2024 Toyota Rav4 Cost of Ownership Analysis - Forecast vs Actual [!topics] Topics: FIRE 2024 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid XSE Summary Back in 2024 we purchased a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid. Before the purchase I modeled the expected costs of various other make/models/trims. For the RAV4 we estimated ~$13.6k / year cost of ownership, and our actual was closer to $12.2k / year owing to better than expected fuel…
December 31, 2025 | 🧑💻 I sniped my friend's website domain, ported his 20-year old game from 🐍 Python to 🦀 Rust, made it playable in the browser on his website, then gave it to him for his birthday [!topics] Topics: Coding , Video Games The Mega Man 2 Puzzle Attack - 🦀 Carcinized Title Screen To close out 2025, I want to share a big focus of my year, the effort and accomplishment, and how it…
2025-09-09 | 🧑💻 Attending Rustconf 2025 in Seattle, WA 🦀 [!topics] Topics: Coding Rust's Mascot, Ferris, visits Seattle Background RustConf is an annual conference about the Rust programming language hosted by the Rust Foundation - the nonprofit that manages the Rust programming language and its community. This year (2025), RustConf was held in Seattle, WA at the Hyatt from September 2-5. Last…
July 26, 2025 | 🧑💻 Two Years In: Becoming a Programmer [!topics] Topics: Coding , Blog Chain: Write An App (2023) My Github contribution graph for 2023 A Personal Development Goal On July 26, 2023 , I wrote that I'd started a journey to turn my hobby of coding into a profession of programming: For a long time, I've been a coder, but not a programmer (see: Coding ). One of my goals for this year…
July 22, 2025 | 🛩️ Trip Report: Airplane Camping on Orcas Island, WA [!topics] Topics: Aviation Runway and taxiway lighting define the Orcas Island Airport (KORS) at twilight, against a distant, tree-lined coast. Preface I'm writing and sharing this trip report because when I was preparing to go airplane camping for the first time, I didn't find all the information I wanted. Also, to the extent…
March 07, 2025 | An LLM ("AI") Stochastic Parrot in the Sheets (SPITS) I just want a Google Sheets formula function that lets me ask an LLM about some of the data in my file. Surprisingly, Google has yet to implement this, so I made one [1] . If you have a Google Sheet with data like this: A B C 1 Transaction Date Product Price 2 9/1/2021 Milk $3.49 3 10/1/2021 Gum $0.99 4 10/2/2021 Toothpaste…
✅ May 18, 2024 | Uncommitting To free up more of myself for more important objectives in my Hierarchy of Fulfillment, I will not be writing here as regularly as I have been in the last twelve months, where I have written almost weekly. Instead, I expect the writing to be a bit more sporadic and in small bursts as windows of availability emerge. I still intend to update my Now page on a regular…
May 11, 2024 | 🛩️ A Mostly Boring Flight [!topics] Topics: Aviation Inside the cockpit of a Cirrus SR-20 flying on a clear sunny day with Mt. Rainier in the distance, covered in white snow One of the challenges I've found with flying isn't the flying itself but having a sustaining reason for flying. To me, it feels wasteful to to spend the money and time to go fly without a specific purpose.…
May 05, 2024 | Mossters of the Forest [!topics] Topics: Hiking A particularly twisted abomination This is one of the best times to hike in the Pacific Northwest. What I especially love is how many of the lowland hikes are tours through moss-covered forests. The moss covers absolutely everything . It is a vibrant green that nourishes the eyes. The air is fresh and thick with the smell of life. On a…
April 27, 2024 | 🛩️ What Flying an FAA Authorized Simulator Looks Like [!topics] Topics: Aviation , Video Games The "AATD" Cirrus Flight Simulator I recently used [!Caution] The following contains what may be inaccurate, incomplete, or maybe even wrong aviation knowledge. Do not use this information in lieu of a Certified Flight Instructor, or the laws of the Federal Aviation Administration. I…
April 20, 2024 | Building a Roguelike in Rust's Bevy Game Engine [!topics] Topics: Coding A screenshot of my "game" in an emulated terminal emulator One of my goals this year, per my Hierarchy of Fulfillment , is to write four types of software applications: a game a Command Line Interface ("CLI") application an embedded application (software running on a piece of hardware without an operating…
April 13, 2024 | Approaching FIRE: How much do I need? [!topics] Topics: FIRE Coincidentally, a couple friends who don't know each other, both inquired within the past couple days about my budgeting and planning process. I assume they both know me as an organized, goal-oriented, data-inspired, and systematic/methodical person interested in financial independence and "retiring" early, aka " FIRE ".…
April 3, 2024 - Quick Lunch Flight in Cirrus SR22 Turbo from Renton, WA to Gig Harbor, WA [!topics] Topics: Aviation The "tennis ball". I had booked a plane with a more humble color, but the club bumped me in to this aircraft for reasons of "it would help them out". Mostly for the purposes of maintaining my flying currency, I flew a Cirrus SR-22 Turbo from Renton, WA (KRNT) to Gig Harbor, WA…
March 30, 2024 - How I replaced my vendor with a very small C# script | Mistaking an Opportunity as a Problem [!topics] Topics: Coding I may have accidentally fired a vendor, drove a small business to close shop, and maybe missed a half million dollar market opportunity by making a free app. Early in my career, I worked for a B2B SaaS company whose marketing function was doing the latest lead-gen…
March 20, 2024 - My 2023 Hierarchy of Fulfillment Report Card [!topics] Topics: Hierarchy of Fulfillment , GTD My slightly redacted 2023 Hierarchy of Fulfillment For the past several years I've been iterating on a goal setting framework whose intent is to help me align how I spend my time to the things that hypothetically yield sustainable fulfillment through experiences of novelty and awe. I…
March 16, 2024 | 🔥 Hike and a Fire [!topics] Topics: Hiking, Mountaineering , Camp Fires On a morning hike, the sun filters down between and through the green moss clinging to standing and fallen trees The last few days have been particularly pleasant in the Pacific Northwest (" PNW ") - warm, sunny days that finally break the chain of the great long dark of winter cold, snow (when it finally…
March 09, 2024 | 🎮 Valheim [!topics] Topics: Video Games A screenshot of my character's tower-keep in Valheim Valheim is a "Survival sandbox" video game developed by Iron Gate Studio and published by Coffee Stain Studios. I would describe it as a bit of Minecraft with the combat of a Souls game , but with cozy-comfy vibes in the breaks between the combat-action that reminds me a bit of Stardew…
March 02, 2024 - Embedded 'Hello World' in Rust with a Raspberry Pico [!topics] Topics: TIL (Today I learned) Raspberry Pico on a bread-board lighting up an LED with a jumper wire Last month I attended the Seattle Rust User Group monthly meetup at the Microsoft Reactor building in Redmond, WA. While the monthly meetups are usually software presentations and some in-person networking, the most…
February 23, 2024 | 🪴 One Year of TIL (Today I Learned) [!topics] Topics: TIL (Today I learned) A tree with branches and leaves grows up out of a brain A year ago I wrote my first post on this - my relaunched personal vanity website - and some of its tent pole content: TIL (Today I learned) . I wasn't wholly sure what the purpose was, but at the time it just seemed like an interesting experience…
February 17, 2024 - Tackling my Reading Backlog with Deliberate Intent [!topics] Topics: PKM , Obsidian , GTD I have a backlog queue of internet articles I've saved to read that is more than 1,000 items long. I'd like to winnow that backlog down. However, I'd like to do it in a way that is intentional, effective, conducive to learning, aligned to my near-term objectives. Typically, how I consume…
February 10, 2024 - Journaling in Obsidian [!topics] Topics: PKM Screenshot of my Obsidian.md Daily Note with Journal Header This year, I've started a habit, that I track in Daylio , to journal in my private Obsidian vault. The goal isn't to exhaustively write about my day, but rather jot down the most notable of moments that I want or may need to recall at a future date. For example: notable…
February 02, 2024 - Six-month check-in on Coding -> Programming [!topics] Topics: Coding , Blog-Chain: Write an App Google Bard Generated Image: An image of a person walking toward the horizon on a path made of matrix-like code symbols On 2023-07-26 , I wrote about starting a journey from just being a hobbyist coder with no formal education in software development, to becoming a programmer. The…
January 25, 2024 - Programming a Dungeon Crawler Roguelike in Rust [!topics] Topics: Coding , Video Games Dungeon Crawler Roguelike from Hands-on Rust by Herbert Wolverson As part of becoming a programmer rather than just a coder , I've been learning the Rust programming language. Although I've already successfully contributed Rust code to an open source project , I saw a lot of area capacity to…
January 20, 2024 - The Novelty and Awe of Flying Airplanes [!topics] Topics: Aviation , Hierarchy of Fulfillment Flying over the Seattle-area sound in the vicinity of Gig Harbor, WA The reason that my Hierarchy of Fulfillment Framework has "Experiences of Novelty and Awe" at the top, is that there is research to support the notion that its these types of experiences (novel, and awe-inspiring),…
January 12, 2024 - Putting Linux Mint with XFCE on a 14 year old laptop - Toshiba M645 [!example] Topics: Computers Its dirty, but otherwise in great condition and now running Linux Mint XFCE I rehabilitated a ~14 year old laptop, the Toshiba Satellite M645 I bought for graduate school, with Linux Mint XFCE, but getting it to work was at least 36 hours of trial and error. My motivation to put…
January 06, 2024 - Hierarchy of Fulfillment 2024 [!example] Topics: GTD , Blog Chain: Hierarchy of Fulfillment My slightly redacted 2023 Hierarchy of Fulfillment The last few weeks closing out 2023 and leading in to 2024 I've been honing the list of: experiences I want to have and share with family and friends this year and far in to the future the projects I need to execute to support those…
December 24, 2023 [!example] Topics: Coding Summary / TLDR In 2010 I coded a program I called "Qbert" (in homage to the character of a similarly named arcade game ) in C# to quickly and easily load a CSV file of people into the marketing automation tool's database, including formatting the data, applying normalization methods, and removing erroneous and duplicitous entries. [!warning]-…
December 16, 2023 [!example] Topics: Networking, Seattle 🤝 Request: Networking in Seattle Area As I've begun to put down roots in the Greater Seattle, WA area, and now have a little bit more time now that certain social constraints have been eased, I'm looking to meet up with folks. I don't have an ask or any specific agenda, and I'm not selling anything. Just looking to build out my local…
December 04, 2023 [!example] Topics: Coding Summary / TLDR CodeSpider was a utility I wrote in C# in 2008/2009 as a means to evaluate the html of a large number of web pages to identify which pages contained certain IDs that needed to be changed or removed. It was the first 'useful' software I'd written. Background In 2008 / 2009 time frame, Websites for B2B Software Companies, were often managed…
November 27, 2023 An amazing, wonderful, and sometimes misunderstood property of the internet is just how incredibly free it can be - especially in the sense of not having to pay for information, tools, services, content, etc. The incredible work of very smart people (ahem, nerds), who simply have a passion for what is possible with technology, has enabled an entire generation, economic and…
November 21, 2023 [!example] Topics: Coding Link to tech demo video on YouTube [!note] This is an article about my first ever merged pull request on an open source product. See Coding for more background on my coding experiences and my journey to consider myself a "programmer" instead of just a "coder". I'm taking this journey because I like to make useful products, learn interesting things, solve…
November 14, 2023 [!example] Topics: TIL (Today I learned) TLDR: I fixed my laptop screen despite expecting to make things worse, wasting time, and forcing myself to pre-emptively buy a replacement laptop. It wasn't hard, technical (the solution was simple enough my toddler could have done it), or time consuming. The hardest part was just resigning myself to the fact that I needed to fix it, or…
November 06, 2023 [!example] Topics: Coding , Video Games In 2013, some friends and I were writing a video game blog called "DeltaAttack" and I was weaving in my interest in data science and machine learning. At the time, the statistical programming language R was having its moment and although there were no R packages that could classify text into Myers-Briggs type indicators, I did find a web…
November 02, 2023 [!example] Topics: Aviation 🛩 Flight to Troutdale, OR (KTTD) in Cirrus SR-22T Not long ago I flew in an Cirrus SR-22T G6 w/ FIKI to Troutdale. I brought my partner and toddler with me to see family who live in the area. Notable on this flight is that despite the beautiful sunny day, there were high winds in the Portland area. Fortunately with winds 20 knots gusting 26, they were…
October 26, 2023 [!example] Topics: Coding 🦀 Rust Meetup @ Microsoft's Reactor Building Last week I was fortunate enough to attend a monthly meetup about the Rust programming language held at the Microsoft Reactor building, hosted by the Seattle Rust User Group . "Brad G", who is also in the rotation for sending out the weekly Rust newsletter, was the emcee of the event and a wonderful host. He…
October 17, 2023 [!example] Topics: Coding , GTD This Post is part of the Blog Chain: Write An App (2023) Blog-Chain. Contributing to Taskwarrior I felt like I reached a point in the process of coding my text-based game that I could be developing bad coding habits without knowing it. I also wasn't developing the collaboration skills common to programmers who work in organizations. I felt like I…
October 10, 2023 [!example] Topics: Aviation , Mountaineering Weekend Flight Recently I flew from KRNT (Renton, WA) to KHQM (Hoaquim, WA) and back. Flying IFR is a challenging but rewarding experience. The views in the Pacific Northwest when a cloud layer cuddles the mountains makes for a very scenic way to appreciate the beauty of the world. 🏃♀️I Run, but I'm not a Runner I was asked recently…
[!example] Topics: Blog Chain: Hierarchy of Fulfillment October 01, 2023 Hierarchy of Fulfillment The Hierarchy of Fulfillment (HoF) is my experimental framework that loosely applies David Allen's 5 Horizon's of GTD to each tier in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and indirectly inspired by Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and a slight dash of Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit or…
September 12, 2023 I'm taking a week off from writing about coding, as I've had minimal progress this past week, though no lack of insights and learnings. re: Recommended Books On 2023-03-27 , I was asked by the young man performing maintenance at my home if I had any book recommendations. I was caught off guard because I had no idea how to recommend books that would be relevant for someone his…
September 05, 2023 re: Coding This Post is part of the Blog Chain: Write An App (2023) Blog-Chain. Though I only had one solid day of coding this past week, I made significant progress due to an uninterrupted 5 hour block in my calendar. I was able to enter a state of flow and really work through resolving some blocks and refactoring some stupendously absurd code and as a result, not only did…
logjam and Boston creek Park Ranger - North Cascades National Park (Flicker) August 28, 2023 re: GTD , Coding This Post is part of the Blog Chain: Write An App (2023) Blog-Chain. The sentiment this past week has been : logjammed. I ran in to many roadblocks in my progress in learning Rust and other personal endeavors. It seemed like nothing was moving. No forward movement, just stagnation. It felt…
August 21, 2023 re: Aviation - Flight to Friday Harbor, WA A friend, a toddler, and his mom joined me in an adventure to fly to Friday Harbor, WA ( KFHR ) last week. Friday Harbor is located on the San Juan Islands and just a few miles from the international border with Canada. The airstrip is a wonderful un-towered airport within a short walk to the quaint downtown area and a bakery, coffee shop,…
August 14, 2023 re: Coding This Post is part of the Blog Chain: Write An App (2023) Blog-Chain. Ownership in Rust - Chapter 4 of the Rust Library Book I'm moved beyond much of the review of the first few chapters, and Chapter 4 of the Rust Library Book actually gets in to some of the idiosyncrasies of the language. Particularly with "Ownership" in Rust. I found the review of the computer's memory…
August 08, 2023 re: Coding This Post is part of the Blog Chain: Write An App (2023) Blog-Chain. I've completed Chapter 3 of The Rust Programming Language book , and found many other great resources to continue to work on the language. Chapter 3 was about control flow - if/then, loops, while, etc. While the concepts are nothing but review for me, the syntax is what I really need to spend time…
August 01, 2023 | 👩💻 'Blaugust' & Yak Shaving in Rust re: "Blaugust" For the month of August, I'm "participating" in a month of "blogging" per Belghast blogging on aggronaut.com : Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place in August each year that focused on blogging and other serialized content. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to…
July 31, 2023 | 👩💻 Learning to Code in Rust: 'hello world' re: Coding This Post is part of the Blog Chain: Write An App (2023) Blog-Chain. Today I worked through the first set of exercises in The Rust Programming Language "tutorial" book for Rust. This exercise book was recommended to me by a friend who was curious about Rust. There are a total of 20 "chapters" in the book, and I intend to get…
July 28, 2023 | 👩💻 Write An App: Git First Things First re: Coding This Post is part of the Blog Chain: Write An App (2023) Blog-Chain. Today I had just a little time to check off a small task to set up version control. I started by checking if I had git already installed. I used git --version to see that I'm on v 2.34.1 but according to the git website , 2.41 is available. I'm unsure what the…
July 27, 2023 | 👩💻 WSL & VSCode Setup, 🐐 Bouldering with Goats re: Coding This Post is part of the Blog Chain: Write An App (2023) Blog-Chain. Late last night I: Installed the WSL extension and Remote Development extension for VScode via https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/wsl-vscode Set up a project directory in my Ubuntu WSL environment Tested running Nushell in VSCode's…
July 26, 2023 | 👩💻 Write An App: From 'Coder' to 'Programmer' re: Coding This Post is part of the Blog Chain: Write An App (2023) Blog-Chain. I've begun a journey: For a long time, I've been a coder, but not a programmer (see: Coding ). One of my goals for this year is to build an app. Nothing useful, fancy, or impressive. Just to get from zero to one using modern tools. I wrote a handful of…
July 12, 2023 | 🎂 A Birthday Cake from The 7th Guest [!example] Topics: Video Games Recently I ordered a cake for my best friend. I'd never ordered a cake before. I was inspired to order him a cake that is a based on a cake from a video game he and I played in our youth: The 7th Guest . The 7th Guest could be described as a "spooky" themed Myst . The player navigates through a haunted mansion…