This is a Now page, partly inspired by the work of Derek Sivers. You should try one of your own, and you can read others' pages. This page is constantly being updated; come back often.
The weather radar to the right is the local radar in Melbourne, Florida that covers my area. If you look at where Lake, Orange, Osceola, and Polk Counties all meet a little north of I-4 (Four Corners), that's about where I'm at. Walt Disney World is a few miles to the east.
The "Live Status" block above is generated from data logged using Aaron Parecki's Overland app running 24/7 on my iPhone. It reads my GPS location and device status once per second and sends a collected data packet to my pi server about every five minutes. The data is stored in a QuartzDB flat file database, another project developed by Mr. Parecki. You can see part of that collected data on the Map page as well.
Living
Renewed my lease on the one-bedroom apartment here in Cagan Crossings for another year, through September 2027.
Going
Check the Events page for what may be next. It's not a guarantee that I'll be there, but it is on my calendar to attend or at least let others know about.
- My theme park visits are sporadic during the summer months because of the Florida heat, humidity, and frequent summer thunderstorms. I try to drop in on Magic Kingdom after evening church services and group studies when the park is open late enough.
- Planning a road trip up the east coast over Thanksgiving week to visit my two sisters in Syracuse.
- Planning for a few days up in rural Michigan around the MLK holiday in January to visit Dad.
Working
- Responsible for Toad Data Point reporting as a junior report developer with Optum Workers' Comp. It pays the bills and finances my Disney World habit.
- This web site, of course, as an ongoing "Truman Show" style experiment.
- Slowly updating old music and creating new music for The Study of Starlight. I was supposed to release the second track, a remake of "Rain & Candlelight", in June, but pulled it back to redo certain parts and haven't gotten around to doing it yet.
Reading
(Links to Amazon are not sponsored.)
Personal study
Mosaic is currently going through the letters of John (1–3 John).
Kindle
- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. If you ever wanted to explain Christianity to a non-Christian without making any reference to the Bible (which they likely couldn't care less about), this is the book to give them. It is a collection of radio talks given by Lewis shortly after World War II and fashioned into a book with some additional notes from the author. And he's got some really fascinating terms that you might find worth adding to your vocabulary (like "self-righteous prig"). Currently in Chapter 11 of Book Three.
Paper
- Hebrew-Greek Key Word® Study Bible, English Standard Version, edited by Warren Baker, D.R.E. An updated version of the late Spiros Zodhiates' Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible, New American Standard Version, that I bought thirty years ago, now in a more current translation that most churches seem to have moved on to. Since I gave away substantially all of my biblical studies library with all my other stuff a couple of moves ago, Zodhiates' work has been my go-to for evaluating the original languages.
Online
- Florida Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court opinions. I've found making this known gets me dismissed from jury duty almost every time. At least it did last time on an "Engle progeny" case, along with sharing that in the past some of my friends worked in law enforcement. Nowadays my friends are all associated in some way with Disney.
- Stalking Reddit threads, mostly around Disney and Apple topics, and the occasional bible question.
- I dropped Threads and LinkedIn. Too much noise, little to no signal. Pretty much leaves Facebook and Instagram, the only real reason for which is to communicate with friends and family.
- I dropped Discord since I also dropped off of Twitch. The latter was the only reason I had the former.
Watching
- I finally caved and purchased a 78-inch flat-screen for the apartment, but I hardly ever turn it on except for streaming Bloomberg during the day for some "smart noise" and as a display for the Raspberry Pi to watch the current weather radar as the daily thunderstorms roll through. Why so large? So I can watch it without needing my glasses.
Listening
- Dropped podcasts from my listening habit—just got way too far behind.
- I've been spending a lot of my recent time listening to my own upcoming tracks as I build them out. I'll layout the stems and sequences and listen to exports on repeat for a while for ideas on what to add, remove, or fix.
- My automatic Apple Music playlist has been offering up a lot of European and Christian metal, EDM, Praise & Worship, and French-language '80s pop. And Kraftwerk. View my last.fm here.
- smoothjazz.com during the work day.
- Ambient instrumental music for sleep (preferably with some bass notes—a good deep bass always seems to hit me right in the feels).
Other Doing
- 3D printed a new desk organizer setup, which also involved converting the monitor riser I had previously built into a platform to cover the monitor legs.
- I've started looking into camping gear and traveling more, especially with my newly-rediscovered geocaching hobby.