Weather 📷 This is taken from my patio in Indio CA. The mountains in the background are usually tan not covered in snow. In fact we are looking directly at Joshua Tree National Park which closed due to bad weather. About an hour before I took this picture we could not even see the mountains.
Secure 📷
Another big day of home improvement DIY… New ceiling fan in the bedroom and new LED lights for the guest bathroom. 100% LED compliant now.
We were so tired of waiting for hot water to get to our shower. Running a recirculating line would be very expensive. But then we found this: Pressure Differential Recirc Pump. It took me a half hour to install and now we have instant hot water.
Some of the coolest clouds ever in the desert.
Landing in Palm Springs. we dodged a late winter storm due to hit Minnesota tomorrow. Great to see friends and family for a few days.
Very excited today, we just booked an Antarctic expedition cruise for December.
Got to see the Loons (MNUFC) in preseason action against the New York Red Bulls this afternoon here in the Coachella Valley.
Today the mens club event was very fun. The obstacles on the course were a great mid season reminder that I just play for fun.
The first hole there was a tractor parked right next to what we locally refer to as Gilligan’s Island. The tractor was right where I like to hit it, so of course I started out with a bang!
Number 11 we had to tee off in the trees and shoot over another tree to get on the green.
Number 15 the tractor was parked in front of the green. Its hard enough to chip onto that hole without the obstacle.
On the first hole we had to putt with a hockey stick! Happy Gilmore!!It was hilarious nobody knew how hard to hit it with a stick.
Some of the other holes had hose or rakes or other obstructions laid out in front of the green. Not to mention that the pin placements were diabolical! Right on the edge of the green by the water, right on top of a hill. A couple of the tee boxes were moved into the waste bunker areas near the tees.
My partner and I ended up tied for 2nd, so we even won a couple of bucks in pro shop cash.
Making ribs for our friends tonight. Two more hours until they are done. But what else are you going to do on a Sunday night in an over 55 community of active adults? 🤷🏼♂️
Today’s NYT Sunday crossword theme was so fun. Favorite clue: “You there, holding the Quattro razor! Scram!” - Schick hog go! And thats only one layer of the fun.
I think ChatGPT is my new goto search engine… Me: “explain the difference between propane and natural gas” ChatGPT: - A very good answer Me: “explain …. as though I am a highly educated person” ChatGPT: a more nuanced and better and better answer than before
I do try to have empathy for all of you all southerners, but as a northerner, a little freezing weather is just life. I came back to Minnesota (from southern CA) for Christmas and a hottub pump gasket had a leak… almost no water in the hot tub and what was there was frozen solid
Also, the mountains were just stunningly beautiful with new snow added overnight. Nothing beats playing golf in shorts and seeing snow on the mountains just miles away.
I think this is as close as I’ve ever come to a hole in one! The ball is on the opposite side of the cup from where I teed off so I don’t know how it did not go in the hole!!
And yes, I made the putt for a two.
I just realized how inconsistent I am… During the board of regents meeting I strongly advocated for faculty. But with my developer hat on, I have a different reaction when they ask for some feature to save them time because they are too busy to do it the way I designed it. Maybe an area of personal growth.
Lets say you are a teacher, and you know that when you are teaching there are 1000 other classes across the world learning the same material. How could you capitalize on that? Would you want your students to interact? If so, what would that look like to you and your students?
Finally got to play with a Christmas gift today. My new Ruixin knife sharper, it definitely takes practice, so I haven’t tried it on my best knives yet. But it really helped a couple of the cheap badly dull knives I started with.
All of this rain has left our San Jancinto mountains with more snow than usual, and a beautiful backdrop for today’s round of golf.
What to do when your open source community lets someone down? Promises were made, now classes are starting tomorrow and the recipient of those promises is left hanging and you get radio silence from the people you need to live up to their end of the bargain.
I finally got time to post a retrospective of 2022 for Runestone Academy. Give it a read and feel free to comment or discuss here.
Shoutout to Susan Rodger and all of her students at Duke University! The stream of Paypal donations to Runestone Academy over the past few days puts a spring in my step and a smile on my face!
Bowling for the first time in well over a decade. I’ve never bowled at a place where the score is kept automatically for you.
A fun night out with friends from Heritage Palms.
apropos of nothing I think it is funny that all modern apps and editors have the command palette that is nothing more than a nice gui wrapper around the emacs command apropos-command which has been with us for decades!