On Sunday we ended up going sledding before it started melting in the sun. But it didn’t melt enough and refroze as super-ice.

So the week started with two snow days. Callum enjoyed it, but Julie and I had to work like any other normal day. So it ws like a normal workday with additional climbing up the walls.

We had the yearly worry that the furnace was going out, but we just had to disconnect the temperature probe and clean it with steel wool. Always a fun time.

On Wednesday Callum and I went to see John Woo’s “Hard Boiled” in the theater. I don’t think I properly setup the movie before we went in and he thought it was all a bit too much. Which - fair. That’s basically what “Hard Boiled” is - too much. Dang that baby’s cute, tho. I’m still going to try to get him to see “Better Tomorrow” and “The Killer” when they come out.

On Friday we went to see a Middle School murder-mystery bingo fundraiser. We quit at intermission, because we couldn’t hear anything and didn’t have a kid in the show. We ended up at Kirbey Lane and had a great time.

On Saturday Stella came home for lunch and we went out to Modern Market and then the Central Library. I like to park right next to 5th street and walk over to the Central Library along the Shoal Creek paths. But that might have been a bit much on my newley walkable de-bunioned foot. Stella and I got drinks at the Cafe Creme in the library and we got books to plan our Mexico City vacation. We also bought plane tickets!

Stella took the car to go dancing, so Julie and I took Callum to see Les Miserable at Bowie and then on to a date. We started first with a reservation at Sputnik. They had live music and the general vibe was - loud and not a date so we bailed. We ended up at Osterhouse which was surpringly good. Then we went over to the HEB to get some candy, and then over to 400 Rabbits for drinks while waiting to pickup Callum. There’s not a huge amount to do in that part of town, but it was a pleasant night out.

On Sunday we got groceries and just go caught up on stuff. Julie went out with friends for dinner so Stella, Callum, and I had a chickpea laden pasta dinner, then took Stella back to UT. I spent a lot of the day working on adding live-chat conversations to Fun Old Times.

So we are iced in. We got a fair amount of ice last night and it’s quite cold. But we’re snuggly. That insulation we installed a year ago has changed these sort of events from a situation where we try to close off parts of the house and white-knuckle it hoping the pipes don’t freeze, to a very snuggly warm experience.

This week started with grocery Monday and not doing much of anything. Which was nice, but I think Julie needed more scheduled programming. On Wednesday I went to the Doctor and got a very positive report on my bunion surgery. I’m now just in a surgical boot and can walk on it. I also got cleared to e-bike places. So I went and picked up some McDonalds. For some reasons they didn’t have curbside so I ended up walking more than I wanted to go pick up the food inside. I also went on a walk around the neighborhood with Julie. I definitely overdid it on the first day which probably should surprise no one.

On Thursday I got a couple dudes out to Koko’s to hang out. That place is just weird. There were half a dozen employees there who seemed to be trying to avoid us. We had to order at the bar and the two bartenders seemed to be doing everything. Reminds me of old Austin and service at places like Opal Divines where the servers would disappear into the upstairs bar and get waster.

Speaking of Opal Divines. Friday we tried out our local hotel restaraunt - Machi Sushi which replaced the last Opal Divines in the Best Western across the highway. It had transformer statues out front and had all you can eat sushi. It was definitely a step up in food quality from Kura’s and was a fun experience. It’s nice to have a place everyone likes so close. Of course, I pledged to finish up any food people didn’t have room for so I ended up eating way too much sushi. Then I ordered a fried twinkie. The server made it look like an irradiated frog with 3 eyes. Good times, but I was in a bit of pain afterwards.

Saturday we put up the Christmas decorations. I managed to get on a ladder and get the lights down. Just went slow and steady. But my foot was an overstuffed sausage by the end of it. We watch Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” which started slowly, but ended up being a fun comedy.

This week I added the ability to poll you friends to Fun Old Times. I’m also working on something like the text message replacement I always wished I had.

This week was punctuated by trying to get me off my scooter and back on my feet. Julie really felt that all the post-surgery information saying I should be back on my feet after 6 weeks should superceded the fact my follow-up appointment is 7 weeks out. I ended up contacting the doctor and got a very firm no back.

On Tuesday Julie, Travis, and I had our first reconvening of our writing group. We did a writing exercise sending a letter from your 80 year old self to your current self. It was a much deeper exercise than I was expecting.

This past weekend we went to Houston for our belated Christmas. We hung out around the fire pit in my Dad’s apartment complex on Saturday. We got to see my sisters Kate and Christine and my nephew Peter.

Then on Sunday we had Christmas with Julie’s family and drove back to Austin.

This week I’m hoping to get back on my feet on Wednesday and have a Dude’s Night on Thursday.

This year I’m going to try to write a weeklog to record my gratitude and remember the small things.

Week 1 was mostly encompassed in my New Years post. But I did miss that we went to the San Antonio Zoo to see the new Gorilla Exhibit (and our old pals the anteaters). The Gorillas were very cool. One wandered around like a human on two legs and that was pretty wacky. We had dinner at La Fonda on Main. It was pretty good elevated Mexican. I had some skewers over rice. It had a lot of vegetables which was great, but the beef had zero seasoning which was a bit baffling. All in all a great dinner, though.

On Saturday we watched the Stranger Things finale. I think it was more emotional for me than for the kids. The ending was so wrapped up with COVID and the fact we’re almost empty nesters and everything is changing in our family very quickly.

On Sunday we went to the Wildflower Center for a walk. Checked out Fortlandia. Getting exercise on one leg while not overdoing it has proven a real struggle.

This week was back to the grind, although I still enjoy work and it’s really not that bad. I think just being tired from my leg makes everything drag.

We planned a 50th birthday party for my old friend Travis. We had custom merit badges and a fun cake and I realized that I was the one having control issues and getting wigged out about the planning. But it all came off without a hitch. We had this old badge maker we’d gotten at Austin Creative Reuse and I ordered some blanks we hoped would work off of Amazon.

Our only worry is we have kicked off this phase of our life with too good of a party and it’s going to be hard to keep this pace.

We’re taking Stella back to the dorms tonight, so it’ll just be the three of us again. I think I’m doing better about saying goodbye now. Last year was really rough.

This week we’re going to start back with a bi-weeky writing night on Tuesday. Fingers crossed it goes well.

Have you ever heard the phrase:

| He became desensitized to violence and moved to the country to live a peaceful life herding sheep.

You haven’t. Because that’s not how trauma works. You don’t need to watch that video and traumatize yourself. You already know something horrible happened. You know it’s not right. If you watch that video you will literally terrorize yourself.

People who have been traumatized seem ok. They seem to be doing fine. Except when they occasionally lash out inappropriately. Or drink too much. Or have a heart attack because they are always in fight or flight mode.

The day of 9/11 I turned off my TV and worked on my computer. The people I knew who spent the day glued to their TVs were traumatized by watching the plane crash over, and over, and over, and over*. Some decided to join the military for vengence. Some aired horribly racist views. Many gleefully supported the war and destruction.

You don’t have to watch it. You are motivated to make the world a better place without watching it. How will it help?

People who become desensitized to violence aren’t the ones who go on to make their countries better. They’re the ones who end up shooting up a friendly bipartisan baseball game.

You don’t have to watch the video.

NYE Party

We had our annual New Year’s Eve party last night. I bartend and it was a great time. I started when I still drank as a way to drink less and prevent a hangover. But now that I’ve been sober for over 6 years I just enjoy the process.

We had new friends, old friends, and I had several really meaningful conversations.

I played with generative AI (specificly Google Gemini) to try to generate a drink menu for NYE. It was an interesting experience. It was very good at coming up with drinks based upon the alcohol I had on hand. It was amazing at drink names. It was very bad at making up drink recipes. And I have no idea why it felt it needed to come up with its own recipes. It was weird. It was also great at garnishes. I tried to create a menu image, and Google’s Nano Banana just will not put the text you want in the image. It was a good exercise for seeing what the state of the art is right now. And I’ll go back to not asking AI questions for a while.

But through all these iterations/failures I came up with this drink based upon an Elderflower Collins. The drink is great spirited or spirit-free:

Midnight Garden

• 2oz Gin
• 1 oz Elderflower Liqueur
• 1/4oz Creme de Violet
• 1oz lemon
• 1/2 oz hibiscus simple syrup (steep dried hibiscus blossoms for 3 minutes in 1 cup water, strain, add the liquid + 1 cup sugar and stir over high heat until fully disolved, let cool)
• Soda water
• Garnish with a sprig of fresh thyme

For the spirit-free I used Belvoir Farm Elderflower Syrup Mixer for the NA elderflower. I used Monin Violet for the Creme de Violet, and Free Spirits Non-Alchoholic Gin for the Gin.

The Year Ahead

In 2002 I wrote a play called Scaping the Goat The play was about the way that cable news had taken the events of 9/11 that had terrorized one city, and repeated the imagery from it over and over until it terrorized the entire world.

Despite having written the play I seemed to have lost the message in my own life. I got sucked into the daily terrorizing by both parties to raise money and hurt people’s health. I got off Twitter, but got on Bluesky. The effect persisted. At some point this year I just got off the train. I’m still aware of what’s going on, but I don’t exist in a state of permanent fight or flight. I’m not terrorized by every single thing Trump says. This is not to downplay the damage he has done, but he has been even more effective at terrorizing us than breaking things.

I wrote a post because despite this administration explicitly targeting me and my family; we had a great year. And I need to celebrate that.

Around this time I started building Fun Old Times as a way to really understand how to effectively use generative AI in programming and to create the social network I always wanted. Through the process I have become more and more worried that we’re going to see an end of affordability for AI tools for home and open-source projects in the coming year and I wanted to get a head start before the tools become much more expensive.

I released new code today that was all built by hand, so I haven’t lost my brain yet.

I built Fun Old Time because I wanted a way to have smaller communities. I wanted something that wasn’t gamified. I had all these ideas for what I wanted social media to become and it never happened. Fun Old Times will import this blog post into my small community automatically via RSS. But it will also exist on the Internet. So I can have my internal conversations inside Fun Old Times and keep a blog running that can have more public reach.

My goal for this year is to continue what I started last year, and that I think was best summed up by Jenn Schiffer. I’m done with:

hating the internet instead of making the internet

This year I want to get back to writing. I want to get back to building. I want my community back. I don’t want to watch 10 second clips of “Community”. I want back-to-school pictures of my friends’ kids, dammit.

My goals for this year:

• I want to create and write again
• I want to spend more time with you
• I want to build new things together
• I want to repair and resuscitate relationships
• I want to make useless art and useful art
• I will not be terrorized
• I will add comments back to this blog so it’s not a weird one-way street.
• I will build community with Fun Old Times and not just build features.

I’ve never really done a year in review post. I have PTSD from my family writing up newsletters and mailing them out. But I’m working on remembering better. So here we go.

January

The year started off with our family going on new year’s day hike with our Nimble Nomads. We walked Horsnby Bend and I fell in love with Hog Plum, ultimately order some seeds from the Internet, growing them from seed and planting the seedlings this fall.

The next night we checked out Luminations at the wildflower center, ending up in our hot tub.

Julie and I made it out for Free Week and checked out Night Drive at the Mohawk then we saw Nosferatu on the last day of Christmas break.

We went to Houston and had Christmas with the fam. We even saw Xtine’s family!

We got some snow on January 21st. We saw the band Travis on January 25th at ACL Live. Julie and I finished out the month with a date at the Cidercade.

We had a craft night - Commicraft Commicraft - it was a round-robinned comic book with Tom and Mark.

February

We took our first rides in a Waymo. “Look ma no driver!”

We had the Larsons and Kievlans over to dinner. This is something we need to do again in the new year!

I worked for a week in Montreal. We got there in a snowstorm and we got into this weird people mover bus instead of going to a gate, and then the peoplemover lowered and drove us to the gate. It was weird! I went cross-country skiing and loved it.

Rhett got his head stuck in a trash can.

I made our traditional valentines pizza and we took Stella back to campus in a Waymo, picking up Callum at Tribe on the way. It was a weird date with robots.

We went on a date to the Well.

We went on the modern home tour with our second daughter Savannah and Callum. Super fun.

Julie had a girl guitar showcase.

March

We had dinner with Brennan and Kristen and Lucy and Brandon. It was super fun. We need to do it more often!

Then we had the oscar party. There were a lot of monkeys this year.

At SXSW we got to stand in line for the Criterion Closet (it was in a truck). We didn’t make it in, but Callum and Julie got super cool swag bags.

We had a craft day. It was MarchCraft FeltCraft. We made little felted animals.

We saw Santigold at Radio East. It was cold and very fun.

Callum and I “toured the University of New Mexico”.

Athena the owl returned to the wildflower center.

We went to houston for spring break and hung around like tourists. We toured the downtown tunnels. We went to Meow Wolf (the radio station). We dined at Crawfish and Noodles with plastic bibs.

We went into the cistern and heard the tour guide sing. We walked the bayou a little. We toured the Menil. We toured the HMPA.

We hosted a birthday party for Lucy at our house with Karaoke.

Julie, Callum and I did a trash cleanup in the Country Club Creek trail greenbelt near our house.

Stella joined us for her birthday and we went for indian food at Nasha.

Callum had a choir concert in Crockette’s cafitorium.

April

Somehow convinced the family to try Din Ho. We went to the Sherwood Forest Faire.

Stella and I ran the Longhorn Race 5k. And I did not forget the bibs.

Callum had a birthday party with X-Men challenges. One was to eat weird looking foods. The kids did suprising well.

Went to see Kylie Minogue! So very, very good.

Rented CapMetro e-bikes and rode around the lake.

Walked down the new pedestrian part of Congress Avenue north of the Capitol and toured the Blanton.

Had our Easter party with the whole fam and friends.

Went to the all-city tenor bass concert.

We saw LCD Soundsystem at Emos. It was fun, but also a bit weird since it’s just an endless greatest hits tour.

Julie got convinced to buy personalized tequila at Total Wine. Hijinks ensued.

We got new gutters!

Julie had a girl guitar showcase at Lustre Pearl South.

May

We went on Modern Austin’s outdoor garden tour.

Stella moved out of Jester.

I had a birthday and got a musical keyboard.

Callum did his solo at the theater/choir combined cabaret.

We hiked the trails behind Aquarina Springs in San Marcos.

Julie and I went out for our anniversary.

We also went on a trip to Seminole Canyon State Park, Kickapoo State Park. We toured antique stores in Del Rio. I saw many plants!

Callum got some Cougar awards. He’s a very good student.

I wired up a steamdeck mini to control the lights and blinds.

We visited the family in Houston and went swimming in Grandaddy’s pool.

We finished the month with a memorial day swim party.

June

June began with a graduation party for one of my Becker Botcats.

Dinner at the Texican for Julie’s birthday with a Mexican Margarita.

Julie got a USB coffee warmer which was probably her favorite present. And inflatable chickens to ride in the pool, which I believe was the friend group’s favorite gift. It saw a lot of use in the summer.

We saw our good friend Karen in Different Stages’ production of “For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again”.

We saw Death from Above 1979 at Empire Garage playing the entirety of “You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine”. It was amazing. And also made us feel old. But I got the t-shirt that would make me many friends throughout the year.

We took our new express bus to the lake to ride e-bikes again. I put my bike on the bus this time. Julie and Callum biked off without us and saw Jenni rehearsing with the Minor Mishap marching band.

There were life changing snocones, much swimming, and another Girl Guitar showcase with Julie performing at Antone’s.

July

More swimming!

Some thieves suspended one of my neighbors chairs on the fence, broke into our shed with a fence post, and made off with our gorilla cart. I ended up fixing my neighbors fence because she was out of town and I was worried about the thieves returning and breaking into her house. I think this officially makes me old.

We went to the HRC and saw exhibits of goth childrens books and one about PEN which is a dinng club that eventually became on the forfront of protecting free speech. We had coffee after at Cafe Medici on the drag, which used to be Insomnia/Metro. It is a way more comfortable space now.

Junie had a growth that was bleeding so we took her to Ace of Spays in North Austin for surgery. They took the growth off of her face as well. But sometime shortly after recovering from surgery she ended up with Horner’s syndrome. It was not a great month for Junie. She had to wear a pink union suit for much of the month, but she came out of it ok.

Rhett got his head stuck in a trash can.

We went to a BBQ popup at Meanwhile sponsored by Uptown Sports Club with lots of Asian BBQ. Then we watched synthpop on the stage.

We went to see Callum as a company member in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. His costume vibe was very Dark City. Meme and Pappy even came.

As part of her surgery recovery Junie started demanding walks. We complied for a time. Even though it was very hot.

August

We road tripped to Dollywood. We had Bahn Mi’s outside Dallas. We checked out the Royse City Futuro house outside of Dallas. It looked like a UFO and was in disrepair.

We had Bratwurst in Little Rock, and made it to Memphis where we went to Graceland. Graceland had expanded mightly since the last time we went. When Julie and I were last there it was mostly just the house and the planes. The number of museums now is out of control and was far too much to see all of.

In Memphis we also went to the Peabody hotel and watched the ducks march from the elevator into the fountain. We went to the Bass Pro Shop in the pyramid. Which was weird and fun. You don’t expect a fake bayou inside a pyramid next to a river.

We ate dinner in Nashville and made it to the Great Smokey Mountains late at night. Which was terrifying. Google Maps lead us astray and we ended up backing up in pitch black mountain roads with Julie leading us on foot.

But then we went on hikes in the Great Smokey Mountains. We saw a baby bear close to our car. We encountered many families attempting hikes they were in no way prepared for (one family asked if we were professional hikers because we had hiking boots on and hiking poles). We saw so many waterfalls. We woke up and had coffee on a massive porch overlooking the mountains, or on our back porch overlooking the woods.

We played mini-golf at a dinosaur themed park. But then it also had some mythology and dragons left over from its previous incarnation. We went on the Great Smokey Mountain Railway which was amazing, although the road to get there was terrifying hairpin turns. And apparently it’s popular with drivers so we were constantly getting passed by sports cars and motorcycles driving really fast.

The route involved watching lots of white water rafters. Next day was Dollywood. The roller coasters were amazing. We saw the bird of prey show, and checked out some Dolly Parton outfits. We went on the steam train at Dollywood which was a horrible experience. It started with a warning that they would not be stopping the train because of cinders in your eyes, and well… the train was basically getting bathed in smoke and cinders — including in my eyes. 0/10 stars do not recommend. Although we did encounter some folks from our trip on the Great Smokey Mountain Railway the day before. We have accepted we are train people.

Heading back we went to Tiny Town in Hot Springs, which was a cute train diorama built over many years.

We saw Doctah Mistah’s production of “Toxic Avenger” with the family when we got back.

We had some fun family time. We started watching Project Runway and doing sketches for the challenges along with the contestents.

More swimming, more snocones, and then back to school for Stella and Callum. Stella going back to school was a little easier this year, but only a little. I miss my kiddo. Stella going back to school has reaquainted us with the restaraunts on Duval, and we ended up taking her to Curra’s after move in.

August was Austin pride. This year it was nice to see all the corporate sponsors who had not abandoned the queer community. It was a very different vibe. A woman came up to me and told me her life story. Going to the pride parade was tied into her journey to have kids. Life is weird, but I like people.

August was another Girl Guitar showcase at Antone’s. We saw Callum’s lighting design in Spark’s production of “Pillar of Fire” at the Vortex.

I ended the month extracting more of our pre-pool backyard and building berms.

September

We went to Haunt Happy Books in Lockhart and had some BBQ at Kreuz Market. Julie did not like the smokiness of the dining area, so we will go to another bbq place when when we go back. I got a collection of train horror stories.

We saw Spoon and the Pixies at the Moody outdoor stage. It reminded me that I don’t love the Pixies as a live band. I’ve seen them twice now and their setlist just somehow doesn’t work well. But Spoon was amazing.

We went to Mr. Sean’s birthday at Austin Beerworks Sprinkle Valley location. A great day of sitting outside at a beer garden. Something we don’t do enough now that the kids are grown.

Stella, Julie, and I got our COVID and Flu vaccines. Callum had to wait for his annual pediatrician visit.

Callum made his homecoming mum and Julie and I went to the game taking Jasper and Callum with us. Callum went to the homecoming dance with friends.

September also saw Callum get his driver’s license and a bookreading at Book People for Mo Deviau’s “Epic and Lovely”.

I started an herb garden this month, and it has actually been coming along.

I went to Copenhagen for work and stayed in an amazing hotel. On our last night we went out to a circus themed tapas bar. It was a bit stunt foody, but the drinks were silly and it was a great time.

Running on fumes I got off the plane from Copenhagen after something like 12 hours flying, and went to see Kuhla Shaker and The Dandy Warhols at the Mohawk as part of Levitation Fest. Kuhla Shaker was great. We knew way more songs than we thought and they were a band that had obviously gotten very, very good over the years. The Dandy’s on the other hand. They were so quiet that you could barely hear them. Low energy, just generally sad and bad. But I made a friend from South Africa thanks to my DFA 1979 shirt.

George and Kathy had us over for an oyster dinner party and epic game of “SuperJasonPassword”.

October

We had a game night. We decorated for Halloween. We sang Karoake at the Barrel of Fun for Ashley’s 1 year anniversary of the Mueller group.

ACLFest was this month. Highlights for me were The Dare, Panda Bear, Carseat Headrest (I’m apparently in my psych-rock era), Riloy Kiley, Wet Leg, and of course The Killers show which was worthy of Vegas. I made a friend because of my DFA 1979 shirt.

We toured Texas State with Callum and some of the least interested parents and kids we’ve been on a college tour with. We explained to our tour guide why San Marcos has a mermaid parade. Because we’re nerds.

Bill and Andrea came to town and we had a party and drank at the Draft House.

We saw Callum at the Region UIL performance at the Performing Arts Center, and his cool water runoff demonstration with Roots and Wings.

Then to a Girl Guitar showcase at Girl Guitar’s new space. It was too loud and tight, but Mercury Daze’s performance of “Dragula” slayed.

We managed to catch most of the Wombats at Scoot Inn. It was a dinner time show which was… odd. We were home around 8.

Callum went as Seymour for Halloween and made an amazing Audrey II puppet.

November

November started with Travis’ Halloween party. More Halloween is great. Julie and I were Mulder and Scully.

We went to the Texas book festival. We saw the authors of “After the Spike” and preventing depopulation is my new advocacy focus.

We saw Callum and the River Watchers in Forklift Dancework’s collaboration with Austin Water for “The Way of Water” at Hornsby Bend. Zell Miller was the narrator and we learned the kids today are not into spoken word the way us 90s kids are.

I felled a Red Bud that had been in our yard since we moved in. It was the end of an era, but the right call. It was super-disased and infested with ants.

We saw Cargill (one of the writers of Black Phone, Dr. Strange, Sinister, etc) at ACC talking about writing. Cargill was a person who helped me learn to be less critical and just enjoy art, and it was great to see him in person.

We went to Leona in South Austin for Anna’s birthday. The lighting made us all think we were going to fall off a path and die. We did not fall off a path and die.

We went to Houston and saw the fam and then had Friendsgiving. Standing up at a birthday party for Crystal in East Austin made me realize that I did indeed need bunion surgery.

December

That surgery happened on my left foot at the beginning of December, and I’ve been one legged on a scooter since.

That did not stop us from having cheese at Antonelli’s and karaoke at the high ball for Ashley’s birthday. The High Ball did not have an elevator so I ended up bouncing up and down a lot of stairs.

We went to a Christmas concert at Crockett with the elementary and middle schools that feed into the school. It was super-cute. Then I got yakamein at Cyprus Grill.

Callum had a Christmas party with friends, locking Julie and I in our bedroom.

Then a Girl Guitar Christmas concert at Stubb’s for Julie. I got to take the elevator which was fun.

Julie and I had a date night at Koko’s Bavarian and then on to present shopping. This year had fewer suprises because I had to be escorted everywhere. Callum and Stella took me to Blue Genie to shop for Julie.

We went to Fort Worth and stayed overnight at my Mom’s house. We took her out for a birthday dinner at Cheddars. The next day we toured the new house they’re building - it seems almost done. Then on to a tour of UNT and Christmas shopping on the Square. We all love Denton. It’s unfortunate its promxity to DFW, but I guess the weirdos there need somewhere to go.

Instead of continually adding to our Lego town the kids and I added lights from “Light My Bricks”. It was very fussy, but worth the effort. I can see this becoming a yearly thing.

We watched some Stranger Things. We made gingerbread houses. We had fake turkey loaf for Christmas dinner. I spent a lot of time lying on the floor with my foot up. The swelling from this surgery is no joke.

Post Christmas there were puzzles and Lego. There was a yearly white elephant cookie party.

Then we went to the SNL exhibit at the HRC.

Daniel and Jeff came to town and we went to Bamboo House for Peking Duck.

Tonight is NYC and it’s time for our annual New Year’s party. What a year.

Last night my son was reading a Marvel comic based upon the Knights of the Round Table, which reminded me of a Sega Arcade game from the 90s. I decided to look it up:

My search text was “knights sega arcade game”

Google gives me back “Nights into Dreams” which is a Sega Saturn game. The correct game “Knights of the Round” is the second or third result, but note also the text at the top of the search:

Did you mean nights sega arcade game

Well, no. I didn’t. I put in the word “knights”. Also it’s not an arcade game.

I’ve been seeing this again and again when searching technical articles, but it’s harder to explain why the results are wrong. This particular search made it easy to demonstrate how much Google Search has been hit by enshitification. This is what Bing returns which is exactly what I expected:

If I put “knights” in double quotes on Google I get the correct results, but I’m not going to put everything in my search in double quotes, so I get the results I expect.

So, I’m switching to Bing by way of DuckDuckGo. It’s frustrating it’s come to this, but Google Search is fundamentally broken.

Our house came with a laundry room. It was a really nice space, but it was un-airconditioned and in our garage. As part of a remodel we were able to enclose that space and add heating and air. But it was always colder than the rest of the house. Like 20 degrees colder at times. We ended up blocking it off a lot of the time.

When they enclosed the space they put in the rolled pink fiberglass insulation. It was better than nothing, but we had done the Austin Energy audit about a decade ago and they had blow in insulation over the rest of our house. Last year when it went into the 20s we had our pipes freeze and I got to spend a lot of time thawing them out in the attic in freezing temperatures.

So I wanted to do some weatherization and they said blowing cellulose insulation into your attic is an easy DIY project. I got some extra insulating tape and taped up all the gaps in the insulation around our pipes and then last Saturday we bought 11 bags of cellulose insulation and rented a blower from Home Depot.

They say you need 2 people to lift the blower, and it was really heavy. We got it out of our car easily enough, but had to get Callum to help us when it was time to get it back in. The hoses we got did not have clamps and they suggested we use duct tape to connect them. So we spent a good hour of our 4 hour rental just fighting hoses. I had to go back to home depot and get an o-ring clamp, but once we had the hose secured everything was exactly as trivial as they suggested. It’s a 2 person project. One person is at ground level feeding insulation into the hopper, and the other has a hose in the attic blowing the insulation in. Julie said feeding in the insulation was dusty and tiring. Holding the hose to blow in the insulation was pretty boring and dusty, but otherwise not much work. Even with wasting about 2 hours with hoses and a trip back to Home Depot, we still completed it in time to get our rental back before the 4 hour mark. So this really was a realistic afternoon project - including the trips to the store.

Some questions people have asked me:

1. Do you need special protective equipment? Nope. Cellulose insulation is just like paper and wool. That also makes it carbon negative, since you’re basically storing carbon in your attic. It’s dusty, but the kind of mask you have left over from COVID will work just fine. Any sort of gloves work, and I wore a baseball cap that got really dusty. But I didn’t have any lung or skin irritation. It’s nothing like working with fiberglass insulation.

2. Do you have to remove the old insulation? Nope. This is additive. Your old insulation keeps working and you just add to it. Apparently, insulation is basically measured by the depth so the more you add on top, the better your insulation.

3. Do you have to do any prep? If you have can lighting that isn’t made to be covered in insulation (these are generally the old kind that had halogen bulbs), or soffits there are extra steps to keep them exposed. We did not have those, so mostly I just had to move things around in our attic to get them out of the way. The videos about using the machine explain this stuff pretty thoroughly.

4. How much did it cost? We were doing a 10’x12’ space. I was shooting for something like R60. That’s like 15-20 inches covering the space. That took 11 bags of insulation. With the 4 hour rental it cost less than $400.

5. Are you happy with it? Yes. It used to take your breath away a little bit to walk into those areas. Now it feels like the rest of the house. It used to always be within about 5-10 degrees of our attic. Now it’s generally within 5 degrees of the rest of the house, which is a dramatic difference.

I wanted to do a manual Tidal Rewind. Tidal gives you stats every month. This isn’t completely right as it doesn’t seem to properly collate all of my music (from phone and desktop). Especially when I compare it to Last.FM. I listen to way more music than this, but, whatever, it’s fun!

I want to do a some up of what I think you should check out (these links work even if you don’t have Tidal)

The Chill

Beverly Glenn-Copeland

Eddie Chacon

Coco

The Dance Rock

Hinds

Freak Slug

We Are Wolves

Chinese American Bear

I believe Julie has approved of all of these as “Not Awful”TM

I feel like I’ve rediscovered some favorites here.