Thanksgiving Turkey out of the oven. Now for the rest.
Making Wassail Tea means that it is officially the beginning of the holiday season for us!
Four Thousand Weeks as Rings
I’ve been reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The title comes from the fact that if you live to be 80, you’ll have had about 4,000 weeks. Technically it is 4,174 but that wouldn’t make a very good title for the book.
I’m still just in the beginning of the book but as I pondered his focus on the finitude of our time, I couldn’t help but think of how to visualize this! I knew Shortcuts could do the math for me, and then I realized Charty could do the visualization.
- The innermost ring (red) is the current week. It will fill up each day and reset at the end of each week. This ring will fill 52 times for each time the middle ring fills.
- The middle ring (yellow) is the weeks until your next birthday. This ring will fill 80 times until the outermost ring is filled.
- The outermost ring (green) is the weeks you have lived thus far. Hopefully we even overfill this ring.
It strikes me as an interesting visualization. Something to ponder. 🤔
However, I showed it to my family and they didn’t care for it much at all. The common theme seemed to be that “filling ones rings” is seen as a goal, something to look forward to, and filling these rings didn’t seem like a thing to look forward to. 😇
This post is part of the Shortcuts Collection.
Faribault Woolen Mill Tour
We took the tour of the Faribault Woolen Mill today. We learned a ton of interesting things about milling wool as well as the fact that Faribault Mills is the only fully vertical woolen mill in the United States. They have been operating at this location for over 150 years, founded in 1865! The mill is entirely mechanical, almost nothing digital. There are 22 steps that the wool goes from the 800 lb bales to a final product. All happening right there in this one mill.
The mill wasn’t running when we toured so we were able to wander a tiny bit more, and touch the wool at various stages. I would love to go back and do the tour when the mill is in full swing to see everything operating.
Faribault Woolen Mill banner celebrating 150 years.
One of the Carding machines taking the wool directly from the bales and aligning all of the strands into something that can be yarned.
Many of the machines were manufactured 100 years ago and are no longer made so there are parts stored in various places for repairs.
A step in the Carding machine.
You can see the strands of wool on the Carding machine.
The same pins and needles section of the Carding machine free of wool.
Yarning machine that is taking single yarns and making double or triples.
This giant Warper machine takes a hundred or more spools of yarn and turns it into woolen fabric. It takes up to 2 days just to spool the yarns correctly.
Another Warper machine that can do significantly more complicated patterns.
Multiple yarns of wool coming together.
Woolen blankets being assembled.
These are “programs” that the Warper machines can use to create different patterns. They are very similar to what a player piano would have used.
This is the “computer” that can create the “program” sheets for the Warper machine. There is nothing computer about it beyond the typewriter keys.
Workbench for the Warper programming and designing.
Inspection station that all wool produced in the mill goes through. The light allows inspection to make sure there are no defects.
Family selfie in front of multiple bales of wool.
Tyler and I played as a team and came in 2nd in Ticket to Ride Japan. It is a fun variant with the community bullet train encouraging some cooperative play.
The two most important ingredients when making lasagna are:
- Italian Opera
- Love ❤️
Mazie and I made this pan with plenty of love, and the Three Tenors accompanying us!
Tammy and I at Keepsake Cidery enjoying a crisp fall day.
Firewood delivery moved and stacked. 🔥
ConstituionDAO
ConstitutionDAO caught my attention right away. This DAO is forming to raise a fund to bid on one of two privately owned authentic copies of the US Constitution. Sotheby’s is holding the auction tomorrow.
The DAO started this morning with about $16M in ETH raised, and currently has $33.7M in ETH just twelve hours later via their Juicebox listing. The project was launched six days ago!
I couldn’t resist being part of this so I sent in a small amount of ETH and am waiting for the auction to claim my PEOPLE governance tokens.
What a wild idea, and all enabled largely because of the crypto stack. We’ll see what happens next! 🤞
Did the 30-min Foo Fighters ride with Emma Lovewell on Peloton tonight. Put all I had into it with a strive score of 68.0, which was 260 kJ. Foo Fighters are the best spinning soundtrack there is! 🥵
Tammy and I enjoyed the 7 Course Tasting dinner at the pop-up Guacaya Bistreaux in Glass House. Authentic Latin Caribbean Tapas & Libations. Chef Pedro Wolcott opens up their permanent location in the North Loop in Spring.
The new Clifford: The Big Red Dog is a nice rendition of a classic story.
We all volunteered at Free Bikes 4 Kidz today. Tammy, Mazie, and Tyler did cleaning of donated bikes. I tried my hand at the mechanic station working on derailers, brakes, truing wheels and a lot of other stuff I didn’t know how to do. 😊
We had a fun time at the Washburn High School production of Grease tonight. 🎭🎶
We had an opportunity to celebrate with #TeamSPS CFO Kim Nelson and her Career Achievement recognition at the CFO of the Year Awards Luncheon today!
Angry Bunny Club
I’ve been wanting to find an NFT project that I could be part of to learn and see first-hand what these are like. I wanted to find a project that was fun. I wanted something where the NFT appealed to me on its own. I wanted something that was affordable. I also was curious to have it not be on Ethereum, preferably Polygon or Solana. When I found the Angry Bunny Club it checked all the boxes.
The initial minting was over but Magic Eden is the official marketplace for Angry Bunny Club and there were a number of bunnies listed for 0.25 to 0.3 SOL. I got a couple, then a couple more, and now I have six. I had to get a Santa one. 🎅
Left to right: 338, 3069, 4801, 1308, 3680, and 3678. You can also see all bunnies in my wallet.
Like many NFT projects, the Angry Bunny Club is creating a number of different expereinces from these Bunnies, and then the community shares in the proceeds from those activities. They are working on some casual games that will feature the bunnies. There is also discussion of some publishing projects. 50% of the proceeds from those projects go back to Bunny owners.
They also distribute 50% of the resale fee from Bunny sales to holders on a weekly basis. This week that was 0.006 SOL for 6 bunnies. If that rate stayed the same it is 0.312 SOL a year. The purchase cost of the six Bunnies I have is 1.8 SOL. So if that stays flat that would be a 17% return. It is interesting to see these mechanics and to have an Airdrop land in your wallet each week.
Like nearly all of these projects it also has a Discord server, along with some channels that are only available to people with Bunnies in their wallet. There is a feeling of being in a club with others.
This is all learning for me. I picked this project because I think the NFTs themselves are fun, and the learning is just upside. 🐰
I’m a Member of the ENS DAO!
I just claimed my $ENS governance tokens and am now a voting member of the Ethereum Name Service DAO. I decided to not delegate my tokens at this time. My primary ENS name is thingelstad.eth.
This transition of ENS into a DAO has been incredible to watch. NiftyTable has a great writeup on it.
ENS is one of the best case studies for why people should care. The community now owns and governs a public good they use everyday that has billions of dollars in treasury.
ENS is leading by example how a decentralized entity can operate, provide real value, and be sustainable.
For comparison, this would be like going back to the early 1990’s and having the community involved in the structure of the DNS system.
Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser
Our Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser was a great success this weekend! We had more than 100 people stop in to buy Wicky Thing Candles, Jiggy Thing Puzzle #001, Four Bees Honey, and fresh baked cookies. We all had a lot of fun hosting people. The kids particularly enjoyed walking guests through the various options and checking people out.
All the proceeds are going to non-profits, and we raised…
$4,757
We gave everyone the opportunity to choose to direct their sale to any number of the great organizations that we had identified.
- Constellation Fund (Donate)
- Free Bikes 4 Kidz (Donate)
- Appetite for Change (Donate
- Feed My Starving Children (Donate)
Seems that non-profits closest to kids and food got more engagement than the others.
We made four distinct Wicky Thing Candles for the sale: 🔥
- Oh My Darling: Sugar-y and Citrus-y, this candle will brighten and energize your day as soon as you set it burning!
- Mind Like Water: Made with a calming cashmere vanilla fragrance, this candle will have you deep in meditation in minutes.
- Apple of my Eye: And this candle is sure to be the apple of yours! Heavenly apple and cinnamon scents combine to create that rich, full aroma we all love!
- Winter Wonderland: Crisp and pine-y, this fragrance will transport you directly to that snow-covered pine forest of your dreams!
We also sold our very first Jiggy Thing Puzzle #001, “Celebration City”! 🧩 Sure to be a collectors item. Hand drawn digital art, 500-piece puzzle perfect for anyone.
Tammy and the kids made a bunch of cookies which was a great touch so people could have a little something fun to eat as they left. Tammy’s sister Angie was also kind enough to allow us to resell some of her amazing Four Bees Honey that she makes with the bees in her yard!
Overall everything went great. We did capture some learnings to make it better next year. We are considering making this an annual tradition that we do! In the meantime, we still have some puzzles to sell…
The recent Tesla updates allow you to look through the cars cameras when Sentry Mode is activated. I’m not sure if there is much utility in this, but it is a neat trick. You can look through any of the cameras, not just the front one.
I now have two crypto-based debit cards. The Coinbase one uses USD Coin (USDC). The Litecoin card is funded with Litecoin (LTC) that is liquidated for USD as needed. Two very different models. Who says fiat and crypto can’t work together?
