Look, I know it’s a fascinating miracle of logistics and interlocking institutions that I can mail-order gluten free flour at all, but at the same time I’m so puzzled that it has spent the last five days in the greater Phoenix metro area without getting any closer to my house.

Me, in chat: No, I’m not putting kkk into the shared doc we’re all looking at. I just forget that it doesn’t have vim keys. Again.

One month of no twitter reading (allowing occasional posting) has been the very best thing for my mental health. Recommended!

About a year on, I’m super happy with this smart sprinkler controller. Being able to put plants in the ground, adjust sprinklers and then test them without running to the control box is amazing, and the smart scheduling seems to work pretty well.

I've long had a workflow in Alfred for adding things to my grocery list in Wunderlist. With Wunderlist being retired, I've switched a couple of shared-with-family lists to Todoist, and it's mostly okay; Todoist is much less of a good tool for just making lists, as it's oriented to projects  and lifestyle methodologies, but is good enough for what we need right now.

So I re-built my workflow in Alfred! All you need is a workflow that runs a bash script, and use the following for the code:

  curl https://api.todoist.com/sync/v8/sync \
  -d token=YOUR_TOKEN \
  -d commands="[{\"type\": \"item_add\", \"temp_id\": \"$(uuidgen)\", 
	    \"uuid\": \"$(uuidgen)\", \"args\": {\"content\": \"{query}\", \"project_id\": OPTIONAL}}]"

YOUR_TOKEN is found on the settings -> integrations page of your Todoist account. Specify a project ID if desired (I use the ID of my 'groceries' list as a default here). Otherwise omit the project argument. You can find the project ID by viewing the project in your browser; it will have a URL like https://todoist.com/app/#project%2F123456789%2Ffull, where the 123456789 is your project's ID.

Previous updates:

• Dear Destiny - a play log
  
• Alan Plays Destiny: My Season 3 Summary
  
• Note - Feb 22, 2020

----

It's been a while since I did this, so here's another set of revised win/loss numbers and weapon stats for my Destiny 2 play. The final Iron Banner -- a week-long competitive PVP mode -- of the current season concluded last week, so I thought it was time to wrap up this edition of the perpetually-open fish shell and R Studio session and get on with making a picture of my data. 

Iron Banner holds a lot of fun, nostalgic memory for me from the first Destiny. It was one of the events that offered a chance at loads of high-powered loot that one could use to upgrade gear, and diving into it broke my reluctance to spend time playing in PVP game modes. The current incarnation of the game mode is not quite the same loot-fest, but it's still a game type that I generally have fun with, so I look forward to playing it when it comes around. It's also a nice discrete mode to use as a lens into my game data. Here's a big picture of my games since the launch of the last big expansion, Shadowkeep, last fall:

And the summary of all that data says that I perform pretty similarly across all three of my shooty space dolls, with the edge going to the Warlock. (Which surprises me, actually.)

class  Outcome #Games Avg K/D
------ ------- ------ ------
Hunter  Defeat   51     12.92
Hunter  Victory  57     12.72
Titan   Defeat   55     13.64
Titan   Victory  58     14.41
Warlock Defeat   41     13.95
Warlock Victory  61     15.49 

This last completed Iron Banner was the first such event in a long time where a non-Erentil was anywhere close to my use of that precious voop-shooter; I had a really good time experimenting with a fun change-up in my loadout, which is probably a good finding, since Bungie will be sunsetting all my favorites in seasons to come. 

Tune in next time, when I might, finally, complete writing up the chain of tools that I use to make this data. If you made it this far and need a buddy in-game, I'm playing on Xbox and on PC these days; let's splode some aliens sometime from our respective quarantines.

I got out for a too-short bike ride this morning! It was short because my thin gloves were way too light for the 33° F temp at 5:30am. I only made it about a mile before turning around for home because I couldn’t feel my fingers (but at least they had stopped hurting!).

Using nextdns.io for a few weeks shows me just how often my TV is trying (and failing, now!) to call home.

Oh dear. This Todoist package for org-mode actually works quite nicely.

My view of Josh Ritter’s Silo Session tonight: a full performance of So Runs the World Away in its 10th anniversary! ❤️ 🎶

I made a thing in Tableau, and then figured I should validate some specifics with R… and… it matched. So I should probably quit for the day, because honestly it’s not going to get better from here. (Also allowing that I’m precisely and equally bad at both, to be clear.)

New coffee bag Friday! cc @CartelCoffeeLab

I’ve been making time to listen to music before bed lately. The new album from Waxahatchee is so brilliant. And Frank Turner turned me on to Micah Schnabel a few weeks ago. His writing and singing is urgent, cutting and moving.

I missed the live broadcast last night because of My Work, so watching Josh Ritter’s latest Silo Session with lunch is a real treat. It has been special to “gather” with family dispersed far away and share these performances the past few weeks.

The view from this morning’s coffee in the backyard.

Shadows on the front door

Stayed off Twitter all day yesterday and it was good for my mental health. Might do it again today.

Coffee on the patio, the view from where I sit.

Looks like it’s that time again, Sprinkler Repair Season.

I am 100% having a beer and playing video games in the background of my son’s zoom taekwondo class, yes, and I feel no shame.

Pupper

I got to be the “you’re one of the lucky 10,000” guy to at least two coworkers today, but about John Prine instead of Mentos.

Two more thoughts:

My wife and I got all dressed up to go see John Prine in concert when we were in grad school. It was a beautiful Saturday night in Tucson. The show was on Friday. I think he would have thought that was pretty funny.

And, this road trip story is wonderful, one of my very favorite things: https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/1562-living-in-the-present-john-prine

Peace.

I vividly remember riding in the front passenger seat of a VW Rabbit, on the way up the steep road to Powder Mountain with my dad, listening to a tape of John Prine. I was probably nine. It may be the first memory I have of really paying attention to music. (It was certainly the first time my dad explained marijuana to me, when I asked what Illegal Smile meant! Later I would read the liner notes for his wonderful anthology “Great Days,” where Prine asserts that the song was never about drugs, but it became such a beloved pot smoker anthem that he didn’t have the heart to break it to them.)

There’s so much more to say and remember and listen to. For tonight: His music has been a part of my life for as long as I can recall and I’m sad that he’s gone. Peace.

Afternoon snack time.