We had a 15th birthday celebration in our house this week. To celebrate, we made one of our favorite desserts: an Ice Cream cake. I think we got the recipe out of a kids cook book several years ago, and we actually don’t have a paper or digital copy. Instead, we just make it off memory, which works pretty well. Here’s my version of it:
I received a pleasant surprise delivery from UPS today: When I looked at the from-address on the label I realized what it must be: A “reward” packet from the good people at Relay.fm and St. Jude: A box of prizes for me, as their way of thanking me for raising a little bit of money ($1700, not so little? but not that much) for childhood cancer awareness month back in September.
Obviously, I didn’t raise the money just so I’d get an award, and I’d have said that I didn’t want one if I was asked (sorry, maybe they did ask and I forgot that I said “yes, please”?). But, I have to admit, this has really warmed my heart and made my day, getting these gifts. Thank you Stephen, Myke, and to everyone involved at St. Jude. It’s great to see the circle of giving continue, and this does motivate me to participate again next year 🙂
I had a pair of things to fix around the house recently, and I noticed a theme with both of them – that sometimes a simpler solution is the best one – despite the challenge that there might be in finding that simplicity. Perhaps that’s a version of “if I’d have had more time I would have written a shorter letter”, and it’s expected that something simple might be harder to come up with. Regardless of that, I wanted to collect and share those two stories here:
First, was the key for my 2013 Corolla. It’s the kind with both an old-fashioned metal key, and a built-in fob, or remote-control buttons on the base of the key. The problem was, that the plastic loop that allows the key to go onto a key ring had broken, so the key would fall off my key chain. I won’t go into details on my first attempted fix, other to say “zip ties and electrical tape”. Of course, I could have gotten a replacement, but doing that with the dealership, I assumed, would be at least a few hundred bucks, so I wanted to find a cheaper solution. I was able to find blank replacement keys on Amazon, but then there was the challenge of how to (1) get it cut, and (2) get the electronics reprogrammed. I reached out to a handful of locksmiths in the area, but not a single one gave a reasonable response to my inquiry. So I felt a little stuck.
Until I spent some time looking at the key and taking it apart. What I eventually realized was, that the base of they key is essentially a two-piece shell – one which has the key embedded into it, but the other, the back, is just a simple plastic case – and both pieces of the shell have a loop on them. So the simple solution I came up with was, to order a blank replacement, then take it apart and use its simple back to replace the back from my original. So I could keep using my original, and just have a working loop again, via the loop on the back case from the replacement. No locksmith or dealer needed. Simple.
My second story is about my wife’s iron. She has a very specific one that she likes, but a few months ago, the lid on its water tank broke, so she couldn’t use it, without water leaking out of the tank. Apparently this iron is discontinued, and after much searching, I was able to find just one site that still had it in stock – so I ordered a replacement. But, after just a few weeks of use, it started “shorting out”. I’m not sure if that’s the proper electrical term – but essentially it would start working fine, however, when moving the cord (which is inevitable when using the device) it would loose power and turn off. It was basically unusable.
At this point, I thought I might be able to disassemble the new iron, find the bad electrical connection, and fix it. I wasn’t sure if I could find it, and even if I did, if it would be safe to use after the repair. Regardless of my doubts, I started taking it apart and looking closely at all of its component parts. After several minutes of fiddling with it and thinking about it all, eventually I noticed that the water tank itself was a component part that could be removed. That’s when I remembered that we still had the old iron with the broken water tank lid, and then the solution was obvious: I just moved the tank from the new iron (with a good lid) to the original iron (with working electronics), and voila, we have a Frankenstein’s iron, but 100% functional, and totally safe, because it isn’t based on me fixing any wiring 🙂
Having both of these stories come up within about a week of each other struck the same chord in my brain, about how I was originally looking for some kind of bigger or more complicated solution to a problem, but in the end, simpler solutions were available to me. I feel like there’s some lesson to take from this, though I don’t quite see that bigger picture yet.
When I got my new M4 Mac Mini last month, I knew right away I wanted to use it for more than just a backup and file server.
So as of last night, I’ve completed the migration of this site, kelkhoff.com, to be running on my mac mini.
Here’s the full stack:
hover for kelkhoff.com DNS →
linode for load balancing, and TLS →
linode running an nginx docker image, doing a reverse proxy →
erro Dynamic DNS and port forwarding →
mac mini running wordpress and mysql under docker compose.
Hopefully that doesn’t give away too much infosec 😉
From a different point of view, here’s a different view of the full stack. Yes, I am using my Apple Vision Pro box as a rack, while I’m pending the purchase of a new 3D printer…
Anyway, I think the site’s performance is improved – but, I still do see some initial-connection delays when wordpress wants to download 50 images at the same time, or 100 javascript files. So, hopefully I can tune that, either at the linode or nginx side. Or, I might try to simplify the stack some. I do like having the internet hitting the linode balancer instead of coming DIRECTLY into my house, but at this point, I’m probably over-paying linode for what I’m getting from them, so I might be searching out a new cloud whatever-you-call that provider (like a cloudflare?)
I’ve been near-sighted since I was about ten years old. But here in my mid 40s, now my up-close vision is starting to falter too. I tried progressive lenses a few years ago, but didn’t really like them.
Anyway, one of the main things I have to hold farther away from my face to see all the time, is my iPhone. So, a couple days ago I activated the text-size setting, bumping it up just one level (110%), and boy, it’s a really nice quality of life improvement. So glad I’ve done it. Time to do the Apple Watch next.
I used to buy some box of frozen mashed sweet potatoes. They had some kind of sweet something mixed in them, and a crumbly pecan topping. They were so good! But I haven’t seen them at the grocery store for like a year or so, which made me sad.
But at the store this weekend, my little Vanessa saw all of the sweet potatoes that they had out for Thanksgiving, and she asked what they were, saying that they looked strange. So I grabbed one, knowing that I like them, but not knowing how I’d prepare it.
Now when I was a kid like she is now, I didn’t like sweet potatoes (for some reason!). My mom always made them very well, but they were a taste that I just didn’t like. Lucky for me though, I did somehow acquire a taste for them as an adult.
Anyway, I just googled for mashed sweet potatoes, and it was pretty easy to make one: I peeled it and cubed it, then boiled it for about 15 minutes, until I could smash it with tongs. Then mashed it with a fork, mixing in a little milk, butter, and (real) maple syrup. Then I made a little crumb topping with melted butter and brown sugar, and voila!
It was so easy, and pretty much just as good as the frozen ones I used to love, so I think I’ve got a new regular menu item for cooking. Which is nice.
The Overcast app (my podcast player of choice) got a new feature last week: The ability to show you how many hours you’ve listened to each of your shows over the past year. Here’s my top-9, in a fancy image that Overcast produces:
For the most part, this is pretty on-brand for me. Going through the list…
I feel it’s my duty to correct an entry I made here a few weeks back, re: my electric kettle’s stay-warm feature oddly “breaking”… turns out (and maybe this isn’t a surprise to anyone who knows me well), it was just me that “broke”. Somehow, after using this kettle for something like six months, on the day in question above, I randomly forgot how to use the stay-warm timer. Instead of clicking the button and then turning the dial to increase how long it should stay warm, my brain decided that morning, to repeatedly press the button. Which isn’t ever how it worked.
Anyway – good news – my kettle keeps my coffee water hot for as long as I like now – so my second cup comes out faster during my working days.
As I’ve spent 2024 losing over fifty pounds, it’s come to my attention that I need some better-fitting blue jeans.
I’ve always worn a 32” inseam. But this week, for the first time since maybe before high school, I’m wearing (comfortably) a 32” waist as well!
So, that makes my pants 32×32 – which I will call Square Pants.
I got a new pair of glasses from Zenni Optical last Friday. For awhile now I’ve been looking for a smaller (but not too small) circular lens – kinda going for the Steve Jobs or John Lennon look. I think this pair has nailed it. I’m pretty happy with how they look, which I think is a little unusual for me.
I continue to be shocked how inexpensive glasses are at Zenni. These – were under $60, even with a bunch of special magic options (which yes, probably do nothing) added to the lenses.
And – since they’re so price-effective, when I realized that I accidentally ordered a -4.75 instead of -4.25 for my right eye, I didn’t even mind just ordering a second pair. I thought I could tell the right eye was a little off, so I guess it’ll be better when I get the strength that the doctor ordered?
Oh – and I have 2 old pairs (plus whichever of these is less good to see through) that I’m going to donate to the Lions. Because (1) I heard someone recently say how they used donated Lions glasses when they were a kid, and that made a difference in their life, and (2) because I feel more and more compelled to give more and more back to the world recently, and what a small thing that is – to donate glasses that will otherwise just sit in my drawer unused.
On Friday, 2024-11-08, I got a new M4 Pro Mac Mini 🙂
My intention was to use this machine as a home server, primarily for backups, but also for, idk, any servers I might want/need to run – such as Home Assistant, Octoprint, and/or any personal apps I build.
I recently picked up a 4TB Samsung T9 SSD, which is plenty big (by almost 2x) for my current backup needs.
I had been backing everything up to a Synology, and then from there, offsite via Backblaze B2… but my bill for that service keeps growing (as it does), and just past $40/month! By switching to this Mac Mini based approach, I can use Backblaze’s single-computer = $99/year plan, and … eventually the Mini + SSD will pay for themselves 😉
And in the mean time, I do have a suuuper fast new Mac here. I’m trying hard not to switch my daily-usage to be on the Mini… Build times for my main work app were about 50% of what they are on my M1 Max MacBook Pro — not that it’s ever felt slow to me. I think I’ll stay here for now, and try to just let the mini do the job it was bought for.
A month ago (or six months? who can tell), Timmy mentioned getting a tray or rack or other kind of “mount” for his MacBook, to elevate it, and keep it off his desk. At least, that’s the story I heard. I thought it was interesting, so I Amazoned for one for myself (side note, Google became a verb, but Amazon didn’t? I think it’s high-time we fix that).
Anyway, I had one in my cart for some number of months (see above). And I finally pulled the trigger last night, with overnight delivery – so, now my MacBook Pro is flying too 🙂
A couple of nights ago, when it was raining like crazy here (my 8-inch rain-gauge was overflowing!), our power went out for a second around 5AM. Not sure if this is just coincidence, or if there’s a causal relationship here, but later that morning, my electric kettle would no longer let me press the “warm” button multiple times to set it to stay warm for a longer period. That is to say – it used to be, each time you hit that button, it would add 30 minutes to the “stay warm” timer. Now, when I hit the button it puts up a 30 – but hitting it again, just deletes the 30. I only thought about a possible connection between the power-fail and this change in behavior because, whenever the kettle loses power, it forgets that I want it in “quiet” mode – so when i first turned it on, it was beeping at me, which made me think about the fact that it had lost power. Then, when I saw the change in behavior on the stay-warm function, I wondered if those thing were related. I did un-plug, wait 10, and re-plug, to see if that would fix it, but, no dice. :shrug:
