A spectacular institutionalized ergonomic failure at the local Walgreens, the mouse cantilevered over a plastic receipt printer because no one in corporate HR asked, “where does the mouse go?”

My wife is a monster. She made me get rid of my Moo-cow chair as we prepare to move. I bought it for a mere $95 a decade ago, knocked the legs off and would stretch my own long legs across the floor in my office. Someone will be lucky to have Moo-cow.

It rained recently, but not before I caught my dry and weary “dust” gauge yellow with pollen. That inch of rain leaves us only about 15 inches short of normal, hence the “extreme drought” moniker for the county. Rain, rain, come again, come again every day.

Our new microwave is better than the last in every metric, cooking, noise, appropriate size—but one. The glass tray doesn’t fit, inevitably sliding against the door when cooking. Panasonic support said it was not a mistake and put something heavy on it and then ghosted me. Video doesn’t lie.

Peace with Glass

I’ve struggled with Liquid Glass since its introduction. At first, I embraced it, but clearly it was not designed with Mac in mind, so I used accessibility settings to “turn off” Liquid Glass, but clearly macOS is not designed to thoughtfully remove UX concepts. So, finally, I went back to first principles.
My Mac desktop works best as a calm workbench rather than a dashboard. The left edge holds stable anchors and frequently used tools that rely on spatial memory, while the top-right column is reserved for incoming files so Finder’s natural placement behavior supports file triage.

Continue reading →

Weihnachtstod, “Christmas death,” is traditionally celebrated in Germany on the first Sunday after New Year’s Day by “casting out” the spirit of Christmas anxiety with hot cocoa and inviting calm and order into the home. But since we have a second story deck, I like to go big.

Sublime sweet potato chai at Ashville Chocolate, subtle sweetness, lightly spicy, a treat too good for this world, yet here it is.

Is this a glitch? Is Charlie Brown Thanksgiving the new U2 album? Or is Apple testing content insertion into the watchlist on the Apple TV app? Don’t eff with my queue, Eddy Cue.

#AppleTV

At Dobra Tea in Asheville, green tea for my wife, I partook of Masala spiced(!) chai, cut with milk and dark, dark chocolate sugar. Three cups later my chest is vibrating like a tuning fork–love it!

I’m pretty sure psych grad students are doing A/B experiments between the smell in the orthopedist’s office, which smells like someone set off a lysol bomb, and the lobby of the medical office building blaring 80s pop music through ceiling speakers.

Along the French Broad River in Ashville, a chain leak fence repurposed as community art and therapy. Tie a ribbon and let it go.

Reconstruction of the Black Creek Greenway is leaving it less green, deconstruction of the trees that overhung the trail being well underway. It used to be a shaded valley stroll during summer days, and maybe it be will again in 50 years, glad I got to experience it, sad I will not again.

An excavator sits on a dirt path near a large pile of branches and debris along a path in woods, surrounded by trees and fenced off with orange barriers.

From the mountains to the sea, the Pine Knoll Shores aquarium covers a lot of exhibit ground in North Carolina, this being a sleepy screech owl all screech out.

A camouflaged owl is perched on a tree branch in a forest exhibit at Pine Knoll Shores aquarium, blending seamlessly with the surroundings.