I learned yesterday that the trusty Marin bike that has been carting me around since 2007 has a cracked frame and I am pretty bummed about it.


Hand-written index card


Side door at the Kennametal building in Greenfield


Did I Make a Mistake Selling Del.icio.us to Yahoo?:

Once we were acquired, Yahoo helped us on the tech side, but not as much as it said it would. I think this is common for acquisitions. Before you’re acquired, you’re an important visionary. Afterward, you’re a crazy person who just wants to burn money.

Any decision was an endless discussion. I remember once, we had to present to a senior vice-president. We had a 105-slide deck prepared, and we didn’t get past the second slide because they ratholed about one fucking slide. It was a miserable environment.

It took a year for reality to set in. If you wanted to get hardware, you went to the “hardware request committee” with your proposal. They assumed that engineers liked spending money for no reason, so you’d have to go back and present again in two weeks. So there’s a month gone.

As an aside, I had no idea that the guy who created del.icio.us had previously created and run Memepool. I was never much of a del.icio.us user, but Memepool was one of my daily stops online at the tail end of 1990s and very early 2000s.

Specific to the quotes text above, though, I assume I am supposed to be outraged as I read those paragraphs, but it sounds like life in basically any medium to large organization. Schactman outright states earlier in the piece that his site was constantly broken and going down all the time; all the process and oversight he laments here is how you avoid that state.


Wet pavement on Sanderson St. at night


Apple Fitness needs to have a toggle for “I am a middle-aged normal person” that switches all of the choices for workouts to stuff like “Painting the guest room” and “Hauling yard waste to the transfer station.”

I still run and lift weights and whatnot, but a weekend day spent doing chores around the house and yard nearly always leaves me feeling more wrecked than any deliberate workout.


When I tell the 13yo that he can pick the music and he puts on the NWOBHM Essentials playlist, I know I have done at least one thing right as a parent.


An early run on a Sunday morning

I have a lot of to-dos on the docket today—a room that needs to be painted, a yard that needs to be mowed, a week’s worth of dinners and school lunches that need to be shipped for, and another bike that needs to go in for a tune-up ahead of a fundraising ride next weekend. I also wanted to get out for a run today, and the having been woken up by the cats, I figured the best time to do that was early, while everyone else was still asleep and the house was quiet.

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Stone by Baroness

StoneBaronessI have always enjoyed Baroness’s stuff—especially Red and Blue—but I will admit that the last few albums did not really grab me. This new one, though—it’s really good! I have listened to it five or six times since it came out on Friday and have found something new to appreciate each time.

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Green River at dusk, after the end of the season


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