Last night I found out Charles Edge died on April 19 at the way-too-early age of 48. A pillar of the Mac admin community, Charles was a noted writer, speaker, advisor, leader and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Friendly and kind, he was an ultra-nerd who was also hip to pop culture, knew his way around a bar and as Bynkii said on Mastodon, “Dude always looked good.” He was briefly my boss at 318 when they expanded to Minnesota, but more importantly, Charles was my friend.

Even though we both lived in the same metro area, I hadn’t seen him in person since lunch at Key’s back in March of 2023. Both of us were always busy, but we would frequently text each other to bounce ideas back and forth, most recently talking about home media servers. And then there would be the random message out of the blue, like this one during the recent Big 10 basketball tournament:

Heya, I know you’re in hell madness of March and whatnot, so just dropping a supportive message that you’re badass and if ya’ need an extra set of hands on a thing, it’s always good to have an excuse to just hang. 😊

And then there were gems like these:

I lurf drinks!
I’m good at drinkin
Babies are cute

I first met Charles back in 2009 at an Apple Consultants Network meeting in the basement of Southdale mall. The Apple admin community has always been special and we were so lucky that he moved from California to Minnesota and chose Northeast Minneapolis as his new base of operations. I remember going on client visits with him to places like Splice and Lifetime Fitness and was just in awe of how he solved problems for clients.

We would work out of his home in Northeast, with my favorite memory being the time he had me SSH into Shaun White’s winter Olympics website to repair an Apache config issue. I was nervous as hell, since the snowboarding events were going on as I was in there messing around, but Charles had my back. He quickly reviewed my suggested fix and said, hit the return key and send it! Boom, fixed.

Work at 318 on the west coast was a glamorous affair, with A-list clients including many celebrities, movie studios and other large bluechip companies. Charles was the first call when Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne needed tech support, for example, but jobs in the midwest were a little more mundane. If there was ever someone you would want on a work trip to Atkinson, Nebraska, Three Lakes, Wisconsin or Ironwood, Michigan, though, it was Charles.

I always felt that the official Charles motto was “script all the things.” He was always so curious of how things worked, how he could automate them and better yet, how he could teach others how to do it too. I love how Adam Engst wrote in his post that “Charles was very much a Tigger, in the Winnie-the-Pooh sense, and tirelessly bounced from project to project.” It was always fun to watch him speak at various events like Minnebar and JNUC, but it was also cool to see him progress throughout his career. I think he liked it when I once called him the “Hank Moody of technical publishing.”

We chatted a lot about web publishing and blogs, since we both had very old sites running WordPress. Krypted.com (“Tiny Deathstars”) has always been a goldmine of technical information and Charles was most recently publishing a ton of great content on the Secret Chest blog. His last post there, Friday Fun With Steganography, was published on the day he died, while his post A Digital Legacy Contact was published the week prior.

It was somewhat ironic that I first learned of his passing on Mastodon, as there is a strong Mac admin community there and he told me at lunch that he had signed up (but never really used it). There is even an updated Wikipedia page (which I think he would probably find pretty embarrassing).

There has been much heartwarming content posted online by those who knew him, including Tom Bridge and the Mac Admins Podcast (I was a guest with Charles and Tom on my only podcast interview ever). Other posts include Rich Trouton, Armin Briegel and Chip Pearson on LinkedIn:

Friends, it is with a heavy heart that I write to you to share that our friend Charles Edge has passed away.

He was known by many people and loved by all and his passing is a huge loss in many communities. He is survived by his two children who are being lovingly cared for by their family.

His passing was sudden and unexpected Friday evening. In this time of grief, we appreciate a little space to figure how to best support his family and will use this channel to communicate news or further information.

Thank you for your love in this hard time and I am very sorry for yours and all of our loss.

Charles and I shared being a dad to two daughters and it was so fun dropping off my old Star Wars toys for his oldest. My heart aches for his family (and everyone who now feels the void left by his absence).

UPDATE: Star Tribune obituary here. Charles died of a cerebral aneurysm. Memorial gathering will be held Saturday, April 27, 3-5 p.m. at Town and Country Club in Saint Paul (additional services to be held in Dahlonega, Georgia at a later date).

I was worried when he told me in June 2022 that he had had major surgery, but everything seemed back to normal last year. I don’t know his religious beliefs, but I like to think of him in a Star Wars scene reappearing next to Bartosh at a cantina named Dave’s in a galaxy far, far away…

💔

• State and federal taxes ✅
• Office TV installed before the Masters ✅
• First outdoor training run of 2024 ✅

Upward and onward!

Mentally, I’ve very much enjoyed not wearing my Apple Watch daily. Physically, I’ve fallen way behind on my general fitness when I don’t track the circles. This week I decided to do something about that.

On Monday, I met with a personal trainer at Lifetime Fitness and took a tour of the Target Center club. We talked quite a bit about my past history and what I think I want to do this year, which is basically get back in running shape and lose weight.

While I elected not to hire him now as my personal trainer, here’s my current plan:

• Bought new running and gym shoes (and a new gym bag).
• Started back on the nightly treadmill hill walk with hand weights while watching shows from the list on the iPad.
• Preparing to run the Get in Gear 10K on April 27, the Milk Run 5K on May 25 and the TC 10 Mile on October 6. And if I get extra motivated, maybe the Afton 25K on July 6 too.
• Looking forward to the bike trails drying out – want to increase that cross training this year. Might add the bike attachment to Oliver’s roof rack.
• Planning to walk every golf round this year (like usual).
• Thinking about getting another weight bench to go with my dumbbell set.
• Utilize my access to Lifetime for indoor running, stair machine cardio, a return to racquetball, explore new classes and learn to be a better swimmer.

My schedule makes all of this challenging, but you need to prioritize what’s important, right?

My little web baby is almost an adult: 7 Minute Miles turns 18 years old this Saturday. Some highlights:

• First post: March 30, 2006
• Domain created: November 26, 2002
• Posts: 30,050
• Pages: 216
• Database: 193.4 MB
• Directory: 62 GB
• Server: AWS Lightsail, Ohio, Zone A, Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS, 4 GB RAM, 2 vCPUs, 80 GB SSD
• Tech stack: WordPress 6.4.3, PHP 8.2.17, nginx 1.18.0, MariaDB 10.3.39, Let’s Encrypt SSL/TLS
• Costs: $17.99/year @ Hover, $25-28/month @ AWS (Lightsail and Route 53)
• Jetpack stats (avg/mo): 96 posts, 1497 views, 540 visitors

I’ve tweaked the font sizes a little since the launch of the new theme last year, but overall remain happy with how things are now. I recently simplified the navigation menu, which now just has home, about, lists and search links. The new about page was completely re-written and I updated my résumé page (and PDF) to reflect my move to Target Center last September.

Not sure what comes next. I’ve re-established the automation between 7 Minute Miles and Instagram via the excellent Intagrate plugin and continue to automatically capture any posts to Mastodon via the TootPress plugin. This site also technically federates content via the ActivityPub plugin (you can follow dmk@7minutemiles.com in your favorite Mastodon client), but I don’t see many people reading posts that way.

I removed all of my concert videos from YouTube, hibernated my channel, then posted them all here using the HTML5 Video Player plugin. I also tried to clean up the photo galleries a little, but both of these media types will likely require an increase in server storage in the next year to be expanded/enhanced.

Long live the weird web – thanks for visiting!

Thanks to the social media manager in my office, I’m now back on the Gram. She has a goal to increase Instagram followers, so I registered @7minutemiles as a private account, followed @targetcentermn and started looking at the current state of that platform. As some of you may recall, I used to be @kingsbury for years and Colleen had her account stolen by a hacker (Meta support was not helpful).

It’s really amazing to me how much content is generated exclusively for Instagram, especially in the food world. Sports and entertainment is also still going strong and I’m slowly re-discovering golf, skiing and regional travel accounts (Meta appears to limit new accounts to 100 follows a day now). A few people have discovered my new account and sent follow requests, but I’m not sure how much I will publish there.

As Cory Doctorow wrote, now is the moment for POSSE – Post Own Site, Share Everywhere. IndieWeb has also written a lot about POSSE, which I had already started to try recently on both Bluesky and Mastodon. Need to think through this a little more, as I never liked when people would just post the same stuff everywhere.

Still really love the idea of people publishing their own sites and content – whether that is a small business website, a personal blog or something else. What I do here is neither free nor easy, but there are options out there for people if you look. The vast majority of people, however, will likely continue to use services like Instagram and TikTok as their only home to the content they create and publish.

As someone who basically dropped off all social media for a time to focus on my personal site, getting eyeballs on your content is infinitely harder, FOMO is strong and with comments disabled on my site, two-way communication is definitely hindered. And as Zeldman says, “go where the people are.”

Still, people like Jason Kottke remain great examples of self-publishing ideas and implementation. I love reading his posts like this one on the latest kottke.org site redesign. My RSS reader follow list hasn’t changed much over the years, but there is still some great stuff that pops up in there from people like Teri Kanefield, Brian Krebs, Charles Edge, Tom Bricker, Mistletunes and Phil Roberts.

Back on the platforms, I got to explore Threads with the new Instagram account and didn’t see a lot of personal value there. The “For You” view was awful and the “Following” option showed that most activity on accounts I care about is remaining on the Instagram side.

I still enjoy reading content on Mastodon via Ivory, which remains the closest experience to what I had with Twitter and Tweetbot. Recently learned I can follow tags there and have been enjoying the “SKIING” tag a lot. Also like Bluesky, but wish I could use a Tapbots app for that service instead of the website.

Instagram on the web is much better than before, but I’ll probably get back to using the iOS app again once I have the full follow list in place. Still happy I hibernated my LinkedIn – it will be there if I need it in the future, but don’t miss it day to day…

Earlier this week, I came across a picture of my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Fox. Decided to fire up Duck Duck Go and see if I could find any information on what happened to her after Randolph Heights. Since online search in 2024 is terrible, couldn’t find anything. Just for kicks, I decided to search for my favorite high school teacher, Mr. Demers. Unfortunately, I found his obituary from 2021:

Richard Demers, Age 81, of Nashua, NH Died Thursday August 20, 2021 at Langdon Place after having faced the ravages of Alzheimer’s over the past several years. Born May 7, 1940 in Somersworth, NH, he was son of the late Ernest and Florence (Perreault) Demers and was predeceased by one son, Leonard, one sister, Pauline and one brother, Edward. Richard was a former high school history teacher for the St. Paul Public School System in Minnesota. He also served in the United States Army and Air Force National Guard. A vibrant man, Richard lived a connected life to his community – be it in the North Woods of MN at his beloved Woman Lake, the East Side of St Paul, or his daughter’s NH porch. He loved gardening (grew all of his own vegetables), fishing from his 1970 little green boat, snow mobiling with the old guys, travel (without a cell phone or credit card), long walks with his German Shepherds, reading history, DQ hot fudge sundaes, an provocative debate over a good cup of coffee, the Boston Red Sox, and most especially his four grandchildren. Survivors include Nicole Gates (daughter) and her husband Chuck, Louis Demers (son), Louise Ader (sister), and Isabelle and Jackson Gates and Deacon and Dominic Demers (grandchildren). SERVICES: There are no visiting hours. A private graveside service will be held at Forest Glade Cemetery in Somersworth, NH at the convenience of the family. The Davis Funeral Home, 1 Lock St., Nashua, NH 03064 is in charge of arrangements. davisfuneralhomenh.com (603) 883-3401. Published by Pioneer Press on Aug. 24, 2021.

How ironic that the person that instilled my love of history had so many things written here that I never learned until now. We all knew he lived on the East Side and had a son named Louis, but DQ hot fudge sundaes? Boston Red Sox? Woman Lake? Oh, to have another provocative debate now with the inventor of the OTE.

Speaking of opportunities to excel, so many great comments on the legacy.com page from former Saint Paul Central students:

I took every history class I could with him, including an independent study I did on the history of classical music (with him serving as advisor). American Experience. Ancient Civilizations. Western Civilizations. All wonderful. All highly impactful on my life and the person I’ve become. He taught me about the Harvard Book and I almost went there because of him.

Writing notes in the borders of the history books he had us read led to my marriage to Demers classmate Colleen, who commented to me after seeing this news, “I cannot fathom that vast intellect being ravaged by Alzheimer’s disease. Heartbreaking.”

After seeing what that horrible disease did to my grandmother, my sincere condolences go out to his family. Please know that Mr. Demers positively impacted many, many lives of students in Minnesota and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to be one of his scholars.

A few more things off the to do list: the about page has been re-written, added Target Center to the résumé page (and uploaded a new PDF version) and consolidated the navigation menu to Home, About, Lists and Search.

Also hibernated my LinkedIn account for now…

I think I caught a cold during the Disney On Ice run – it was chilly in the building and well, thousands of trolls everywhere. Still love this old Simpsons graphic from back in the day. Ready for this to be over so I can get back into the regular swing of things…

All the gurus like to talk about time management, but here are my personal top seven:

• Time is precious – use it wisely
• Prioritize and make time for what is important
• Sometimes you need to do nothing
• Keep work and personal as balanced as possible
• Acknowledge some tasks need the right environment to happen
• You can be productive all times of the day, but remember to sleep
• iCloud Notes are great for to do lists across devices, but I also love notepads and Flair markers

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk…

• Wear my Apple Watch all the time
• Posting to social media
• Read online comments
• Click on any links about politics
• Subscribe to Amazon Prime & Creative Cloud
• Allow notifications on my iPhone
• Answer calls from unknown callers

Everyone on my Mastodon feed is talking about the 40th anniversary of the Mac today and which machine was their first. My first direct experience with one was the original form factor version (not sure the specific model – probably an SE) that was owned by my college hockey player roommate at the University of North Dakota in 1987.

The first one I actually owned personally was a Performa 405 from 1993 that I’m pretty sure my parents bought at Sears, of all places (also weird to think my first Apple IIc was purchased at Daytons). The fuel department at Northwest Airlines was my first professional job working with Macs, which included a lot of Quadra 700s and PowerBooks. Many, many more from this list in the years since then…

It’s been a fun ride – thanks, Cupertino!

P.S. – still looking for a good promotional photo of that 405…

It’s no secret our family loves the Minnesota State Fair. I’ve still managed to go every year of my life, and realized the same is true for my daughters too. One of the long-time items on my bucket list was to “Sit on a Kingsbury Bench at the State Fair,” which up to this point involved a $2500 donation to the Minnesota State Fair Foundation.

Given the large financial commitment, I’ve had it pretty low on my list of priorities. There is a yellow “Dave and Colleen” bench from a different family (pictured above), and my aunt and uncle got a green bench a few years ago for their grandchildren that usually ends up on Machinery Hill.

Last week, someone on Mastodon mentioned that the program was going to end this year because they don’t have enough storage space to add more. I hadn’t read anything on the news and the fair did not email us about it (which they are usually really good about). When I checked the foundation website, it did say the program was ending soon and to get your orders in quickly.

I talked it over with Colleen the next day and we decided we should just do it (and agreed on a yellow “Kingsbury” bench). When I went back to place the order, that page now unfortunately said “…after 15-plus years, we have ended the recognition bench and table program. All bench and table donations made as of January 17, 2024 will be honored.” I emailed the foundation right away and received this response:

Unfortunately, we are completely sold out. We will not have a waitlist as the way that we were able to keep the opportunity fair we only accepted submissions with all information and that were fully funded. Our apologies, but stay tuned in future years for more recognition opportunities on the fairgrounds.

I’m no marketing genius, but it seems to me that if you are a non-profit trying to raise money, you should probably figure out a way to take it from people that want to give it to you. It’s fine if you need to end a program for logistical reasons, but the way this program ended doesn’t seem like it was done in a manner that would optimize the financial success of the foundation.

I still love the fair, but it will be hard to hear any future fundraising requests without thinking about how the end of the bench program was managed. Maybe the other Dave and Colleen will share theirs with us…