Some chicken recon for @KeriFromKansas from Nashville Coop
Hello, deer
The penultimate round
Burgeoning Beanstalk
Get it while you can, Minnesota
Monday grease marks
Time makes little sense these days, but today marks five years at the stadium 🎉
Highest 40-cent Orchid ever
Move Streak Milestone
Welcome to my nightmare
Star Wars Snol
Happy Halloween to Nive Man Tina and the gang @SaintDinette
Sixty and sixty-one
Snol’s long lost cousin?
October 30th last year was a million ways different from today
Ran across this old image from @twindependent – so much overlap with my set (miss you @FirstAvenue)
A little Snol time tonight
The secret to IT success
Remember the fail whale?
Standing there alone, the ship is waiting. All systems are go, “Are you sure?” Control is not convinced, but the computer has the evidence. No need to abort, the countdown starts…
- Major Tom
Congrats to MLB for also getting to the finish line in 2020 ⚾️
Windows and macOS updates suddenly feel like a walk in the park
These two ❤️
I could quarantine all winter and not get this photo library under control
Pacific Blue iPhone 12 Pro
It’s that time of year again – the iPhone Upgrade Program notified me that I could trade in my iPhone 11 Pro from last year for a new model. After reviewing the options, I decided to pre-order a 256GB Pacific Blue iPhone 12 Pro. My most important features continue to be the camera and battery life, but it turns out storage size wasn’t as big a deal as I thought last year. I jumped up to the 512GB version on the 11, but I wasn’t even using 100GB. I’m still a no-case guy, but the colors don’t really do anything for me one way or the other (same with the other new accessories).
The Apple Store app pre-order process is still very easy and I didn’t have any problems submitting it a week ago. Shipping notifications and tracking from UPS went as expected and the new phone was delivered on time Friday afternoon. I don’t mind the lack of a power adapter or “crapbuds” in the box, as I don’t need either. After losing my original pair of AirPods Pro, it has really become apparent how much you need wireless headphones in the Apple ecosystem. It’s just so much easier than having nineteen different adaptors and cables. I found it strange that there was no up-sell during the pre-order process from AT&T to move to a 5G plan, so I’ll have to change that on my own to test the 5G features (no real rush on that yet, as I don’t know about their local coverage, flavors of 5G or impact on battery life).
After unboxing the new phone, I did one final iCloud backup of the old one. The setup process on the new one required having the old phone nearby and started off smoothly, but I ended up having a bunch of issues this time around. The process did something to my watch, which didn’t initially unlock my iMac (but at least I didn’t lose any of my health data). One of my 2FA apps, Google Authenticator, didn’t transfer settings and I had to follow the directions in this post to help with that (TOTP Authenticator transferred seamlessly). My credit union app and debit card required a bunch of manual set up to restore, but my Apple Card transferred over with no issues. Tweetbot needed new auth tokens to work, my personal 7minutemiles.com email had to be re-authenticated, Siri CarPlay location services settings didn’t transfer and it took a long time to pull down all of the items from the iCloud backup.
I also had an issue with the new phone trusting my iMac, but that just turned out to be user error. I still do not like synching music and photos in the Finder instead of iTunes/Music, but I think I finally have things set up correctly now (there were a bunch of random songs selected for sync in the album tab of the music selection, even though I only wanted to sync by playlist). Very thankful that 1Password transferred over with no issues, as that is a vital service for me now. It’s weird reading a Matthew Panzarino iPhone review that didn’t involve a visit to Disneyland, but I guess that’s the reality of 2020. I do agree with him about the general feel of the 12 line versus the 11, but don’t really buy into the Rolex analogy.
Colleen is waiting for the Max, as she wants to have the “best” phone in the family. It will be interesting to see how the larger camera sensor in that model does with overall photo quality, but that one is just too big for my hands and pockets. I think MK wants a mini and SK is probably due for a new one as well. Onward!
Prime Day Wave Riders!
Frozen Restaurant Week
Thanks to everyone who made this Tom Petty stream possible – it’s been amazing
2020 Top 7 Online Reads
Back in 2017, I posted my top 7 online publications. The list today has changed a little:
- Star Tribune*
- Washington Post*
- New York Times*
- The Atlantic*
- The Economist*
- Daring Fireball (RSS)
- 9to5Mac (RSS)
* paid subscriber
Uptown was always the best – lots of good memories in that store
Jerks.
Thank you, Zen Box
Today’s life hacks: turned off all iMac notifications and new mail sounds, used iPad as a second monitor via Sidecar
Pandemic drivers + first snowfall of the season = just about what you’d expect
A very different kind of Patch Tuesday
Mondays are for pizza
Mr. Clean in the hood
We would have to have 6 oz. Coca-Cola in the studio. When they were working on the Traveling Wilburys’ first album, Roy told Tom that the sugar and the syrup put just a little smooth on your voice…
- Jim Scott
RIP to the legend whose namesake press box I sit in every game
End of the line?
Danger lurks in these wild woods
Craziest golf weather ever
I don’t need no arms around me. And I don’t need no drugs to calm me. I have seen the writing on the wall. Don’t think I need anything at all…
- Another Brick In The Wall (Part III)
Not a bad day’s work
Not that I mind, but everyone else at Rayette seems to have forgotten that we have an exercise room
The internet has all the answers
Tonight’s rabbit hole: Lost Spur golf sign > Osman Shriners > Freemasonry > 1917 Code of Canon Law > OBE
Last of the fall bike rides?
The barges are active
First golf outing with Jeff
Per the @kilbo tip, had Bezos send me one of these babies
Almost done with the JNUC 2020 sessions – thanks to all who shared their knowledge (for free)
Freddy’s Freaky Flip
Leaf days are numbered
Strongly endorse the apple and hard cider tasting kits @sweetlandorchrd – perfect day for a visit
Good fortune has arrived
This soup, though
Solid Weekend Update and Jack White made a strong case for the best SNL performance ever crown
Every time I hear someone say “offices are dead and aren’t coming back,” I wonder how many companies they have actually worked for
Fall (re)construction
Pizza in the park
Top 7 Minnesota Courses
Patrick’s list of his top 10 Minnesota golf courses got me thinking. People often ask me my favorite courses in the state, but I’ve never really wanted to rank them. I’ve also never joined a club, so there are a number of great private courses that I’ve only played a handful of times (and some key ones I’ve still yet to play). Throw in the recent Minnesota public and private rankings from Golfweek and I guess it’s time to finally come up with my list. But since this is 7 Minute Miles, we only do “Top 7” lists around here, OK?
Before we start, a few general comments. Golf has been insanely popular in Minnesota during COVID, which has made it harder to get tee times all over this season. This is a complete reversal of the downward slide the industry took since the “Tiger Boom,” which lead to the closing of so many courses in the state (Joe Bissen documents this history extremely well in his two books on the topic). It’s been a really long time since Minnesota had any courses listed in national “best new course” rankings, but we definitely punch above our weight class nationally, with a wide range of great courses that are typically much less expensive to play than other parts of the country.
Full disclosure: I’m a big fan of Donald Ross and local architects Paul Miller and Garrett Gill are friends of mine. Minnesota has many great Ross courses that don’t make my list, but are truly great courses. Northland and White Bear Yacht Club, in particular, would likely make the list if I got to play them more often (and I’ve never played Woodhill or Minikahda). I’m curious to play Minneapolis again after the big redo, but the layout wasn’t one of my favorites before that work was done. Gill and/or Miller worked on many of my favorite public courses around here, including two that aren’t in my top seven, but are very close to the cut: Legends Club and Meadows at Mystic Lake.
I should also talk briefly about the Brainerd lakes area. There are a concentration of spectacular courses there, but most of them get canceled out for me by the Jeffrey Brauer trio of courses farther north. So I while I think courses like The Classic and The Preserve are wonderful, I’d still rather play at Fortune Bay and Giants Ridge. Deacon’s Lodge is the only course on the Golfweek public list that I haven’t played, so I may have to revisit my thinking about this at some point (I also haven’t played Golden Eagle in Fifty Lakes).
Lists like this are always subjective (and ultimately political), but this is my take for 2020. With all of that out of the way, let’s get started.
The flowers from @sushirocks are thriving
The new sign at Gross 👌🏻
