Calling Gen-Xers: The next issue of my music newsletter will focus on Nirvana’s Nevermind. I would like to feature some reactions to that record. If you would like to participate: send me a tweet-length answer to: “What did the 1991 you think of this album?” Thanks in advance!

Corning Museum of Glass

Wow. Ice skating today really emphasized how badly out of shape I am… gotta get back on the exercise train ASAP.

After reading all of the articles on Substack over the last couple weeks, I feel better about my decision to move my music site off that platform. I was ahead of the curve, but I think the takeaway is owning your platform is always the best choice, if you can afford to make it…

ICYMI -> the latest issue of my music newsletter went out a couple days ago. This mont on One Last Wish: Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet

The latest issue of One Last Wish just went out – this issue: Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti and an admission that my parent’s music wasn’t bad. Join me on my adventure!

Watson

Dear Reps. Jacobs, Malliotakis, Stefanik, and Zeldin –

As a citizen of the United States and New York state, I am writing to you today to voice my disgust with your actions that have propped up the lies and misinformation from Donald Trump and encouraged the insurrection that occurred yesterday in Washington D.C. by his supporters.

The alternate reality and absolute delusion Trump supporters live within is astounding. You four have helped reinforce that delusion. You should be ashamed of yourself and I look forward to your expulsion from Congress for sedition.

The results of the 2020 Presidential election are clear and not even close. Any suggestion otherwise is dangerous, as we saw yesterday. Ask yourself, which option is more likely to be true?

A) the loser of the 2020 election is the person that:

• lost the 2016 popular vote by 2.89 million votes to a historically unpopular opponent
• only won the 2016 electoral college due to some 76k votes in 3 states (MI, PA, WI) that were solidly Democrat for the previous 30+ years of Presidential elections
• oversaw mass death and economic collapse in 2020 due to the pandemic – in his re-election year
• stoked division through lies and conspiracy for the last 5+ years
• was a historically unpopular President

OR

B.) Somehow, as Trump suggests, all of these states coordinated massive voter fraud to just eke out wins in a couple states (most of which returned to their historical Democrat voting patterns) but very large leads in others, totaling a 7+ million vote lead in the popular vote and the exact opposite electoral college result?

Can you in good faith and logic really stand behind option B? Every single state certified their election results. The states that did do audits or recounts found very little change from the initial counts, if any at all – and no amount of change that would impact the outcome of this election. The court cases brought forth by the Trump campaign were laughed out of court for lack of standing and evidence. There’s no debate. At all.

If you somehow are conflating the outcome of the 2020 election with issues you may have with how states execute elections in the future, then this is certainly not the path to choose. The only thing you’ve accomplished is confusion, distrust, and anger… and false hope that the election would be overturned. That is a great disservice to this country and our future. Once again, you should be ashamed.

If you want to “fix” elections, I look forward to full Republican support for a voting rights act that gives every citizen of age the ability, ease, and access to vote securely in every election. No one should have to stand in line for hours to vote or risk their life or livelihood to exercise this right.

In closing, I truly hope you see the error in your choice yesterday and do the honorable thing and resign, as you have failed this state and country.

Thoughts and prayers, Jason

Issue #3 of my music newsletter One Last Wish is out today! I look back at my first rock album, Vivid by Living Colour and much more. Thanks in advance for reading and please subscribe so you don’t miss out on future issues. 🎧

Awesome family hike today! So beautiful out.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Awesome Chadwick Boseman tribute in Jingle Jangle on Netflix.

Without saying your age, post 4 albums that came out when your were 14.

Our weekly make pizza and watch the Mandalorian came to an awesome end this week. 🤯. We want to continue the tradition - what series should we watch next? Preferably something 12/13 year olds would like. Have Disney+, HBO, Hulu, and Netflix.

Poor puppers is tired and sore from dental surgery yesterday.

Lap puppers

The December edition of One Last Wish is out now. I take a look at my top 20 albums from 2020, including my favorite: Punisher from Phoebe Bridgers. Work on January’s issue starts today, so subscribe now and don’t miss out.

The second issue of One Last Wish – my music newsletter is going out soon! Subscribe now to get it in your inbox. This month I focus on my top 20 albums for 2020.

Narrowed down my 2020 Best Albums list to 55. See who made my cut here: music.apple.com/us/playli…

Final rankings will be in the One Last Wish issue coming out in two weeks!

November was busy! I kicked off two projects and would be honored if you checked them out:

1. Mindful Tasks - my buddy Brian and I tackle our productivity pitfalls head on
2. One Last Wish, a monthly newsletter where I dig in to the albums that changed my life (as well as new faves)

Happy Thanksgiving! Thankful for a low key day, a delish and easy meal, and most importantly: getting to hang out with four intelligent, funny, beautiful ladies every day. Hope you all had a great day.

Back in the 90s I loved making zines on the hardcore music scene… today I am kicking off a digital version. The newsletter is called One Last Wish and it will, of course, focus on music. Check it out – the first issue is up. I hope you subscribe!

Any micro.bloggers interested in a fantasy basketball league? I am working on starting a dynasty league on Sleeper.app. If so, hit me up! 🏀

$5 gigs, not $10m deals: the story of US punk label Dischord Records | Music - The Guardian →

My all-time favorite record label.

Watson’s DNA test came back. 81% American Staffordshire Terrier, 13% American Bulldog, 4% Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog, and 2% Miniature Bull Terrier. And according to Chet: 100% annoying, but sometimes cute, brother.

File this in the “surprised I didn’t pay more attention to this band” category: Small Brown Bike

So good.

I love this idea from Merlin Mann and Do By Friday: the “Follow Your Nose” playlist…

1. Pick a song you love and start a playlist
2. Go to the artist’s page and view the Related Artists/Fans Also Like section – then pick a group you aren’t familiar with…
3. Go to their page and start listening to their top songs & add one you like to your playlist.
4. Repeat 2 and 3 from that artist page, building out your playlist until you are bored or hit an artist where you can’t do #2.

Almost like a choose your own music musical adventure. So much fun!

Here’s my first attempt:

Pumpkin carving complete.

Voting early for the first time ever.

Weekend getaway to Allegany State Park

🎵 The Breeders - Pod

beabadobee - Fake It Flowers Live #livestream - YouTube →

If you are a sucker for 90s-influenced indie rock like Beach Bunny, Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail, and Hatchie you will love this.

Some puppy is tired this AM. Some owner is too. 😴

A Day in the Life - Buffalo, NY - 6:20pm ET

Amherst Girls Hockey practice.

Enjoyed the beautiful weather this weekend. First hike with Watson!

🎵 Slow Pulp - Moveys

Super good.

Two buddies

Finally best buds

Someone is comfortable in his new house. 🥰

Meet our new puppers, Watson

🎵 Fleet Foxes - Shore

Not sure there is a better example of white privilege than Mitch McConnell moving the goal posts in order to “win.”

🎧 Now listening: Frosting on the Beater by The Posies

Pigs and pug

Growing up and living next to the Canadian border has a lot of benefits, one of which is being familiar with Canadian radio and hosts. Saw the new Strombo show in Apple Music today and knew it was going to be good, instantly. Listening now and it’s 💯.

Currently reading: Recursion by Blake Crouch 📚

Some photos from our camping trip to the Adirondacks.

QAnon, Conspiracy Theories, and the Rise of Magical Thinking →

Very good explainer on conspiracy theories and thinking.

A Record 76% of Americans Can Vote by Mail in 2020 - The New York Times →

Come on New York. We stick out like a sore thumb.

Family getaway today!

What ARGs Can Teach Us About QAnon – mssv →

QAnon fascinates me (and confounds and scares me), probably because I enjoyed ARGs in the early 2000s. A good read.

Run The Jewels Return! - Broken Record with Rick Rubin →

A super good conversation.

Currently reading: 1776 by David McCullough 📚

Stella Immanuel, Trump’s New COVID-19 Doctor, Believes in Alien DNA, Demon Sperm, and Hydroxychloroquine →

WTF. Please vote.

Finally ditched Amazon Prime. We will see how long this lasts.

Parenting win: Stella (bass) and Lucy (drums) are jamming Another One Bites the Dust in basement.

Kate Tempest – People’s Faces Lyrics →

I learned of Kate Tempest through Joe Talbot’s awesome web show… this song was released in 2019, but it’s so perfect for 2020.

🎵 Blu & Exile - Miles

SO good.

Almost one-third of Florida children tested are positive for the coronavirus | TheHill →

“They are seeing there is damage to the lungs in these asymptomatic children. … We don’t know how that is going to manifest a year from now or two years from now,”

Sounds like in-person school is a good idea.

🎵 Garden Variety - Knocking the Skill Level (Remastered 2020)

Finally on streaming! One of my absolute favorite albums.

Miles Beckett on Twitter: “Why are COVID cases increasing while deaths are decreasing? The answer is simple. It’s called Simpson’s paradox and it’s the result of incorrectly pooling data and arriving at a false conclusion. A thread →

Super good thread and explainer video.

Would really like a micro.blog plugin to match the Last.fm display @smith implemented on his new blog. Looks so good.

Is free speech under threat from ‘cancel culture’? Four writers respond - The Guardian →

Professional consequences start off dire for the people who are cancelled en masse by structural racism. At least old white dudes get the respect of being cancelled on a case-by-case basis.

Good responses from all four writers.

Bully - Every Tradition - YouTube →

Another new one from Bully. So good.

Reopening Schools in NJ- Educator Concerns →

An even larger list of questions from teachers. SO many issues. It’s not as simple as “we need to open.”

Teaching with Jillian Starr on Twitter: “A Thread: America’s teachers have a lot of questions regarding the push to reopen schools.” →

So good and spot on.

ending the charade – Fredrik deBoer →

So how can someone object to an endorsement of free speech and open debate without being opposed to those things in and of themselves? You can’t. And people are objecting to it because social justice politics are plainly opposed to free speech. That is the most obvious political fact imaginable today.

Pretty sure no one is against your ability to say things, just that there are consequences for saying things (an even more obvious fact) and that, holy shit, people are finally being held to account for the racist, misogynist, hateful stuff they say (and do) and if enough people feel that way, maybe you finally feel the repercussions. If you feel that forces you to censor yourself or limits your free speech, that is on you. There are plenty of soapboxes for you to spout your bullshit.

BALLEY TV - Episode 3 with Billy Bragg & Arlo Parks →

A great episode of Joe Talbot’s (IDLES) web series where he talks with fellow musicians during the pandemic. Love Billy Bragg!

As I was listening to the Daily podcast today, I couldn’t help but think how dangerous the thinking around school opening is…

They lead off the podcast saying stuff like studies say that inside is like 20x more dangerous than outside for contracting coronavirus; that places like restaurants, bars, churches are the most dangerous (places where people congregate for long period of time, talk/sing/laugh/etc); that coronavirus lingers in the air, etc etc. Then they talk about how opening schools will be fine. Even though everything they described fits schools as well?! Crazy.

They do mention studies that seem to suggest young children haven’t been super spreaders, but what about older students and staff? And kids bringing it home to at-risk family members?

The flu ravaged many schools in our area this past school year, so I have no faith in schools coming up with a plan to prevent coronavirus spread. Even more so after reading plans that have been put forth in a few states. Some have no mandatory masks or staff testing and very little guidance in terms of dealing with all of this…

Then there are examples like Israel, which seem to be closest to what I’d expect from most states:

Two weeks after Israel fully reopened schools, a COVID-19 outbreak sweeping through classrooms — including at least 130 cases at a single school — has led officials to close dozens of schools where students and staff were infected. A new policy orders any school where a virus case emerges to close.

The government decision, announced Wednesday evening, comes after more than 200 cases have been confirmed among students and staff at various schools. At least 244 students and school employees have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the Ministry of Education. At least 42 kindergartens and schools have been shuttered indefinitely. More than 6,800 students and teachers are in home quarantine by government order.

Pretending this disease does not affect kids or isn’t dangerous in a school environment is going to get a lot of people hurt.

I understand the want and need to get kids in school, but that doesn’t change the reality of the situation. The quicker we can change the mindset of folks who won’t wear masks and the quicker we can get an actual federal plan and coordinated response to this pandemic, the sooner we will be able to get back to anything close to normal. Four months into the pandemic and that isn’t working out too well.

Dirty Projectors: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert : NPR →

The new songs are so good!

RIP Laverne. You will be missed. Such a sweet pig. 😞

Here are my thoughts from this weekend’s camping trip to Stony Brook and. Watkins Glen:

1. Not checking Twitter, Apple News, or RSS did wonders for my stress level. No service, no notifications, no stress.
2. We wore masks anytime we were within 20 feet of someone, but many didn’t. Stony Brook hiking trails weren’t too busy on Friday (the rest of the park was…) so we didn’t have much to worry about as we only hiked. Watkins Glen on Saturday felt insanely packed and I’d put mask wearing at like 50% – I was very uncomfortable, even though it was probably not packed at all for “normal” times. I know I’ve been living in a bubble of Buffalo and our neighborhood for the last 4 months, but I’d prefer to not have to deal with that again anytime soon.
3. I downloaded Hamilton before we left Friday AM so we could watch over the weekend. What an amazing production! One daughter is a super fan, so I’ve heard the music pretty much non-stop the last two or three years, but to see the whole production in order was great. Highly recommended. My only complaint was since Act One set such a frenetic pace, Act Two felt like it dragged a little… even though there was plenty of drama in the second half. If they could improve on one thing, it would be two one-hour, more evenly paced acts.
4. Watkins Glen is insanely cool as you can see in the pictures. Highly recommended, in normal and/or non-holiday times.

Friday

Saturday

Local educators urge their peers to be actively anti-racist - buffalonews.com →

The kids and I accompanied my wife to the educators rally in downtown Buffalo this evening. Super inspiring. Glad the kids got to see it!

🎵 Hum - Inlet

Lest We Forget the Horrors: A Catalog of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes: The Complete Listing (So Far): Atrocities 1-759 - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency →

So, so many. Please vote.

Great Father’s Day weekend at Evangola State Park.

🎵 Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher

So freaking good. In the running for my album of the year.

My initial thoughts on HEY after 24 hours:

1. the workflows and UX are pretty great, as mentioned by almost everyone
2. one negative, maybe: some screened contacts aren’t sticking to their The Feed designation, though it’s possible I did something wrong during initial training – will monitor more before reporting as a bug
3. so far, The Feed looks like a great way to browse those types of email on my own time. You can get the gist from what is exposed and dig in if you want. Brilliant.
4. when they launch custom domains, look out. I probably would have subscribed already.
5. love to see full data export and no lock in – this makes committing a little less stressful
6. full testing is kind of hard as I am hesitant to respond to emails from the Hey address. It does force me go back into Mail.app to respond, but that also reminds me how ugly and broken the old system is!
7. Would have loved to get jason@ but it was always a dream given who’s involved 😄

At this point, since I use Fastmail already, the decision is whether or not the workflows are worth the extra $35 a year, assuming the custom domains come soon-ish. I am leaning “yes” at this point, as they’ve really have me re-thinking email and how I deal with it. I love that it becomes permission-based across the board and not just for opt-in lists.

I do appreciate DIY posts like these that show what’s possible on your own, but honestly all of the services mentioned cost more than Hey on an annual basis and it looks like more work to maintain. If I was already in that world, I’d probably be hesitant to change to something new, but I’m not going to build all that to match Hey functionality and not save money/time.

In the end, custom domains + Hey’s functionality out of the box seem like an easy Yes. I hope they announce more on timing for custom domains before the end of the trial, though I am not counting on that to make my decision.

More to come!

IDLES - GROUNDS (Official Video) - YouTube →

So good. Perfect soundtrack for 2020. Can’t wait for the new album!

That time when a beekeeper shows up in your neighborhood to collect a bee swarm.

🎵 Ned’s Atomic Dustbin - God Fodder

Police: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) - YouTube →

Crucial. Watch the whole episode.

George Floyd, Minneapolis Protests, Ahmaud Arbery & Amy Cooper | The Daily Social Distancing Show - YouTube →

So good.

Hike at Zoar Valley today. Beautiful day.

Survivor finale is so good. Definitely my favorite season so far. #TeamNat

Senate Votes to Allow FBI to Look at Your Web Browsing History Without a Warrant - VICE →

Sanders and any other Senator who didn’t show up for amendment vote should be ashamed.

Proof of life. And it snowed today. 🧐

Avenue 5 - Airlock Scene - YouTube →

Pretty much America right now.

The girls took the pigs for a walk today.

Seminal punk label Dischord’s entire catalog is now free online →

“Free” is a bold headline, as it’s pay-what-you-can and the money does go to the artists. Definitely worth checking out. Some of my favorite bands of all time.

The pigs are out getting some sun today! Including my wife’s classroom pig, Suzanne. Coco and Laverne are not quite sure about her, yet.

We may not always have control over our options, but we do have control over how we choose among them.

Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less 💬

Going the full Whitman this summer.

“In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”

— Buddha (turns out, probably not)

Not sure where I found the quote. Though it’s not Buddha, it’s still valuable advice.

💬

Also, officially sucked into Animal Crossing. Friend me up on the Switch!

Family mural adventure.

Our oldest put together a presentation to convince the rest of the family to read Percy Jackson and other Rick Riordan books. 🤓

Michigan Family Declares the Sidewalk In Front of Their Home as a Monty Python ‘Ministry of Silly Walks’ Area →

This is amazing.

Spring time cherry blossoms. Definitely a mood lifter for our daily walks.

Back on micro.blog hosting! The ease of posting, the community, and not having to manage an install won me back in the end.

Countertops are in finally! Final touches should be done next week.

Amazing to overhear @Mammals_Suck give a March Mammal Madness @2020MMMletsgo masterclass to all of my wife’s 7th grade science classes this AM. Such a cool experience that probably wouldn’t have happened with in-person school.

Isolation bass lessons in our “almost complete” new kitchen. Stay healthy and safe!

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 30

Vision

Some intense lighting effects at Interpol really messed with your vision.

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 29

Leap

The Lady Knights took a huge leap forward this season. Heartbreaking first round playoff loss today.

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 28

Below

From our trip to Mammoth Cave last summer.

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 27

Together

The kitchen is coming together. Cabinets and island moving into place.

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 26

Escape

A nice little escape: last summer in Long Beach, NY

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 25

Hurdle

Another hurdle done: walls painted and flooring in. Cabinets start tomorrow!

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 24

Double

The twins. Double trouble.

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 23

Station

One of our favorite family trips: visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios.

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 22

Spectacle

All three daughters sitting next to each other for a photo!

We launched a brand new version of Relic Scout today! Relic Scout is perfect for collectors and flippers, but also very useful to anyone buying or selling on eBay. See auctions, Buy It Now listings, and recently completed sales all in one view – for any item you are looking to buy or sell.

We’ve got some sample searches set up to show you the benefit of using Relic Scout. Customize and fine tune your search queries, then bookmark the page for easy access. Your eBay skills will never be the same.

If you are a regular eBay user, please check it out and send along any feedback you may have. Thanks in advance!

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 21

Progress. Dry wall up, paint and flooring purchased.

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 21

Scale

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 19

Space

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 18

Oppose

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 17

Cool

Up front for Band of Horses.

February Photoblogging Challenge Day 16: Rest

Can’t believe how fast time passes. Stella five years ago.

February Photoblogging Challenge Day 15: Balance

Gift from the Mrs. #pitterpatter

February Photoblogging Challenge Day 14: Warmth

Eternal Flame, Chestnut Ridge Park (Orchard Park, NY)

February Photoblogging Challenge Day 13: Rise

February Photoblogging Challenge Day 12: Attachment

Erie County Fair 2015

February Photoblogging Challenge Day 11:

There’s nothing plain about these three.

February Photoblogging Challenge Day 10

We just booked our summer camping trip in the Adirondacks, so I thought this sign from Old Forge would be appropriate for tonight’s post.

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 9

There may be a lull in the work this weekend, but we took the opportunity to check our cabinet order and organize the boxes into areas of the new room.

February Photoblogging Challenge Day 8: Contrast

Downtown Buffalo in the theatre district.

February Photoblogging Challenge Day 7: Above

Guaranty Building, Buffalo, NY

A winter storm is hitting the area, so I am dreaming about spring. Today’s Photoblogging Challenge word is plant. Here’s a photo from the cherry blossom festival in Buffalo.

February Photoblogging Challenge Day 4: Hide

Day two complete!

via Flickr

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 4

One big spot of snow left from the storm.

February Photoblogging Challenge: Day 3

Today’s word: Reflect

From our trip to Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts.

Day one complete! Exciting progress.

via Flickr

Day one complete! Exciting progress.

via Flickr

Kitchen remodel day one: dining room before

Kitchen remodel day one: dining room before

Kitchen remodel day one: kitchen in the living room and dust wall 😄

Kitchen remodel day one: old kitchen, new appliances

Kitchen remodel day one; old kitchen, new appliances

Kitchen remodel day one: old kitchen, new appliances

Kitchen remodel day one: dining room before

I created a Flickr album to track the progress on our kitchen and dining room remodel. Follow along!

The sight we’ve been waiting for… kitchen and dining room remodel starts tomorrow! (For February Photoblog Challenge Day 2: Sight)

I really want to particpate in @macgenie’s photoblogging challenge for this month. I am going to have to cheat for Day #1, though – too much running around today! Today’s word: Open

A nice throwback to our visit to OBX, the beaches, and the open ocean.

The Case Against Impeachment Has Nothing to Do With Impeachment - The Atlantic →

An excellent historical look at the lengths politicians have gone to shore up white (and usually male) minority power.

Nova (from Panic) beta time! So excited.

Now that the Iowa caucuses are close, I see it’s become “scare people away from Bernie” season again. How about we just let the primaries happen this time? Last time they forced a candidate, it didn’t turn out so well.

I am really digging the design of Fantastical 3. Not entirely sold on the subscription, but I am going to follow through with the trial to get a better idea of what it brings to my life.

Bon Iver tickets at Art Park acquired! Going to be another anniversary concert with the Mrs. One of our favorite bands.

OK, Twitter hiatus commencing (again)… too stressful, too much of a time suck. If I ever go back, any folks I want to follow will go straight into Feedbin.

As Fast as Her - Chicago Blackhawks - YouTube →

This is Zoey’s fifth year playing youth/girls hockey and my second as a volunteer. I’m so glad she has role models like Kendall Coyne and the Buffalo Beauts to look up to every time she steps on the ice.

Thanks to everyone who shared the “subscribe to YouTube” in RSS tips over the last few days. So amazing.

Beyond Fracking: Oil-and-Gas Industry’s Toxic Waste Is Radioactive - Rolling Stone →

Between this and climate change, the only moral and logical choice is a Green New Deal. Any argument against is simply (short-term fossil fuel industry) profits over people.

Me and the Mrs out for some meat raffle fun.

First win of the season for these ladies!

Ian MacKaye: Full Interview (AUDIO ONLY) - House Of Strombo - YouTube →

Such a good conversation.

How IDLES Singer Joe Talbot Challenges Masculinity With Punk - NowThis →

Dave Winer on Bernie Sanders:

Sanders is a nice guy for sure, but he can't do the organizing we need to do (see below). It's not something you can delegate.

Not sure how Dave came to this view on Sanders (he did mention his age and the fact that he doesn’t have apps on his phone), but Bernie’s campaign epitomizes grassroots, democratic organizing. The Intercept had an article on his campaign app and that app is translating into volunteers and donors at record numbers. It’s a big part of why I donated to his campaign. Of course, Sanders may waste all of this like Obama did, but I am willing to take that risk.

Couple firsts for me this past week: Made my first donation to a presidential campaign and did my first Patreon. (Bernie and the Do By Friday podcast, if you are interested.)

The New Mutants - Official Trailer →

Comes out April 3rd. I dig it.

Girls got their first non-loss of the season. They’ve improved so much. A win is just around the corner!

Note: This post was published elsewhere initially. I am moving my 7-Day Music Club efforts from that domain to my main blog. Enjoy!

As we start this new journey on 7-Day Music Club, I felt the best place to start was at the beginning. For me, the true joy of music, discovery, and finding my own taste started with Run-DMC’s Raising Hell.

Not only was was Raising Hell the first cassette I bought with my own (10th birthday) money – purchased at K-Mart in Lockport, NY shortly after release in 1986 – but it was the first album I listened to repeatedly, memorizing all of the lyrics. It was also the first record I bonded with friends over: my friend Alex and I would listen repeatedly in his bedroom or while playing Sega Genesis – we’d each take turns being Run or DMC, nailing our parts as we went through each song.

The love of Run-DMC evolved creatively as well – we eventually started writing our own raps as Run-PVD (as creative a name as you could expect from a 10-year old) with our friend Eric. We even performed in the hall for our 5th grade student teacher the following school year.

The discovery of Hip-Hop was universe expanding for me in many ways – especially after a childhood of exposure to classic and yacht rock via my parents. Run-DMC led me to LL Cool J’s Bigger and Deffer, the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill, and the Fat Boys’ Crushin’. From there: Public Enemy, Slick Rick, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Erik B. & Rakim, Nas, BDP, 3rd Bass, Black Sheep, Digital Underground, the D.O.C., Geto Boys, Ice Cube, Young MC, and Digable Planets. I was hooked.

Highlights From My Focused Listen & Reflection

Tracks

1. “Peter Piper” – 3:23

Wow, that drum and cowbell combo, sampled from Take Me To The Mardi Gras by Bob James, is so iconic. The lyrics, relying so heavily on nursery rhymes and fairy tales, made for a relatable introduction (for a 10-year old, at least) to the album.

2. “It’s Tricky” – 3:03

We are not thugs (we don't use drugs) but you assume (on your own) They offer coke (and lots of dope) but we just leave it alone It's like that y'all (y'all), but we don't quit You keep on (rock!) shock! cause this is it...

As a ten year old, drugs and alcohol weren't really a thing yet, but these lyrics did influence me as a young person. I didn't drink alcohol until I was 21 and I've (still) never done drugs. Hardcore music and straight edge helped me get through the teenage years, but hearing this early on definitely had an impact.

Easily identifiable samples: Mickey by Toni Basil and My Sharona by The Knack.

3. “My Adidas” – 2:47

One of my favorites. This song definitely sparked my desire for Adidas in elementary school. For the record, I had black with white stripes.

Got a pair that I wear when I'm playin ball With the heel inside, make me 10 feet tall

4. “Walk This Way” – 5:09

Given my childhood to date, I was obviously familiar with Aerosmith, so this song was a weird mix of familiarity and something so new.

The Walk this Way video sums up my relationship with music and Run-DMC as a whole for me at that point in time: my parents were obviously Aerosmith playing their music loud and I was rebelling against it, experimenting with my own tastes, and putting my own spin on things. Such a good video.

5. “Is It Live” – 3:07

6. “Perfection” – 2:52

7. “Hit It Run” – 3:10

Now how devastating can an MC be? My name is Darryl, but you can call me D Hit it Run!

One of the hardest/toughest songs on the album. Run kicks it with some fast, aggressive beat boxing, while DMC’s rhymes don’t hold anything back… it’s certainly a precursor for modern day Hip-Hop music.

8. “Raising Hell” – 5:32

The title track continues the momentum started on Hit it Run — this time with an awesome metal-influenced guitar riff. Had Walk this Way not been a single, this track would have gotten way more attention.

The lyrics to start the track were some of my favorites:

Kings from Queens from Queens come Kings We're raisin hell like a class when the lunchbell rings The king will be praised, and hell will be raised S-s-s-suckers try to faze him but D won't be fazed So what's your name? D.M.C.! The King is me! Your High-ness, or His Majesty! Now you can debate, you c-c-c-concentrate But you can't imitate D.M.C. the Great!

9. “You Be Illin’” – 3:26

Man, this song! I vividly remember doing this song with Alex in his dining room area. Such fun, corny lyrics… how can you not enjoy this song?

(To)day you won a ticket to see Doctor J Front row seat (in free!) no pay Radio in hand, snacks by feet Game's about to start, you kickin' popcorn to the beat You finally wake up, Doc's gone to town Round his back, through the hoop, then you scream "Touchdown!" You be illin'

10. “Dumb Girl” – 3:31

11. “Son of Byford” – 0:27

12. “Proud to Be Black” – 3:15

Lyrics and other goodies from Genius.com

Listen to Raising Hell on Apple Music:

Listen to Raising Hell on Spotify:

Buy the Vinyl

Support your local record shop! But if not, here are a few online options:

• Raising Hell On Discogs
• On eBay
• On Amazon

What was your first record, cassette, or CD?

Writing Feeling Into Song With Sharon Van Etten (Rebroadcast) - 1A →

Great interview. This makes me love @sharonvanetten even more. Hope she comes to Buffalo some day.

Merry Christmas!

KEXP just posted a live performance from Hatchie – #4 on my 2019 list. Watch below or view directly on YouTube.

Ice skating with these ladies tonight.

Let’s make 2020 the year we all get off Instagram and move back to Flickr: The world’s most-beloved, money-losing business needs your help

Re-upped my Pro account.

I’ve finally narrowed my list of favorite music releases of 2019 to 22. I tried my hardest to get it lower, but I just couldn’t boot any more from the list.

With that said, here’s the general order of preference:

1. Clairo - Immunity
2. King Princess - Cheap Queen
3. Bon Iver - i,i
4. Hatchie - Keepsake
5. Better Oblivion Community Center - s/t
6. Angel Olsen - All Mirrors
7. Middle Kids - New Songs for Old Problems
8. Bob Mould - Sunshine Rock
9. Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow
10. Maggie Rogers - Heard it in a Past Life
11. Mannequin Pussy - Patience
12. Tyler the Creator - IGOR
13. Anderson .Paak - Ventura
14. The New Pornographers - In the Morse Code of Brake Lights
15. Earthgang - Mirrorland
16. Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride
17. Khalid - Free Spirit
18. Stella Donnelly - Beware of the Dogs
19. Freddie Gibbs and Madlib - Bandana
20. Tank and the Bangas - Green Balloon
21. Jamila Woods - Legacy! Legacy!
22. The Japanese House - Good at Failing

Feel free to listen along:

Are there any releases I missed, that you think I’d dig? Feel free to share in the comments.

If you don’t have Apple Music and are in need of some instant gratification, here are a few of my favorite performances from these artists:

Stella Donnelly:

Clairo:

Sharon Van Etten:

King Princess:

Maggie Rogers:

Middle Kids:

Why the Clash’s ‘London Calling’ Still Matters - The Ringer →

One of my fave albums of all time. Will be listening today.

My Apple Music Replay for 2019

Sacha Baron Cohen Uses ADL Speech to Tear Apart Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook →

The ultimate aim of society should be to make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed, and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love, or how they pray.

The 2010s Have Broken Our Sense Of Time →

Or more simply, the algorithm:

You can find yourself wondering why you’re seeing this now — or knowing too well why it is so. You can feel amazing and awful — exult in and be repelled by life — in the space of seconds.

Enjoyed a Beauts OT win on Saturday and a Bills ugly win on Sunday. Let’s go Buffalo.

“There Is Definite Hanky-Panky Going On”: The Fantastically Profitable Mystery of the Trump Chaos Trades – Vanity Fair →

Shady at best, criminal at worst.

Another music nugget: it took me 3 albums but I finally get Angel Olsen. Her new album All Mirrors is simply amazing. I’ve started to re-visit her previous work and am really enjoying most of it now, where I didn’t before… anyone else have this experience with an artist?

Video: Watch Sharon Van Etten Play The Tiny Desk : NPR →

SO good. I don’t know how she plays Seventeen every night.

Clairo talks about the story behind Alewife and recording with Rostam. (PSA: suicide is a main subject.)

The Delusion and Danger of Infinite Economic Growth - The New Republic →

Extreme weather events, melting arctic ice, and species extinction expose the lie that growth can forever be prioritized over planetary boundaries.

The Consumerism Curse – On my Om →

“Fundamentally, it is a business model that is flawed —- capitalism is still functioning on the premise of endless resources.”

Also, endless growth and endless waste. None of which are sustainable. Yes, capitalism has improved the quality of life for many people. It has also left many behind – through inequality, oppression, and overwork.

Between inequality, climate change, and resource depletion something needs to change. I doubt America would ever go for socialism, so I am hoping for some kind of compassionate capitalism that blends elements of capitalism, socialism, and social justice. It’s going to take a bold vision and a lot of work – just hope we’re up for it. Time is running out before huge change is forced upon us by nature.

How Politics Can Make You Sick - Elemental →

Just as an official impeachment inquiry of President Trump begins, a new study finds 38% of Americans were already stressed out by politics, with 11.5% saying they’re so stressed it’s making them physically ill, even if only a little.

I’ve talked to numerous friends about this subject. Based on the responses, I’d guess those numbers are low. I’m definitely in both categories.

Created an iOS shortcut to take a phone number from the clipboard and look it up on Robokiller. Way more consistent than all the shady phone number sites you find through search.

The oral history of Veruca Salt’s American Thighs — The A.V. Club →

This took me back to high school and freshman year of college. Absolutely love this album.

Greta Thunberg had a powerful message at the United Nations Climate Action Summit. I hope world leaders (both government and business) felt half as much shame as I felt listening to her words.

My actions are half measures at best and empty at worst. I need to take a deep look at my place in all this and make changes. Please consider the same.

[embed]https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1176151948304769025[/embed]

Clairo performs ‘Bags’ on Ellen:

Love her debut album Immunity.

Picked up the new Bon Iver and Physical Graffiti yesterday. Zeppelin is getting a ton of play. That record is amazing.

We got to witness a spider catch a fly in it’s web, wrap it in silk, and eat it this AM. Complete with fly larvae!

Nothing better than rocking my Pre-season Champions hoodie to celebrate a Bills win.

First two games of the season in the books. #AmherstKnights #girlshockey

via Flickr flic.kr/p/2hc5d2R

EARTHGANG’s new album Mirrorland is so good. A definite OutKast vibe, though with their own style. On repeat today. Check it: https://song.link/https://music.apple.com/us/album/mirrorland/1478445586?uo=4

Apple Music →

Apple Music launches on the web! Pretty solid for a first release and way faster than iTunes.

#hockey #travelhockey #hockeygirls

Introducing ‘1619,’ a New York Times Audio Series - The New York Times →

Crucial listening. Please give up 45 minutes of your life each week to follow this series. We grow as a country when we learn about the lives and history of our most marginalized.

Trump’s Tax on the National Psyche - The New Republic

So on point. Ready for this timeline to be done.

I’ve really been digging the new Bon Iver and this episode on Holyfields makes it even more special. I love hearing the story behind the sound and lyrics.

Quick stop over to the beach in Long Beach (NY) before we drove back to Buffalo.

Maiden!

Picked this cool little Kodak Printomatic for my 15-year work anniversary gift.

Interpol was amazing tonight.

Stella’s b-day present finally came!

🎵 Digging: Immunity by Clairo

Cleveland has been pretty fun! We enjoyed wandering around and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame today.

Zoey’s day was made: front row at the Snail Mail concert, then got her guitar pick and set list after! A pretty great 11th birthday present. All pics by Zoey, except the one of her.

Had our first casual get together of the hockey season today. The girls were more than excited to get their warm-ups. Haven’t seen smiles that big in a while! Everyone put theirs on and were back out on the ice in minutes. Zoey hasn’t taken hers off yet.

Back to coding the next version of Relic Scout! It’s been a few months, but all of that comic book hunting I’ve done over the last few weeks has sparked my interest again. Let’s do this.

First summer trip of the year is in the books: some 1600 miles and 34+ hours in the car, 7 states, 2 time zones, 1 National Park, 1 Ikea, and ZERO kid fights. (Yes, you read the right. All three were amazing.)

Had to check out the guinea pig exhibit at the Nashville Zoo. Kids are in love! They miss their ladies back home.

Mammoth Cave was pretty amazing!

Hello, Louisville! Have a perfect view for fireworks tonight.

Going to give the new Reminders a shot for a few weeks.

Awesome day for a ride! Our first Ride for Roswell was amazing. We will be back.

My last week in music. On a Middle Kids kick! Also check out Truth Club’s new album.

One of the most important rock bands today: Idles

Ok got my new iPad Air. Should I buy Things for iPad or wait to check out Reminders in the Public Beta? Previews seem to indicate all of my major issues have been fixed in Reminders, so leaning toward holding off. Anyone on the dev beta using Reminders now? How is it?

Super relaxing trip away this weekend for Father’s Day! We went to Golden Hill on Lake Ontario to stay in a yurt. Thankfully we did, as most of the weekend was cold, windy, and rainy. We were able to get out and do some exploring, though.

Thanks @Burk for the sticker!

I know we’ve had a lot of rain, but Dark Sky seems to be rubbing it in today.

We made a launch mistake with 7-Day Music Club! Substack limits community comments to paying subscribers only. We don’t plan to charge, so we moved to WordPress. We’re back up and running over there. Please subscribe and register for the forums!

All of the coverage of iPadOS inspired me to get back on the iPad train. New iPad Air, keyboard, and pencil ordered. Pretty excited!

The first issue of 7-Day Music Club is live and written by me… all about my first cassette purchase: Run-DMC’s Raising Hell. Please check it out and subscribe to get future issues.

My wife got me a penguin encounter for my birthday! I loved penguins growing up — especially after reading Mr. Popper’s Penguins and the Bloom County comic strip. Today I got to hang out with Opus at the Niagara Falls Aquarium. What a coincidence!

Love music? Vinyl? Our very first 7-Day Music Club newsletter is almost ready – with the first issue written by me! Now is the perfect time to subscribe: 7day.substack.com

The Mrs. won Educator of the Year at her school. So proud!

Our favorite Girl Scout event: marching the Buffalo Pride with our troop. So much fun, so positive. Restores my faith in humanity for another year. 🌈🏳️‍🌈❤️

Got one of my faves! Swervedriver’s Mezcal Head on vinyl.

Lucy scored her first soccer goal tonight! So exciting.

Birthday records came! Still have Swervedriver and Joy Division coming.

Sadly the multiple payment methods doesn’t seem to be implemented the way I hoped. You can’t easily change payment methods when buying in App Store it seems. Bummer.

When did Apple add multiple payment methods in iOS? Been on my wishlist for a long time.

Just backed Bokeh on Kickstarter – excited to see where Tim takes this…

Cherry blossom festival

Vampire Weekend tonight in Buffalo. Great show!

88 Important Truths I’ve Learned About Life →

Super good list.

NFL Draft night! My fave options for Bills:

1. T.J. Hockensen (TE)
2. Ed Oliver (DT)
3. Trade down in 1st (then pick A.J. Brown, Andre Dillard, Christian Wilkins, or D.K. Metcalf)
4. Jonah Williams (OT)
5. Obviously Quinnen Williams or Josh Allen, if they fall.

Family tickets for Endgame purchased. First Marvel movie all of us have been excited for at release. My plan worked! 🤓

Current status.

🎵 Wand - Laughing Matter

Really digging this new album. For fans of older, fuzzy Radiohead.

A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez →

Visit for the amazing art, stay for the vision of a forward thinking economy and just society that tackles climate change head on.

Record Store Day pick ups!

How to take a picture of a black hole | Katie Bouman - YouTube →

So awesome.

First night of indoor soccer. All on the same team!

Subscription Hostages - Signal v. Noise →

This is one of the main reasons I enjoy subscriptions on iOS. I can view all in one place, then cancel or re-subscribe with a couple taps.

I finally sat down and took a look at Hugo themes last night to add pagination to the Micro.blog-hosted Hyde theme. Turns out, it was much easier than I expected!

Here are the steps:

1. Make sure Hyde is selected as your current theme.
2. In the Custom Theme section, click the Edit Custom Themes button.
3. Click the New Theme button to create a custom theme based off of Hyde. (Name it whatever you’d like…)
4. Select that theme to go the templates view.
5. Click New Template to create the pagination partial with the filename and location:

   layouts/partials/pagination.html

6. Add this code to that template and click Update Template:
7. Click on the list template:

   layouts/_default/list.html

8. Add this code: above the last

   {{ end }}

   and click Update Template
9. At the end of the Hyde.css file find the second to last #post-nav block and add

   text-align: center;

   to center the pagination at the bottom.
10. Once you make those changes, go back to the Micro.blog Design tab and select your Custom Theme. Click Update Microblog Settings to use these theme changes.

That should be it!

George Lakoff: Don’t Think of an Elephant - YouTube →

Excellent and insightful talk. Via: Do By Friday, episode 126

Zoey was so excited to get her braces off today!

Picked up another all-time fave: Ctrl by SZA

Finally saw Captain Marvel today with the family. We loved it and my geek heart exploded with every little Easter egg.

I’m pleased to announce a new project I am launching with a few long-time music loving friends: 7-Day Music Club.

The premise: we feel that the current digital age of music has not only damaged the album as a collection of songs, but our relationship to it and the artist. That feeling of holding the album in hand, pouring over the lyric sheets and inserts, and repeated/focused listens – are all a thing of the past for many people.

Our plan: 7-Day Music Club is a community that will celebrate albums as a social, shared experience through focused listening and storytelling. Each week we will focus on one crucial album from our collection to encourage a deep, 7-day focused listening session and conversation.

Our full site – including a blog, newsletter, and message board – will launch in early May. Visit today to sign up for our newsletter and be notified when we launch!

Song Exploder: Sharon Van Etten →

Such a great episode from one of my favorite artists.

Americans Borrowed $88 Billion to Pay for Health Care Last Year, Survey Finds →

I’m not sure how anyone can think the status quo is sustainable.

The Mrs. and I saw Rent for the first time today. The second act was top notch!

Just another Friday night selling Girl Scout cookies. Thankful it’s the last weekend for another year.

Our first experience with travel hockey tryouts is in the books after four years of house hockey. My bank account is in pain, but feeling good about where we landed. Zoey took it all in stride and thoroughly enjoyed it all, so thankful for that…

Got my copy of 3 Feet High and Rising today. So amazing! Transported back to my early teenage years when it first came out — the whole album has held up very well. 🎵

🎵 Nilüfer Yanya - Miss Universe

So good.

Ok, I created a Shortcut that you can use from within Apple News to create a markdown link of the canonical article URL in Drafts. No more Apple News URLs and redirects!

The danger of ‘I already pay for Apple News+’ - TechCrunch →

A good counterpoint to my post from today.

Congrats to @Agiletortoise on the release of Drafts on the Mac. Just imported my Bear notes, organized my tags and workspaces, and cleaned up my inbox – going to try to use Drafts as my main text notes app going forward.

Apple News vs. RSS – Snakes and Ladders →

Guess what you see when you look at your RSS reader? Exactly what you chose to subscribe to. Neither less nor more.

Agreed, 100%. I think the problem with a lot of these Apple News silo posts is that it’s portrayed as a binary choice. It’s not. You can use Apple News and a feed reader, which is what I do…

Apple News, for me, is where all high volume and mass media subscriptions go (so magazines fit well here) and my feed reader (Feedbin) is for everything else, plus any site where I don’t want to miss any post.

High volume, multi-topic sites in feed readers are a nightmare, so that’s where Apple News can provide value. For Apple News to work well, you need to do a couple things:

1. In General Settings > News, check the ‘Restrict Stories in Today’ to only display stories from channels you follow.

2. Subscribe to a good number of channels and topics. I am up over 60 at this point…

3. Use it! The more you read, love, and dislike stories, the better your device gets at recommending things to read.

No, Apple News is far from perfect. It IS closed, no read/unread state, no portability, there are minimal controls for changing the reading experience, etc, etc. (Text IS selectable and shareable on my device, so not sure where that negative came from…)

Ultimately, I want journalism to survive and prosper in the Internet age. We need it, now more than ever. The current model obviously isn’t working (advertising supported anything promotes clickbait, as we’ve all seen) and I don’t think a $10+ subscription for every site/thing under the universe is the solution either.

The Apple News+ bundle is a tremendous value if you are interested in even a handful of the publications involved AND Apple can provide enough of a market for it to possibly benefit the news industry – revenue that isn’t dependent on advertising, so that’s at least a start. I’m not sure it’s the best idea or the solution, but time will tell. In the end, if it gets the masses used to regularly paying for digital content, then I am all for it.

Today’s pickup: Broken Social Scene. One of my all-time favorites.

Last fall my father-in-law was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Our entire family, including his seven grandchildren, are cheering him on every day as he battles this horrible cancer. In June we will be doing the Ride for Roswell to raise money in honor of his battle and Roswell’s mission to end cancer. Your thoughts, donations and support would be greatly appreciated!

First time record shopping in probably 15 years! Picked up Sharon Van Etten and Fugazi, two of my faves.

I’m really digging a couple new albums from today: Part 1 Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost from Foals and SASAMI’s self-titled full-length.

Signed up for Vinyl Me, Please to grab De La’s 3 Feet High and Rising. I’ve wanted that record for awhile so very excited. Anyone have experience with the service? Feel like I remember either @jack or @Rianvdm posting about it before.

Second to last skate of the season.

Saw Angela Davis at UB tonight. So smart and thought provoking.

Trying to stay warm today.

The Mrs. and I took a glass blowing class last night at The Foundry. So much fun!

About one-third of Americans say using blackface is acceptable - Pew Research Center →

How can a legit research service use both ‘sometimes’ and ‘rarely’ as options on this? Regardless, the results are sad.

Earth Crisis at Kendzies in Lockport. Probably 1996.

H2O at Blind Mellon’s in 1996-ish: think they opened for Sick of it All. So good!

Hot Water Music: Cleveland Hardcore Fest ‘95. Blew me away.

Head over to @noechodotnet today to see a collection of my photos from the 90s hardcore scene. (Pictured: Autumn at Lost Horizon in Syracuse)

90s Hardcore Photo Party (Upstate New York Edition) - No Echo →

Check out some of my photos from the 90’s hardcore scene in Western New York and surrounding areas! More here.

Hoover Middle School’s production of Alice in Wonderland. Last performance is today at 1pm!

Another fave from the 90s: Mineral at the Detroit Hardcore Fest (1996?)

Yeah Amherst Girls! Zoey in the gray helmet along the wall with her team. They got to skate during a recent Beauts game. 🏒

Our precious Earth and the lunar far side – Dwingeloo Radio Telescope - CAMRAS →

Awesome pictures!

Maggie Rogers | House Of Strombo - YouTube →

Great interview and a couple acoustic songs, including a Whitney Houston cover.

Added some new photos to my band photo Flickr album. Most are mid to late 90s punk and hardcore bands.

Shift - Showplace Theatre in the late 90s

Spent 7 hours working on set design with Stella today to support the middle school’s production of Alice in Wonderland next week. We built a large mushroom, flowers, a rock, and the queen of hearts’ throne. Fun!

Browsing the photo box: @itinerantprinter and I, high school graduation 1994.

Chet enjoying today’s sun.

‘This is Not the End’ by Spielbergs →

Musical crush for the day.

Trades like the Porzingis deal are a big reason I love the NBA. Deals like this very rarely happen in other major leagues. Sure I would feel differently if Buffalo had an NBA team and KP or Davis were leaving my team.

Today and tomorrow: Blizzard warning and -20s wind chill. Next week: 50s. Totally normal Buffalo winter.

My top 16 songs from the last week are showing a little obsession!

On Maggie Rogers’s Inescapable Aura, Debut Album ‘Heard It in a Past Life’ - The Ringer → Love the new album.

Accidental twinning! Lucy wasn’t digging it — especially since mom is a teacher at her school.

Daring Fireball: TechCrunch: Facebook Pays Teenagers to Install VPN That Spies on Them → Seriously shady.

Wow, our schools just canceled for Wednesday and Thursday! Brrrr. Ready for winter to be over already. I usually don’t get that feeling for a few more weeks!

Les Savy Fav brought the full crazy to Elsewhere (pics, video, setlist) →

Probably my favorite live band. We saw them many times over the years, including a New Year’s Eve show in Seattle. I booked them for a basement show in Buffalo just as we were moving to Seattle – I wish I was able to stick around to see that mayhem.

Celebrated the first half of the school year by taking the kids to 5 Wits for an escape room and then Dave & Busters for dinner and games. So fun!

All this Blot.im talk… had to jump in! Posting to Git repo via Working Copy on iOS is pretty awesome. Need to dig in more.

New album from Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers. So so good.

Amazon’s Wish List with Stacy Mitchell — Why Is This Happening? with Chris Hayes — Overcast →

Interesting episode on Amazon’s growth and how it’s wielding power to get even bigger.

Zoey bought a guinea pig grooming set today. Both are in heaven!

Had my first Impossible burger today. So frickin good. Best veggie burger by far.

Maggie Rogers - Light On (La Blogothèque – Live in Paris) →

I like this version better than the recorded. So good.

Jawbox announce 2019 reunion tour →

YES. Please come to Buffalo!

Sadly I needed to bribe Lucy to go see Into the Spider-verse with me today, but also finally going to see it so it’s not all bad.

Operation ‘replace swollen battery and upgrade to SSD in my old 2009 MacBook’ with Stella is complete. She is so psyched.

Outkast’s Aquemini is 20 years old and still amazing. Changed my mood today. Much appreciated.

Today’s New Comic Book Day pickups. And I finally set up a pull list at the LCS three blocks from my house.

Giving Day One another chance for journaling… have a daily gratitude prompt, IFTTT for my blog & photos, and TV/movie log shortcuts set up.

Intermission shoot out for these ladies at the Beauts game today!

One music list to rule them all – The Outline →

An aggregated Album-of-the-Year analysis. Pretty interesting…

Just got Stella excited to help out with a battery and SSD hard drive upgrade to make my 2009 MacBook usable. Parts ordered!

I recently scored some good deals on a few comic investments: Paper Girls #1 (CGC 9.8), Monstress #1 (CGC 9.8), Machine Man vol 2 (first appearance of Iron Man 2020), and the complete run of Infidel. I will be posting more on each this month on my Relic Scout blog.

Some of my favorite moments from 2018.

Some highlights: visiting Hogwarts at Universal Studios, marching in the Pride Parade, Kendrick Lamar, Melisa completing here NY Master Teacher fellowship, Letchworth for Father’s Day, Stella and Zoey’s surprise selfies on my phone, kayaking and hiking in the Adirondacks, Band of Horses, back to school, WNY Llamafest, visiting family in NYC, impromptu dance parties…

So many more that weren’t captured on purpose.

2018 has been challenging in many ways and is ending on a very somber note, so it was helpful to look back and see reminders of all the good times we did have this year.

Best wishes to all in 2019! Here’s to a new year of staying positive in the moment, full of empathy, love, and patience.

Some of my favorite things from 2018 in no order…

Music Releases

1. Snail Mail - Lush
2. Shame - Songs of Praise
3. Saba - CARE FOR ME
4. Mastersystem - Dance Music
5. Yuno - Moodie EP
6. J. Cole - KOD
7. Red Hare - Little Acts of Destruction
8. Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs
9. Anderson .Paak - Oxnard
10. Superchunk - What a Time to Be Alive

And a playlist of some of my favorite songs:

TV Shows

A golden age for TV. By far too much choice, but tons of great series:

1. The Expanse
2. Maniac
3. The Handmaid’s Tale
4. Daredevil
5. The Americans
6. The Man in the High Castle
7. The Gifted
8. Ozark
9. Atlanta
10. Second seasons of Iron Fist and Luke Cage (RIP)

Movies

I didn’t see many movies this year, but these were my favorite:

1. Black Panther
2. Avengers: Infinity War
3. Ant-Man and the Wasp
4. Annihilation
5. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
6. A Quiet Place
7. Mary Poppins Returns
8. Deadpool 2
9. Crazy Rich Asians
10. Ready Player One

Comics

My top series from the year…

1. Mister Miracle
2. Deadly Class
3. Paper Girls
4. Black Hammer
5. Batman: White Knight

Possible cool Micro.blog app idea: viewing a post from MB user in browser, hit MB share extension and it auto adds username to send response. Would be easier for MB hosted blogs but maybe others could add meta tag to facilitate?

Dinner and ice cream fun with the girls.

Zoey earned the ‘A’ after today’s 3-2 win. Lots of hard work and effort! So proud.

The tale of girls house hockey.

shame - Full Performance (Live on KEXP) - YouTube →

Love Songs of Praise – it’s one of my faves from 2018. Hope to see them live someday!

My new pickups from the local comic shop.

Dirty Projectors: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert - YouTube →

So good. If I was a talented musician, this is the band I’d want to be a part of… eccentric, R&B influenced indie rock.

watch Ben Gibbard, Julien Baker, Craig Finn, Kevin Devine, Aaron Dessner at Frightened Rabbit tribute →

Scott’s passing still hits me hard.

Picked up a few books at the LCS today. Loved Firefly. Digging into the others later!

Finally scheduled out my remaining days off. Only 8 full work days left in 2018! Which means I have some serious planning to do.

Such a great group of young ladies.

Impromptu dance party after A Charlie Brown Christmas at the Theatre of Youth.

Finally gave in and got an Instant Pot. What recipe should I try first?

Cousins on Thanksgiving 🦃

Saw The Crimes of Grindelwald tonight with the family — so good!

New .Paak is so good.

Here are the most infuriating details of Amazon’s HQ2 deals →

If this deal goes through in NY, I am off Amazon. No more. Quarterly profits > $1.5B since Q4 2017. Bezos’ wealth +$36B this year. WTF.

Laverne and Cocoa officially live together! Last night was their final “get to know you” and move in.

Main Street, Buffalo

If I were the Democrat leadership in the House, my plan would be to come out the gate fast and pass as much legislation as possible:

• fix the ACA or better yet, pass a medicare-for-all plan with all the details on how to pay for it
• pass reasonable gun control legislation
• pass a voting modernization act to promote encourage all to vote & make it easier to vote (“We want to hear everyone’s voice.“)
• pass a plan to help with inequality/the coming change in jobs due to automation/AI
• pass immigration reform
• etc. etc. etc (So many possibilities.)

Basically touch every issue you want to use as a focus for 2020.

Set the talking points for the next two years and force the Senate and Trump to react… to say No.

No more reactionary politics. No more letting the other side dictate what the Democrats stand for – show the country actual policy and leadership.

Then send Barack and Beto on a countrywide tour to sell it to the country. They would draw MASSIVE crowds.

Do I have faith they will do this or come close? Nope.

One can dream.

Re-joined Flickr Pro! I’ve been using the site in one way or another since 2005 and I am very excited about it’s independent future. Remember to use coupon code FLICKRPRO30 before November 30th. My profile: www.flickr.com/people/jd…

If you are on Mastodon, you can follow my blog using @jason@endonend.org

Watch The Deadly Class trailer: assassin academy for teens - Polygon →

Can’t wait for this show.

Fun night at Misuta Chows with the Mrs. and some good friends. Arcade and great Japanese food.

Stella and her friends finished up their mural at Buffalo Arts Studio. So cool!

Stella and her friends finished up their mural at Buffalo Arts Studio. So cool!

Friday night lights. Sort of…

Over at Relic Scout, I shared my pull list and most anticipated comic books for November.

NFL teams aren’t even trying that hard to justify keeping Kap off a team. Here’s my hometown Bills. I get Anderson as a mentor - he’s in his 14th season. Barkley is horrible. If you are tanking sure, but don’t claim you are trying to win.

Finished: Marvel’s Daredevil 📺

So good. Loved Fisk (again), Bullseye, and Nadeem. Hopefully they will be back for another season.

This kid. Who wants to be a cactus with a mustache?😂

Laverne got a young new companion today: Cocoa. Super fluffy and soft! @macgenie

My latest comic issue recommendation over at Relic Scout: Speculator’s Corner: Volume 2, Issue 3 (Young Avengers Presents #6) - Relic Scout

A Joyous Cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart Again? - kottke.org → So good!

So glad I looked through the JetPens planner section for the 100th time! I found this, which is exactly the view I like and only one I really use in my planner: Hobonichi Accessory - Weekly Calendar 2019 - JetPens.com

Yuno (Live on KEXP) - YouTube →

One of my favorite albums of 2018. A perfect blend of indie, hip hop, R&B, and even reggae.

Over on Relic Scout, I shared My Comic Collecting Origin Story – how I got started reading and collecting comics. I know there’s a book out there for everyone, so if you need ideas let me know!

Three perspectives

Cousins weekend!

It’s a Tragically Hip kind of day.

Some couch time with Laverne.

Saba: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert - YouTube →

Saba’s Care for Me is one of my fave’s from this year.

That’s a win!

Almost game time!

In Praise of Mediocrity - The New York Times →

Tim Wu on having hobbies:

Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it.

Don’t Miss This: “Redlands” by Jordie Bellaire and Vanesa Del Rey – Multiversity Comics →

So good!

I Know Brett Kavanaugh, but I Wouldn’t Confirm Him - The Atlantic →

If the Point of Capitalism is to Escape Capitalism, Then What’s the Point of Capitalism? →

The capitalist, ironically enough, is trying to earn his freedom from capitalism — just like everyone else. The only difference is that he’s a step closer

J. Cole was so good. Put on an awesome show!

J. Cole - Album Of The Year - Freestyle - YouTube →

Seeing J. Cole tonight! So excited.

Bully at Mohawk Place. So good!

Bully - Full Performance (Live on KEXP) - YouTube →

Seeing Bully tonight – so excited!

Brie Larson Was Told to Smile in ‘Captain Marvel,’ So She Put Smiles onto Marvel Dudes →

Perfect response.

SPACE ALERT™ – An Apple Shortcuts Text Adventure – UARRR.org →

This is pretty amazing and a super creative use of Shortcuts. Hope there’s more like this coming!

Hat tip: @ismh

60 minutes proving De La Soul is one of hip-hop’s greats—but its legacy is in danger →

Truth.

The Captain Marvel movie can’t come soon enough.

Captain Marvel’s helmet/mohawk movie costume is the result of a bet - Polygon →

Love DeConnick’s run and McKelvie’s design.

Morning walk before a six consecutive hour meeting.

Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel - Official Trailer - YouTube →

YES.

Thinking about Attention — CGP Grey →

Found myself nodding in agreement throughout the 11+ minute video. Worth a watch!

Lucy and her fellow Girl Scout Cadettes rode 24 miles on their bikes to raise awareness for their leader’s fight with mitochondrial disease. They wrote letters to politicians, contacted the media, and had local businesses sponsor their ride. So proud of these ladies.

Liked: The Fast and Frugal Needs of the Online Reader - Hapgood →

Check for other coverage, find the original, investigate the publisher. But unlike much information literacy, these concerns are bonded to quick web-native techniques that can be practiced as habits.

Liked: Forget the new iPhones, Apple’s best product is now privacy →

Nintendo Entertainment System – Nintendo Switch Online → Super excited to be able to play some of my favorite NES games from childhood. And my kids are the same age I was then, so I get to share with them as well!

The House that Came in the Mail - 99% Invisible →

This is a pretty cool story. Our house was built in 1920 and has many features similar to these Sears houses, though ours isn’t one. See the Sears Archive for images of every model.

Hat tip: @ayjay

An Avalanche of Speech Can Bury Democracy - POLITICO Magazine →

It’s not speech per se that allows democracies to function, but the ability to agree—eventually, at least some of the time—on what is true, what is important and what serves the public good.

How to make a one-page zine →

I haven’t made a paper zine in over 20 years, but this looks super fun. I will have to try this with the kids!

I did find the layouts from my last two zines recently. Here they are, in all of their 1994/1995 glory:

• Hat tip to @ChrisJWilson

Rest in Peace Shirley. What a rough way for the kiddos to start their day. Heartbreaking.

WNY Llamafest

WNY Llamafest was a hit.

Hockey season AND embarrassing dad season again.

Apple Music Gains Better Organization of Releases on Artist Pages – MacStories → Lots of changes to artist pages on Apple Music. Big improvements!

Just noticed this in Apple Music: upcoming releases at the top of an artist’s page. Awesome!

Yup it’s hot outside. Feel for all the kids and teachers back in school! Thankfully tomorrow will feel 30 degrees cooler.

Death Cab for Cutie cover Frightened Rabbit’s “Backwards Walk” (listen) →

A very nice tribute to Scott. Still can’t believe he’s gone.

Sunlit 2.2 is here →

Congrats @manton! Sunlit is how I post photos to my blog and now we get an Instagram-like feed in the app. There’s no better time to join Micro.blog. If you have a blog, there’s no excuse – it’s free! If you need a blog, hosting is a mere $5/month.

Fifth, sixth, seventh, fifth. First day of school year!

First day of school. First time all four are going to the same school. First time the Mrs has been in first day pictures!

As I mentioned in my last Relic Scout post, I am going to document my progress with launching new features on the site.

Today I tackled some design decisions related to the “Hit List,” which is a new view we are adding to Relic Scout. This view will include (to start) all graded comic book auctions ending in the next 24 hours that have at least 1 bid.

In addition, we will be adding Relic Scout information & tools like:

• a link to other listings for the specific issue
• historical sales & price trends
• a deal score rating which gives a simpler metric to judge the current auction price versus historical trends
• the ability to bookmark individual listings for later

Here’s the latest mockup of what we’re going for:

I took a couple cues from RSS reeders (stars and ‘mark all as viewed’) as I thought those were useful tools to deal with large amounts of constantly refreshing information.

One element I need to work on is the ‘deal score’ area. I want to find a way to surface small amounts of useful historical pricing information, something along the lines of 7-day, 30-day, and all-time prices maybe? Modal or tooltip is the obvious answer, though I want them to work well for mobile users.

We could also add global user-level settings for grading service, grade range, and deal score minimum, which could be useful for these types of pages.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated – especially from comic book collectors and frequent eBay users.

In my next post I’ll share the final design mockup and then, later, I’ll share a link to the live page on relicscout.com.

“White Fragility 101” | Crooked Media →

A great episode and reminder: regardless of how you feel, it’s easy to be complacent when you have privilege on your side. Large scale change needs continued action and education by all. 🎙️

Enjoyed Annihilation so much I grabbed the hardcover collection this weekend. 📚

I added a few more Micro.blog shortcuts to my MarsEdit setup. To add these, open up the New Post window, then under the Format dropdown select Customize. Here you can add new macro entries. Add the code I shared below to the Opening Markup box for each macro.

Easily link to another Micro.blog user

Here are two ways to easily link to another Micro.blog user (useful for sending webmentions):

• This option will prompt you to enter the username:

Copy the macro:

[@#asktext Enter Text:#](https://micro.blog/#asktext Enter Text:#)

• If you copy the username to your clipboard this option will grab it and automatically enter:

Copy the macro:

@#pastetext#

Add Tagmoji Macro

Here’s the previous tip I shared. This macro will insert the appropriate tagmoji to your post.

First I created a Group (under gear icon) once you click Customize as described above. Then I added each to the group as shown.

You can find the currently used tagmoji used in Discovery on this page maintained by @burk

For example, enter this in the Opening Markup box:

🎵

New album from one of my favorites! Definitely see Saintseneca live if you ever have the chance.

Here’s a pig pile for @macgenie!

Three amigos.

Also just set up some Micro.blog tagmoji as formatting macros in MarsEdit. Now I just need to remember to use them.

Almost hockey season again! Got Zoey back out on the ice after a 4 month break.

For National Dog Day: Chet, our pug, has been a huge part of our family over the last 4 years!

Block party fun. And yeah I hurt myself. Lol.

Current home screen.

Tonight’s reading material: Pearl #1, The Seeds #1, and Death or Glory #4.

Read: Elizabeth Warren’s speech unveiling new anti-corruption bill - Vox →

Between this and the Accountable Capitalism Act, Warren is on fire. A 2020 bid has to be in the works…

What a perfect cover for the current state of Mister Miracle.

Almost 20 years later. Still relevant, still powerful.

Commentary: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez becomes the Sarah Palin of the Left - CBS News →

I wish current members of Congress were held to as high standards as Ocasio-Cortez.

We Want Comics: LOST – Multiversity Comics →

WANT. I loved LOST so much – probably the last time I watched a “live” TV show every week. Comics would be a perfect way to wrap up loose ends & add depth.

A couple of weeks ago I deactivated my Facebook account, citing Facebook’s long standing history with privacy violations, ineptitude with fighting hate speech/Russian trolling/etc, and their overall business model in my “why are you leaving?” survey response. Besides dealing with my mom, who thought I unfriended and blocked her, I haven’t had another thought about the site since — it’s refreshing.

Since then, I’ve been reflecting on my usage of Twitter, as Jack Dorsey has been in the news due to their hands off approach with Alex Jones — despite repeated violations of their terms of service. This, combined with amplifying the voices of nazis, trolls, and bots that do nothing but harm and negatively impact the discourse on the site (and off the site, through threats of violence and harm), has me ready to jump ship on August 17th in support of #DeactiDay.

On August 17th I will be deactivating my account to show Twitter I do not want to be a part of a site that tolerates hate, racism, and abuse. The protest movement is giving Twitter 30 days to fix the site, which happens to be the time the deactivation becomes permanent. We’ll see what happens. I am not expecting much.

Regardless, I have moved nearly 100% of my social posting to endonend.org. Other than occasional retweets and Twitter responses, everything I have posted online this year has originated on my site. This will remain going forward and quite honestly I am glad I made that decision, considering the state of these siloed social media sites.

I am also very glad to be a part of the Micro.blog community which uses my RSS feed and provides a social layer that connects many blogs like mine. My micro.blog account pulls my RSS feed into the service and displays my content to folks who follow me through that service, while commenting and discussion takes place on micro.blog similar to Twitter. The timeline view of people I follow is chronological and free of ads (imagine that!) The team behind Micro.blog has solid community guidelines — meaning they treat the site as a community and not whatever the heck Jack considers Twitter today (it certainly was a community back when it started.) My experience with comments and discussion on Micro.blog has reaffirmed my faith in humanity -— interesting, civil, and respectful in tone —- everything you’d want from an online community.

I highly recommend checking it out. They offer a cheap ($5/month) blog hosting service, if you are looking to start a blog. If you have a blog, grab your RSS feed and head over to sign up -— the site is free to use if have an existing blog.

If you don’t have a blog, start one! Help us bring back the independent nature of the web and blogging – where you can discover new ideas and read diverse opinions free from corporate control and algorithms. The web, after all, is the best social network – whether it’s using hyperlinks, an RSS reader, or utilizing a service like Micro.blog that provides the social connectivity between independent sites.

Short posts or long posts, it doesn’t matter. Having your own site gives you the freedom to post what you want, when you want. Your site becomes your own personal diary of discovery and growth – something you can look back and reflect on. Your posts become the gateway that connects you to others, new ideas, and thoughtful discussion. In other words, everything that makes the web so great.

Beautiful day for a paddle.

Paddlin’

Band of Horses was super good.

Band of Horses and Bonny Doon tonight at Town Ballroom. Great show!

First visit to the comic shop in a while. Picked up Black Badge by Matt Kindt and the Kirby variant of FF #1. Good stuff!

Manton Reece - Infowars and the reluctance to curate →

Manton hits the nail on the head:

Facebook and YouTube are conflicted about how to handle this because their model is wrong. Unlike podcasts and blogs, which can live at a custom domain and move between hosting companies, videos on Facebook and YouTube are served directly on those platforms. If the videos are blocked, especially by YouTube which controls nearly all video on the web, there’s no obvious migration path away.

and:

The solution is clear: post to your own site, encourage other people to get their own domain name, and support smaller social networks like Micro.blog that are empowered by design to curate.

More than 20 years ago I took Melisa on our first date to see the Descendents. Tonight, on our 16th wedding anniversary, we saw them again. Fantastic coincidence!

Seattle venue Showbox may be torn down for apartments →

Bummed for the Seattle music scene! My wife and I spent many nights at the Showbox when we lived in Seattle.

Micro Monday - Episode 19: @endonend →

My first podcast! A little nervous to listen, though I guess I already lived it once.

Just noticed this on iOS 12 public beta… is Apple updating stock apps via AppStore now?

Picked this up at Target. Can’t wait to play with the family tomorrow.

Our annual five days in the Adirondacks. Totally magical. Spent time in Lake Placid, hiked Mt. Regis, paddled Lake Meacham, and spent 99% of the time with no cell service. Relaxing!

Five days in ADK. Amazing as usual. #lakemeacham #mountregis

Yep.

Our hike yesterday in Chestnut Ridge Park to see the eternal flame.

Super bummed my Apple Watch decided to stop tracking for a few hours yesterday and I didn’t realize it until too late. Ended my 75 day streak of closing all my circles. Back at it today!

Two new members of the family. Meet Laverne & Shirley.

One of 150 some photos left on my phone when I wasn’t looking. At least they are cute and loving each other!

First full day on iOS 12 public beta. Time limits for social media is refreshing.

Preview of Sunlit 2.2 | Manton Reece→

I am so excited for the next version of Sunlit. Exactly what I was hoping for from Manton, in terms of direction, when he launched version 2 a few months back. Also appreciate the feature in the demo video! :)

Such a gentleman.

Such a gentleman.

Last night’s post-musical practice sunset. Glorious.

Last day of elementary school for these two.

Letchworth in all it’s glory.

Letchworth in all it’s glory.

Hiking with my ladies at Letchworth.

Zoey’s Father’s Day card. Complete with 50 pocket cargo pants. So cute.

A good boy.

My graduate!

King Kendrick last night. So good. Schoolboy Q killed it too.

King Kendrick

What a day. Pride Parade with the Girls Scouts during the day. Kendrick Lamar at night.

Happy Pride! Faith renewed in humanity

Moment of the day: my wife presenting my daughter with two middle school science awards: one for her science fair project and one for her grades and love of science.

Zoey’s self portrait. So cute.

Daring Fireball: 10 Strikes and You’re Out — the iOS Feature You’re Probably Not Using But Should →

Manchester Orchestra cover Frightened Rabbit to honor Scott (watch) →

Beautiful.

DEADLY CLASS | First Look | SYFY - YouTube →

So excited for this… one of my all-time favorite comic books.

Lucy scored two new Lumberjanes books and autographs today at Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Thanks to Mariko and Brooklyn for making her day!

Still reeling from the news on Scott Hutchison. Hope he turns up safe. Such a big part of my life with music and getting through tough times.

Song Exploder | Liz Phair →

Liz Phair and Brad Wood take a look at Divorce Song.

So proud of Lucy. She was very nervous to go to middle school, but she’s absolutely excelling. Three straight quarters on Honor Roll, a 98 overall average, and now another Beacon Award. Such a great kid.

Built to Spill, Afghan Whigs, and Rituals of Mine tonight.

Picked up this Fender Squier Bullet Telecaster today. Plays great and feels super solid for the price. I sold my guitar and amp when the twins were born and have missed playing music and the creative outlet.

Got my MIND MGMT fix from Matt Kindt today. Absolutely beautiful.

Science museum fun.

Sun means family walk time!

Palak paneer, chicken makhni, and samosas at Clay Handi in Kenmore.

artisanal bread making class with the Mrs.

“Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” with Stella

[caption id=“attachment_5076” align=“alignnone” width=“3072”] After game picture[/caption]

Road trip to Hamilton for a rematch against Coronation. Super fun trip, even though the game didn’t go our way.

Hockey weekend almost done. Three games and two practices Friday to Monday for Zoey. Canada trip next weekend!

12 Gates Brewery. 8 for 8 - all awesome. Best Buffalo brewery we’ve been to so far.

Special guests at the Kenmore-Grand Island girls varsity hockey game!

Today’s library pickup 📚: Doom Patrol omnibus. 1280 pages! (via Instagram)

So excited for this! Jeff Lemire has been my favorite writer over the last few years. Out March 7th on Image Comics. 📚

Exclusive: “Gideon Falls” Trailer by Lemire and Sorrentino – Multiversity Comics→

Beers and a fireplace with my special lady friend last Friday. (via Instagram)

Chet is not feeling the cold today. (via Instagram)

Hockey, Albright-Knox, summer boat ride with the Mrs, me as Logan, twins and I at the White House, protest sign, New Pornographers, Missy’s 40th, and twins first day of school. Wishing everyone a happy 2018. 🎉

More Albright-Knox

Awesome Murakami exhibit at Albright-Knox

Growing up so fast.

Buddha in the snow.

Someone was made festive while they were sleeping.

Awesome pic of Zoey by @mdettbarn #hockeygirl

Pre-game stretch #ouch

Happy 40th to my favorite!

Someone is enjoying the Dog Super Bowl

Hollywood-themed “Me and My Guy” Girl Scouts dance today with my daughters. So fun!

Micro.blog Photo Challenge from @douglane — Day 7: “Shadow”

Micro.blog Photo Challenge from @douglane — Day 6: “Seasonal” decay

Micro.blog Photo Challenge from @douglane — Day 5: “Liquid”

Micro.blog Photo Challenge from @douglane — Day 4: “Up close”

I may be biased because it’s my first new release vinyl purchase in a long time (and first pre-order ever), but the new Quicksand sounds a lot better on vinyl.

Micro.blog Photo Challenge from @douglane — Day 3: “On the move”

Micro.blog Photo Challenge from @douglane — Day 2: “Tasty” aka grocery shopping day

Zoey doing her best Burns-y impersonation

Micro.blog Photo Challenge from @douglane — Day 1: Squares

Day 3 of 7: B&W life challenge

Day 2 of 7: B&W life challenge

Day 1 of 7: B&W life challenge

Logan noir

Chet is all business today. #sharkpug

Our outdoor themed pumpkins.

Bully’s second record reinforced their place as one of my fave current bands. So good.

#PMA

Let’s go Bills.

First Pink Storm clinic of the season. Stella playing hockey now too!

First day of fourth grade!

Over two years ago, I launched a site called Relic Scout. It was my first attempt at building a site using Ruby on Rails. Users could enter what they were looking for and the site would monitor eBay to find matches – it was basically eBay saved searches, but in our own walled garden. Turns out, that was a pretty poor idea and we quickly scrapped it.

Fast forward two years, through many talks and idea sessions and MANY late nights of coding, my partner Brian and I rebuilt the site (again using Ruby on Rails and two more years of hacking knowledge) to be open, but also more niche. For our initial launch, we focused strictly on comic book collectors.

So what is Relic Scout now? Relic Scout is the ultimate tool to track down the comics you want. The site allows you to build your want list, then see listings that match what you want, in the condition you want, at the right price. Collectors can buy with confidence.

Today, we’re officially announcing Relic Scout and encouraging people to sign up. If you are a comic collector, please check out the site – we’d love your feedback! If you collect sports cards or US coins & currency, please sign up for our mailing list. (We’re planning support for those areas in the future!) If you don’t collect, but know someone who does, we’d appreciate the word of mouth!

Finally, we are all over social media, so please follow our journey:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Our blog
• Reddit
• Flipboard

Thanks for reading and checking out the site! Extra special thanks to my wife, Melisa, for all of her support and encouragement – I couldn’t have done it without her.

Onward!

Having three daughters has been particularly challenging lately, as the girls move into the pre-teen years. (Spoiler: I know it will get harder.)

Our recent challenge has been the transition out of co-ed sports. We aren’t to the girls-only stage yet, but we’ve been considering it more closely with every passing game day interaction.

Whether it’s the mundane “what are you doing here?” question for my hockey playing soon-to-be-9-year-old to the more problematic physical and verbal targeting of her (and her girl friends) on the ice. Or the casual “girls can’t play basketball” to my soon-to-be-10-year old during recess. (Which she told to me, ironically, as she hit a 12-foot jump shot in our back yard.) Regardless of the intensity, it’s getting more frequent and more frustrating for the girls. (And us, quite honestly.)

My wife and I had a great conversation the other night about this and what to do about the situations. My wife said something like “as women, they will need to learn how to handle people telling them they can’t do something” — how, as a woman, they can’t play a sport, do a job, get a promotion, earn as much, have control over their own health decisions, be President, say no, etc, etc.

That phrasing was the cold, hard slap of reality that I am white, male privilege. Doesn’t matter how liberal I am, how much empathy I have, how much money or time I’ve donated to good causes, or how hard I try to not perpetuate that privilege. The simple fact is, as a white male, I’ve never been told I can’t do something. That is mind-blowing, given how often women and young girls, people of color, people of non-Christian faith, and the LGBTQ community hear the exact opposite. (Or, in other words, the majority of our country.)

Never being told you can’t (for any reason other than pure safety) leads to Trump, to rape culture, to groups of old white men writing health care legislation without a single woman in the room, to white nationalism, border walls, bathroom legislation, slavery, voter ID laws, police brutality, etc. etc etc. I could go on for fucking ever.

Then I think of all the times I encouraged my hockey daughter to out work the boys. I know my heart was in the right place, as my intention was to encourage hard work in general, but my phrasing was problematic for sure… I was perpetuating my privilege. Teaching my daughter that she needs to work harder than boys to simply be considered equal, that she needs to compare herself to boys (or anyone for that matter), was wrong.

Then I read the How to raise a feminist son post on Kottke.org, which focused on a NY Time article of the same title. A key quote:

Even as we’ve given girls more choices for the roles they play, boys’ worlds are still confined, social scientists say. They’re discouraged from having interests that are considered feminine. They’re told to be tough at all costs, or else to tamp down their so-called boy energy. If we want to create an equitable society, one in which everyone can thrive, we need to also give boys more choices. As Gloria Steinem says, “I’m glad we’ve begun to raise our daughters more like our sons, but it will never work until we raise our sons more like our daughters.”

The Times post also contained advice for raising boys (great advice for all children, btw), including encouraging friendships with girls:

Research at Arizona State University found that by the end of preschool, children start segregating by sex, and this reinforces gender stereotypes. But children who are encouraged to play with friends of the opposite sex learn better problem-solving and communication.

With all that said, we’re sticking with co-ed sports (for now), because we feel it will be a growth experience for our daughters. I hope we have better experiences next season and I hope that by our daughters (and their girl friends) showing up and competing, we’ll start to open more minds and spark more discussion between parents and their sons — at least locally. In the end, all it will take is a hard check to change our mind, I imagine.

Artisanal, small batch lawnmower 

A regal work buddy

Favorite from release day: Feist’s ‘Pleasure’. Check it!

Sebadoh at the Tralf in Buffalo 

Earth Day cleanup with Girl Scouts 

Team Clouded Leopard for tonight’s March Mammal Madness bracket battle. #2017MMM

Royal City by Jeff Lemire lives up to the hype. Check it! 

It’s a protest music kind of day.

2016 might have been a horrible year in the eyes of many (and in some aspects, correctly so), however the year was pretty great in terms of music. From performances like Kendrick Lamar at the Grammy’s to Beyonce at the Super Bowl and her Lemonade special… to album releases, there were a ton of great moments.

Here are my favorite albums from 2016. I couldn’t reduce the list to a smaller number, so I broke the larger list down by genre to help you find something you might have missed over the course of the year. (In no particular order.)

RB/Soul 1. Anderson Paak — Malibu 2. Solange — A Seat at the Table 3. Rihanna — Anti 4. NxWorries — Yes Lawd! 5. Frank Ocean — Blonde 6. Blood Orange — Freetown Sound

Hip-Hop/Rap 1. Run the Jewels — RTJ3 2. Schoolboy Q — Blankface 3. A Tribe Called Quest — We got it from here 4. Common — Black America Again 5. Danny Brown — Atrocity Exhibition 6. Chance the Rapper — Coloring Book 7. DJ Khaled — Major Key 8. J Cole — 4 Your Eyes Only 9. Kendrick Lamar — Untitled Unmastered

Rock/Indie/Alternative 1. Bon Iver — 22, a Million 2. D.D Dumbo — Utopia Defeated 3. Daughter — Not to Disappear 4. Frightened Rabbit — Portrait of a Panic Attack 5. Warpaint — Heads Up 6. Radiohead — A moon shaped pool 7. CHVRCHES — Every Open Eye 8. Bob Mould — Patch the Sky 9. Descendents — Hypercaffium Spazzinate 10. World Be Free — the Anti-Circle 11. Hamilton Leithauser Rostam — I Had a Dream That You Were Mine 12. Car Seat Headrest — Teens of Denial 13. White Lung — Paradise

In addition to the list, I’ve been adding songs to my Best Of 2016 playlist. Feel free to subscribe, if you are an Apple Music user.

So, what did I miss? Share your favorite albums from 2016! I love new music.

At the end of each year I take some time to figure out what I want to do more of in the coming year. I call this my Love List.

Why a Love List? As I wrote back in 2011:

The list is fluid and will change as my life changes. I’m not going to judge myself if some of these don’t get completed. I am going to put this list somewhere so I see it every day and spend at least part of my day moving one or more of these forward. And then at the end of 2012 I will do a retrospective to see how far I’ve come on these items.

So it’s basically a more positive, fluid take on resolutions. For example, here is the 2016 version.

I did a poor job tracking my 2016 list in any detail, but in summary:

• Family: I had a great year with my wife and kids. We traveled to Disney (with many adventures along the way), went camping in Rhode Island, and much more. It was a very positive year — probably one of our best.
• Exercise and Health: I did run two 5k races and did an OK amount of training for those, so I’d consider my health goal met.
• Programming/Eko Wave was a fail. I wasn’t able to keep momentum for an extended period of time. It’s been hard to even get started in the last couple months of 2016, with both of my parents spending time in the hospital on top of regular family/work busyness.
• Writing: Write more? Nope. Was less of a priority than programming, so got even less done.
• Photography: I did take a ton of photos and made a photo book, calendar, and got a couple larger prints made for our house. Definitely a sucess.
• Random: I did read more than previous years. I read a few actual books for once, in addition to many comics/graphic novels. I also made progress on my guitar, using Apple’s Music Memos to track and work on my ideas. (It’s a great app, if you are interested in making music.) I didn’t get around to meditation much at all, however.

So, with that said… 2017. What’s on my list so far:

• Family: family will always be my top priority.
• 3,000,000+ steps (average more than 8,220 per day.) I am going to accomplish this through more regular exercise, as well as training to run in five 5k races. My first race last year was a serious effort, but completing the second one (with a ton of improvement) got me hooked.
• Launch in Q1 2017 Relic Scout . With marketing and promotion effort for remainder of year.
• More reflection and gratitude. I am going to accomplish this through writing more on this blog, keeping a log of daily gratitude, journal more in Day One, and make quarterly photo books.

I am going to try to keep it simple this year, while using activities I’ve used as Love List items in the past (writing/photography/etc.) to help support bigger picture goals.

As always, I intend to post updates and progress here… stay tuned.

Happy New Year to all.

Like many people, I woke up today in shock and still exhausted from last night’s election results. I went to bed angry and disappointed, thankfully falling asleep — probably more from sheer exhaustion than anything else — after spending a short time pondering how I will explain this to my three daughters in the morning. The three daughters that were so excited to go vote for the first female presidential candidate. The three that went to bed with an 83% chance of waking up to the first female president in US history.

This morning, they ran into my room excited to hear the news, but like many of us who witnessed it live, their hopes were dashed and confusion set in…

“If he says mean things and isn’t a good person, why did so many people vote for him?”

That was just the start. They were profoundly sad, gracing me with many hugs to help with their (and my) disappointment. I’ve been a mess ever since…

Since school drop off, I’ve spent time reflecting with other like-minded people, reading great posts like Anil Dash’s Forget “Why?”, it’s time to get to work , pondering the most bizarre and contradicting exit polls I’ve ever seen, and attempting to temper my fear since Trump really didn’t run on anything but adjectives, a wall, and locking Clinton up (and I doubt the last two will ever happen.)

We don’t know what the next couple years will bring from this government led by an extreme narcissist — and while I don’t imagine much good coming from it for anyone who isn’t a white male, I do know that we can continue down the path we started on…

That means we will continue teaching our girls about love, empathy , decency, politeness, and inclusion — giving and expecting it back in return. It means continuing to teach them to think beyond their immediate needs, when they have enough (and what enough means), to consider others less fortunate. It means continuing to work with the amazing Girl Scouts of WNY to help the poor and marginalized, whether it’s helping food pantries or marching in the Pride Parade. It means supporting local businesses that are run by or support women, minorities, people of color, and LGBT.

There’s a lot we can do to lessen the impact of a Trump presidency for future generations. The most important moment starts today. Let’s show our kids that bullies and fear don’t win in the end.

[caption id=“attachment_4939” align=“alignnone” width=“800”] #ImWithHer for them.[/caption]

Tomorrow, we take our three girls to vote for President for the third time in their lifetime. The first two were for the first African American President. Tomorrow, the first female President.

The best part is they know no different. This diversity is normal to them. It’s so amazing to know that their generation is already off to a great start.

Now it’s up to us to keep setting good examples. Examples free of inequality, prejudice, hatred, abuse, degradation, and violence.

Let’s get this done.

A few weeks ago I ran my first 5k race after “training” (read: finish about 2/3 of a couch-to-5k program) this summer. It was the Tops 5K for Roswell Park Cancer Institute and it was super inspirational to run with cancer survivors and hear so many amazing stories before the race.

For my second act, I’m running the Monster Scramble 5k in October to support the National MS Society in honor of my sister and many of our friends who have MS.

If you live in the Buffalo area, Melisa and I would love if you joined our team and ran with us! If you aren’t able, we’d appreciate any support you could give by donating to our team and the cause !

Thanks in advance!

To many, today’s social conflicts are binary. You are either pro-cop or anti-cop. You are either pro-life or pro-abortion (love the ridiculous terminology). You are either for us or against us. You get the idea — it’s 100% or nothing.

It’s easy to think that way. The focus is you — your comfort, your life experiences, your beliefs, your truth. It’s challenging to have empathy or concern for people not like you. That kind of empathy is a necessity for peace, equality, and justice, however.

That empathy allows us to consider other people’s situations, experiences, and choices with an open mind. To take these stories as truth and recognize that this truth matters as much as our own. And when those truths are unjust or unfair or simply painful, this kind of empathy allows us to act in order to improve the well being of all human life, not just our own or people like us.

For binary thinkers, that empathy is replaced today with anti-PC fervor — but that is simply a crutch used to justify their fear and feelings of prejudice, racism, sexism, and ultimately hate. This fervor works to demean the truth experienced by others — be it through their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, genetics, or economics. This fervor allows them to wash their hands of any issue they don’t want to take the time to consider or understand.

True empathy also leads to a less straightforward, more complex belief system. Complexity that’s hard to communicate in today’s soundbite and 140-character culture. For example, I find it amazing that someone wouldn’t think this is possible or even logical:

• To be for #BlackLivesMatter — perfectly summed up by this comic . Or just maybe the simple logic that hundreds of years of slavery, oppression, inequality, and injustice just might have a negative effect on an entire group of people. To me it just seems wrong to willfully ignore or demean their words, their truth, their experience, their anger and frustration. See Bree Newsome’s tweets for more:

• To support police who are invested in their entire community and interested in upholding the law fairly, equally, and completely.

• To be against police brutality, racial targeting, and extrajudicial executions. To think that having one of the highest incarceration rates in the world (alongside China) does not match the democracy, “all men created equal”, and “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” messages of our founders. (Blacks are 6 times as likely to be in jail than whites, despite making up 13% of population. Latinos are nearly 3 times as likely to be in jail as whites, despite making up 16% of population.)

• To think gun violence is a horrible disease caused in large part by our culture and our willingness to cede everything to the 36% of our country that own guns. I am OK with people owning guns if we limit the types of weapons available and require licensing, training, and even basic, regular health checks. Because, turns out, that stuff works .

• To be pro-choice because it’s not my fucking body or life, even though both my wife and I are against choosing abortion for our life.

[caption id=“attachment_4930” align=“alignnone” width=“600”] Marching with the Ken-ton Girl Scouts at the 2016 Buffalo Pride parade.[/caption]

• To support all LGBT issues, from marriage to bathrooms to any other new “scary issue” people dream up, because everyone deserves happiness, to love and be loved, and the liberty to live life as they were born.

These are some of my truths, my beliefs — constantly evolving based on listening, reading, and watching through a lens of empathy. Empathy I learned as a child and work to grow over my life.

Empathy my wife and I work every day to instill in our children, because we want them to grow up in a world where pain, injustice, and truth are taken seriously — regardless if it’s in their face or not. We’re teaching our kids to act, not succumb to fear or wash their hands of social and economic issues because they aren’t affected directly or pass blame on whoever their generation’s Millenials turn out to be…

This world needs more listening and less talking. More empathy and less fear. Let’s all spend more time listening, understanding, and evolving as human beings. Who’s with me?

Over the weekend, I finally got around to a project I’ve been wanting to do: repurpose a tree round from the tree they cut down in front of our house earlier this spring. Plus, the round was finally dried out enough that I could 1.) move it and 2.) get the bark off in a reasonable amount of time.

The best part was Lucy and Stella (two of my three daughters) were super excited to help out!

Here are the basic steps:

1. De-bark the tree round. I used a hammer and pry bar. Most of it came off pretty easy, although there were a few stubborn areas.

2. Sand it down. I used a combination of fine and medium sandpaper blocks to get the round nice and smooth to the touch. Stella and Lucy were huge helps in sanding this behemoth.

3. Once you are done sanding, wipe the round down with a wet, lint-free towel to prep it for staining.

4. Put the legs on. This was actually sort of difficult, as the round was pretty uneven on the bottom. I did end up finding four spots that were equidistant apart and fairly centered on the bottom for support. I used Ikea Capita legs that are adjustable, so we can level the table on any surface.

5. Stain it. I used a honey maple stain, which ended up darker than I pictured, but looks good nonetheless. Stella and Lucy helped stain the top, as well.

6. Finish with a polyurethane. I used a fast drying clear satin polyurethane to protect the wood and give it a nice, rustic look:

I did three coats on the sides and six plus on the top, since it soaks in so much.

So pleased with how it turned out, but most of all I was glad to make something with my hands and have Lucy and Stella help out. A great experience for all of us!

I am to the point where I’m ready to dump anyone who endorses or votes for Trump.

Why such a drastic measure? Well, I will question their sanity and decency, for starters. Plain and simple, Trump is a horrible person and an even worse choice to lead our country. So much so, it threatens the future of this country — what is stands for and what I hope it to be in the future for my children.

From the Trump rally in Buffalo, NY (Photo: Chris Fritton )

I get why people want to vote for anyone besides Clinton or any of the other chump Republican candidates this cycle — people are angry with the bullshit that goes on in DC and the sense of helplessness that goes with being unheard and underserved for so long. But Trump? Really?

Before you even get into the baggage of Trump’s overcompensating, manly bullshit artist personality, you have the horrific shit-show that is his candidacy, policy, and life’s work. To name a few:

1. Trump is a racist and a bigot .
2. Trump is a misogynist .
3. Trump ia a narcissist and lacks empathy.
4. Trump’s business success is uneven at best and borderline shady at worst . OK, yeah he’s a “billionaire” (quotes, because who knows for sure) and he took his inheritance/loan/whatever you want to call it and stumbled into what he is today. Through many bankruptcies , bail outs, and horrible business ideas . Mark Cuban is 100% right… his ideas are horrible. He’s essentially a brand name, that’s it.
5. Trump is a con-man .
6. He’s a serial liar: 76% of his fact-checked statements are at least ‘mostly false’ or worse.
7. He’s creating a violent monster at his rallies .
8. Trump is a spit-balling, uninformed bullshit artist when it comes to foreign policy .

You can say it’s all a show and that he will act presidential when the time comes, but his rich legacy says otherwise.

I want a president that, at her or his best, drives us to be better people, better stewards of this planet, and better neighbors. At the very least, someone who has empathy, respect for all citizens and the global community, makes attempts to improve our country for every citizen, and works to improve our standing in the world.

Our country deserves something more than the ugly, scared, violent, hateful version of ourselves. Trump is willing to cater to those emotions and the people caught in that trap. Trump’s version of “winning” at virtually any price, isn’t worth the risk.

It isn’t worth resigning yourself to voting for him because of Hilary. It isn’t worth taking the chance on someone so self-centered, so ruthless and cunning, so willing to say anything at any moment to get what he wants, and someone so unwilling to apologize for anything — ever.

Why risk destroying our country — America as the beacon of liberty, freedom, diversity, and hope for the rest of the world?

[caption id=“attachment_4659” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Wormsloe live oak tunnel[/caption]

Vulnerability.

n. Susceptibility to attack or injury; the state or condition of being weak or poorly defended.

n. a specific weakness in the protections or defenses surrounding someone or something.

There is no better expert on vulnerability than Brene Brown. Her TED talk on the subject has been viewed over 22 million times. I highly recommend spending 20 minutes to view it, if you haven’t already.

The basic gist of the talk is this:

Connecting gives our lives purpose and meaning. In order to connect to others, we need to embrace vulnerability and be willing to take risks. We need to have the courage to be imperfect. To be kind to ourselves, so we can foster compassion for others. We need to be who we are, rather than who we think we should be.

All difficult stuff, right? Especially considering all the forces working against us: fear, shame, disappointment, expectations, the media, etc.

She also pointed out that our society is very good at numbing against vulnerability:

“We are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. The problem is — and I learned this from the research — that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can’t say, here’s the bad stuff. Here’s vulnerability, here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s fear, here’s disappointment. You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.”

I didn’t realize it until I watched this video, but my struggle has always been about vulnerability. I spent a good deal of my life in quiet fear of failure, showing weakness, and emotion. Trying to live up to expectations. To avoid (physical, mental, and emotional) risk. To build up an image of perfection to those around me. To be something I’m not deep down inside. Along the way, I avoided reality and never experienced vulnerability. I stopped connecting. I stopped living.

For me, that meant not addressing traumatic experiences in my past, making life choices based on the likelihood of success, and a limited number of close relationships with people.

I was very shy growing up and naturally good at all things school tries to make kids do well, so I floated through my early life. I got good grades, was a model student, had no major problems, and I never got in trouble. Every parent and teacher’s dream, right?

The problem with that dream is there was nothing pushing me to grow, take risks, fail, and really learn. Even the big, character forming experiences of college and moving across the country were filtered through my need to limit risk and emotion. I never ventured too far from my comfort zone.

The basic theme to each period in my life is risk aversion. I floated through life. And then when real, adult problems finally hit (and they always do), I didn’t know how to handle them. I resorted to what I do best: be passive so I don’t make the wrong choice.

Except that really isn’t the answer that keeps you from failing. It’s the answer that keeps your from really addressing the problem, from growing and being vulnerable. I learned this the hard way, because I came awful close to failing spectacularly and losing my marriage and family.

Thankfully, through a lot of counseling and self analysis, I discovered the why and how of who I am. I also figured out who I want to be in the present — to undo some of my defaults, in order to finally grow and be vulnerable. To not let fear and passivity drive who I am and the choices I make each day. To connect with people I care about and to live.

The truth is, we are all enough. Good enough as we are, good enough to live out our dreams, good enough to be loved, and good enough to love. The key is to let that person out, especially around the people we love. Once I did that, the changes I needed to make became much simpler. And, turns out, being vulnerable can lead to levels of happiness I had never experienced.

As Brown said in the talk:

Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, “I’m enough,” then we stop screaming and start listening, we’re kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we’re kinder and gentler to ourselves.”

This subject is also a core principle of Buddhism and the central tenet behind the Four Noble Truths: Dukkha. Life is Dukkha. It’s suffering, it’s impermanence, it’s change, it’s a pervasive struggle against a sense that things never measure up to expectations or standards. It’s struggling against ourselves and everything around us, rather than just being open and accepting. The rest of the Four Noble Truths deal with finding the origins of this suffering, the truth that you can eliminate suffering, and the path toward that cessation. It all comes back to being vulnerable.

One of the reasons I started this blog, as a more personal outlet for myself, was to open myself up to vulnerability and honesty. To share stories and ideas I haven’t had the courage to do in the past. It’s hard. Most of the time, pushing the Publish button is not easy — especially with some of the more blatantly honest and forthcoming posts. I do, though, and haven’t had any regrets. I feel it has helped me grow. It has helped me feel alive. Hopefully it helps you in some way too.

I’ll leave you with a couple great quotes from the talk:

“You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”

This is an expanded version of a post I wrote in 2012.

Prior to the previous weekend, I stumbled upon an article that mentioned the first anniversary of Ferguson. I was shocked. Had it really been that long? It felt like just a few months ago.

But then I realized it hadn’t felt like a year because of the constant stream of police-related violence and deaths over the past year. How many? A lot. Like 1,091 a lot. (Mapped and featured on Vox.com, courtesy of the non-profit Fatal Encounters.)

Based on that number, you would easily think the problem has gotten worse. In many ways it has. I think there are a good number of scared, under-trained, but also power-hungry and cocky (and in the worst cases, racist) police out there in our communities. I also think there are a lot of scared people of color in these same communities that don’t want to be pulled over/stopped/arrested and potentially become the next headline. Unfortunately, mixing the two can make things even worse, so the need for change is even more urgent.

Then you have memes going around social media like the image you see to the right, with over 28,000 likes and 195,000 shares when I took the screenshot. Brutality in quotes and blaming all of this on bad parenting and bratty kids! Really? That take seems completely divorced from reality. If anything, white kids and parents dominate those categories, hands down.

For one, there have been many high-profile examples of police violence happening after minor traffic infractions or no infraction at all. (And not so high profile.) Secondly, the issue crosses age, education and any other demographic, with one exception: race. This issue disproportionately impacts minorities. (See this Vice article for more detail and breakdowns.)

On the bright side, systemic racism and inequality are in the news nearly every day. That is a good thing, if we ever want to truly tackle that problem. Vox has the numbers on how this is changing society:

But recent surveys show the shift. A June survey of 2,000 US adults from Gallup found that all Americans are more likely to say that black people are unfairly treated in all aspects of society, including police encounters. And a July survey of 2,000 US adults from the Pew Research Center found a 20-year high in the percentage of Americans calling racism a "big problem" in society.

Now the question becomes, what are we going to do about it? Part of it rests on policy makers and enforcers. We’ve already seen politicians pushed to take policy stances and police departments being pushed to make changes, like requiring body cameras on police officers. Much more needs to happen (and soon), obviously.

But the other part rests on us to keep pushing the issues until we see real, sustained change. We can’t put our head in the sand and blame it on bratty young people or bad parenting. Or be scared to speak up because you know a police officer that isn’t part of the problem. (‘Cause you know, police are needed. That isn’t the issue. The issue is they should be held to the same societal standards and laws they are paid to enforce.) Or just pretend racism doesn’t exist, because you don’t see it. Or inequality doesn’t exist, because you believe in the American Dream. (Hint, social mobility doesn’t exist in the U.S. any longer.)

Quite simply, just take a moment to remember that your experience in this world isn’t the same experience others have over their life time. Everyone is battling their own inner demons and baggage – even generational baggage. Sometimes we all just need the benefit of the doubt and a little help.

Last year I experimented with the major streaming music services, with Beats narrowly winning the race over Spotify. One of the key reasons I decided to stick it out with Beats was the rumored revamp of the service and integration with the Apple ecosystem.

This week, Apple and Beats released that new service as Apple Music. The new service combines the iTunes library (well, most of it at least), your music library (via purchases and iTunes Match/Cloud Library), Radio, and Beats curation/recommendation engine into a single interface. Based on that, I’m sold.

The key points for me are:

1. Having access to all the obscure artists I have loaded via iCloud Match. All of those CDs and records I bought back in the day, many of them not available on any service, are now available to me in one single streaming app along with new music.
2. Access to new music (and the old that I don't own) available via the iTunes library. If the size of the library isn't equal to or greater than any other service, I imagine it will be soon. I also imagine that Apple Music's pay wall (no free accounts, beyond the 3 month trial) will get them more exclusives and more artists that were streaming hold outs. (Taylor Swift, as an example.)
3. Discovery and re-discovery via the recommendation engine ('For You') and the 'New' music tab. No other service does this as well -- not even close. I have a broad music taste, from hardcore/punk to classic rock to hip-hop to blues and folk. As you can see in the screenshot to the right, you have a laid back hip-hop playlist, some post-rock, A$AP Rocky, Flaming Lips, and Bright Eyes. Scrolling down, you have the Pixies, Tame Impala, Jay-Z, J. Cole, Superchunk, Neil Young, The White Stripes, Cat Power, Sonic Youth, and Black Uluru. You can't get any more diverse and accurate than that!
4. Speed -- the Beats app was pretty slow and had some nagging bugs. The new Apple Music app fixed all of that -- it's quite speedy, considering my library size and all it's trying to accomplish.

The only negative so far, beyond figuring out some confusing aspects of the user interface, is the song count limitation. There is a 25,000 song limit to the service. Before today I was over that limit, so I couldn’t add new albums to My Music. This caused much frustration because the iOS app doesn’t tell you why you can’t add an album – it just looks like it saves OK, then the album reverts state to un-saved. Ugh. Well, now I know. Also, this negative will go away come this fall, when Apple raises the limit to 100,000.

The biggest surprise to me is Beats 1 radio. I generally don’t like mainstream radio. I loved KEXP when we lived in Seattle. I like sports talk radio and podcasts. But most stations on the FM dial? No way. Too much of the same thing (and mostly bad music) – you know it’s bad when you flip stations and hear the same song on two different stations! And then there’s the commercials.

I decided to give Beats 1 a shot yesterday and was able to listen live to Zane Lowe’s first broadcast. The diversity, quality, and flow of his selections blew me away. He played songs by artists I don’t like or weren’t familiar with… and it worked. It flowed. Guess that’s why he is a professional DJ! Beyond Lowe, there’s plenty of great programming. I checked in on the other two main DJs and both had similar levels of quality, so there’s no drop off. St. Vincent’s Mixtape Delivery Service was pretty amazing too – I was able to catch half of that show and it had some delightful moments. I am definitely excited to see where that and the other artist shows take Beats 1.

As you can tell, I am pretty happy with the new version of Beats. I’ll gladly enjoy the 3-month free trial and hope Apple Music can turn music streaming into a viable revenue stream for musicians of all types.

As mentioned before, I embarked on a photo-a-day project to learn my new camera. Follow along on Flickr by clicking the Photo-a-Day link above!

Here are a few of my latest entries:

I found a relic from the first date with my wife – almost 18 years ago!

A little over a year ago, I founded Eko Wave with two friends (who also happen to be co-workers at the real job.) Last week, almost a year later, we launched our first product called Relic Scout.

Relic Scout is a utility for collectors with two primary purposes:

1. Keep track of your want list.
2. Find the best deals on these items, so you can maximize your budget and buy even more for your money.

We take your want list, entered on RelicScout.com, and use that information to find buying options for you to consider. Then, each day, we’ll update the site with new options for each item, as well as keep track of auction status (on an hourly basis to start), so you have updated information available to make decisions. Then, you’ll be able to buy with confidence when the right eBay listing comes up for your item (or elsewhere, like a garage sale or flea market.)

Relic Scout has built-in support for Comics, Sports Cards, Sports Memorabilia, Coins & Currency, and Trading Card Games. We also have an ‘Other’ category, which has basic support for many of the most popular collectible categories on eBay. If any of this sounds useful or interesting to you, please head over and sign up!

With the elevator pitch out of the way, I’d like to share some behind-the-scenes detail as it was a very valuable learning experience.

Ideas

Over the last year, we had numerous ideas on where to take Relic Scout. We worked on many of these in some fashion, but most of them either evolved into other ideas or were dropped all together. In the end, we scaled the original idea back with the intention to launch what we considered a minimum viable product. Something we would find useful, even if it wasn’t fully built out or realized yet.

I highly recommend this approach to anyone looking to build a product or launch a business. Start with the basics, launch, and then evolve as fast as possible once you get feedback. It’s really important to get something out there in the real world as quickly and cheaply as possible. It doesn’t have to be perfect either. (Remember my post, Make, Do and Wabi-sabi?)

Keeping the idea/project moving forward has a few benefits:

• It keeps you from second guessing decisions
• It gets your idea out in the wild faster, so you can start gaining feedback to build the second, third or even fourth release. You know the ones that have a much better chance at succeeding?
• It separates you from every other person that has ideas, but doesn't execute

Execution

With all those idea changes/adjustments going on, we also considered many approaches to executing the idea. Last Spring I built a proof of concept in PHP – a basic script that queried eBay for an item, parsed out the data, and organized it in a MySQL database. The idea of custom building an entire site seemed daunting at that point, so we looked elsewhere.

Then during early Summer, we took a look at building it on top of WordPress, as we came across a case study on a company that built a SAAS product on top of WordPress. As flexible as WordPress can be, we decided it would take too much hacking to break away from the CMS/blog nature of the software.

That brings us to late Summer/early Fall, where we took a look at a much more flexible CMS system, Expression Engine. We actually made a lot of progress on that site. With some dedicated effort we could have pushed that across the goal line, I’m sure. But that too felt like a big pile of hacks, that could easily unravel with future changes in the platform. So in December, we decided to take a break from the Expression Engine site and re-evaluate.

After the holidays I started hacking with Ruby on Rails, a programming language I’ve always wanted to learn, but in the past I didn’t have a good idea to use in my learning process. So I just started. Low and behold the development started moving really fast and three months later, Relic Scout was released to the public in it’s current beta state.

The takeaways from this part of the project:

• If you want to learn a programming language, I highly recommend having an idea of what you want to build. Having that idea helps keep you motivated and interested, rather than just following some tutorial you find online where you learn to build something you'd never really use.
• There is serious allure in building on top of another system to get you started. I firmly believe now that unless your project is meant for that system, build your own -- especially if you have any programming experience or have a goal to learn a language. For example, unless your project is a blog or heavily involves content, it's probably not a good idea to build it on top of WordPress.
• If you have an idea you believe in, never give up. It would have been easy to give up and say I don't know how to program well enough to build what I want, but I think in many cases you'll surprise yourself in how much easier some paths actually are, compared to the apprehension you feel before you start.
• Building something that's a little complex, takes you outside your comfort zone, teaches you a ton, and ends up fairly close to your idea (from scratch, no less) is amazing. If you have the itch to build, definitely scratch it.

Launch

Launching the site last week was exhilarating and tiring. It was so exciting to be able to take the site live and show people we know and care about where all that time and hard work went over the last few months. It was also very nerve wracking. Stress about the site not working or no one caring, or worse, thinking it sucks all hit you hard. You work so hard to get to that point, you don’t want anything to take that good feeling of launching away.

Now is the time to be patient. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. Since launch, we’e had over 90 unique visitors hit the site and around 11 signups. On the positive side, that’s a 10%+ conversion rate, but it’s also way less traffic than I had hoped for, given that all three of us know way more than 90 people in total.

So next up for us is a push to get to 50 users this month. We’re going to start publishing more on the Relic Scout blog, hitting up social media to start building relationships with potential users, and what ever else we can dream up to help kick the site usage into high gear. At this point, users means more feedback, which means we improve the site faster.

I am starting to think the hardest part of this entire project wasn’t learning a new programming language and coding the site from scratch or the process it took to get to that point, but what we have in front of us. It’s an exciting challenge at least.

Stay tuned!

There are a ton of iPhone 5 reviews in the tech press, so I won't bore you with too many specifics, but the overall experience (compared to the iPhone 4) has been so positive, I felt I had to share something.

So, what stands out to me? A couple of base features have huge upgrades:

• Phone speed: SO much faster than the iPhone 4.
• Camera quality
• LTE. Wow, no idea how it compares to Verizon LTE, but I'm very pleased with AT&T's LTE speed in Buffalo. It would be incredibly easy to blow through a ton of data with this phone.
• Battery life. I saw a big increase over a nearly two year old iPhone 4. Obviously I can't compare new phones, but this to me is impressive given the three items above.
• So thin and so light. It really feels fake.
• The larger screen. I really enjoy the apps that have been updated to utilize the larger screen real estate.

New (to me) things:

• Siri. Use it and love it. Especially now that apps (like AnyList and Omnifocus) can tie into Reminders lists.
• Facebook integration. Yes, probably a surprise, but the biggest benefit to me is I can now upload photos and the very occasional status update without visiting the site or installing the app. Yes, I know I am doing social media wrong, but it is SO nice. I can keep family members up-to-date and not have to wade into the time suck.
• Panorama mode in the camera. So cool.
• Starting with a blank slate (did not restore my old phone backup)

I loved starting with a blank slate. I had over four screens worth of apps on my old phone, with many in folders. Starting over allowed me to add apps slowly and purposefully. And with iCloud, Google, and Dropbox I barely lost a thing. Now I only have two screens and not many in folders.

Over at MacStories, Federico Viticci did the same:

As I said above, last week I set up my iPhone 5. I had an iCloud backup from my iPhone 4S, but I decided to start with a so-called “clean install” — meaning, no iCloud restore. It’s not that I don’t like restoring all my settings and apps with iCloud: the feature does indeed work as advertised. But partially because of a self-imposed belief that iOS “gets slower over time” and a personal tradition of using new devices with new data, I preferred to set up my iPhone manually, without restoring any backup. And to tell the truth, I quite enjoyed the process.

<

p id=“yui_3_17_2_1_1407674114902_735451”>I too really enjoyed the process. And the phone. I highly recommend the upgrade if you currently have the iPhone 4. I can certainly see holding off if you have the 4S, but compared to the 4 the benefits are huge.

My good friend, and fellow father of twins, Mike Rose recently kicked off a project called Paper Faces, where he will draw a portrait a day using the iPad app Paper by 53. To date, he's received a remarkable 800+ volunteers, as his initial post on Twitter received an enormous amount of retweets and favorites. So cool and well deserved.

Follow the post title above to visit his site and read more about the project. He's also accepting donations, so please do if you take advantage of his offer.

I was lucky enough to be one of the first volunteers and you can see my new avatar below. I gladly bought him some hot wings this morning.

When it's either incredibly exciting or frustrating to be interested in Apple and tech: iPhone rumor/leak time.

Yes, it technically started earlier in the year (or more likely never stopped in the first place), but the weeks leading up to a new iPhone launch are always the worst.

Case in point, the 9to5Mac RSS feed, which just posted two contradicting stories within the span of two minutes.

Sometimes I long for a slow web, when there wasn't a rush to break news or post a hundred "stories" a day, strictly for pageviews.

Any other RSS/news/info addicts out there? How do you balance that interest with the overwhelming amount of over-publishing on the web today?

Stella is so great with animals. She absolutely adores our cat Jolie. She was literally hugging the goats at the county fair. She even loves bugs! 

Stella has been comfortable with animals for as long as I can remember -- she's never really shown any fear -- just curiosity and compassion. She was speech delayed and has two very talkative sisters, so I wonder if she felt more comfortable with and could relate better to animals and bugs? Regardless, I think we have a future vet on our hands!

I love this picture (even though it kind of looks like she is strangling Jolie!)

According to the CDC, the average restaurant meal is four times larger than the 1950s. Soda size is 6x larger. Hamburger size more than 3x larger. French fries more than 2x larger.

The average American adult? 26 lbs larger, while only averaging 1 inch taller. (For adult men, the averages went 5 feet 8 inches and 166 lbs to 5 feet 9.5 inches and 195 lbs. For adult women, the averages went from 5 feet 3 inches and 140 lbs to 5 feet 4 inches and 164 lbs. Source.)

As part of last week's job report, the NY Times gave us a little insight into why corporations and the elite don't really mind our current economy and why things aren't going to drastically change (for the rest of us) any time soon:

Today the United States economy is producing even more goods and services than it did when the recession officially began in December 2007, but with about five million fewer workers.

Anyone who works knows what it's like during "uncertainty" or "bad times": folks get laid off and the rest of us have to pick up the slack. Why would businesses go back to a "bloated" workforce, when they can get pre-recession productivity out of a recession-era workforce? There's only one answer to that question: a massive increase in demand.

Where is that demand going to come from?

Europe? Nope.

Asia? Probably not.

Our government? Not now, with the massive state & local cuts or the federal "austerity now!" meme. In fact, the government sector shrank during the first 3 years of the Obama administration -- for the first time in 40 years. Obama has to be the worst socialist ever, right?

(Just imagine where the economy and unemployment rate would be, if the government had maintained a historical level of growth during this time, much less the kind of growth normally seen during a recession. The Wall Street Journal makes an attempt: 7.1% unemployment. )

So that leaves us: your common, everyday American.

But how can we do that when only 1% of the growth in national income during the recovery went to wages and salaries. 88% ($464 billion, as of the end of 2010) went to corporate profits, which are at record levels. (Which they are hoarding at record levels too. To the tune of $850+ billion.)

And this isn't even considering the stock market. Here are a few graphs to consider:

The Dow Jones is up 57.5% since Obama's inauguration:

The NASDAQ is up 93.7% during same time:

<

p id=“yui_3_17_2_1_1407674114902_386140”>Boom for the 1% and stagnation for the rest of us. This is the new reality.

Pinterest is all the rage, but I don't use it. Sure I checked it out, but it didn't stick. Why?

Well, to start, I got an invite before the site really blew up and the discovery part didn't fit my needs. People weren't pinning stuff of interest, so I didn't have any incentive to return to the site. (And it continued to remain irrelevant the handful of times I did return for a brief moment.)

The main reason, though, was Gimme Bar.

Yes, the basic premise of Gimme Bar is similar to Pinterest, but Gimme Bar does more of what I want and less of what I don't:

1. You can save entire pages, not just images. (I save site designs for inspiration.)

1. You can back up Instagram, Twitter, Delicious, Pinboard. (I use the Instagram backup.)

1. You can back up your entire account to Dropbox. (Meaning you can take your data/collections with you!)

1. The actually have a business model: Pro accounts for $24 per year (Oops, did I forget to mention Pinterest's shady business model?!.)

1. There are no follower counts, share counts, follower/following lists, etc -- no reason to gamethesystem or strive for social media "fame." (Just collect stuff you like vs. a popularity contest or trying to make money.)

1. Discovering new stuff. It's not perfect, as the user base isn't huge, but they do share things that interest me most of the time.

So, if any of this sounds interesting to you, sign up today and look for me! My username is endonend. Feel free to send me your username as well and I'll follow your collections.

Last night I had the opportunity to take the Letterpress T-shirts workshop at WNYBAC with Melisa.

The class was amazing. It was so nice to actually design, build, and create something you can hold in your hand. It's such a contrast to the digital world I live in each and every day. I definitely want to do more, and luckily they have plenty of workshops options to attend. If you live in Buffalo, I highly recommend checking out WNYBAC.

For my shirt design, I used words from a great Dalai Lama quote I posted a few months back:

Take care of your Thoughts because they become Words. Take care of your Words because they will become Actions. Take care of your Actions because they will become Habits. Take care of your Habits because they will form your Character. Take care of your Character because it will form your Destiny, and your Destiny will be your Life. - The Dalai Lama

The words conveniently fit in a scrabble-type format that build off each other, just like the quote. I really like the idea. I only wish I took a little extra time to embellish the design a little with some of the great wood blocks from the WNYBAC collection. Next time!

Here's my setup on the press:

I decided to use a dark blue ink on a grey t-shirt. Here is the final result:

<

p id=“yui_3_17_2_1_1407674114902_331936”>Since I was the first one done, I was able to watch Melisa design and build a great looking t-shirt based around the quote, “Change is the only constant” (originally by Heraclitus.)It was interesting to watch her work and make decisions. I came in with an idea and was super focused on executing it (thus the lack of embellishment), where she came in with a couple vague ideas and did a lot of exploring in workshop. Then she took the time to play with different elements as she built out an idea. Whereas I found two fonts that worked fairly well together (and had all the necessary letters) and went to work. I certainly enjoyed my work – it was relaxing to piece together the movable type, spacers, and furniture to build out my design. I definitely want to go with a more “free” approach next time to see what happens.

From GOOD Magazine:

Some depressing facts: Nearly half of people ages 16 to 29 do not have a job. A quarter of those who do work in hospitality — travel, leisure, and, of course, food service. A study of 4 million Facebook profiles found that, after the military, the top four employers listed by twentysomethings were Walmart, Starbucks, Target, and Best Buy. The restaurant industry in particular is booming; one in 10 employed Americans now work in food service — 9.6 million of us. Those numbers are growing each year. Even though more and more laid-off, middle-aged Americans are turning to restaurant jobs, as of 2010 about two-thirds of food service workers are still under age 35. And the industry’s workforce is more educated than it was just 10 years ago. In major U.S. cities, about 9 percent more food service workers have been to college.

I feel bad for recent college grads. Not only are they becoming the service industry generation, but they are dealing with very large college loans.

College tuition and fees have sextupled since 1985 and doubled since 2001. A faster rate than healthcare, gasoline, and consumer items.

With three girls 13 total months apart (twins and an older sister), I often get asked how I keep organized, so I figured a post on my favorite tools would be beneficial to others.

The key is my iPhone, which is my second brain for the most part. There are three apps I use to help keep me organized: Omnifocus, Evernote, and Clear. I've tried a TON of different to do apps and other productivity tools over the last year and I always come back to Omnifocus for my to do list; Evernote for storing links, reference materials, and other useful content I come across during the day; and recently Clear as a simple list app. More on all that below!

Omnifocus

Omnifocus is a premium to do app for the Mac and iOS. The price puts a lot of people off, but when it comes down to support, app quality, and usefulness, there are few apps that can compete. You need to pay a premium for that kind of experience. Plus, in the end, $20 (iPhone price) for a to do app is nothing considering you'll use that app more often than pretty much any other application on your phone. If you consider one year ownership, that $20 works out to $0.05 per day, so it's nothing really.

Organization

I took time to reorganize my todo list last night, with a main focus on simplifying the organization and implementing a different strategy for contexts. (Contexts, for all of you not familiar with David Allen's Getting Things Done, are generally thought of as places or methods to do work -- so Phone, Desk, Home, etc would be considered standard "contexts".)

Projects

My new main projects view now has three folders: Personal, Work, and Eko Agency.

Inside Personal, there are two folders: "Personal Projects" and "Rituals and Reviews", with the latter holding all of my regularly scheduled items (chores, payments, Omnifocus reviews, etc.)

Then I added "Single Actions" and "Someday" task lists. Single Actions will hold all of the one-off items, while Someday will hold all of my ideas for future projects or items with no due date.

Work is set up similarly, but I used different names to make them stand out from my personal list: "Work Projects", "Work Routine", "Work One Offs", and "Work Someday".

Eko Agency is also similar, but more streamlined since it's less of a focus for me: "Eko Projects", "Eko Someday", and "Eko Single Actions".

Contexts

As far as contexts go, I chose to take a different approach than a standard GTD setup. My new method is based off an article on Simplicity Is Bliss called 'A Fresh Take on Contexts', which argues a better approach for contexts revolves around time and attention -- so how much time and energy you have available, as well as the level of focus needed for your tasks.

With that said, here are my new contexts:

• Low Energy: tasks that take longer than 5 or 10 minutes, but don't require a lot of focus.

• Keep Flow: short tasks, less than 10 minutes and no differentiation on level of focus. More on this below!

• Full Focus: tasks that take longer than 5 or 10 minutes and require a lot of focus.

• Errands: pretty self explanatory.

• Waiting: stuff I am waiting on other people to do before I can move a task or project forward.

I did want to spend a little more time describing "Keep Flow", which is just a shortened way of telling myself these taska are quick and easy. Tasks I can pick up when I'm bored, feeling stuck, or not feeling up to taking on something bigger -- kind of an anti-procrastination context. That way I can knock off a few items quick to get back into a productive mode.

Under Keep Flow, there are a few contexts: Call, Email, Read, Quick Dashes. Where Quick Dashes are active tasks that don't take much time to complete -- usually less than 10 minutes.

The cool thing about Omnifocus is I can create two custom views (called Perspectives) for this new Keep Flow context: one for Work and one for Personal, that I can use to break down that context even more and have a ready made list of quick tasks while at work or at home. Brilliant!

Then finally, my favorite feature of Omnifocus for iPhone is the Forecast view, which shows you the next 5 days, as well as Overdue and Future items in a quick view. You can even hook up your calendar to show meetings and appointments in this view as well. So useful!

Evernote

Evernote is an amazing service that allows you to capture and store information in centralized location. You can then tag and organize your information to make it easy to find and refer back to on a regular basis.

What I like to collect:

• Gift ideas.

• Recipes (Initially. I end up adding them into Paprike Recipe Manager for actual use in the kitchen.)

• Useful programming, e-commerce and web development articles and guides.

• An archive of good articles I've read on the web. Topics usually include: politics, Mac/iOS software tips, and Buddhism.

• Site bookmarks (iOS apps, web apps, etc.) to check out later.

Capture

It's so easy to get virtually anything into Evernote, from any device you use on a regular basis. I have the browser extension set up on all of the computers I use, an email address I use to send entries to (they automatically get added to your inbox), as well easy share buttons integrated in my feed readers: Google Reader and Reeder for iOS.

Access

I have the desktop app installed on my MacBook, the Chrome app on my work computer, and the iOS app on my iPad and iPhone for easy access pretty much anywhere. The search is great too, so you can find that hidden gem in your pile of notes very easily.

I highly recommend Evernote. Did I mention the basic service is free? Go sign up and come back, I'll wait...

Clear

Clear is a simple list app for iPhone that costs $0.99. It has a really unique gesture-based UI that is fun to use, so that alone makes it worth checking out.

I use Clear to keep lists of things I don't need to put in Omnifocus: movies I want to see, books I want to read, basic post ideas for this blog, music I want to check out, quick shopping lists, and other temporary lists.

Clear excels in quickly creating lists (it opens much faster than Omnifocus and item entry is very fast, as well), so it's a perfect fit for my use case.

Summary

That's pretty much it -- three tools that organize my entire life.

What do you use? Share in the comments! I'll also answer any questions, if you need help or want more detail.

Last night, the Mrs. and I took a studio art class at Albright-Knox. The subject for the night was pastels and taxidermied animals -- how could we go wrong?

It was my first art class since high school and probably the first time I've sat down and tried to do art since then... and it was awesome! We had such a good time.

Here's my initial sketch of the bobcat we both selected:

And our "final" work (we both ran out of time, though I rushed to finish off the feet to get close to being done.

Melisa's is on the left and mine is on the right.

Yesterday's love list update post inspired me to make progress on one of my items -- I booked our August family vacation trip to Wellesley Island State Park.

I was even lucky enough to score a waterfront campsite! We are so psyched.

The rules of a creator’s life. (via Creative Something)

I love this picture of our house on Christmas Eve -- mainly because it doesn't look like our house. Glad I was able to frame this photo and not include all the other crap around the tree!

Beautiful.

I’ve flown by Mount Rainier many times, driven by it, snowshoed on it, saw it literally every day while we lived in Seattle. (When it wasn’t cloudy and raining, that is!)

It was breathtaking every time.

Isn’t it amazing that something you see so often can still take your breath away? And it’s all because when you take time to look, you are living in the moment.

Take that same level of focus and apply it to the other amazing “every day” things in your life — your significant other, your kids, your family, your friends. You won’t regret a single moment.

Photo from Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Eff you Lotus Notes and your 10 minute shutdown every day

Z is for Zebra

Stella enjoying her valentines cookie

Cookie monster

Stella’s smile

Watching the game

Zoey entertaining us during breakfast

Lucy squared

Lucy flying around her room