2020
- Consistent in frequency
- Consistent in format
- Endlessly repeatable with new content.
Nice spin session on Peloton this morning, 30-min Rock & Roll class with Emma Lovewell! Geeky fun looking at the mPaceline graphs. #FitByFifty
All data that I have read points to this pandemic lasting for a long time.
“The World Health Organisation warned that it might take five years to bring covid-19 under control and that the virus may never be fully eliminated. It could become endemic, albeit manageable, in the way that, eg, HIV is. Meanwhile an eagerly awaited study suggested that only 5% of 2m people tested in Spain have been infected; nowhere near herd immunity.” — Economist Espresso for May 14th, 2020
Great Season 40 of Survivor “Winners at War”. I wanted Natalie to win though. Tony played a strong game, but Natalie did something nearly impossible!
“The average number of passengers on a commercial flight within the U.S. right now: just 23. Every day, the airline industry is losing almost $400 million.” — NY Times Monday Briefing
Just upgraded one of my Pi-Hole servers to v5.0! All went completely smooth. The new group filtering is interesting. I may put all my Apple TV’s in a group and restrict the DNS dramatically for example. Maybe block all for some Smart Home stuff and only whitelist what it needs.
Lake & Irving is one of our favorite restaurants and they re-opened last week with a limited takeout menu. They have a great setup for getting it to your car and is completely contactless. The Cheeseburger is so delicious! 🍔
Family was craving for some Pavarotti ice cream tonight so Tyler and I made a stop at Sebastian Joe’s! Cold day but they were doing a steady curbside pickup business.
Happy Mother’s Day to my amazing wife Tammy! She is the center of our family. 💕 Our very first pandemic Mother’s Day! 🤠
A very Happy Mother’s Day to my Mom, and to all the Mom’s out there!
Just wrapped up my first attempt at doing pulled pork using the Sous Vide. I started the Sous Vide last night. I let it run for 20 hours at 165. When I pulled the bag out the pork had shrunk and there was about 3-4 cups of liquid in the bag. I poured the liquid into a sauce pan to reduce on the stove. I transferred the pork to the Big Green Egg and let it smoke for 3 hours at 280, with some good chunks of hickory for added smoke. 🔥
When I pulled the pork off the grill the bone pulled out clean and the meat shredded just by pushing on it. It had nice flavor. After pulling it I poured the reduced liquid over to taste. It was delicious and really easy.
Next time I will add more dry rub before putting it on the grill. Otherwise it was one of the best pork butts I’ve ever made. 🐖
Transferred the pork butt to the Big Green Egg after 20 hours in Sous Vide. Time for the finish smoke at 280 for 2-2.5 hours. Reducing the liquid from Sous Vide bag to add back to pulled pork.
A good newsletter is usually:
First Peloton FTP Test
I did my first Functional Threshold Power test today. This is a good way to measure my fitness progress over time. Peloton doesn’t advertise it much, but they have some great built-in capabilities for power. After you do an FTP test ride for example, the bike automatically prompts you to store your average wattage and then in all rides going forward you get a realtime power meter that is customized to you.
There is no good or bad for this. I did struggle with holding my power over the course of the 20 minute test. I felt pretty spent by the time it got to the last exertion level.
The heart rate graph is a little off. I’m using mPaceline for this and it has my Max HR a little higher than it should be. The main thing I took away from HR was that I was giving it my full effort. I also think my HR was higher than it should have been for the Zone 4 and 5 sections.
I’m going to do one of these tests every 6-12 weeks to check-in on progress.
First time doing a pork butt using Sous Vide. Pork will cook at 165 in the water bath for 20 hours and will finish with a 2 hour smoke on the Big Green Egg tomorrow. Following Serious Eats directions. 🔥
Unemployment from pandemic.
I am so excited to hear that Bundesliga is resuming the season! Tyler and I will be cheering for Bayern on May 17th! ⚽️
Tracking Pre-meal and Post-meal Hunger Level
I’ve been tracking my food using Ate. One of my favorite features in Ate is that you can setup questions to answer about the meals, and tracking pre-meal and post-meal hunger level is useful information to me. However, I didn’t like the options so I made this set of options combined with fun emoji that work really well for me. I have the same options for a pre-meal and post-meal question.
0 - Lost hunger 😶
1 - Irritable 😠
2 - Hungry 👍
3 - Satisfied 👍
4 - Full 👍
5 - Sluggish 😒
6 - Stuffed 😟
The goal is to stay in the 👍 values.
The Importance, Accessibility, and Inclusivity of Connecting Online
We have all shifted quickly to online platforms for many of our interactions. It is easy to see some of the challenges with this. Technical barriers. Cognitive confusion leading to “zoom fatigue”. There are also some powerful benefits online that were not as obvious before.
Work
For “knowledge workers,” most everyone is doing their work distributed, and I have noticed an equalizing aspect to it. The two dimensions that I see the most are geography differences being lessened, and more balance between those that are outgoing versus more introverted. When everyone you work with is in an equally sized video frame right in front of you, geography is only notable to the extent that it may be evening where they are and morning for you. I’ve had many team members share with me that they have never felt more connected with the members of our various offices. And perhaps more powerfully, our team members in other offices have felt like they can contribute and engage better with the rest of the teams.
This reinforces one of my beliefs about remote versus centralized teams that it is hardest to do both. Fully remote is a considerable leveler, and everyone will have to accommodate. Entirely local is the default that humans have used for millennia. The tricky part is doing both. My hope is that we can take the learnings developed during this pandemic and apply it to improvements and empathy going forward to keep these benefits in place.
Large group gatherings have also surprised me online. They work very well, as long as you keep the time short. And one of my favorite parts is that you can successfully engage in Q&A with the audience. I’ve held team all-hands meetings for decades, and I long ago decided to not open up time for Q&A because the chances of someone asking a question were near nil. The social dynamics of being that one person in a room of 250 that stands up with a question are just too challenging for most individuals to navigate. Online tools though by necessity must create a feature to do this. They have to enable it. And in doing so, they remove the barriers that inhibit people. I’ve found much more engagement than I’ve ever seen in in-person large group meetings.
mini minnebar
Last weekend was supposed to be the annual Minnebar unconference. Minnebar is one of my favorite events of the year. Over 1,000 technologists, collecting around community-led topics with about 70 sessions throughout the day. Minnestar, the non-profit behind the Minnebar, pivoted online and held mini Minnebar and I thought it was great!
The event was hosted on Crowdcast, and it was impressive. The event had a single track, versus multiple parallel sessions as it usually has. That was just fine to me, and it made me think that there could be five or six events like this throughout the year and get the same quantity of content to an even broader audience.
However, the big win to me was opening the event to a broader geography. One of the sessions I realized my brother would like. He lives three hours away and would usually never be able to attend Minnebar. But since it was online, I sent him the link, and he was on in 5 minutes. The event drew people from around the state. Minnestar has debated for years about how to reach people outside of the metro area. I know from dozens of board conversations. We considered for years bringing our events to other cities, but getting them online and opening up globally brought the program there. There was even a person from Turkey who attended Minnebar!
I also felt a lot of energy from the event. It hit me how important it was that the event happen, in some form. I needed the connection to the technology community to still be there. It was so great to see comments in the stream from friends and give a 👋 to them. It filled my day with energy to connect and so what if we couldn’t do it in person with happy hour, we still did it. It reminded me how vital these connections are, and we all must forge ahead.
A New Way to Mourn
My last observation on this topic is from an episode of the Daily called A New Way to Mourn. I highly recommend listening to this. It is a touching story with a powerful message. In short, this highlights that many funerals are being queued into the future. “We will get together to remember Bob when we can connect as a community.” There is a massive problem with this. These are essential rituals and are vital to loved ones and friends going through the mourning process. Deferring them to some unknown future date is going to cause significant problems.
This story about mourning and celebrating a departed loved one online is incredible. And again, I note the accessibility component. Some people can’t travel for various reasons and may be unable to attend a traditional funeral ceremony. Typically they would be excluded from this critical aspect of the mourning process. Hosting a visitation and funeral over Zoom opens up new avenues and accessibility for loved ones to be part of the process.
Lemon Drop Martinis for Cinco de Mayo! 🇲🇽 🍋 🍸
