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Crucial Track for September 26, 2025

"Larger Than Life" by Backstreet Boys

Listen on Apple Music

A song that reminds you of a particular friend.

This reminds me of a friend I had in high school who would always sing in class. He was not a great singer but I don't think he cared. He would sing this and other songs with the confidence of a rock star. He didn't care if there were 2 or 200 people around him.

And the coolest part is that no one gave him any grief about it. We all just rolled with it.

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Crucial Track for September 25, 2025

"Kokomo" by The Beach Boys

Listen on Apple Music

A song that reminds you of one of your favorite places.

I don't know if it's "Kokomo" or "The Kokomo", but I do know that I've never been there.

For me, it represents a place that I can just sit back and relax; not worry about the stress of the world.

Aruba, Jamaica, ooh, I wanna take you to Bermuda, Bahama, come on, pretty mama Key Largo, Montego, baby, why don't we go? Ooh, I wanna take you down to Kokomo We'll get there fast and then we'll take it slow That's where we wanna go, way down in Kokomo

Maybe I'll be able to go down there one day.

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At one point, I thought that I would be able to do all the prompts.

Part of me thinks “that’s going to annoy all my readers”, but since I don’t have analytics I wouldn’t know.

A progress tracker from crucialtracks shows 15.7% completion, with 24 out of 153 prompts finished.

Crucial Track for September 24, 2025

"Vacation" by The Go-Go's

Listen on Apple Music

A song that reminds you of your last vacation or holiday.

This is the first song that came to mind when I thought about vacation. When I hear the song I think about a commercial for a vacation more than the vacation itself. Either that or a comedy about vacations.

It's weird to me that vacations cause so much stress that I sometimes feel I need an extra day after just to rest and recover.

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Sometimes it’s the simple things that do not work.

Siri does not understand the command to drop a pin.

Lillie likes to chill at the landing.

A dog is sitting halfway up a carpeted staircase, looking to the side.

I’m going to this week’s Homebrew Website Club Europe/London meeting.

I haven’t really done anything to the website in a while, but it’s nice to hear idea that I can put on the list.

Crucial Track for September 23, 2025

"Djobi Djoba" by Gipsy Kings

Listen on Apple Music

A song in a language that you don't know.

This is my favorite Gipsy Kings song. It's fast and seems fun and I have know idea what they are saying.

View Mandaris Moore's Crucial Tracks profile

Another day of selecting all email and archiving them.

iPhone Air A light touch of sadness in my hand

I went to the Apple Store1 to check out the new iPhone Air Saturday. The mall parking lot was horribly crowded and I got to experience the insanity convenience of car culture in America. After driving around and avoiding getting hit by people who follow different rules of the road than I do, I finally parked across the street in the overflow parking. I walked into the mall and saw that the line to purchase new phones only had a couple people in it. Maybe most people had already bought theirs online?

I went inside and picked up the new phone.

And just felt a little sad.

It confirmed that the issues that I was seeing when running iOS26 on my phone were there by intention.

Photo libraries that cut off the top row of options show up with plenty of space on the new phone.

Menus at the top have plenty of room for options.

Animations are fluid - almost like flowing liquid - and not sporadic or slow.

Is it unfair to complain that the newest os doesn’t run that great on my 5 year old iPhone SE?

Maybe.

I remember a report that engineers would be required to use older phones to test these things out. Feeling my phone get warm as I navigate between different apps, makes me think that it didn’t happen as much. Trying to get my phone to take a picture and having to wait for the last picture to load or trying to find where they placed options has decreased the amount of times that I want to do something with it.

Holding the new phone brought up all the joy that I’ve been missing about being someone who identifies as an Apple Enthusiast. The thrill of new possibilities from exciting applications is tarnished by drama with the App Store. Services that only increase in price but not functionality. The community that I used to share my enthusiasm is shrinking as people move to other platforms.

All in all, I’m actually a little discouraged from spending money on something like this.

I put the phone down and it zips back into place due to the antitheft tether.

And, I think that’s where I’m at.

I’m not tethered to the idea of getting one.


  1. It’s kind of funny that the autocorrect will capitalize the s in store. ↩︎