2021 Minnesota Aspirations in Computing Award Ceremony
Great night joining the Minnesota Aspirations in Computing Award Ceremony tonight and recognizing so many young women that are making their mark in STEM. I also want to welcome our four #TeamSPS summer interns Ezigbo, Caroline, Claire, and Cecelia to SPS Commerce. I can’t wait to see what you create! Lastly, a huge thanks to Jade Denson of MnTech for emceeing and bringing so much fun and energy to the event!
See Aspirations Awards events from 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, or 2024.
Reading List: Think Again
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant arrived today. This book hit my radar via Three Star Leadership and Tools & Toys. “It’s about the learning culture between your ears.” That put this in on my list right away! 📚
Got my Elgato Key Light added to my setup. Having it attach to the desk is key for the standing position. It is also nice to be able to control color and brightness from the Stream Deck. It can get very bright too. 😎
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.
I started building the LEGO® NASA Apollo Saturn V this morning. I’ve wanted to build this for a long time. 🚀
Today’s project: Pork butt time on the Big Green Egg! Stack of wood chunks to pump up the smoke. 🤤🐖🔥
Smoking along at 2pm. Will be time to wrap soon. 145-150 temperature.
Registered thingelstad.eth on ENS
In my continuing exploration and learning about Ethereum I decided to setup what would be my usual entry on the Ethereum Name Service (ENS). The same way the Domain Name Service (DNS) converts names like thingelstad.com into something computers can use, ENS can convert thingelstad.eth into the wallet address I prefer for Ethereum, and other crypto as well.
ENS is a companion to DNS. Mostly it holds addresses for crypto destinations. It also can hold additional metadata like pointers to your Twitter and Github profiles, as well as your website, email address, and profile image. ENS is completely decentralized like all things on Ethereum. It is operated and governed via a series of smart contracts.
The process is super easy, as one might expect. You simply connect to your wallet. I use Rainbow for all my Ethereum dapps connections. To buy the domain name you execute a series of two transactions on the blockchain. In fact, all changes to your ENS entries are changes on the blockchain. Some of them have fees, and all of them cost Ethereum gas. After registering the domain, you have to set your resolver. The resolver is saying which contract should requesters ask for information from. Think of this as your DNS host records. You can then add any number of crypto addresses to your entry. I setup Ethereum (of course), Bitcoin, Litecoin, Cardano, and Filecoin. It is unclear to me that there is any benefit in setting up all of them, but that was the list I thought may get used.
The last step is to create a reverse entry for your wallet. That is just like your Reverse DNS entry. Doing that allows dapps to show your friendly thingelstad.eth entry instead of the address. This is another transaction.
You can see the records for thingelstad.eth, it is all setup. I also have the reverse record set. To test, Etherscan Name Lookup for thingelstad.eth works as does the reverse lookup. Nice! 🙌
It was fun to do this and another opportunity to get familiar with dapps and Ethereum. Unfortunately this type of experimentation is extremely expensive right now due to gas prices being so high. The actual costs of doing all of the above are very low, but the gas prices to execute the transactions were more than 10x the cost of the thing itself. Right now this is like buying a $10 item on eBay and spending $100 to have it shipped to you.
Lastly, the ENS service operates as a token. My address, thingelstad.eth, is a token that only I own. It is kind of neat that it now shows up in my wallet as well!
Lucky looking so very peaceful as she takes an afternoon nap. 💤
Ready to put the steaks on the Big Green Egg! 🔥🥩
Called up Bevcomm today and upgraded our DSL connection at the cabin to the fastest that we can provision. Hopefully this resolves the lag I’ve been experiencing in Zoom.
Incredible night for a fire on Cannon Lake.
We watched The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tonight and it was a fun remembrance of reading the book when I was a little kid. Everyone enjoyed it. It is an epic story.
Sharing my current allocation of crypto investments. Skin in the game.
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I got my first shot of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine this morning!
I had to reflect on the timeline. First case of COVID-19 on December 31 2019 in Wuhan, China. January 21 2020 we had first case in US. On March 11 2020 the WHO declared a Global Pandemic.
384 days after the Pandemic declaration, on March 30 2021, I got my first shot of vaccine at MHealth Fairview Clinic in Bloomington, MN.
Thank you to all the Doctors, Scientists, Researchers, and Civil Servants that made this a reality! 👏
I get my first vaccine shot on Tuesday! 🤩
From the Vikings training facility to local churches, our vaccine roll-out is leading the nation with more than 40,000 shots administered each day. #MNSOTS
— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) March 28, 2021
Brandi Carlile at the Ryman Auditorium
We were excited to watch Brandi Carlile stream her first live show tonight from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Brandi and the Twins have done a number of streamed shows from their home during the pandemic. But this was the first show with the band, on a professional stage, and a limited number of vaccinated folks in the audience. It was amazing! 🤩
Carlile started with her powerful cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, just her and a guitar. She was then joined by the Twins, and then the band on the third song. She hit every song you would want to hear. The whole band was filled with so much energy, so excited to be playing together on a stage for the first time in over a year, that it came all the way through the Internet and out the TV in our family room. ⚡️
We’ve been seeing Brandi Carlile sing for years now and we only get more impressed with her. She is an amazing performer, songwriter, and musician. Our whole family enjoys her music!
She finished the evening with an incredible performance of Amazing Grace. It was so beautiful I was wiping the tears from my eyes. If you haven’t seen Carlile, you really should. Her talent is amazing.
The Cactus Blossoms at First Avenue
Tonight we streamed The Cactus Blossoms as they played live to a limited 50-table audience at First Avenue. It was great to see them play live, and the production from First Avenue was really good with multiple cameras sweeping through the room. I hope that they continue to offer streaming options for shows. I like the idea of having an option to see bands live in the main room, but also being able to see them streaming opens up a lot of additional options to see live music that otherwise aren’t available.
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” — Atomic Habits (p 38)
I made four votes for the person I wish to become in my 60-min zone spin class this morning. See blue circles for digital version.
Analog version.
Enola Holmes
We watched Enola Holmes tonight and enjoyed it a lot. Witty story and characters. Millie Bobby Brown was great in the lead.
Pileated Woodpecker
I’ve been fighting a Pileated Woodpecker, and losing. This woodpecker has been visiting our house every morning. It usually shows up between 7-9am. It is the biggest woodpecker I’ve ever seen, and it’s done a number.
We have someone coming tomorrow to put a metal plate up, and then we are going put in Hardie Board. The rest of the house has Hardie Board already, but its regular lumber in the gable.
I’ve been pounding on the wall, but it has gotten less scared of that. Now I’ve started running outside and yelling at it which sends it away. If the image of Bill Murray going after the Gopher in Caddyshack is coming to mind, that is about right.
