If you are a Talking Heads fan, run (don’t walk) and listen to True Stories, The Complete Soundtrack
Top 7 French Fries
Screw that Harvard guy – French fries are life. I had some especially good ones this week that made me think I should list my favorites in a mini post. It’s too hard to rank them in order, so here are my current top seven in alphabetical order:
- Barbette
- Fresh French Fries (State Fair)
- Mac’s Fish and Chips
- McDonald’s
- Octo Fishbar
- Raising Cane’s
- Saint Dinette
Honorable mention (and RIP) – The Station in Sagle, Idaho (which burned to the ground at some point – thanks to the Bonner County History Museum for helping me research). Platters of fries the size of your head (made from fresh-cut Idaho potatoes, of course).
While millennials have dominated headlines in recent years, baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) have continued to dominate consumer spending in the U.S. In fact, consumers over 50 now account for more than half of all U.S. spending…
- Visa Business and Economic Insights
Woot! Woot! Thanks, DGS
Officially back making donuts
Going to regret this at 4:45am, but @atmosphere is totally worth it
I’ve hit the Niver trifecta!
Kid two remembered! Thanks, MK ❤️
Celebrating 27 years
Variations on a classic
Hee-haw & Merry Christmas
Fancy hair for SK
Still a long way to go, but it’s nice watching hockey with two eyes again
GD Nordy
My Insty 2018 Top 9
New laptop setup day
Throwback night in Bedford Falls
Pretty little city built on a hillside. Music in the bars and fire in the sky. We went to the beach and it was covered in ice. And I used to call it home…
- Winners, Trampled By Turtles
Thanks @deadmanwinter
A little Lucy before DMW light up the Furnace
Just like the Mall of America
It’s like time stood still
My name in donuts and Dew
When you come back to your office computer after two months, you get *two* full Office updates
Back at it – green line to work on a brisk, sunny morning
Goodbye Bibelot
Got though it, but not even the Valium and the “calming nature video and soothing music & lights” made the MRI experience cool
Post-MRI stop with my driver
My Christmas elves
Strong targeted casino marketing
So. Much. Two Dots.
Duck meatloaf with CK, JV & SV
Back in my airline days, people used Minny all the time to refer to MSP. Plus: Minnie and Paul?
Need to compare with the Mpls one
Foreshadowing?
Security broke my emojis
This site has always been a tool for me to stay sharp on new web technologies and lately it’s been a great way to test my cognitive skills since the little incident in October. I’ve had three things on my web development to-do list for a long time: 1) use Let’s Encrypt to add TLS/SSL security, 2) make my WordPress theme mobile-friendly and 3) create some dedicated data entry screens for golf scores, runs and bike rides. During my recovery at home, I decided to tackle item #1…
Since I still had Homebrew installed on this server, I was able to get Certbot installed early on in the process and had a valid certificate ready and waiting. I haven’t tried automating the renewal process yet, but can manually renew the certificate with no problem (had to do this once already, in fact). For whatever reason, I had trouble finding examples online of people with similar setups and had several false starts in getting Apache configured correctly to use the certificate for this domain. This post got me most of the way there, but had more of a focus on Mac OS X Server and not plain old Mac OS X client. A few other helpful links here, here and here. And this thread on the Let’s Encrypt site helped me figure out what can/should go in the httpd-vhosts.conf file versus what should go in the httpd-ssl.conf file.
Can’t believe the downtown Minneapolis Arby’s closed at some point while I’ve been out – will have to hop the train to University now
Wish Curtis was on Insty
Put me in, coach
Yesterday I had my appointment with the neurosurgeons who needed to approve my return to work. Happy to report that I’ve been cleared to return next week. I really didn’t think it would happen that soon, but I’m super excited to be back in time for the final two regular season Vikings home games (and hopefully at least one playoff game before diving into Final Four prep). Big thanks to everyone at work who stepped in to help while I’ve been out – I’m looking forward to getting back out there. And thanks again to everyone who has facilitated and supported my recovery.
SKOL!
Some exciting news coming to 7minutemiles.com this afternoon
Secret Service nightmare
A Big River Christmas
Pizza night across the street
Therapy doge gone rogue
Unscheduled Downtime
Nights like tonight are when I remember just how stressful it can be to have servers remotely hosted 1,300 miles away. As I’ve written many times, this site runs on a Mac mini located in Las Vegas in a data center run by the fine folks at Mac Stadium. While trying to fix my SSL/WordPress/emoji issue (which I’ll write about later), I managed to almost completely lock up the server. I could ping it, but the Screen Sharing session dropped and SSH was unresponsive at first. Eventually I was able to login via SSH and issue a quick “sudo shutdown -r now” command before getting kicked out again. About ten minutes later, I was able to get in via Screen Sharing. Since I had a couple of security updates to install that required a restart, I decided to just continue the unexpected web server downtime and run those installers too. This ended up taking nearly an extra hour, so I apologize if you were trying to load the site and got nothing.
Now back to researching just how WordPress core supports and displays the latest emoji characters…
The European Christmas Market
Never gets old
Best booth at the ice fishing show by far
Got my Qualys A+ SSL scan result, but broke emoji display
Spice drops rule
They lit the tree
The ops team rocked it
Baller
Still some cleanup to do, but finally got High Sierra, Apache, Let’s Encrypt and TLS to display 7minutemiles.com using https
CK’s last day of leave
Early Christmas gift from SK
I guess a healthy bottom line doesn’t mean much if to get it, you have to hurt the ones you depend on. It’s people that make the difference. Little people like you…
- Mr. Shirley
CK and MK were busy tonight
Week Four Update
A little tardy on the latest update, but all is well. I survived a four hour therapy appointment and apparently did well enough that my speech therapist thinks I don’t need to continue with that track any longer. I had my long-awaited appointment with the ophthalmologist and received a pair of “magic glasses” that have greatly reduced the need for future eye patch use. They have optical film from 3M (see above) that utilizes prism technology to correct my double vision. My left eye is slightly crossed, but this stuff really helps correct that (and it’s so nice to have both eyes open all the time). The extra good news is that there is nothing wrong with either eye – the double vision is caused by the nerves that control the muscles that direct each eye and the doctor is optimistic that this will eventually correct itself. I will also be starting therapy next week to work specifically on eye exercises to help this process along.
In other HCMC appointment news, I met with an awesome neurologist who showed me the “before” and “after” CT scans of my brain from the day of the incident and from when they discharged me from the ICU. It was really cool technology and the way she explained it made it crystal clear how serious the situation was on October 8th (and how much improvement there was after three weeks). Have I mentioned how big a fan I am of the staff at HCMC? I’ll return there again on Friday for another CT scan that will hopefully continue the trend. That will also be Colleen’s last full day with me, as she returns to work on Monday. After that, my next big appointment will be on December 4th, when I meet with the lead neurosurgeon to discuss continued recovery plans and possibly a return to work date.
We saw both Charlie Parr and Hippo Campus at the Palace Theater with no issues from the lights or sound levels (the infamous Palace talkers are another story). On the advice of my friend TG, I picked up a pair of Vibes earplugs, which seemed to work well at the Hippo Campus show (and dampened the discussions of the people sitting near me). Saw one Wild win (Ottawa) and one Wild loss (Arizona) at the X with my uncle, also with no sensory overload issues. Stopped by the stadium for the start of the very loud Packers game, but found it totally manageable. Left that game before halftime to beat the train rush, but had a great time seeing people and delivering thank you cards.
With the Thanksgiving holiday, it was a busy week for seeing family and friends. Had lunch one day with a friend at Dark Horse and went over to the Inver Grove Heights AMC to see Ralph Breaks the Internet (which we both liked). We took my mother-in-law out on Thanksgiving Day for lunch at the original Buca di Beppo in St. Paul, then had a more traditional dinner at my aunt and uncle’s house in the Mac-Groveland area.
This will be my last “weekly update.” Truly thankful for you all – thanks for reading!
Cheers, DK
Didn’t know if I’d like Narcos: Mexico without (lots of) Pablo, but it was really good
