The strong compulsion I feel to organize everything into some perfect order based on frequency of use is almost perfectly mollified by how nice it is to look at things organized neatly.

Our chef's knife was so dull it could barely cut a tomato, so I went bananas researching sharpeners (immediately learning that our pull-through one was terrible), and landed on this Work Sharp Mk.2. Now our knives are VERY sharp, and I can do that fancy easily-slice-through-paper thing!

That's better

As a crude illustration of how much these high Santa Ana winds dry things out here in Southern California: 3 days ago, my Rachio smart lawn irrigation thing estimated our lawn's soil moisture at 100%, and it's now dropped to 0-16%. Normally that takes at least 7-10 days this time of year.

I'm pleased to announce that I have been voted "loudest gum chewer" by a unanimous panel of my peers (who I live with).

Used my 35mm (APS-C) prime lens today after 2 years of zoom lens comfort. Turns out creativity loves constraints (and I love how small it is). I even somehow managed to get some great shots of my 4yo who usually requires that 17-70mm range 😂

When the AI uprising happens, it'll be because of the demeaning names we gave their ancestors

I have never once added rinse aid to a dishwasher without spilling it everywhere. There must be some mystical technique that is unknown to me.

It me, Man.

Let's go 💪 (Next stop, Fire Socks)

The remaining Halloween candy is getting pretty grim by January. (Twizzlers. So many Twizzlers.)

SoCal winds snapped our avocado tree clean off this week. Silver lining: I got to experiment with using AI (Claude) on the cleanup logistics - tool selection, process, and feedback along the way. Now we wait to see if it will grow back... 🤞

I was in a meeting yesterday where someone said something was "nowhere near Berlin" and I really, really enjoyed that people are still referencing Eurotrip 21 years later.

One of my favorite things, professionally speaking, is when you start up a new program and then come back to it months later and see how much it's grown: new leaders stepping up to run it, and seeing it improve in ways that you didn't envision. Magical.

12+ hours into an internet outage from high SoCal winds and I'm living in fear of my own smart home. I'm tiptoeing around trying not to trigger any alarms because I definitely didn't prep my Home Assistant setup for this scenario...

Bro the wind was blowing the shingles off of my house last night let's be cool about this

Hi! I'm going to start cross-posting here. For those who don't know me from elsewhere: - I'm an engineering director working at a video game / fitness company - I used to work at AWS/Amazon - I'm a huge nerd - I'm super curious and love learning new things - Many of my posts are silly / irreverent