Well, this is long overdue. Here’s what’s happening in general –
Personal
We had our first grandchild! A little boy named Sutton. He’s four months old now, and doing well. Our son and daughter-in-law (and now grandson) have to be in Tennesse for 18 more months until she finishes her medical residency.
The girls are doing well: Gabrielle is a nurse at the local NICU, and Isabella is finishing up her third year of nursing school.
Professional
I have switched jobs…again. I spent six months at Valtech, and it just didn’t work well. Not a great fit, and my departure was very amicable (I wrote a bit about the reasons on my resume page.)
I have been at Staffbase for six weeks, and I love it. It’s a long-overdue move away from digital marketing and into intranets and internal communications. When I was in services, intranet projects were always my favorite. Professionally speaking, I feel like I’m finally home.
Writing
I have finally completed my goal of looking up and writing about 1,000 things I did not know. I’ll write more about this later, when I have a chance to clean it up, but I just wrote the 1,000th entry this morning, so this is fresh.
I have created a new site: The Ineffable Concept of Thought Leadership. It’s collected writings on the topic, which I’m working through at my new job.
Over the last year, I’ve been writing on LinkedIn quite a bit more. I’ve started to archive my posts here.
And while this isn’t my writing, it does relate – I have started using AI to summarize posts and pages for their index pages. You can see an example at the link to my LinkedIn posts above. I used Azure at first, but the summaries were too large. This last round was using OpenAI, and it’s… okay. Every once in a while, it just has a total miss on something, but it’s 95% good.
Watching
I finally saw Hamilton live, on Broadway. I had seen the Disney+ version and listened to the soundtrack non-stop, but I had never seen the stage version. Staffbase took a group of us as a company event. It was stunning. I cannot recommend it more highly. We were way up in the balcony, and I was initially bummed about that, but it just did not matter – within two minutes, you’re absolutely locked in on the stage.
Archer (13 seasons of it, anyway; there’s one more, but it’s not streaming yet). Great show. Incredibly profane and vulgar, but whip-smart, and the “coma/dream” seasons are visually amazing.
What We Do In the Shadows. I watched this mainly because I love Matt Berry. Very funny show.
Wednesday. Entertaining. I enjoyed it. Dark Harry Potter vibes.
High Potential. Caitlyn Olson is really good here, but the show is very lightweight. One of those, “everything will resolve with an hour” kind of shows. But Olson reminds me of Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side – you just love it when she’s on the screen because you don’t know what she’s going to say next.
Zero Day. Absolutely fantastic limited series. DeNiro’s first work on TV. I binged it on a series of plane flights, then immediate dropped my suitcase and finished it when I got home.
The Lord of the Rings movies. No, I had not watched these in all my years on this planet. My wife went out of town to visit our grandson, so I watched one-a-day for three days. They were…okay. The battle scenes were amazing, but I thought they were a bit overwrought. When Sauron is defeated and the major conflict is over in the last film, there’s still 40 minutes to go. Goodness.
I loved this SNL sketch about getting men to talk to their doctors by pretending the appointment is a podcast.
Reading
I read a lot, but these titles were notable –
Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live: Really interesting history of the first 10 years of SNL. It’s led me to this YouTube channel called the Saturday Night Network, which produces short documentaries covering every season. I’ve learn so much about the show’s history.
Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century: A very sad, sobering look at how hard it is to survive in the book publishing industry. I eliminated any lingering desire I ever had to go into publishing.
Firewood Happens: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Minnesota’s Northwoods: A collection of essays about life in a small cabin in the north woods of Minnesota. I picked this up in Detroit Lakes when Annie stayed at The Whistlestop BnB up there, which is a bed-and-breakfast created from old Pullman train cars.
Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly: A great book about how reaching our goals is never simple or direct. We…meander, and this is okay. There is joy and discovery in the journey. Reminded me somewhat of Four Thousand Weeks, which was incredibly meaningful for me.
Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste: An interesting first-hand look at the world of fine wine and the strange people who exist there.
From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life: A lovely look at how our strengths change as wel get old. We move from creativity to wisdom, and how our careers and passions need to change along with that in order for us to reach our full potential in the last third of life.
Inconspicuous Consumption is a newsletter about noticing and investigating the weird details of life. It’s always interesting.
Finally, I have bought a paid subscription to Ground News, which is a news source that evaluates bias in other sources. The subscription is worth it, if only to support the work they’re doing.
Listening
This guy playing the New Orleans Saints theme on violin at a wedding in (I presume) New Orleans, is just amazing. Beyond the music, which is fantastic, everyone in the wedding party looks so good, and there’s just such an incredible sense of… joy there with people dancing their way through the frame. (I love the old guys. One of them in particular has great knees…) I watch this video over and over. I wish I could have been there. (The violinist has a channel that’s worth subscribing to.)
I don’t know how I was reminded of it, but Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons is pretty good.
I got briefly obsessed with Raye. She’s a jazz(-ish) singer from the UK. She’s amazing. She just sang at the 2025 Grammys, and I’ll link to that, though everything she does is amazing.
I spent some time listening to Steely Dan for no apparent reason. It’s like weird yacht rock. Turns out there’s no guy named Dan.
I continue to love Girltalk, especially his All Day album, and this live concert from New York.
Flo and Joan are British musical comedians. They’re hilarious.
I have always loved The Revelation Song. Makes me cry sometimes.
Random Advice/Notes
My new job requires a Mac, so I’m using one for the first time in my life. It’s okay. Not as transformational as people say, but it’s not awful. It’s like Windows with different key combinations. The hardware quality is admittedly amazing, though, and battery life is insanely good (which is probably why it’s so heavy).
I bought a 150W charging block for my devices. Absolutely recommended. It charges things wildly fast – even just five minutes will give my phone an extra 20-30% (when plugged into it, my phone reports that “Super Fast Charging” is happening, which is a label I had never seen before). Really handy for between plane flights. Combine it with the longest charging cable you can buy, and it will change how you relate to your devices.
At 53-years-old, I’m weirdly the strongest I have ever been in my life. I deadlifted 455 pounds the other day, squatted 365 pounds (full squat, below parallel), and can bench press 275 pounds for 10 reps. My SBD (squat-bench-deadlift; the three movements of powerlifting) currently stands at 1,155.
I’ve started to pay for a couple AI services. I pay $20 for OpenAI, and $10 a month for GitHub Copilot. The former is good for research; the latter for code.
Speaking of paying for things – you won’t regret $12/month for YouTube Premium. I haven’t seen a YouTube ad in years.
I renewed my life insurance, and learned how much rates skyrocket in middle age. Apparently me dying is no longer just a remote possibility – they might actually have to pay out now. Also, at my age, locking in for a longer term costs more per month. You’re used to getting a discount on something when you agree to a longer term, but getting a 15-year plan over a 10-year plan cost about 40% more every month, because those extra five years are a very risky window for the insurance company. It’s sobering to contemplate.
Turns out that lots of people look like me.
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