Megan and Lee

This is just a nice photo of Megan and Lee at the Madera Pancake Breakfast last year.

Remember Steve from Blue’s Clues?

Remember Steve from Blue’s Clues? He remembers and he still appreciates our time spent together!
(via)

 

Wilmot’s Warehouse

I got to play Wilmot’s Warehouse with Megan, Abigail, and our neighbor’s, the Quinns! It was great fun spending time at their house, playing with their bunny, having fun in the backyard, working my vice: novel fizzy beverages, and playing board games! Yay!

In the game, we had to make up a story to memorize the positions of all 35 tiles. Sounds impossible but we TOTALLY did it!

 

 

 

Jimmy Kimmel Live back on the air

For my relatives in Nashville and my friends in Washington DC, where Jimmy Kimmel was preempted last night, here’s the 30 minute Youtube version of last night’s show. Viewed 15 million times as of right now, it’s an important watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1tjh_ZO_tY

(for historical perspective, Trump’s FCC called ABC and had him taken off the air. Public outcry (about fascism) brought him back)

MacOS Tahoe Slowdown and a Fix

Ugh, I installed the new “Tahoe” update to MacOS a few days ago and I instantly noticed that my computer, a Macbook Pro 16″ 2019 ith M2 Intel Silicon, was sluggish and the CPU fan was running more than previously. I especially noticed that scrolling started in Chrome had becoming insane-makingly jittery. I found some tips and THIS one seems to work!

(via)

To disable the problematic feature for all apps thus fixing the issue, run the following command in the Terminal:

defaults write -g NSAutoFillHeuristicControllerEnabled -bool false

And restart all apps/system. Note this also disables macOS’s native autofill feature.

That worked to fix my computer! It’s now back to being zippy-fast and not overheating for no reason.

If you need to remove this fix, run this command in Terminal:

defaults delete -g NSAutoFillHeuristicControllerEnabled

The same post also says this, though I don’t need to run it to fix my problem…

To fix the perf issues for Electron apps (and presumably Chrome/Chromium browsers?), also run:

launchctl setenv CHROME_HEADLESS 1

Note this need to be re-run every time you reboots. Thanks for u/PatrikCR for the heads up!

This tip didn’t help:

If I turn off automatic graphics switching in power it works smooth. Ig intel GPU cant handle macOS 26 :/

 

Ben and Jerry’s Boycott

 

In light of Jerry resigning from Ben and Jerry’s because Unilever isn’t holding up their end of the deal, I sent another letter to Unilever:

I wrote to you in March (see my public archive of the letter here) saying “If you abandon Ben and Jerry’s social mission, I will stop purchasing your product and strongly suggest to my friends the same.”

My family has avoided your products since March. Now that the co-founder Jerry Greenfield has left the company for the same reasons, I will actively pursue removing your products from our local shelves by reaching out to friends and local stores, and activism describing how distasteful your products are.

Do the right thing.

Dune!

This week I embarked on a new gaming adventure, we played Dune the board game!
It’s got a lot of twists and turns, no “Victory Points” (yay!), lots of treachery, a brutal fighting system, and it’s going to be a lot of fun after I figure out how the hell to play it!

Going to Burning Man! Pickles and Pop Rocks

I’m going to Burning Man with Megan and Abigail! Staying in Kidsville, ~5:05 between E and F, in Camp Cerrito, also known as “Pickles and Pop Rocks” We’ll be there something like Tuesday-Sunday. See you on the playa?

 

Wildcat 4H

We’ve been doing 4H for the last few years with our now 5th grader and very much enjoying it! Notably, the projects are engaging, run by committed volunteers; and the officer meetings are structured such that the kids run them, giving them ownership!

Come to the Ice Cream Info Session August 23rd from 2-4pm at the Arlington Park Clubhouse, or just sign-up at wildcat4h.org. Notably, it’s only $150 for the year for any and all projects your kid signs up for (except for some projects with material)

 

Amazing Grace

I originally learned to sing Amazing Grace when I was with Miriam and Rebecca a zillion years ago. Many books and histories have been written about it. The apocryphal background to the song is of the author who was on a ship that had slaves; the ship sank in a storm and as slaves and freemen alike were washing up on the shore, some living, some not, he had an epiphany about slavery and life.

When Abigail was born, it became a song I sang to her a lot. As a 10 year-old, when Abigail has had a particularly bad day, or a particularly good day, she asks me to sing it. Here are two live recordings.

June 18th, 2015. Abigail is 5 months old.

 

July 7th, 2017, Abigail is 2 1/2 years old.