Author: cosmo

Every Sunday, I have a repeating item on my to-do list to write an email to Kyra on her mission:

Today I closed the item as “complete”. It was the last email I’ll write to her while she’s serving in California. Laralee and I are both excited to see her again when she flies back to Denver on Wednesday. Eighteen months sure flew past. I’m so proud of her for choosing to serve a mission.

For a while now, I’ve been increasingly concerned with how much information Google has about me (yeah, I know many people feel this way). The problem, of course, is that they make it so easy to use their services, and when you get an Android device, you’re pretty much locked into their ecosystem. There was a time I thought maybe being locked into the Android/Google world was better than iOS/Apple, but I no longer think that. So I’ve been thinking about how to migrate away from them, without losing the convenience many of their products provide.

Last week, I was surprised and dismayed when Google announced they were changing how their Tasks system worked. It essentially killed the interface I’d been using for years to manage my daily to-do list. Since I’m a guy who absolutely depends on my to-do list, it was crushing. Their new Tasks UI is clunky and terrible, and I immediately hated it.

Luckily I’m a web developer!

So I sat down and started building my own to-do list platform. Because I was building it from scratch, I could make the user interface exactly how I envisioned a “good” task system would behave. Over the next few days, I spent a few hours here and there poking at it. I connected it to Google’s API so I could still manage my to-do list through them (since I have a phone app for it, and don’t know app development). Things were good, but today I decided even that’s not a good solution. I’m still providing Google with a list of everything I do, and although I don’t think there’s some poor employee who reads the to-do lists of millions of users, I also think there’s no reason Google should have that information about me.

I started poking around NextCloud, which is a fantastic platform I’ve been using for years for file-sharing, and found that the calendar and task tools are first-class. They have all the functionality I need to manage my schedule and tasks, and I found some apps that integrate directly with them. Best of all, the data is completely under my control (running on a server I own) so it’s all private to me.

Now I’ve successfully switched everything over to NextCloud, imported my data, and deleted all of it in Google. Laralee saw what I was doing and asked if I could set it up for her as well, so I did. Now we’re both de-Google-ified, at least in these two areas. Woot!

Dominion remains my favorite board (card) game, and I’ve been a faithful collector of all the sets since it first came out many years ago. For Christmas, Mom and Dad gave me a set of wooden dividers, and I promptly bought an “Artist Supply Case” from Hobby Lobby– the dividers were specifically designed for that box, and provide a way to insert six rows of European-sized gaming cards.

After spending a weekend sanding, staining, and varnishing the box, it was time to load up the cards. They all fit– barely– but I needed a better way to organize them so I’d see what was what. With almost 400 unique cards (10+ of each type), there are over 4,000 cards that have to be sorted. So I found a list of all the cards online, downloaded an icon set, matched the font on the game cards, designed and printed everything on colored paper, glued them to a bunch of bridge-sized playing cards, and inserted them into the stacks of cards so everything is organized.

The result is awesome. Everything is color-coded by set, alphabetized, and squeezed in perfectly. The box is exactly big enough to hold all of the expansion sets. Laralee says that’s great because it means I won’t order any more expansions in the future. She also saw what I was doing and commented that she couldn’t believe I’d spend so much time on something so trivial, but that only proved she’s a Philistine when it comes to board games.

So now I’m all ready to crush Kyra again, when she returns from her mission in a couple of weeks. Yay Dominion!

Today in seminary I gave the class a “pop quiz”, which I do fairly often as a good way to start discussion and get everyone talking at 6am. Because we were discussing the Word of Wisdom and being healthy, I made a little trophy for whoever did the best on the quiz. I called it the Golden Broccoli Award, and it was breathtaking.

Yes, I actually spray-painted a sprig of broccoli, then painted a base, and mounted it. Awesome.

Of course Laralee thinks I’m the biggest dork she’s ever married.

I opened the fridge and seriously thought we had a bag of birdseed in there.

Apparently I’m uncouth and uncultured, because I didn’t recognize that it’s quinoa. I told La she can call it whatever fancy name she wants, but it still looks like birdseed.

La and I went out for lunch at the new(ish) First Watch restaurant in town. I liked their napkin holders:

Ooh, the stock market is so much fun. I’m not sure I’m timing my retirement very well…

Hey, if you’re going to play the lottery, you should celebrate even the smallest victory.

I just got an email from some random guy who said:

I am Attorney representing the late Eng. Michael A. Schroeder, who died during the 2004 tsunami while on vacation with his family in Thailand. He seems to be related to you hence I have contacted you to discuss this matter with you.

I don’t know what “Eng.” means– maybe Michael was an engineer? Or perhaps he was English. Or a really engaging conversationalist. Or an enigmatic sort of guy.

In any case, I suspect that when I respond I’ll learn that Michael had a lot of money, and the Attorney (capital “A”) representing him is going to offer to split it with me in a clever and very professional-sounding scheme. Personally, if the Attorney representing my estate waits fifteen years before contacting my heirs, I’m going to come down from heaven and give him a stern talking-to.

Julian visited us again this weekend, so we decided to get some lunch at a new sandwich shop in town and then go bowling. Yes, bowling. I figure it’s one of the dumbest games ever invented, but with the right group of people it can be a lot of fun. It turns out we had the right group of people.

Zaque’s strategy was to use a lightweight ball and put just enough juice on it to get it to the pins.

As it turns out, that was often not enough momentum to actually knock down enough pins, even though his targeting was pretty good. So he’d often end up with splits or a couple of stalwart pins in the middle.

I, on the other hand, believed in using a heavyweight ball (15 pounds, oof!) and hurling it down the alley with all the force I could muster. My aim was terrible, but sheer inertia did a lot of damage.

Julian definitely had the best form, and managed to start off with a couple of strikes in the first frames.

Laralee looked good too, although apparently I caught her after a particularly bad bowl:

In the end, we all had a good time playing a dumb game.