Today I discovered that Google Docs has supported pageless documents for over a year and a half. I learned this at precisely the right time, and now I’m rethinking how I handle many of my digital documents. ...

This year my company is officially taking a break starting the weekend before Christmas through New Year’s Day. I haven’t had a break from work this long1 since graduating college, and I am thrilled by the concept. Several of my coworkers are nervous about this change—we have customer support teams and we need to ensure our sites don’t suddenly break while everyone is gone—but I plan to revel in it in the intended fashion. I get to enjoy time with family and friends without distraction, without needing to burn additional PTO, and come back refreshed with an eagerness to get work done. ...

Erin and I spent a weekend north of San Francisco in a small house among the redwood trees. It overlooked a misty valley that offered the perfect balance of seclusion without isolation.1 We set up this small retreat to disconnect, focus on ourselves, and also discuss our yearly themes. ...

Sarah Wexler, reporting for MLB.com:1 After a fervent sweepstakes, reigning American League Most Valuable Player Shohei Ohtani has agreed to terms with the Dodgers on a record-demolishing 10-year, $700 million deal, according to his agent, Nez Balelo. This is incredible, ridiculous, and frustrating. Incredible No free agent in any sport has ever received a contract worth this much. It’s a huge play by the Dodgers, and a windfall for Ohtani who definitely has nothing to worry about financially. Time will tell whether the deal is good when considering Ohtani as a player long-term, but as a move they can leverage as marketing it’s likely going to pay for itself rapidly. Ohtani is a superstar across the world, particularly in Japan and the United States. Between the merchandise the Dodgers will sell and the butts in seats they’ll get even in the next two seasons, I have to imagine they know it’s worth the investment. If they can make some deep playoff runs, that’ll do even more. ...

I just completed my NaNoWriMo project for 2023. I wrote three stories for The Last Question world in thirty days, totaling 30,984 words. You can find the drafts on the NaNoWriMo page of this blog, with the caveat that they are indeed drafts. Let’s get into how this all went. ...

I enjoy playing with technology, trying new apps, and adjusting my processes. I listen to podcasts that nominally focus on productivity and the tools to get work done. You can look at my track record of changing writing setups to understand what I mean. It’s easy to conflate optimizing how you work and the work you’re trying to do. It’s rarely the case that these are one and the same, so it’s good to remember that the only way to accomplish a task is by doing it.1 ...

I’m behind my 30,000 word goal, which is why I’m writing this post as a fallback instead of something longer and unrelated to NaNoWriMo. It’s still possible for me to maintain a pace that gets me done on time, but I haven’t been making as much progress in my free time as I’d like. My biggest issue this year is that I’m still not allowing myself to write freely. I’m thinking a little too much in the moment, trying to self-edit, and not just getting a story out there that can be refined at a later date. ...

I was in a position to provide some talking points for my company’s upper-level math textbooks. It was written in the aftermath of customer-induced pique regarding how we sell ourselves. While it’s focused on my company, the core idea of a problem-first approach extends beyond what we do in particular. ...

The Texas Rangers won the World Series in five games over the Arizona Diamondbacks, and by the end it looked as inevitable as the 4–1 victory shows. I was fairly neutral going in—I have some connections to the Rangers via the Twins, but felt myself rooting for the underdogs in Arizona more often than not—and so my hope, as always, was for a tense series that went at least six games. That didn’t transpire, and viewership was down as the matchup was panned across popular sports media, but that hardly matters to me. ...

I’ve done something for National Novel Writing Month each year since 2019. That first year was the only time I’ve “won” by getting to fifty thousand words, but I’ve always appreciated the exercise and change of pace required to make a reasonable attempt. November is just around the corner, so it’s time to consider my plans for this year’s effort. ...