I’m excited to celebrate my birthday by releasing ChetCast, a microcast about my life as a stay-at-home dad! I first started podcasting 11 years ago in my college dorm room. It was just me back then, but now I’m lucky to have three children to join me on the show.

I’m hosting my show using Micro.blog and recording it with the Wavelength app. Special thanks to Aaron Parecki for the music. This has been a great community to be involved with and it’s been truly fun seeing Manton continue to iterate.

In case you’re wondering, the thing that I’m perhaps best known for among my friends and family is my love of sprinkles. I’ve labored diligently, with great success, to pass on this love to my children. When choosing podcast artwork that represents me, my family, and my new show, no other object could more completely summarize this project.

My last podcast made it to 50 or so episodes. I hope to make 1,000 episodes of ChetCast, documenting the adventures my children and I share.

Releasing the first episode of my new microcast tomorrow. My Benedict is a guest, but he calls it a “bobcast.”

Six months into using single stream recycling in our household, and we’re diverting about 50% of our solid waste. Wish our facility would expand to accept more things.

After a conversion experience, one is tempted to set aside, downplay, or reject one’s past. In Thomas Merton’s biography The Seven Storey Mountain, the former dissolute student turned Trappist monk largely characterizes his former life as bad, and his life in the monastery as good. Of the “old” Thomas Merton, he said ruefully, ‘I can’t get rid of him.’ In time Merton would realize how misguided a quest that is: there is no post-conversion person and pre-conversion person. There is one person in a variety of times, the past informing and forming the present. God is at work at all times.

The tiny one fell asleep in my arms. These are the days.

I was really excited to see Maton release a new theme on Micro.blog last night. I was even more excited when I saw the name, Marfa.

For those of you who don’t know, Marfa is a very small town in West Texas. It’s situated in rugged and mostly untouched terrain. For whatever reason, it’s become a haven for art, leading to its rise in prominence.

Coming from the Soaring community, Marfa is well known for another reason. Marfa is a National Landmark of Soaring, a place that glider pilots from across the country travel to fly in its unique and favorable environment. The airport has hosted the US National Soaring contests as well as the 1970 World Soaring Championships. A documentary called “The Sun Ship Game” was even filmed based on the pilots in that 1970 competition.

In 2005, I earned my private pilot license at the airport in Marfa. It will always be a special place for me.

Several times a week, I turn to my wife, dumbfounded at the words that have come out of my children’s mouths. Incredible just how much they pick up on by listening. There’s a lesson in there.

Another beautiful day in this great Nation!

Time for the semi-annual deep cleaning and waxing of the cars. I love this day, and how smooth the cars feel afterward!

My bad boy approach to hijacking my own footer is costing me a lot of time in troubleshooting.

When I look at the current specimens of our national currency, I’m disappointed. The United States Dollar is a global reserve currency, and its design is disjointed. Looking at the difference between the various notes, there’s a hodgepodge of design features and colors. It borders on a national embarrassment.

The Treasury redesigns notes on a regular basis for currency protection and to counter fraud, but it currently has no plans to redesign the $1 note or the $2 note. As a result, we have a fragmented design and little prospect of that changing. Even the notes that it does redesign seem to lack a unified vision for what the US Dollar should look like.

I wouldn’t like to see anything as busy as the British pound, but something more measured like the Euro. I’d like to see a unified design that’s clean, balanced, proportional, minimal, and symmetric. Perhaps common elements arranged on a grid that could be easily substituted between note designs. The denomination goes in the same place, the base color is the same with accent colors differing by denomination, and so forth.

Many today will proclaim that cash is dead, or will be soon, but I disagree. Cash is anonymous, fast, safe, and universally accepted. Cash represents about 15% of all transactions in the United States and around a third of all payments globally.

Cash is here to stay, so let’s make it beautiful.

How did I go so long without using emoji in Things? It gives such clarity to my projects!

Fresh starts in YNAB are excellent. Very well thought-out feature.

My backyard is lovely

The greatest temptation in design is to add too much. Add just enough, and not a single object more.

Honestly, what the hell is the Toyota design team thinking?

First Mass with three kids. Two sets of grandparents helped. No backup on Thursday, though!

No, sorry, I'm not on Facebook.

Happy to be celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Catholic Husband blog!

I regret that my hearing is so good that I can hear extremely high pitched noises.