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April 2,2019
“God likes to claim He moves in mysterious ways, but there doesn’t seem to be too much mystery here at all,” Baxter continued. “This looks like blatant favoritism.”
That was pretty good.
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April 2,2019
I’m still waiting for Pixelmator to add type on a curve. This is, from my perspective, the only major feature missing when compared to Photoshop. Seems like a major oversight at this point, unless its technically very difficult to implement.
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Haiku
April 1,2019April Fools
A few corporate jokes,
I preferred the real tech news.
Cloudflare is at it!
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Reading
April 1,2019
Finished reading: Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History by Bill O’Reilly & Martin Dugard 📚
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April 1,2019
My son just asked me if he could watch Jingle All the Way. I’m so proud!
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April 1,2019
I’m all for bank security to protect against losses from fraud. However, if we can’t trust that the actual customer has control of their online account, maybe we should increase security or just not offer that service.
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ChetCast
Episode 71: Joke Day
April 1,2019We’re back at home, the kids are with me, and in honor of April Fools, we have some jokes for the folks!
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Haiku
March 31,2019Apple Music Albums
New experience,
Listening to whole albums.
Thanks, Apple Music!
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March 31,2019
That moment when you’re reading a bedtime story to your five year old, and he interrupts you to explain the paschal mystery.
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Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program
March 31,2019PSLF borrowers: 890,516* (Total number of borrowers who have one or more approved PSLF Employment Certification Forms)
Borrowers who attempted to certify for PSLF: 1,173,420
Borrowers who submitted forgiveness applications: 19,321
Borrowers who were granted PSLF: 55
Huh. 55 approved out of 19k applications. Maybe it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. No way around loans other than repayment.
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March 31,2019
I don’t think that Apple News is all that great.
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Haiku
March 30,2019Correcting Paint
Scratches on the hood,
A big annoyance. Polish,
And it’s all gone! Sweet.
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Apple Maps in the City
March 30,2019Apple Maps continues to suffer from its false start. iOS users download alternatives like Google Maps and Waze to fulfill their navigation needs. Yet, if you look at the three products, they each have a competitive advantage. Nothing can touch Waze when it comes to beating traffic. Google is the king of business, shops, and places. Apple Maps brings beauty in design, along with the tight integration between phone and Watch. While I normally use these mapping services for driving, I thought I’d have a great time using Apple Maps for walking navigation in Chicago last week. I was very wrong.
The problem with Apple Maps wasn’t really a problem with Apple Maps, it was GPS. The high buildings interfered all of the time, to the point where I couldn’t rely on the directions tapping me on my watch. At times, Apple Maps had me a block and a half away from my actual location, and was far too slow to update my position.
I wonder if 5G will fix this problem. Not that 5G will improve inner-city GPS woes, but because the individual 5G tower will be able to relay that location information to apps. If there are 25 5G towers (or spots, or whatever they’re going to call them), along my route, conceivably each of those towers could hand off my location to my mapping app as I moved along my route.
This experience gave me a real appreciation for cities as they build their emergency services and communications networks. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to coordinate and dispatch emergency services to the right location in an efficient manner.
Location data within a city is a problem for a lot of people. Hopefully we’ll get a fix soon enough.
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March 30,2019
It is easy to correct auto paint.
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Haiku
March 29,2019Account Consolidation
Too many accounts.
Too much to manage, closed most.
Ah! Instant relief.
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March 29,2019
Spring evening.
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March 29,2019
The Mighty by O.A.R 🎵
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Website Diet
March 29,2019Alison went to a lecture recently on fad diets. She showed me the slides, and they were pretty much what you expected. What was incredible is just how many fad diets are out there. It’s easy to get busy, lose track of your health, and not focus on eating the right foods. Plus, there’s a lot of conflicting information out there about what foods are good and what foods aren’t.
In thinking about our collective health, I realized that there’s a stark similarity between our own unhealthiness and the relative health of our websites. I’ve been working on my own websites for over a decade. There are redesigns that occur, but for the most part, improvements are added to my sites without much taken out.
This bloat, over time, gets in the way of user experience and can have a measurably negative impact on load times. The lecture of fad diets got me thinking that maybe my websites need to go on a diet.
I hate to do it, but from time to time, I’ll use a browser extension that will count the number of trackers on a website. When the number gets over 30, my desire to stay on a website dramatically decreases. There are analytics, ad networks, Facebook Pixel, and services from companies that I’ve never heard of, all watching my every move.
Zero. That’s the number of trackers that are now on my websites. To the extent that its within my control, I’m not going to add a single tracker to any of my sites. I want to keep my web presence healthy, and honestly, I think my content stands on its own. It’s important for me to write and publish regardless of the number of visitors or where they come from.
So when you visit any of my sites, be confident that you’re the only one who knows. Stay for a while or just a few moments, read my thoughts, develop a few of your own, and then move on. It’s a better, faster experience for you, and a healthier one for my site.
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March 29,2019
Just discovered that WSJ didn’t stop using RSS, just moved the feeds. Looking forward to Reeder 4
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March 29,2019
The AirPower announcement would’ve been nice immediately before the AirPods 2 release. My guess is a good chunk of orders for the wireless case were customers who planned to use it with AirPower.
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Haiku
March 28,2019More Yard Work
Pollen everywhere,
Clearing weeds and yard debris.
Allergies pending.
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Reading
March 28,2019
Currently reading: Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History by Bill O’Reilly & Martin Dugard 📚
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News I'll Never Read
March 28,2019Following up on my blog post on paying for news, I checked out a few major news sites to grab some headlines that I will never see from The Wall Street Journal. All of these articles were on the main page, some prominently so.
Meghan Markle's rumored new nickname will reportedly make Prince Harry 'angry,' royal source claims
A great piece of journalism from Fox News about only the best in palace intrigue.
Want a happier relationship? Pay attention to your partner's 'bids' to connect
In case you went to NBC for the top headlines, but decided in the end you just needed to work on you.
The 43 most outrageous lines from Donald Trump's phone interview with Sean Hannity
43 quotes and painfully witty commentary by an editor-at-large over at CNN.
Keith Olbermann unleashes fury at turkey hunter, tells Twitter followers to make his life a 'living hell' — and they do
Slow news day over at The Blaze newsroom. I hate articles about what’s happening on Twitter.
Mum's plea for girls to ditch leggings sparks protests
Thanks, BBC! Message received.
When we don’t pay for news, media organizations have to put out these pathetic articles that aren’t worth the time they spent writing, editing, and publishing.
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March 28,2019
This guy is always having a good time.
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March 28,2019
I want to do a fresh start in YNAB, but I want to do it on the first day of the month. April 1st seems like a poor choice.