Strava 2023 Year in Sport

Took in Tinsel Town at O’Donavon’s today with Tammy’s sisters and Olson bro-in-laws.

We had friends over and played SHEEPLE: The Best Game in the Ewe-niverse for the first time. It was a fun game to play in a group with a lot of laughs. Recommended.

People & Blogs: Me!

When I first heard of Manuel Moreale’s People and Blogs project, I knew it was something I wanted to subscribe to and support. Keeping the web personal is vital to me. I love personal websites and blogs. A newsletter that shines a light on both sounded fabulous and would tell the stories of how we keep the web personal.

I was even more excited when Manuel invited me to participate! Issue 16 was released today: P&B: Jamie Thingelstad! 🤩

Here is a complete list of the previous people:

  1. Manton Reece
  2. Rachel J. Kwon
  3. Kev Quirk
  4. Brian Koberlein
  5. Toby Shorin
  6. Andrea Contino
  7. Ana Rodrigues
  8. Jim Nielsen
  9. Ray Thomas
  10. Jamie Crisman
  11. Piper Haywood
  12. Chris Coyier
  13. Robin Rendle
  14. Nicolas Magand
  15. Eli Mellen

Sign up to get new issues or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Tammy and I went to The Holdovers tonight at the Mann Theatres in Edina. We both enjoyed the movie and particularly liked the retro feel and pace of it. Plus great acting and a good story.

It was fun to be able to speak at the Mntech Tech Outlook 2024 event today. Dan Abdul, Sarah Engstrom, Eric Hanson, and I introduced our companies and covered a lot of ground with Jeff Tollefson moderating. Topics ranged from GenAI, talent development, technology strategy, and more.

Upgraded to OmniFocus 4

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of OmniFocus 4.0 and today is the day! I haven’t used any of the betas so it is all new to me. It was an easy decision to upgrade because OmniFocus is one of my most frequently used apps and the cornerstone of my GTD system.

I upgraded three Macs, my iPhone, iPad, and was excited to see a proper Apple Watch version that now runs completely independently.

My initial impressions:

  1. The user experience is a big change. It will take me a bit to get used to it, but I can already see how it is more streamlined.
  2. The logical role of perspectives in the user experience is way better.
  3. Love that the Apple Watch version is useful. I never used the previous version and it hadn’t been updated in years. This one I will use.

I was excited to be the first to claim tonight’s MN Blockchain Holiday Party POAP! Also see related POAPs.

Brandon Ferdig kicking off tonight’s MN Blockchain Holiday Party. The evening was a fun social event as well as a recap of the events the organization has hosted over the year. Thanks to Colin Hirdman for hosting the event.

We are now a Ridwell house!

A few months ago while walking our neighborhood I noticed some of these white boxes in front of houses with a Ridwell logo on them. Tammy was far ahead of me and knew that it was a service to help you properly recycle and dispose of a bunch of household things that typically end up in the trash — particularly plastic but many other things too. Tammy is much more sensible about our environmental impact and I assumed that at some point we would have one of these too, and that time has come.

I got to see it all new when it showed up. Ridwell gave us a number of canvas sacks to put different products in. We place it all in the box and they will come on the next trip around and properly dispose or recycle the items. It seems like a pretty good service and certainly a smart idea. Tammy is particularly excited that they take styrofoam. They also handle a ton of other plastics that you cannot otherwise recycle. Combining recycling, organics, and Ridwell we think we’ll be able to reduce our landfill output to a very minimal amount.

If you want to sign up this invite link will give you a month free.

First Visit to the Haberdashery

In 2022 I worked with a style coach and it was a transformative experience. It’s been about a year now, and I have had one piece of homework that I still hadn’t done — get a suit that really fits me. Nancy Dilts had told me to make my way to Heimie’s Haberdashery in St. Paul and they would take care of me. I’ve had it on my list for a year, and finally Tammy decided to give me a nudge and she just made the appointment for me.

I worked with Richard Shallbetter and he got me measured every way possible for a custom suit. My favorite part about getting a custom suit was that I got to pick out the specific fabric combinations. Now I wait and am eager to sport what I hope will be my favorite suit ever.

And this will not be my last time to Heimie’s. I loved the experience.

It was an honor to be included in the Twin Cities Business 2023 Notable Leaders in Technology (detail page). Amazing to be part of a great company like SPS Commerce and a great team like #TeamSPS! See LinkedIn post.

We had a great brunch and even more fun taking pictures in the Red Nose Room at Red Cow Uptown this morning. 🎄🧑‍🎄

After visiting the European Christmas Market we walked over to the Glow Holiday Festival at CHS Field. It was fun to walk amongst all the lights and there were many activities.

We had a great time visiting the St. Paul European Christmas Market tonight. We had delicious food and checked out many different shops.

Excited to see Aladdin at the Orpheum!

We attended our first St. Olaf Christmas Festival at Orchestra Hall. This year was themed Love and Joy. This concert has been held since 1912. The mass choral arrangements with all 500 students were wonderful. Orchestra Hall was the perfect venue as well.

First time stopping at Smith Coffee & Cafe and was very impressed with their coffee program and the pastries were great.

In celebration of our niece’s 16th Birthday she arranged a large group of family and friends to go to Feed My Starving Children and pack food this morning! Our group packed 42 of the 180 boxes for the session, for a total of 38,880 meals. It was a fun time doing good!

New Standards Holiday Show 2023

We had a fun night at the 2023 New Standards Holiday Show tonight! This is a holiday tradition of ours and is always a fun evening. There were many returning and new special guests. The show wrapped with the excellent Christmastime Next Year. 🎄

New Standards Holiday Shows: 2023, 2021, 2019, 2018, 2013, and 2012.