• The Week #109

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    • We spent the night at the Odawara Resort & Spa with Yumi's sister and her kids. It was a lot of fun, though quite tiring. The main attraction is the collection of swimming pools, both indoor and outdoor. You're free to use them before the official checkin time as well.

      Traveling like this is lots of fun, as there's nice air conditioned activities for the kids built in. We swam in the pools for probably 5 hours, total. A few hours before dinner and again after dinner.
      The door on the right is actually full of water and leads to the outdoor pool
    • We got a new sofa that is long enough to lay down on and finally makes the living area feel complete. Now that we have two sofas, we've arranged them facing each other. The idea is that we'd rather chat or read than focus in the TV.
    • The green bean plant has a case of leaf miners that I've let get out of control. I let it get that far because I couldn't decide how to combat them. I'm not an organic gardener (or a proper gardener really), but I hated the idea of spraying some wonder chemical on food that I'm going to ingest. Turns out, neem oil might could do the trick. And as it's just a vegetable oil, I don't need to worry about eating something that, we find out, causes cancer or something as so many of the pesticides do.

  • πŸ”— After Going Solar, I Felt the Bliss of Sudden Abundance

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    My rooftop panels showed me that a world powered by renewables would be an overflowing horn of plenty, with fast, sporty cars and comfy homes.
    This is something I’m really looking forward to when my panels get installed. Whenever the chip shortage allows them to be made…
    1. Tagged with
    2. solar
    3. electrification
  • by
    in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
    Lovely sunrise this morning in Odawara. πŸŒ…

  • Checkin to Hilton Odawara Resort & Spa (γƒ’γƒ«γƒˆγƒ³ε°η”°εŽŸγƒͺγ‚ΎγƒΌγƒˆ&スパ)

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    in Odawara, Kanagawa, Japan
    Home for the night.

  • Checkin to Nebukawa Station (ζ ΉεΊœε·ι§…)

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    in Odawara, Kanagawa, Japan
    I should come to these parts more often. Not that far. Less than 1000 yen train fare too.

  • πŸ”— Manchin and Schumer announce deal for energy and health care bill

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    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin on Wednesday announced a deal on an energy and health care bill, representing a breakthrough after more than a year of negotiations that have collapsed time and again.
    ...
    While many details have not been disclosed, the measure would invest $369 billion into energy and climate change programs, with the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 40% by 2030, according to a one-page fact sheet.
    Great news! Exactly what I needed to hear this week.
    1. Tagged with
    2. electrification
    3. climate change
    4. energy
    5. politics

  • Remembering Kelly Wilson

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    I got a text from my brother, we lost our Uncle Kel. We knew it was coming, but it's always too soon. You're never ready. I was hoping that I'd be able to see him one more time. That he could meet our son. Life had other plans.

    I didn't see Kelly often when I was a child. But when we did, it was always a good time. One time we were standing around his house in California making guacamole and snacking on avocados. He taught me the trick of drizzling just a touch of creamy salad dressing on the avocado and eating it with a spoon. Eating an avocado directly with a spoon had never crossed my mind. I do this sometimes now, and I always think of him when I do.

    He was very mechanically inclined and took pride in his work. If something was supposed to move but didn't, be it a vehicle, a machine, or a factory, he could diagnose and fix whatever was wrong with it. When he fixed something, he'd fix it right, leaving it better thanΒ  it was before.

    One summer day in college, I joined Kelly out in the oil fields east of Houston. We left at 5:30am for the 90 minute drive out. We stopped by his usual convenience store for morning coffee. It was a good start to the day.

    The entire day, IΒ  just tagged along, after all I'm a suburban boy who's good with computers, not much help out in the oil fields. We're pouring sweat in the Texas heat when Kelly gave me one bit of advice that I still reflect-on. He said, "Stay in school, you don't want to be working out in this heat everyday. Finishing school will let you work in comfort".

    It was simple advice. I've long since finished school, but that one day with Uncle Kelly gave me a greater sense of empathy for people working outdoors. Almost every time I see someone really working hard outside, I think of him and his advice.

    Kelly was always curious. Before moving to Japan, he asked me to send him photos of Japan. Not postcard style photos, just things that you wouldn't normally see, things that let a person know "hey, you're in Japan".

    Being a good nephew, I obliged. I'd send him random photos of the mundane: a coin laundry machine sitting outside an apartment building, traffic signs giving you the real-time traffic delays, cigarette vending machines. For good measure I also sent photos of random wtf Japan too, like cars tricked out with LEDs all over them.

    As time wore on, I sent fewer photos of Japan and more photos of Leo, usually on big milestones (he's standing! he's riding a bike!) or on Father's Day.

    I'll miss these little back-and-forths. I'll miss seeing something Japan and thinking "Oh, Kelly needs to see this!" and snapping a photo for him. While I can't send him a photo any longer, I will continue looking for things he might enjoy and snapping photos of them.

    Thank you for everything Uncle Kel.

  • The Week #108

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    • My Uncle Kelly passed away. He was just 61 years old. He was a good man. He was very good mechanically and could build any machine you could dream of (or at least he could from my perspective). I'm simultaneously filled with sadness of his passing, worry for my mom (they were twins), and anger at the American health insurance "norms" that results in people enduring pain longer than they should, going to the doctor when they can't bear it any more, and ultimately find something too late. Rather than rant about things I cannot fix, I feel like I should write a proper post about him, so that's all I say for now. Uncle Kel, you will be missed.

      Disclaimer: The rest of this post was written before this bullet. It feels a bit flippant in the wake of things, but I'm leaving it as a record of the week before he passed.
    • My first week with Tanzawa Health has been a success. I've logged my weight and mental state each day. While I'm tempted to start building graphs so I can visualize the data I'm collecting, I'm also in no rush – just having that single reference point is enough to keep me on the right track.
    • I (finally) started working on adding support for photo posts. It's still a ways away, but I think I know what / how I want them to look. Photos will also the first feature where I introduce HTMX / Hyperscript into Tanzawa as I migrate away from Turbo/Stimulus.

      Why migrate away from Turbo/Stimulus? I'm not a fan of the webpack build process I need to use for it, which means I'm hesitant to fully embrace it and my app suffers because of it. HTMX / Hyperscript seem to have been embraced by the Django community as well (Turbo comes from the Rails community), so it also makes sense to use the preferred tool of the ecosystem. I'll outline my plans for photos in another blog post.
    • I did the 2022 Sotestu Stamp Rally with Leo. Stamp Rally's are a common summer activity in Japan. Basically you're given a booklet and at select stations there's a stamp station inside/outside the station. Once you complete the selected stations, if you're early enough in the season, you can collect a small prize.

      Completed Stamp Rally! 6 overlayed stamps to make this image.


      We visited all 10 stations and got the prize! I had thought about checking in to each station/location so I could make a trip and get a nice map, but decided against it and just focused on hanging out with Leo. I'm glad I did that.
    • Over a year ago Sophie knocked over a cup of coffee (being places we she shouldn't be!) and killed my wife's 2014 Macbook Air. I took it apart, cleaned it and tried to fix it, but it wasn't quite right, so about a year ago we bought a replacement. It's been sitting in my office collecting dust ever since, as I procrastinated clearing the hard drive and taking it to Apple to recycle.

      I charged it up and went to delete everything on it when I realized – it's working perfectly again. Sound is working. WiFi is working. Keyboard is fine. Trackpad is also fine. Half of it wasn't working a year ago. Maybe a year of the cold and heat let it fully dry and sort itself out?

      As we already got a replacement machine for it, I fiddled a bit with Fedora 36 on it (via a live-usb). Naturally as it's Fedora, it requires some faff to get WiFi working (which will probably require installing, as a reboot is required for new drivers, I think). But I was able to even get that far because I could share WiFi from my computer over bluetooth and it just worked! I'm amazed.

      I think Fedora might be my new OS once it starts to become a hassle to use my Mac because of outdated software. Big Sur is the last macOS my computer is compatible with, so I'm already not able to run the latest OS.

  • πŸ”— You should take more screenshots

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    If you do any sort of creative digital work, screenshots and screen recordings are a great way to remember it.
    That was part of the reason why I started writing archive pages for my projects a while back. I used to have screengrabs of my old Mac and Linux desktops floating about somewhere, too, for that extra nostalgia hit. They seem to have disappeared in the sands of time, however. Mostly Digital Blasphemy backgrounds with similar color themed xmms and friends running.
    1. Tagged with
    2. nostalgia
    3. blogging
    4. computing

  • Checkin to Starbucks

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    in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
    Coffee break. Loving the plant based options at Starbucks now.
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