Today feels like an inside the house workday seeing how it is fairly cold outside, and the shed office is a bit cooler than I’d like. I could head to a local office we have that I have visited once but this is highly unlikely since it’d mean braving the cold to start the car and drive.
It was another cold day but I was getting a little stir crazy sitting with no running and I couldn’t go a third. So I decided to venture out for a short one and it wasn’t too bad since there was not much wind. Also, got my yearly Frozen Face so I can check that off my list.
Blog Question Challenge 2025
It seems as though Jason has challenged me to do some work this weekend and answer questions. 🫠
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
This is a great question and I don’t have a great answer. I know I dabbled back in my High School days of just writing silly things and posting it to a static webpage with just straight HTML. So that would have been at least back in 1998 since I worked at an Internet Service Provider with a good friend of mine. I probably kept doing that off and on then even though college as I have recolections of sites and that is where my Brebs.net domain came from (probably more on that another time). However, I would say actually documented in a CMS kind of blogging software started in 2007 when my wife and I went to Peru we documented out travels and then we started another one up the months before our first was born in 2009. However, you will see this blog really only goes back to 2011 when I started doing one just more for myself again. Also, I don’t really have anything prior to 2007 online either but I do have the Travels and Family one still online that reminds me of another project that I want to do something with them at some point.
What platform are you using to manage your blog, and why do you use it?
Everything is in Micro.blog for me at this moment and no real plans to change. I have tinkered with some other platforms since going all in on Micro.blog in January of 2022 but this platform fits my needs of having short posts to document things I am thinking about as well as longer form ones as well. I appreciate the work that Manton has done so far and I know he keeps making it better and adding features from time to time.
Have you blogged on other platforms before?
Of course I have… Seems like a silly question as I would like to find the one person that has been blogging for longer than a decade that has used the same platform since they originally started. I am going to include in here some of the places I have trialed as well but just didn’t stick but I was more curious. So here is the list:
- Micro.blog
- Blogger
- WordPress at Wordpress.com
- WordPress Self Hosted
- Weblog.lol
- Pika.Page^
- Scribbles^
- Obsidian.Publish^
- Public.Me^
Honestly now that I typed these out I feel like there is probably others that I am just not remembering that I gave a try. However, that have been more short lived or that I am justing giving a try to for fun I noted with a ^.
How do you write your posts?
Everything now starts in Obsidian and gets published to Micro.blog from obsidian. The nice thing is since pulling all my posts down into Obsidian I can go back and edit everything in there too and using Micro.Publish plugin it is super simple to post and update anything.
What’s your favorite post on your blog?
I think my personal favorite is the one where I documented running a 5k a day for 365 days. It is mostly two fold because on the one had it was for me to just document what I did and my own accomplishment as that is really what I like about a blog is a good way to document things. The second is I did get a lot of feedback about it and in fact connected me with a conversation on a Podcast with two guys talking about running and one of which I still chat with from time to time today. The is the second part of Blogging that is amazing is that it does connect you with people you might have not run across in your normal day to day life and makes the world feel that much smaller.
Any future plans for the blog?
I have no real plans at this time as I like the current setup and it is working pretty well. I have been thinking about putting all my images on Bunny to have them hosted from there but for now I think having everything on Micro.blog works perfectly for what I want.
Who will participate next?
Is it a good morning? 🥶 I guess I am inside with a hot cup of coffee with little plans to do much more outside today than shuttle kids to some games.
With this… we have another teenager in the house.
Happy Birthday to our oldest daughter who always seems amazes me. 🎉🎂🥳
Morning run and the weather felt great. Well the weather felt great but my legs were screaming at me. I probably shouldn’t have pushed it but the next 4 days are going to be cold and I wanted to get a mile builder.
Not sure why but I find this article very interesting learning about Astoria, Oregon as well as hearing the coined term “The Graveyard of the Pacific” about the Columbia River. The best part is if you don’t want to read the article you can watch the YouTube video instead.
So nice out today I ditched my outer shell jacket for this run. Didn’t have time for a super long one today which would have been nice but at the same point I was feeling tired so probably worked out for the best.
This run felt good today even though at the time I went out the clouds rolled in. I did come across this city water truck “smoothing” out this city ice rink. I always wondered how they resurfaced them.
It was not as cold out as I thought it was going to be which was a good thing as it was 0°F. It was good to get out for a run after a busy hockey tournament weekend.
My daughter got moved to forward for hockey during this tournament weekend and well today she shined. Today she scored 2 goals on the same shift in under a min. 🤩 She is a great defensive player and I love seeing her now flex her skills on forward.
This goal was right after the first one, I just love the grinding it out to make the play.
These girls got it done today with two shutouts paving their path to an extra game at Freezeburgr 🥶.
I felt like I had to make a quick run along the water today. However, more sleep would have been better but after I woke up I could not fall back to sleep so i figured I would be productive. It would be interesting to hit this route sometime in the summer as I am sure it is a nice view then as well.
Got these miles in before a turn in events today that had me driving to Duluth tonight. Glad I added the extra mile today as I was feeling good and in case I don’t get another run in I will be happy with what I have done this week.
Nothing special on this run today just getting some miles and thinking done. However, I happened to pull up the Training Today app and realized I had a 0 so maybe I should have taken a rest day.
Good run to start the week off in between a bunch of meetings. Found another very nice ice rink along my meandering route as well. 🏒
Cold one out running today with temps low single digits in not only actual but feels like. Wanted to get some miles before the car trip to Iowa this afternoon.
I enjoy stumbling upon some amazing rinks when I go for runs. Today did not disappoint as this one in the distance had a scoreboard. I mean what.?!?. Well done 👏
2024 Application Defaults
It is about time as it seems like everyone else is doing a 2024 update to the Dual of the Defaults so I figured I would get it in right under the wire. Again a big shout out to Hemispheric Views and their Episode 097 when this idea was hatched and to Robb who is still keeping track of all of this.
So onto the 2024 list and lets see what has changed (2023 List)…
- ✉️ Mail Client: Apple Mail
- 📨 Mail Server: GoogleSuite & Apple Mail
- 📝 Notes: Apple Notes (plus Obsidian plus GoodNotes for Work) - Change
- ✅ To-Do: Reminders
- 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera.app
- 📚 Photo Management: Photos.app
- 🗓️ Calendar: Calendar.app
- 🗄️ Cloud file storage: iCloud and Google Drive (still a mess but getting better)
- 📰 RSS: Reeder with FreshRSS
- 📇 Contacts: Contacts.app (Google Backend)
- 🕸️ Browser: Safari (plus Chrome for Work)
- 💬 Chat: iMessage and Discord
- 🔖 Bookmarks: LinkAce - Change (also I blame Robb for this)
- 👓 Read It Later: Not using anything at the moment
- 📜 Word Processing: Google Docs
- 📊 Spreadsheets: Google Sheets (plus Excel for Work)
- 🛝 Presentations: Google Slides
- 🛒 Shopping Lists: Alexa Lists 😱
- 🧑🍳 Meal Planning: None - Based on what I buy we cook 🤷♂️
- 💰 Budgeting & Personal Finance: Copilot - Change
- 🗞️ News: Apple News and various sources in RSS
- 🎶 Music: Apple Music
- 🎧 Podcasts: PocketCasts
- 🔐Password Management: iCloud KeyChain (Not a change but found my old KeePass file as it had some things on it I needed for my kids over break. So it is kind of in use right now as I need to migrate that in 2025 to something better.)
So overall I have had 3 changes of which my note taking apps I feel like change all of the time so that is really hard to count. So in other things I think the most sinificant is the other two as my wife and I have settled in on Copilot and have enjoyed using it for basic finance tracking. Also, even though I kind of did it on a whim and figured I would go back to Shaarli I have been enjoying using LinkAce for bookmarking. I think my only issue is every time it says there is an upgrade I forget how to do it. However, now that I think about it, it was the same for Shaarli too.