The Anti Social

I’ve been coding more side projects lately. I have an idea for my own Indieweb server to one day replace how I manage this website. My goal is to make it easier to post images and galleries. Eventually I kind of want my own personal Instagram on this site.

I’ve long wanted some blogging engine based on serverless tech so it could be something that I’d host as close to free as possible.

Since nothing quite like what I want exists, I’m building it myself. I’d say I have about 90% of the proof of concept done, now I’m just adding all the boring stuff (like auth and tests) before it’s in a state that I can start using it to publish this site.

But, damn, that last 10% always takes longer than the first 90% put together!

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I’ve been meaning to write about the electric car we purchased a little over a year and a half ago but honestly — what is there to say? It’s a car. It gets me from point A to point B, and it does so really well.

There was a time when driving a car powered by electricity was novel and there were a million things you needed to know but — I think those days are largely over. It’s a car. It does car things. I just have a ‘gas station’ at home so the lie “I’ll get gas in the morning” is no longer necessary.

We got the 2023 Electric Kona limited. It’s honestly been the best car we’ve ever owned, but probably that’s mostly because it’s the newest car we’ve ever owned. Many of the things we like about it have nothing to do with it being electric:

• Smart/adaptive cruise control is great on the highways. You set the upper speed limit but the car has a radar in the front that slows it down if the cars ahead of you slow down.

• Lots of safety features none of our other cars have. It’ll auto-brake for you if someone slams on their breaks ahead of you and you don’t react fast enough. The slightly more interesting option for me though is that it will detect cars in your blind spot that you might be pulling in front of and stop you. (I had this happen to me when I was pulling out of on-street parking in my neighborhood when an Amazon Prime truck turned down my street going about 2x the speed limit. I didn’t notice it because he was going so fast entirely in my blind spot, but the car did and prevented me from getting in front of it.) Also — love having a backup camera.

• CarPlay is great.

• I had heated seats in a previous car, but this car has cooling seats as well and that’s just really awesome in the summer.

It did cost a bit more than we hoped to pay for a new car, but the significantly lower operating costs have already been helpful. We were paying close to $450/mo on gas. In the winter when our solar panels don’t generate enough to offset our electric use, we were paying anywhere from $50-$125/mo in electric costs. (not entirely from the electric car, but figure this is a good SWAG of how much we pay)

We kept a gas car that is our “adventure car” — the car we take camping, the car with AWD for mountain driving, and the car that’s old enough if it gets a little banged up, no big deal — but we use the electric car as our “default” so we only gas up the adventure car about every 6 weeks or so. (Unless we are adventuring, obviously)

I’ve seen memes about how electric cars are so bad for the environment, yada yada yada. But I think that overlooks how bad cars (and all the related infrastructure — how much land is devoted to parking cars, highways, gas stations, storing cars in garages, etc) are compared to nearly any other form of transportation. Electric cars are an (in my view, minor) improvement over gas cars environmentally but still nearly any other transportation option is better — walking, biking, electric biking, electric scootering, any available transit (bus or train) — in roughly that order.

All that said, we live in suburbia and can’t get away from using a car, and of all our options, the electric car we have has been a wonderful addition to the family. If you are in a situation where you can regularly charge your car at home — I think it’s nearly a no-brainer if you want to buy a new car. They are a bit more expensive than the other new options, but the reduced operating costs and simpler mechanics mean you will be able to own and run most electric cars much longer (and more affordably) than most gas cars.

If you’re not someone to buy a new car — probably for the best — still get the most efficient used car. That, in my view, remains the best option environmentally and fiscally.

Finally — the best electric vehicle I own is not the car, but my e-bike. It is SO fun to ride. Being a bike I can get more distance than the e-scooter I also own, and I can get a small bit of a workout in too. If you were to get anything, get an e-bike! They’re the best electric vehicle you can get right now and even a super fancy one will cost way less than even the least expensive car.

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I got my M1 Macbook Air right at release in 2020, and over the past year or two I’ve noticed that the sound quality on it has gotten progressively worse and worse.

I long suspected it was because of dust/dirt/debris in the tiny little speaker holes, but I long dreaded taking the machine apart to try to clean them out.

Finally fed up with hardly any sound coming out of the right side, and deteriorating sound quality/loudness from the left side, I Googled and found many people suggested using a new toothbrush to clean out debris.

I spent about 10 minutes and used the light from my phone to see which holes looked blocked. After getting as much dirt out as I can, I booted it back up and started playing some music and — WOW.

I had no idea the speakers could get this loud or be this undistorted. Should have done this ages ago. Will hold on to this cleaning toothbrush for future cleanings.

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Bing Beverage. By big vice is probably drinking too much soda. In the past 10 years or so I’ve cut it down significantly but I still like a little sweet drink most days, and I really enjoy Bing. We discovered them at a local showing of the Banff Film Festival (which also inspired us to go to Banff the next year!) when someone was handing them out to promote them. They’re kinda hard to find, but my local grocery store consistently sells them chilled.

Brianna’s Poppy Dressing. We’ve been eating a lot more salad lately, which is a great thing, and I discovered my now favorite dressing through Target. I always laugh at this label, I call it the peach dressing because they have a big picture of a peach. Not because this has any peach in it (it doesn’t) but because the poppy dressing is supposed to be really good on peaches. I like my Colorado peaches as-is, so I’ll just have to take their word for it.

What are some things you really enjoy?

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Happy Leap Day! Today ends my social media exile. A few thoughts:

1. I have not been perfectly social media-free because while I deleted the apps from my phone, I left the apps installed on my iPad and laptop so occasionally I would peek at them.

2. Honestly, I’m not sure what it is, but I found using them on my laptop in particular to be extremely un-compelling compared to my phone. I would scroll for a few minutes and get bored and do something else. On my phone I could easily scroll and scroll and scroll…

3. Part of it may be that I kept myself from posting anything during this month. I occasionally liked or hearted things if they were especially momentous (such as seeing some friends who welcomed their new baby into the world) but otherwise I passively scrolled until I was bored, which came pretty quickly.

4. Because of that, I accomplished my main goal which is to re-claim my time from the black hole of social media use. More on that in a moment.

5. I think going forward I will continue to occasionally use Threads, Facebook, Nextdoor, Linkedin from my laptop/iPad only. I will re-install the Instagram app on my phone for a couple of reasons. One, it is the app that the majority of my friends use. (hello millennial friends!) and two, mostly we use and share stories which I still enjoy posting to keep in touch and you really can’t (certainly can’t easily) post these anywhere except through the mobile app.

Instagram is still my “refrigerator” app — the app I open most often when I am bored and have nothing else to do, like checking the refrigerator not because I’m hungry. So there’s still a bit of concern that I will spend too much time on Instagram, but this little mini-vacation is enough to convince me to keep it on a tight leash.

One of the best ways to break a habit is to replace it with a better habit, so what are some things I am doing instead?

1. My 15 year old decided he didn’t want his Switch OLED anymore which he only got a few months ago. I bought it off of him, and have been using it to play some quick matches with my oldest son on Fortnite.

2. Many evenings, I have been re-watching some episodes of the Americans while playing Minecraft with my 15yo. Quality bonding time —if you fast forward through the sex scenes. 🙈

3. I’m back on the scripture reading and praying wagon. I have often done the 5 day reading plan but have been struggling lately. So I switched gears this years and am just reading a single Psalm a day. It has been — wonderful.

4. More walks as the sun has come out and we’ve had some of the most beautiful weather for February ever.

You might be like — you replaced one bad habit (social media) with two different bad habits (video games and tv) and I think that’s fair. However — with a pretty full schedule, my TV/video game consumption has been near zero for probably close to 10 years. Not actually zero — I’m not against either, obviously — but small enough that occasionally I would fit a show in here and there amongst many other things.

With a slightly freer schedule, I am catching up on some TV shows I have really wanted to see. And I’m rewatching some series (The Americans in particular) that I’ve really enjoyed, and doing so while playing video games with my kids.

And for me, video games have been almost entirely relational. A good way to find common ground with my kids. I like Minecraft but I only play it as much as I do to connect with my kiddo. Same with Fortnite with my other kid.

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Some of these are hyper-specific to my neighborhood or town, others are more general to my state (Colorado) and country (USA).

• That we know many of our neighbors, right next door and across the street

• Our neighborhood is full of people from every life stage — from retirees to young professionals to families with young kids

• We live in a remarkably walkable area. The library is an 8 minute walk, the rec center is 10, a grocery store only about 15 minutes. Within just a few blocks are numerous parks and open spaces.

• Our neighborhood is full of houses with lots of large windows and hardwood floors.

• Our town has a goal of something like 40% open space.

• Colorado has stepped up to really help people. From free school lunches for all, to free college for foster kids. I am proud to be a Coloradan.

• I love all the state parks, mountains and hiking options less than one hour from my house. An embarrassment of riches, truly.

• I live in an older neighborhood full of so many huge trees of all kinds of different varieties.

• Denver International is one of the biggest airports in the country — I can get almost anywhere in North America with a direct flight.

• We have a wonderful culture of being active and being outside. 300 days of sunshine a year!

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Much has been made in Christian-circles (is that a thing?) about how people are leaving Christianity through a process that somewhere along the way picked up the name deconstruction.

I have a number of good friends I know who have undergone their own deconstruction. Most started out with fairly classical fundamentalist views and many of them are now fully out on faith completely, still-believing-but-very-much-not-fundamentalist-anymore (need a catchier title for that one), or they have just abandoned discussing faith entirely so who really knows what they are?

I was having coffee with a pastor friend of mine and we got to talking about this and he said he appreciated and really respected my approach. First of all, I felt like that was one of the highest compliments I could ever receive. (2 months later he proved it wrong and called me a great father—now THAT is a compliment that lifts one’s spirits) And secondly, what deconstruction?

As I look back over the past ~15 years, I do have to admit that my faith has changed. How I experience and think about God has changed. What I share, and what I find important has changed. But honestly, all these changes are either entirely expected, or somewhat on the periphery. I still fundamentally believe much of the same things now as I did before. And I think there’s a few key reasons for that.

First, I find Jesus endlessly appealing. Always have. He hangs out with sinners. He has incredible one-liners and comebacks when the bad guys question him. He knows how to have a good time and was accused of partying and drinking too much. He loves people no one else loves. He gives up his life for those he loves. He is exactly who I want to be. Always have. No matter what you think about all the God stuff — Jesus as a person is exactly who we all innately wish we were. Or, at least, we wish we had a best friend exactly like this. We know this because people who were nothing like Jesus loved being around him.

Second, I find Jesus endlessly challenging. I do. I don’t think Jesus was being metaphorical when he said sell everything you have and follow me. I don’t think Jesus was being metaphorical when he said that anyone who is not willing to abandon your mother and father, your wife, your kids, your siblings — is not worthy of me. I think Jesus was entirely serious when he said to take up your cross and follow me. I take the teachings of Jesus seriously. That doesn’t mean I follow them. That doesn’t even mean I understand them. But I think Jesus said what he said for a reason. And I don’t think you get attractive Jesus without challenging Jesus. You’ve got to follow the challenges, as best as you can and as best as you understand them, to be rewarded with sweet-Jesus.

Third, I find Jesus’ constant challenges to the religious quite sobering. There was a lot of “settled theology” in Jesus’ day that he upended over and over again. He fought with Biblical students who were very thoughtful, methodical, and studious. Today most Christians will sneer at the Pharisees and Sadducees like they’re dumb. They were not dumb. They had understandings about their faith that went back hundreds of years. They had Bible verses for their positions. And Jesus showed them that they were dead wrong! I find that quite sobering. Today we only know they were wrong because Jesus came on to the scene and showed us how wrong they were. What beliefs are I holding on to that Jesus will one day say is dead wrong? Conviction is a good thing. But so is the sobering humility that all of the conviction in the world won’t do a lick of good if Jesus says you’re wrong. So be open minded. Maybe something you believe with all your heart today you will need to abandon tomorrow because it’s getting in your way of following Jesus.

Fourth, God loves people more than I love people. I know so many Christian parents who are so worried about their kids because they want their kids to go to church. Or to stop smoking weed. Or to not “be gay”. They trot out that they don’t want their kids to go to hell. And I don’t either, but I can’t remember Jesus worrying about active adultery leading someone to go to hell. I can’t remember Jesus pleading with someone to go listen to his sermons else they rot in hell (literally). You aren’t going to scare people into a good relationship with God. If I’ve deconstructed anything, it might be this idea that selling anti-hell cards is what we do. (I don’t think I have ever seriously believed this to begin with)

No. Every person you love? God loved them first. And he loves them most.

Yep even your kids.

Oh. And he loves the people you hate, too.

And to be more like Jesus you gotta try to love them too.

And you know what?

That is probably the hardest thing of all to do. Which is why so few of us try.

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I got Day One 11 years ago. My first entries were random, with pictures. I was just trying the app out shortly after my birthday. Within a day or two of getting Day One, Sandy Hook happened and I journaled a very short piece about how horrific it was to hear on the news of an elementary school shooting. Because of that, every time December rolls around, Day One reminds me of “11 years ago today” and I read that entry about Sandy Hook and I’m instantly transported to my desk at an office in downtown Denver when I read on the news about this horrific shooting.

Not all of my entries are sad or horrible, but that to me is a reminder of the value of journaling. To remember where I was, and what I was feeling, and how life has progressed in the years since. This became especially important after I became a parent in 2019.

Daily Journals
I started my habit of journaling every single day after being introduced to Austin Kleon’s logbooks by way of my friend Cary. This was probably sometime around early 2015/late 2014. Both my friend Cary and Austin Kleon used physical notebooks, but I had already been using Day One very intermittently so I decided to just use Day One.

I was pretty good at times for using it daily, probably logging every other or third day on average for years. A lot of my initial logs are not very interesting, just saying I “chatted with Will for a bit” and that I “went to work. Looked at bikes.”

By mid-2015 I realized that these kinds of entries weren’t that interesting to me, and asking a bunch of questions only kept me from meaningful captures, so I simplified quite a bit. Having a more free-form entry asking “What happened today?” really opened up my journaling a lot more than most other changes.

This is about the time my consistency really started to pick up:

In January of 2019 we began our fostering journey and opened our home to a 14-year old boy named Noah. (spoiler alert, we adopted him in October of 2020 🎉) This is when I really endeavored to journal more, especially when we had some really intense and deep family therapy in the summer of 2019. I now have an unbroken streak since July 22, 2019, over 1,600 days ago.

Some of the tips for keeping a streak:

1. Have a routine. I use an Apple shortcut I created and run it before I go to bed. This shortcut captures things like my calendar entries, and creates a minimal template with the date, calendar entries and a simple “What happened?” type prompt. I don’t edit this, and save the entry and go to sleep. The next morning on my computer, I’ll fill in the “what happened?” prompt. I’m usually a bit more verbose when I have a full keyboard in front of me, and 10 minutes to journal.

2. Keep it simple. Most of my entries are just simple recaps of what happened for the day. I rarely explore my emotions or go deep into what happened. A quick and simple description is all that is there.

3. Add a photo. I did this very intermittently in the past, and I’m trying to do better going forward. But it’s so fun to see photos from 10 years ago in my journal, and it adds so much extra context.

4. Don’t go backfill. This was a tip from Desiring God that I read about journaling years and years ago — if you miss a day or a week or even a month — don’t backfill. Just start from where you are. When you feel like you need to fill in previous days, you create a backlog that grows and grows and feels hard to get over with. Just start with today and don’t worry about the past.

5. Don’t really worry about the streak. Focus on the things that are valuable for you. For a long time I just journaled on the days I had something to say and if I got busy — I didn’t really worry about missing that day.

Longer form journaling
So that all covers the daily journals, but I really find value in long form journaling. I find that by keeping a daily journal, I’m really able when I need to focus on deeper emotions and deeper issues going on when I sit down to journal.

Before I kept a daily journal, I felt like I had to explain what was going on or the context of life when I wrote a journal. Now because I have the context already logged each and every day, I focus on how I’m feeling or the deeper patterns I’m noticing. Here’s a peak at my different journals.

My main journals are the Daily Logs entries, which I keep every day. And the Journal category which are when I sit down and write when I feel like I need to write. Many times I’ll write these longer entries when I feel like I need to process something. I often find that the process of writing things out helps clarify my thinking. Sometimes I just want to capture a moment. Here’s one of the shorter examples I don’t mind sharing:

I have 17 entries in this journal for 2023. None so far in December. They range from entries like the above, to an entry sharing my thoughts as we were about to meet our 14-yo foster son after a week in a behavioral treatment center for suicidal ideation and all my fears, hopes and — honestly — mostly just fears. Many of the entries are just random, or thoughts I have in my head that I need to get down on “paper”. When my nearly 20-yo cat died in 2022 I wrote down some of my favorite memories and photos in the middle of my grief.

Some additional structure
Probably in 2020 when everyone felt hopeless due to Covid, I created an entry I dated to Dec 31 with 50 memories I loved from the year. And another post on the same day with the books I read, and some of the movies and tv shows and other media I enjoyed. I have done that every year since — most years I just create an entry early on and date it to Dec 31 and keep it up to date throughout the year, but this year I have been slacking so this looks like something I need to take care of this week!

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I wanted to share some organizations that we have supported throughout the years and have done a really good job making the world just a little bit better.

Musana Community Development Organization. Schools, hospitals, women empowerment projects, and more. A model where your gifts are actually investments creating a snowball that will continue to impact more and more people, lifting many people out of poverty. 4 campuses in Uganda with more to come. (disclaimer: I serve on the board of directors and have been involved for over ten years. Would love to chat more if anyone is interested.)

Court Appointed Special Advocates. ( National Office, Boulder CASA, 17th Judicial District CASA) CASA provides a trained volunteer for kids in foster care to hang out with and advocate for the best interests of kids. We’re fortunate that the kids we have fostered have had CASAs and they have been really awesome. My wife also served as a CASA for a kid before we became foster parents.

Local foodbanks. (here in Colorado we have supported Sister Carmen in Lafayette, FISH in Broomfield, and the OUR Center in Longmont) These provide important resources in the community in the form of food, transportation and other ways to stand in the gap for people facing hard times in our communities.

Youth For Christ Juvenile Justice Ministry. Have you ever visited a kid locked up in juvenile justice programs? I have and it is a bleak and dark place. All kids—even and maybe especially kids who have offended—need hope and someone to believe in them. YFC JJM takes great care of kids who most of the rest of the world so easily overlooks.

Local Humane Societies. (for us, Longmont Humane Society is a favorite) Humane societies provide important help to pets and helping them find great homes. We have adopted several dogs, cats and guinea pigs specifically from LHS and love the work they do.

I’ll save the lecture for some other time. A value that I have tried to live out is that we give up things we love for things we love even more. What you give up is the true testimony for what you do and do not love. We love to try to make the world a slightly better place, one person, one hour, one dollar at a time.

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I’ve been enjoying all the posts about people’s default apps, and other posts about subscriptions. I’ve found many new awesome people to follow through my feed reader. So here’s my contribution.

I’m pretty boring, for personal use I generally use all the default apps (Calendar, Mail, Notes, Safari, Contacts, etc) because I find them sufficient for my needs, and I have history in all of these apps going back to 2004 or 2005. Seriously, I can look at my calendar from 2005 to see what I was doing back in college because that was the first year I got a Mac.

For work, I use whatever they give me, usually Gmail & Slack.

Outside the Apple apps, here’s what I’ve settled on for other uses:

• Tasks: Things. (I am VERY bad at keeping this up to date)

• Journaling: DayOne. (1,500+ streak strong! :D)

• Feed reader: Reeder

• Bible: NeuBible except when I really want to read the Message or NLT, then YouVersion

• Podcasts: Pocket Casts (though I have not listened to a podcast in over a year at this point)

• Read it later: Pocket (and I’m very unhappy with it)

• Music: Apple Music (it’s only okay)

• Library books: Libby (love it)

• Audio book subscription: Libro (support independent booksellers!)

Subscriptions

Alas, it is hard to get by these days without a bunch of subscriptions. Here’s what I have:

• Apple One Premier: $38 + tax.

  • When it started, it was only $30/month. I use all the services that are included (top ones being: Apple Music, TV+, Fitness, and photo storage space) but the price has been increasing much faster than the value. If there’s another price increase, I will probably seriously look at scaling this back or eliminating it entirely.

• YouTube TV: $73/mo.

  • This one is new for our family, got it to give our media obsessed (especially sports obsessed) kids something to watch at our house instead of going out to Buffalo Wild Wings every-time there’s a game. It’s basically cable but with a much better digital UI.

• Netflix: included in cell-phone plan.

  • We’re back on Netflix. Of all the streaming services, I find Netflix content to be the most mediocre. For a while we subscribed to the $9.99 ad-free plan, but they killed that literally a week after we subscribed. We changed cell-phone providers and now it’s included in that plan. I wouldn’t bother otherwise.

• Libro.fm: $15/mo

  • Basically Audible but supporting independent bookstores. I just put this on pause because I now am way behind on using my credits. Without a daily commute, I’m finding I listen to very little audio content.

• Journaling: DayOne premium. $25/yr.

  • We’ll see what Apple’s journal app provides after a few years of updates, but I am liking DayOne quite a bit.

• Website: Vultr. $10/mo.

  • Hosting this blog on a little instance for $10/mo. Been completely satisfied with them.

Previous subscriptions

• Disney Plus.

  • I loved Disney+ when it came out and considered it a great deal at $7.99/mo. Now at $14.99/mo, I’ve already watched most of the back catalog I was interested in, and all the new content is hit or miss. Andor was amazing. Most of the rest of new content was not that appealing.

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I probably have been spending too much time on my local Next Door group. But, a lot of people there are complaining about various new projects that are working to bring more housing to our area.

Now—granted—I live in the very middle of peak suburbia. But it never ceases to amaze me how the complaints about more density in new housing developments always fall back to a couple of issues.

First, they complain about “ugly apartment” buildings. And while I think a lot of modern development can be a bit soulless, I think the same thing about most new single family housing as well. And I don’t think there’s anything beautiful about some of the new houses that are anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 square feet and may have only two or three people living in them.

Next, they always complain about all the extra traffic from “cramming” a bunch of people into a space. Okay, well never-mind that the people who most often complain about this sort of thing also complain about public transportation and oppose all the efforts to improve transit. (which is the only cure for traffic)

But I think what frustrates me at times is the short-sightedness. Yes – I think there’s a place for single family houses. When you have kids, it’s actually really great to have a good backyard and nice suburban neighborhoods. But—shocker—not everybody has that.

More townhouses, condos and apartments give lots more options for lots more people. I live in a 70-year-old neighborhood that we love, and many of my neighbors are quite old. It’s pretty common (and sad) to see an estate sale at a neighbor’s house and then a few weeks later, a for-sale sign to go up in the yard. Usually these houses have been poorly maintained as the aging owner lacks the ability or finances to maintain their house like they used to.

With more housing types available, I wonder if more older people would choose to leave their single family houses for smaller apartments and town-homes that have less maintenance. And especially if they could remain in a community they love. This would be a benefit both to the older person with less to maintain and worry about, and to whatever young family would move up into the formerly occupied house.

By making effective alternatives available for people, you can accomplish a few things at once. You can enable a higher supply of single family homes without necessarily building more homes. (obviously how significant of an effect this will have will vary greatly on many different factors)

This is the point that I think is often lost with NIMBY advocates. They look at a parcel of land, and perhaps it can fit a few dozen single family homes, but hundreds of apartments and townhomes and other dense housing. The effect this would have on freeing up single family housing is hard to measure — but I don’t think it’s zero.

At the end of the day, everyone’s needs are different, and creating a diversity of housing will better serve an entire community’s needs.

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I feel like I can be a pretty cynical person, but occasionally I will open up social media and go hoooboy. This happened to me yesterday after reading some posts on NextDoor (NextDoor seems to be even worse than Twitter and I don’t understand why) after a pretty big and exciting development project got approved in our city. There’s a lot of posts about how poorly our city is run and how this project is going to fall apart and, well, yada yada yada.

Now, I have my own cynicism about this project myself. There’s a lady on city council that is absolutely obsessed about the dirt that is going to be displaced from this project and where is it all going to go. Like, lady, you don’t think a construction company is going to know what to do with a pile of dirt? She has brought it up at every city council meeting I’ve listened to in the past 2 years and I just don’t understand why that’s her main concern about this project or why the developer’s answers the previous meetings are forgotten and we have to rehash how moving dirt is expensive and they will find good uses for it as efficiently as possible.

But if you were to listen to the people on NextDoor you would think we live in some sort of poorly run hellhole that is one or two steps away from total societal collapse. Do we live in the same place? I moved to this city for a lot of reasons but one of them is that it’s pretty well run. Is it perfect? Of course not. Could it do better? Always. And calling out where we can do better is often how we do better.

But there seems to be a pervasive hopelessness or cynicism about almost everything. Have you been to other places in the world? It’s not perfect and we have some things we really need to work on — but there’s a lot to celebrate too.

Yesterday as I was driving home from a volunteer meeting I was getting pretty cynical about something someone said in the meeting. I was getting really frustrated. And I stopped myself to really analyze why I was getting upset. Were there things that happened imperfectly and I would have liked to see happen better? Yeah. If I were in charge and did the same thing, would I want to receive more grace then what I’m currently giving this person? Yes, that too. And, in the grand scheme of things, are things going really well and am I hyper-focusing on one little thing and blowing it way out of proportion? Yes, absolutely.

And recognizing it, I stopped doing that. I moved on to other things.

Life’s too short.

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It’s been about a year since I’ve ridden my ebike, my new bike has taken most of my energy. But I finally fixed the flat tire and went for a nice and long 30 mile ride on a very hot day.

I love all sorts of bike riding. The ebike is really great for going longer distances and exploring paths I don’t normally ride. The extra power gives me a lot of confidence to try routes I may not be comfortable with on my acoustic bikes. I always know I can make it home with the battery power.

Today’s ride was so great because I explored a new path, and of that 30 miles, easily 26 miles were on dedicated trails with zero interaction with cars. Heavenly!

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Every now and again, I need to revisit this amazing section from King’s Cross, a Tim Keller book.

There are a lot of wounded people out there. They are emotionally sinking, they’re hurting, and they desperately need to be loved. And when they are with you, you want to look at your watch and make a graceful exit, because listening to them with all their problems can be grueling. It can be exhausting to be a friend to an emotionally damaged person. The only way they’re going to start filling up emotionally is if somebody loves them, and the only way to love them is to let yourself be emotionally drained. Some of your fullness is going to have to go into them, and you have to empty out to some degree. If you hold on to your emotional comfort and simply avoid those people, they will sink. The only way to love them is through substitutionary sacrifice.

Or think of an even more dramatic example—parenting. When you have children, they’re in a state of dependency. They have so many needs; they can’t stand on their own. And they will not just grow out of their dependency automatically. The only way that your children will grow beyond their dependency into self—sufficient adults is for you to essentially abandon your own independence for twenty years or so. When they are young, for example, you’ve got to read to them and read to them—otherwise they won’t develop intellectually. Lots of their books will be boring to you. And you have to listen to your children, and keep listening as they say all kinds of things that make for less than scintillating conversation.

And then there’s dressing, bathing, feeding, and teaching them to do these things for themselves. Furthermore, children need about five affirmations for every criticism they hear from you. Unless you sacrifice much of your freedom and a good bit of your time, your children will not grow up healthy and equipped.

King’s Cross by Tim Keller, page 142.

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A while back I posted about some of my Apple gripes, one of them being that my MacBook Air M1 and Dell USB-C display wasn’t getting along. A Mac OS update broke it, then another update fixed it. And it remained working until the other day when another Mac OS update broke it again. UGH!

I tried a few things to fix this, until I came across this reddit post which said to cut power to the monitor and plug it back in. I had rebooted the computer a few times but hadn’t thought to do the same with the display and — bam, everything is working again.

Phew! And ugh! Sometimes I hate modern tech.

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This is a screenshot of our ecobee temperature report from last night. We have a whole house fan that we turn on at night after opening a bunch of windows. The white line is indoor temperature, green line is outdoor. You can see that the two lines are decently well correlated through the evening because the fan is running, bringing in outdoor air into the house and as the outdoors cool, so does our house.

Around 3am the time on the whole house fan turns off, and here’s the mystery: within an hour the indoor temp jumps from 71º to 78º.

This is the mystery. Why? It’s 4am, the sun’s not out yet, the outdoor temperature continues to decline a little bit, and we’re obviously not running the heater. Why does it jump 7º?

I have noticed the whole house fan has not been as effective in this house as our older house and I’m trying to figure out why. Even if the outside temperature in the middle of the night is mid-low 60ºs, at best our house will be low 70ºs by the time I wake up, warmer than the outside air by a decent amount.

I don’t think it’s a sensor problem as the ecobee has two independent temperature sensors and both are usually within a degree of each other, and we have a couple of clocks with temperature gauges that register very closely as well.

This continues my obsession to lower our energy use and increase our comfort. But I’m really struggling to understand how to better optimize using the cool outside air to keep our house comfortable longer.

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This post by Anna really resonated with me. The people who have held the space for me when I’m anxious have been some of my most healing moments. And being someone to hold the space for others in their moments of anxiety has been some of my most privileged times.

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Ruth, as you may remember, joined our family a few months ago. She and the dog Stanley don’t get along, but she has been such a wonderful addition. She’s so playful, and she gets into absolutely everything. The other day I left my sock drawer slightly ajar and I came back a few hours later to 90% of my socks on the floor.

Because of that we call her the chaos demon. Hear weird sounds at night? “Oh that’s just Ruth the chaos demon.”

But she is SO sweet, her fur is SO soft and when she chooses to sleep on you and purr, you feel like you’ve won the lottery.

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I got a new bike recently! I have not had as much time riding it as I would like but it has been awesome the miles I’ve put on it so far. 💙

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When I set up this blog I told myself I wouldn’t let it devolve into constant complaining and bellyaching like so much of my social media experience.

Don’t get me wrong, I love complaining. And it’s cathartic. But sometimes all I see on social media is just complaint after complaint after complaint and sometimes it is too much.

But sometimes it you just gotta complain. And today will hopefully be one of those rare times.

I am really starting to get sick of Apple software. I don’t know if there’s a better experience, but my experience with Apple software has severely degraded in recent years. Let me get some of it off my chest:

A recent software update completely changed how my work Macbook Pro handles my external monitor. I have a USB-C hub on my desk to give me a single cord to my work laptop, I can plug my laptop into this one cord and it gets power, my external web-cam, my wireless keyboard (which is not bluetooth), and my external display. For a year this worked perfect. After the most recent Mac update, if my Mac wakes up before my display, all the text and images are blocky. It’s like the resolution is turned down way low but the display is blowing it up, but I’ve checked (and tried changing) the resolution a few times and it never fixes it. The only solution has been to unplug the USB-C dock, let the Mac go back to sleep, then wake up the Mac again before the display sleeps. Sometimes this takes a few tries.

I haven’t even been able to get this to work by turning the display on first. The past 2 or 3 weeks I have been consigned to trying to get this to work by spending the first five minutes of my day fiddling with cables and trying to get the timing right.

Heaven forbid I should leave for a bit and come back to my Mac going to sleep or I get to do this all over again.

My AirPod Pros are stalking me. If I take my AirPod Pros anywhere, when I arrive home I get a notification that someone else’s Airpods are being used to follow me. I appreciate the privacy alert, but these are my AirPods.

I think there may be something wrong with how they are set up. When I go to ‘Find My’, it tells me it can’t locate my AirPods (even when they are in my hand, connected to my phone and Find My tells me they are ‘with you’) and that my setup may be incomplete. If I follow the support article for how to ‘complete’ my setup, the button it tells me to push does not exist.

AirTags are great but please for the love of all that is holy allow us to share location with family members. We have an AirTag on the dog, it’s awesome. It’s on my wife’s account. I take my dog for walkies every day, and every day when I get home I get a notification that someone can track me with a stray AirTag. I know! We share our phone’s locations. It’s not a big deal.

If you’re not going to give me AirTags that are feature complete with the rest of the Find My devices (I can see locations of all of her devices, and she can see mine) at least allow me to disable this notification for this AirTag. I’m only allowed to disable this notification for 1 day, which means the next time we go for walkies I get the notification again. Apple if you are going to say that you know best — well, you just don’t.

Speaking of USB-C and displays, an update broke my Dell USB-C display, then another update fixed it. I have another display on my desk that I recently got from Dell which is natively USB-C. I put my personal MacBook Air on this next to my work display. When I first got it, the USB-C cable worked great. It delivered power, connected the ports on the display, and connected the display.

Inextricably after a Mac update, the display stopped working. Power delivery worked, but not the display. I’d get a notice on the display that there was no signal detected. As a work around, I connected two cables, the USB-C one for power, and another HDMI->USB-C adaptor so I could still use the display.

Fortunately another Mac update a few weeks later fixed this so I’m back to my single cable glory, but I am really starting to worry about applying software updates.

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There is more I could say but this has been cathartic enough. Maybe I’m just getting old but the thought of trying to switch to Windows or Linux just sounds too much. I’ll just pray that Apple gets their crap together.

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So, picture this. A particularly devout religious group with a fairly strict sexual ethic that pushes a fairly particular moral viewpoint currying favor as a loud and sizable but minority political group. They shun outsiders and those who do not share the same ethical or moral framework and actively work to punish those with differing views. Viewpoints are polarized, everyone is at each other’s throats — it looks like civil war is about to break out.

Am I summarizing politics across the US, with the recent fights over book bans, transgenderism, and abortion? You would be forgiven for thinking so, but I am actually thinking of life when Jesus walked on the scene. But, as they say, history may or may not repeat, but it definitely rhymes. And I can’t help but think that our present moment rhymes a lot with what life looked like when Jesus walked onto the scene.

I was reading some threads on a couple of local sub-reddits absolutely denouncing religion in general, and Christian churches in particular. And I kind of nod my head along. I think the criticism leveled can sometimes be quite spot on.

I identify as someone who follows Jesus and I look at a lot of churches and Christians and just think, how did we get so far off track?

Over and over again Jesus conflicted with people who, I think, were very well meaning and wanted to show their love, devotion and piety towards God but they did it by hurting the people that God loves. Which, turns out, at least according to Jesus, is not a good way to show your love, devotion and piety towards God.

When Jesus’ cousin John was beginning to wonder if Jesus really was everything he thought — John sent messengers to Jesus to ask. And Jesus’ response I think is telling: Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. (Luke 7:21-22)

When Jesus is directly asked whether or not he is the One, his answer is: look at all the good I am doing for marginalized people.

Not look at how many sinners are turning from their sins.

Nor look at how many adulterers have been beaten.

Nor look at how many lost people we told to go to hell. (literally)

Not even: I am the one prophesied of old, the one predicted to come.

But: we are taking care of and helping the least. The people the world is forgetting and trampling down upon are receiving a new life. Jesus hangs his hat entirely on how well he takes care of people.

And with that in mind, the early church spread like wildfire. The church had a very particular (and peculiar for the day and age) ethic for most things, especially sexually — but what it never lost sight of was the blind receiving sight, the lame walking, lepers healing and more. Roman Emperor Julian famously denounced Jesus’ followers in the 300s as “impious Galileans” who take care of not only their own poor but Rome’s as well:

These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agape, they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes… Whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity and by a display of false compassion have established and given effect to their pernicious errors. See their love-feasts and their tables spread for the indigent. Such practice is common among them and causes a contempt for our gods.

So if history rhymes, and if the greatest error the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Zealots, and all the other religious groups of the day committed was to focus too much inwardly on their own piety, and outwardly on the sins of the people around them: what does that say about us today?

Is it possible, just possible, that we who follow Jesus are just a little too focused on the sins of our communities? Should we listen to Paul who asks, rhetorically, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?” (1 Corinthians 5:12) Answer, none.

Should we listen to God who sent his people into exile in Babylon and then commanded them to seek the prosperity of Babylon? (Jeremiah 29:7)

What would it look like to let our good deeds shine before others? (Luke 5:16)

Listen. Dragging people out in front of Jesus for their sins and asking him to condemn them didn’t work the first time, and it’s not going to work today. Let us instead of blasting people for their shortcomings instead build people up, especially the poor and marginalized, and never give up in working towards the peace and prosperity of where God has planted us.

Maybe we will have a few less complaints about us on reddit.

And maybe God will do something really big like transform all of human history.

Again.

That would be good news, wouldn’t it?

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Rode my road bike for the first time this year yesterday, and again this afternoon. Gosh I love bikes so much. And am I out of shape after a winter of reduced activity!

As spring comes, here’s your reminder to get outside. You’ll be glad you did.

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Recently got lost on this really cool map of electricity generation across the world. I had no idea Brazil was so far along in renewables. My service area is more carbon intense then I realized, and solar doesn’t make up as much system-wide generation as you’d expect. But wind is a lot more stable then I expected, and it is close to the number #1 power generated for us, consistently dangling around 48%.

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Okay, in slightly less life-or-death news, March was a busy month for us.

• Got a new washing machine. In February our dryer broke which prompted me to buy a new one, and this month we decided to go ahead and get the matching washer.

  We always had to run our clothes through the dryer a couple of times to get them fully dry, and the new washer has solved that problem. Apparently it uses less water in general, but it also gets more water out of the clothes before going to the dryer. This is a nice upgrade as it means less wear and tear on our clothes, and less use of the dryer electrically.

• Also we redid our bathroom floors. We found some marvelous hex marble tiles. It turned out great! We embarked on this project because the previous owners had used some stick and peel vinyl and it’s starting to come up in both the bathroom and the kitchen. We felt the bathroom was the priority fix because of all the moisture, we wanted to prevent any rotting of the subfloor or structure.

• While we were at it, figured might as well get a new toilet. So I got the Swiss Madison Classe after reading so many reviews online of people who love Swiss Madison toilets. The dual flush system should save a bit of water, though I doubt we will ever notice much of a difference on our water bill, it’s nice to conserve wherever we can. Lowe’s has it for like $300.

• In non-house projects, Noah had his spring break and he and I stayed a long weekend up in Leadville and went skiing. So much fun!

• Completed my state/federal taxes and got the refunds back. Our refunds are substantial every year and I know people say that you’re just giving the government an interest-free loan. But I feel like our tax situation has been so fluid I have never wanted to take the risk and end up owing.

• Took the whole family to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. It was the first time for our 14 year old, and he loved it. It gave me a great opportunity to take lots of pictures. I love photography and need to get out more and shoot more often.

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I hate that at this point, just reading the title of this post, I’ve already lost ~40% of you because of presumptions one way or another about what I’m going to write. I don’t like that we as a society have just decided to be angry with each other and that we can’t find ways that we can reduce violence and increase the well being of people. This post will not be well written or well organized, it’s just my raw thoughts from the past several months of reading and absorbing what people are saying and my thoughts on each.

I reject that we are unable to find common ground. I reject that we can’t do anything. I reject this idea that we are as a society stuck and powerless to do anything about the very real prevalent gun violence in this country.

“Shall not be infringed.” This was trending on Twitter earlier and I watched an old Penn and Teller video where Penn is going off about this phrase in the 2nd Amendment. People were going off about this because the idea is that nothing should infringe our right to get a gun.

Knowing that I’m not a constitutional lawyer, I have often looked at the earlier phrase “ a well regulated militia being necessary to a free state” and thought the “well-regulated” part strongly hinted at the need for regulations. AKA laws. AKA limitations. Is not being able to own a tank an infringement to bearing arms? Should private citizens get to own nuclear weapons? F-16s? Missiles? Canons? Machine guns? Turrets? Where do we draw the line? Nowhere?

“Three fifths of all other persons.” Honestly, even if legal scholars decide that “shall not be infringed” means that we can’t restrict people from owning certain weapons such as nuclear weapons, tanks, missiles and automatic weapons—none of which were envisioned by the founders when this amendment was written— we can change the constitution. The constitution is not a divine document, and I’m tired of treating it like it is. It counted each black person as 3/5ths a person. We decided to change that.

Twenty Five Amendments. In fact, we’ve changed it twenty five times. There’s a built in mechanism to change the constitution when we decide that it no longer is suiting us. We’ve done things like prohibit alcohol, then oopsie daisy, maybe that was a bad idea. We’ve changed how the Vice President is elected. We changed how Senators are elected. Etc. We should change the constitution to work for us.

Is this working for us? More than one mass shooting a day so far. I watched an interview from a state law maker who said he’s not going to do anything about this, and when asked about his own kids he said he homeschools them to avoid violence. This has been a common attitude in my family. Why can’t we work to make the outside world safe? Why accept that you just gotta stay home, in your cocoon, and that’s the only safety you will ever get?

Air travel continues to get safer. MIT did a study and the statistics are fascinating to me. Worldwide, the risk of death in airplane accidents has been declining by a factor of 2 every decade. Every decade! Millions of people travel and despite the natural fears of flying, it’s one of the safest things you can ever do, even with the residual fears from 9/11, and mechanical problems, and crazy problems.

Air travel got safer through incremental improvement. I think the NTSB is a gift to the world. The National Transportation Safety Board is that rare government bureaucracy that I think about when I pay my taxes and I am head over heels excited to pay my tax bill for. They take a look at every airplane incident and investigate what went wrong, without blame or prosecution, and then make recommendations for how to make things safer. Whether it’s a weird failure from a mechanical component that needs a new inspection process, or new recommendations for how pilots communicate in stressful situations, they are just always looking at what went wrong to try to figure out ways to make it work better.

And it’s working. Turns out that if you put aside ego and ask how to really fix things, you get better ideas. And when you implement those ideas, you can learn from it, and improve those ideas further, and make things better and better.

We’re doing the opposite with violence in America. We just all have our opinions on what will make things better, shout at each other, and then nothing changes, nothing gets better, and we just shout louder and louder.

It’s worth shouting about. No one should be burying their children, especially not because of some crazy person with a weapon. Why can’t we put aside all our other differences and agree on this one thing: people are needlessly dying.

So, what should we do as a society in response? I sincerely don’t have the answer, but I think as a society we should take a less egotistical approach and a more NTSB approach. I think we should be incremental, and we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.

400 million guns for 330 million people. These are big numbers. This isn’t, even in the best case, going to be solved overnight. We shouldn’t expect that any change we make will lead to zero mass shootings, the problem is too big for that. But can we improve the situation? Can we find ways for there to be only one mass shooting per day? Or one every couple of days? Or for the number to go down?

Not just guns, but not just mental health, either. I get a little frustrated when I read that people want to deflect from guns and say that we have a mental health crisis. Let me generalize only law-makers: why is it that the law-makers who are most likely to defend gun rights and decry mental health challenges are almost to a T the ones who also vote against all mental health support?

I think we need to have a conversation on what we can do as a society to help improve mental health outcomes. There’s a whole host of things we can do, a few that come to my mind immediately:

• incentivizing people to become psychiatrists, therapists, and psychologists.

• funding mental health programs across the country.

• funding outreach services

• funding R&D into better medication

• funding medication so the people who need it most have access to it

• making health care affordable so all people have access

• making life more affordable so fewer people need crippling levels of debt

And probably a hundred more if I spent more than 30 seconds writing down only the things that first came to mind.

“But it’s not the role of the government to …” Says who? The Constitution? Well the government is “We, the People” — so the government does whatever we collectively decide to do. So if, we the people decide we’re finally fed up with a 1700s government in the 2000s, we can change it.

The Bible? Au contraire. Read Leviticus and all about how God uses the people collectively to care for the poor and destitute, especially (but not exclusively) through the jubilee. Then go read the minor prophets (you’re familiar with those, right? Since you’re such a Bible scholar?) and how God is fundamentally pissed off over and over again at the people for their collective sins for not taking care of the least. And over and over again, God connects how they treat the poorest and worst off in their society with how God judges their society.

I don’t think 21st century America would fair very well under that scrutiny. And I worry about my own complicity in my society’s sins.

We have collectively sinned against our children, against ourselves, and against God by not taking this seriously. Like when God told Jeremiah to stop praying because their words and their fasts were many but their lack of concern about the things God cares about angered him. (Jeremiah 14:10-12)

I think God cares about children suffering and dying, about poor people being trampled upon, and sick people being cared for. I think that because God says it over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

I don’t know what God is calling you to do specifically to help correct our collective sins. I felt called to foster care. I feel called to lead young men closer to Jesus. I feel called to be a voice calling for action amidst inaction. I feel called to repent of my own sins and failings.

But I think he’s going to call you to something. Be brave. Do it.

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I just discovered Free Tax USA. I filed with them this weekend.

I have used TurboTax for a while but never really liked it, and hate all the interstitials of marketing screens and animations you have to click through. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was getting an email after inputting all of my information saying that I better hurry because their prices are going up soon.

Like, who does that? Plus Intuit is just a shady company.

So when I discovered I could file federal taxes for free and it’s only $15 to file for state taxes, sign me up. I also feel like it took me a lot less time to input my information because I didn’t have to click through three screens for every single document. And they reminded me that I added insulation to my house and I can get credit for that.

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It was hard to walk into the humane society and look at all the kitties yesterday, as it brought up so many memories of Lokie who passed away last May. But I have missed having a cat, and after looking at all of the options, we found a beautiful 2 year old girl that we’ve named Ruth.

She met the dog Stanley earlier today, he sniffed, she hissed, he cowered, she smacked him in the face. Now Stanley is worried about why we have a demon in the house. 😆 She’s still getting used to the new situation but we already love how sweet, playful and soft her fur is.

Welcome to the family!

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I’ve been finding some really cool personal websites that are inspiring me to try to do more with my own site.

First is Henrique Dias. Really dig the clean appearance, and all the content. I also really dig the More section where he posts things like his impossible list of personal goals and accomplishments. Bonus points for the guest book powered by web mentions.

Next is Barry Frost. His main blog entry is a weekly journal entry on his blog. I’ve never met Barry and only know him from these posts, but I really dig these little peeks into someone else’s life. He also posts bookmarks and checkins (like the old Gowalla) fairly regularly which is pretty cool though I only follow the blog.

Next is Aegir which I have posted about before. Every post is a different photo and page style to match.

I don’t know about Aegir, but I know Henrique and Barry both have their own blogging software as the backend running everything. I’ve just been using Wordpress to focus my time less on the tech, but I’d really dig to run a blog on Cloudflare workers or AWS Lambdas. And I also would really dig having a section for different post types such as bookmarks, checkins and photos. 🤔 Maybe I need to write my own blogging engine. Maybe.

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People talk about having an existential crisis and it is amazing to me how often I feel some version of that, but rarely does it feel like a crisis. More like a little pinch.

I feel like I’m a fairly driven and motivated person (even though I don’t know if I want to be) — I always want to make forward progress. And rarely do I feel like I’m making negative progress, but there are seasons in life where I feel like I’m just standing still. And that makes me feel like I’m wasting my life.

I was telling Alissa about this and that I feel like what am I really accomplishing. Am I just living one day to the next? And she gently and lovingly but firmly rebuked me by reminding me that I’m helping raise two boys and helping them be better men. Okay point taken but is that it?

Well first of all, if that was it, that would be more than enough. That has been the focus of my life’s work for the past 4 years since we started as foster parents and while I’m infinitely aware of all my short-comings in a million different ways, I’m also really good at this. And Alissa and I are really good as a team at this.

And it isn’t all that I’m involved with or doing. I’m treasuring up all the things that I’m doing and just remembering that God is so good.

I think it’s really easy to read other people’s blogs or watch YouTube videos and think — I don’t have the time to build projects with wood like I would like. Or, I’m an okay photographer, but I’m not a really great one like that guy. Or how cool would it be if I was great at cooking, but my 14 year old said my spaghetti sauce this week was good so why isn’t that enough?

Basically, my existential pinch is because I don’t have time for normal people hobbies? I don’t have time to invest in woodworking because instead I’m spending my time working on training materials for this trip I’m leading to Uganda later this summer and I want to equip 31 mzungus how to think about poverty and I’m having an existential difficulty because I also don’t have time to progress on my woodworking backlog?

Brains are weird. One of these will have a lasting (I hope) impact on the lives of the poor and vulnerable, and one of these will be sold at a garage sale for like twenty bucks when I’m dead. And my brain is questioning whether my life has enough meaning because I won’t have another piece of junk my kids have to get rid of when I’m dead.

Okay, brain. Go be weird. I’ll ignore your existential questions until you stop being dumb.

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