I should take photos of my kids every day. I don’t know why I don’t, but I should.

Because it is back to school time, my mind has once again turned to collecting new recipes to try for easier fall cooking. Vegetable soups are the top priority today.

Thompson Park

📚 I am enjoying Dan Moren’s latest book, The Aleph Extraction.

I decided I wanted a universal snippet on my Mac to use to insert the date in the format I want it in. To my surprise, Dash, my code reference tool, can do that. If I want something more focused, it looks like aText might be the best, cheap app to do it on the Mac (and there’s a Windows version, too). (I used to run TextExpander, but that’s too expensive and way more feature filled than I need.)

There are thousands of COVID-19 cases at colleges and universities in the news this week. What happened to the elementary, middle, and high schools that have opened already? What’s going to happen in a week or two when students around where I live start going back to school? All the news articles I came across about them were about parents' anxiety rather than the actual consequences in schools that opened up in August. Has nothing much happened? That seems impossible, based on what young adults (not that different than high school students) are facing.

I gave myself a haircut today. It seems that it takes longer to do the less often I do it. It has been hard for me to keep to a once-per-week schedule, but I like the idea of having that kind of discipline.

How can it be that the teapot emoji hasn’t existed until this year and that Apple doesn’t support it yet, even on the iOS 14 beta?

I’m thrilled and relieved to discover this morning that the reason my desktop stereo stopped working yesterday is because, somehow, I toggled the input switch on my DAC (which I never touch) to some incorrect setting. Of course, I pulled all the components (with dials and switches I use all the time) apart and tested them individually first. 😅

My AnyList subscription is expiring soon. I am strongly considering switching to Paprika 3 for my grocery list app. I already own it, it does what I need, and, most importantly, its Apple Watch app doesn’t require an annual subscription. My wife and I are going to try it out next week.

Lord & Taylor is closing all its stores. Pier One closed all their stores earlier this year. Years ago, when I was in business school, I thought that retail stores mostly were going away. I expected it, but it still feels weird to live through it as it slowly happens, especially when places nearby are going to close and it is unclear what will replace them.

I am wrapping up a huge project at work today and tomorrow. It feels good.

School is starting today for my wife, who is a teacher, and for my daughter, who is a student in a different school and district. Both are starting the year remotely. We will see how it goes for the surrounding towns doing in-person/hybrid models. The news reports about COVID spreading in universities are really worrying. I hope for the best, and I hope that students and teachers can learn and work remotely for the whole school year.

Nintendo bringing Super Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy to Switch. This is great news for me, because I missed all those games. Of course, now I don’t have any time to play them. 😅

After about a month I am still playing several games of Good Sudoku by Zack Gage every day. I highly recommend it!

At this point in the pandemic, I am still limiting grocery store trips to once per week, but I started to forgo wearing gloves and to use (touch) my Apple Watch and iPhone for my shopping list (on AnyList). I wash everything with soap and hot water after I get home. I hope I am doing enough to keep safe.

I am pretty sure that I need scissors to open my new scissors. 🤦‍♂️

As Apple pundits debate whether or not a new product announcement looms in the near future, I am trying to psych myself up for another year with my super old devices. I’m trying to appreciate the value I am extracting from them, which isn’t as fun to think about as ooh, new, shiny.

Amazon’s Alexa has been a pretty lackluster addition to my household. It gets our music-related requests wrong most of the time: usually playing the wrong radio station or, for albums with a title track, it plays the song and not the album. Mostly, the kids try to get it to say stupid things.

Tonight I assembled a desk that my wife bought, so she could work from home more easily.

Now that it is September, it is finally time for me to upgrade my iPhone to the developer beta. I have been running the developer betas of iPadOS 14 for some time now without incident.

It amuses me that Gruber and Moltz are recommending “Ted Lasso” on “The Talk Show” this week. My wife and I love that show, too.

Prepping pancakes to surprise the kids in the morning.

I have been enjoying Apple Music’s new iOS 14 beta feature for infinite playback of similar music after an album ends. I can see it being annoying sometimes, because you might not know that your album has ended, but it is nice when my main goal is to fill my head with pleasant sound and not worry about being my own personal DJ.

If I am lucky, this week will be a return to normal working hours and stress levels. If I am not lucky, well…