PSA for @BlueJays fans. The game on Friday vs. the Angels is only on Apple TV+. On the bright side, it’s a late game and you can watch for free. Still, these MLB deals stink for the average fan.

Tried (and succeeded) in pulling the old Moen cartridge out. Pretty clear to me now that the new one is in that the plumber that installed this one likely melted the inside seals when he installed it. Never quite felt right to operate. Nice win to start the day.

Tried (and failed) to pull a Moen cartridge out of the shower faucet this evening. I’ve done these a few times before without trouble, but this one just won’t give up. Going to Home Depot first thing tomorrow to get a special puller tool. Last resort will be a plumber, I guess.

Will it ever end? I’m honestly starting to wonder why I would ever want to cross the border and visit that country ever again.

So many transport nerds. Oh to be a part of a day like this. Everyone truly chuffed to ride the new trains. www.youtube.com/watch

New transit lines opening is always a great day for a city and Toronto has quite a few substantial projects on the go (pardon the pun). Besides the Crosstown, there’s the Finch West LRT, Hurontario LRT, big GO expansion, extension of Line 2 eastwards, and the Ontario Line.

If I lived in London, today I’d be out riding the new CrossElizPurpleTrain or whatever Geoff Marshall has decided the line that isn’t a Tube line should be called. We’ll get our own #purpletrain moment in Toronto sometime in early 2023 when the Crosstown starts up along Eglinton.

It’s 7:15 P.M. and the random fireworks are already starting. Hopefully most people run out of them by 10:30 P.M. or so.

Nothing like trying to re-train YouTube on what you are interested in and more importantly what you aren’t interested in. So much crap, news, fake news, entertainment “news” and just straight up click-bait garbage content.

I drove through Uxbridge, Ontario today on the way home from some train watching. Damage from the storm yesterday is severe including damage to the York-Durham Heritage Railway, homes and businesses and the Trinity United Church. www.youtube.com/watch

Nice day today, other than that line of heavy rain and strong winds that rolled through this afternoon. Tomorrow I hope to be trackside to photograph some trains for the first time in ages. I’ll have the drone up if the weather cooperates.

Ballgame with the guys did not disappoint. Jays won 2-1. Romano came in for the save so we got the whole light show thing in the 9th. It was great to hang out again after a couple of years.

Work for a bit, then we’re off to the Blue Jays baseball game today. Looking forward to some in-person time with some of my co-workers. It’s been a long time.

Sometimes it’s the little things. We’re relocating our outside hose tap tomorrow from an inconvenient location on one side of our house to a far more convenient location on the other side. This is Toronto, so I’m thinking it’ll lead to a $30k increase in property value.

I had the desk, got the chair in the spring of 2020. Frosted the window and added the 27" 4K monitor in the summer of 2020. The personal MacBook came for Christmas in 2020.

Then a Synology came along last summer and I scrounged up the little Samsung monitor (with an Amazon FireTV stick) for YouTube slow tv background visuals and noise.

The storage units to the right are brand new this week and really helped declutter the space visually. Oh, and the LED light for some fake sunshine was an early 2020 purchase as well.

If you asked me in March, 2020, how long I thought it would be until we returned to the office at least part-time, I would have said by the fall. Here we are 27 months later and the answer to that question is now “never”.

I need to paint still but after more than two years working remote, I’m finally making progress in my home office environment.

I did a big desk cleanup last week, and yesterday I put together a pair of storage units from IKEA to further remove clutter and make my office a bit more calming. For the first time in its life, my printer isn’t sitting on a box on the floor.

Speaking as a someone with 15 years in the business of domains and DNS, don’t use DNSSEC unless you have a really good reason why you need to use it AND also understand how it works (and how you can really break things badly). news.ycombinator.com/item

Sure sign that summer is not far away in Toronto: the roof is open for tonight’s Blue Jays game vs. the Mariners. First game under open skies this season.

Successful personal day. Got some expired IDs and such sorted for myself and the kid. Dealt with some banking tasks (old accounts cleaned up, etc.). Assembled some IKEA storage and tidied the clutter in my home office. Much better.

Instagram has a new app icon. I’ll reserve judgment until the rest of the internet tells me whether I should love it or hate it.

Contrast with the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) here in my city which, for whatever reason, seems intent on linking accessibility with handicap or disability. That goes all the way down to using the wheelchair icon on the link to their Accessibility page. Removing barriers to transit usage is more than accommodating disabled riders. Step-free describes the removal of physical barriers beautifully and I wish the TTC used that term here.

Accessibility should be inclusive of all barriers, both physical and non-physical. That could include things like financial barriers, language, wayfinding, safety and even where transit is provided in the city to ensure that all residents have equitable access to move around their city.

Also kudos to Transport for London (TfL) for the work being done to provide step-free access on more and more of the network. tfl.gov.uk/travel-in…

The British term “step-free” when describing fully-accessible stations on the transit network is so nice. It’s a brilliant description of exactly what the stations are without ascribing a specific use case or type of user. From the street to the train, there are no steps.

Finding myself rooting for the Penguins tonight, mostly because of Crosby. But I have the Rangers in my bracket so…

(what a goal that was!)

Wow. Another epic first round collapse. Gotta love the consistency from the Leafs!

Leafs fans get a Game 7 vs. Tampa Bay on Saturday that absolutely none of them want.

Mayor John Tory proving he’s both out of touch, and also no fun. City Council in Toronto voted today to adopt his motion to NOT allow consumption of alcohol in Toronto public parks. Want to smoke weed in the park? Sure…no problem. Sip on some wine or have a beer? CALL THE COPS!!

Switched my Garmin over to an “analog” watch face from a digital one. Inspired by a section in this post from Douglas Adams in which he suggested that digital time was less meaningful than the analog (hands) representation. I’m giving it a try for a bit.

I used WordPress for a long time but over the last few of years, they’ve lost me. Seems the rest of the world is starting to agree. It’s not good for building a site in the ways that site builders like Squarespace and Wix are. joost.blog/wordpress…

Hmmm. Got half way there…I can get it to fill the username and password now (the UX to link an app isn’t all that intuitive). But we use an OTP as well and it won’t fill that at the same time. It tries to do it in two steps.

1Password 8 for Mac is awesome (been using it since the initial betas). One thing I can’t figure out is how to get it to fill Cisco Anyconnect VPN app. I suspect it’s something the Cisco app is doing and not 1Password? Ideas?

Highlight of my day at work? An anticlimactic deployment to production without a CR, Ops or anything. For years, we dreamed of this and now…here we are. Merge the pull request, deploy to PTE and all the tests run in Github actions and a little bit later it’s live on production.

Enjoyable Miami Grand Prix. Pity it was just a 10 lap race as the first 40 or so were a complete snoozefest. Thank goodness for a safety car near the end to make for some excitement to the finish.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there.

Well…that went okay? Took way longer because network (it’s always network). But we’re back up and running.

Mentally preparing to do a pretty significant infrastructure move for our servers at work. We’ve done all the prep work, testing and a run-through. Our run-book is solid. We have a really good go/no-go point and a way to back out. But it’s still stressful as heck.

Line up for security. One hour. Done. Walk to the gate. Line up for lunch at Carl’s Jr. After that it’ll be line up to board the flight. Then ljne up to get the train to line up for the other train.

If the West Coast Express was my daily commute, I’d be happy to head into the office every day. Beautiful ride along the water.

Riding the West Coast Express out to Coquitlam today. My original plan was to take in a Vancouver Canadian’s baseball game at Nat Bailey Stadium but the weather is rainy so I’ll ride the rails instead.

Finally saw the barge at Barge Chilling Beach as well (on the run) and it’s bigger than I expected.

Marathon number 14 is in the books. Not the race I wanted to run, but I’ll take it. Battling injury for the last 5 weeks of training and that never ends well on race day. Thanks to the residents of Vancouver who showed up to cheer like I’ve never seen them before.

One of the Synology features I enjoy the most is the OpenVPN server. No need to pay for a VPN. I just connect to my Synology and route everything through my home internet connection. Bonus points for being able to watch the Leafs on Fibe TV even though it’s blacked out here.

Baseball games that start at 4:05 P.M. are another great part of life in Vancouver. Who doesn’t want to ease out of the day and into the evening with some Blue Jays baseball on the TV?

I honestly think this is what Airbnb has in mind for their service. Could they limit listings to lived-in homes? Maybe. It would hurt their bottom line though and that’s not really compatible with how investors expect them to run the business.

I’ve stayed in a few Airbnbs that are clearly vacant units that should be in the long-term rental pool in the cities they were in. In this case, the home owner uses Airbnb to supplement income and to enjoy a nicer lifestyle themselves.

I struggle a bit with using Airbnb because of the many negative impacts on cities and affordability, but the experience of living in a home instead of a hotel when travelling is vastly superior. Feeling good about this one as it’s the host’s actual home.

Chilling at the Yaletown Starbucks for a bit, catching up on things, posting to my blog. I haven’t done this in literally two years.

I should know better than to turn off the TV and go to sleep after the Red Sox scored four in the 8th. Of course the Jays came back with three in the 9th and then walked it off in the 10th.

Wow. The @bluejays have a player in Gosuke Katoh who can play a good first base (and anywhere else in the infield), can put down a bunt (a rarity these days) and who has Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” as his walk on music.

Today I did something I haven’t done that since December 30, 2020. I took a rest day and didn’t run. To be honest, I’m sitting here having an internal debate about whether I should just go out and run a mile or two. I won’t…

Since @twitter is in the news today for reasons, if you are questioning where you might want to be instead of Twitter, the answer is micro.blog. Set it up on your own domain name, and syndicate to where ever - Twitter, Mastodon, etc.

Today is the 481st day in a row that I ran at least a mile (and 99.9% of the time, quite a bit more). But it’s also going to be the last run of that streak. With a marathon to run on Sunday in Vancouver, I’m going to prioritize the race and take a few days to rest and repair.

So apparently Twitter is going to call Musk’s bluff and accept his takeover offer? I’ll wager $10 that he pulls a Lucy and says he’s changed his mind and doesn’t want it anymore.

This @bluejays team is a great bunch. I’m getting more and more excited about this season after another close game, and another win. Best team in the American League.

Finally got to playing with the panoramic mode on my DJI Mini 2. This is the site of a new development near our house that will transform some unused land into mid-density housing and parkland. www.skypixel.com/photo360s…

As my boss said today on Slack: “delete this day”. Yes please. But I also don’t want to have to do it over.

Ball game! Solid effort for the @BlueJays. Always good to beat a division rival.

Watching some baseball. Game two of 20 games in 20 days for the @bluejays. I approve of this schedule.

Atlassian Confluence is crap. It should make you want to use it to become a meaningful part of team communications. Instead I loathe opening a page and fighting with it.

Notion has its quirks and frustrations, but when I want to write stuff down, I go to Notion, not Confluence.

Ouch. There is currently a grand total of zero Sunwing planes in the air as they deal with some sort of systems crash/outage. As you might expect, vacationers are not happy.

Curious that NASCAR is running a race on Easter Sunday. I always remember that and Mother’s Day as being “sacred” and always off weekends. Last time they raced Cup on Easter Sunday was apparently back in 1989.

It’s pretty clear watching the pre-game show just what Buck Martinez means to the rest of the @Sportsnet crew and to @BlueJays fans in Toronto, across Canada and around the world. Not great to hear he’s battling cancer and we’re all pulling for him.

It’s good to have @bluejays baseball back again for another season. I remember growing up when we got a TV game on Sunday afternoon and Wednesday evening on CTV. Then CBC added a Friday night game. Now? All 162 games live.

Every so often I check in to see how long my #runstreak has been going. It’s day 471 today. After the first few months, it became so habitual and after more than a year, even more so. I don’t even think about it anymore.

I’m all for this. A return to Web 1.0 when things weren’t so easy, but yet it was more accessible somehow. vhsoverdrive.neocities.org/essays/ol…

Elon is a troll. The worst kind.

Great ballgame. Always better when the @bluejays win and Vladdy hits three home runs.

Pro-tip: set your alarm and wake up extra early the day you travel home from a later timezone. You can kickstart the jet-lag recovery and feel a bit more sleepy by the end of the day.

A brief summary of the various places I ran over the last few days in Vic and Van. Really enjoyed that part of the trip! www.runnerjames.com/running-i…

The window seats are useless on this flight. Clouds the entire way across the country from Vancouver to Toronto. And we’re flying over a literal blizzard in the Prairies.

Nice long weekend in Victoria and Vancouver is coming to an end. The good news is that I’ll be back in 16 days for the @BMOVanMarathon with the boys. Already looking forward to spending more time here.

One of the many highlights of my 24km run this morning in Victoria, BC.

Victoria, BC does not disappoint. UVic visited, neighbourhoods explored, trails hiked, beaches walked. Decision made. Off to Vancouver for a day and a bit tomorrow.

The @BlueJays win! I “watched” the game on MLB Gameday via in-flight wi-fi from the real @WestJet Flight Deck (aka a 737-800). I forgot how much fun this team is. Looking forward to a great season.

That thing where you track your own flight on @flightradar24 using the inflight wifi. #ws723

Long day coming up tomorrow with a full day of work, then a late evening flight to Vancouver to kick off a visit to Victoria and a tour of UVic with Lindsey over the weekend. Happy to be heading west again. I haven’t been out to BC in what seems like forever.

So yeah. I don’t understand TikTok.

Let’s face it. Elon’s attention span for this kind of stuff is so short, he’ll likely be bored with Twitter before he even attends a board meeting.

Week 14 of training for the BMO Vancouver Marathon is done. Suffice to say, I’m not thrilled to have a strained hamstring at this point. The #runstreak continues though. www.runnerjames.com/bmo-vanco… 🏃‍♂️

If you want to wreck a good thing online, add a way for creators to monetize it.

It strikes me that it wouldn’t take much for a few key tech influencers/podcasters to lead a good number of people from Twitter over to micro.blog or Mastodon. These are the same folks that crave the community that they had in the early days of Twitter.