Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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The Great Consolidation of 2023
I like to think that I’m a neat and organized person. And with physical things, I’m really good. But when it comes to digital things, I’ve got clutter everywhere. Files on the desktop and downloads folder that need to be properly filed. Videos that need to be archived on an external raid hard drive. But…
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Happy New Year!
Everyone says that the last two years have been dumpster fires, with everything being cancelled / changed from COVID, but I think last year was a pretty great year. Here are just a few of the good things that happened to me and my family in 2021: I took a 40+ hour online JavaScript boot…
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Out with the old
I blew out my old basketball shoes on Wednesday night at open gym. The toe split out and I had to resort to duct tape to finish out the rest of the games. I’m pretty sure I had these in college, so I think I got my money’s worth 😀
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Moving to a WordPress VIP Developer Role
As of today, July 19th 2021, goal has finally come true, I’m switching roles at Automattic. This year was finally the year when I made time for myself and spent hundreds of hours over nights and weekends learning JavaScript. Today, I start as a Developer Apprentice in the VIP division. I’m no longer in support…
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A little bit of organization
Our workout room has a small bump out due to the fireplace above it (honestly I have no idea why, but it’s a great space). Added a couple of shelves to get nearly all the gear off the floor.
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Bought it again
With interest rates being so low, we refinanced again (we’ve only lived here 18 months). We used Ally Bank to refinance and was able to lock in an interest rate of 2.375% for a 15 year! The savings from the previous 15 year loan at 3.5% will be more than $35,000.
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The annoying click
A few weeks ago, a friend used our car to drive the kids home and they suggested they wanted to watch a movie (which we never use, since ugh DVDs are awful). The disc was loaded incorrectly into the CD drive and it wasn’t in the tray right. It’s a six disc changer and if…
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Surprise Guest Today
One of my good college friends flew down from the Indian Lake area (about 75 minutes away) to deliver a jacket he posted on Facebook. He’s a pilot for American Airlines and has been flying on the weekends to get more hours so he can move up to bigger planes (and higher salaries). The kids…
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Take me back to Florida
We spent 10 glorious days in Florida in January. I snuck some dumbbells in the back of the car and it was so nice to do some workouts outside, in perfect 70 degree weather.
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How much longer will it run?
How much longer will it run? 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix. We’ve had it for more than a decade and have put on nearly 200,000 miles. I’d like to get a pickup, since my commute is six miles taking kids to school. And I’m tired of taking the car seats out of the SUV all.the.time. Maybe…
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House Update – November 2018
We started the month off anticipating that we would be moved in by month’s end, but due to a few delays, everything wasn’t finished up. One of the big delays was about the driveway. The engineers had spec’d the driveway to be a width of ten feet wide, but the HOA covenants states that all…
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House Update – End of October
Another month has come and went and they are still working on our house 🙂 Even though it seemed like there were a lot of days where nothing happened, progress was made. These things specifically: All rough electrical work Media rough wiring (for Ethernet and speakers) Each electrical / plumbing / gas / house structure…
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House Update – End of September
September has come and gone and we are getting closer to a completed house. Not a lot happened at the beginning of the month, with lots of days of no progress. This is because nothing else could start until we got concrete in the basement. The sliding basement door and basement steps couldn’t be installed…
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House Update – End of August
There have been a lot of new visual changes in the second half of the month. On Monday, August 20th, the framers continued framing on the second floor and got all of the interior walls completed. It was a bit wet, so I didn’t take many pictures. Tuesday the morning was spent preparing the rafters…
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House Update – Mid August
It’s been awhile since I checked in, but mainly because we’ve been traveling and the bulk of the home work has happened in the last 7 days 🙂 Since my last post, the basement plumbing got completed and passed inspection. Our roof trusses were delivered (weird, since no other wood has been delivered) and the…
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House Update – Weeks 5 & 6
Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen the most amount of changes to our lot, yay! On Tuesday, July 10, the forms for the basement walls were delivered and set in the basement. It sure looked like enough of them! The next day, the crew spent the afternoon taking a gazillion measurements, since our basement…
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House Update – Weeks 3 & 4
Week three started off with a bang as we finally got the footers poured for the basement walls. This was 11 days after the footers were set. The combination of rainy weather and waiting for an inspection was the reason for the delays. Over the next two days, the forms came off the poured footers…
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New House Construction – Weeks 1 & 2
My wife and I are building a new house and after what seems like months (well, it really was months with decisions and selections to make) they finally made a call to the excavating company to come and start digging on June 12. The digger was set to be on site at 8:30am, so I…
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Car Problem
As someone who loves to be on time, I found this laugh-out-loud funny 😂
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Shortcut to connect AirPods
I’m a big fan of Apple’s AirPods and they are normally connected to my phone to listen to a podcast. It’s always a bit tedious to connect to my MacBook Pro for team calls, until now. I found this great Alfred Workflow (at the bottom of the article) to quickly connect. It works great!
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Best 9
I never publicly posted my best nine photos on Instagram, so here they are. It appears that I held a baby a lot in 2017!
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Happy New Year!
In 2018, I’m going to try to document our lives better. In 2017, I posted daily from Jan 1 thru September, then fell off the wagon. Let’s see if I can make it a full year this time.
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Fake Apple Store
This is a fun skit that pretended an Apple Store was in the subway and folks were lining up to buy the iPhone X. Improve Anywhere
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Costume Practice Run
Our little guy is going to complement sissy’s costume of Rapunzel as Pascal, her friend the chameleon.
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Snow!
First day of snow in Ohio.
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New Siri Watch Face
I like the Siri watch face in WatchOS 4, as it normally shows my upcoming calendar appointments, but I don’t have anything, it shows a cute message like this: Even though it’s 1:15 PM
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Bad Idea
How To Bypass Chrome’s HSTS Warnings Simple article to point out how to get around Chrome’s error page when viewing an HTTPS site that doesn’t have a valid SSL security. Simply type badidea on the page, and the site will load.
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Firefox Focus
I’ve been giving the Firefox Focus browser app a try on my iPhone to have a more private experience while browsing the web. Hopefully, I’ll see less ads (which are always blocked) and the sites will load quicker.
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Family Pictures
We took fall family photos tonight, even though it was 80 degrees outside. Here’s one I snapped with my phone. I think the “real” ones are going to be 👍🏻
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Changing Up My Gravatar
I’ve had the same Gravatar online for the past 5+ years and figured it was time to have some new headshots taken. Here are the three that Jen took and I’ll be updating all my social profiles as I have time. Thanks Jen!
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Bombers Four Year Anniversary
My CrossFit gym, Bombers celebrated their fourth anniversary and it was roughly my second anniversary of participating in CrossFit. To celebrate we had four team workouts which had us doing wallballs, deadlifts, pushups, pullups, squats, rope climbs and partner carry. Each workout was tough, but a lot of fun to workout and compete with friends.
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Busy Doesn’t Mean Productive
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Upload Once, Blog Anywhere: Photos from Google
Another neat new feature from WordPress.com
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A Million Page Views a Month
If you are looking to improve your strategy on getting page views to your site, I’d recommend checking out this article about Tony Robbins’ site; it gets more than a million page views per month!
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This Kid Loves Balls
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Game about Squares
If you are looking for a mind game and want to waste some time, check out Game about Squares
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Tallmatticians
I do not feel tall next to all of my tall colleagues!
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Jumping into the Pool
Here is a slow motion video of someone splashing me in the pool on vacation.
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Small Plane, Big Plane
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Found the Lost Lake
After my two feats of fitness, I decided to do a simple walk around the Lost Lake while I caught up on a few podcasts. It was quite brisk, but the views were worth it!
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Big Hike
Today I went on a hike with some colleagues up Blackcomb Ascent. > The Blackcomb Ascent Trails are three interconnected uphill hiking trails that meander through beautiful old growth coastal rain forest terrain from Whistler’s valley bottom to the Rendezvous Lodge on Blackcomb Mountain. Upon completion, the trails will travel a total of 6.1km with a total…
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WWWP5K
Today I ran in the worldwide WordPress 5k with my colleagues. Finished in just under 23 minutes. Which I think is pretty good, considering the last 5k I ran was last year.
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Bargain Bike
We had a scavenger hunt today with some teammates and we found this cheap mountain bike.
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Calling Home
It’s fun to call home during a trip and I can see everyone!
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Team Day
The first day of the Grand Meetup is reserved for spending time with our team. Luminus wasn’t able to make it, but with the magic of Photoshop, he made the team photo 😂
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Travel Day
On my way to Automattic’s annual Grand Meetup.
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Wearing our babies
We made it home from our trip yesterday, but I didn’t include this picture of how we navigated thru the Atlanta airport. Way way way better than pushing a stroller thru the airport 🙂
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Matching Travel Buddies
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Long Day of Travel
We left the hotel at 5:15am and started our journey towards Atlanta. Melody was able to get our flight changed to be a day earlier, but we had to drive to the airport. The journey should take about 6.5 hours, but with all of the evacuees heading out at the same time, we got there…
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Getting Ready for Irma
We are on vacation in Daytona Beach and the hotel staff is preparing for hurricane Irma by playing sand bags everywhere. We will be leaving tomorrow before they evacuate the entire resort.
Got any book recommendations?