Yesterday evening I wondered how long this blog had been around. So I decided to look it up on the wayback machine. I was not ready to realize that yesterday was my blogs BIRTHDAY 🎉 Wow. It's been 12 years! Crazy how fast time has flown and how much of my life has changed since then. I'm now no longer: * Working at Boostability. * Married. * Mormon. However, a lot is the same! I'm still a dad. I'm still a software engineer (and I've grown in my career a lot!). _And a lot is actually better_. I've never been happier than Azure and I started dating last year. I've learned so much more about myself and who I am. It's been a wild ride! Here's to another 12 years! 🍻

Since I'm now in my third week of employment with them I figured it was safe to announce: After 4+ years with Govalo I started a new job at Filevine! Honestly this was one of the longer job hunts of my career so far. I'm not sure if it's the market or that I was a bit more picky in what I applied for, but it started way back in September of last year (2025). I was mostly applying for staff level engineer roles and a small handful of manager roles. I hadn't considered Filevine but a friend who works there reached out and encouraged me to apply. After finding a position that matched, applying, and going through the interview process I was offered a position. I started back mid-January and since then you've probably noticed I haven't been updating here as often. I figured that would happen the first couple weeks as I got up to speed with my new gig. I was correct, but it's now starting to feel like I have a lot more energy. I'm excited to get back to posting here and working on Webstead.

The City Council will hold a public hearing on the liquor licenses for the Canopy by Hilton in the Mill District and Depot Renaissance Hotel.

A directory of places to give to as Minnesota defends itself from ICE occupation

I've been sharing a lot of links to my blog on social media lately. I figured I should probably help those of you still stuck in the social silos of big tech break free from the chains of the algorithmic feed. It’s time to remind you of tech long forgotten by many, but still widely used if you know where to look. ## RSS Remember that orange square with two quarter circles and a dot? Yeah, this thing! RSS (short for Really Simple Syndication) was developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a way to easily distribute and aggregate frequently updated content, like blog posts and news articles. It allowed users to subscribe to websites and receive updates automatically, avoiding the need to visit each site individually. Though it’s been somewhat overshadowed by social media platforms in recent years, RSS remains a powerful, decentralized tool for keeping up with your favorite content on your own terms. Back in the day, you used to look for this button on interesting websites and copy the URL to paste into your feed reader and subscribe. Practically every website had it! Even today, the vast majority of blogs publish RSS feeds. News websites publish them. Even some social media sites (like Mastodon, simply add `.rss` to the end of a profile URL) publish RSS feeds! ### Feed Readers If you want a blog post about which RSS feed reader to pick, you’ve come to the wrong place. Many folks with more time on their hands than I do have compiled copious lists and notes extolling the virtues and weaknesses of various options. Suffice to say, you have choices: Feedly, Feedbin, The Old Reader, and many more. ### Links If you're looking for the links to add to your feed reader, look no further than my new Subscribe page. You can also find a link near the top of this page! From there, you’ll find links to all my feeds. Happy blogging, friends!

I don't know why but I'm super excited about this! I think that it's something to do with the thought of being able to try new recipes all the time. I've always loved trying new flavors and foods. The thing I _hate_ though is finding the recipes and shopping for the ingredients for a weeks worth of groceries to make exactly the right number of servings. But be honest with yourself, you hate it too. We all hate it. We decided to do something about it and subscribe to Blue Apron. When I say we arrived at this decision after months of looking at different options I'm not kidding you. We truly did look at all the options we could find that met our basic criteria. This isn't a post recommending Blue Apron to you, though. I promise. This is a post about my experience with it thus far. Ordering was fairly painless. Azure picked a few things from their options and added them to the cart and then we decided the number of days we needed and the number of servings for each day and I picked the recipes for that number of days (5). If I was thinking at all about my blog I would have taken pictures of the boxes outside when they arrived. If I had, you'd be looking at pictures of them right now outside my house on Tuesday at about 7:30pm. Instead you're reading words that I'm hoping convey that I wanted to be frustrated (because I wanted to cook something fun!) but wasn't actually because they were still delivered before their self-imposed deadlines of 9pm. Honestly the biggest thing I noticed (and you'll see later) is just _how_ much packaging all comes with these meal kits. ## Actually cooking something We decided to let Ruby pick what we ate last night. We got 5 meals, 3 with 4 servings. So she picked between Chorizo Enchiladas (what we ate) and two other options. Which brings us to one of the reasons we liked Blue Apron: we subbed the chorizo for regular ground beef. We worried the kids may not enjoy chorizo. As you can see from the recipe card its printed for either 2 or 4 ingredients. There's also measurements listed but as you'll see from the pictures you pretty much just throw in all of whatever they give you. The first step was cooking the rice but that's not exciting so I didn't take any pictures of it. However, I will say that Azure is on to something with rinsing your rice... 🤔 The first _real_ step was cooking the ground beef. I was initially wary about the lack of seasoning it was asking for. But after cutting up and putting in the Pablano peppers my doubts started to retreat and be replaced with curiosity. The _smell_ was amazing! This is when things really started to get interesting because it was asking me to do something I was familiar with from cooking some Italian recipes before. I moved the meat and peppers to the side of my pan and put the tomato paste right on the pan. I don't know why, but I've been told this makes it taste better. So I do it. Once it had cooked a bit and mixed in I could tell just from the smell that this was going to be delicious. If you asked Azure I'm sure she would describe me doing that thing I do where I raise my hands above my head and think about Tusken Raider noises (don't ask). This is where things got boing again so I didn't take any pictures. You mix this meat and tomato paste and pepper stuff into the cooked rice. That becomes both your foundation and your filling. Listen, I'm not here to teach you how to make this. That's why they send you the recipe card. Just trust me that it was easy and boring to go from what you see above to the finished plate you're about to see, okay? I honestly thought the kids were going to turn their noses up at this. That's why we subbed the ground beef in. But they **loved** it. They had seconds. Ruby copied me with putting hot sauce on hers. Azure had seconds as well! We all did. This shit was magnificent and easy and simple. Why do we make food so complicated? ## So what? I think if you asked everyone what they thought about their food delivery box service they would (if they liked it) write something pretty much like what I wrote above. I'm not unique. Neither is Blue Apron. I like that I'm not locked into a monthly contract. I'm glad that I'm not locked into auto-ship. I say again: _I'm glad I'm not locked into auto-ship._ We make food complicated. I said it at the top that I didn't want to have to find the recipes and shop and blah blah blah. I was making it complicated. This recipe was a handful of ingredients that I mostly always have on hand. The only thing I'd have to buy out of the ordinary to make this is the Pablano pepper. I'm not locked into auto-ship. I got a recipe that I can now easily shop for and make regularly. I'd say that's a win-win. If you were considering a food / meal subscription box and this post resonated with you at all I'd tell you to give it a try!