Week of September 30, 2024

The big thing this week is that 159 of my colleagues at Automattic left over three days as part of this ongoing struggle with WP Engine. I stayed. The offer was generous and tempting, but I think Automattic is in the right when it comes to the lawsuit and I believe in Matt’s leadership of both Automattic and the WordPress project.

It has been a wild ride this week. I went into the Manhattan office one day, the final day of the deadline, and saw three people at a table near me post their resignations after nervously pacing around, then get out of their chairs, shut their laptops, and grab a beer out of the cooler. Cheers, former coworkers. I wish you the best

The folks who stayed now need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

On one of our evening walks down by the river, Charlie wanted to load rocks in one of his toy trucks so he could throw them in the water. Why not, little man?

I got to have dinner with two separate friends this week: Chris after work on Thursday in Manhattan at Casa Carmen, and Jeremy on Friday at Slainte in Peekskill. Being intentional about catching up with friends is something I am proud of.

I checked on the Little Free Library on Friday. Lots of book turnover from two weeks ago! I’ll go stick some more books in there soon.

Charlie playing with the hose:

Look Daddy! I’m making a RAINBOW!

I took Charlie to the craft store to pick up a couple things we needed. He picked up some muffin papers and really wanted them, insisting on carrying them around. When I asked what he wanted to do with them, he said, “I want to share cupcakes with my friends.” So later that day Amanda and Charlie made cupcakes from scratch and he took them to school. He was so excited and so proud of them. It was very cute to see. I’m glad we encourage and go along with his ideas when we can.

Charlie and I went with one of his friends and her dad to the fall festival by the waterfront.

I coined a new term for bounce houses: Chaos Castles.

One clear difference between little boys and little girls: Every little girl in Charlie’s friend group will sit and patiently paint something, then walk away clean. Every little boy ends up covered in paint after about five minutes.

I replaced two window screens and the screen door this week, all three long overdue. Also washed the ACs and put them away.

I used a speed stitcher for the first time this week to stitch some webbing into a double floatant holder. The gel kind goes on the bottom, the power goes on top.

I cut webbing to length using a crappy chisel that I heated with a blowtorch, then I cut the circle for the gel floatant to slide through with a heated up section of copper pipe. Then I stitched a loop at the top for a clip and two pieces of elastic to secure the bottles.

The speed stitcher worked great and I know I’ll get some use out of it.

It doesn’t matter that summer is over. We use the grill year-round.

I tied some more flies over the weekend. Some things I tried:

Black, white, and brown woolly buggers in size 12, 14, and 16. Some with tungsten beads, some with brass beads, and some with glass beads.

Some killer buggers with glass beads (pink and red) in size 16. I wanted some smaller ones, all previous ones were 12s.

What’s next? Probably some more flies with stiff hackle. Different kinds of futsu kebari, elk hair caddis, stimulator, or blue winged olive.

The habaneros and jalapenos are finally starting to turn red! I don’t have time to ferment them to make sauce right now, so I’m picking and freezing them until I do have time in a couple weeks.