New Year. Same as the old year so far. Last month bought more things to get better sound for the garage home theater. Got to use it once or twice. Got my Q Stoves Q-FLAME Q05C Outdoor Wood Pellet Patio Heater. Seems to work ok. Only really tried it out once so far. Takes a little tweaking to get the heat up, definitely not light and forget. Definitely not as much smoke as a fire table, that's for sure. Didn't have smokey smelling clothes at all. Been going to Menards a lot. I like that store. No idea why. But easy to go to when I have to wait to pick up Lucy after dropping her off at swimming. Got a Christmas tree. Setup the LEGO Winter Village with train underneath. Got a USB Adapter for the lighting sets so it's hooked up to the same Lutron Lamp controller as the tree lights. Tracy got into decorating a bit, did the outdoor planters, added some additional lighting to the front tree/bushes. Did not sign up for the Winter Wonderland walk though. Did have our first possible confirmed exposure during the group walk (at least Tracy and Lucy did) through one of the Blaine dads. Not sure what to do, we found out maybe 6 days after the possible exposure, and we were all feeling fine and showing no symptoms. Ideally we'd all get tested to be sure, but wasn't going to happen. Been getting a lot of Tea Ninja (usually every Saturday after Lucy's swim practice). Got some taro powder to make at home. Made the taro tea I think, but haven't tried making a slushie yet. Hung up all the foam dart blasters on pegboard. Almost need more pegboard already. Almost bought Airpods Max on release day (just by checking available stock for pick up). Actually purchased the silver but then cancelled my order because I second guessed my color choice. So been checking daily since then for Space Gray availability for pick up. Christmas was good, Zoomed with the Argaos, FaceTimed with the Abandos. Jackson's presents were mostly digital. The new iMac pretty much stays booted in Windows. So many games available. Lucy's coolest present was a LEGO Mindstorms Robot thingie which is pretty impressive. It's cool. There's coding and everything. She successfully presented on getting a Leopard Gecko, so started getting the infrastructure for that. Actually watched Wonder Woman 1984 and Soul close to release days. Tracy got me a clear ice block kit, which works ok. Rang in the new year with The Princess Bride and some board games. Kids actually stayed up until midnight.

Keep on, keeping on. Typing this from the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020), booted into macOS for the first time in a. while. It's a really nice machine. It continues to just stay booted in Windows though. So much gaming available. Although the Xbox Series Wireless controller issues are annoying, and that seems to be Windows's fault, which makes me tempted to get a console, since those should at least be more reliable? Finally getting some snow up in here. Looks like winter. Again, my proposal of shifting the calendar a couple months so it's cold and snowing in December instead of Jan/Feb should be taken seriously. Although I wonder if such a shift makes sense for seasonal weather around. the globe, and not just in Chicago. Otherwise, not much has changed yet. I did nuke and pave all my devices a couple weeks ago. I had added some additional regex rules to my Pi-Holes to block ads from the News.app, but I was too aggressive. Safari stopped syncing iCloud tabs. Took a bit to figure that out, after some help on micro.blog. But kinda nice to start fresh. Finished watching New Girl and the most recent season of Cobra Kai, and started up Kim's Convenience from the beginning. Did a bunch of network hardware upgrades. All rack mounted devices now. Was also able to setup Let's Encrypt for the Unifi Controller. Added benefit, should make it easier to keep up the same on this site. Speaking of which, I renewed this domain for another 10 years. Had it since July 1998. Crazy. Got myself an early birthday present when AirPods Max were available for pickup a couple weeks ago. They're amazing. So yeah, it's been an expensive January. Made a Peanut Butter Layer Cake for a friend's birthday. It was amazing. Probably my favorite thing I've made yet. Planning on making the Pancake Layer Cake for my birthday. Had to order some special supplies from a place called Modernist Pantry. They have supplies for molecular gastronomy. Tempted. Trying to keep the Memex updated more. Trying to exercise more, simple Plank Workouts and the harder Sterling K. Brown Pyramid Workout. Got a new work from home setup with a Cora Standing Desk Adapter and Roost Laptop Stand. It's setup at the end of the kitchen table and I spend most of the time standing, but easy to bring it down for dinner or when I get tired.