Snide Remarks

That’s (literally) my boy!

Helmet @ the Varsity in Minneapolis.

3.5 On the Guzzard scale.

Got the opportunity to watch my middle son perform at Orchestra Hall tonight. Great job, as always, by the folks at GTCYS putting on these concerts.

Another year, another OPStoberfest conference - thanks to Target and Cargill for this year’s edition!

After a few weeks of deliberations, today is decision day on which new viola to get. 🎻

I’m happy to see the official return of NetNewsWire. I was a dedicated user of past versions of the software, and have been following the development of the new version of the application by @brentsimmons for months now. Over the past several days my feeds have been full of articles trumpeting its return. Personally, I look forward to giving it a spin when Feedly support is added down the road.

However one aspect of its release strikes me as odd. My corner of the internet seems to be full of developers, many independent, who consistently grouse about the poor economics of the app store and the continual race to the bottom of the prices of their apps.

Yet here we are celebrating the return of NetNewsWire, a free application (and labor of love) despite the fact a plethora of great RSS applications already existing in the Mac market, including Reeder, ReadKit, Leaf and others (especially as the iOS version approaches).

I encourage use of the Open Web and standards like RSS. I appreciate the work that Brent and a cadre of volunteers has put into this update, culminating in getting a high quality software release out the door. I hope this application helps to solidify the use of RSS for another generation of Mac, and soon iOS, users on the internet.

But I can’t help but shake the feeling that this is also going to make life more difficult in the RSS reader market. I don’t have a better solution (charge $10/copy, but donate the proceeds to the Internet Archive?), but I can’t help wondering if applications like this, perhaps if released by someone less well-loved in the Mac community, wouldn’t be seen as part of the software sustainability problem instead of simply being hailed as a hero of the open web.

Conflicted or not, I welcome the return of NetNewsWire and look forward to the next chapters in its resurrection. Congrats on hitting 5.0, Brent!

Saw Star Wars (A New Hope) in a theater this afternoon for the first time in a couple of decades. It was the “updated” digital version with the CGI Jabba at Mos Eisley, etc. but fun to see with two of my boys, plus a bunch of cheering strangers.

Big day: three kids in two different track meets (with one securing a place at the state meet), two kids in music recitals, visiting a couple of graduation open houses, and then a couple of kids at sleepovers, including at our house. Someday they’ll all be gone and I’ll be bored, but today is not that day.

The water is up about 4 feet from normal at the cabin, so glad got a chance to see whether moving the unneeded dock sections was as easy as the marketing materials indicated. (Spoiler: it was pretty simple)

Congratulations to my oldest son, Henry, who just returned from a very successful week of skiing in Anchorage, Alaska at the U.S. Junior National championships.

We didn’t attend in person, but were able to follow via a livestream broadcast (when my wife wasn’t too nervous to watch!).

My oldest, Henry, finished 9th in the Minnesota State High school cross country meet today. Nice day, great race.

Great day for the Minnesota State Fair.

Great DevOps Minneapolis meetup topic tonight with Ian Malpass (@indec) presenting “Clouds with Silver Linings - Maximizing Leaning from Incidents”. Lots of practical experience and lessons from @stitchfix. Thanks to @SPS_Commerce for hosting and @Travelers for the refreshments.

My take on the WWDC announcements: All in all, quite practical and useful. Looking forward to the parental controls, especially, to see how they are implemented.

I’m ready for some football! 🏈

Procrastinated a bit today by putting together this playlist of The Bad Plus’ self-proclaimed favorite songs: itunes.apple.com 🎵

Two kids get a snow day tomorrow, the other two do not. Life is so unfair!

Nice night for Red Bull Crashed Ice in St. Paul!

Well, now that I can breath again, that was a crazy finish to the Vikings game. Bought one more week of the season Go Vikes!