The Anti Social

Mount Royal and the ten mile range.

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Sunrise beauty.

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The Gore Range is so spectacular.

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Loving this song: American Gospel

A little on the nose.

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Fixed the kayak. Lovely. Even with a few leaks.

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Hard to beat.

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When we visited Brussels, we took a train ride to Bruges. We loved the picturesque countryside and the ease of traveling by train. But in Ghent we were blown away as we pulled into the train station by all the bike parking. Hundreds and hundreds of bicycles. Would love something like that in the US.

Rick Steves: What Americans Can Learn From Europe’s People-Friendly Places

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Flowers

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Lovely wildflow sunrise.

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Sunsets

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Butterfly

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Edges

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I am so happy. 🤗

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Inspired by this post, here are my laptop stickers.

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One of the most powerful concepts I have ever come across is taking a step back to understand the difference between data and narrative.

Data points are objective snapshots of information. Bob has been late to 3 out of the last 5 meetings is an example of data.

Story is what we tell ourselves about the data. Bob is inconsiderate is an example of a story.

It may be true that Bob is rude and wastes other people’s time, but that is just one story that could be told from the data we have.

Here’s the super power: find other stories that fit the data. Here’s a few off the top of my head:

• Bob has unreliable transportation.

• This meeting time conflicts with dropping his child off at school.

• Bob’s attendance at this meeting is unnecessary.

• Bob is regularly double and triple booked.

Perhaps Bob is an inconsiderate jerk—but you actually have no idea from the information provided whether he is or isn’t. But our brains love to jump straight to stories (Bob is a jerk) with complete confidence (look at how often he’s been late). We’re so certain of our stories that we overlook how little information we really have.

I have made this jump more often than I know and have always regretted it. When I am able to step back and realize A does not necessarily imply B — I can take a step back and look at the situation objectively. Many times this means the stories I’ve been telling myself are wrong, and I can give more grace and kindness. But sometimes I find out that the stories I’ve been telling are too kind, and with some extra objectivity, I should expect better.

In both cases, taking a step back and looking at things with an objective lens and separating out what data I know and what stories I believe enables me to do better.

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I’ve been meaning to write an update on my post about electric driving — and only just now have I realized it has been a whole year since that post. Time goes by so fast!

Unfortunately, we had a bit of an accident and completely totaled our Kona (lovingly named Sparky). Thankfully all occupants were okay. It meant though we’d have a new opportunity to re-think what our primary car is.

We found a very lightly used 2024 Ioniq 5 for a significant discount over brand new. (Cars depreciate fast — and this is insane)

The Ioniq 5 was the car I wanted the first time we were shopping, and in the intervening couple of years, they have become much more readily available. As I wrote about last year, I prefer used cars thanks to depreciation, and we actually had a reasonable selection of used Ioniqs across the Denver metro area available. I highly recommend this route — it saved us a bundle on a car that literally only had 400 miles — so was effectively brand new.

The Ioniq 5 solved all the things I didn’t like about the Kona

• We got AWD, which we don’t need or care about very much, but is pretty important in blizzards on I70 in the mountains.

• Still have heated seats — mostly for back pain. These heat up so fast.

• A bit larger, especially in the back seat, so our kids have a bit more leg room.

• This car has a more up to date charging system, so it fast charges so fast. We hardly ever think about charging because we have the at-hone charging which saves so much time — we never need to go to a gas station anymore. But if we forget to charge, or want to take a road trip, it’ll only take about 20 minutes to get back to a reasonable charge level.

• It also has a bigger battery, so its range is higher than the Kona’s, and we actually charge it less often. (we usually charge only once we get below 50%)

• Basically — faster fast charging, longer range, and much more options for fast charging — has all combined and I no longer think about charging or range at all.

Overall — I highly recommend this car if you’re in the market. There have been some reports of challenges online about the charging controller (called the ICCU) and we briefly had a moment of concern driving home from the mountains when we got an error message indicating ours might have a problem. But Hyundai recently issued a software recall on ours, and we haven’t had any additional trouble, so fingers crossed they’ve solved it.

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It has really been incredible to watch Apple’s greed and arrogance in their legal fight with Epic. I was dismayed that Apple won nearly all of the claims in their lawsuit because I’m a big proponent that consumers should be allowed to do what they wish with their own devices. I think consumers should be allowed to install alternative apps, including alternative app stores, without interference by platform owners. (And I think this should be true of all computing devices, including cell phones and game consoles.)

Unfortunately, that’s not the law in the US. So Apple won and consumers lost. But the one issue they did lose on was that In App Purchases having zero competition from Apple was deemed to be illegal tying. Basically, because Apple banned developers from even linking to alternative payment solution, they were illegally tying their market dominance in cellphones to another market (in app purchases).

Despite this loss, Apple won approval that monetizing in app purchases even outside of Apple’s system was permitted. All Apple had to do was allow developers to use their own payment system, and charge a fair and reasonable monetization fee for doing so. So the loss in this case for Apple was not nothing, but in the grand scheme of things, fairly minor. Apple had to open up the App Store a smidge, but they could easily still make significant sums of money by continuing to tax all digital purchases that happened on iPhones through apps, whether through IAP or through developers’ own payment systems.

They came up with a system so onerous it was designed never to be used. Malicious compliance to the nth degree. They came up with an onerous auditing requirement, and the fee they decided to charge was 27%. It was designed to ensure that developers would not be able to adopt it. It was designed to cement the illegal tying, but couched in a way that Apple hoped the court would bless.

Maybe the court would have had an Apple VP hadn’t been caught lying in testimony. Or maybe they would have gotten away with it if Apple hadn’t memorialized in writing a bunch of statements to the effect of, “Let’s make this as unappealing as possible.”

Perhaps if Apple had settled on a fee of 10%, or 15%, or maybe even 20% — they would have won full support. They could have shown that they were acting in Good Faith. Instead, they convinced themselves they were special, got greedy, and ended up committing perjury in the process. And now they aren’t going to get anything from a whole host of apps.

Apple won this case. But because they acted like idiots they turned almost total victory into a major loss. They got greedy, and I am loving seeing a Federal Judge put them in their place.

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I was recently watching a wildlife documentary that had such magnificent up-close videos of animals and it was so well done, I found it distracting. “Is this all CGI? Is it AI? Are they splicing lots of different videos together to make it look seamless?” It was really bugging me.

Well, it turns out the BBC has a dung camera to get all that amazing footage. The BBC just released a behind the scenes look at how they make these documentaries and I can’t wait to learn more.

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I’ve really been enjoying the song From the Depths of Woe by Indelible Grace Music. ( Apple Music Link) So many great lyrics, including:

From the depths of woe I raise to Thee
A voice of lamentation
Lord, turn a gracious ear to me
And hear my supplication
…
Therefore my trust is in the Lord
And not in mine own merit
On Him my soul shall rest
His word upholds my fainting spirit
His promised mercy is my fort
My comfort and my sweet support

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We now have a greenhouse in our backyard!!

We are growing/starting some plants for the garden in it — but the main goal was to replace our patio with a really awesome backyard hangout space.

Why a greenhouse?

• Covered so we can enjoy during rain, shine or snow

• We had our first thunderstorm in it the other day, the pounding rain on the glass was incredible

• Greenhouses are warm! Great for cooler fall and spring days where even just a few extra degrees would make it more comfortable to be outside (and the greenhouse can consistently deliver about a 5º-10º improvement)

• They’re enclosed, so even on windy days it’s nice to be outside (helps keep it a bit warmer too when the wind has a bite)

• It’s almost like adding a new room onto the house

• Love the extra sunshine

• Includes windows and shades to help cool on hot summer days (we will see how effective this is!) I’m not sure how usable it will be at solar noon in the middle of August. But we have enough tall trees on the west side, that between those, the windows and shades — I’m hopeful it doesn’t diminish our summer evenings outside by being too hot. I’ll see and report back.

Repeatedly I’ve looked at Alissa while enjoying the greenhouse and said, “This is the best purchase we’ve made in years.”

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I’ve been obsessed with watching this live feed of bald eagles in California. They’ve got two baby eaglets and it’s so fun to watch them get fed by mom and dad. There’s a third egg, and we’re all just waiting for it to hatch. Hopefully soon!

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I remember one day on my commute into work, I hopped on to the bus I took every day, and pulled out my phone to read the Bible as was my custom. And whatever reading plan I was on brought me to Matthew 23.

Though I had encountered this chapter numerous times before, for whatever reason that particular day, that particular chapter really hit me hard. Each paragraph begins with a condemnation against the religious leaders, rulers and teachers of Jesus’ day. ‘What sorrow awaits you’ … ‘what sorrow awaits you’ … ‘what sorrow awaits you.’ Truly — it is an epic smackdown of the religious elite of Jesus’ day and is worth reading even if you don’t pick up all the nuance.

And I remember reading this and thinking — how can I make sure that Jesus never says anything like this about me?

These men devoted themselves to God’s teaching. They could cite chapter and verse of everything they believed. But somewhere along the way, they lost the plot. They could cite Hosea 6:6, “I desire mercy not sacrifice” — but when the religious rulers question why Jesus would take care of the lost and lowly, they can’t understand what “I desire mercy not sacrifice” truly means. And so—and to folks who dedicated their lives to learning the Bible, this insult almost can’t be overstated—Jesus told them to go learn what “I desire mercy not sacrifice” means. ( Matthew 9:13) Imagine being told to go learn something you’ve spent most of your life trying to learn. Ouch.

Somewhere along the way, studying theology became more important than putting any of it into practice. Or to put it more pithily: their thinking became more important than their doing.

And so with that in mind, Jesus’ condemnation in Matthew 23 becomes quite convicting. They were so devoted to God’s commandments around tithing (giving a tenth) that they would even make sure to give God a tenth of every herb and spice they grew (today and even then worth only a few cents) while neglecting God’s love of justice, mercy and faith. (Matthew 23:23)

If we are to understand Jesus fully, God seems a lot less interested in our performative displays of piety and a lot more interested in justice, mercy and faith. The Pharisees were so obsessed with being perceived as righteous, they went to the trouble of making sure they didn’t short God even a penny or two on their herb gardens — while robbing God blind by not taking care of those He entrusted to them.

Jesus’ warnings are dire: it is possible to love the Bible so much that you lose sight of loving the people God loves: the lost, the lowly, the broken, those far from God.

I’ve often heard people who acknowledge this problem but say something to the effect of, “Well, I am loving people by not giving them bad theology.” I’ve heard this on topics as wide ranging as end times eschatology, judgment and hell, gay marriage, abortion, and content preferences in music, books, and movies.

Let us not mince words. Bad theology can be deadly. It was bad theology that justified slavery. Bad theology for the extermination of Native Americans. Bad theology for environmental destruction. Bad theology against American democracy. And it’s bad theology that hates everything from guitars, to drums, to dancing in churches that has lead to a significant schism in both Protestantism and our witness.

What to do? I think it goes back to God’s desire in Hosea 6—I desire mercy not sacrifice. God seems to delight in extraordinary and patient grants of mercy, even to his worst enemies. We are most like him when we show people love, grace and mercy — especially at great personal sacrifice. (no wonder this is not popular!)

I also think there’s significant room for us to hold our ‘theological convictions’ with a loose grip. The Pharisees were the product of hundreds of years of serious biblical study culminating in every Pharisee dedicating their lives to the continued study and teaching of ‘biblical values’. We need to have some significant humility. If they can miss the mark so badly, so can we.

I am convinced that when I die, I will hold some beliefs, ideas and theologies that are just simply wrong. That, in the glorious light of Day, all will be illuminated. I’m not sure I can prevent that — so much of our theology is put together by piecing together scraps of scripture and trying to make sense of it. If God wanted us to have a full picture of theology, He probably would have spent more time giving us more than scraps to piece together.

But what He did reveal clearly, over and over and over again: Love Him. Love people.

And even that we aren’t always going to get right. But if He says that’s most important, we must start there. Love God. Love people. Let the chips fall where they may.

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I need a catchier title for this, but one of my favorite forms of content are when someone quotes an idiom in an attempt to discredit it, but in the process ends up proving the point of the idiom in the first place.

Many years ago at my old church, one of the pastors spent an entire sermon talking about how much he hated the St. Francis of Assisi quote: “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.” The idea, of course, is that our lives should always be preaching the Gospel by how we live, and when given the opportunity, we can talk about our faith.

Well, this pastor spent the whole sermon talking about how much he hated this because there are going to be times you need to speak up. Yes, of course. That is why there’s that part about using words when you need to. In preaching this sermon against this saying, you’ve said you’re trying to debunk it, but you just ended up proving it out.

Another recent example: I saw a clip on Instagram of a guy saying that he’s a contrarian to the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” but how we need to support families with kids because it’s hard to raise without a community.

Yes, that is what the saying means. You are not a contrarian, you just didn’t understand the phrase and ended up restating it, worse, and with more words.

I need a title for this phenomenon of quoting sayings to debunk them but you just end up explaining the original saying. There’s probably a logical fallacy with a fancy Latin title that someone should point me to.

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Before even covid began, I started doing strong lifts 5x5. I liked its simplicity. I got the app because I really like when working out not having to think about weights, or tracking, or whatever exercise I need to do — I want to focus on form and technique, so I let the app worry about the details.

During covid when all the gyms were closed, I bought a bunch of weights (way overpriced) and did my lifts in the garage. When we moved houses, I dedicated a basement bedroom to my gym and have inconsistently lifted strong lifts 5x5 ever since. But as time as gone on, I’ve become a little bored with the program and how long it takes.

Enter Strong Lifts 5x5 Ultra. It splits the workouts, and puts them across 4 days instead of 3. I de-loaded heavily and have started from the beginning. I am a big believer that consistency beats intensity and am hoping that more consistently lifting more days of the week (for shorter time each one) will be a better work out. Day one, check!

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Last night as I journaled, I checked my streaks and saw I just hit my 2,000th day in a row of journaling. 🙌🏼

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Last October, I got back into 3d printing. After doing a bit of research, I decided on the Bambu Lab A1, with AMS Lite which allows you to print in 4 different colors.

Years ago I had a Creality printer which I enjoyed playing with, but it was so fiddly. You had to manually level, manually adjust, manually do everything to make it print well. It worked well enough, but it definitely got old after a while.

Someone said the Bambu printers are the “Apple of 3d printers” — it just works. That’s generally what I’ve found. Load the filament, find a model on my phone, press a couple buttons, and an hour or two later my object is printed. I’ve had far far far fewer problems with printing on this printer, it’s been wonderful! Highly recommend it.

I 3d printed a bunch of little fidget toys for Christmas stocking stuffers, and have printed a ton of useful little organization boxes for my office. Been loving it!

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I’m currently re-watching the movie A Hidden Life. It’s 3 hours long, but my goodness is one of the most spectacularly beautiful films I’ve ever seen. Depicting the incredible beauty of a simple farming life in the shadow of mountains in Austria, it shows the true story of a faith-filled farmer named Franz who refused to go along with the Nazis, and they killed him for it.

How terrible the human cost of war, of tyranny, and of outright hate. Perhaps some would say that Franz should have just given in, but his faith in God never allowed him to compromise like that. As MLK Jr famously said, the time is always right to do what is right.

May this be a lesson we carry with us into 2025.

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I decided for some reason to try to install Fortnite on my Mac. Let me walk you through all the steps I took to do so:

1. Found the Epic website for Fortnite. Clicked the link to download. Takes me to a login screen.

2. Oh great, I can use different accounts to login and I see Nintendo as an option. Great, I know I have a Nintendo account so I’ll just do that.

3. Use my password manager to fill out the username and password field. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Mentally note all the 11 year olds I’m about to crush in Battle Royale.

4. A “Select all the crosswalks from this square of 9 images” captcha window pops up. I select the crosswalks, including as images replace the images I select. I pass. Yay, I am not an emotionless robot!

5. No account with that email address. record scratch Wait, what? The field clearly says I could enter either my username or my email address and I used my username. Okay. Let’s try with the email address I think I used for this account.

6. Go back through selecting all the cross walks. Wait for the verdict on whether I’m a bot or not. I haven’t turned into a bot in the past 90 seconds, apparently. Yay!

7. “We’ve emailed you a login code”. Ugh. Fine, I’ll open my email and find it. Wait a bit for my email to sync. Find the email.

8. Enter the login code. Hit enter.

9. “Incorrect code”. What??? It’s literally the code you JUST sent me. Double check the email message and see if I missed something and copied the wrong thing. Doesn’t look like it. Did selecting the code accidentally miss a character? Again, doesn’t look like it.

10. Deliberately slow down a bit. Copy the code again. Paste the code. Switch back and forth and make sure it copied correctly. Looks like it did.

11. Okay, I am 99% certain I entered the exact same code the second time but this time it works. Eventual consistency, man.

12. “Do you want to share your name and email with Epic?” Not really but I guess I have to…

13. Now the Epic screen is here. “Please enter your multi-factor code!” Wait — I just did? What the heck? Go back to my email, try to copy and paste the code into the Epic form, but it’s one letter short. Go back to my email, I see I have two new emails. Both from Nintendo, “There’s been a new login to your account.” The second one, “You’re now sharing information with Epic.” Ugh.

14. Comment to myself this is literally 10 more steps than I have ever had to log in to any of my banking accounts. If anyone wants my Epic account they can have it, surely this is not worth it. Rethink for a moment if I even want Fortnite on my Mac. Press on anyway.

15. Decide to search my password manager for Epic, and find that I had saved an account with a password, and MFA! Briefly think about what a massive waste of time it was to try to use my Nintendo account instead earlier. Copy/paste the MFA code and hope that it’s the right account.

16. Great! I’m in! Hooray! Looks like I’m at a store front? Okay. Let’s click the download link.

17. Download works fine. Oh, it’s downloading the Epic launcher and not Fortnite. Okay. Cool, I guess? I really only want Fortnite, I will literally never use it for anything else.

18. Move the Fortnite Launcher into the Applications folder. Eject the DMG. Open Applications folder. Launch Epic Launcher.

19. “Please login.” FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

20. Well remembering what a nightmare it was to login with the Nintendo account, I go straight to the Epic account. Enter my username, my password, the MFA code when prompted. Takes me straight back to the store. Great, now we’re cooking with gas.

21. Search for Fortnite. “Buy for free”. Okay, sure whatever. Click through several checkout prompts as if I am making a purchase. Get to the end of the checkout process, “You have already purchased this game, access it through the library.”

22. Okay fine, whatever. Locate the library link. I only have Fortnite in my library. I click on it. I click download.

23. I noticed in the left panel a “download progress” link has appeared. I click on it, curious to see how long this will take.

24. I gasp when I see that Fortnite requires 93GB of storage. That seems like … quite a lot?

25. “You must free 70GB of storage to download Fortnite.”

26. I hurl my laptop into the sun.

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I have been on a years-long effort to make my home workspace as comfortable and clean as possible. Just so we are all on the same page, here’s the view I have when working out of my home office:

Does it always look this neat and perfect? of course not. I shoved some of my clutter off to the side. I’m a pretty fidgety guy so I have a number of fidget toys. I also have a USB-C charging cable I use to charge various devices, so often my USB-C headphones, my Switch, or other random devices will sit on my desk when I’m working charging.

The Setup

The left computer is a personal Mac mini, the right computer is a MacBook Pro that belongs to my employer. I use Universal Control so I only need one set of keyboard and trackpad to use between machines. If I had to describe Universal Control in one word … flakey. Even writing the previous paragraph it disconnected randomly right in the middle of typing. I like Apple’s products generally — but I am finding as time goes on that it is very hard to rely on consistently. Moving the pictured MacBook closer to the Mac mini has certainly helped, the Mac mini is mounted behind the left display. But it still disconnects several times a day.

I try to keep work and personal activities separate. Hence why I have two computers at my desk.

Ergonomically it’s okay, I definitely don’t want to spend extended time on the personal display because I have to turn my head. But that’s okay because my work computer is my focus when I’m sitting in my office, my personal computer is just there for personal mail, photos, and an occasional text. When I’m here I’m working and I focus on my work computer.

Cleaning up cables

A couple months ago I got these Thin Client mounts. I’ve had my monitors on a monitor arm for a while which is great because it frees up so much desk space. But I still had so many cables so I was looking for a good way to consolidate.

Here’s the Mac mini in the thin client mount behind the left display:

I’ve tried to make it a bit neater with cable management, but it is still an eyesore for my wife. (my wife gets the space across from my desk) It’d be a bit better if my desk was up against a wall, but we just don’t have that kind of space in this house.

I have an old 2018 Mac mini with two USB hard drives that I use as backup space for my complete photo library, documents, mail, etc. We’ve got gigabit fiber internet, so everything gets a hardwired ethernet connection.

Then there’s my work computer. I have a little dock for the MacBook Pro, but I have quite a few peripherals I attach to it which I do through a Cal-digit dock. The dock has been great, super reliable, and it is one of the few out there with multiple USB-C ports and USB-A ports. I really underestimated how, even today, it’s hard to find hubs and docks with sufficient USB-C ports.

What I like about this dock is that I have one cable that goes from it to my laptop and that cable does everything, external display, ethernet connection, connection to my USB-C camera for video conferences, power, etc. What I don’t like about it is that it has ports all over, so it was like having a big spider on my desk and cables were everywhere. So I got another of those thin client holders and moved the dock behind my monitor:

I like that this dock has a bunch of USB-A and USB-C ports, but it lacks a network connection or HDMI connection, so I have another dock connected that has those ports that I’ve put right next to it. It feels kind of Frankenstein-y, but it works better than I expected.

And there you have it. No one was asking but it feels good to have a space that makes me happy and helps me do my best work.

What’s Next
I’d really like Apple to improve universal control, that’s the one thing that frustrates me multiple times a day. It’s downright unusable for anything except the most basic use. (my use is just basic enough I can sort of tolerate it but it is so frustrating)

I’d also like to see more inexpensive monitors with more downstream USB-C ports. The dock for my right monitor is inaccessible enough — what I really want is one or two USB-C ports that I can plug my temporary devices into. (think USB-C Yubikeys, and USB-C headphones, and cables to charge my AirPods, trackpad, etc) The Dell Ultrasharps come close, but they’re either way too expensive, or like the one I have, has only one USB-C downstream port.

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Like many, I’ve been trying to reduce my screen time use on my phone so I can be more present with family and friends. I’ve been very judicious about what notifications I allow to interrupt me (only my wife’s, kids’ and a few close friends’ messages immediately ping me — everyone else can wait until I have a moment to look at my messages). I’ve been using focus modes and scheduling to hide certain pages of apps from me so I don’t mindlessly scroll my work chat or email when I’m not working.

And when I wake up first thing, my phone is in black and white mode automatically. My phone is perfectly usable, and I still often scroll Instagram for a few minutes, but the black and white filter helps remind me I don’t want to spend my whole morning on the ’Gram.

So I really enjoyed reading the Brooks Review post incorporating all of the above into a focus mode he activates on-demand when he wants to be present. I particularly like that he activates his black and white filter on demand — I’ll have to think about having a similar focus mode!

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