2020 marked my first winter hike up in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. It was an overnight with two friends up to the Carter Notch Hut taking the Nine Mile Brook trail in and out.

I was a little worried about what the conditions might have in store but it ended up being amazing. I might have enjoyed it more than hiking in the other 3 seasons? It felt more calm and peaceful. There was a certain beauty to everything being covered in snow and ice. It seemed more adventurous.

Anyways, I was a little worried about my gear and general preparation. Here’s a quick summary of what I learned.

Gear

Microspikes are awesome. The weather was hovering around 32 on the hike in and there hadn’t been any fresh snow. Snowshoes seemed excessive so we set off in our boots. It only took about 2 minutes to realize there was a lot of ice under the snow. We tossed on our microspikes and it was smooth sailing from there.

I had stacked my snowshoes together and attached them with straps to the center of my backpack. It was a little clumsy. Next time I’ll do one on each side of my pack. This seemed to be how every other hiker I saw did it. Lesson learned.

I didn’t own proper snow pants or winter hiking pants before the hike. After excessively researching which ones to buy online, I landed on the Cirque II Pants from Outdoor Research. They worked great. Warm but breathable. Easy to move in. My only complaint is that I’m a little between sizes. Small were too tight at the waist and medium were a little long in the legs. I went with medium but they feel a touch baggy or bunched up. All well.

One of the biggest selling points of the pants, for me, was that they have a boot lace hook and grommets for an instep lace. This meant I could wear them without gaiters. I tried to find examples of how people did this online without much success. So here is a photo of how I rigged up some elastic cord through the grommets. It worked great. I plan to leave them on there.

I brought a wool buff instead of a synthetic one. It was nice but it stretched out and lost its shape a bit. This annoyed me enough that I might stick with the synthetic next time.

I also brought a wool hat but I think I would have preferred the thinner fleece hat I own. I was plenty warm while moving and I think it would have dried out faster after absorbing some sweat.

I had heavy duty winter mittens and a thin, packable pair for around the hut. Next time, I’ll bring really thin glove liners that I could wear inside the heavier mittens if needed. It’d be nice to have a little more dexterity around the hut so I’d take them off less and let me do things like put on my snowshoes without having my bare skin exposed in the 0 degree temps we faced the next morning.

My sleeping bag is only rated to 25 degrees but I paired it with a sleeping bag liner, which helped more than I expected. I was also wearing tights and a fleece. All that combined with being inside a hut was plenty.

Some final quick hits on gear:

• I should keep a small thing of super glue in my little first aid kit. We didn’t need it but seems useful and minimal.
• A small tube of aquafor or vaseline would also be nice to have to smear on exposed skin (e.g. face) when it gets really cold.
• I should brought my ultralight stuff sack from Osprey. I could have stuffed clothes or food into it and then had it around the hut to use.
• Bring a few more hand warmers. They weigh nothing and take up no space. What’s the downside?
• I relied on my iPhone XS for photo and video. I wanted to bring my Fuji x100t but the batteries die so quickly in the cold and I have to worry about protecting it from the elements. Whereas the iPhone is waterproof, battery last a long time in airplane mode, shoots better video, and it was always easy to access from my front pocket.

I stuffed everything inside a contractor trash bag that I put inside my backpack. I’ve used this trick before to keep things dry when there might be precipitation and it hasn’t failed me yet.

Food & water

Nothing major here. I have a random neoprene bag that is for a camera lens but would have fit my water bottle perfectly. My water didn’t freeze but good to know for next time.

Related – bring less water. It was only a ~4 mile hike each way. The hut has potable water. I don’t know why I thought I needed to carry 2.5L. 1L or 1.5L would have been plenty and water is heavy. Or keep an empty platypus bag rolled in my bag if I’m stressed about it.

Otherwise, I basically brought a few clif bars and trail mix plus the stuff we had for dinner. It was fine.

Other lessons learned

Keep stuff I want to stay dry in my sleeping bag or in a bag of some sort. I had my rain shell and a pair of tights hung up on hooks on the wall of our bunk. Condensation formed there and I woke up to everything being damp. Not awful but easily avoided too.

It was hard not to sweat on the hike up in ~30 degree weather. I didn’t need the tights I had on under my cirque pants. There was some icy drizzle so I didn’t want to take my shell off. I did have all the vents open and removed my hat. But my baselayer shirt was soaked when we got to the hut. Maybe it was unavoidable but I’m going to think about this some more.

Shorten my trekking poles a bit on steeper inclines. We tried to break trail¹ and summit Wildcat Mountain on Saturday morning. It wasn’t happening but my awkwardly long poles weren’t help trying to climb up the steeper pitches.

Lastly, I’m far from an ultralight or serious hiker… but I have been trying to thougthfully pare down how much stuff I bring and how much weight I carry. I’m going to get a luggage scale so I can start to weigh my pack before future hikes and see if I’m actually able to trim weight over time.

JAN 29, 2020

Microdosing museums

So… this title is probably not what you’re thinking. It has nothing to do with mind altering substances.¹

I’ve found that I’m often reluctant to visit museums. Not because I don’t like them. But because the traditional visiting format doesn’t work well for me.

If I’m on vacation, spending half a day inside a museum seems costly. I want to be out walking around and exploring. Or even when I feel like I do have the time… I get burned out spending 3 or 4 hours in a museum.² It is so much to take in. I can’t absorb it all and I have a “completionist” streak. Bad combo.

All this to say I love living within a 10 minute walk of the Peabody Essex Museum. Even better, admission is free for Salem residents.

This solves all my issues. Now I can pop in, explore one exhibit for 30 minutes, and leave. It is glorious.

This is exactly what we did a few weekends ago when we took Buckley on his first museum visit.

The exhibit we checked out couldn’t have been better suited for young children. Granted, Buckley is too young to know what was happening but his presence helped me be more childlike in how I viewed everything.

The exhibit was littered with thought provoking statements and quotes about life. Like these.

And various patterns and materials inspired from nature.

There were also some interesting structures you could explore within. Some contained videos or lighting fixtures. Harder to photograph, however.

All in all, it was great. Excited for many more short trips to the museum as a family.

As an unexpected bonus on our way out, I got to contribute to an interactive exhibit. You sit silently and meditate as you try to form a piece of clay into a perfect sphere. Once you’re satisfied, you add it to the collection. A peaceful way to wrap up the visit.

JAN 20, 2020

2019 Reflections

When I was reading Austin Kleon’s “100 things that made my year (2019)”, I thought it’d be fun to try and do something similar. I haven’t kept a particularly crisp log of 2019 so we will see what I can cobble together from memory.

Note: I’m not going to try and get 100 exactly. And I’m calling it reflections so I can include anything I want but I suspect it will end up all being positive stuff. We’ll see!

Buckley and #DadLife

• The birth of my first child had to lead off the list. Just a universe altering experience. Too much to cover here so I’ll point to some previous thoughts.
• Playing a couple of songs that make me think about fatherhood on repeat. Welcome To Earth (Pollywog) by Sturgill Simpson, Bloom by bLAck pARty, and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan.
• Being grateful that he has been healthy and we’ve been doing at least an okay job ~5 months in. I’m glad we’ve been able to maintain our sense of humor and try to take a more laid back approach to parenting. Lots to worry and obsess over but we seem less neurotic than some at least.
• Watching his grandparents fawn over him.
• Milestones! Smiling, laughing, grabbing stuff. rolling from front to back, sticking his tongue out. Basically almost everything he does is a first and it is a ton of fun.
• I should rewind a bit and acknolwdge for stressful the early days of the pregnancy were for us. We lost a pregnany in 2018 around week 19 so we were terrified it’d happen again. It took a long, long time for us to feel comfortable and feel like this one was going to work.
• Related – the 2018 loss was a termination for medical reasons. I became a lot more comfortable being outspoken about reproductive rights in 2019.
• Baby shower was really lovely. We got to invite a lot of people and made it co-ed as well. Just a great day and nice to feel so loved.
• Waiting for a baby is hard at the end. He was almost a week late. Had a scare-but-not-really with preeclampsia. But it all worked out.
• Getting reminded how much I love the photos that come out of my Fuji x100t. I’ve been using it more and more with Buckley and it is so good at skin tones and the images always look great.
• Taking Buckley to vote in the local elections. He’s a very civic minded baby. The councillor for our ward winning by only a single vote!
• Taking Buckley to a polo match in Hamilton. This was a fun outing with friends. Sort of a fancy tailgate situation with horses. We might try to make it an annual thing.
• Buckley’s first Haunted Happenings parade. He has a lot of costumes in his future.
• Going to an orchard with Buckley for apple cider donuts!
• Watching all his older relatives play with him during Thanksgiving. Excited for him to be more interactive at future holidays or gatherings.
• Buckley staying up late to come to Notch with me when I hit 100 Wednesday runs and got my name added to the plaque.
• Lots of quick restaurant outings with him. We’ve managed to get pretty good at grabbing a bite without things going sideways or him getting fussy.
• Watching the fire department rescue Santa off the roof of the Hawthorne Hotel and strolling Buckley to the tree lighting ceremony.

Running / health / exercise / etc.

• Ran my first marathon!
• Ran the Mount Washington Road Race for the first time!
• First (unsuccessful) attempt of doing the Pemi Loop in a single day. We underestimated how badly the ice monorail and postholing would slow us down. Glad we did the responsible thing and cut it short (though we still hiked ~26 miles).
• Kind of a weird year overall. Despite running my first marathon, I actually ran fewer total miles in 2019 (939) than I did in 2018 (1,126). I tried to ramp my mileage too quickly in January in new shoes and tweaked my left IT band a bit. Then the 3 accomplishments listed above happened in quick succession leading to some burnout. But I finished the year okay and I’m back into a better groove now. Hoping that I can regain some speed at shorter distances and run a sub-3 marathon in Chicago in the fall.
• I was off and on with tracking other stuff. Made some attempts to track how many pull ups and push ups that I did. Same with alcoholic drinks consumed. But I’d have stretches where I didn’t log anything. It is a hard balance. The accountability helps me but trying to quantify everything also kind of sucks.
• Briefly held the Strava segment crowns for the Notch 5k and 10k loops.
• Bought an old English 3 speed bike for $40 and fixed it up. Cleaned off all the rust, replaced the pedals, added cork grips and a milk crate, and took it to the local bike shop for a tune-up. Didn’t ride it quite as much as I hoped but looking to change that in 2020.
• Beer mile with a bunch of friends. OOF. No thanks. I puked twice and remembered that I don’t like chugging beers. Fun in theory though.

Travel and fun and all that

• Rented a tiny little cabin in Stowe, VT in January and got completely snowed in. But it was fun. Worked on a puzzle and snuggles with the dogs while watching PBS.
• Went to an Eric Church concert at TD Garden with my cousin and her husband. We didn’t really know any of his music but they had floor seats and it was a blast.
• Playing bocce on the beach on an unseasonably warm March day in New England with a close friend.
• Going to the Salem Cheese Shop a few times for their blind tasting challenge. I never did guess correctly on which region the wines were from but it was a fun way to end a week when I could make it.
• MAUI! Our babymoon. Such an amazing trip and island. First time to Hawaii. Loved exploring the island. Loved doing lots of stuff in a relaxing way. Road to Hana was a highlight, for sure. Too many favorites to list.
• Bought an awesome straw hat in Maui that I wore a lot for the rest of the year.
• Quick pitstop in Milwaukee on the way home for an event with Lea’s family. Stayed in a cool art deco type historic hotel. Visited a nice brewery with a funny tour guide.
• Attended a surprise wedding!! A lovely couple down the street from us invited us to their 20th anniversary celebration at Ledger (a nice restaurant in town). When we arrived, it sure seemed formal and wedding-like. Sure enough, Tess and Alyssa had never been formally married and they were about the change that. Mayor Driscoll officiated and it was all very amazing.
• Went back to Eagle Mountain House! This is where we got married in 2015. So when we traveled to NH for the Mount Washington Road Race we stayed here the night before. It was fun and a bit nostalgic to be back there.
• Fun weekend in Falmouth with a bunch of Lea’s college friends and a quick day trip to Martha’s Vineyard as well.
• Wedding weekend for a high school friend at Belhurst Castle on Seneca Lake. Fun to see old friends and get to spend time at home too. Stopped at Seneca Falls to check out the women’s suffrage museum. Made a day trip to Ithaca to walk around the commons.
• Fun dinner with two college buddies at Row 34. We ate well.
• Beer advent calendar with friends. 12 of us total. Everyone supplied two 12 packs. 24 different beers to try throughout December. Kind of a lot of drinking but it was really fun.
• Hosting Christmas! Switched this year to doing secret santa so people didn’t have to buy as many gifts to cut down on consumerism a bit. Worked really well. Plus, Christmas with an infant around is adorable.

Home improvement type ish

• Converted my old butcher block desk into a standing desk.
• Generally improved the basement aka my office a fair amount. Hung more stuff on the walls. Got a diffuser and more filing cabinets. Added a plant. And so on.
• Bought an old vintage Steelcase Tanker chair off craigslist. I kind of love it but I’m not sure it is good for my back.
• Tulips planted last summer bloomed and looked great. Most of the perennials in the yard looked healthy this year.
• Biggest thing was definitely setting up the nursery. A bit stressful at times but worked out really well in the end.
• Made the living room more organized so we have a spot for all of Buckley’s toys and gear.
• Got a Dyson stick vacuum that seemed kind of unnecessary but has turned out to be a life saver. We vacuum and clean up so much more often now. Highly recommended.
• Put up frosted privacy sticker type things on the bottom half of our first floor windows. Lets in light but gives us a little more privacy than before.

User Interviews grows up

• I now have 4 direct reports on my team (2 product designers, 2 product managers).
• The company overall went from a headcount in the low teens to 40 within the calendar year. It sounds crazier typing it out. It felt like a steady ramp for the most part.
• Offsite in Austin in April with ~15 of us. It kind of felt like a turning point – here is the last time a small core group will be together before we get big. Lots of tacos, bbq, and nights ended at The White Horse Tavern.
• Worked from home full time! We’ve always been a remote team but in 2017 some of us would meet up a few days a week in office space in Boston to work together. We lost that space in 2017 and didn’t look back. I love being fully remote now.
• Awkward Silences podcast became legit. We landed an impressive list of guests and hit 20k listens. I’ve learned a lot from the guests and a lot about how to host. It has been a fun ride.
• San Diego offsite in December. Much bigger crew – over 30 of us this time. Still an awesome vibe across the team and it felt like it helped all the newer folks gel with the rest of the team.

Misc. stuff

• Bauman’s Botanicals. Found these local shrubs at the farmers market. So, so good when added to seltzer. Drank a lot of these. Excited to get more next summer.
• Bought a Pocket Operator from Teenage Engineering. I don’t quite know what I’m doing but I was able to make some fun beats. It is a lot of fun to fiddle with regardless.
• Finding and loving the Emoji Mashup Bot on twitter.
• A nice restaurant – Chez Casa – opening down the street from us. Good sandwiches, good salads, good fresh pasta. Just a lot to like.
• Buying this Parks book on a whim. Really lovely collection of National Park graphic design over the years.
• Became oddly fascinated with bag reviews from Chase Reeves on YouTube. Not exactly sure why. I’m not buying a new backpack at the moment. But I love his rambles about life and general vibe, I guess.
• The Lost Boy album by YBN Cordae. This really stuck in my head and was on heavy rotation for me.
• Getting my personal site all set up and configured on Github pages. I imported all my old tumblr posts and generally got things in better shape. More improvements to come.
• Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan. Loved this book despite not knowing much about surfing.
• Finished The Americans and was satisfied by the ending. Rare for a TV show these days it seems.
• The two Fyre Fest documentaries were amazing. I loved that stupid saga so much.¹
• Did pretty well with reflecting and journaling. Some meditating as well. Lots of epsom salt baths too.
• Into The Spider-Verse was so good. Funny, clever, cool soundtrack, etc. I put off seeing it for a while then loved it.
• Rhythm + Flow on Netflix was oddly capitvating.
• Fleabag was as good as everyone said. Glad we got around to watching it.
• In general, I wasn’t great at tracking content that I loved. A lot of good podcast episodes and New Yorker articles in particular that I cannot easily dig up. Going to work on fixing that somehow in 2020.

Phew, that was a lot. Probably missed stuff but I think I hit a lot of it.

JAN 16, 2020

New year, new styles

I’ve had a few issues with this blog that I had been meaning to clean up for quite a while… and well, I finally did it. Nothing crazy but here is a quick list of some of the changes.

• CSS has been simplified quite a bit. It is still probably too bloated and confusing for a site of this simplicity but I’m not a developer or designer. It will be fun to see if I can simplify further. But overall – much better than it was.
• New header font! I’m now using Noto Sans instead of Nunito. Nunito was a bit too rounded, smoothed off and it didn’t fit well with Zilla Slab (the serif font I’m using for body copy).
  • I stuck with serif for body font and san serif for headers. This seems to be the inverse of a lot of modern blog styles but I prefer it so whatever.
• Slightly reduced max width for better readibility.
• Fixed a lot of spacing, marging, and padding issues. Headers in particular were a mess previously. But line heights, paragraph spacing, and lists are better now too.
  • Lists in particularly were bugging me the most. Glad to have fixed those issues for good. I made the line height on list items a little tighter than on paragraphs so each item feels a little more contained. Subtle but it helps. I swear.
• Added the tiniest amount of border radius to images (2px!) that is barely noticeable but it makes me happy.
• Put in styles for code blocks finally (including syntax highlighting when a language is specified).
• Made the base font size 20px. I think Zilla Slab reads better at this size and it was simpler to have it as the default instead of doing everything off a base of 16px and using 1.25rem constantly.
• Added a date above each post, which also serves a permalink to the individual post. This is not super intuitive but I want the blog to primarily serve as a minimalist feed. Therefore I don’t like requiring every post to have a title so it is a workaround to view every individual post when there isn’t always a title to click. I know this is not the best usability wise but it works for me for now.
• Related – cleaned up the formatting of individual posts so they don’t look like trash now that there is a way to view them.
• Put footnotes into their own, more clearly contained little section. Much happier with this treatment¹.
• Loaded the 500 weight italiced version of Zilla Slab for use within block quotes. I love, love having this weight and style available. Adds a nice subtle distinction from the normal 400 weight and it looks nicer than the fake browser version of italics that you usually get instead.
  • Note: I’m not a typography snob but I wouldn’t mind becoming one. Enjoying these posts from Frank Chimero lately.
• Added some negative left margin to block quotes so the text continues to align with the normal paragraphs but the left border hangs out in its own gutter. I tried a lot of different styles for block quotes before landing on this one.

I think that is about it! Really happy with how it all played out in the end. I also added a style guide page so I had somewhere to easily see the impact of various changes. I should have done that sooner. Lesson learned.

NOV 17, 2019

“Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.”
— Yousuf Karsh

NOV 14, 2019

“Stan culture” isn’t really a topic I’ve thought much about. I’ve heard the terms for groups of fans – Beyhive, Beliebers, Little Monsters, etc. But that had been the extent of my knowledge. I did not fully realize the impact these rabid fan groups have on social media.

As these random things always happen, I read an article about this same topic in The New Yorker right after listening to this podcast.

“You know how dope it would be if Nicki put out mature content? No silly shit. Just reflecting on past relationships, being a boss, hardships, etc. She’s touching 40 soon, a new direction is needed.” When Thompson got to the show, she put her phone away. By the time she checked it again, two hours later, her tweet had gone viral.

That is barely even a criticism? Like what are we even talking about?

I guess my main thought on this whole topic is – don’t let a single artist or piece of fiction define your whole identity. I loved Game of Thrones and found the last season disappointing. All well. I loved Kanye and have found some of his newer stuff weird. So what.

Would I have preferred Game of Thrones had an amazing ending? Yea, of course. Would I be happier if Kanye kept making undisputably classic albums? You bet.

But there are so many other shows and other music I want to explore anyways. I’ll just do that instead of freaking out on twitter. Everyone relax.

It is funny to me people will say things like “I stan so-and-so.” Have you heard the song? Stan isn’t exactly portrayed in a good light.

And of course this has been going on forever.

“Lisztomania,” coined in 1844, described the mass frenzy that occurred at Franz Liszt’s concerts, where audience members fought over the composer’s gloves or broken piano strings.

NOV 11, 2019

⬀ Student debt is transforming the American family

I feel so conflicted about this topic. Undergrad played a huge role in my life and I want others to have access to the same type of opportunity. Student loans can help do that.

But given the current rate of tuition increases – it is projected to be over $100k/yr by the time my son would be applying – it is hard to imagine the cost continuing to be worth it. Tuition is outpacing inflation and income in dramatic ways.

From the late nineteen-eighties to the present, college tuition has increased at a rate four times that of inflation, and eight times that of household income.

Ending up with a lot of student debt is such an albatross. It limits your options precisely at the stage of life when you should have the most optionality.

We’ve set up a 529 account for Buckley. And hopefully it will appreciate well and help pay for some meaningful portion of his education. We’d, you know, like to help him avoid being crushed by loans.¹

But I think higher education will look a lot different in 18 years. Or at least I hope that it will? I’ve worked with enough self taught software engineers to see how the internet changes education opportunities. The current system is bloated and there are practical alternatives emerging. Something is going to give… eventually.

NOV 5, 2019

🇺🇸 Vote! 🇺🇸

So my wife and I voted in our local election today and one of the candidates we voted for won by a single vote. How crazy is that? It is actually blowing my mind.

I feel like a infomerical or something. Remember to vote kids!

Lastly, I love that Salem’s progressive movement goes by “Witch the vote.” Of course. 🧙‍♀

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by #witchthevote (@witchthevote) on Nov 1, 2019 at 2:33pm PDT

OCT 31, 2019

I love this photo from Jheison Huerta that I saw on kottke.

I’ve gotten okay at doing long exposure shots on my camera. But capturing the stars in a night sky in such a vivid way is still a mystery to me. It’d be a fun skill to learn though.

OCT 14, 2019

Nine-to-five is how you survive, I ain’t tryna survive
I’m tryna live it to the limit and love it a lot
– Jay-Z

This is one of those lyrics I’d see quoted in AIM away messages growing up and I never really thought much about… until recently.

Since I’ve been working remotely, I have occasionally taken advantage of having more flexibility in my day to day schedule. Maybe I’d go for an afternoon run on a nice day to break things up. Or wrap my day up a little early to meet a friend. But honestly, I did this type of stuff when I worked in an office too.

But in the 7 weeks since our son was born, I’ve realized how amazing it is to have a lot of autonomy over your work schedule. I don’t think I can overstate the benefit.

Now maybe I go help with Buckley during the afternoon and catch up on work later while he sleeps. Or I start my day later to help with his morning fussin’. It is more fluid and flexible.

So this lyric means more to me now. I don’t want to just “survive.” I want to be deeply involved in raising my son (aka “love it a lot”) and turn User Interviews into a juggernaut (aka “live it to the limit”). Remote makes it possible for me to do both. I’m not limited by an arbitrary and strict 9 to 5 schedule each day. It is more fulfilling and I’m getting more done.

OCT 9, 2019

Leaning into a problem

I grew up in Central New York. In a small town that received a lot of snow every year.

So when I was 16 and got my learners permit in November… learning how to drive in the snow was emphasized. One of the most important things to learn is how to react if the car fishtails around a corner. This is when you go around a corner, your rear wheels slip, and drift out towards the center of the road.

The answer is counterintuitive. You need to turn the front wheels towards the middle of the road too. Basically, you need to steer into the problem. This is how you stop it and regain control.

I find that this metaphor holds up in other areas of life too.

When I’m running a race and it starts to hurt… I do best when I lean into the pain and try to attack it. Or if I don’t know something at work… it helps to lead with my lack of knowledge. It attracts more assistance and input than pretending to have it under control.

This all makes me think I should get around to reading The Obstacle Is The Way.

OCT 8, 2019

I grabbed a screenshot of this haiku from Austin Kleon’s instagram story. It is by Ron Padgett in BIG CABIN.

Love it.

OCT 7, 2019

“The best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them.” – Ernest Hemingway

I’ve thought about this a few times since coming across it. On the surface, trust seems binary – I trust someone or I don’t.

But that doesn’t hold up under much scrutiny. Trusting someone to hold your spot in line is quite a bit different than trusting someone to watch your child, for instance.

So I’m going to try and default more to trusting people – in some capacity – from the start.

OCT 6, 2019

⬀ Inside the cultish dreamworld of Augusta National

I knew there was a certain weird aura around Augusta but this story covers a bunch of things I had no idea about. Here are some of things that caught me offguard.

Literally the first sentence.

Beneath Augusta National, the world’s most exclusive golf club and most venerated domain of cultivated grass, there is a vast network of pipes and mechanical blowers, which help drain and ventilate the putting greens.

I had no idea how much they do to keep up appearances.

It has been accepted as fact that recalcitrant patches of grass are painted green and that the ponds used to be dyed blue. Because the azaleas seem always to bloom right on time, skeptics have propagated the myth that the club’s horticulturists freeze the blossoms, in advance of the tournament, or swap out early bloomers for more coöperative specimens. Pine straw is imported. Pinecones are deported. There is a curious absence of fauna. One hardly ever sees a squirrel or a bird. I’d been told that birdsong—a lot of it, at any rate—is piped in through speakers hidden in the greenery. (In 2000, CBS got caught doing some overdubbing of its own, after a birder noticed that the trills and chirps on a golf broadcast belonged to non-indigenous species.)

There is more.

… what appears to patrons and television viewers to be the whitest sand in golf is technically not sand but waste from feldspar mines in North Carolina.

Ok, this part about John Daly was not actually surprising.

Augusta National is sometimes likened to Oz. For one thing, it’s a Technicolor fantasyland embedded in an otherwise ordinary tract of American sprawl. Washington Road, the main approach to the club, is a forlorn strip of Waffle Houses, pool-supply stores, and cheap-except-during-the-Masters hotels. In the Hooters parking lot during tournament week, fans line up for selfies with John Daly, the dissolute pro and avatar of mid-round cigarettes and booze.

The article goes into a lot more detail and history about the club. Just read the whole thing. It is fascinating.

OCT 3, 2019

Competing against yourself

“Dad’s message about basketball—and life—was this: ‘Johnny, don’t try to be better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can be. You have control over that. The other you don’t.’ It was simple advice: work hard, very hard, at those things I can control and don’t lose sleep over the rest of it.”¹

I find that in some areas of life it is much easier to follow this advice than in others. Running, for instance, has a whole culture around this exact thing. PRs. Personal records. If I run a good race, it won’t be long until someone asks “hey, was that a PR?” And if it was, I’ll be met genuine enthusiasm and happiness in response.

And I’ll be genuinely proud. I outdid my previous best. That’s a cool accomplishment under any circumstances.

It’s all around great. But why does this dynamic happen in running but not in many other aspects of my life?

I have a two part hypothesis:

1. It is easily quantified
   • There are only two data points that matter really. Distance and duration. How far and how fast? These are easy numbers to track and share. It is simple. Lots of other things can be quantified but it is usually not as straightforward.
2. It is a shared experience
   • Everyone is trying to do the same thing. Run a specific distance faster than they ever have before. And regardless of your speed, doing so requires the same thing from everyone – their best effort. So whether your shiny new 5k PR is 18 minutes or 30 minutes, a PR means it was your best ever effort. Period.

I love cooking. But how do I quantify if a meal was my best ever effort and how would I share that with someone else? Same with work. Was that my best ever retro as a PM? Hard to say for sure.

It makes me want to try and quantify something like # of hours of deep work I manage in a typical week. Need to give that more thought.

SEP 13, 2019

Buckley John Forster

My son¹ is 3 weeks old today. Almost everyone has informed us that these first few weeks are a blur so I’ve been doing my best to capture my thoughts. Here is a dump of things that have crossed my mind since his birth. Roughly in chronological order but also not really.

• He is the most perfect human to ever exist, nbd.
• As fucked as our healthcare system is in this country – and I do believe it is very fucked up – the people who work within it are amazing. It is the system and the corporations that deserve criticism – not the practitioners. Everyone we encountered while my wife was in labor and immediately after was amazing. I am so grateful for all of them and couldn’t imagine working in such a stressful profession myself.
• Not being in the delivery room with my wife seems so insane to me. I know that used to be common. But why? She benefitted from my support and presence. I wanted to be involved. It felt like a better arrangement for everyone.
• My wife delivered him without any pain medication, which I can hardly fathom. In one of our birthing classes the instructor was comparing labor to running a marathon. Uhm, I’ve run a marathon and now I’ve witness a natural birth… they are not even close to being the same. It took me a little over 3 hours to run a marathon and I wasn’t really in much distress until about 2 hours and 30 minutes into it. You pace yourself. I had also done long runs (up to 22 miles) so I was pretty familiar with the pain and discomfort. It wasn’t new. It was tough, sure. But you can’t prepare for labor and it seemed many orders of magnitude harder.
• He was 5 days late. Those 5 days, as you can imagine, felt very long. So the due date seemed inaccurate. But after more thought – it takes an estimated 280 days to make a tiny human. So it taking 285 in the end is less than a 2% miss. It seems unbelievable close with that framing.
• I’ve done much better with little sleep than I would have guessed. Tired at times and it certainly isn’t easy but I expected to be much more fatigued. Dad adrenaline or something?
• I got comfortable holding and soothing him really quickly. In general, I’ve felt at ease with him. The only times when I’ve felt panicked or worried about his care have been at night. I wake up terrified about him somehow getting into bed with us. He is always happily in his bassinet. I guess all the posters in the hospital about the dangers of co-sleeping are deep in my subconscious or something. I am hoping this will pass.
• There was a moment when I felt bad for how much I was using my phone. But I was using it almost entirely to take pictures and videos of him and to share those with our family. This is much different than my usual phone usage. We’re quick to assume any phone usage as bad. I’m not going to worry myself about how much I am documenting this little dude’s life though.
• Breastfeeding is hard. Like much, much harder than I would have expected. It has been, by far, the biggest source of stress for us. It is one of those things I had heard before but never internalized until having first hand experience.
• We wanted to avoid using formula but he wasn’t gaining weight with breast milk alone so we had to supplement. This was hard to accept initially. But in the end, certainly giving him nourishment is better than having him starve. So what is the alternative?
• I skew pretty stoic but he has put a good dent in that. We were watching an episode of Queer Eye and I burst out crying one day. It was an episode where they were helping a music teacher who had dedicated her life to her students. The idea of there being such good people in the world and that people like that are going to help little Buckley grow up really struck a chord with me.
• Going back to work has been hard. Tired and distracted are not the ingredients for peak performance. But I’m getting back into the groove. And it is nice to have some blips of normalcy in the day that is otherwise consumed by this little critter.

I’m probably forgetting a whole host of other observations and thoughts I’ve had about this dude. I suspect this will not be the last time I post about him.

Important update: the dishwasher and laundry machine have been life savers. We’re constantly cleaning something. I feel fortunate to have access to both.

AUG 22, 2019

⬀ A Year of Working Remotely

I’ve been working at User Interviews – a fully remote company – for over 2 years now. I keep meaning to summarize my thoughts on remote work.

But this post came along and pretty much did it for me. A lot resonated with me. Some highlights. 👇

“The way to look at remote work is that it’s a series of tradeoffs. You enjoy benefits in exchange for disadvantages. The uptake of remote work over the next decade will depend most on the minimization of those disadvantages rather than the maximization of the benefits. Reason being, the benefits are already substantial while many of the disadvantages will be lessened over time with technology and process improvements.”

This feels exactly right. No commute, more flexibility, economic advantages, etc. These benefits already exist and aren’t going to get much better.

Whereas the drawbacks and challenges will be better addressed in the next few years. Collaboration and communication tools will continue to evolve. Norms and best practices will emerge and so on.

“I will say this about video meetings though: I have a very hard and sudden limit I reach with them. My first hour or two of video meetings every day are a joy. But the days when I have to do 4 or 5 hours on Zoom, it gets tedious. This is not the case for me with in-person meetings. I feel like in an office full of people you genuinely enjoy, sitting down in a conference room or taking a walk with them is refreshing. It’s part of what makes office life enjoyable… for me at least!”

This mirrors my experience. I love Zoom. Days without any video calls feel isolating.

But a slate of them back to back to back is exhausting. You’re performing for a camera almost. You feel “on.” Often with no real break between calls. A day full of meetings in an office at least usually means walking to different conference rooms. It is chopped up a bit as you physically relocate.

A day full of meetings is never great but it is worse over video.

“In terms of being super-productive in remote environments, the biggest lever is to work as asynchronously as possible. Carve off large chunks of work that you can do on your own without having to check in every hour or even every day. For design reviews, do some of them over video, but collect as much feedback via asynchronous comments as you can.”

Ding, ding, ding. Async is amazing if you can figure it out. Remote provides a natural incentive to figure it out. It’s not easy but it’s great. Plus, you end up with written documentation and other artifacts to revisit that don’t always come out of meetings or whiteboard sessions. It is documentation by default when working async.

A few final add-on thoughts from me:

• Companies fear remote work because they cannot track employees and worry they’ll take liberties. Employees fear remote work because they worry they won’t be able to stop working and set boundries when their home is their office. Seems like a silly misalignment in expectations when you think about it.
• Sometimes I love Slack. Sometimes I hate Slack. I couldn’t imagine working remote without it. But it distracts me a lot too. This deserves its own post.
• A pleasant home environment and socializing outside of work are key. But these should be key for office workers too. A nice home and regular social activities with non-coworkers shouldn’t be disproportionally valued by remote workers. Kind of sad when you flip it this way and realize office workers seem to be more okay forgoing these things without doing so intentionally.

AUG 19, 2019

When simple – but working – is good enough

My effort to commit fully to using Jekyll for all of my blogging needs has mostly worked and gone smoothly. It is in a good sweet spot for my technical abilities. I mostly understand it. My basic working knowledge of the command line, ruby, html, css, and git offer enough competence to get it working without too much fussing (usually).

But, more importantly, parts of it are a bit outside my current technical abilities. Sure, I encounter challenges. Often, in fact. But I perceive them as solvable challenges and so I’m motivated to do so. Flow state, deliberate practice, and all that stuff.

But not all challenges are worth solving.

As someone who has worked in Product for over a decade, I know this. It is obviously true at an intellectual level – there isn’t time to solve all of the problems before us. Duh. And I feel confident coaching others through these types of trade-offs. Or being the decision maker on where to draw the line on an effort.

But it is harder when you are the one wrestling with the challenge directly. It is easier to maintain good judgment as a third-party. It is hard to do it yourself and self edit while working on something.

That is all to say – I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to responsively embed media on this blog. It took me longer than it should have to realize the rabbit hole I was going down. It felt like a solvable challenge¹ so I stubbornly insisted on trying to solve it.

But no solutions were presenting themselves. Some required moving off hosting on Github pages so I could use plugins, which means introducing a CI tool. Others required making a ton of custom CSS in various _include files or some crazy shit with javascript to handle the different aspect ratios of various sources. Lastly, some involved making API calls to oEmbed, which is a non-starter since this is a static site and not a server.

No solutions that met my needs or abilities².

But in earlier in my googling, I had stumbled across iFramely. A paid service for solving this problem. I didn’t want to pay for anything. But they offer a “Check URL” page where you can paste in any link and it spits out responsive embed code…

I thought about it a bit more. On average, I only post a few times a week. And maybe only a third of those posts need to handle an embed. I’m not going to be doing this terribly often. How slick of a solution do I need?

So there you have it. Now when I find a link I’d like to share, I take 5 seconds to copy it into iFramely and paste the output. It is an extra step, sure. But it is simple and it works.

Sometimes, it is good to re-learn a lesson the hard way.

AUG 18, 2019

⬀ Kind of Bloop – an 8 bit tribute to Miles Davis

I’m not quite sure what to make of this? At a minimum, it is fascinating. And I love that someone took the time and effort to create it. It kind of works pretty well?

I’m surprised this didn’t get on my radar 10 years ago when it was first released. It’s a good gimmick and I love gimmicks.

The timing is right now though – I just purchased a Pocket Operator Arcade and have been trying to learn how to make my own chiptune beats¹. A random but fun overlap.

Give it a listen.

AUG 17, 2019

Had an interaction yesterday that felt like the internet at its best. I asked on twitter for intros to user researchers who work across cultures / countries. Got referred to Robyn Larsen. Ended up checking out her website where I found the illustrated print above, which I believe belongs to this artist.

5 minutes of serendipity and clicking links into discovering a cool graphic and an artist to follow.

It ain’t all bad online.

AUG 16, 2019

My wife and I heard this for the first time randomly on Spotify with no knowledge of what it was. Gradually, we started to realize it was awfully repetitive and laughing aloud. But we still thought it was real for a moment. Finally it clicked that this had to be a parody of some sort. It was a confusing and hysterical couple of minutes.

The backstory is kind of amazing. A real musician named Dustin Christensen made a joke version of one of his own songs.

For years, the two have recorded joke versions of Christensen’s songs. Their format is simple: Take the song’s opening line, and say it as many different ways as possible. “Parked Out by the Lake” lampoons Christensen’s song “Vacant Motel Heart.” (That one has only 5,000 plays on Spotify — “The original song is ruined forever,” Christensen said with a laugh.)

He didn’t even release it himself. It was a private joke with friends that leaked somehow. I love it.

AUG 16, 2019

The Kindle Oasis is almost great?

I should offer a disclaimer upfront that I like Kindles. I know many prefer the feel of a real book. I do too in certain instances. But the convenience and portability appeal to my pragmatic nature.

My previous Kindle was a 6th Gen Paperwhite from 2013. It was still in decent shape and working well – actually not bad for a 6 year old piece of consumer tech.

But the Kindle trade-in program¹ combined with handling an Oasis in an Amazon store put me over the edge and got the upgrade wheels in motion.

I’ve had it for about a week now, here is my quick review.

Pros

1. Screen is much crisper. 300ppi vs. 220ppi on my previous device. Text is noticeably sharper and more pleasant to read. I didn’t have an issue with the previous screen until after using this screen. You really cannot go back once you adjust.
2. Physical buttons for turning the pages. 🙌 Though I wish there was an option to disable the touchscreen page turns as a software setting. Craig Mod’s essay on this explains it better than I will so I’m not going to bother.
3. The software and interactions are snappier and less laggy.
4. Waterproof. Unclear often this will come in handy but a nice insurance policy.

Cons

1. The width is a little awkward. I loved being able to quickly stash my Paperwhite in a back pocket when I was out and needed my hands. i.e. Commuting on a subway. The Oasis doesn’t fit in a pocket, which is a shame. I’ll probably have a backpack with me more often than not when using this outside the house but it is a slight bummer all the same.
2. The little notch / ledge to help you hold it isn’t as ergonomic as it could be. At least for my hands². The material is a little slippery. The ledge isn’t quite pronounced enough to really get a good hold on it. It is nice and I like having it. It just feels like a missed opportunity. I expected the holding ledge to be the best part of the device. It is meh. I think putting a case on it might help. For now, I’m leaning on gaffer tape…

I guess to summarize – I like it but I expected to love it.

AUG 15, 2019

Slowly... then all at once

Today – August 15th – is our 4th wedding anniversary. Which is great but it feels very overshadowed as we await the arrival of our first child.

Because today my wife also happens to be 39 weeks and 4 days pregnant.

We hit the 39th week on Sunday and it felt like an important milestone. After all, most babies are born between weeks 39 and 41.¹

It has been a weird milestone, though… because nothing really changed?

It feels like something should have changed. But it hasn’t. We’re still in the same spot – the baby could arrive tonight or it could arrive over a week from now. Either of those outcomes would be totally normal and we have no idea which one it will be.

Beyond testing my patience², it is also a big distraction for us. You can’t help think about it constantly while still trying to kind of go about your life as usual. It is a strange experience and a strange waiting game. Hence the title of this post. Time feels excuratingly slow waiting for her to go into labor. But once it happens, everything happens.

Either way, we’re beyond thrilled to meet this little dude. Maybe he’ll be our anniversary present this year? 🤞

AUG 11, 2019

Week recap, August 11th

Liked

• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Finally saw this movie. It was phenomenal. A+. Soundtrack is solid too.
• The Lost Boy album by YBN Cordae. I wasn’t familiar with this at all until my brother recommended it. It is a nice listen. Lost & Found stands out.
• The Busy Trap article in NYT.
  • “The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment.”
• Mid-August weather in the high 70s and low 80s without too much humidity. It was a perfect New England summer weekend. Even managed to snag a fantastic lobster roll from Little Harbor Lobster, which is currently in the lead for my favorite lobster roll in the area.
• This entire radio station on Spotify.

Learned

• How a garden buddha statue changed a neighborhood in Oakland
• Styling embed links, particularly iframes, to be responsive to page width is way more complicated than it seems. I moved all of my old tumblr posts over to this self-hosted jekyll blog and that has been an unexpected complication. I’m going to work on fixing it next week. Happy with the transition overall, though.
• Related to above – I realized need to clean up how the CSS for this site is organized. I’ve managed to grossly overcomplicate it.
• Whimsical’s sticky note stacks work well for breadboarding. We’ve been using this more and more lately at work and it is a great way to quickly explore an idea or workflow.
• Preeclampsia is scary. My wife is 39 weeks pregnant today with our first child. Two days ago, her blood pressure was up a bit (it quickly returned to normal and she and the baby are fine). It was enough to set off some internal alarms and mild panic. Having kids is complicated but we’re almost done and he is almost here!

AUG 3, 2019

Our first child is set to arrive any day now and this advice resonated. Interested to see how it holds up once the kid is actually here.

JAN 3, 2019

⬀ Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds

I highlighted a significant portion of this article. It feels particularly relevant to our current political climate.

Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. You can’t expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome.

The way to change people’s minds is to become friends with them, to integrate them into your tribe, to bring them into your circle. Now, they can change their beliefs without the risk of being abandoned socially.

JAN 1, 2019

⬀ Walden Local Meat Co.

If you live in New England, give Walden Local Meat Co. some serious consideration. First, the quality is fantastic and you get a nice variety of items. But, more importantly, it is a good thing to do. The commercial “concentrated animal feeding operations” (CAFOs) are abhorrent in so many ways.

Based on their year end recap, it sounds like it is working.

This is the only region of the country in which the average age of farmers is declining, the average size of farms is decreasing, and the total number of farms is increasing – all signs of a revitalization of sustainable local farming.

It is a little expensive. But just eat less meat? Quality over quantity. Seriously, it tastes much better.

DEC 21, 2018

I love Tracksmith. Sure – their stuff is expensive and skews preppy. But you know what? I like how they celebrate the amateur spirit of running. As a New Englander, I enjoy their aggressively New England vibes. And the items I’ve purchased from them have all been phenomenal in terms of quality, fit, and so on.

Plus, they introduced me to this poem.

The Song of the Ungirt Runners by Charles Hamilton Sorley

We swing ungirded hips,
And lightened are our eyes,
The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
We know not whom we trust
Nor whitherward we fare,
But we run because we must
Through the great wide air.

The waters of the seas
Are troubled as by storm.
The tempest strips the trees
And does not leave them warm.
Does the tearing tempest pause?
Do the tree-tops ask it why?
So we run without a cause
‘Neath the big bare sky.

The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
But the storm the water whips
And the wave howls to the skies.
The winds arise and strike it
And scatter it like sand,
And we run because we like it
Through the broad bright land.

DEC 19, 2018

Here is the great temptation of all middle age – comfort and security – but the surest death to the artist if accepted wholly

— Dawn Powell

This excerpt from A Diamond to Cut New York struck me (sidebar: the Dec 3rd issue of The New Yorker that re-ran a lot of old pieces has been oddly fun).

This has happened to me a few times now. I’ll see something specific to the arts or advice for artists and find that it applies much more broadly if you reframe it. Exhibit A: Jerry Saltz’s How to be an artist..

Anyways, don’t get too comfortable.

DEC 18, 2018

⬀ My Dad's Friendship With Charles Barkley

This has been all over the internet today and rightfully so. It’s a good reminder of the value of showing up in meaningful moments and the shared humanity between us all. Plus, Lin sounded like a good dude.

DEC 15, 2018

⬀ Gritty the Meme, Gritty the Messenger, Gritty the Messianic

I couldn’t let 2018 come to a close without a Gritty reference. I don’t know how but Gritty is like the one thing to have gotten popular on the internet without also immediately being destroyed by the internet. Truly special.

Some highlights – half court shot, person of the year, and a little kid fighting Gritty, twice.

DEC 10, 2018

Right for a right, wrong for a wrong
This is clearly not life’s design
Figure out quickly that nothing gets answered
When you ask the universe why
Life is a journey, to live is to worry
To love is to lose your damn mind
But living’s a blessing so I am not stressing

Man, the thoughtfulness and the story telling of the lyrics in this song floor me. Every. Single. Time.

DEC 2, 2018

Christmas in Salem House Tours

AKA one of the best events of the year in Salem. It is organized by Historic Salem and really marks the start of the Christmas season in my mind. I like having a little time after Thanksgiving to decompress before jumping right into the next holiday.

This year focused on the Derby St neighborhood with 350th (!) anniversary of The House of Seven Gables and Nathaniel Hawthorne playing a particularly big role.

The house was turned into a museum in 1910 by Caroline Emmerton who used the proceeds to offer classes and workshops to the local immigrant community. She is a badass and her story is really cool. Worth a further look.

Anyways, it was a beautiful day with lots of other great historic homes and stories being featured too.

NOV 29, 2018

I decided recently that I wanted to learn more about cocktails. Someone had recommended this book to me a while back and I finally got around to picking it up.

It’s great. One of those books where the physical materials really add to the experience of reading it. Highly recommend.

NOV 27, 2018

A third option?

Heading into Thanksgiving, I heard two perspectives over and over.

One went something like “confront 👏your 👏racist 👏uncle 👏or 👏you’re 👏the 👏problem.” It was — surprise — mostly on Twitter.

The other was a call for putting politics aside and enjoying the time spent with friends and family. An ask to dial down the partisanship and remember that we all often have a lot in common. Bill Maher went on a rant about this on Real Time.

I see merits in both and I feel like we’re retreating to the extremes again. It is one or the other. Why can’t we do both? It made me think of this book.

It is hard to influence people and get them to change their opinion on something. Especially when it comes to politics in our current environment.

Angrily confronting an older relative who probably changed your diaper isn’t going to lessen divides. It is going to deepen them. Ignoring it all together isn’t a solution either.

So I guess—try to find another approach. Read the book. Give it some thought. Maybe bond with your uncle over a beer while watching football and send him a thoughtful email right after that explains why you see some things differently?

I don’t know the answer but I know we can do better than the proposed extremes.

NOV 26, 2018

Prioritize finishing

I’m often juggling too many projects (or ideas for projects) at once. Combine that with a procrastination streak… and it doesn’t always yield the best outcomes.

“Prioritize finishing” is a new mantra of sorts I’ve been keeping in my head. It has helped me keep up momentum across tasks. It is akin to the “only handle it once” principle from Getting Things Done.

Basically, if there is a loose end wrap up or a project I can cross off the list – do it. Close open loops. Etc.

NOV 25, 2018

⬀ The Green Book Redux - 99% Invisible

The next time someone challenges you to explain “white privilege” – make them listen to this episode.

There is something simple, yet powerful, about hearing that to go on a road trip African American families needed a special book to know where it was safe to stop for food or stay for the night.

I know there are much more horrific examples from the 1950s and 60s. But something about learning about The Green Book just resonates. It’s like the smaller, everyday offenses are easier to digest.

I don’t know. Listen to the episode.

NOV 22, 2018

It’s probably my favorite Wu-Tang album *and* my favorite Beatles album.

— Mαtt Thomαs (@mattthomas) November 19, 2018

Here are some fun facts about me:

• I am 32 years old.
• I have owned cars for 11 of my 16 total eligible driving years.
• I have never owned a car with an aux input or bluetooth.

Wu-Tang vs The Beatles: Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers

I mention these things because when I was commuting by car and only had access to a CD player, I burned CDs for my commute. Even in 2009, burning CDs was a pain and I never wanted to do it.

So I listened to this mash-up of The Beatles and The Wu-Tang Clan a lot. Like a real lot. All because I had somehow managed to burn it into a CD.

It’s amazing. I never really loved either group. But I liked them both and I appreciate of the cultural and musical importance of each.

But I like this mash-up more than anything for either individual group. Blasphemous? Yea, probably.

Whatever. Who cares. I’m thankful for this mash-up.

NOV 21, 2018

Beaujolais Nouveau

I don’t know a ton about wine, which means I get the pleasure of learning something new rather often.

Within the span of a few weeks, I happened to hear a couple of people talking about “beaujolais.” I had never heard this word before. Turns out it is a region in France that produces wines. Makes sense.

Last night, my local wine shop was pouring a few Beaujolais Nouveau wines. And now I know this specific style of young wine is released each year on the third Thursday of November along with a corresponding celebration in the region. This is a good overview.

Anyways, it’s not my favorite wine ever but I like the annual tradition that accompanies it. Supposedly, the harvest this year was an unusually good one so I’m going to do my best to hunt down a few more bottles from different producers while I can. ‘Tis the season. 🍷

NOV 18, 2018

I don’t consider myself religious. Maybe that’s my nature or maybe it was the nurture of being raised without going to Church. Probably a healthy dose of both. Who knows?

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been more open to considering the spiritual aspects of life. I feel a closeness to my late father, for instance, when running hard. Maybe the oxygen debt triggers old memories of running with him. Maybe it’s something else. But it is a pleasant phenomenon all the same.

I’ve been trying to listen to a wider variety of music. Gospel as a genre and Aretha Franklin as an artist qualify as a blind spot in my knowledge.

I don’t know enough about music to offer any commentary other than – this shit is spiritual. I played it the other morning and felt in a pleasant mood all day.

OCT 9, 2018

⬀ Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Oof, I started reading this book last night. I’d heard good things about it. But I didn’t expect it to move me like 15 minutes into it. The chapter that got me was from a woman who lost a child late in the pregnancy. My wife and I lost our first child this June in the 20th week of the pregnancy.

In her response, Cheryl shares a couple of stories from young adolescent women from tough backgrounds whom she mentored for a year as a youth advocate.

The advice she eventually lands on giving one of the young women about dealing with adversity rings so true.

I told her it was not okay, that it was unacceptable, that it was illegal and that I would call and report this latest horrible thing. But I did not tell her it would stop. I did not promise that anyone would intervene. I told her it would likely go on and she’d have to survive it. That she’d have to find a way within herself to not only escape the shit, but to transcend it, and if she wasn’t able to do that, then her whole life would be shit, forever and ever and ever. I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother’s life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.

SEP 28, 2018

Today is the 20 year anniversary of this album. Doesn’t seem that old to me some how. It holds up well. The sentiment below is a nice, concise summary.

So how could it exist? How could a commercially successful rap group, deep into rap’s first gilded age, make something that warm and layered and imagistic and thoughtful?

via Aquemini turns 20

P.S. – Chonkyfire is so underrated.

MAR 5, 2018

Cleaning cast iron pans for lazy people

Cast iron pans have seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years and for good reasons. They are a great tool, they last forever, they are affordable, and they are healthier than teflon alternatives. Plus, they exude some always popular nostalgic, vintage vibes. Win, win.

Anyways, the internet at large will tell you in one sentence that “cast iron skillets are bulletproof” and in the next sentence explain to you how critical it is that you care for it in the exact right way. To be fair, some this advice is warranted as the way to clean one is different than a normal non-stick pan.

But a lot of the advice out there is high effort, low return in my opinion. The chemistry of cast iron seasoning suggests using flax seed oil¹, The Alton Brown method recommends cleaning with kosher salt², and Lodge even makes a product designed for scraping their pans³.

Here is what I recommend after years of tinkering around

• Get yourself some sort of steel scouring or scrubbing pad - like this one.
• Never use soap
• Run the pan under water and scrub the hell out of it using said pad (use the same pad for as long as possible, mine has been going strong for over a year so far)
• Take the wet pan and immediately put it on a hot burner on the stove to dry

Here is why this works. The scrubbing pad accumulates lots of grease after a few uses. So while it is removing food particles, it is also smearing oil around the pan. By drying the pan over heat, you’re doing a sort of mini-seasoning every time and eliminating any risk of rusting.

Lastly, and most importantly – this approach works because it is easy and quick. Once you know you can quickly and easily clean the pan then you will use it more. Using it more and more helps the pan build up layers of oil that have bonded into the metal over time. The best cast iron pans are always the ones getting the most use. Ask your grandmother.

Is this the perfect technique? No, probably not. But I can clean a cast iron skillet in a few moments without any hassle and it is always in good shape the next time I go to use it. Good enough for me. The salt technique took too much time. Rubbing oil into the pan with a paper towel tends to leave some paper fibers behind on the pan, which ends up making things stick. Keep it simple. Metal on metal. Dry over high heat. Done.

Note: you should definitely still properly season your pan from time to time. This is just for day to day upkeep.

FEB 28, 2018

App recommendation: Libby

I’ve been using Libby for the past month and it’s been great. As a general rule, I don’t worry too much about spending money on books but having such easy access to books I can borrow for free is nothing to sniff at. I haven’t tried borrowing an audiobook yet but excited to give that a spin soon.

Pro tip: if you’re a resident of Massachusetts then you can get an e-card from the Boston Public Library website without ever stepping foot in the building.

But you do need to have a library card to get started using the app.

Unsurprisingly, most items that I want to borrow have a waiting list but I’ve just been indiscriminately placing holds on things so I have a steady queue that’s becoming available. So far, it hasn’t been an issue at all. If anything, I’m unable to keep up with things.

My only complaints so far (to be fair, I’d bet most of these are beyond their control)…

• You can only search one library collection at a time. A universal search across all libraries I’ve added would be amazing.
• I wish there was some way to integrate with my Goodreads “want to read” shelf so I could easily see what is available in the library collections automatically instead of having to search title by title, trial and error style.
• Sending the ebook to your Kindle locks the loan period with no option to renew your loan. So basically if you don’t finish the book within the loan window then you lose access, which means if the book has a queue then you have to get back in line to borrow it again. A pretty unfortunate experience for the most popular ebook reader. That said, the loan period seems to require a network connection to be enforced on your device… so if your Kindle happens to find itself in Airplane mode then…
  • Note: I only mention this because the book is marked as returned in the Libby app so I don’t believe this “trick” negatively affects any other uses. If I’m wrong on this, please let me know.

FEB 21, 2018

"It's the case stupid" aka my AirPod review

I’ve owned a pair of AirPods for a month now and I’ve enjoyed them much more than I ever expected. I concede that they look a little goofy and are on the expensive end of the spectrum. But those are really my only main complaints. And, to be fair, when you really look at other bluetooth headphone options, they all look goofy in some way. They sound better than the normal EarPods and generally exceed my non-audiophile needs. I don’t know if it’s the lack of “cord weight” (as some have speculated) or a slightly different shape but they stay in my ears remarkably well. For me, they feel more secure than EarPods by a significant margin. I’ve run on a treadmill in them with no issues. In fact, the only time I can recall them falling out of my ears is when I’ve bumped them while taking off a t-shirt. Pairing them with my devices was painless and switching between using them with my MacBook Pro and iPhone 6s is trivial. Auto pause when you remove one pod is cool and useful trick. The double tap controls, while limited, have generally seemed sufficient.

But, for me, it really does all come down to the case. After the first few days, I’ve completely stopped worrying about the battery life and charging in general. I store them in case when not in use and I plug the case into a charger here and there as it’s convenient. That’s it. My Kindle is the only other electronic device where I feel so laissez faire about charging. It seems like a small thing but it really reframes my thinking from “this is a device I have to consciously manage” to “this is a tool I use.” And, in the one situation when I did find my AirPods almost out of juice, the fast charging got them from ~5% to ~30% in a few minutes.

The other, maybe more important, aspect of the case is that it has led to almost constantly carrying my AirPods with me. There, of course, was nothing preventing me from carrying around corded EarPods day to day but having the cord get tangled or bunched up in my pockets was enough of a deterrent. It is simply more convenient to carry the case and I find myself doing it more often.

In terms of small gripes…

• Using the AirPod microphone for video calls on my laptop has given me a slight echo a few times.
• Not AirPod specific, but I wish iOS was better as resuming playback from third party apps after 30+ minutes of idleness. It’s really annoying to try to resume playing a podcast only to end up with a random song on Apple Music instead. I assume this has something to do with memory or battery optimization but it takes away from the user experience in a material way.
• Not realistic but I wish the case where somehow a bit thinner.
• Switching from using both AirPods to a single AirPod is a little clunky but not that common of a use case either.

OCT 24, 2016

⬀ 10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings

I always find myself wishing I had more time to digest the content on Brain Pickings so I enjoyed this concise list of themes and lessons.

1. Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind.
2. Do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone.
3. Be generous.
4. Build pockets of stillness into your life.
5. When people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them.
6. Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.
7. “Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.”
8. Seek out what magnifies your spirit.
9. Don’t be afraid to be an idealist.
10. Don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively.

JUL 27, 2015

Love For Sale - Chicago Cultural Center Exhibit

Saw this (free!) exhibit over the weekend. Cool historical component to it and a very distinctive and influential graphic style that spanned decades. I had never heard of Valmor before and had no idea of the cultural relevance. Highly recommend if you get a chance to see it - the artwork has a very comic book vibe to it and must have influenced Shepard Fairey’s style to some degree.

JUN 25, 2015

“Whatever happens, you’ll probably have to improvise, and failure of nerve is really failure to trust yourself.  You have a great endowment of brain, muscle, sensitivity, intelligence – trust it to react to circumstances as they arise.” – Alan Watts