At the start of this year I wrote this about the Year of Opportunity: Characterized by a desire to explore and treat new experiences with more positivity and excitement, I hope to make the most of what could be our final year living in California while also increasing my appreciation for the life I’ve built. It certainly was our final year in California, and that shifted my mindset to focus not only on the opportunities in San Francisco but also any that would be available once we moved. ...

There are two separate issues with the technology I use at work that conspired to confound me earlier this year. Salesforce objects have two different unique ID constructions. Common lookup functions in Google Sheets are case-insensitive. ...

Scuttlebutt is objectively an excellent word. It’s fun to say, has a playful connotation that lands better than “gossip,” and is a great example of a multisyllabic word that is even more amusing when you switch up the consonants that begin each half. Buttlescutt. I wanted to understand where this word came from. ...

Well, I did it. I was on the ropes a few times but always found the time, energy, and creative hook to keep my story, It’s Like Jazz, moving along and hitting the requisite 50,000 words. ...

I’ve had this print of a painting for around twenty years. I bought it at a garage sale in my neighborhood as a kid, and I’ve brought it with me everywhere I’ve moved since. Despite having it for so long, I’ve never closely looked at it until writing about it now. Doing so revealed two things: The painting is titled Troubled Pals, and the artist is Keith Ward. Once I realized that, I tried to track down anything else about this painter or painting. The first result was a painting with a similar setup but an adjusted setting. ...

This has been a great experience so far. I had a great start, followed by a few rough days after a five-day trip to Denver. I caught up this past weekend and am back on track, though I’m looking to keep pushing hard because going home for Thanksgiving will only complicate my attempts to write. Even with that said, I’m proud of what I’ve done so far. Compared to 2019, I’ve started building a better story. I’m more thoughtful about creating characters and pushing a plot forward. I certainly won’t have told a complete story by the end of the 50,000 words, but that’s not necessarily the goal. ...

Given a thoroughly disappointing end to the Twins’ 2024 season, I wanted to look back to interesting (and hopefully excellent) Twins performances throughout my lifetime. As I often do, I started at Stathead and began exploring. Here are two batches of unimportant tidbits. ...

The oldest posts on this blog comprise a three-part series I wrote in fervor after the 2016 election. I was a college student who couldn’t drink alcohol yet but had learned a tremendous amount about the world while working as a residence advisor. I empathized with the experiences of others with incomprehensibly different life stories. I saw the fear, frustration, and numbness that came over people I loved and cared about. It was awful. ...

I’m doing it again. I plan to return to the basics for the first time since my initial attempt in 2019. I’ll be sitting at any number of devices—I have half a mind to resurrect my old ThinkPad that runs Pop!_OS and make it a dedicated writing computer—and writing a new novel wholecloth. I feel both intimidated and energized by the prospect. I’ve been working hard on other side projects, including writing blog posts in advance, to make sure I have the space to give this a good effort. ...

In addition to receiving a physical copy of the Sunday edition of the New Haven Register, my subscription includes access to their “E-Edition,” which amounts to a digital scan of the paper. It’s perfect for reading on my iPad. Clicking on an article opens it in a dedicated and simplified reader view, avoiding the need to flip through the paper to continue reading. Plus, I can still read the daily comics. ...