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Monthly Archives: July 2024

Halfway to the goal

July 5, 2024
photos, sports

As I’ve mentioned, I’m moving into the old-guy sports of golf and tennis. I harbor aspirations of getting back to the gym, but it will likely be in a maintenance rather than competitive vein. Tennis is good for me because it’s a decent runaround in a tight 90-120 minutes. Golf is much more of an investment, in $$ and in time. Because they’re both sports you can play when you’re old, though, I’m cool with the spend.

I played for the third time this year and, I have to say, it was a lot of fun and I was better than I expected. I still scored for shit, but I was hitting the ball well. If I had gotten there early enough to get some time on the putting green I could have save myself a bunch of strokes. A bunch, in this scenario, is 4-5. It was an after-work round on a hot afternoon and my watch suggests it was definitely exercise.

If I can get 6 rounds in this year I’ll seriously consider upgrading my irons, which were 12 years old when I bought them 21 years ago. My golf friends tell me that the technology in modern clubs makes the game so much more accommodating for the enthusiast (“bad”) player that I’m cheating myself by not making the move. It’s just too expensive right now for something I might do 6 times this year. I’ll surely be shopping used, in the hope that mid-2010’s golf tech was good enough to keep me in the fairway in 2025.

Also, the golf club parking lot has some treasures.

21!

July 4, 2024
computers, fun

Twenty one years ago I got a wild hair and spent a steamy holiday Friday afternoon installing Movable Type.

I can’t tell you how long it took me to find and resize that image of a glass of milk.

It was revelatory, following some printed instructions to install some code on a server which would enable me to be just like Kottke. I read more than a handful of blogs back then, but he was the inspiration. The archetype of what blogs were.

I harbored hopes that I might get some traction as a poor-man’s kottke (or a “we have kottke at home” in modern parlance), but that didn’t pan out. I lacked the drive to post with the necessary consistancy (obvs.).

That said, I am glad to have had this blog as a place to occasionally burp a thought or photo into the world.

Summer Adventures 2

July 3, 2024
fun, photos

A crucial discovery of my mid-life has been the concept of “friend with a boat”. I’m definitely a “land” guy, but I can see the appeal of having a boat to go out and do water stuff. I certainly don’t have the resources (or temperament) to have a boat and all that boat-owning entails, but we have friends who do, and it’s a credit to them as people that they’re willing to invite us out on the water in the summer.

Sometimes you see pelicans.

Sometimes you see a forklift putting a boat away in the barn.

Other times, you spend 4 hours casting lines trying to catch bluefish, but the only thing you hook is a floatation cushion that blew off of some boat.

It’s always cool to grab a Maps screengrab so see where you were, though.

Also, boat dogs!

David Nance and Mowed Sound

July 1, 2024
Music

Every so often I hear a record that is so good and so confident in the choices that I’m compelled to replay it over and over. David Nance & Mowed Sound has been in the heaviest of Heavy Rotations for me lately. Like Steve Gunn with his Allman Brothers sliders goosed a little bit. There is so much cool guitar on this record!