I never thought I'd say it, but I'm feeling burnt out on eating at good steak restaurants. I don't mean burnt out forever, fortunately. Just burnt out for maybe a few days after eating at nice steakhouses two nights in a row.

These two dinners were connected to the small conference my company sponsored yesterday. Both meals were with customers. ( Read more... )

Wow, it was almost a month ago now Hawk and I made the decision to upgrade our phones. We've actually had the phones in our hands and been using them for a few weeks. How's it going? Although the transition process was ridiculously difficult our new phones are easily a win- and a very inexpensive win- over the phones we replaced ( Read more... )

We had another new bird join our nest recently. ...Well, maybe not so recently; he joined us in June, when we were in Alaska! It's one of the things that's been stuck in my blog backlog.


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Yesterday I posted about how Hawk and I bought new iPhones (the new 16 Pro) Thursday night. The deal was practically a steal. Verizon and Apple (I assume they're subsidizing it on the back end) offered a whopping $1,000 credit, each, for trading in our old phones. Normally the trade-in value for our older, mid-range phones would be $100 or less.

" ( Read more... )

As of last night Hawk and I have new iPhones on the way.

We weren't really in the market for updating our phones. At least I wasn't. I updated 2.5 years ago, buying an iPhone SE 3. It's fine for me still. I figured I'd upgrade sometime next year, when the next gen comes out. Hawk's phone is older. She's got the SE 2, and it's about 4 years old. So ( Read more... )

On a hiking trip two weeks ago I broke my hiking pole. I started looking for a replacement the next day. Local outdoors stores didn't have the sort of pole I enjoy using, and the nearest REI with one in stock was almost 2 hours away. I decided to order online.


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Blue Ridge Trip '24 #15
Blowing Rock, NC - Wed, 4 Sep 2024. 1pm

I accidentally my hiking pole. Not today; all I've done so far today is get up and get lunch. It happened yesterday.


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It's been a few weeks since I lost a camera lens in an Alpine swamp. It was a bummer since it's a general purpose, mid-range zoom lens, a Fujifilm 15-45mm lens that I used for a lot of my photos. After losing it I delayed for a few weeks in replacing it as I considered whether I wanted to replace my whole camera- which I could order with an equal ( Read more... )

Years ago Hawk challenged me, "All your business travel has given you really expensive tastes." I objected; the reality of business travel is seldom luxurious. The main thing that drove my choices across hundreds, and then thousands, of nights on the road was paying enough to avoid unpleasant surprises. That what you get as you start climbing to ( Read more... )

I've done something this week that's become unusual for me. I've eaten at a steakhouse. TwiceIt's not that I dislike steak. In fact I like it very much. And because I like it very much I don't enjoy it at family style restaurants. It's not good enough quality meat and it's not cooked that well. To get a good steak, I found years ago, one really ( Read more... )