Mandaris

The Apple events are usually fun for me. I usually put it on my calendar and watch them live either by myself or with a friend. This year, I went over to a friend’s¹ home and we watched it live as they announced all the different products.

And…

And I think Brianna Wu has summed it up better than I can.

I mean, I really enjoy my Apple Watch and my iPhone Se, but I don’t see enough in this event that would make me want to upgrade. I mean, money is tight and a lot of this is a year over year upgrade over something that I already have.

So, I’m happy for everyone involved. Apple will still be able to make billions in the holiday quarter as people try to get the latest iPads for their kids to do their school work or dabble with making better home videos.

I’ll see you at the next event!

We’re both vacinated. ↩︎

Wow @jayeless! I was working theming the default marfa theme using the color scheme from nord and just playing with the idea of making it it’s own seperate plugin, but what you have done is absolutely beautiful.

Went into the office today.

I went into the office today to have a little bit of a change of pace as my productivity at home has kind of wound down in the last couple of weeks.

I had forgotten how much of a hassle it can be.

First, I had to pack up my laptop. And even though I didn’t need to pack all the dongles because I have a docking station at work, I still need to unplug my current home set as I don’t have one here. Working from home is only a “temporary thing”¹.

Then I had to drive in, find parking, badge in, and clean my desk area. All things that aren’t too bad when I compare it to not getting a paycheck, but time consuming compared to just getting to work when I’m ready.

And after that…

Nothing.

No magic.

No automagic switch that turns on the magic productivity.

I’m the same person.

I’m doing the same thing.

This time, I have other problems like getting my laptop on the company’s Wi-Fi that doesn’t recognize the device.

There is nothing so permenent as temporary. ↩︎

It’s been a pretty long weekend. My wife was telling me that we hadn’t had this many activities in a weekend since the pandemic had started. We were out of the house almost all of Saturday because of my daughter’s volleyball tournament followed by a birthday party at the skating ring.

Sunday was filled with a trip to the farmer’s market, seeing my parents, going to another birthday party and then a volleyball clinic.

On top of that, I’ve got this hesitation about how I’m going to handle the coming week.

I wrote that last sentence and then spent 10 minutes saving a gist to github to respond to a closed issue, then surfing twitter, then making a task in OmniFocus before coming back here and writing this.

Well, I’m up in Chico, Ca this morning to take my daughter to a volleyball tournament. She’s really passionate about it or maybe it’s because her friends are also doing it. Either way, it makes her smile.

For me, coming to Chico causes other emotions because I went here for college. Do I walk around campus! Or do I go to a couple of my old favorite restaurants to see if the food is still as good as I remember?

In fact, I don’t know if I’ll be able to see her play because it’s in a gym in a country that wants to pretend that it’s not in an on going pandemic.

Oh, it looks like it’s time to go in.

Smart Glasses by Facebook and Ray-Ban Mix Cool With Creepy

Ray-Ban’s Stories look like classic sunglasses. Except they’re made in partnership with Facebook and have built-in cameras that are hard to spot.

I really liked the video that is included in the article. Joanna Stern is a master of the craft and really like a well crafted article.

As for the glasses, I remember that there were a couple articles about people getting into fights after people found out that they were being recorded. Sometimes, it’s for the better but it’s definitely creepy.

I woke up before my alarm this morning and actually sat up and did some meditation. The day before I had thought about what I was going to do for a morning routine but haven’t committed to writing anything down on paper.

I know that my life is better if I have some kind of start up where I give myself time to do all of these things.

But what are all the things I should do?

What if I don’t wake up on time?

What if my schedule needs to change?

Ultimately, I have to understand that if I want my life to be better I need to do the things that lead to that outcome.

In my Toastmaster’s club we recently talked about what things you should have ready incase of an emergency where you need to leave your home. Something that seems to be more and more common. For example, I live in California and we’ve had a major fire for the last 3+ years and I don’t think we’re going to be seeing many koalas in the wild. Not to meantion all the places effected by climate change.

Anyway, I’ve been telling my family to pack a bug out bag for weeks and the advice has fallen on deaf ears, so I took the time to “Lead by Example” and started to make a bag for myself.

If you are interested, you can look at the emergency kit on ready.gov.

Meeting invites using the default tools from apple is kind of messy.

For close to 48 hours, my home has been without air conditioning. I’m very, very thankful as today will hit 106° F (41° C) with a 67 AQI and that is not air that anyone should be breathing.

Luckily, it was a very easy fix for the repairman and they were in and out of my home fairly quickly.

I’m not too happy with the fact that they person didn’t put a mask on. I put my mask on, but it’s not for me, it’s so that I don’t give you what I got as you move from home to another.