Category: Blog

  • Happy New Year!

    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.

  • 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

  • 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!

  • Game about Squares

    If you are looking for a mind game and want to waste some time, check out Game about Squares

  • Weirdest Thing

    The weirdest thing I did today was sell at blender on Craigslist at my daughter’s swimming lessons. I even had to plug it in in front of other parents to demo that it worked 😂

  • Upcoming Eclipse

    I barely use social media, but I’m hearing all kinds of things about this upcoming eclipse on Monday. Overheard someone at church say that their school is taking a calamity day on Monday due to the eclipse Our babysitter mentioned using a cereal box to make the viewing lens Someone in Dayton bought all of…

  • Lucky Stop at the Pump

  • July 2017 Recap

    July 2017 Recap

    Each month I have a reminder to write down a summary of what happened during the month, and each month, I snooze it until next month. But not today 🙂 Lots went on in July. Here’s some of the highlights. First full* month back to work after paternity leave. *I didn’t actually work the full…

  • Misheard Song Lyrics

  • Take a look at the new social icons.

  • The People of the Internet are Funny

    It can be summed up with this simple request

  • Chat with a Spanish Bot

    Duolingo now has a feature to chat with a bot. I think it’s more fun than just answering quiz questions. Plus it’s more real to have to answer in a dialogue fashion.  Maybe it will help me become fluent in Spanish 😜

  • Washing Jeans?

    I was reading an old version of Men’s Fitness tonight, and I read this article “Ask Men’s Fitness: How Often Should I Wash My Jeans?” and the recommendation was at least three times per year? Really? Seems like they should be washed more than that 🙂

  • Lots of Heat

    Looks like summer will be hitting us in full force over the next week. 

  • Broken RCA Jack

    Unloading the car the other day, I broke off an RCA cable for the auxiliary input. After a bit of searching Google, I found the method to fix it and it worked like a charm. I love the internet 🙂

  • Much Cooler

    One of the air conditioning lines in our MDX had a leak so we’ve been without A/C for the last few weeks.  It definitely pays to have a dad with a lot of tools. The new parts from a dealer would have been close to $200 plus labor and I got the parts online for…

  • Is This Poison Ivy?

    Several times last year and now once this year, I’ve gotten poison ivy. I’m highly allergic, so it’s not a good situation. The weird thing is, I haven’t been able to figure out where I got it. We don’t live near a woods, nor have I been in a woods, yet, I have the ichy…

  • And that’s why they play

    The Cleveland Cavaliers looked impressive in the last two games of the Eastern Conference finals.  Tonight, the blew a 20+ point lead.  🤔

  • Quit Tricking Me Kroger

  • April 2017 Recap

    April 2017 Recap

    I’m quite certain that was April was the fastest month in history, well it seemed like it to us anyways. Here’s what happened this month: I ran the shuttle service on Mon / Wed / Fri for our daughter to go to preschool and Thu afternoons for swim lessons (got to get ready for swim…

  • I Used to Be Cool

    Saw this on a Honda Odyssey today on the way to church. Melody and I laughed way harder than we should have 😜

  • No Wonder It’s So Expensive 

    I switched to Time Warner Cable’s Spectrum Internet last month, yet every week I get a letter in the mail with a “special offer” I cannot use because I’m already a customer.  If they’d stop advertising to their own customers, I bet the could charge less for their service. 

  • Oh Millennials

  • March Madness Begins

    The title is twofold. Yes, the NCAA March Madness tournament starts today. And the remaining parts of March could be quite crazy with the birth of our son. As the tournament starts, it reminds me when I was in college a handful of friends drove down from Ohio Northern to watch the opening round game. It…

  • Lotsa Miles

  • 100 Days of Code

    100 Days of Code

    In 2017, one of my goals is to become a better developer. I spend a lot of time troubleshooting with customers for my day job at Automattic, but I don’t have the skills to fix any code. While I’ve called myself a developer in the past, I’m more of a tinkerer type of developer. I can take…

  • Now on Dustin.blog

    Now on Dustin.blog

    The new home of my blog is Dustin.blog. I plan on using this to post updates from me, rather than on Facebook and Twitter. I wiped my phone clean back in November and the only social account I added back was Instagram. And with my busy life taking care of a two year old and…

  • iPhone Battery Issues

    I’ve been having some major battery issues with my iPhone 6s. Today, with only a few minutes of use, I was down to 12% charge by noon. I finally made time on my schedule to do what the Apple Genius suggested; factory reset my phone. After loading my “critical” apps, like DuoLingo and Elevate, which…

  • 100 Pushup Challenge

    100 Pushup Challenge

    Last week at CrossFit, we had a workout that had four different moves and each move had 100 reps. The moves were box jumps, pushups, situps, and lunges. For me, the pushups were the by far the hardest. Since this a move that I can work on at home, I found the 100 Pushup Challenge.…

  • Upcoming Travel

    Upcoming Travel

    Over the next few days, we are heading back to the US after being abroad for more than six weeks. We’ve been in Valencia for the majority of the time and we’ve taken a few excursions which Melody has eloquently documented on our family travel blog. Today, I’m in Austria, set to fly home after…

  • My Morning View

    My Morning View

    We’ve been in Spain more than three weeks now and while a lot of our daily lives are the same (Melody and I are still working during the day), but my morning view is much nicer. In order to fit all of my work in, I’ve been getting up around 5am each day and get…

  • A new normal

  • Inbox0 – Finally

    In 2015, I set a goal of clearing out my personal inbox every day. I was able to keep this going for more than 4 months, until travel season started and I couldn’t find the energy or time to fully clear out my inbox from May on. I had the goal of repeating the same…

  • Grilling in Shorts, in December, in Ohio

    It’s been unseasonably warm here in Ohio with today being in the 60s 

  • Jump Rope Battle Wound

    In today’s CrossFit workout one of the moves was double unders, which is jumping rope while swinging the rope around twice. Not sure how I managed to hit my forearm with a miss; pretty sure I’ll never do that again!

  • Best Christmas Album

    I like listening to Christmas music (in December only). This by far is my favorite Christmas album.

  • Plain Christmas Bulbs

    My wife sent me out last night to get a half dozen shatter proof plain Christmas bulbs. Apparently 2015 is the year of the sparkly ornaments because I had to go to five stores before finding enough. But even the pack I bought had 50% of the covered in glitter, ugh!

  • Just about right

    Just about right

    Our 21 month old daughter was able to pick out all the letters in her name. She hasn’t quite mastered placing them in the right order yet.

  • Learning Git

    Today I spent time going thru the Git Course on Codecademy. Git is a way to version control your code as well as giving you the ability to easily share your code with your team. I’ve been using Git as a version control system for my own personal projects, but never with a team. In…

  • Co-working and Holiday Party

    Co-working and Holiday Party

    Today a few of my coworkers got together to work and hang out in person. We worked together at the Greene in Dayton and enjoyed dinner together. I love that since we don’t see each other regularly that Automattic paid for our dinner tonight and encouraged us to see our local coworkers.

  • Reading in a basket

    Some days were meant for reading in a clothes basket.    

  • We’ve got mail

    It’s much more efficient to get mail delivered by the week 🙂

  • Cincinnati Zoo Lights

    For my father-in-law’s birthday, we gave him a coupon to see the zoo lights with his granddaugther (and her parents too 🙂 ). We went this evening because it was almost 70 degrees today. By getting there at 4pm, we were able to beat the traffic and see some of the animals. Kenley was a…

  • Warm day in Ohio

    Warm day in Ohio

    I took advantage of the 70 degree weather and cleaned out our car in preparation for our upcoming holiday travel.

  • Lots of tea

    I’ve been drinking a lot of pretend tea with this little girl, thanks to a new table at Grandma’s house 🙂

  • Tracking Activity with FitBit

    A few weeks ago, we found that our company, Automattic, was going to purchase all of us FitBits to track our physical activity.  I opted for the FitBit One because I didn’t need another thing on my wrist, since I already wear my Apple Watch.  This tiny device fits in my pocket and will track…

  • Café de Monde

    Apparently when you come to New Orleans you have to get beignets from Café de Monde.   

  • Eating at Mother’s

    You have to have Jumbalaya when in New Orleans, so I enjoyed Jerry’s Jumbalaya for lunch today. And you know what they say, the longer the line, the better the food. And the line was long and the food was really good 🙂  

  • Going to Grandma’s

    With a toddler, the car is full when we go to Grandma and Grandpa’s

  • The Signal is Down

    The Signal is Down

    This morning, I worked from a coffee shop in Yellow Springs before my chiropractor appointment called Dino’s. Dino’s Cappuccinos is a small local coffee shop and this is the first time I worked from here. Side benefit: they accept payments via the Apple Watch 🙂 I walked up to the counter to ask for the wifi password…