We had a delightful afternoon at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Tulips are blooming! 🌷
For fun I added my website to the IndieWeb Webring. 🕸💍
My Morning
- Woke up around 5:30a to the chirps of a CO detector telling me the 9V backup battery is low.
- Let Lucky out and then realize a neighbor with two dogs is walking down the alley triggering Lucky to start barking and running around like a crazy animal.
- Get keys to run an errand and accidentally activate car alarm while putting shows on.
😬
Hard Miles
We saw Hard Miles at Edina 4. Based on a true story, it tells the story of a counselor taking four young men in a correctional school on a long bicycle ride to find themselves. Their destination is the Grand Canyon (which kept reminding me of a similar theme in the movie Grand Canyon. I have a soft spot for movies that prominently feature cycling. Plus Matthew Modine who I first remember from Vision Quest was great in it. His character goes through his own emotional journey in the trip as well. Recommended!
Happy Birthday to Tammy! 🎉 I took the afternoon off for Tammy’s birthday. Mazie wasn’t able to be at home so we drove to St. Olaf and took a nice walk through the Natural Lands with her. We then returned home and got Tyler from school, opened present, had a nice dinner at Pajarito and then a movie at the Edina 4 Theatre! 🎂
Playoff basketball tonight with Timberwolves v Phoenix. Aggressive ball! 🏀 50-51 at the half.
Blog Gardening Reflection
Today was a particularly fun session of blog gardening:
- Realized that we walked the High Line in New York exactly 11 years apart and didn’t know it, first in 2012 and then in 2013.
- Shared 1-year anniversary of a milestone with SPS team.
- Reminded of the Cherry Blossoms in Kyiv.
- Linked all five High Line blog posts together.
- Fixed three photos that had been lost in past blog migrations.
- Used Internet Archive to fill in missing information from a conference I attended in 2016.
- Added a photo from Lightroom that had never been on my blog because it was hard to do that back then.
- Added over a dozen hyperlinks to various posts making them and the web better.
- Fixed a handful of typos.
Minnebar 18
Today was one of the biggest days of the year for the technology community of the Twin Cities — Minnebar 18! Once again Best Buy Headquarters was a gracious host sponsor and Minnestar welcome over 1,000 passionate technolgies to partake in at least 80 sessions led by members of the community. Tyler and I had a great time and attended many sessions.
- Let’s Invest: Building Strong Community and Empowering Our Future with Steve Buchanan
- Mastering LLM Optimization: RAG, Fine-Tuning, and Combined Strategies with Prashanth Pollishetty and Varun Kodathala
- Google Sheets + AI, the new Brainstorming, and Custom GPTs with Jeffrey Williams
- Retro-Computing Hobby with Girish Jorapurkar
- DevSecOps the Good, the Bad, the Ugly with Brian Dolan-Goecke
The main room as the day gets kicked off.
Minnebar 18 t-shirts ready! They look amazing!
Ran into Colin Hirdman who had this incredible display integrated with his shirt.
One of our sessions learning about LLM techniques.
Steve Buchanan introducing himself as he gets Session 0 (aka Minnebar Keynote) going.
Very, very long line for pizza.
Great to see Maria Boland Ploessl, Benjamin Ortega, me, Jeff Sellner, Tony Collen, and Adrienne Peirce.
The session we attended Retro Hardware.
SPS Commerce is a terabyte sponsor of Minnestar!
We didn’t get everyone, but several of #TeamSPS got together for a team photo at Minnebar 18!
👋 Awesome community members that I got to say Hi to at Minnebar (incomplete and unordered)…
Bridget Kromhout, Nate Anderson, Levi McCormick, Jeanette Dorazio, Justin Porter, Casey Helbling, Paul DeBettignies, John Roberts, Jenna Pederson, Colin Hirdman, Samantha Grumdahl, Matt Decuir, Gordon Raup, Maria Boland Ploessl, Adrienne Peirce, Jeff Sellner, Tony Collen, Benjamin Ortega, Corwin Diamond, Bode Falade, Mark Gritter, Nikki Riemersma, Jim Bernard, Pete Clark, Tor Flatebo, Tori Peraza, Melissa Buening, Jade Barker, David Duccini, Peter Edstrom, Graeme Thickins, Molly Doyle, Robert Weber, John Murphy, John Kelly, and Robert Speer.
See also Minnebar collection.
We just passed the Bitcoin halving and are now in Epoch V! What an incredible journey so far. I found Bitcoin interesting in 2014. I ultimately experimented with it but didn’t see the utility. I ignored it for years. Then played with it from time to time. I think it is likely that Bitcoin is the foundation of an entire crypto ecosystem that will grow in importance over decades.
See my blog posts mentioning bitcoin. Screenshot is from Timechain Calendar.
Crucially important House of Representatives vote coming up to provide critical aid to Ukraine! I just got off the phone with Representative Omar’s office expressing my support for these bills and asking for her vote in support. Thank you to Stand With Ukraine MN for the steps! 🇺🇦
2024 Minnesota Aspirations in Computing Award Ceremony
The annual Aspirations in Computing event highlights the accomplishments of incredible young women that are doing amazing things in technology. For the eighth year running SPS Commerce has sponsored this program and we’ve hosted dozens of Aspirations interns now, including some that have gone on to be college interns and even then team members! This was also the first year for Aspirations in Computing since finding a new home with the MnTech Foundation and holding the event at the Metropolitan Ballroom.
Many members of TeamSPS volunteer and are engaged with Aspirations in Computing, but special recognition for Amy Patton who has put so much into this great program! 👏
Thank you to all the sponsors of this great program!
The 2024 Aspirations in Computing honorees.
TeamSPS members with our four Aspirations interns for 2024.
How many people can you get in front of a small photo booth?
Aspirations is fundraising for eight scholarships for winners that need assistance with their next steps to college. If you can, add your support for these amazing young women!
See Aspirations Awards events from 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, or 2024.
I attempted my first yoga class with Peloton today and learned that my flexibility is not where it needs to be to do yoga. Need to stick with the stretching classes for now.
Added the new #TeamSPS Cyberweek 2023 challenge coin to my display case. What a collection!
Great to see The Little Mermaid Jr. at the Reif Center featuring my nephew Andrew as Grimsby.
Guinness at Rapids Brewing Company. 🍻
Nice afternoon walk in Golden Anniversary State Forest with my brother Isaiah and Tiffany.
Look up.
Tyler practicing hobo packing.
I’m two weeks into no coffee and this morning I thought I would try a mug of Pu’er Black Tea fully aware that it has caffeine but maybe not too much? I’m surprised by how noticeable the caffeine “surge” felt as I drank it with no caffeine in my system.
The open foundation of the Fediverse continues to pique my interest and outweigh my disregard for social applications. I created Mastodon profiles and setup syndication for @jamiethingelstad@mastodon.social as well as @weeklything@mastodon.social. I currently publish to BlueSky and Nostr as well.