microblogs

    Early morning indie hacking on the back deck with coffee brewing… Bliss β˜•πŸ’»

    A laptop, an orange water bottle, and a coffee press on a table are set against a scenic outdoor background with a cloudy sky and trees.

    I cracked open our back door to be serenaded by the birds this morning. Every Spring I’m reminded how much I missed them during the Winter. 🐦

    I present to you… “Jake Jobs”. Google AI Studio is fun πŸ˜‚

    A person in a black turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers is speaking energetically on stage with their hands gesturing.

    Yesterday I listened to my daughter’s heartbeat. It got me thinking that the heart is incredible. Let’s say you live to be 90 and average 70 beats per minute:

    90 years * 365 days * 24 hours * 60 minutes * 70 beats per minute
    = 3,311,280,000 heartbeats in a lifetime.

    We are a wondrous creation. ❀️

    Google Gemini on the Pixel phone is so nice. I got paper mail from my HOA about a meeting and was able to:

    1. Take a pic of it
    2. Hold the power button to open Gemini
    3. Say “add this to my calendar”

    All the details, including location, were saved at the correct time on my calendar. Took seconds.

    Today I added a weekly microblogs counter to the top of my homepage. Clicking the link takes you to see all of my microblogs. A while ago I changed my homepage to only list long articles. But this made it hard to surface microblogs, especially on mobile. This remedies that. Plus counters are cool!

    A mobile interface displays a blog profile for "Jake Weidokal" featuring recent posts with "5 microblogs this week" at the top.

    I’ve been on a weight loss journey and decided it was time for a new professional headshot! I’m fortunate to work with a group of NASA photographers and videographers so I was able to do this for free in our studio!

    A smiling person wearing a dark suit jacket and a light-colored shirt stands against a blurred dark blue background.

    Trying beans from a new coffee roaster today. Really excited about this place. The owner has personally traveled the world to many of the farms where he sources beans and they only serve pour overs in the shop. I haven’t gotten a pour over there yet, but hope to soon. Troubadour Coffee Roasters A picture of a bag of coffee sitting on a car dashboard with a bright, blurry background

    I shared this picture of the joke board with our contractor team today (who are still remote for now) and the responses were:

    • “are the ‘jokes’ written on paper towel?”
    • “We are resigned to using parchment like our ancestors”
    • “you shouldn’t write jokes on the dead sea scrolls”
    Jokes written on a large piece of paper attached to the back of a tall desk.

    My wife picked up a leather bound journal for me at a thrift store today. I like testing a few pens in a new journal to break the tension of the blank page. After I finished the first page, my daughter climbed up on the couch with me and added her own finishing touches.

    a collage with a brown leather notebook on the right, and on the left a notebook page is filled with scribbled text including pen tests and ideas for using a journal, with some red highlighted marks

    I packed up my home office yesterday and moved all my NASA IT equipment into the office today. After getting settled in, I put up this joke board on the outer wall of my desk to be a little speck of joy as we adjust to the new normal.

    A paper on a wall displays a joke about programmers and bugs, labeled "App Dev Joke of the Week" dated 2/28/25.

    Today held happy water-themed beginnings. It was my daughter’s first time peeing in a full-sized toilet and her first day of swim lessons.

    No need to read between the lines on the latest email to feds about “What did you do last week?” They moved on to open mockery. I will say, despite all the ill-will and distraction thrown at my colleagues, it has been inspiring to see everyone stick to the mission and deliver on our work.

    New site feature! I added a sidebar for recent microblogs. This will only appear on desktop, not mobile devices.

    A blog page displays entries for 2025 and 2024, recent microblog updates, and various post titles and dates.

    I updated the link styles on my blog:

    • removed underlines from links for readability
    • added a box-shadow animation when hovering links for enjoyability

    I pushed changes to Fed Meetup this morning! Users can now save their searches and export results to a CSV file. My coworker is using it to plan group travel for his new team at NASA. It’s nice to see it still getting some use, and it may be getting more use in the near future!

    My latest attempt to be less distracted by my phone is printing articles on a piece of paper that I can fold up and carry in my wallet. Going to try to read these instead of using my phone and falling down the rabbit hole.

    An open book with a journal article titled "When to Begin Writing" by Sheldon Richmond inside the front cover, resting on a wooden surface.

    I just looked through all my old blog post ideas and drafts. There are some fun ideas I forgot about in there. There is one titled “Demustyfication” that has been a draft for a long time. I just can’t seem to get it where I want it, but it keeps tugging at me. I wrote about it back in April.

    “Everything depends on everything and we don’t know anything!”
    - my wife, while we decide on basement finishes

    This perfectly describes software development.

    My dad gave me his old 45 pound dumbbells so I:

    • got excited
    • made a list of the exercises I could do with them
    • tried all the exercises
    • crossed about half the exercises off my list because I can’t do them

    45 pounds is heavier than I remember… Got some work to do. πŸ’ͺ

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