Today I learned (from the Bing bot, and thanks to my kids’ curiosity) that there are approximately one septillion stars in the universe. A septillion is ten to the 24th power. It’s a number so large it is unfathomable to me.
🎵 Today’s listen: Boston by Boston. I’m trying something retro for a rare weekend gym day.
Currently reading: The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt 📚
I decided to finally go all in on using my Planck EZ keyboard at work. I am still trying to get faster at typing on it and sometimes forget where I mapped certain symbol keys, but I am finally loving it. Now I want another one for my Mac, which wouldn’t be a big deal if they weren’t so pricey. ⌨️
My friends from high school would never believe that I attended religious services twice this week. There was a lot of music and merriment each time.
🎵 Today seems like a good day to listen to a ton of Lana Del Rey.
I followed a bunch of (semi-famous, mostly tech) podcasters I listen to in Mastodon and it totally became Twitter again for me, in good ways (there is content) and in bad (it’s a lot of outrage and virtue signaling). I don’t really know people on the platform, so I think it might just not be for me.
Finished reading: Constance by Matthew Fitzsimmons 📚 It was an OK sci-fi thriller. The writing was competent but it was never exciting. It was obvious from the start who the big bad was, and the characters seemed to lack inner lives. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5.
I have been enjoying playing chess puzzles and correspondence chess at lichess lately. It is free and is really, really good.
I joined Club TWiT this evening. Leo’s pleas finally wore me down. I look forward to seeing how ad-free podcasts affect my listening preferences.
Is Dilbert over now? It seems so weird. I remember 20 years ago when Dilbert comic store part of every internal IT presentation. I wonder what will happen to it. Will it get picked up by NewsMax or Truth Social or Fox News?
I had begun to think that my tolerance for hot, spicy food was very high, but the Peruvian chicken place I tried today is making me question that. 🌶️🔥😅
On the most recent Accidental Tech Podcast, I’m pretty sure Marco Arment mentioned that he uses one of my iOS apps, Simple Call Blocker, to block whole town’s worth of potential spam phone numbers.
I'm tuning out most AI think-pieces for a while
Currently reading: Constance by Matthew Fitzsimmons 📚 It’s a thriller with a sci-fi premise. I hope I like it. I hated the last book I started!
🎵 I’m just playing the hits today.
Finished reading: American Girls by Nancy Jo Sales 📚 I abandoned this book pretty early on. There’s nothing new in it if you follow tech and social media issues. No rating, because I did not complete it.
I’m really enjoying the Super Bowl. It’s a great game! I don’t really care who wins.
Finished reading: Fairy Tale by Stephen King 📚 I enjoyed it but wished it was 100 pages (or more) shorter. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5.
Bing it with AI
🎵 Today’s listen: Dog Problems by The Format. It’s a classic combination of feel-good music and “I feel bad” breakup lyrics. Nate Ruess, who fronted this band before he sang with fun., has a distinctive voice. Standout tracks include “Time Bomb,” “The Compromise,” and “Snails.”
I still have a Google Voice number and at this point I don’t know why.
Public service announcement: If you cut your finger in the kitchen, like I did last night, those silly-looking finger cots (or finger condoms) are awesome for protecting the wound.
Ice Cubes, the Mastodon client, has been getting better at a rapid rate. There are updates every day, it seems. Impressive.
🎵 Today’s listen: In The Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. It’s an indie rock masterpiece. That’s all I can say.
Tom Brady Retires: The Revised Edition
🎵 Today’s listen, Groundhog Day The Musical (Original Broadway Cast Recording), composed by Tim Minchin. It is wonderful and timely.
I find the Magic Trackpad (which is connected to my Mac mini) to be very janky compared to my wired trackball (or to the built-in trackpads on MacBooks). The pointer skips around a lot. I wonder if everyone has that but no one complains.
🎵 Today’s listen: Come Get Your Wife by Elle King. Much of it is fun, “angry woman” country music. Whether you enjoy it or not probably hinges on how much you like its hit single, “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home),” which is a duet with Miranda Lambert.
Paid Search Engines
🎵 Today’s listen: John Coltrane and John Hartman I just learned about this album this week. As far as I know, it is the only vocal jazz/standards album John Coltrane ever made. John Hartman has a deep, silky voice that’s so good I am surprised I never heard of him before.
📺 I’m watching The Last of Us. Love it.
🎵 Today's listen: Heaven or Las Vegas
📺 Television Is Better Without Video Games
My daughter performed in front of a couple hundred people in her elementary school talent show tonight. I am so proud of her. I was not brave enough to do such a thing at her age.
Want to read: You Are a Badass® by Jen Sincero 📚 Thanks, @greghiggins.
🎵 Today’s listen: To Venus and Back by Tori Amos. I haven’t listened to this album in many years, but I remember liking it in 1999 and 2000. I remember Tori Amos being very divisive when I was in high school (in the mid 1990s); I can’t remember why.
📺 I finished watching His Dark Materials season 3 last night. I found the last season to be a letdown in many ways, especially the last few episodes. I think an adaptation of The Amber Spyglass that I would like would be twice as long and cost a hundred times as much.
If you stop doing something, you get worse at it. Last fall, I stopped writing for myself every day. I’m tring to get back to it now. I’m finding it harder to stich together thoughts and sentences. Typing—outside the context of my day job—feels weird. My writing has lost its voice—at least for now.
🎵 Radio Paradise
I have been playing more chess lately, and I have never played worse, I think. It is a humbling game sometimes, especially if you are not a visual thinker.
Currently reading: American Girls by Nancy Jo Sales 📚
Currently reading: Fairy Tale by Stephen King 📚
I’m happy Tapbots’s Ivory Mastodon client is out. My love for its predecessor, Tweetbot, far exceeded any feelings I had for Twitter. I installed it and am trying it out. At present, however, I’m not that interested in Mastodon, and I don’t think Ivory will change that. It was hard to kick my addiction to Twitter and I don’t think I need to replace it with something that is almost exactly the same.
I have been happy to sit out the whole Twitter implosion, though I am beyond tired of hearing about it all the time on the podcasts I listen to. I still have an account over there, mostly to be able to read tweetstorms (that really should be blog posts) that other people link to. I haven’t posted anywhere in a while. I’ve been busy reading and working and haven’t had much to say.
📺 I have been watching Obi-Wan while at the gym because it is relatively mindless. And wow is it mindless! Seeing more Darth Vader and Obi-Wan is fun, but boy does everybody suck at their jobs on that show. 😀
HBOmax keeps canceling shows and, in unprecedented fashion, wiping them from its catalog. It’s unbelievable and petty. From the outside, it just seems stupid. How can the company that made them lose money by streaming them? Im glad I’m not a subscriber right now.
Hades II is in development! This is unexpectedly good news. (It feels wrong to use a Roman numeral after a Greek god’s name.)
The New York Times iPad app got a dark mode recently (I noticed it yesterday), after a million years of not having one. The iPhone app, however, still does not have a dark mode. What is the big deal with the Times about reversing black and white in their app?
We plan to visit my mom for Christmas again this year. It has been several years since we could, due to the pandemic or us being sick. We are all feeling happy about it. I just hope we can stay healthy that week, because it has been a very rough autumn for us, illness-wise.
Today I’m taking my family to Boston for a short trip. We are excited. My wife and I went to college near Boston and have fond memories of the city.
My son and I are sick for the second time since school started. No one liked wearing a facemask last year but I didn’t catch a cold or COVID until my son stopped wearing his.
For the first time in about 15 years I am no long a customer of Verizon Wireless. My family is living the MVNO life. I hope it works out, but I get the impression that, because eSims make switching quick and easy, we can always switch carriers again if we need to.
Upgrade+ from Best Buy sounds incredible. It is tempting me to buy a MacBook that I really can’t afford right now—but could easily afford if paid for over the next three years. 😅 That’s dangerous.
Python 3.11
Tonight I signed up for wireless service through Tello. I will test it alongside Verizon Wireless (via my iPhone’s eSim) for a short time and see how well it goes. I wanted to try Mint, but I need monthly billing for expense reimbursement through work. I almost signed up for Visible but their poor customer service scares me.
🎵 Taylor Swift Releases 7 New Songs Just Hours After New Album Midnights: Listen. Taylor Swift is crazy, y’all.
Here’s a game for a Big Data nerd like me: Is it Pokemon or Big Data?. Very (ok, somewhat) funny and informative.
I received a small windfall today in the form of a prepaid virtual prepaid card, which is quite difficult to spend vs., say, money in my bank account. My office offers the same thing for spot rewards, and even the U.S. government used this scheme for one of the COVID payments last year.
I wasted an hour trying to get it added to my Apple Wallet so I could actually spend it, before I gave up (because it would not work) and requested a plastic card, for a small fee, to be mailed to me weeks from now. The whole thing seems like a scam. How hard is it to send people checks?
I hate it how I can no longer call a doctor’s office and get ahold of a person. The online MyChart sites that all my doctors have are not a good enough replacement for a person who answers the phone.
🎵 Who else is looking forward to Taylor Swift’s new album? My daughter and I are anxiously awaiting its release tomorrow.
It amuses me that the tech pundits seem to hate Apple’s latest iPad and iPad Pro updates.
The Excel gods have not been smiling on me this evening. I can’t get two different worksheets merged the way I want to, which is without requiring my users having to do anything other than click “Refresh all Queries.” It isn’t working. Poor data quality seems to be the culprit.
Did you know you that, in Windows 10’s File Explorer, you can easily copy a file’s full path to the clipboard? You right-click it while the Shift key is down, and select the “Copy as path” item from the context menu, which otherwise isn’t there. 🤯
I think that widescreen 16:9 presentation slides look worse than 3:2 ones. Text gets too wide to read comfortably. Some people divide their slides into two areas side-by-side, like they are two slides in one, which also isn’t good. Those are too busy, I think.
The once and future lawnmowing man
It is stupefying to me that Apple’s new low-end iPad supports the first-generation Apple Pencil and requires a special adapter to pair and charge it. Who thought that would be a good idea?
📚 Greenlights
I started using https://hckrnews.com to browse Hacker News in a less redundant way. It collects the stories that reach the front page of Hacker News and groups them by day. Each story shows up once and doesn’t move around, so it takes a lot less time to browse.
I finally changed over my personal email address to use iCloud. That will save me $20/year on my Hover.com bill and give me an excuse to use my iCloud email account, which has been checked fruitlessly by Apple Mail for many years.
Blah
I have some light reading tonight: Polars User Guide. I basically hate Pandas’s API and hope to use something more nicely designed, and a heck of a lot faster, instead.
📺 I finished watching Slow Horses Season 1 tonight. I loved it and can’t wait for Season 2. I’m wondering if I would like the books that the show is based on. I also wonder if it will get more than two seasons.
I’m uninstalling Visual Studio from my work computer. It feels weird to do it, but I haven’t used it in years. Visual Studio Code killed it for me.
Is there no good and fast way to create an ETL job in Python?
Chess is just poker now
Long-running data feeds are a real thing after all
🎵 Today’s listen: Autofiction by (The London) Suede. It’s really good! They went “punk” after 30 years. 😀
I wrote a SQL script that queried, cleaned, and loaded data into a table. It failed after 9 hours of runtime because of a NULL value in the source data that I had forgotten about. 🤦♂️
I am still learning new T-SQL operators. Today I discovered CROSS APPLY, which is for joining to a table-valued function (with parameters pulled from the other tables).
🎵 Today’s listen: Asphalt Meadows by Death Cab for Cutie. I’m excited to hear new music from one of my favorite bands from the aughts.
Tableau is a very powerful data visualization tool. The more I use it, though, the weirder it is to me from a UI standpoint.  I find it both easier and harder to use that it’s nearest competitor, Microsoft Power BI.
I coded and tested an update to one of my iOS apps tonight. It has been too long since I touched Xcode. I have been working more evening hours this year than ever before—mainly because I am on dad duty during daytime hours—and don’t get to work on my hobbies as much as I used to.
My son lost his first tooth today! It happened while he was at school, eating an apple. His teacher wrapped it up for us and sent it home with a note.
iOS 16 is very nice! I am enjoying the new Lock Screens and how they tie to the system Focus feature.
My idea to eat healthier on my vacation was poorly conceived. 😅
Whitefield, New Hampshire, band concert. My father-in-law is playing a song he arranged and my kids are dancing and running around the town green.

It is my family’s annual drive off to vacation day. We are all excited. I will be driving pretty much all day.
I am supposed to be packing my tech gear for my vacation, so of course I am updating all my Linux boxes and freeing up space on my file server instead.
Yesterday I wiped my old iPad, which was running iPadOS 16 developer beta 3, and reinstalled iOS 15.6. Of course, an hour after I did so, a new developer beta was released that may have fixed the Music app crashing bugs that were vexing me.
🎵 Today’s listen: Gold by Sister Sparrow. Apple Music labels it an “Alternative” album, but it is blue-eyed soul all the way. My favorite track is “Can’t Get You Out of My Mind”; it’s fierce and fun.
My writing as a child:
Why use a small word when a big word will do?
My writing as an adult:
Why use a big word when a small word will do?
🎵 Today’s listen: firstborn by Nicolle Gaylon. It is a veteran country songwriter’s first album. It is full of autobiographical songs which are, interestingly, chronologically ordered from birth to death.
The Music app on the most recent iPadOS 16 developer’s beta crashes a lot. I regret installing the beta for this reason, but it was on a device I could live without, and I did need to test one of my apps.
I don’t need a better notes app. I need to take better notes.
I want to install Linux on an old PC that I have. After looking at all sorts of reviews and videos showing the various desktops and distros I could try, I came to the conclusion that boring old standard Ubuntu would probably suit me best.
🎵 Today’s listen: Emotional Creature by Beach Bunny. I loved this emo-pop band’s debut LP, Honeymoon, a couple years ago. I didn’t know this album was out, so I’m excited to listen to it. The lead single, Oxygen, is good.
Standard Ebooks
Back to converting e-Books with Calibre
Google Fonts
Lexend: Change the way the world reads
First impressions of the Kobo Clara HD e-reader
ChromeOS Flex
Rubik’s Cube
JSON with my son
Impulse purchase: Kobo Clara HD e-reader
🎧 An update on the Sony WH-1000M4
🎵 Today’s listen, Stop the Clocks by Oasis. It is a greatest hits album that is supposedly curated by the band to resemble on of their live show setlists. It is all the Oasis I need, and maybe a bit more.
I am excited to teach my daughter division by unit fractions this evening. I have been telling her that multiplication and division, much like addition and subtraction, are inverse functions. Now I get to show it in action, and it may blow her mind.
📺 I very much enjoyed Stranger Things season 4. After I finished it, I re-watched seasons 1 and 2 (so far), which I have not seen since they debuted. I think they hold up well and I liked them even better than the first time I watched them.
I don’t use Drafts anymore even though it used to be my all-time favorite iOS app. It became way more than I need it to be. Ulysses and Apple Notes have completely overtaken it for writing, and I don’t bother using it any more to create calendar events or execute searches.
Learning with VS Code on Chromebooks
🎮 Today’s listen: The London Suede and Similar Artists Station on Apple Music. This is probably a personalized BritPop playlist. I’m discovering a lot of album cuts I didn’t know about or bother listening to in the 1990s. Also, I now think Blur holds up far better than Oasis.
Pilcrows and silcrows
PeaZip
🎵 Today’s listen: I Miss Britpop. Because I do.
Everything takes longer to do than I expect
The beautiful, overwhelming vastness of the universe
Common Table Expressions
Azure Data Studio
Oh, Schiit
I was delighted to learn this evening that I could install the excellent, open-source database Postgres on my Mac by downloading a simple app bundle—Postgres.app—and copying it to my Applications folder. In contrast, installing SQL Server on my Windows machine at work was a big deal.
🎮 Ori and the Will of the Wisps
ETL with Python
Dependence Day
📺 Stranger Things season 4 really clicked for me. Sure, it has some clumsy bits and didn’t serve half its characters with a real story, but overall I was hooked from the start and loved every minute of it.
Summer computer science
Summer math
I have been resting and collecting thoughts long enough. I plan to start writing blog posts again! I just need to make some time to do it.
I have not felt like I have anything to say lately. It has been a weird, intellectually empty feeling—probably born of overwork and my new, thrice-weekly exercise habit. My mind is scattered and I cannot complete a thought.
I am afraid I am becoming a workaholic. I keep returning to work or work-related stuff in the evenings now, almost every day. I feel like I can’t get enough done during the day anymore.
Today was my son’s preschool graduation. The whole family went to his very cute graduation ceremony this morning. We had a pizza party in his honor this evening, and my wife made a delicious cake to his specifications (chocolate cake, vanilla buttercream). He is very proud of himself and I am very proud of him.
I watched Apple’s WWDC keynote this afternoon. I am most excited about the new MacBooks because I have been hoping for that kind design since 2020. I really want one, but the closest I will ever get is buying one for my daughter next year to use for middle school.
Ask Micro.blog: Can anyone recommend a good PC game controller for young children? I think my kids' hands are too small for my Xbox controller. There are many choices on Amazon but many seem low quality. I’m planning to set up a retro gaming machine.
My son, the programmer
My current Python project
Today was my son’s first playdate, which has been long delayed due to COVID. We met our son’s friend’s parents, who were very nice, and had a fun cookout this afternoon. I even made coffee ice cream in my new ice cream machine.
Enable Recycle Bin on mapped network drives
I did my first workout at my new gym tonight. I am happy I did, and am proud to say that it was not as hard as I thought to get back into cardio and weights again after many years away from them.
Robocopy
I joined a gym 💪
I’m setting up a web server for my five-year-old son to play with on an old Raspberry Pi that fell into disuse a long time ago. I was delighted to discover the Raspberry Pi imager exists now to make OS installs a breeze.
Windows PC setup is still a pain
Today was the first 90º+ day of the year for us in Central New Jersey. I took my family out for ice cream, and later to the beach, to beat the heat. I think everyone had a great day.
🎧 Sony WH-1000M4 headphones are just OK and that sucks
Thinking about my next role at work
I am trying the no-case lifestyle again with my iPhone 12 mini. I am pretty sure my case is the reason why wireless charging is so flakey. Let’s see how long I can go before I drop the slippery thing.
Generating dummy data with Python
I am starting to write a job description for what will be (I hope) my next job—or at least my next job title. As a start, I am researching all the other similar job descriptions from open job postings. I hope I can cobble together something good by the end of the week.
I finally caught COVID
My seasonal allergies have been worse this week than they have been in years. I can’t think straight. I’m hoping pollen season ends early this sprint. 🙁
Working Late
Ah (Choo!), Spring
I’m writing my self-evaluation tonight for work. I’ve blown past the suggested length, but hope it will be OK. I’m that good, after all. 😀
Annual Reviews Are a Terrible Way to Evaluate Employees
Crypto is winning, and Bitcoin diehards are furious about it.
🎮 Knotwords: A New Word Game From Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger
Henry Winkler Breaks the Curse of Stardom
All billionaires are oligarchs
When I used Mac OS 8
📺 I rewatched all of Barry over the past week, and watched the first episode of season 3 tonight. So far, season 3 appears to be off to a fine start.
Elon Musk acquires Twitter for roughly $44 billion
Feeling old
I realize now that I’m writing my blog for my children. A body of work—even a body of an unimportant, inconsequential work—is a better thing to leave behind than nothing at all.
Jazz music is tolerated by my children
Prepping my old MacBook Pro for my son
A keynote address
📺 Netflix canceled my daughter’s favorite show, The Baby-Sitters Club. I haven’t broken the news to her yet, because it would crush her. Consequently, I don’t feel too bad that Netflix has been beaten up by Wall Street this week.
A hastily built presentation is better than nothing
📺 I started rewatching Barry in preparation for the season 3 premiere. It seems impossible that the last episode of season 2 to air was almost three years ago. 🤯
A Python Refactoring Day
Chateau Picard
Be excellent to each other
🎵 Betwixt
I’m giving OneNote an honest try this time
🎙 The Most Thorough Case Against Crypto I’ve Heard
📺 Friday Night Baseball
My daughter is turning 10 next month, and we are finally getting her some “older-kid” gifts. I just ordered her a pair of HomePod minis to use as a stereo pair in her room. I think she is going to love them. Someday she will play something other than Taylor Swift on them, too.
I am wondering if a wireless CarPlay adapter would be worth it. It seems intriguing, but maybe dealing with BlueTooth is more trouble than it’s worth.
My wife and I just ran lines with my daughter for a skit she is working on for her acting class. It was kind of hilarious to act with her. I am either a terrific actor or a terrible ham. I can’t tell which, but I think my wife thinks it is the latter. 😅
📺 Why does the premiere of Apple’s Friday Night Baseball have to coincide with the season finale of Severance?
Refactoring Python
Python for data validation
The reward for doing good work
🎮 Children of Morta
My wife and I hired a cleaning service for the first time since the COVID pandemic started. Of course we spent most of today frantically cleaning the house to prepare for them. 😅
I can’t seem to read books lately. It’s hard for me to even watch TV shows. I wonder if my attention span is shot.
📺 Bill Hader Created a Killer to Cope
Hot Sauce
Try telling Memento Mori to a five-year-old
🎙 Draft of the Ages
📺 Rick Beato on YouTube
Will Smith hits Chris Rock over joke about Jada Pinkett Smith at Oscars
🎵 Do you really want to cry today?
🎵 FTHC by Frank Turner
🎙 Tim’s Back! On Substack!
I learned today that one of my cousins died. Before this I didn’t even know he existed. I am not entirely sure how I should feel. Vaguely sad is all I can muster right now.
🎙 How WordPress and Tumblr are keeping the internet weird, with Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg
One thing that I learned about this year in chess that I never thought about is this:
For grandmasters, sportsmanship is resigning when your opponent will clearly win. For novices, sportsmanship is playing out the game and allowing your opponent to checkmate you even if it is inevitable.
I have not been doing much writing lately. I looked over a white paper I started writing in the fall, and realized I haven’t worked on it since December. I do not wish to abandon it; I’m just not that interested in it right now. I have been busy—and have wasted time—elsewhere.
📺 I love Severence on Apple TV+. It is a strange, darkly comic, slow burn of a suspense story. I thought it was a miniseries, but I learned from Wikipedia that season 2 has already begun shooting—and not too far from where I live. My mind is spinning. Where could they take this weird story?
🎮 Classic Mac games I used to enjoy
Is increased productivity worth the increase in stress?
🎮 I played through through Celeste this week. I really enjoyed the challenge until the last couple levels, when I had to turn Assist Mode on to get through them. I am glad I made it up to the top of the mountain, no matter how I got there.
Plaintext Sports
One of my old websites is #2 on Hacker News right now.

A Groggy Senate Approves Making Daylight Saving Time Permanent
⚾️ I’m watching the Red Sox/Twins opening Spring Training game. I’m happy that baseball is back! Instead of following the Sox, I may watch the MLB free game of the day and jump around the league this year. It will be interesting to see how the new universal designated hitter rule plays out.
🍀 We are having a St. Patrick’s Day dinner tonight. I put the corned beef in the slow cooker and got the potatoes ready for roasting later. I’m even going to cook cabbage for the first time. I plan to sauté it, and hope it turns out well.
All I know is that I don’t want to create a paper maché volcano
🏈 Tom Brady Barely Left and Now is Back
Book Fair
ScratchJr
I got a chance to try Universal Control tonight. It is pretty cool! I think it will come in handy sometimes, when I want to type on my iPad without having to get my BlueTooth keyboard.
I have not had much interesting to say lately. I have been doing boring things like preparing my taxes and watching way more TV than usual. I hope to get out of my creative slump soon.
Judging by the weather—wind, cold, snow, sleet, hail, and rain—it is the last gasp of winter here in New Jersey. All I have wanted to do is sit under a blanket and watch TV.