Spring evening.

The Mighty by O.A.R 🎵

Alison 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.

Just discovered that WSJ didn’t stop using RSS, just moved the feeds. Looking forward to Reeder 4

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.

Following 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.

This guy is always having a good time.

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.

The Angel 🍿

Is it just me, or is the layout off in Safari and Mail in 12.2?

So much delicious food in my pantry, so little time.

I did a pretty good job of documenting my adventures on my trip to Chicago. Lots of pictures, a few short updates, and five podcast episodes covered my movements though-out the city. I wanted to sit down and reflect on my overall experience.

My time was mostly my own, and the list of things that I wanted to do was pretty short. For the most part, I only spent money on food and beverages. There weren’t any experiences that I was interesting in, mostly due to the cold temperatures outside.

I thought that I was going to use ride-sharing and food delivery services a lot more, but we only made one round trip and had food brought to us twice. I walked everywhere, and everything was within a mile or two of the hotel.

Everyone wore headphones in the city. I joined in for the same reason, so that people wouldn’t talk to me. I caught up on podcasts, which is what I normally listen to while walking. I did listen to music on my last day, which was also nice.

I wore a backpack almost everywhere I went. My iPad Pro was a great travel companion, allowing me to write, update websites, and read the news wherever I set up shop. Chicago has a $.07 bag tax, so it was also nice to be able to throw whatever I bought into my bag and keep on moving.

Amazon Go was a great option for ready-to-eat meals and snacks. The employees were very attentive and its clear that corporate wants the stores to be clean, bright, and neatly stocked. That may be partially due to the limitations of the camera system, but regardless, it was a net positive for the customer. Prices were also fair.

I think Molly’s Cupcakes was my go-to spot. They had the best coffee that I found, and a great environment. They also played 90s music which was good for the setting and not offensive. The cupcakes were award winning, but I was partial to the cheesecake. Yum!

YNAB was a great travel companion. I don’t often add transactions on my phone on the go, instead opting for doing the heavy lifting with receipts and the web app when I get home. It was also nice to be very aware of my budget balances as I went through the day. That being said, this has been a crazy two months, so I did my second Fresh Start of 2019 when I get home.

I closed my rings with ease each day. I have a Move goal set at 600 calories. At home, I close that ring if I do my 60 minute walk in the morning, otherwise its usually in the 300-400 range. It was nice to be active while just going about my normal day instead of a scheduled exercise time.

I had a nice time in Chicago, even if the city life isn’t for me. This was a much better vacation than our trip to Orlando, where I had to drive from the hotel to get anywhere. Also, Lake Michigan is awesome.

Paying rent is very different when you physically write a check as opposed to letting Bill Pay handle it.

Lord of War 🍿

As a pilot, and a lover of Boeing jets, I’ve been following the 737 MAX stories very closely. Aviation can be a difficult beat for any reporter to cover, but in times like these, it’s important that the flying public is given an accurate view of the situation.

The Department of Transportation and Justice Department have launched criminal probes of the MAX certification process. While it’s possible that there were a few bad actors in the process, it’s unlikely that there are systemic problems within the safety certification process.

The aviation community’s first priority is safety. From my first days of flight training on the airfield, a culture of safety was ingrained in me. Everything starts and ends with safety. Accidents in aviation are extremely rare, but when they do occur, we learn new lessons to improve processes and safety.

The 737 MAX was the Boeing response to the Airbus 321neo. Reports bring up the fact that the Boeing team was scrambling to get the MAX designed and certified so that they could keep up with their competition. This scramble should not necessarily be equated to cutting corners.

It’s a normal business process in aviation design to create substantially similar aircraft in order to streamline the certification process. The 757-200 was initially certified, and then Boeing created the 757-300, an elongated version. For the 737, Boeing had already created the 737 (1964), -100 (1967), -200 (1968), -300 (1980s), -400 (1980s), -500 (1980s), -600 (1990s), -700 (1990s), -800 (1990s), and -900 (1990s). The MAX is simply the next iteration on the 737. Each time, improvements were made, sometimes capacity expanded, and the FAA certified the airframe. So it would be unfair to immediately draw conclusions on this business decision alone.

Sometimes the FAA will reject a request for a streamlined certification process. The Boeing 767 features the exact same flight deck layout as the Boeing 757, but the FAA chose to require a separate pilot rating for aircrews on each airframe.

Regardless of the certification, streamlined or not, the aircraft had to prove itself. Boeing underwent a rigorous process to prove that the updated aircraft was safe to fly and ready to enter service. The plane was put through a battery of systems, ground, and flight tests. The FAA is an independent regulator and takes flight safety very seriously. They do rely on industry experts for specialized areas of expertise, but they had no incentive to approve an unsafe airframe.

While we want answers, and want them quickly, aircraft accident investigation is a lengthy and thorough process. In the United States, even in fatal accidents, it usually takes two years for a final report to be issued. The fact that these accidents occurred in foreign countries, and one in water, will make it more difficult to complete a thorough and rigorous accident investigation.

The worldwide grounding of the MAX fleet seemed to be haphazard, with the FAA garnering a negative impression by the flying public. It’s important to remember that, while these accidents are scary and certainly two of the same type in this period of time is unusual, we have to keep an evidence-based process.

We will find out what happened in these accidents, Boeing will make changes to processes, procedures, and training, and the 737 MAX will fly again. In the meantime, have confidence in the airlines, mechanics, pilots, and regulators that regardless of their personal interests, safety is always priority one.

Wahooo!!! Cardhop for iOS is out! Just a few minutes ago I went upstairs to my iMac to use Cardhop to look up a few addresses instead of using contacts on my phone. This is really great news.

I love steam in bag vegetables.