Paulie Gatorade!
The little present to myself arrived today – thanks, @billamend
Pork Royalty in Saint Paul 🐖 👑
It’s like an apocalypse movie
IT’S HAPPENING – welcome to the neighborhood, Chef Facundo 🍕
Sqrel should totally be a winner
Nice.
American grocery stores are really pretty amazing
These jokers on Oak Island should bring in some Iron Rangers, set them loose on the money pit, then get out of the way
Salty donkeys are the best donkeys
DK’s January Journal
Haven’t really written much lately – both here or on Twitter (my last remaining social media account). The Banff trip from January 2020 seems like an eternity ago and while I’m very grateful for our health and stability, it’s been a mentally tough twelve months. There are so many things I miss right now: attending live concerts and sporting events, eating out, happy hours with co-workers, walking around the Great Minnesota Get-Together, traveling to Disneyland and Vegas. Luxuries, to be sure, but I still miss them.
So what else is going on? The kids are both doing well. Work for Colleen has been intense (as it is for everyone in healthcare these days). With football season complete, my job is all about planning, budgets and maintenance until the future of events becomes a little clearer. It’s stressful being a department of one (and the 24/7 on call), but I’m trying to balance things as best as I can. The days and nights really all blend together now, as do weekdays and weekends. I’ve noticed a shift lately of time seeming to pass by faster, which is definitely a different vibe from a few months ago. Looking forward to the new Boludo to open near the office.
We’re in house search mode and it’s been absolutely bonkers (that’s my nemesis website above). Everything you read about the real estate market right now is true – almost every new listing is receiving multiple offers on the first day. If it doesn’t, you wonder what’s wrong with the place. We’ve only made one offer so far and were outbid (by a lot). Many showings get canceled before we even get there because they sell so quickly. Hoping more inventory comes online as the weather gets better. We are being patient and prudent for now – it will happen when it happens.
NVM – it was called Chunky, by sleepoversf
Internet fail: why can’t Google find the name of that ten year old Tumblr theme I liked with the columns and post types?
Look who’s open again
Football Sunday Food
The learning never stops
Hualālai on TV 🌴 Snow falling sideways outside ❄️ AWS: phpMyAdmin ✅ SSL Labs “A” Rating ✅ .htpasswd ✅
Couldn’t match the hype
Ubuntu Server 20.04 on AWS: upgrades ✅ nginx with virtual hosts ✅ PHP 8.0.1 install ✅ MariaDB ✅ Let’s Encrypt certbot ✅
Tiny fry, large fry
One Biiiiillion Dollars
We can see a greener future
Nothing beats the actual office
Still an absolute mess
Lowertown PSA: starting today, Kyatchi is open for takeout *and* limited onsite dining
This is so exciting!
Inauguration Day 2021 🇺🇸
How awesome is that?
Chicken, chocolate and chihuahuas (and more!)
Golf on my birthday (kinda)
Man, after-work drinks taste so much better than instead-of-work drinks…
- Bean
Historic Carver
Nive Man Sunday Dinner
Fried chicken + donuts = 💯 Thanks, @debrouillard52
Farah’s Feline Flip
Thanks, ADMIN
Want a lick? Sike!
Winter storm warning
Thanks for the recipe
The taro chips from Union Hmong Kitchen are amazing
End of an era
Happy 2-0, MK 🎉
If I could only be 1/10th as cool as this 😎
I’m optimistic, and I’m really looking forward to World of Concrete in June…
- Steve Hill
Cool to see @theCharlieParr right in front of my favorite sound board spot for week #2 @FirstAvenue
Finally, a Grand Story
The very clever series of commercials for Grand Casino (developed by the talented Chad Germann and his team at Red Circle Agency) has always made me feel like I should have one of those experiences at some point. Sadly, I’ve never had a large jackpot at Hinckley or Mille Lacs, but today my daughter and I at least had something happen that might qualify as a true Grand Story:
Hinckley has a ton of my favorite game, Black Orchid, often with unusually high progressives. The first machine I played today had a large frog progressive, so MK pulled out her lucky frog (a handmade clay pin) and set it on the machine. A few minutes later, boom, $78.43 frog jackpot. On our way out, we saw another Black Orchid that had a very large butterfly progressive that we tried to hit (unsuccessfully). Just before giving up, though, we hit a smaller $30.61 frog jackpot that put us back on the positive side of the ledger for the night…
Prime rib, Grand-style
Luna needs a boyfriend
Had a great day breaking in these fun Rossignols. Also tracked down @4waytest, the best dressed man in Minnesota
It’s a War by @tbtduluth was the perfect song to come up on shuffle as we crested the hill on I-35
Fire Darth Vader
Dell battery management 😡
No better way to travel
Always feel guilty eating an entire Party Pizza by myself, but it’s really smaller than a slice at Cossetta
When he entered office four years ago, Republicans controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress; when he leaves, Democrats will hold all three. The last time that happened was 1892…
- The Economist
It’s been quite a day
January sunshine
The new toy has arrived
Minnesotan Chinese
Early 2021 Brain Dump
It’s already been eight months since the last one, so let’s do this:
- For my Christmas and birthday gift this year, I got new skis and bindings (returning to my classic Rossi/Marker combo). Had a mixed experience at The House – will probably go back to Joe’s next time.
- With the skis finally here, trying to figure out when I can break them in. Lutsen has some really appealing midweek flex pricing, so that is a leading contender. Might do an Afton or Welch day and still really want to hit Beaver Creek someday (as well as return to Schweitzer).
- I got all excited about responsive, mobile-friendly WordPress themes this week, but have hit a testing roadblock. MAMP worked out of the box with a plain vanilla WordPress install, but I haven’t been able to get this site transferred over successfully.
- Thought about tossing my current theme completely (instead of retro-fitting for mobile) and customizing a theme like this one, but now I’m not sure which direction I want to go.
- Also not entirely 100% behind WordPress these days: don’t like Gutenberg and complexity seems to be increasing overall. Don’t see any great alternatives on the horizon, though.
- I’ve been happier with my transition to AWS, but maintenance and upgrade issues with the Bitnami WordPress Stack are making me reconsider moving to a straight LAMP virtual server instead.
- Yes, I do keep my iPhone boxes (but I’m trying to get better about recycling them).
- We’re house shopping, but this market is crazy aggressive right now. If you know someone in the Twin Cities thinking about selling a good “old people” house, please hit me up.
- Adult ear infections are not for the faint of heart.
- My Apple Watch move streak is closing in on 270 days – shooting for a year, then it can restart whenever.
- I bought a pair of Exerstrider Nordic walking poles after reading the story in the Strib, but I haven’t read the setup and training instructions yet. Seems like it will be fun.
- OWC has agreed to refund the SSD purchase, thereby ending my iMac kernel panic trauma.
- I have temporary computer options in place, but do want to move to an M1 machine. At first I thought I would do a Mac mini with a large, third-party monitor, but the retina screens on the iMacs just look so much better to me. I’ll probably wait for the M1 iMac later this year (with lots of RAM and SSD storage).
- I’m craving a Fuddruckers burger so badly I would consider an eight hour round-trip drive to South Dakota to get one.
- Sad the Vikings season turned out the way it did, but at least we get the Dallas circus back in town later this year. It will be nice to have Wild hockey again soon (helps to be a night owl) and I’m cautiously optimistic about the Twins and the Saints (but don’t get the whole “we’ve invited” thing – is there a deal or not?).
- The first Sunday of the Charlie Parr online residency at First Avenue was so emotional – make sure and catch the rest of them (every Sunday in January at 8 p.m. on his YouTube page) and drop him some money via GoFundMe.
- Speaking of music, we really enjoyed the Bee Gees documentary on HBO – nice job by Frank Marshall (with lots of fun cameos).
- Long live Grogu!
Welcome 2021, nice to have you around…
Snol the Hipster
Merry and Happy
Sunday night with @theCharlieParr @FirstAvenue
Tried MAMP on the new laptop for the first time – so much easier and quicker than my old test environment setup
Bee Gees Doc + popcorn
