I am going to start trying to get my kids to watch the nature documentary-style movies on Disney+ later today. The new ones look gorgeous, and the old ones had fun narratives, invented from the wildlife footage, to follow. I loved the old True Life Adventures movies that used to be on the Disney channel all the time when I was a kid, and found one of them, The Living Desert on Disney+ last night. Disney+ also has National Geographic content, which I have to dive into more next. I am cautiously optimistic that my kids will enjoy them (or at least tolerate them sometimes and learn something).

I’m pushing a small bug fix update out for one of my apps, and re-thinking my git branching strategies a little, because I have been stuck in version control hell for a while now.

I got over my last cold-turned-sinus-infection late last week, and I am already coming down with the next one. Oh, the joys of having a toddler in preschool. 🤧😕

I am updating my FreeNAS box right now, not because I need to keep it current (it’s working fine), but because I can’t help myself. 🤞

My personal life today consisted of no news, then bad news, then good news, all on different fronts. I plan to unwind a bit, later on, and watch “His Dark Materials” on HBO.

I am happy that I have subscribed to the “Poem-a-Day” email series from Poets.org. Each new poem makes my world a tiny bit bigger. Poetry is something I have missed, without realizing it, since I studied and wrote it in college.

Jeanne Marie Laskas’s article in The New York Times is absolutely wonderful:

“If you make him out to be a saint, people might not know how hard he worked,” Joanne said. Disciplined, focused, a perfectionist — an artist. That was the Fred she and the cast and crew knew. “I think people think of Fred as a child-development expert,” David Newell, the actor who played Mr. “Speedy Delivery” McFeely, told me recently. “As a moral example maybe. But as an artist? I don’t think they think of that.”

Go read it.

I started my day by putting “do something great" at the top of my task list. The greatest thing I did today was rather humble: I cooked delicious butternut squash soup for my family. I will count that as a win.

The credit card my wife and I use the most got compromised again yesterday. It happens about once every year or two. I don’t know how it happens, but the bank’s fraud detection always catches it somehow, so I guess we are ok. 🤷‍♂️

I have to do required ethics training today for one of my audit certifications. Unfortunately, having watched “The Good Place” does not excuse me from the CPE requirements.

I hope to start to get more meaningful programming work done this week. I have been sick or on antibiotics (which knock me out) for the past three weeks.

There’s nothing like an unscheduled play date in a few hours to get me to clean up the messy parts of the house I normally don’t want to bother with.

Democrats should not move to the left or the right to win in future elections. They should move to Wyoming.

The amount of family disruption that has started since our 2-year-old son discovered he can boss around Alexa is absolutely staggering.

So far, I have found Apple Arcade to be overwhelming, in terms of number of games available, and underwhelming, in terms of whether I want to spend more time playing games. One gem I found was “Shantae and the Seven Sirens” (a colorful Metroidvania-style game). I wanted to like the Oceanhorn sequel better than I did, but it just didn’t grab me. There are lots of irreverent, mobile-style games, too, which I tried, but can’t really justify putting more time into.

I think that I mainly don’t have time to play video games right now, and don’t want another monthly subscription to worry about (even though it is a low dollar one) either. My plan is to cancel my free trial just before it rolls over into a paid subscription. Perhaps I will try it again later.

I enjoyed this article about Chi-Fi from at The Verge:

The factories that make the drivers don’t care who they sell to; they maintain a certain level of quality because their clients depend on that. And once you’ve sourced the parts, it’s not expensive at all to put them together. “If you have a van and a bottle of glue,” Klasco says, “you can be in the business.”

I am a happy customer of one of the oldest Chi-Fi brands, HifiMan, which makes planar magnetic headphones at super low prices. Well, their prices are low for what types of products they sell, but in real dollar terms, they are pretty high: HifiMan mostly sell multi-hundred-dollar headphones, not $25 AirPods rip-offs.

I avoid most other Chi-Fi brands, because I would be concerned that build quality, and therefore produce longevity, would be very low. That said, I have paid lots of money for headphones from well-known, well-regarded, non-Chinese brands, and had them break in under two years.

I voted in my town’s local election this evening. It worries me, in a way that it hadn’t before, that our voting machines do not create a hard copy record of our votes—just an idiotic, digital bloop. I hope my vote still counts.

I am not sure why, but I keep thinking lately that I need to read poetry by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

I had to reboot my iPad (iPadOS 13.2) to get the Files app to show me the same files on iCloud Drive that my iPhone (iOS 13.2) shows. As the developer of a Files-based app, this kind of thing is really frustrating! 😢

Call me crazy, but the last thing I want to read is “How Trump Reshaped the Presidency in 11,000 Tweets.”

I think the clock change today actually allowed my family to catch up on a little sleep today. That’s a first!

I have a cold. 🤒😤

I made it through Halloween without eating any candy! I did eat a little homemade brownie, but I don’t feel too guilty about that.

I both (1) don’t want everything to be partisan, and (2) don’t understand why two Democratic representatives in the House (including one from my state) voted against the Trump impeachment rules resolution. Note that I already don’t expect_any_ of the Republicans to act in good faith.

Foul weather, though not as foul as expected, canceled my daughter’s Halloween parade this morning. We’ll see in a couple hours how trick-or-treating will be affected. It’s not raining right now, so who knows?