My heart goes out to everyone in Spokane and Twin Falls. It’s been a rough day for the North West.

*EVACUATION ORDER* GO NOW issued for Robie Creek zone RC-06 #IdahoFire helicopters working Upper Shaw Mountain Road / Cottonwood Creek. Tankers will continue working the Ridge I'm seeing smoke further up than I'd prefer. But fire behavior in timber will be far different than sage/cheatgrass

I have questions about this Google AI overview and the specific example they felt the need to include.

Want a fun reminder of the impact of tariffs… take a teenager prom dress shopping!

In other news, I just got promoted from Senior Staff to Principal Software Engineer! 🎉

I’ve been a developer who uses Ruby on Rails for many years… but today I shipped my first change to Ruby on Rails! A small bug fix to prevent an unnecessary query in ActiveRecord when using composite database keys.

I went on a trek in Chile last year. One of my guides doesn’t have an Aunt because she was one of the vanished during Pinochet’s regime. And if you are wondering why I’m telling this store today now would be a very good time to read up on the US involvement in South America and the consequences.

Drum roll please… my ADHD self is at inbox 0 on my personal email. (Well technically inbox 12 but they all have a purpose and an action needed to clear them.)

Since I’m sick in bed with the flu.. but can’t seem to nap I’m finally digging out my overflowing email inbox. Some serious unsubscribe happening. Just over 1000 emails left to go. I may actually start 2026 with functioning email!

If you are in Boise Tamales Nelly is closing 😭 but there are a few days left to place a take out order. The Tamales freeze well and are the best I’ve ever had.

I wonder how many people all got paged at once thanks to Cloudflare!

Before and after slow roasted garlic

Tech friends who work in e-commerce and cloud providers who support us. Have a great week and may the final exam be full of nothing but climbing sales. (Final exam = Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend.)

My kids: Mom did you learn about the Cold War in school? Me: I lived the Cold War while in school

David, Host of The Cold War@coldwarhost.bsky.social · 9mo ago

🎵Duck...and cover!

The Cloudflare outage is a good reminder that: - Configuration is Code. - There will always be bugs but companies who publish good post mortems help make the entire industry better.

Favorite positive comment from my 6 month review: “Willing to ask ‘dumb’ questions.” Part of the staff+ role is being comfortable asking the question everyone is thinking but is afraid to say because it might sound dumb. Or the question that challenges some basic idea everyone assumes is correct.

Teen: Are you and dad fighting? Me: No, that’s the noise I make when your dad tells me his friend who was staying elsewhere will be sleeping at our house tonight but not to worry because he will not care if the sheets are fresh and the house is tidy and he’s known this for days but forgot to tell me

There is a shrieking baby waiting for a flight. And one passanger turned to another and said, “We were all once babies other people had to hear shriek.” So parents traveling with babies… most of your fellow passengers get it. You are doing great!

Once again I have made roasted pumpkin seeds that taste like I pressed salt into a seed shape. 😂😭🤦🏼‍♀️ Some day I will get this right.

Teen: Mom what’s your Halloween costume? Me: Overworked Software Engineer Teen: You said that last year! And that’s not a costume! Me: No, last year I dressed as overworked working mom. Teen: ….

Work from home buddy is helping me break a big technical problem into little technical problems. She recommends focusing on the minimal tasks needed to get something working in production… and checking the current state… of her food bowl.

Some photos from today’s Boise Pride parade.

Parenting teens with ADHD in a nutshell. Teen offered to pick up dinner for everyone from the local grocery store deli. Without being prompted, she found my favorite drink and bought that for me…. But she forgot to actually buy my dinner.

Me: Our router keeps needing a reboot. Do we need to replace it? Husband Thinking: Well it’s a Dell computer I installed when we moved into this house… so it’s about 15 years old…

The cure for imposter syndrome is helping people and answering questions. Me: I don’t know that much about this. Me several paragraph explanation later: Hmm… maybe I do know something. 😄

When a kid needs help at night: Babies: Cry Toddlers: Scream Elementary: Shake you awake Teenagers: Quietly stare at your sleeping form until some innate survival instinct wakes you up positive you are about to be murdered by a serial killer.

Morning hike was more exciting than expected. Guy on dirt bike: Just so you know there’s a fire up a head off the trail. Don’t worry. It’s been called in. Us: How far ahead? Guy: From here? Oh, maybe 200 feet or so….

Having driven on 2 of the 10 most dangerous roads in the world I feel like the actual most dangerous roads in the world aren’t on any news site’s list. Because none of the official ones come close to a road I once drove on in the White Cloud Mountains in Idaho.

Dear AI coding helper, Sometimes a tab is just a tab and not a request to rewrite the line of code.