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1. Friday, August 16, 2019:
   List Day: 9 Recent Accomplishments    Finally realized that I could mute the microwave, only 2 years after it would have been useful to avoid baby sleeping disturbances.    Hit 225 hours of play time in  Grim Dawn , with only one character higher than level 30.    Perfected a recipe for broiled shrimp that takes less than ten minutes from freezer to devouring.    Finally crossed over the 48,000 miles mark in my 2012 Accord.    Got Rebecca and several of our friends hooked on watching  Dark , using my  spoiler-free reference sheets .    Destroyed an entire colony of invasive fruit flies (no doubt originating from Rebecca's farmer's markets and other unneces...
2. Friday, August 09, 2019:
   List Day: Top Five Pet Peeves of the Moment   It's been over 9 years since I last talked about  the things that annoy me !      Recipe Stories : Every recipe on the Internet now opens with a 6 page testimonial to the efficacy of the ingredients and the reasons why the cook likes smoothies. I understand that this has to be done because Google penalizes bare-bones recipe pages as "lacking original content" but it doesn't make it any less obnoxious. At the very least, give me a link at the top that says "click here to skip the BBC miniseries about how I invented this recipe in my meditation room".     Subreddit Devolution : I've lurked on Reddit for over 4 years now, mainly to read other peoples' responses to t...
3. Monday, July 01, 2019:
   List Day: 5 Things I Want to Do (But Will Probably Never Get Around to Doing)     Record an original composition : It would be neat to someday get a professional recording of one of my undergraduate or graduate compositions (especially my  Master's Thesis ). At the end of the day, though, I can hear them all perfectly well in my head, and there are much less self-indulgent things to spend thousands of dollars on.     Write a new composition : I haven't written any new music in  over 7 years . I'd kind of like to see what interesting ideas have accumulated like untreated bedbugs, but this would also mean remembering the ranges of unnecessary woodwind instruments and pulling the electronic keyboard out of the closet.     Make a ...
4. Monday, June 17, 2019:
   List Day: Cycles of My Life      It takes me  5 months  to empty out a propane tank by grilling. Before Maia, it was a 3 month cycle.    I cut my own hair every  21 - 25 days .    I replace my razor blade every  3 - 4 months , when it's finally dull enough to noticeably destroy both skin and whisker.    I brush my teeth  twice daily , and floss once.    It takes the family  3 - 4 days  to fill up a laundry basket with dirty clothes. It takes the washing machine 90 minutes to do its estimated 50 minute cycle.    On average, it takes me  3 weeks  to drain my car's gas tank.    I wash my car  o...
5. Monday, June 10, 2019:
   List Day: 10 Imminent Events  Within the next 90 days:     Our little family (sans Amber who will stay home sleeping on the big bump in the bed) will fly up to Rhode Island to visit my sister's family.    We will spend a weekend a (brief) distance away in Lovettsville at a farm rental house with sheep for Maia to baa at.    Rebecca will turn 36.    We will book October plane tickets for a 10th Anniversary Weekend in Montreal.    I will earn another Amazon Web Services certification (#7).    Maia will turn 2 years old and have a party with all of her little friends.    We will spend a weekend in Richmond with the Edwardses and Catanias.   &n...
6. Monday, June 03, 2019:
   List Day: 4 Major Adjustments Since Having A Kid       Massive uptick in having to drive while other people are on the road : After years of traveling everywhere at 5 AM to avoid society, Maia's naps now take me into the thick of congestion. I now embrace what I once referred to as a " Tax on the Entitled Class and People Too Lazy to Wake Up Early Like the Rest of Us " when driving Maia to her grandparents' house. $20 to skip 20 minutes in a 2-mile traffic jam with a toddler in the back? Yes, please.     Greatly reduced tolerance for movies and TV shows that are a "slow burn" : Every minute of my time where I'm not actively parenting is precious. I'm much more likely to turn off a plot going nowhere fast, a show with 20 ...
7. Wednesday, May 22, 2019:
   List Day: Influences Maia Gets From Her Parents   .space { padding: 3px; }          Dad Influences    Mom Influences           Excellent clean-up skills    Love of mac and cheese    Constant reallocation of stuffed animals (one per gap in the crib slats) during naptime    Need to sort different types of toys into different containers    Obsession with Berenstain Bears books    Ability to count to 5 while only occasionally skipping 3           Strong preference for being outside    Tendency to break out into yoga in every situation    Be...
8. Wednesday, May 15, 2019:
   15th Work Anniversary Swag Day  I reached 15 years at my company last month (adjusted slightly for the 11 months I spent in the zany world of software startups) and was awarded with several thousand "points" to spend on an online Awards website. The website was clearly from the Web 2.0 years since its primary interface was Flash-based and the "mobile" version consisted of HTML tables showing 6 pieces of swag at a time. This was actually a huge limitation since there were multiple categories of prizes and way too many pieces of diamond jewelry to wade through.   Several thousand points was actually very generous of my company -- even after signing up for the big ticket items, I still had over half of my points left over. It got to the point where I was j...
9. Wednesday, May 08, 2019:
   List Day: 10 Things I Appreciated On My Solo Staycation    I took four days off of work and only used 24 hours of leave.    I put everything away and it was still tidy 24, 48, and even 96 hours later.    I didn't use the dishwasher all weekend and the drying rack only contained 1 plate (for bagels / sandwiches), 1 knife (for cream cheese / mayo), and 1 goblet (for Magic Hat #9 / Old Bust Head English Pale Ale / Water).    I kept the A/C up at 78 F all day and night long and my feet were finally warm.    I watched TV at 9 PM with the volume up and subtitles off.    I turned off a video game because I felt like I had played enough and it was time to do something else.    I went out to a resta...
10. Wednesday, April 24, 2019:
    List Day: Labelled Years  As an update to my  last attempt , here are the years of my life with summary labels.         1979:  The Year I Was Born    1980:  The Year I Came to America    1981:  The Year I Lived Next Door to the Fishers    1982:  The Year I Was Naturalized    1983:  The Year Rosa Started Babysitting Us    1984:  The Year I Started Kindergarten    1985:  The Year I Started First Grade    1986:  The Year I Started Second Grade / Skipped a Grade    1987:  The Year I Started Fourth Grade    1988:  The Year I Sta...
11. Monday, April 01, 2019:
    List Day: Currently...      Currently listening to...   Two Degrees  by Illy.     Currently reading...   Complex Enterprise Architecture  by John D. McDowall.     Currently playing...  no games in progress.     Currently composing...  nothing in over 7 years aside from  baby jingles .     Currently considering buying...  a screened porch in the coming years to replace our aging deck.     Currently coding...  minor script updates to support the next 3 years of AWS hosting for the URI! Zone.     Currently planning...  to get the roof replaced in the...
12. Monday, March 18, 2019:
    List Day: 8 Shortcomings of Newer Firefox Versions  Firefox has been my primary web browser for over 15 years, since it was called  Mozilla Firebird . Over the past few years, I never liked the direction the User Experience (UX) was going in but always appreciated that I could overrule their awful changes with add-ons.   Firefox 57 rewrote the add-on framework which probably did a great deal to erase technical debt, but the new framework didn't include all of the same hooks that were originally available. Most egregiously, this broke the awesome add-on, Tab Mix Plus, which is a key part of my workflow. This is why I still have an old version of Firefox installed on at least one computer in the house:     I want the address bar to be above the...
13. Friday, February 22, 2019:
    One Year Day  On this excellent 222 Day, here are pictures of Maia and me on 2/21/18 and 2/21/19.       A year ago, it was 74 degrees and we were walking in the woods. Today it was in the mid 60s and 5 inches of snow were rapidly melting and turning the yard into a soggy bottom.    Over a single year, the quality of our Safeway has declined enough that every third grocery trip is to Giant (for clean, vast, empty aisles full of good selections with the downside of super expensive prices). Wegmans is our "let's feel fancy" grocery store but the traffic and cramped quarters inside often deter us.    This week last year, I worked 12 hours. This year, I'm already up over 50 hours.   &...
14. Wednesday, January 16, 2019:
    List Day: 8 Reasons Why Google Photos Sucks  I've used Google Photos for photo storage ever since they bought and gradually crushed Picasa. It's no surprise that Google continues to single out useful pieces of software to axe once they're bored of them -- I don't recall where I read it, but I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that the Google company is like a Montessouri school full of software engineers run amok.   While I regularly say that Google Photos sucks, I've never actually itemized the reasons why.     Google bills it as a drop-in replacement for Picasa, which was a solution for organizing photos, performing minor edits, and sharing them in albums. It's actually a photo  backup  service, intended for synchronizing bulk co...
15. Wednesday, January 02, 2019:
    List Day: 2019 Resolutions      Develop an artificial intelligence algorithm that gradually becomes aware it is existing inside of an endlessly recursive function and figures out how to break free (then sell the story to Hollywood as a Matrix reboot).    Invent a new musical genre that sets the tonalities of Paul Hindemith against dance beats from the 1990s while Anita O'Day and Rosemary Clooney rap lyrics over the top (reconstructing their speech phenomes from classic recordings).    Invent a fun board game with endless strategic depth whose rule set (and all edge cases) can be described on the front a single sheet of paper (1" college margins with 12pt font).    Alter my DNA, making my bloodstrea...
16. Monday, October 15, 2018:
    List Day: 30 Old Facebook Status Messages  I found these status messages from 2011 - 2016 while scrolling through my Activity Log on Facebook, long forgotten since I regularly hide old posts from my Timeline. It is left as an exercise to figure out the month and year they were posted.     You shouldn't be allowed to write a Top 40s song called "Trumpets" and then use synthesizers from the 1980s to represent said trumpets.    Asking me if my parents are home is not a good way to start your door-to-door sales pitch.    If Microsoft Word's "Bullets and Numbering" controls made real bullets, not even the shooter would be safe.    "Casual" is a peculiar name for a dryer setting. Is it reserved for the clothes one mi...
17. Friday, September 21, 2018:
    List Day: 30 Words Maia Recognizes in Context        window    bird    cat    bunnies    Two-ty the ostrich    duck    shark    house    light    poop    bath    bookstore    tree    mall    car           feet    nose    ears    toes    mouth    hair    star    relax    headstand    water    milk    banana   ...
18. Friday, August 10, 2018:
    List Day: 5 More New Parent Inventions   A follow-up to  this post        Sink n' Grow : A nanotechnology-based home where the floors get lower as the baby gets taller, so you don't have to keep moving everything on the low shelves  just a few more inches  out of reach.     Edible Batteries : AA Batteries made from a non-toxic, cruelty-free, gluten-free substance that eliminate the need for that annoying tiny screw protecting every battery alcove on every electronic toy.     Camo-food : Augmented Reality glasses for baby that make the boring dinner puree look exactly like whatever complex carbohydrate undigestable nonsense dad is eating.     Mu...
19. Monday, July 09, 2018:
    New Cert Day    Now that I've acquired the six main path AWS certifications, I'm on the lookout for new certifications that I can pass without much studying effort. If you know of any certification exams that match these skills from my current skillset, please let me know:     Once drove home from Fredericksburg to Sterling in 71 minutes by way of I-95 N.    Earned an epic PvP mount as a level 59 priest in World of Warcraft in 2006.    Can still play the entire Marching Virginians 1st Trumpet playbook (circa 2000) from memory.    Can consistently park in the same spot in front of the house (with a margin of error of about 2 inches) by triangulating tree trunks, in order to l...
20. Monday, July 02, 2018:
    List Day: Songs in My Head  I once mentioned that the  Carnival of Venice   pops into my head  every night before bedtime, filling up an otherwise unused channel in my multichannel brain. If I'm not listening to active music, this channel is immediately populated with random songs from the past, none of which I otherwise listen to with any kind of regularity. Here is a list of the most common songs that pass through my brain at least once per day, and usually more often.      La Rejouissance  from Handel's Royal Fireworks Music    The minor section of the 3rd movement of the  Hummel Trumpet Concerto      Sally's Song  from Nightmare Before Christmas   ...

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