∞

Sam and Dean are growing up, and they’re still best friends.

An orange and white kitty and a black and white kitty are laying on the back of a couch. They’re facing toward each other and resting their paws together. They’re both fuzzy with long whiskers and ear hair.
∞

Call me suspicious, but I bet that’s not my real year end bonus notification.

Screenshot of an email from "strauser HR Support Desk/OU=EXCHANGE ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP [...]", titled "Important: strauser End-of-Year Compensation", to me, with an attachment named "strauser_Year_End_Bonus_Form_[...].pdf". Zooming in on the sender's info show it was sent by "anthony@boobie-brands.com".
∞

My wife and I have been spending a lot of time with the new version of “Animal Crossing”. As it was during COVID, it may again be nearly the perfect respite from a challenging outside world.

∞

It’s been a long time since I’ve worn a watch that didn’t involve electricity.

Closeup of someone wearing a Seiko SSK003 watch. The sun is shining on its face and reflecting the deep blue of the bezel.The same watch in a very dark room. Its hands and markings are glowing almost radioactively, brightly enough to read the numbers near them.

∞

When I say there are a lot of self-driving Waymo cars near my work…

Photo of cars on a street moving toward a traffic light. There are 5 white self-driving Waymo taxis, a red car who wandered in, then another Waymo.
∞

Google Cloud emailed me a reminder that they’re about to make breaking changes in permissions that will cause currently working things to stop working.

“Remind” is begging the question by implying that I was ever minded in the first place.

But really, if you use GCP, check your email.

∞

I realized that my entire career seems to be built on saying, “huh, that can’t be right…”

∞

As seen on BART. I love my neighbors.

Picture of a rainbow colored protest sign someone’s carrying through the subway. It reads:&10;&10;SUPER&10;CALLOUS&10;FASCIST&10;RACIST&10;SEXIST&10;NAZI&10;POTUS
∞

We saw a blue heron on our hike today.

A tall, scrawny bird with a long neck is standing by a tree on some grass. It’s grey. It looks sad, though, hence its name: blue heron.
∞

I just got an email from AWS support asking for some data, saying, and this is a copy-and-paste quote, “You can provide this information by replying to this message.”

I replied to it.

A minute later I got an error message. Only then did I notice that they’d sent the first email from no-reply-aws@amazon.com, and that “replying to this message” was guaranteed to bounce.

They get me every time.

∞

With the sun behind me at sunset and reflecting off the buildings, and a perfectly clear pink sky behind them, the San Francisco skyline almost looked like a render.

San Francisco from street level, looking up at tall buildings (including the Salesforce tower). The buildings are blue and shiny. The background is pastel pink. A low wall in the foreground is covered with graffiti.
∞

The Cardputer-Adv + Cap LoRa-1262 combination is turning into the little pocket Meshtastic radio I’d hoped the T-Deck Pro would be. So far, so good!

The Cardputer with LoRa add-on, displaying the Meshtastic UI on a nostalgic green screen.
∞

In the middle of our weekly Hyperventilate Watching The Bills session.

∞

I opened the box containing the replacement shower drain cover, and its bag of screws — which is what I most wanted in the first place — fell to the ground. The cat grabbed it and ran off when I yelled at him to put it down. Now I’m back to having just 1 of the 2 screws needed to hold the cover in place.

In case you were wondering how my day was starting.

∞

The National Park Service claims putting a sticker over inappropriate parts of the 2026 pass invalidates it. However, you have an absolute right to carry the pass inside a clear plastic case, and that case may have a sticker on it that tastefully hides the affected area.

∞

Initial impression of unboxing an Oura Ring: it would have been so easy to make sure the inner box was oriented the same way as the outer box. Obviously that doesn’t have the slightest effect on how the device works, but don’t you want to awe new users with attention to detail?

Photo of an Oura Ring box. The outside wrapper is right side up and readable. The inner box is partly out of that wrapper, and is rotated 180º so that its "Oura" embossing is upside down.
∞

Far be it from me to tell anyone to clean their gutters, but if you have cattails growing in yours, it may be time.

Photo of a yellow cinder block industrial building with clumps of cattails growing tall in the gutters.
∞

I just got a Yaesu FT-70DR and everything you’ve heard is dead-on. It’s built like a tank. The UI is pretty nice and I’ve been able to program it easily using just the manual that came with it. Others say they hear me loud and clear. And also, the battery really does drain that quickly. Not so much as to be unusable, but enough that I’ll probably buy a spare battery soon. If we had a disaster today, I’d be babying it like it was an iPhone with 20% charge left.

∞

I realized today that I’ve accidentally de-Googled myself without deliberately meaning to. I’ve never used Gmail, but host my mail elsewhere with a domain I own. I use my phone’s own calendar, contacts, and photos apps. I pay to search the web with Kagi. Apple Maps has been great for years. Chrome is only for broken websites. My home NAS is way nicer than Google Drive.

I hadn’t actively tried to do this. I just don’t use any of their stuff anymore. I don’t need it and haven’t missed it.

∞

Kitty toe beans.

Closeup of a kittens crossed black and white legs and his little black a pink paw pads.