Captains Log
July 5th 2026
Feels Good to Sleep
As the title says, it feels good to get some sleep. I think I fell asleep last night at about 9pm. I woke up this morning at 6:30am. That may seem early to some, but thats pretty late for me. I'm one of those old guys that gets up super early even on his days off. Every day for work I set my alarm for 5:15am and even on the weekends I can't sleep in too much past that. Still that gave me 9.5 hours of sleep.
I let Maggie out this morning to go to the bathroom and noticed that the driveway took a beating from the downpour. This has happened before, but it was really bad, large portions of the drive way were exposed and a large amount of the gravel I use for it was sitting at the bottom in large piles. I took a photo, but this was after I already did the top half and it's not as visible.
In glancing at it, I thought "I can fix this pretty quickly". I was wrong, I was able to fix it, but the quickly part was an extremely hopeful conclusion. It took me the better part of an hour to repack the rocks. This is mostly due to the fact that they slid down the hill and collected at the bottom. I had to use my wheelbarrow to pick them up and redistribute them.
Case for My Macbook
I was dealing with the power outage yesterday and took my macbook with me in the truck. I noticed when I was carrying it that a dog hair was on the lid, or so I thought. I tried knocking it off and it was a very small very thin scratch on the lid of the laptop. I tyically use it in a drawer in my desk so I'm not really sure how it got scratched.
In an effort to preserve the finish I did something I was thinking about doing when I bought the laptop, but I wasn't sure I wanted to. I bought a case for it off Amazon. It should be delivered on Tuesday. I didn't want to do this at first because I've never needed one on any of my other devices. The difference though may be that the other devices were plastic and I put stickers on them anyway. I don't want to put stickers on my Mac because the feel and finish are one of the best parts of owning an apple product.
I ordered a case the same finish as the device. I'm hoping that when it is on it's not even noticeable. I looked at clear ones, but they appeared to be glossy and I don't want that. I also don't want to put it in a purse like case. I have a messenger bag I use for my work laptop to go back and forth between home and work, if I'm going to put it in a bag I'll just use that!
So far I haven't found anything that my Mac can't do yet. I initially didn't want to spend more money because I wasn't sure I was going to like the Mac OS. I've tried using it before, although briefly and the learning curve, while initially doesn't seem too bad, I found things different enough that it bothered me. For instance, the menu for all apps, no matter whether they are full screen, or smaller, is at the top of the screen. Its like a unified menu for all applications. Its not worse than what Windows or Linux is doing, but if you have been in those environments for a while, it is different enough to really throw you off.
After using it for a few weeks though, I'm thinking I might stay with Mac. In fact Katie doesn't know it yet, but I think in a few years I may upgrade to a MacBook Air, whether that is the M6 or M7 chip by then, who knows.
Finding Shrooms
I was doing yard work recently and came across some mushrooms growing wildly on my property. I presumed it was mushrooms, Katie was worried it was some kind of chemical, it looked very weird. I decided to use Reddit to figure out what kind of mushrooms I had growing. I checked the subreddit mushroomidentification and immediatly got a response. Apparently it's not actually a mushroom, its "Dog Vomit Slime Mould".
My initial response was gross, I might need to take my dog to the vet as that is really vibrant and bright! Then I saw that it was mould and googled it. Apparently its a type of mold, not mushroom/fungus. It sometimes appears on mulch in moist locations.
This made me curious about other mushrooms growing on my property. I asked Reddit about them too... They didn't take too kindly to that and removed my post. Apparently, the other kind growing randomly around my yard are psychodelics!
