Any idiot can have an idea, but getting that idea into execution is where the real skill is.

Canada has brought me smoke filled air and Metric in the past month. I was already a Metric fan, but had not really listened to their latest album. I was fortunate to pick it up on vinyl when I was in Canada back in April. The right thing to do with an album is to give yourself time to warm up to it. The two songs I keep coming back to are:

The incomparable Werner Herzog talking about the Amazon jungle:

I was prompted to read this book from a coworker. Some ideas that resonated with me:

I have historically been a big fan of Google. Their products are engaging, though not reliably durable in their lifespan. I was a big fan of Google’s Pixel phone in all its Android purity. What has slowly become distasteful for me with Google is that they are an advertising sales company who builds cool tech … to serve the advertising. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would take to move away from them. The three most compelling services are a personal domain email I have locked up with them that my kids make heavy use of, the calendar sharing, and their photo storage story. I’m working on a exit strategy on these, but they are not a high priority today.

Much of the kitchen refresh was hinged around adding some new cabinetry with the ultimate goal of painting them all to be a uniform color. We had been living with a mixed set of colors having had existing red maple, adding white painted cabinets, and constructing new custom cabinets. To finally get them painted was a major milestone.

In my professional world, a Program is the superset of many related Projects. We even have the role of Program Manager to oversee the long term progress of a Program that can span multiple teams and organizations to ensure something gets done. Over the past year, the big Program for me has been a kitchen refresh. I am told it is not a remodel as we did not take it down to bare studs, but I promise you the distinction does not seem to be much cheaper.

Some random thoughts on AI, or more specifically the LLM implementation of AI:

If you are not familiar with Kyle Kinane, you must spend the full eight minutes listening to his story of a man bringing a bag of pancakes onto a flight.