Ploafmaster General

In these early stages of raising a child, it's frequently impossible to think about more than a few days out. Planning is silly because the work of parenting trumps most social obligations. It doesn't take long after a child is born to begin thinking and acting on a much shorter time scale, like a week or something.

What I've found for myself as a consequence, however, is that my frame of reference is pretty limited these days. What's going on the world these days? I don't know. What's going on in my house on this day? I mean, of course I'm current on all the awful things happening with American torture, our present civil rights crisis, and the other horrific things that dominate my Twitter feed. Other than that, I have trouble thinking broadly or deeply about any topic.

The upside is living more in the moment. Being wholly occupied with my daughter when we play together or she's dancing around. I'm no super dad, so yes, I often squeeze in some internetting while Maddie plays, but generally, it's easy for me to focus on her and what she's doing right then and there without thinking about when to take her where or who to call about what. I guess that's a fair trade.

How do you pronounce that title? If you’re not familiar with the iconic quadruped war machines from The Empire Strikes Back, skip this post.

I hear tons of people pronounce it as a pair of hyphenated words, just as they look. But ever since I was a kid I always said, “ā-tee ā-tee”. I mean, almost everything else with hyphenated letter/number names in the Star Wars universe is pronounced my way, right? R2-D2? AT-ST? C-3PO?

Am I a weird outlier or something?

Ugh, I just found an old post from Time on this very matter from 4 years ago. The author’s on my side for the same reasons, but apparently Lucasfilm holds the opposite view.

Of course, Lucasfilm produced the prequels and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, so I still don't entirely trust their judgement from 2010…

Right now my wife is traveling for her job. She left this morning before sunrise (such as that is on an overcast, rainy day) and will return tomorrow evening, well after sundown. That means I'm solo parenting for a couple of days (though Maddie is with the babysitter during work hours), but in a more abstract way, it means all the responsibilities of the house fall to me. The same thing will happen next week when Valerie travels again, and potentially for a longer stretch in January.

My own immaturity and short temper have made a fool of me a couple times because of this. It's easy to be annoyed at being "stuck at home" - not for having to watch my kid, rather in a sense, having a bit more of my week dictated and inflexible. I try to balance the scales by petulantly demanding some time for myself whenever she returns.

Unfortunately, it's just as easy to forget that Valerie isn't traveling for fun. I know what she does on these trips, and it's generally working from morning until evening, with brief meal stops punctuating a day of measuring hotel interiors and the like. Sure, most parents know there's some value in getting a break from their children, but Valerie doesn't owe me anything when she gets back.

Relationships aren't math or accounting. There's no balancing of entries for free time, dining out, or chores. I've been married for 10 years and I know I'll still be working on this until I croak. But knowing about the ongoing maintenance required of any human relationship doesn't make the day to day any easier. Self-awareness of my own shortcomings doesn't excuse their manifestations.

I guess I'm just saying I miss my wife right now.

I've always thought I liked sports, but I haven't watched more than ten minutes of autumnal competition this year, whether NFL football or NCAA basketball. Is it a trickier schedule and an active toddler? Maybe. Is it the rough publicity coming from the NFL this season? Perhaps. I just know that I haven't really missed it at all. It has me wondering how much I really care about sports and how much I was raised to enjoy them.

You won't hear me sneering “sportsball” though. That term always struck me as condescending, equal to most casual pejoratives that reinforce our separateness. And I'm not anti-sport; people want to connect and belong, so of course tribalism and comaraderie can be appealing, even if on arbitrary geographical grounds. And I'll always find the perfect catch, or the heaviest dunk exciting. It's a thrill to watch skilled professionals excell at what they do. But this year I'm just not feelin’ it.

Maybe next season.

What you see in the photo is the slow, steady drip of the first extraction for my apple bitters. It's filtering through two coffee filters held in place by the ring of the mason jar so I minimize any sediment in the final product. I've also cooked the solids in a cup of water and placed that back in the original jar to shake for a few more days. It's getting close!

Tonight I finally got around to watching All is Lost. This is the second feature from writer and director J. C. Chandor (a Jersey boy!), and whoa Nelly, is it fantastic. I can't remember the last time I watched a movie so purely concerned with visual storytelling - so fully taking advantage of the medium. And Robert Redford proved that he's still one of the best with a nearly wordless performance none the less full of emotional intensity.

5/5

Keeping track of the year end Oscar contenders I need to see. Eventually.

Keeping track of the new restaurants I have to check out. Someday.

Keeping track of all the books I should read.

Keeping track of all the new music I should hear.

Keeping track of all the shows coming through town.

Keeping track of all the things I'm keeping track of.

Keeping track of all the sentences I end with prepositions.

I've wanted to spend some time getting more familiar with Google Analytics for a while now, but never knew where I should start. Tonight I discovered that, apparently, Google produces their own public training courses. Have any of my readers ever done this? Does anybody know whether it's helpful for more than just marketing types? I'd love to use analytics to help make better cases for design and architecture decisions, basically.

Our babysitter was sick today. That meant Valerie and I had to take shifts watching Maddie and make up for lost time working after hours. Complete schedule upheaval.

But you know what? I had a great morning with my kid, taking her to the coffee shop with me and running into other dads I know. We danced to EDM at home (as usual) and she played around and over me on the couch. I got to see Valerie at midday when I dropped Maddie off at her office holiday lunch.

Then there was this afternoon. Maddie had a late but epic nap that meant Valerie and I were working on opposite sides of the dining room table while listening to music, sharing the occasional chit-chat. Maddie ate dinner with no fuss, said “Hi!” a million times, and went to bed without difficulty. Valerie and I worked some more, though she eventually watched some Call the Midwife while I finished up. Our last exchange before she drifted off to sleep in bed involved laughter and hugs.

I could use a little more of this sort of disruption in my life.

Every dang year. I can already feel it happening. Here, in the first half of December I'm crushed with high priority work that needs to be done yesterday. Competing "priorities" both internal and client-oriented assail me from all sides. But you know what? The back nine is going to be really quiet.

I, like many of my coworkers, won't be around much in the last bits of December. I take off starting Christmas Eve and don't return to work until Monday after New Year's Day. But you know who else vacations at the end of the year? Wraps up major initiatives and doesn't want to start new ones until everybody's back from their long winter's naps? Clients, that's who.

So while I'm only just wrapping up my day's work tonight around 11:30 PM, my work stream looks to start drying up in about two weeks. Then I'll be picking over the carcass of 2014's billable hours trying to keep myself occupied until my own break.

Today I deleted Swarm from my phone. I'd been using it frequently since Foursquare decided to split its functionality between two different apps, and it was fun for a while. Competing with your friends in categories was a neat twist on the old Mayor game, and Plans are a pretty cool idea if you have a large enough network. But I noticed that I had slowly decreased my usage, forgetting (and caring less) to check in at every single location. I haven't deleted my account or anything, but I suspect I'll leave it unattended if I make it a week without re-downloading.

I'm not against location-centric social networks. I'm not worried about internet boogeymen like the elusive "burglar who sees that you're not at home on social media" (but seriously, though - I'm super interested if there are real stories about this that don't involve stalkers/creepy exes who'd be watching your every move anyway). But I've always struggled with the point. I used Gowalla (rest in peace) when it hit the scene because it was fun to keep a log of where I'd been. When that folded, I made my way - late to the party as usual - to a Foursquare that had already seen mass account stagnation even amidst claims of continued, rapid user sign-ups. Most of the people in my social graph hadn't used Foursquare in months. But I still had a lot of fun. Mayor of both (at the time) Lamplighter coffee shops? You know it.

Earlier this year, Foursquare split its service between two apps. Swarm came first, focusing on friend-spotting and the personal side of location awareness. In August, Foursquare's main app relaunched primarily as a discovery service. They had reasons for this, but it completely disrupted the way many old-school users worked with the service. There were complaints (as always with these sort of changes), but folks still using Foursquare at that point stuck around with Swarm as well. And really, did you need Foursquare to recommend a taco joint for you? Don't most people just check that God-forsaken Sarlacc Pit they call Yelp these days anyway?

I think I left mostly because Swarm hit that "what next?" moment for me. I joined. I added friends. Friends added me. I checked in and built a sizable lead at coffee shops. In the end it was just another clicky-pen to click. I show up, I open my phone, I check in. My friend checks in somewhere "nearby" and I get a notification. I don't need that. If I want coffee or lunch with my friend Sam, we can text each other. My wife doesn't need to see a notification that I check in at Kroger to know that I'm really at the grocery store. If I want to post a geotagged photo, I'm probably going to put that on Instagram anyway.

If you need me, you know where to find me.

Every year I get my Christmas tree I can't help returning to this video. Should be extra special for you if you're a fan of Linda Belcher.

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTs5eKZ0i1E&w=640&h=480]

I've become a fan of Chelsea Peretti through Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and now I find out that Netflix produced a standup special for her. It's pretty freakin’ funny, like an unfiltered and extended appearance from Gina.

Recently my turn signal flashing has been erratic. I don't simply mean the sort of hyper blinking that you see when a bulb is out. Valerie checked every bulb (side markers included) and confirmed they all work. But I've been seeing combinations of steady light, no flashing, changing speeds, etc. I saw the same thing when I pressed the hazard light switch as well. Since all my bulbs worked, but the flashing was failing, I figured it a relay, not a fuze. A relay is basically switch controlled by electricity, and in this case it cases the lights to flash.

In the case of my 2004 Jetta I was lucky. As it happens, the flasher relay is combined with the hazard light switch. After some research, I read online that it's easy and low-risk to pop out of the dashboard. I found a replacement part on Amazon for just over $12 after tax, and today it arrived. The hazard switch indeed popped out with ease and, after attaching the new one, it worked flawlessly for both hazard lights and turn signals in both directions. I've been very happy with my mechanic for many years, but I probably saved myself around a hundred bucks on this fix. I'm not the handiest fellow, but it's immensely satisfying to fix something like this on my own.

Spatchcocked, roasted turkey was a rousing success. But more than the lovely, even cooking and all-over crispy skin, it was the prep that had the biggest impact, I think. I picked up the bird fresh on Tuesday after lunch, already cut by the butcher. So I laid it out flat on a wire rack in a sheet pan and liberally salted both sides before putting it in the fridge. This means that for two days I was essentially curing the turkey, intensifying the flavor and prepping the muscle tissue so that it would lose a little less moisture. I'm a dark meat guy, and the thigh was some of the best non-smoked turkey I've ever tasted.

Oh, and I guess my mashed potatoes were alright, too.

My kid is home sick instead of at the babysitter's (who is, herself, sick), and it's super heartbreaking. She's not devastatingly ill or anything. It's a sore throat and coughing. But she's too young to understand that whining and crying actually make it worse. So she screams, then moans, then cries, and generally stays unhappy between fitful, short naps. And there's nothing I can really do about it other than frequently give her water, cold and soothing food, and lots of hugs (when she's not being too grumpy for me to hold her).

This is just adding to the pile, and probably to the noise. But I have to get it out of my head. I'm pretty upset about everything that's happened in Ferguson, MO, over the past few months. I won't mince words: a police officer murdered an unarmed teenager. That's really all I have to say for you to figure out how I feel about it, I guess.

Then, last night, a grand jury that had been convened to decide whether this killer cop should face a trial, figured that wasn't really necessary. The American Bar Association disagrees and wants federal charges. That maaaaaaay happen, but my growing cynacism doesn't give me hope for a satisfactory resolution. For now, a group of 12 people have taken Justice's blinfold and gagged her with it so she wouldn't even have a chance to speak.

Snagged one a them thar Amazon Fire Sticks on pre-order for 20 clams. I already dig the interface compared to the Roku by a mile, but I'm hoping for the iOS app soon so I don't have to use the little remote that came with it. I do actually watch some of what's on Prime Instant Video, so I'm hoping the Stick sticks.

With all of the ingredients acquired, I've finally put everything into a jar and sealed it up. I have to shake it up every day for two weeks until the next phase, but getting past the starting line is cause enough for excitement!

Because you needed more phone punditry from bloviating strangers in your life, I wonder whether anybody truly thinks Apple will stick with the 4" screen in any significant way. Since the release of this year's phones at 4.7" and 5.5", the old form factor seems to me like it's headed for extinction. Plenty of the tech cognoscenti that I follow (so, already, a very specific and narrow set of inputs on which to base my observations) continue to pine for the 4" screen and wonder whether Apple will hang on to that size in future releases.

I think that Apple's move to larger sizes says all we need to know. Hanging on to smaller devices in the $99-to-free price range doesn't look like hedging to me. It just looks like maximizing profits on old hardware.

In the middle of wondering what the point of Instagram was back in its early days, I remember sticking to my guns that if you were going to post anything, you should only post phone shots. It used to piss me off when photos racked up loads of faves and comments (okay, there's raw human jealousy in there, too) because of how they looked when it was clear that some world class glass was used to capture the image. But my missing Instagram's purpose and potential has turned out to be related to my insistence on posting exclusively with a phone.

When Facebook bought Instagram, I was one of many reactionaries that ditched the photo sharing service. Besides, I was still a heavy Flickr user, and to my snobby would-be photographer's self, that's where the serious photography enthusiasts hung out. Instagram was for folks that just wanted to share pictures of...whatever. Not so much for the pictures as for the whatever.

In the intervening years, however, Flickr stagnated (I still use it, but less so). Users abandoned the service for one reason or another, and pouty conservatives whined about leaving every time the site changed in pursuit of broad relevancy. Instagram, on the other hand, continued to grow and reach a broad audience. Eventually I realized that if I wanted to share photos with people that would actually look at them - particularly friends and family - I needed to return to Instagram. So I did.

What I truly misunderstood with Instagram those years ago was that a) smartphone camera adoption would come to destroy the point-and-shoot market, and b) smartphone technology has progressed so rapidly that there isn't much to miss about point-and-shoots. The iPhone or Android photos on Instagram aren't much worse (or better, frankly) than most of what users posted to Flickr or Facebook or elsewhere. So while Instagram remains a smartphone-centric social network, it's still a photo sharing site. So what does it matter what camera took the pictures that people post?

In the post-show of the most recent episode of Accidental Tech Podcast, Casey Liss suggests that he's "cheating" by posting photos taken with a Micro Four Thirds camera. But why is he posting photos to begin with? Because these are photos of his wife and child, or other moments that he want his friends and family so share. Why not post them where everybody's already looking? That doesn't sound like cheating. It sounds like exactly the point.

My mother-in-law is a very smart woman, but she's a bit behind the curve when it comes to modern electronics. That's fine - she's not anti-technology, or anything. But even for her generation she's missing out on a few elements of the gadget landscape that might actually help her out in a variety of ways. Sometimes she has trouble managing a multi-remote setup for her TV and cable box, so my wife, her sister, and I have been hesitant to steer her toward anything too advanced. After failing to embrace a car GPS that she bought for herself, we figured something like a smartphone was out of the picture. Then she lost her camera.

Long ago, Valerie and I pitched in with her sister to buy a digital camera for their mom. This was already a huge leap, at least 8 years ago. We showed her how to switch from taking photos to viewing them right there on the camera, and how to get everything from the camera to her iMac. For years, we figured that's how she'd been using the camera.

In reality, my mother-in-law eventually stopped transferring photos to her computer and ended up steadily filling the memory card with years' worth of memories. We still hope to find it, but if the camera is truly lost, so are about 5 years of photos. Coincidentally, my mother-in-law had been telling Valerie that she felt like it was time to replace her phone as Valerie struggled to navigate and configure the Byzantine voicemail system of a clamshell phone.

The gears started turning in my head, and I'm thinking it's finally time for my mother-in-law to get a smartphone. An iPhone, specifically, since it'll be easier for her family to support. This way she still gets her phone with easier-to-use voicemail, AND, she'll get her biggest camera upgrade since 2006. I also think if I set things up the right way, she'll have to worry a lot less about losing her device and all of its photos. So here's how I think this could work:

1. Have her get an iPhone 6, 64 GB. I don't anticipate her being a huge app/music/movie user, so most of the free space after the OS and base apps will be available for local photo/video storage. I'm suggesting the 6 because autofocus is ripping fast compared to all prior iPhones. And since she always uses the flash on auto, at least it has that kinda-less-hideous dual LED flash.
2. Get one of those obnoxious Otterbox cases. They all look fugly, but this way we all worry less about her dropping it or putting it in her purse.
3. Start out by moving EVERY APP except the phone to a different home screen, inside a folder. Keep the phone in the dock so it's always visible even if she accidentally swipes to another home screen page.
4. Start out really slow. Just get her used to using the phone and voicemail, and adjusting to a touchscreen. Turn off all notifications, location services, etc. Use restrictions to lockdown the App Store and iTunes. Otherwise, no passcode or TouchID yet. She won't really have sensitive stuff on there anyway that wasn't freely accessible on her clamshell to begin with.
5. Once she's used to the smartphone at a basic level, move the camera and Photos apps to the dock as well. She could look at the photos in the camera app, but it'd be easier for her to have a single tap from the home screen if she just wants to view photos.
6. iCloud photo storage has dramatically improved, but for simplicity here, I'd put the Flickr app on her phone, set up a free account, and turn on the auto-sync option in the Flickr app. By default, all uploads are private, and this way she has a free terabyte of storage for her photos. Whenever she fills up the phone, we can wipe out the pictures to make room without worrying.

Over time we could slowly introduce some additional apps as well, like the calendar, or weather, but only as she gained confidence. It all sounds a little paternalistic, but if you know my mother-in-law (or similar luddites), this is about protection AND minimizing the kind of tech frustration that leads to tech rejection. I want her to have an easy time keeping in touch with her family and the ability to take good photos of her grandchild (and whatever else) without worrying about losing it all.

Thoughts? Is this overwrought? Anybody out there have personal success stories about introducing new gadgets to technophobe friends or family?

UPDATE: My pal Sam recommended a modified approach: just start with phone, camera, and photos in the dock. Leave harmless but maybe useful things on the homescreen (like notes, calendar, etc.). Put everything else in a folder on another screen. No need to lock down app/music stores. After teaching her how to use the phone and camera, just let her know she can play with whatever she sees if she wants without worry. We'll see...I like these ideas, but I also fear that me and my friends take a LOT for granted when it comes to gadgets. So I tend to be overcautious.

Note: this post may contain spoilers for a TV pilot that's more than 30 years old.

For reasons I can't fully explain, I decided to start watching a sitcom that's almost as old as me. Cheers. The entire series is on Netflix and, while I'd never previously watched an episode, I was already familiar with the premise: Sam owns a bar called Cheers. The bar's populated by regulars like Norm and Cliff and some other folks I didn't quite recall. And Danny DeVito's wife, right? Right, Rhea Perlman. Cheers is an American cultural touchstone from the late 20th century, so if you're at least my age you probably know a little about the show.

But really, the most recent connection was from a cartoon. I'm a huge Adventure Time fan, and while the show is mostly bonkers, it's been marked by occasional moments of sincere emotional depth. The best of these moments, for me, shows a good man's descent into madness in service of protecting a scared little girl. The Cheers theme song is used in the episode "Simon and Marcy" to illustrate both his attempt at comforting the child and later, his struggle to hold on to what makes him human:

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udWQDqK_gLM&w=854&h=480]

It's still a humorous episode of a cartoon ostensibly aimed at kids, but it's also harrowing and ultimately tragic.

Anyway, I decided to check out the source material. And why not? I've heard and read good things from trusty sources. So over the weekend I finally watched the pilot episode. And I was hooked immediately.

In one short 25 minutes of television we get an avalanche of jokes, from one-liners to witty retorts, some physical comedy, humorous misunderstandings, and grade-A sarcasm. Every bit as funny as I could have hoped. The cast is terrific, too, from George Wendt and John Ratzenberger to Ted Danson and Shelley Long.

But the story in Cheers' pilot is what really got me. An idealistic (if a bit stuck up) post-grad named Diane enters the bar with her fiancé on their way to the airport. The audience is introduced to the cast over the course of a long evening as Diane slowly realizes that she will not, in fact, be marrying this man the next day. Meanwhile she tries to resist her environment while everybody else draws her in until, ultimately, she acknowledges that it's the perfect place for her.

Everybody in Cheers is there so they don't have to face something outside and upstairs. Sam used to be an MLB pitcher but now, incongruously, runs the bar as a reforming alcoholic. Norm hints at an empty marriage. Carla is a single mother overwhelmed by her four children. None of these situations are as harrowing (or weird) as "Simon and Marcy", but the bar is full of an ad hoc family that cares for each other, whether it's overlooking employee tardiness or making sure an overindulgent regular gets a ride home. They're just trying to hang on to what makes them human.

Our troubles are all the same.

I work pretty closely with one project manager at my office because the project in question has dominated my job for the past 2 years. I refer to her as my "work mom"; she's actually my mom's age, very friendly in a parental sort of way, and makes the best freakin' chocolate chip cookies I've ever eaten. It's a good working relationship.

Beyond belief, my old HP laptop was replaced with a 15" Retina MacBook Pro at the end of summer. I've been a Mac user for a few years outside the office, so it was pretty great to use my preferred computing environment for my job. This past week, this same project manager replaced her old machine with the same setup that I have, but she's an old school IT worker that's never really used an Apple computer. She's really smart - she's worked her way around IT for a lot longer than I have - but now she finds herself in a situation where she doesn't quite know how to use her computer, the tool she depends on for nearly every task throughout the day.

Now, as so often happens with actual parents, I find myself providing tech support. I'm actually kind of enjoying it, though. As I've mentioned before, I like to help people where computers are involved, so it's been fun to share the keyboard shortcuts, tools, and processes that have helped me out. It's also been instructive to see what I take for granted about they ways I work and what I've already learned over the years.

WOWEE, podcasts are BACK, baby! I mean, they never actually left, or anything. Regardless, I thought I'd put together a short list of some great shows that aren't produced by Ira Glass (though I love This American Life and Serial):

1. The Flop House. Merlin Mann recommended this one through various channels, and I'm hooked after a few episodes. About 50% of each episode is actually a discussion of a commercial and/or critical flop while the rest is hilarious banter between the hosts, two of which are writers for The Daily Show. It's easily over an hour most of the time so plan accordingly if you already have some long listens in your queue.
2. The Memory Palace. Infrequently published but always beautiful. I suppose host Nate DiMeo bills this as a history podcast, but it's really a collection of well-written essays read on air, recorded and edited with care and skill.
3. A Responsive Web Design Podcast. Sure, it's ostensibly about a digital design philosophy, but if you work in teams on large projects with frequently competing goals, there's still a lot to love and learn from on this one. I REALLY wish the audio quality was better, but the information and hosts are so good that it's worth the listen.
4. Roderick on the Line. This one includes the aforementioned Merlin Mann and his friend, John Roderick. The web guy and the indie rock guy have a weekly conversation that oscillates between humor and philosophy. And really, just a load of great storytelling. Supertrain is coming.

If you're not listening to any of these already, you should check them out. And who knows, maybe some day I'll eventually wake up my own dormant show...

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the excellent Overcast podcast app (if you're an iOS user like me). You can hook up your Twitter account to see and provide recommended episodes and shows. Another great discovery tool if you don't trust iTunes reviews from strangers.