I recently started a tradition of working from a different coffee shop each Friday. Today’s Pumpkin Pie Latte was a nice complement to deep work ☕

A coffee mug sitting on a wooden table with a laptop on the right edge of the frame.

My Meeting Philosophy

I recently had 35 meetings in a week. This is a lot, but not uncommon for employees of large enterprises. While it is easy to lament an organization’s “meeting culture”, there are also actions individual employees can take to reduce their meeting load. I recognized that attending all the meetings on my calendar was not possible (one time slot was quadruple-booked!) so I developed the following approach for responding to meetings.

I replaced all the X-Large t-shirts in my closet with Large. I am surprised just how much better I’ve felt wearing clothes that fit right. I tried different options and ended up ordering 7 colors of the Next Level N6210. They’re cheap as dirt with an “athletic dad-bod” fit.

Moon, silent, alone.
“Arise, abyss!” she commands.
Dark depths stir to life.

I like when a bathroom has beautiful or insightful decor. I learned something new today about a train that debuted in 1936. Why did trains look so much cooler back then?

An issue of The Observer from July, 1936 titled "Mercury, New N.Y.C. Streamliner, on Detroit-Cleveland Run"

Our cucumbers are out of control. In one day we harvested six cucumbers, each bigger than my forearm. The situation is so dire that I’m having tajín-seasoned cukes with coffee for breakfast. 🥒☕

circular slices of cucumber on a cutting board sprinkled with a red seasoning. a cup of coffee sits in the upper right of the frame.

Sharing a gelato flight is a great way to cap off the evening.

six scoops of gelato each in their own bowl with another bowl of pizelles with "ciao" printed on them

A Recommendation for Trying AI

The following is a message I shared with my organization today. In light of NASA’s push to train up the workforce on AI, I wanted to share a tool that I’ve been using in my day-to-day. This is a simple tool that would be a good introduction for folks who haven’t been using AI much. Perplexity AI is a conversational AI assistant and search engine that provides citations for sources it is using.