With the recent update to NetNewsWire, I thought I might move my RSS feed syncing from BazQux to iCloud. So far it’s been impressively responsive and always seems to be up to date when browsing feeds on my four different devices. That’s $30 saved a year.
Save 50 percent on a Walmart Plus membership until December 2nd | The Verge
If you have a mountain of holiday shopping to tackle over the next few weeks, Walmart is offering a great deal on Walmart Plus. New subscribers can snag an annual Walmart Plus membership for half off through December 2nd.
We’ve had a Walmart+ membership for just a little under a year and saved more than $270 so far. I’ve been able to find just about anything I would have on that other big site named for the river. All in all, I’d say it’s been worth the cost.
Disclaimer: I am an employee of VIZIO which is owned by Walmart, however, I do not get a discount on Walmart+ membership as a perk. It’s still worth it.
I’ve begun reading the next installment in the Bosch universe: Trunk Music by Michael Connelly 📚. I think I remember this episode from the Amazon series. We’ll see how well they align.
Introducing iPhone Pocket: a beautiful way to wear and carry iPhone - Apple
iPhone Pocket is a limited-edition release. The short strap design is available in lemon, mandarin, purple, pink, peacock, sapphire, cinnamon, and black; the long strap design is available in sapphire, cinnamon, and black. iPhone Pocket in the short strap design retails at $149.95 (U.S.), and the long strap design at $229.95 (U.S.).
I understand limited-edition accessories and all, but seriously, $150 to $230 for a fancy knitted sock with a name I’ve not heard of attached to it?
Yeah… I don’t think so.
One of the many paradoxes of San Francisco: Homeless drug addicts curled up on sidewalks while tech bros whiz by them in autonomous Waymo ride service cars…
Finished: The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly 📚 This one had a lot of twists… I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now to wait for the next installment to become available.
As a reference for future me, I learned of a great font resource for nerds watching YouTube last night: www.nerdfonts.com
It took a while to wrap things up, buy I’m happy to finally share that a new version of mnml has been published for Micro.blog users that adds some cool features.
You now have better control over your html images using style classes, for example: <img class="align-left" src="image.jpg" />.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so check out the mnml style guide page for more details and code examples you can copy right from the page.
Speaking of copying code right from the page, this release also includes a setting you can enable to add a “Copy” button to your code blocks, letting readers easily copy a block of code to their clipboard for their own use.
Again, a picture is worth a thousand words, so try copying this code block for yourself:
<img class="full-width" src="https://mnml.micro.blog/uploads/2025/pexels-simonmigaj-748898.jpg" alt="Three towering rock formations rise prominently amidst a landscape of rolling hills and a partly cloudy sky.">
Pretty cool, right?
This feature can be enabled with the “Enable copy button for code blocks” option in the mnml plugin settings page.
Thanks to everyone who has supported mnml’s development over the last year. It wouldn’t have been possible without you.
I find myself using the Raycast AI features (or AI in general) to perform web searches far more often than I use regular search engines like DDG anymore. I like that I can ask follow up questions on the results to refine what I’m looking for versus scrolling through search results. Anyone else?
I’m looking at a new note taking app called Capacities. It’s an interesting idea. I like the idea of no folders.
I’ve seen these floating around in the different feeds I read lately, like Manu’s, Scott’s, and Kev’s.
Being one who has major fomo if I don’t join the fun, I had to share my own pointless facts. However, being the one-ups-man I sometimes am, I chose to throw in a bonus fact eleven for your enjoyment.
Most of the time, but some days I’m just plain lazy and will skip doing it. But then I’ll feel guilty about that decision all day.
This one’s easy… Coffee. I love coffee. I can’t get enough coffee. Sadly, I’ve had to cut way back on it over the last two years. So it’s two cups of “regular” coffee in the morning. If I drink any more through the day it’s got to be decaf. The rest of the time it’s water. Very rarely do I drink tea…like almost never.
Running shoes, though I don’t run. My current daily drivers are a pair of black Nike runners with a white swish that I just love. Once they wear out, they will be replaced by the same.
Hands down, chocolate cake, but then I have a sweet tooth, so I will accept any dessert put in front of me. This too has been scaled way back over the last two years. For my sweet tooth fix these days it’s an apple, Mandarin oranges, or a handful of blueberries.
I swallow a pill for my damned under-active thyroid. Every. Single. Day. Then I get dressed and walk the dog. Then have coffee, which I’ve been thinking of since the moment I woke up.
To me, 27 was my prime and was the age that being an adult just sort of clicked for me. I’d love to be that age again, but still have the wisdom I’ve gained over the last 34 years. I’d rule the world.
Jeez. I don’t even know. A quick guess would have to be ten, maybe 15. I’ll get on a kick and buy a hat, wear it for a week and then it sits for months before I put it on again. I’ve got a box of about five in the closet I haven’t put on in nearly 10 years.
A receipt for breakfast in the SFO airport when coming home from the Dreamforce conference last week. I take more photos of stuff like this than I do “cool” photos.
Keeping Up with the Kardashians, or Love After Lockup. Enough said. My wife enjoys both of them. I do not…at all.
I wanted to be a truck driver. Smokey and the Bandit was popular then. I thought it was so cool. I’m glad it didn’t work out that way though. I’m really happy doing what I’m doing now, even if it was all by accident.
As a kid of maybe five or six, I once had a dream that my Aunt and Uncle (who owned the family ranch that was lost to fire recently), had a collection of combs in a rack. They were all different types of combs, with one of them being made from bone. It had jagged teeth and looked scary. My aunt warned me to never use the bone comb.
I somehow managed to lose all the other combs in the rack until only the bone comb remained, so I had to use it one morning. When I took it from the rack, the comb – which turned out to be possessed – jumped out of my hand and began tearing up the sheets on the fold-out sofa bed I slept on when visiting them for the summer. That’s all I can remember of it now.
That dream scared the shit out of me then, and I can still remember parts of it today. I’m sure a child psychologist would have had a field day with that one since there was so much turmoil in my life back then.
What are your answers to the 10 pointless fact questions? If you want to add fact number eleven, it has to be totally unique to you.
I’ve found both the Seiko and Casio subreddits on Reddit. This could quickly become a problem for both my wallet and my wife…
I began reading The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly today. 📚
I’m at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this week, averaging eight miles of walking per day. Team members half my age are having a hard time keeping up with me. 💪🏻
There’s still some more work to do on my mnml updates, so they’re going to have to wait until next week.
I put in some good work today for a couple of cool new mnml features. One to make using images a little more flexible and the ability to copy code blocks directly from the web page. I hope to release them by tomorrow.
The first week back at work. It could have been much worse…
My first day back was pretty low key. Tasks were mostly around getting access back to systems that were skipped in my reactivation.
The most important one missed was my building badge access. My set working hours are 7am to 4pm, which is an hour earlier than most. Fortunately, I was able to tailgate another departmental coworker in the door. We got this one fixed right away.
After the first hour of getting situated, there were the first two standing meetings. Lots of “we missed you” and “glad to have you back” sentiments from everyone. It was nice, but also kind of embarrassing at the same time.
From there, the rest of my calendar was free. This gave me the time to go through 13 weeks of email to separate the irrelevant from the important. There were thousands of messages, with 60% falling in the irrelevant (and deleted items) bucket.
Then came lunch. Before my leave, I was an eat lunch at the desk type who continued to work while I ate. I made a pact with myself that I wasn’t going to do that anymore, so I got up, went outside and took a brisk mile and a half walk. Then I came back and ate in the employee lounge, reading a book and turning off work for 30 minutes.
After lunch, it was back to sorting through the remaining emails and catching up on Slack threads. All through the day, people were dropping by with welcome back wishes.
When 4pm rolled around, I packed up and headed home right on time. In the past, I’ve been a “one or two more hours” type, but not anymore. The work will still be there tomorrow.
This was a very full day of meetings, most of which I had scheduled with different teams to get debriefed on everything that happened. I purposely scheduled them individually to be sure I got the same story from each group – which I pretty much did.
All in all, what went down was not earth shaking and my direct reports handled it well. Kudos to them. I feel more confident that I won’t have to be the one to save the world anymore.
The last debrief was with my manager. He promised me he wasn’t going to overwhelm me with topics, but naturally he kept adding “one more thing” to the list, which kept me around until 5pm. He also assigned me a critical project to be worked on.
We’re back, baby…
Sticking around until five, I’d forgotten how bad traffic can get. In true SoCal fashion, it took me an hour to drive 18 miles home. I was tired when I pulled in the driveway.
Today was all about catching up on training. There were several hours of it. I somehow managed not to fall asleep.
Wednesdays are employee breakfast day. Today was breakfast croissant sandwiches. I’m too scared of eating bacon and sausage now, so I took the vegetarian option. It was enjoyable, but there’s something about bacon on a treat like this that just hits different…
There were more team meeting sprinkled throughout. The “welcome backs” were getting more infrequent by today.
Traffic home was as bad as the day before.
It was hard to get going this morning.
Today was practically all meetings. I had a couple of hours to work on the high priority project, but the rest were with key vendors. These meetings can be a slog.
A whole new wave of “welcome back” and “we missed you” sentiments from them. Yeah, yeah… Thanks.
I was able to maintain my new lunch habit of a 30-minute brisk walk followed by eating in the employee lounge all the way through the week so far. I’m pretty proud of myself.
I got out of the office on time, but traffic was again bad today too. Thursdays are the worst evening commute day in SoCal.
By the time I got home, I was wiped out and went to bed an hour earlier than normal.
I’ve made it through the week. Still tired, but I think I’ll make it.
A couple of standing meetings in the morning, and a full two hours uninterrupted to work on the project. It was awesome.
Then lunch. I made it the entire week without eating at my desk. Woo! But, being as tired as I was, I skipped the brisk walk. I felt guilty for making this decision, but the body needs rest sometimes too, right?
After lunch, it was a monthly call with my friend & mentor, Matt. We talked about the week, my plans for next week at the Dreamforce conference and just how I was feeling overall. It’s always great to catch up with him. Matt is the real deal.
The final meeting of the day was with my team to coordinate our arrivals at the conference on Monday. We’re a distributed team, so we’re coming in on different flights.
After working all of that out, I did a little more work on the project that I’d planned to leave until after my return from Dreamforce. This will put us a week ahead of schedule. I felt accomplished by it.
Finally, with everything pretty well wrapped up, I left the office at 3pm. Traffic did not suck at this time.
All in all, it was a good first week back and I feel strong. I’m glad I had it to get ready for next week. It will be full of walking, sessions and meetings with vendors we work with.
It’s been quite the week after returning to work. Tons of meetings to get debriefed on all that’s gone down and prepping for the Dreamforce conference next week. I won’t lie, I’m tired, and was yesterday.
A proper post on the week to come soon. And yes, my apex domain is back on Micro.blog again.
I had a great email conversation with Manu the other day where we talked about the digital fatigue he’s been feeling lately. His approach to overcoming it was pretty radical, much more so than I think I’m ready for.
But if I’m honest, I too am feeling my own digital burnout after consuming it non-stop for the last few months while trying to fill my days doing so little during my recovery.
So, I’m going to try my own experiment.
I’ve removed all the apps from my phone and tablet that I tend to fall into when I get bored. The only place I intend to engage with online content is from my personal computer in the evenings or early morning. Sort of a daily digital catch up if you will.
My goal is to limit the amount of time I spend online for personal consumption to an hour at the very most each day for the rest of October, including weekends.
It means you might not see much of me for the rest of the month, but I will always be available through email if you wanted to get in touch about something.
Let’s see how well this goes…
It’s hard to believe it, but today is my last day of medical leave. I return to the office on Monday. I’m both excited by it, and kind of dreading it. I’ve grown accustomed to the slower pace. If this is what retirement will be like, I’ll take it.