A lot of things this week didn’t go according to plan. That’s okay, we adapted and still had a good week.

Monday was the Labor Day holiday and we played a lot outside, trying to soak in that last bit of summer. After a good afternoon of playing outside at home, we got ice cream and went to a new playground we hadn’t been to before in Verplanck. Charlie really savored his ice cream and enjoyed the cool roller slide they had.

A coworker a friend was supposed to visit from the UK and I had planned to work in the NYC office one day, have him up for dinner, hanging out, and rowing before he left, but he caught covid and had to stay home. Bummer.

The weather was great this week, so we tried to prioritize outside time as much as possible in the evenings. We took some walks, went to the playground, and played on the porch and in the yard.

On a walk in the woods and through the park, Charlie was very interested in our shadows. “Look Daddy! Our shadows are holding hands!” ♥️

He also pointed out this interesting shadow and asked me why it looked like that. The light had 8 individual bulbs instead of one large one, and no diffuser, so each made shadows, slightly offset. Pretty cool.

Amanda processed and dried a bunch of our herbs this week. We now have lots of dried oregano, thyme, and chives to cook with this winter. She also made a lovely lavender wreath for the living room.

We’re enjoying the cool weather. Charlie has been extra snuggly.

Saturday morning Amanda and Charlie hung out with some friends, so I got some workshop time. I did some cleaning and organizing, made a french cleat holder for the bench dogs, finally put the old gouge I cleaned up into the new handle I made, and started shaving down a piece of oak for a hammer head with the draw knife.

For the gouge handle, I drilled a hole that was a little too small, then knocked it in on the bench. I prefer a good friction fit to using epoxy. I cut the collar out of a piece of copper pipe and held it in place by punching two small indents in it. I know poplar is a but soft for a tool handle, but it is what I hand and I wanted to try the process on something I had laying around. It is easy enough to replace if I need to.

I wrote last week that I was considering trying out tenkara fishing. I’ve been reading about it all week and decided to give it a shot. I bought a rod that should be here in a few days and I’ve been scouting potential locations nearby.

New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation keeps records on trout streams, including stocking info. They have a handy map, which will give me a great place to start. Here is what is in easy driving distance:

Hoping to get out and scout some of these soon! I’ll probably go out to a local pond to figure out the basic casting technique first.

I’m also interested in smaller woodland streams and brooks that tenkara seems particularly suited for. There is one about a 15 minute walk into the woods at the end of our block I want to try, and many more in the state and county parks around here. Those will take some more leg work to scout.

I pulled out my jumbled mess of flies from the last 20 years and spent two evenings sorting through them and figuring out what they are. Lots of flipping through books and internet searches later, I’m somewhat confident in the categorization. Now I need to get a home case for these instead of trying to keep them in the small ones we carry on the river.

I thought it might also be fun to get Charlie interested in fishing, so we went and got a rod that is just his size, one of those push button kids rods. We also put together a small tackle box for him.

I was a bit ambitious and included lures, but I quickly realized we aren’t quite there yet. Maybe next year. I tried to teach him how to cast in the front yard before going fishing in the local park pond, but he isn’t quite coordinated enough. Even though he got a couple good casts in, it ultimately ended with him getting frustrated and being completely turned off to the idea of going fishing. I felt horrible. I took natural interest and excitement and completely fumbled it. What I should have done is just taken him to the park and let him drop a hook with some corn in the water and hook a couple bluegill to keep his interest.

A couple hours later I was able to get there in a roundabout way: Going for a walk in the park, walking by the pond, and wondering aloud if there are any fish in there, and working up to the reveal that I had Charlie’s rod and net in the car. It worked.

Instead of casting and reeling back in, we used a bobber, hook, and corn. I helped him cast it out, then he watched the bobber and reeled it in when the bobber disappeared (or it took too long to disappear). Charlie caught three fish, two bluegill and a pumpkinseed, and was thrilled.

Lesson learned: You have to play it cool, start small, and capitalize on interest immediately.

I’m off to make dinner, then hopefully go for a bike ride and read some books with Charlie 👋

We traveled to north Georgia Monday through Friday to visit my aunt and uncle, grandfather, and cousins (all on my Mom’s side). My parents met us there. We enjoyed catching up, meeting my cousin’s son Maddox for the first time, and introducing Charlie to them for the first time.

Some highlights:

• Maddox and Charlie playing together on the swingset
• Visiting the Edge of the World Trail and rapids on Amicalola Creek.
• My cousin’s husband taking the two boys on rides in an excavator and loader. They even got to control the boom and bucket. It made Charlie’s week.
• Charlie getting to feed a horse.
• Stromboli night, a longstanding tradition at Higgins family get-togethers.
  • When I was young I was thrilled at being able to pick what I wanted in mine and having the first letter of my name marked on top with dough.
• Learning about tenkara-style fishing from my uncle, which includes a rod very similar to a Western fly rod, but without a reel or floating line and mostly collapsable. The line is fixed length. Typically uses barbless hooks. I am very intrigued. I picked up a couple books to read on it and started researching starter rods.
• My uncle also makes his own nets out of branches. I love the look of them.
• There are armadillos in north Georgia!
• Driving through Atlanta is nostalgic for Amanda and me. We had an apartment downtown for a summer the years before we got married. It was our first time living together and a big early taste of independence.
• We visited the Morrisons on the way there on Monday. It was great to see them! Charlie did not want to be in the photo.
• I picked and tasted some wild muscadine grapes. Very thick skins.
• Sitting on the porch, listening to the Barred owls, and watching a storm roll in.
• Having some great sausages from Frankfurt in
• Watching my grandfather, who can’t hear very well or move quickly, light up when Charlie or Maddox interacted with him.
• Checking out a couple styles of camp chairs my uncle made and getting measurements so I can make my own.
• Catching glimpses of Amanda and my parents each (at different times) reading to the two boys together.
• Charlie did great on the plane! He also liked the Plane Train at ATL. We sat in the front so he could see the tunnel.
• Learning some of the Cherokee treasure lore in the region. Check out Cry of the Eagle by Forest Wade.

After we got back home:

Friday night we grilled some burgers and I whipped up a quick aioli for them. Flying in and out of White Plains instead of LaGuardia or JFK made the difference of being able to cook at home instead of getting takeout.

Our nasturtiums look great!

My hot peppers are finally producing after a very slow start.

Saturday was mostly a “stay at home and put our life back together” day. I mowed the grass, Amanda and Charlie made mini blueberry muffins together, we did laundry and picked up around the house, then we were able to spend some extra time in the afternoon making a meal from scratch that we don’t typically have time for: Chicken and rice with homemade ginger scallion sauce, and scallion pancakes on the side. (Yeah, we had a lot of scallions to use 🙂 )

Charlie also helped me waterproof the Little Free Library by caulking the inside edges and adding weather stripping inside the door. I showed him how the caulk gun works and we applied it together.

Sunday Charlie and I went out rowing early with Jon Richer. Charlie did great out in Peekskill Bay, even as the wind picked up and it got choppy. He is also starting to figure out how to help me navigate: I point out where we want to go, and tells me when I’m not going the right way and points toward the place I pointed out. He got a thrill out of going under a train trestle.

Turns out Jon is interested in tenkara too, so we’ll probably get out on some streams in the spring.

Midday we went to a birthday party at Fishkill Farms and picked apples.

I’m mentioning mostly highlights here, but it is worth mentioning that it was kind of a tough weekend. For large parts of both Saturday and Sunday Charlie was inconsolable. He must be going through some developmental changes right now and is having a hard time. It is age appropriate and makes sense, but that knowledge doesn’t make it any easier. We are trying our best to be patient and supportive, but it is very grating. We all ended the weekend emotionally exhausted.

Here is to an easier next week! 🤞

This week had greater than normal variance. Higher highs and a lower low than usual.

The highs: I had some really great moments with Charlie this week. The weather was beautiful.

We went for a lot of walks and bike rides by the river in the evenings, and I’m regularly astounded by his memory and ability to notice things. I treasure those walks.

Charlie and I were on our own for a couple days while Amanda was in Miami for work. It went better than expected (certainly better than the trip last month.) Every single thing seemed smoother this time around, from morning and bedtime routines, to daycare drop off, to Charlie listening to his body and communicating when he had to potty. I’m really proud of him.

Two highlights:

1. We tried a Texas-style bbq shack we pass all the time. I ordered pulled chicken for Charlie, but he surprised me by preferring brisket and eating most of the brisket I ordered (and I ordered fatty brisket, not lean!). I’m excited to have another person in the family who appreciates brisket.
2. We had a fire in the chiminea on the porch on Friday night. He helped me collect sticks to burn, he was fascinated by instead of scared of the big rat snake we encountered, he enjoyed watching the fire, we talked about fire safety and he was quite diligent, we looked at the stars and talked about the Big Dipper, we set up his small tent on the porch, we snuggled and ate ice cream as the flames turned into embers. A great evening.

The low:

A friend from high school took his own life this week.

I only have four friends from high school I keep in touch with, and he was one of them. It hit me harder than I expected, and even though it probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome, I feel guilty for not talking with him recently. The last time we chatted was over a year ago. I thought about him two weeks ago and meant to text him, but I didn’t. Man, that feels awful.

He had a big impact on my life. He was a few years ahead of me in high school and patiently taught me the basics of PHP and MySQL, which I now use daily in my work with WordPress at Automattic.

Reflecting a lot on him over the last couple days, I realized that I identified with him more than anyone else I went to high school with because of our similarities across different areas of my life:

• We grew up in the same school system and even though we were a few years apart, we followed the same class track. We both worked after school in room 320 on the tech team managing the school system’s website, intranet, and email server. We were in a Sunday night book seminar together as well.
• Every time we talked we were exploring similar ideas, reading similar books, and following similar blogs. He was a reader and commenter on this blog and a couple other blogs I contributed to.
  • I appreciated his intellectual curiosity.
• He had very similar political leanings and an interest in economics, which was a big part of my life from 2008-2014. Only 2 people from high school shared this interest, and I recall that he introduced me to some of the early blogs I read in this space.
• We shared an interest in the outdoors, and good hikes and national park visits were a frequent topic in our email exchanges.
• We both worked in the tech industry.

I have lots of friends that I share one or two of these things with, but he was the only one who comes to mind who I shared this much similarity with in areas of my life I normally think of as separate.

Despite this, we hadn’t seen each other in person for a decade. We mostly kept in touch via email or blog comments and occasional video chats, which seemed totally normal for us.

I wish I would have talked with him more frequently. I wish I would have shared a meal with him at Christmastime each year. I wish I would have known he was struggling. I wish I would have told him these things and told him how much he matters. Now I’ll never get to. It makes me incredibly sad.

Life is about navigating living with these wildly different emotions (joy, pride, fulfillment, sadness, regret, grief) in the same day and continuing to fulfill your obligations while they happen. We often think about these things in isolation, but they happen in the same short period of time and same physical location. You experience them together and life doesn’t stop. My son still needs me to be a father, get us home safely, and make us both lunch even when I’ve just read a heartwrenching email in the parking lot at Trader Joe’s. And even though that little boy mostly needs things from me, he gives so much to me, too. So much joy, pride, and love. Even comfort—he noticed I was sad and came over to give me a hug and sit in my lap.

Life is so much more complex than I thought when I was younger. That is what this week was about… life, death, joy, pain, pride, regret, and the deep complexity of life.

Hi! I’m back. I’m fine, just needed a break from blogging. I thought I’d return later than this, but I started feeling that blogging itch again, so here I am typing away late on a Sunday night after everyone else has gone to bed.

A recap of June, July, and beginning of August

This summer has been hot and humid. The heat started around the same time (we always seem to put in the ACs the week of our anniversary), but it jumped into the mid 90s and stayed there for the end of June, all of July, and the first week of August. Brutal.

• Charlie got to pull the air horn of a semi truck at a Touch a Truck event in Verplanck.
• I had jury duty at the US District Court in Manhattan. (Think Chuck Rhoades in Billions.) I had to go in two days and went into a court room for the selection process, but didn’t get selected.
• I took Charlie out in the guideboat on the Hudson for the first time. We rowed from Verplanck to Stony Point and back. He did great and loved it.
• We spent the week of the July 4/Independence Day holiday in Groton Long Point with the Wasmer family. We caught crabs, swam, played, made sand castles, ate some tasty meals, walked in a parade, and relaxed. Charlie even played with sparklers for the first time. On the way home we stopped at the Stepping Stones Childrens’ Museum.
• I started a new position at Automattic. I now oversee the whole engineering team (3 sub teams in all) in the Concierge group instead of just one of the sub teams. The transition has been more challenging than I expected.
• Charlie and I took walks in the woods, including a morning exploring the creeks.
• We ate our yearly helping of sausage and peppers at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Feast.
• I built a Little Free Library for Esther Place in Peekskill.
• We celebrated Colin and Hayden’s marriage in Lake Peekskill.
• Our garden did great in the hot, humid weather. We have tons of roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, borage, tomatillos, and potatoes. The nasturtiums did better than they’ve ever done and we have plenty for drink garnishes.
  • We made lots of pizza sauce, lots of tomato paste, some salsa verde, and borage ice cubes. We also froze a bunch of tomatillos for this winter (chili verde with pork, albondigas, etc), and gave a bunch to friends.
• We had Charlie’s third birthday party. Even though it rained and everyone had to go in the house, the kids still had fun.
• While my parents were visiting, Charlie and I took them to Stony Point to check out the historic Hudson River lighthouse and Revolutionary War battleground.
• Charlie mastered his balance bike and can now lift his feet up and cruise down ramps at high speed.

Some small moments:

• Coffee on the porch in the morning.
• Ice cream at Blue Pig.
• Playgrounds with Charlie.
• Charlie asking politely to wash the car.
• Charlie and I spraying each other with the hose.
• Meeting friends for dinner, play dates, hangs at the farm market, impromptu pizza and ice cream.
• Going to the park to play, but watching a magic show instead.
• Checking out a tree frog, green frogs, garter snakes, and snake skin.
• Charlie having the time of his life on carnival rides.
• Charlie running around joyfully in the rain.
• Snuggles.
• Charlie riding his bike down the street with his birthday balloons attached.
• Playing cars.

What I read:

• Extremely Online by Taylor Lorenz
• My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
• Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
• Two books by Eliot Peper: Foundry and Reap3r
• The first three books in the Expeditionary Force series by Craig Alanson

I’m currently reading The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey.

Week of August 12, 2024

Let’s start the weekend before, August 10 and 11. We met Kate, Ben, and the twins at the TaSH Farmers Market in the morning and had Cuban sandwiches for lunch at Croqueteria, then went to Jay and Marie’s that afternoon for a summer garden party. Amanda and Jay played their flutes, then Jay, Jeremy, and Matthew played some bluegrass. Detra sang.

The next day Charlie and I spent the morning walking and riding bikes along the waterfront and exploring the newly opened Fleischmann Pier. That evening we met Kate, Ben, the twins, Jeremy, Meg, Miles, and Grandma JuJu for dinner in Beacon. The restaurant messed up the reservations, so what was going to be a chill outside dinner ended up being a stressful inside dinner with four young kids who much prefer to be anywhere but at a table, and six parents wishing the service was faster. Oh well. We got through it, we all ate, but zero adult conversations were had. After dinner we found an ice cream shop across from a playground, which is exactly what we needed.

Monday we picked tomatoes and potatoes. We found a small garter snake who had been living under one of the potato bags.

Tuesday we had an impromptu pizza and ice cream hangout with the Crisantes. Baci’s woodfire Tuesdays, then the Blue Pig. Amanda had some free time during the day and weeded the garden.

Wednesday I started making some banana liqueur. I macerated bananas with Demerara sugar and soaked the peels in some dark rum. Charlie came home from daycare with a fever, which persisted through Thursday night. Amanda and I switched off holding him.

Amanda made pizza sauce with the romas we picked.

Friday I took off work to go on a long kayak paddle with Jeremy Wall. We planned it a month ago. We started from Annsville Creek, paddled up past the Bear Mountain Bridge, up Popolopen Creek, ate lunch, went swimming in Hell Hole, then paddled back. ~8 miles round trip. It was nice to be out on the water.

We pulled our kayaks up on the short and walked up to Fort Montgomery, where I learned that Iona Island used to be called Salisbury Island.

Saturday Charlie and I spent the morning in Beacon and Cold Spring. We got donuts at Peaceful Provisions, coffee at Big Mouth, then played for a while at the Tiny Tots park in Cold Spring. He was finally feeling better and needed to get out of the house, and Amanda needed some time to herself since Charlie sticks to her like glue when he doesn’t feel well. While we were out, she made tomato paste from the second big batch of tomatoes we picked.

During naptime I finished making the banana liqueur, which I used in drinks for us later that evening (Breakfast Mai Tais).

Sunday morning I got up early and made some Haitian pikliz, then breakfast (fried potatoes, sausage links, scrambled eggs). The forecast called for rain for the entire day, so we racked our brains for a way to get out of the house. We decided to hop on the train and ride it to Grand Central, have lunch and explore there, then ride it back. Charlie thinks trains are the coolest, so he was excited and ended up having a great time. He was glued to the window the entire way there, then fell asleep on Amanda on the way back. Chris Johnson and Meg Walter met us for lunch at Grand Central and walked around with us for a bit.

It seems like a small thing, but it means the world to us that we have friends who do impromptu things with us. That happened four times in the last week, and we feel incredibly lucky. It took us a while to build up a community after moving here, and the first two years were pretty lonely (COVID definitely didn’t help.)

No one really mentions how hard it is to build a community from scratch when you move somewhere new with no family around.

Busy week around the house.

First, the surveyor arrived on Tuesday and staked out our property line.

It was warm that day and when Charlie got home from daycare he helped me water the garden, then played with the hose. His favorite outdoor activity! (Compare to the same week last year.) He was also pretty busy with his wheelbarrow later that day and the next morning.

Wednesday the fence crew arrived and started replacing the fence.

A couple hours later the sump guys came to install the sump and dry well. I was amazed that they knocked everything out in just three hours.

Thursday and Friday Charlie was home from daycare. It breaks my heart to have to work while he is home, because he notices that I’m not paying attention to him. I did get to spend some quality time with him after work to go get ice cream and take him on a little bike ride along the Old Croton Aqueduct before picking up dinner.

Later he acted like he was typing on a computer and pretended to ignore us. Gutted me.

Despite all the distractions, I was able to get through my to-do list at work this week, but it was challenging for sure.

Saturday I cut down a tree limb that was already cracked because I didn’t want it to fall on the new fence. I also spent a couple hours replacing the vinyl trellis under our porch with wood.

Saturday night we learned the hard way that our sewer is clogged. It backed up into the utility tub in the basement. Thankfully we caught it early. I thought it was just that sink plugged at first and spent a while trying to snake it, until I saw more bubbling up when I heard water running upstairs. I was not excited to realize that I was elbow deep in shit water 🤢

A plumber came the next morning and cleared the blockage pretty quickly. We got lucky because the blockage was in the house trap/U trap rather than something worse like tree roots in the front yard. At least I learned how the U trap works, where the clean out caps are, and saw the plumber (a nice guy named Mike who works for Sewer Heros) use a 6ft toilet auger to clear the blockage. It looks like Harbor Freight has one, so I’ll pick one up next time I’m over that way.

Sunday we did a lot of yard work to get ready for a Memorial Day party. We hope the newly forecasted rain holds out.

Charlie had a lot of fun helping us wash the outdoor furniture. He is the keeper of the hose. He also helped me push the lawn mower for a while.

My friend Jon stopped by for a short visit to check out my workshop upgrades, the fence, and the sump.

The fence is coming along nicely. We gained a few feet inside the fence since the old fence wasn’t on the line. The yard feels bigger! Should be wrapped up sometime next week if the weather is nice.

Short one this week. I’ve tried to write this a couple times, but keep running out of time.

Look at the determination ⚾

Amanda and I started doing lunch dates out once a week while Charlie is at daycare since sitters are hard to get, and it has been great. We never have to make a reservation, we don’t have to worry about a sitter, and the company is still great.

Ups and downs with the garden. The radishes came in great, but something ate every single tomato and tomatillo plant we started from seed. I guess we’ll need to go buy some plants this week.

The griddle insert on the grill continues to get regular use.

Bike rides and walks with Charlie down by the Hudson. Some days you’ve got to run him until bedtime.

It was a tough week on the potty training front. Lots of poop accidents. Thankfully we are seeing signs of improvement yesterday and today.

I made some falernum and pizza on Friday. These two don’t go together except that I made them at the same time. This was the first pizza in the cast iron casserole pan. There will be more in the future! The dough was tasty, but I want it crispier on the bottom, which takes time and better oil distribution. Amanda wants it cheesier and less done.

The falernum is much better than the standard John Taylor’s Velvet Falernum. Notes here.

Mowed the lawn and got out the deck furniture Saturday morning, then attended two parties that afternoon. We are getting too old to do two parties back-to-back with a toddler.

I got some workshop time in on Sunday. I made more French cleat tool holders (screw drivers, C-clamps, planes, and hand saws), then drilled holes in my bench for the holdfasts. Next up is making bench dogs.

That’s about a wrap for French cleat tool holders I needed to make. I still need to make some for Shopsmith attachments, but I don’t know what I want to do with them yet. With these I’ve been able to clear off the bench, which was the goal.

Full detail post on the French cleats coming soon.

Charlie played outside while I worked in the shop.

Potty training update: We kept Charlie home for four days, then he went back to daycare on Tuesday. Overall he has the gist of it and we are very proud of him. The next thing we are working through is that he sometimes doesn’t want to stop playing, so he has accidents. We keep reminding ourselves that it has only been 10 days since we started and he has been 90% of the way there since day 4, and the remaining 10% will just take some time.

One thing we didn’t expect is how grumpy Charlie would be this week. Regularly being reminded at home and at daycare to stop and try to potty after being able to go anywhere and any time you want must be very frustrating. Any time we’ve tried to direct him or make a suggestion on anything, we’re met with a lot of resistance. I get it little man, it is tough being told what to do.

A Charlie highlight unrelated to potty from the week is that he is now comfortable going out and playing in the backyard while we are in the house (keeping a partial eye on him through the window). He is also climbing the rocks in the woods while we stand down on the path. He is getting a lot more independent!

We needed to get out and burn some energy Saturday afternoon, so Charlie rode his bike around Depew Park and then played at the playground. He loved it, especially stopping at the STOP signs and asking what the other ones meant. We are big into signs right now.

Lots of yard work on Saturday:

• Mowed the grass
• Trimmed the edges with the battery-powered weed eater. So nice to grab it and put a battery in vs messing around with gas and starter fluid.
• Planted the seeds we started in the garden beds. Honestly mediocre to poor seedlings, so we’ll see how they do.
• Direct sowed new seeds in certain spots.
• Added more dirt to the potatoes.
• Got out the hoses and hooked them up.
• Moved half of the dirt pile from the sandbox.

You can just get up and make garlic aioli whenever you want. It is delicious and no one will stop you.

I’m liking LLAMA3. I run it locally using https://ollama.com/ and interface with it on the command line. Not quite good enough to cancel my OpenAI subscription, but it is nice to have a fast free alternative.

I’d love to run this on my home server and put it behind a login so I can use it, but I don’t think the FreedomBox could handle it. I need to keep use cases like that in mind for future setups.

Now that summer is around the corner, time to start thinking about making another batch of falernum, orgeat, and allspice dram.

I have some recipes picked out, but need the time to make them. Perhaps one night this coming week.

Our friends Colin and Hayden had us over for dinner on Friday. It was nice to catch up with them. It is always nice when friends without kids have no qualms about having us over, knowing full well that kids are unpredictable.

Update to my first aid kits: I got these little containers on Amazon (stickers included!) and put together a set for my backpack, Amanda’s bag, the car, and the emergency box. Each includes:

• Advil
• Aspirin
• Tylenol
• Dayquil
• Allegra
• Pepto Bismol tablets
• Pepcid
• Gaviscon

Here is a photo I took before I finished putting them together and labeling.

Almost time to start making cold brew again. I still drink hot coffee in the mornings, but in the afternoons cold coffee is nice.

Have you noticed that Twitter basically stopped showing external links in the “For you” feed? What bullshit. Not my social web.

Speaking of, I’ve had all social apps off of my phone again for the last couple weeks. Only using them on my computer right now. Highly recommended.

The big thing this week is potty training round two. Charlie is a champ and making good progress, but we are all worn out and a bit stressed. I took naps twice this weekend, which is big because I almost never nap unless I am sick.

Despite the protests, each day is better than the last. We just finished day three, and decided to keep him home from daycare tomorrow to get some more wins and make this our new normal before introducing another transition.

We are proud of Charlie, though we are frazzled and ready to get back to normal. Human emotions are complex, so it can be both.

We finished the sandbox this week! Separate post coming soon, but Charlie loves it.

I also finished Charlie’s baseball bat this week. Separate post coming for that as well. Trying to put out smaller project posts more frequently, too.

I made a new-to-us blended tiki drink this week, the Coconaut. Dark Jamaican rum, Coco Lopez, and lime juice, blended with ice. It was good, but I prefer the Angostura Colada (I just didn’t have pineapple juice on-hand.)

Played with a Flipper Zero a little this week, and looking forward to doing more with it. Flashed it with the Momentum firmware and added a bunch of assets from UberGuido.

Mowing season is upon us. I really like having a battery powered mower. Not having to deal with gas, oil, and pulling a cord to start mowing makes a big difference. Much quieter, too. I hate getting the gas-powered weedeater out, so I decided to get a battery powered one as well. I put it together just before a rainstorm hit, so I’ll probably get it out when I mow this week.

We have firm dates set for the fence replacement and sump installation 🙌

Next: Radon abatement.

I did a bit of clean up and maintenance in the workshop while Charlie napped today:

• Paste wax on the Shopsmith carriage
• Paste wax on saw tables (didn’t get to the planer tables, but that is next)
• Cleaned off the green cabinet and put the bolt drawers up there
• Fixed the lock on the green cabinet (used more as a latch than a lock)
• Put a couple things in the rafters
• Made a french cleat for the saw blades
• Vacuumed

It is a lot easier to go out and start a new project when things are clean, organized, and maintained.

I used to think it was incredible that my Dad could look at some threads for a missing bolt then go rummage around in some drawers full of bolts for a couple minutes and come back with one that fits. Now I’m getting there, too. It is a function of having the bolts and working on enough stuff to recognize what you need. The lock I fixed was missing a bolt, but I rummaged around and found one that fit, and when it was a bit too long I added a couple washers. Works just fine.

Amanda likes to say that my Dad, Charlie, and I all have the same natural curiosity about how things work and interest in tinkering. Charlie surprised me by grabbing parts of the weedeater and figuring out pretty quickly (and with no input from me) where they go. He doesn’t have the dexterity or strength to put them together, but he has the right idea.

New ice cream place opened in Peekskill this week. We had to check it out.

My allergies are surprisingly mild this year, despite it being a pretty rough pollen season. I haven’t had to take allergy medicine yet. Only two things I know of have changed: I started taking probiotics and spirulina daily. There haven’t been wide enough trials to show a positive link with spirulina, but there is a positive link with probiotics, in particular ones that contain Bifidobacterium longum and Lactobacillus gasseri strains (the probiotics I take include those.)

I’ll take it! I’ve suffered from seasonal allergies a lot in the last 20 years and it is a literal breath of fresh air to not suffer this year.

Until next week ☕

Nice spring weather this week. We enjoyed it by taking walks in the woods.

I was mostly recovered from strep by Wednesday, which was good because Amanda was in Austin for work from Wednesday morning to Friday night.

Charlie and I spent Wednesday and Thursday evenings at playgrounds, then on Friday we went to Home Depot and got some soil and planted potatoes.

Charlie has been refusing all medication, even if he feels super sick and really needs it. We have to dupe him by mixing liquid medications into either yogurt or gatorade. Thankfully he hasn’t caught on yet. I hope by the time he does he can be reasoned with a bit more.

Which books still pop into your head at least once a month, even if you read them years ago?

For me:

• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
• Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
• Daemon by Daniel Suarez
• The Founding Fish by John McPhee

These might not be my all-time top picks, but I can’t get them out of my head.

We went to dinner on Friday with one of our high school teachers, Chas Deremer, and his family. It was nice to catch up, and now that we are adults with a child of our own, we have much more in common with him and his wife than high school Chuck and Amanda could have realized.

We spent most of Saturday and Sunday building some stuff for Charlie in the backyard: A mud kitchen and a sandbox. Not ready to share photos yet, but everything is coming along nicely. We’ll finish the sandbox on Monday or Tuesday and put the finishing touches on the mud kitchen next weekend.

I made a circle cutting jig for the bandsaw to cut nice circles. Burners for the mud kitchen stove.

Charlie is showing some interest in baseball, so I decided to turn a small bat for him. Started tball bats are roughly 24″ long, 13-16oz, and 1.9″ in diameter. I turned down a piece of 4×4 pine to roughly 2″, which I need to finish shaping one night this week. I know bats are usually made from ash, but I don’t think I’d get down to 13oz with a hardwood, and he’ll start using softer baseballs anyway. I’ll make a bigger one out of ash in a few years.

More on the carbonation front: I carbonated a 1944 recipe mai tai. Very good, though didn’t hold the carbonation when I added ice. Some ways to try and remedy that:

• Triple carbonation over the course of 2-3 hours.
• Get the drink as cold as possible before each carbonation. Aim for 20F.
• Clarifying the drink? Not really worth the hassle, IMO.

Grilling more again is nice! I got my first sunburn of the year today.

I’m writing this while recovering from strep, which I also got last year. Probably the same source (Charlie via daycare.) Hopefully the antibiotics kick it quickly. I’ve avoided the worst of it by catching it early. Both Charlie and I had two days of being properly sick, then back on the upswing.

It put a damper on my weekend plans. Was hoping to get some yard work done and drill the bench dog holes in my workbench. I did get some reading done, though. Still reading Children of Time.

Before my energy totally crashed on Saturday and I had to admit to myself that I was sick, I cleaned up an old Craftsman scroll saw, lubricated the arm, replaced the blade, figured out the tensioning, and got it running. It will be nice to use that to make tighter turns than I can make on the bandsaw.

Would a whole grilled duck be good? 🤔 Perhaps spatchcocked like a chicken.

I should listen to more Titus Andronicus.

Further carbonation adventures:

• I overcarbonated some imperial cider I brewed. Every drink let off way too much carbonation and it foamed too much in the mouth. Next time I’ll try less. I did ~50PSI and about a minute of shaking. Next time ~35PSI and 30-45s of shaking.
• I carbonated a standard negroni to share with the folks at Benny’s Brown Bag. It came out quite nice. Also ~50PSI, and two rounds of carbonating since I decanted it into a glass swing top bottle for sharing.

Two upcoming woodworking projects:

1. Sawbenches, similar to these: https://blog.lostartpress.com/2014/12/07/have-a-party-build-a-sawbench/
2. A wooden tball bat for Charlie. After some research, I think it should be ~24″ long and 13oz. Still trying to decide which wood to use.

FreedomBox server updates:

• I installed Kiwix and downloaded the entirety of Project Gutenberg (~80GB) to add. It worked great, but now the server crashes around midnight each night, which is when updates and backups run, so I’m trying to exclude Kiwix from the backups to see if that solves it.
• I have email running on the box now! It took a while to get the correct ports forwarding and DNS records set up, but it works! Got my first DMARC report the next morning.

House project updates:

• Fence contractor is secured, materials ordered, proposal signed. I couldn’t find two critical pins with my metal detector and survey, so a surveyor is coming out to stake the lot lines.
• Sump pump installation proposal signed, too. Should happen within the next month, which should help with the basement flooding.

Things are moving forward.

I made some Matzo Ball Soup on Sunday for the first time. Fitting, because it was cold, it is Passover, and I wasn’t feeling well. It was good, though I think I still prefer chicken noodle soup.

We were able to spend some lunches and pre-dinners on the porch. Amanda took a moment to press some of the violets in our yard. Charlie enjoyed looking up at the sky.

I didn’t take many photos this week. The sickness and rain really put a damper on things. But two more photos for fun: Charlie and Amanda explored the football field and track while I was sick. And before I was sick Charlie and I were silly at the dinner table.

I didn’t write last week because I was out of town. Here is a recap of the last two weeks.

As I wrote about in the last post, my Mom was here to visit and watch Charlie since he had the week off (daycare closed for spring break) and we still had to work. It was a rainy week, but Charlie and Grandma made the most of it.

That Saturday we drove to Ohio to take Grandma home and to witness the eclipse in the totality path. Charlie had a blast playing at my parents’ house. The eclipse was incredible, well worth the trip. It didn’t get as dark as I expected, it was more like twilight. Something I’m probably (hopefully!) going to remember for the rest of my life. It was nice to get some family time, too.

The day after the eclipse we took a drive down to Holmes County (Amish country) to visit Colonial Homestead, a hand tool store owned and operated by Dan Raber. They have probably the best collection of traditional hand tools in the midwest, if not all of the United States. Dan is knowledgable, helpful, and friendly. I bought some holdfasts made by a local blacksmith, a Millers Falls low angle block plane, a large gouge, and The Guide to Woodworking with Kids by Doug Stowe.

Dan said he works with local schools to assemble sets of hand tools and kid-sized benches for their sloyd classes. They start in 2nd grade! Inspiring.

Dan had copies of Emmet van Driesche‘s Greenwood Spoon Carving and had read Emmet’s other book, Carving out a Living on the Land. Emmet is a friend of mine, so it was cool to see his book there.

I’m intrigued by these axes and this is a reminder to myself that I need to look them up in Eric Sloane’s A Museum of Early American Tools. I also liked these smaller benches with removable legs and plan to build one with a 3″ thick oak board. Perhaps with two sets of legs, one longer and one shorter.

We also went to the Guggisberg cheese factory and Lehman’s Hardware, where I got a 9×13 cast iron pan. I think it will make great pizza and focaccia.

It was plowing time in Amish country. So many teams of horses out plowing the fields. Cool to see. It was also a beautiful warm day, and every Amish schoolhouse we drove by (we took the back roads) had the yards filled with children enjoying the sun. Lots of baseball games happening, too.

I took the opportunity while we were at my parents’ house to back up my pre-2008 digital photo library. Everything post-2008 was already backed up on a drive I have in NY, but I was missing pre-2008. Glad I got it before that computer crashed (one of the original Intel-based iMacs). I also found my old OPML of circa-2007 blog feed subscriptions.

We drove back home on Wednesday. I’m thankful that Charlie is a pretty good traveler. Most of the credit for that goes to Amanda, who sits with him in the back set on longer trips to keep him company.

Hectic catch up days at work on Thursday and Friday, then a birthday party for one of Charlie’s friends on Friday evening. Afterward we got dinner with some friends and kept the kids out later than we should have, but they had a good time.

Signs of spring in the yard:

Not pictured: The peonies, rhubarb, and lilac producing buds!

This week a friend sent me a photo of a swing set he just built for his kids from my plans. There are now 5 of these in existence in 4 US states. It makes me so happy to know there are lots of kids enjoying them.

Saturday morning was gymnastics, then I felt motivated to do some cooking. I made two kinds of tomatillo salsa (avocado salsa verde and tomatillo arbol chile salsa), refried beans from scratch, and chicken fajitas.

Later I put a new gauge and washers on a CO2 regulator and tried my hand at carbonating various liquids: Water, grapefruit juice, and margaritas. While we were in Ohio I mentioned off-hand to my Dad that I was thinking about getting a CO2 tank to force carbonate things (you can only do water in a SodaStream… anything else ends up in a huge mess, which I know from firsthand experience), and it turns out he had a 5lb tank in the garage that someone he knew was getting rid of, and it just needed a new gauge for the regulator. Thanks, Dad!

I’m still getting the hang of how to carbonate different liquids and what PSI works best for water vs juice vs cocktails, but I’m excited to sip fizzy cocktails on the porch this summer, and maybe even fizzy cold brew coffee.

It took me two tries to get the water carbonated how we like it (halfway between regular seltzer and Hal’s). The grapefruit juice was fun because it had a softer, almost velvety mouthfeel. Smaller carbonation bubbles compared to water. The test margarita was tasty, though I prefer it without ice, as pouring it over ice immediately released the carbonation. Perhaps I need to slowly add the ice after pouring? We’ll see.

Sunday Charlie slept in much later than usual, then woke up sick. He had a fever most of the day and just wanted to snuggle with one of us on the couch for most of the day. I took the morning shift while Amanda went horseback riding, then after lunch I worked outside for a while. I repurposed (planed and cut) old lumber to make a mud kitchen for Charlie, which we’ll assemble next weekend. Then I made three new french cleat holders: First aid kit + paper towel holder, squares holder, and jig saw holder.

By the time I was wrapping up, I was more tired than usual and started to get a headache. Amanda felt the same way, so we are probably getting whatever Charlie has. Yikes. I decided to muster the rest of my energy and go to the grocery store to stock up in case we all wake up with fevers tomorrow. Let’s hope we don’t.

Going to be a shorter post tonight. I’m tired from a day of shoveling compost and dirt to finish the garden beds project. We ended the day by sowing peas, radishes, spinach, and cilantro.

Check out how nice our compost looks! The compost bins were one of our early pandemic projects. I’ve already used it all once and started fresh, so this batch is made up of grass/leaves/kitchen scraps between 6 months and 2 years old.

My Mom is here to visit for the week. (Hi, Mom!) Charlie’s daycare is on spring break (matches up with the local schools), so she is hanging out with Charlie while Amanda and I work. (Thank you, Mom! We really appreciate it!)

I put those notes to Mom above because I guarantee she’ll see them. She holds the top number of comments on this blog by a wide margin.

Charlie and I picked her up at White Plains airport, and there is a little observation area on the third floor outside of security, so we got to watch her plane come in. Charlie loved it.

We did an Easter Egg hunt with Charlie this morning. He loved that, too.

We’ve been enjoying the longer days and warmer weather. Lots of wood walks, and Charlie is starting to venture further from the paths to climb the big rocks and to throw smaller ones in the creek. I have a feeling this is going to be Charlie’s Summer ™️.

The Forsythias are starting to bloom! My favorite.

Trying out a new watering solution in the garden this year. The past two years I used wick irrigation (see 1 and 2), but this year I want to try using Ollas. I’m hoping to cut down on the issues I had with wick irrigation (mosquitos in the open buckets, wicks drying out, too much air evaporation.)

I didn’t want to buy them, so I took an chipped terra cotta pot and siliconed a saucer in it. Letting it dry overnight tonight. As long as it proves to be waterproof, I’ll bury it and fill it from the small hole in the top. (And make 5 more)

The general idea is that terra cotta is porous, so water will dissipate out into the soil when the soil is dry.

I did our taxes this week. Got the car cleaned and house cleaned. Did lots of laundry. Charlie got a haircut.

I noticed while driving on Saturday that it was possible to identify large swaths of maple trees in forested land because they are budding out and look red while everything else is still brown. I wonder if any mapping companies are using things like that to build forest datasets? You of course can’t tell the particular species that way, but knowing general percentages of types of trees might be useful.

There was a point in college where I thought seriously about going down the biohacking route. I was tracking lots of different things for a year and a half. I eventually stopped because going to the next level would have required constant monitoring of what I ate and how I exercised, tons of spreadsheets and research, and lots of time getting labs done. I’d rather skip all that and fill it with more fulfilling things than spend all that time on stuff I hate just to eke out 5 more years at the end. I guess if that is something that brings you fulfillment than it is a win/win, but it isn’t for me.

Home server update for the week:

• I have Syncthing running (basically Dropbox without Dropbox – syncs files from designated directories between multiple computers/servers)
  • This required 3x the time I expected and reminded me how much elbow grease you need to get things to work on Linux (Debian in this case.) Even things I thought would be simple like reformatting a drive to get it to mount turned into hour-long ordeals.
    • Sorry, Richard, I meant to write GNU/Linux.
• Daily, weekly, and monthly backups are enabled. They write to the same machine right now, so I need to configure external backups next.
• I downloaded every ebook we’ve ever purchased from Amazon Kindle, stripped the DRM, and put them all on the FreedomBox, which runs Calibre. I wanted to make a digital family library, much like our physical one. Now we can log in, select the book and the format we want, and Calibre will convert it on the fly and download it to our device.
• I started archiving my Likes and Bookmarks using ArchiveBox, and I set up a script to add newly saved links to the archive daily. ArchiveBox does not yet run on Debian, so for now I’m running the tool on a Mac and mirroring the archive to the FreedomBox server, available publicly here: https://grimmett.xyz/share/archivebox/
  • More to configure here, such as automating adding more sources, fine-tuning the settings, and waiting for the 0.8.0 release to unblock an issue I hit with the tool parsing JSON imports. Once resolved, I probably won’t need my scripts anymore and I’ll be able to use the built-in scheduling feature.
    • Twitter bookmarks, Mastodon bookmarks, Instagram saved posts, things I link to in my blog posts and digital garden, Are.na links

What’s next?

• Maybe setting up an email server!
• Dynamic DNS. Probably using GnuDIP.
• Adding a wifi plug so I can remotely cycle the power if the server crashes and I can’t SSH in to restart.
  • Automating this would be cool. Ping the server every 5 minutes, and if (4?) consecutive pings are bad, cycle the power. I think the only hurdle here is that my plugs don’t have an official API, but there is a community reverse-engineered project written in Python.
• Configuring an external backup solution and getting another 2TB drive to clone locally.

We’ve all been sick with a cold this week. Charlie got it first and recovered the fastest. Amanda got it next and was down Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I got it Saturday afternoon and was down most of Sunday. Hopefully I’ll recover quickly.

Thursday and Friday after work/daycare, and Saturday after dinner Charlie and I hung out a lot to give Amanda some time to rest. We went to the library to pick up some books we reserved (Charlie had some requests!), two different playgrounds, the grocery store, the riverfront walk, and an ice cream shop. Charlie’s new ice cream order is chocolate with a cherry on top. (I think he picked that one up from Trash Truck.)

One of my favorite things is toddler-led walks. He chooses the pace and where we go. I follow his lead and cues. I love how much he notices and how curious he is. Afterward at dinner he recounted to us everything we did and saw, quite accurately.

Charlie is big into helping. Here he is helping make breakfast while Amanda is on her way back from the gym.

Here he is holding some daffodils that he and Amanda cut for our mantle:

As we start the engine, so we start our days.

I’m loving the griddle we put on one half of the grill. It is nice to quickly cook some veggies while grilling some meat. Monday we did a pork tenderloin with some zucchini and squash while rice cooked inside.

I finished restoring a cutting board that was my Mamaw’s. My Dad grabbed it when they were cleaning out the house after Papaw moved in with my aunt and uncle. She’s been gone almost 11 years now.

First I had to glue some sections back together. It fell apart.

Then I sanded down the pretty deep knife cuts and general wear.

Finished with my standard beeswax + jojoba oil blend. Started using it in the kitchen the next day.

Keeping with the woodworking trend: I made more french cleat holders this week after work:

• a chisel/gouge/hook knife/carving knife holder
• measure tape holder
• Foredom rotary tool holder
• a cord holder so I don’t have to go hunting behind my Shopsmith for the cord
• clamp holder
• holder for Hand drills, push drill, and hand brace

I’m particularly excited about the Foredom being hung, because I ran the speed control pedal under the bench, so now I can just turn it on and use it rather than spend 5 mins getting it set up for a 30 second task.

I’m trying to tee projects up for myself in the workshop so I can jump on them when I have a little bit of free time. The next one is adding holes for bench dogs and holdfasts in the workbench, as well as making the bench dogs themselves.

I’m thinking a lot again about first aid kits. I’m putting one together for the workshop. I plan to write about this soon with more detail on what I have in the kit in the car, my backpack, and my workshop.

Seeds are coming along nicely. I’m now fertilizing them and have an oscillating fan on them daily to start the hardening process/prevent them from getting leggy.

We didn’t make much progress on the garden beds this week. The weather turned cold and being sick this weekend put a damper on things. We did line the bottom of the beds with the old plywood from the previous ones, plus some cardboard and sticks. Next step is shoveling in compost and dirt.

I heard back from the fence contractor, so hoping to get that project rolling soon.

I went to a friend’s birthday party on Saturday afternoon at The Vinyl Room in Beacon. Amanda and Charlie were feeling rough and had to stay home, but the cold hadn’t quite hit me yet so I went. Cool place and nice to meet some of their other friends and make new connections, like Ryan who owns an outdoor shop in Tannersville called Camp Catskill.

I bought a FreedomBox a couple months ago to dip my toe into the self-hosting world. I thought setting it up would be a whole thing, so I let it sit in the box. This weekend, since we were all sitting around with a cold, I figured I’d get it out and give it a try.

Setting it up was a lot easier than I expected. I had it up and running with less than an hour of active time (though lots of waiting for booting, updates, etc.) I have it running at https://box.grimmett.co/ and I set up some of the basic services, including a WordPress site.

It still blows my mind that visiting that address accesses a tiny little box currently sitting on the buffet in my living room.

Next step is adding some external storage, picking a more permanent location in my house, and configuring more of the services (for which I need that storage.) Then I need to figure out dynamic DNS in case my IP address changes.

I tried to connect an APFS-formatted drive today, but went down the Debian rabbit hole of having to compile my own drivers. I messed something up and ended up breaking the FreedomBox service. Thank goodness for automatic snapshots. I was able to load a previous snapshot, reboot, and get it back up and running.

Related, I finally got Backblaze back up and running, and while I was going through old drives to see what I could wipe and repurpose, I backed up my various machines and put a recent dump of photos on the photos drive.

I’m really proud that I have accessible photo backups from 16 years ago, which is when I got my first laptop. Anything before that is still on the computer at my parents’ house, and I’ll have to remember to clone that the next time I visit.

I had a nice conversation with Chris Glass over email this week.

I like Chris’s bookmarks and am slowly working on moving my bookmark archive from the past 16 years over to my digital garden.

I like the layout of Chris’s blogroll. The grouping + context is nice.

He inspired me to update my own /now page more regularly.

Jon Elordi started doing week notes! 🎉

Rough week at work. Not much I can say about it.

From last year: https://cagrimmett.com/2023/03/27/week-of-march-20-2023/

Amanda and I were sick then, too. We had strep. We also started seeds that week.

In 2022: https://cagrimmett.com/2022/03/26/week-of-march-21/

We started seeds then, too! And Charlie and I went to the same playground. Fun to see how much he has grown.

The warm weather and extra daylight at the end of the day has been a welcome change. Every night this week Amanda, Charlie, and I spent some time outside after daycare/work and before dinner. We are dinner outside multiple times this week, went for walks, cooked dinner on the grill, got our outdoor seating out, rode bikes, and played in the yard and at the playground. It was good for all of us.

Amanda found a battery-powered motorcycle for free on the Buy Nothing Facebook group, and I replaced the 6V battery and sourced a charger to get it working again. Charlie loves to cruise around on it!

I worked from Automattic’s NoHo office on Friday. I went in for a meeting, but I like going in once a month or so for a change of pace. Los Tacos 1, right around the corner, is very good. Astor Wines is also right up the block, so I usually stop in and restock on stuff I can’t find up in Westchester. This time it was orange shrubb.

I made more French cleat tool holders in the shop after work this week.

• Air nailer
• Air hose
• Router bits
• Axe and adze
• Pencil sharpener
• Clock and dust collection hose
• Draw knife and spokeshave
• Drills/drivers, bits, and charger/batteries (I also added a magnet bar for my most-used bits a couple days later)
• Files and rasps

I also made a workbench for Charlie that hangs on the French cleats so that as he grows we can just lift it up. I had my own bench in my Dad’s workshop growing up and have fond memories of the countless hours I spent out there, and I want Charlie to have the same option. I put a magnet bar up with the tools we got him for Christmas, and the old vise I had. He’s played with it a lot in the past couple days. Makes my heart happy.

I’m trying out toe spacers and one of those magnet nose bands to improve your nose breathing at night. Slowly trying to make improvements. Following up on a previous one I mentioned, the probiotics are helping quite a bit.

The seeds we started last weekend are doing great. 80% of them have sprouted already. Rosemary and the scotch bonnets are the holdouts.

This was a yardwork-focused weekend. We disassembled the 4 year old garden beds that were starting to fall apart and built new ones. Instead of elevated like the previous ones, we opted for regular ground-level raised beds so that Charlie can help more easily. Also, now that we got rid of the groundhogs, we expect fewer pest issues.

We went with 12ft beds (previously 8ft) to space things out a little more, plus and extra 4×4 box to grow some luffas in.

Yes, we know the fence is falling apart. I’m waiting on a contractor to get back to me so I can finish filing the permits with the city. Yes, I hate that we need a permit to replace a fence. No, I’m not going to go rogue because I’m pretty sure we have a neighbor that will check because another neighbor recently got fined for something similar.

Next steps: Lining the bottoms with cardboard and sticks, layering on compost and coconut coir, then shoveling the dirt back in.

I also secured Charlie’s swingset with some 24″ metal spikes driven sideways at an angle and attached them with conduit straps.

I needed to rent a UHaul to move the 2x12x12 boards and some wood lattice that I’m replacing on my deck. I originally wanted a pickup truck, van, or trailer, but neither Home Depot nor UHaul had them available. The only thing available was s 15′ box truck, so I rolled with it.

Unfortunately I had an awful experience. Their app is terrible and errors out constantly. First it didn’t show my reservation, which I finally fixed by finding a tool that helps you associate an order with your account. Then the “mobile pickup” option did not accept upload of any the photos it required. Three phone calls and hour later I finally got the truck. Drop-off/mobile return was the same headache, but only took 30 minutes.

Software and AI struggle the most where it has to interact with the physical world. The physical world is messy and does not follow clean, machine-readable rules like the computing world. We still need humans to help us navigate AFK.

At least Charlie thought the truck was cool.

That’s all I’ve got this week. See you next week 👋

p.s. if you read this regularly, drop me a note (email). I’d love to hear from you because I have little idea who actually reads these posts. I mostly write them for my future self, but I like hearing from other readers, too. Thank you in advance!

Lots of rain this week, so we did indoor activities like going to the library, going to the grocery store, and making ambulances out of boxes.

This box is still in our living room, though now Charlie calls it his “garage” and likes to hide underneath it while we walk around the house and call his name. Eventually he pops out and giggles hysterically.

We also went to gymnastics and a birthday party for one of Charlie’s friends.

Another activity was starting seeds. Charlie did the dirt scooping and watering. I’m learning from last year’s seed starting mistakes:

• more lights (shifted four bars to one shelf instead of one per)
• lights closer to the seeds (raised up the soil and heating pads)
• warmer location (basement instead of my drafty office)
• lights on a timer (sunrise to sunset)

Workshop upgrade progress report

I put in the dust collection system! It is a 2HP Harbor Freight dust collector that I took off the stand and mounted to the wall. Instead of the dust bag, which doesn’t collect fine dust, I used a canister filter, which does. Hoses run through the rafters over to my Shopsmith area and to the work bench.

I got a decent amount of karma on Reddit when I posted about my realization that deli quart containers can work as adapters on 4in hoses, blast gates, and splitters.

I also made and hung the french cleats and started building tool holders. I love how this works and am excited about it. More tool holders in progress this week.

I spent more time than I’d like last week figuring out the permitting process for Peekskill so we can get our fence replaced.

I’m slowly improving my Shortcuts actions. My Like shortcut and Bookmark shortcut are smoother and more flexible now. The same shortcut works across browsers and devices, and takes input either from the share sheet or the clipboard. I’m now posting bookmarks to my digital garden site, reducing my dependence on third party subscriptions. I need to clean up and rethink how they are displayed, but the data is there.

The next step is automating importing my are.na, Twitter, Mastodon, and Instagram bookmarks. If you do this, hit me up.

Related, it turns out consistently tagging disparate pieces of content using AI without pre-defining the tags is a non-trivial problem. Great thread from Simon Willison on this.

I’m doing very little pleasure reading right now. I’m working a lot in the workshop after Charlie goes to bed, which is when I’d normally be reading. In general, reading less doesn’t seem great, but I’m replacing it with something fulfilling and productive, which I feel good about.

Looking back at two years ago and one year ago. Charlie has grown so much in the past year! It is interesting to see how my week notes have evolved. Very work and life dependent. Also, I need to get a move on getting my weather station replaced.

Amanda and I have predictions on what is going on with Kate Middleton. Amanda thinks she is having a mental breakdown, I think she served William with divorce papers over his cheating and the royal family doesn’t know what to do about it.

My birthday was this week! I wrote a post about it.

I’m continuing to work on my workshop upgrade as much as I can. This week I:

• Added some light finish to my bench top (a blend of linseed oil and beeswax). I decided one coat is enough. It is just a workbench and as soon as I start using it the top will get dinged up anyway.
  • Using it so far has been great! It is very solid, a huge improvement over what was there before.
• Added weather stripping inside the doors to help the heater out and keep out some dampness
• Added some missing light switch covers
• Added a test set of French cleats to a side wall
• Made my first tool holder to go on the cleats: A holder for my lathe tools.
  • I used my Shopsmith in drill press mode for this for the first time in two years. I also set up the router table and got out the air brad nailer.
• Started modifying and installing my dust collector. Post forthcoming.
• Put an old style flexible spout and vent cap on my new diesel can because the new style “no spill” control spouts are terrible and so hard to use. Holding up the can with one hand while you squeeze the spout with your thumb instead of using your second hand to support and guide the nozzle is difficult. Full 5gal cans are heavy! After using it three times I was so frustrated that I ordered a replacement kit.

Things are starting to come together nicely and I’m pretty happy about it! I’m getting excited about working in there more.

Posts also forthcoming on the general upgrade project and the new workbench, and the French cleats.

I met my coworker and friend Fernando and his girlfriend Gabriele for dinner on Friday. They live in Brazil but are visiting NYC for a week. We went to Lombardi’s, the first pizza place in the US. Afterward we had drinks and popcorn chicken at Double Chicken Please. There we lucked out and got offered a table in the Coop, which had a 5 hour wait, but someone had just canceled. I had the Waldorf Salad (scotch, walnut bitters, celery, apple, ginger ale) and the Americano Americano (Campari, vermouth, coffee liqueur, branca menta, soda). I thought the Americano Americano was clever because it combines the Americano coffee drink with the Americano cocktail. And it was tasty! On the popcorn chicken: If a place is well-known for their bar snacks, you have to get them. The chicken did not disappoint.

Saturday was a full day. Charlie had gymnastics in the morning, then some of the gymnastics crew went to Dunkin Donuts for a snack and then Home Depot for the kids’ workshop. This month they built a butterfly house. Later that afternoon we went to a friend’s new job celebration party in Lake Peekskill. We brought esquites. There Charlie ate his first taco! Until now he would only eat the constituent parts instead of the whole thing together. I think the sour cream sold it for him… sour cream is one of his favorite foods.

Sunday was sunny and warm, which was a nice change of pace. Charlie played outside while I did some more work on the workshop upgrade and Amanda went horseback riding. We also installed a handle on the workshop door at Charlie’s height so he can open and close the door himself.

Challenging week at work. You might have seen various articles about Automattic from places like 404 Media this week. I won’t say anything other than the entire situation sucks. Like many other things in life, before you form your opinion you might want to consider assuming positive intent.