Events

First big event of the month was family weekend at the University of Akron. Grace took us around the university before heading to the Summit Mall and eating at The Rail.

On the 11th I went to a company event at Bolton field. Last year I went up in the bomber, this year I admired it from the ground.

It was time to give blood this month. Since I’m O- I do the Power Red donation. Instead of getting 1 pint of blood from me, they get two pints. To do this, they take out a pint and separate the red blood cells from the plasma and platelets. The plasma & platelets are then pumped back in and the process repeats one more time. It knocks me down a peg for the day, but it’s not that bad.

The KHS Class of ’88 asked me to DJ their reunion, so I started the day with a tour for the alumni of the high school and middle school. Both buildings will cease to exist by the time the class holds their next reunion due to the new MSHS being built.

On October 17th I turned 20,000 days old! Here’s to another 20,000!

I did get to present to Mrs. Clark’s class about running 15 marathons. They were studying ancient Greece and the history of marathons. This is the first time I used Canva’s Magic Create too. I told it that I’m presenting to 2nd graders about running marathons, and it spit out a decent headline over 7 slides.

They broke ground on the new Scooter’s coffee location!

Rochelle performed stand up at the Crescent lounge at the end of the month. The set was really good!

Mom had her three month checkup at a new Ohio State hospital facility. Everything looks good for her, and the view was spectacular.

Tragedy struck when were moving Mom and Dad at the end of the month. I would like to find someone to blame, but this was all on me. I lifted the back of the oven to check the power cord without thinking. The door opened and came crashing down. Literally, crashing.

Geek stuff

Started the month getting re-acquainted with an old friend.

I learned that you can add phonetic spellings to contacts on the iPhone, so now I can use Siri to call En Lai without her getting confused!

For the house I installed a new Amazon Alexa smart thermostat. It was an interesting challenge getting it interface with the ancient furnace we have, but YouTube came to the rescue. And, I also know more about furnaces than I need to. We tried to use the smart scheduling feature, but that lasted about a month until I set a fixed schedule. Maybe we’ll try it again in the future.

MySQL would randomly fall over on my WordPress site, and I got tired of manually restarting it so I searched and found a solution. Add a cron job to run every five minutes with the following command fixed the issue: /usr/sbin/service mysql status > /dev/null || /usr/sbin/service mysql start

I attended a Cybersecurity conference in Columbus near the end of the month. When it comes to cybersecurity, it gets depressing. The biggest issue is people, and they are also a very difficult problem to solve.

My journal takes is a text file which allows me to easily add to it with different programs. To make it easier to add entries from my phone I created a Telegram bot. I message the bot and it adds the message to the journal. This month I stepped it up a notch and added the ability to share a pic to the bot which is then added to the journal. Now I can make entries such as this:

2023/10/31 20:58 – Me and my pop from Casey’s!

ChatGPT really helped with writing the code, it allowed me to add the feature in a third of the time it would have taken me.

My Scion XB is now 18 1/2 years old. My main keyfob’s keyring holder wore out years ago, and now the second one wore out. I was planning on figuring out how to 3-D print new holders and I had the idea of checking the internet. Lo and behold, a company sells the plastic shells, two for $8! So now I’m good for another 15-20 years.

Photos

Sunrise over Kenton High School

Movies

• Mean Girls: “On October 3rd, he asked me what day it was.”
• Totally Killer: A time traveling horror movie to the 80s? Sign me up. Very enjoyable, I would have loved to see it on the big screen.
• The Creator: Wondering where we’re going with AI? The Creator is a look at one possible future. I liked it, but it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. It is now streaming on Hulu.
• Blue Giant: Anime about a kid wanting to be a Jazz musician, and it was excellent.
• Eurotrip: OMG, this is one of my comfort movies. Scotty Doesn’t Know is such a banger.
• Back to the Future: October 25th is Back to the Future Day, so of course Tara and I had to go see it. The movie was one of our first dates too.

TV

• Ahsoka (1) – Great ending to the show, can’t wait to see what happens next!
• Loki (2) – Seems like a lot of wasted time, like this could be a 2 hour movie instead.
• Parks and Recreation (4)
• Rules of Engagement (5)
• Ted Lasso (1) – Finally getting around to this, and we’re liking what we’re seeing so far.
• The IT Crowd (3)
• The King of Queens (8)
• The Neighborhood (1)
• The Office (1)
• The Office Superfan (4)
• Three’s Company (1)
• Trek Strange New Worlds (1) – Still on Season 1, but I really like it.
• Wings (17)

Health

• Average Steps/day: 14,446
• Most steps in a day: 22,849
• Min steps in a day: 12,107
• Resting Heart Rate: 54
• Average Time Asleep: 6 hours 49 minutes
• Miles walked: 147.9
• Miles ran: 47.5

Potpourri

Words of wisdom:

You should also prioritize people who are “kind” over people who are “nice,” Lubetzky says. “Nice doesn’t require much. You can be passive and be nice. But kind requires the strength of being earnest,” he explains. “There are some cases where people are absolute jerks, but there are far more cases where people are too meek and too afraid to share feedback and they cause far more damage because of how common it is.” – Daniel Lubetzky