Family
Heartfelt updates about family milestones and everyday moments. From taking Mazie to college and annual visits to the Renaissance Festival to Swedish‑pancake breakfasts and VR outings with the kids, this category celebrates togetherness.
- The app would allow you to put the car in learner mode. This would not only reduce the power output of the car, similar to valet mode, but also change the power curve to match that of a gas engine. Electric motors have so much low end torque, and I would worry about that amount of power with a brand new driver. I would think software could change that to emulate a gas engines curve, and simulate a gas experience.
- This app would allow the user to have controls for the car, most notably to safely stop the car. A big red “STOP” button on the screen would give the parent or teacher the ability to override.
- The car could be put in a defensive mode, where the radar system that detects nearby objects doesn’t just give you a warning but the car would actually stop to avoid any collision.
- The main display in the Model 3 could be swapped out with a learning display, taking realtime feeds from all the cameras and overlaying driving paths. Maybe even engage the autopilot system to not drive the car, but show on the screen where the car should be driven.
Tyler and I have been enjoying watching Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Good story.
Mazie made a nice homemade sign for delivery people to grab a Clif Bar when they drop off a package. 💛🙏
Mazie harvested lettuce from the garden today. I have no idea what we will do with this many greens! 🥬 😳
848 Day Streak
Yesterday ended my 848 day meditation streak.
Streaks are a great way to build habits. They can also become obsessions. I had certainly been there, sometimes squeezing in a meditation right before bed.
I told a friend that I would purposefully break the streak at 1,000 days.
The streak ended the best way possible. I just forgot. We had a great pool party with family for Mazie’s upcoming birthday and it was an amazing and packed day. Action from dawn to dusk.
And thus the streak ends, and with it no need to obsess. Perfect.
Flooded Forest Kayak Tour
My brother Isaiah and his family were visiting this weekend and we drove to Wabasha for the Flooded Forest Kayak Tour with Broken Paddle Guiding.
Everyone else had nice Solara 135 kayaks and Tyler and I joined up in a Solara 145T Tandem. I enjoyed the kayak. It was one of the most stable kayaks I have been on. There were about 15 people in total on the tour and there were a lot of guides to cover everyone. We took a bike trip a number of years ago with Broken Paddle and we’ve had nothing but amazing experiences with them. If you are looking for a fun day or weekend trip I would strongly recommend them.
There was a large Bald Eagle checking us out as we paddled down the creek.
We also saw a handful of different snakes swimming in the water. That was a bit creepy.
Wish: Tesla "Learn to Drive" App
Mazie is taking drivers education and soon we are going to find a vacant parking lot and I’m going to have her get behind the wheel and drive. Contemplating this I decided we are going to use the Honda Pilot for this, and not the Tesla Model 3. Driving a Tesla is so different from a gas car that I worry it wouldn’t set her up well. I actually wish I had my Mini Cooper S with manual transmission for this exercise.
While the differences between electric and gas are so large, there are a lot of ways that the Model 3 could be a better platform for a learner.
This all made me think that it would be really neat if Tesla had a “Learn to Drive” app. What would it do?
All of this highlights the power of a car being thought of as a software platform. The software can change the entire characteristic of the car could change for this special, and very important, exercise.
Fifty Puzzle
Tammy enjoys doing puzzles. The kids and I have started a tradition of making her a custom Christmas puzzle each year. This year we decided to do one for her “big birthday” and we decided to take a completely new approach.
Here is the final version and I’ll share with you how we got here.
To make this we started with a hand drawn image that Mazie framed out and then her and Tyler filled in. This allowed them to work with pencil and paper and the clear borders for the initial idea. Puzzles are pretty close to 8.5x11 ratio, but not exactly. After scanning I do a stretch on the size to get it just right.
Now that we scanned the original pencil drawing, we needed to recreate the entire image in digital format. We loaded up Procreate and put the original scan on a layer and made it 50% transparent, and then used the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil to trace a copy of the image on a fresh layer above. This made a perfectly clean digital version, and allowed us to clean up the image a bit. There were detail areas that were too small to do with the pencil but by zooming into the canvas on the iPad Pro they were able to get it just right.
After the image was traced we created two layers for coloring. One layer was “under the lines” and is where most of the coloring was done. We had another “over the lines” layer for select sections. We also segmented off the backgrounds and the “50” numbers into their own layer.
One of the super cool features of Procreate is the ability to share a video fo the drawing being created. Here you can see the entire process unfolding, as well as the couple of versions we tried for the “50” colors before we landed on the rainbow. Our creative process took 3-4 weeks and here you get it in 9 minutes.
The project took a while but the finished product worked out great. Plus the kids got to learn how to create digital art and got really adept at working with multiple layers and understanding how to use them to create different effects. Mazie got into the various brushes as well.
The only mistake we made was mine. I forgot that I needed to create a margin on the edge for the printer. We didn’t factor that in, so the finished puzzle lost about 1/4" of the image on all sides. On the top we had sky so that was fine, but on the bottom we had this cool seascape and a lot of that got trimmed off. Next time I’ll remember to mark a “safe zone” there so nothing critical is in that area.
Galloping Goose MTB Trail
I haven’t been mountain biking for over 10 years. My Specialized M4 StumpJumper has seen a lot of neglect over the last decade. But yesterday we all hit the Cuyuna Lakes MTB trails and had a blast on the single track!
We did the full Galloping Goose trail around Huntington Mine lake. The bike crew at Red Raven recommended it as a great route for a family with a lot of fun as well as easy access to regular trails if you need a break.
I hadn’t been on single track for several years, and it was the first time that Tammy or the kids had gone. They had an absolute blast! Mazie and Tyler were laughing and having a great time on the rolley trails.
We did a total of 12 miles with over half of that on single track. The weather and trail conditions were fabulous. This was the nicest trail I’ve been on. They have built up banks on a lot of the turns so you can hold a lot of speed going through them.
We’ll definitely be back again!
Mazie finished her LEGO Grand Piano build today. It is one of the most intricate LEGO I have ever seen.
You can connect it to your phone and it will respond to, or move, the piano keys.
The Boy Who Would Be King
Tyler and I read The Boy Who Would Be King together tonight. It is a good book, and the story and points are made well. The illustrations are also well done.
