Popping Day/Nyquil like candy and using Afrin to gain some semblance of breathing back isn’t how I intendeded to spend the week between Christmas and New Years. But of all weeks to be sick, this is probably one of the better ones given work is all but off and all the kids are home from school.

Spent some time tinkering around with this old thrift store find that needed a bit of work. The front lens cover had some fungus on the inside. A heat gun, a cheap metal pick, and a quick cleaning later solved the problem.

Now to put some film through this lovely little 35mm point-and-shoot.

While the final grades are technically pending, I have finished all my coursework and examinations for what is effectively my first semester of college¹.

I never intended to return to school, but the stars aligned enough to justify taking on the extra workload. It’s been a doozy with full-time work, freelance work, and the ever-important work of being a father to two young children, but it’s been a solid experience so far.

And, for the first time in my life, I’ve ended the semester with a 4.0. I don’t expect that to carry on throughout the remainder of my degree, but hopefully, I can sneak through with a 3.5 or higher GPA when all is said and done—a vast improvement over the 2.8 I left high school with.

Update (December 14, 2023): The grades are officially in my transcript: 4.0 across the board.

The older I get, the more I want to work on smaller screens.

I started writing on my glorious little 13” plastic white MacBook, moved up to a 27” iMac and continued to explore various multi-monitor solutions in every configuration imaginable. Now all I want is a cozy mechanical keyboard (my Keychron K2), a comfortable mouse (my Logi Ego M575), and a reasonably-sized screen (my 11” pre-M1 iPad Pro).

Larger displays only lead to more room for distractions and if there’s one thing I don’t need any help with it’s getting even more distracted than I do in the best circumstances.

Every single day I manage to completely forget a word I’m looking for while writing. I know exactly what I want to say conceptually, but the specific word alludes me.

Today, that word was “impromptu.”

Last week was one of the wildest experiences of my life. As part of my Testing Editor role at Hearst Autos, I tagged along with Car and Driver for their annual Lightning Lap event at Virginia International Raceway.

While I didn’t get to drive cars at full speed, I did get to move around cars that cost more than twice as much as my home and managed to get a Mustang Dark Horse to a meager 70MPH around the track while lining it up for the full-car photo shoot.

In addition to snapping photos and videos for forthcoming Car and Driver e-commerce articles, I also lugged around my trusty Contax 645 and snapped a few photos of the cars we had on hand for the event. It’ll be a while before I send off the film and get back the scans, but it’s been a while since I’ve shot 120 film, so we’ll see how the Kodak Gold 200 turns out.

There needs to be a way to turn an old iPhone or iPad into a CarPlay module. I have a few old devices I could mount onto my dash and use for Maps/Music/Etc. And you’d assume the tech for Wireless CarPlay is there from a current iPhone given AirDrop and other wireless capabilities.

I’ve spent a bit of time this week reducing my online footprint.

I’ll never get it to zero. After all, I’ve spent the past 13 years building an online portfolio of writing, photography, and video work under my own name for various publications whose content I no longer have any control over. But aside from the publications I’ve written for over the years (and continue to in my current role), my goal is to get my footprint as small as possible in terms of deleting social profiles and other content that shows up in search.

In an ideal world, I would’ve started my career with a pseudonym and kept with it over the years. But as an 18 year old with a unique name, I figured I’d run with it. Not to mention I started in photo/journalism, where pseudonyms are rather frowned upon. Alas, it is what it is and all I can do now is to delete, discontinue, and remove what I can in hopes the inevitable link rot will do the rest.

After a week of high-80º and low-90º days, this forecast is very much welcomed. Now all we need is some rain. We’ve only had ~1” of rain in the past 30 days or so, which is ridiculous for a Michigan spring.

My four-year-old son calls “convertible” cars “carnivores,” and I’m not sure I’m prepared for the day when he corrects his mistake. It’s too damn cute.

After three years of trying other daily planners, I’m back on the Hobonichi Techo bandwagon.

I finally ended up pulling the trigger on a standing desk. Until recently I didn’t have the space for one, but now I do and figured it was a good time. Ended up going with the Moss Green Ply Jarvis desk from Fully with an ErgoDriven Topo standing mat (the Moss Green color is almost identical to the wall color I painted my office, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for making it a match).

Little in this world is as refreshing as beachside autumns in northwest Michigan.

Well, that’s one way to spell faucet.

You know you’ve hit peak parenthood when you can tell what Hot Wheels car you’ve stepped on by the feeling of the metal and plastic bits that dig into the bottom of your feet.