It’s satisfying to cross things off a paper checklist. A paper checklist can’t interrupt you. At the end of the day you can add it to a growing little stack on your desk and feel accomplished.

Printers are also amazing. Computer laid out text is neat and organized. A perfectly square checkbox feels authoritative.

I’ve been experimenting in earnest with ways to make an efficient pipeline for printing a daily agenda. This latest version finally got the pieces coming together.

My goals for this project are:

• Easy and streamlined. Don’t overthink it.
• Local to my devices– no external AI or tools.
• Purposeful and useful.

TL;DR

1. Dictate my daily to-dos to Stardate.
2. Format today’s Stardate notes from iCloud Drive with LLM.
3. Slap it into a LaTeX template.
4. Print to a 4x6 index card.

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In the first half of 2024, three things happened:

1. I quit my job at Glowforge. Nine years was plenty, and I am so proud of everything we built there!
2. I got a puppy. Her name is Iggy. She is the goodest.dog.
3. My friend Wes asked me to maintain his family’s sailboat.

This is the story of how Iggy became a boat dog, and I learned a lot about marine diesel engines. I wanted to write this up because there are some fun lessons in here, I figure I should document the experience in case other people have a similar problem, and because it’s fun to watch Iggy grow up in the photos.

Spoiler: the engine’s damper plate was broken– a somewhat common problem for this kind of engine at this age.

In early March, Wes gave me a rundown of the boat. Here’s Iggy with Wes on the dock, trying out the life jacket he had on board for their dog. It just fits her as a puppy.

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If you are not already a regular PBS NewsHour viewer: Watch a full episode on YouTube, let me know what you think on Twitter and I’ll donate $10 (up to $500 total) to their fundraiser.

(Fundraising completed!)

Staying informed on current events is something I consider to be a duty as an adult. Maintaining a practice for doing that seems to be getting more difficult over time– Everything feels urgent, there’s more and more to keep up on each day, and without doing the same homework as others it’s hard to have a conversation about it.

A few years ago I began in earnest reviewing the different sources of US news available. Where could I get reliable information? Is it efficient with my time? Could I discuss it easily with my friends? What should a healthy “information diet” look like for me?

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