First game of the season with the whole family. Go CUBS!!

I still subscribe to a physical copy of the Chicago Sun Times on Sundays. One of my favorite things is watching my son read the comics in the morning, in his robe, like an old man.

A new rule for Oscar voting.

When the Academy announced that, starting next year, Oscar voters will actually have to watch all the movies in a category before making their final-round picks

If you’re like me, you’re probably surprised this wasn’t a rule already.

www.npr.org/2025/04/2…

Enjoying some local shopping with my daughter. And Independent Book Store Day. No car Lincoln Square is kinda nice. Not like you ever get parking anyways.

The problem I keep running into with battling cancer. Even when things are going GREAT, you do a little bit of research on a small symptom and you become instantly overwhelmed by the number of things that can go wrong in your fight.

Mixed day. Started with a stressful meeting in the morning. Got a bit of work done. Cubs game was on a long rain delay but finally got started around 3:30pm. Went with my buddy Shawn so it was cool for it to just be us so we could catch up. Bout to make some popcorn and watch Lost.

A $5000 baby bonus sounds like the worst pay day loan ever.

abcnews.go.com/Politics/…

Nice night for a ball game.

Pete Hegseth’s departing Chief of Staff. Only the brightest. No DEI/woke shit here.

During that meeting, “he turned [and] he goes, ‘Can I just tell everyone around this table that I just took an enormous shit right before coming in here?’” according to two people who were present.

www.politico.com/news/2025…

Finished reading: The Box by Marc Levinson 📚

Good read if you’re curious about the global shipping economy and how global commerce got started. Great primer for the book How the World Ran Out of Everything too. Events from The Box have a direct impact on shipping during the pandemic.

I’m always torn between PC gaming and couch gaming in the living room. (Sometimes with a PC hooked up to the TV) The biggest difference is Dolby Atmos. Headphones just can’t compete with a true Atmos setup IMO. The sound difference is insane.

Man, these Cubs are swinging the bats something fierce. They never seem out of a game.

I’ve heard of weird things with identical twins…but this is just…odd.

This story about a kid in Florida who fell in love with a Character.ai chatbot is horrifying. I have more thoughts on this for later. Ella wanted to use this a couple years ago and was annoyed when we said no.

A Deadly Love Affair with a Chatbot

Finished reading: The Dream Hotel: A Read with Jenna Pick by Laila Lalami 📚

3.5 stars, rounded up

I discovered this book via the Writer’s on Writing podcast. The author, Laila Lalami, was a guest on the show. I was surprised at how her ideas about the future mirrored my own manuscript that I’m working on. Part of me wanted to skip the book to avoid any creative cross-contamination. But the structure of her story was very different than my own so I gave it a spin.

The book is set in the near future where people are given risk scores based on algorithms that analyze all aspects of their lives through data points. One of those data points are your dreams. If your risk score exceeds a certain threshold, you’re eligible for “retention”, a cooling off period of sorts to keep you from causing harm to people. Think Minority Report. The story follows Sara Hussein who is detained after an encounter with authorities following a business trip. Her behaviors combined with her risk score flags her as a potential danger to her husband. She’s detained in a facility and struggles to follow the rules while standing up to the injustices of the facility and its operator.

I was coming off a dismal reading experience with the previous book in my list, so this was a breath of fresh air. The story started strong, the world building solid and I was generally vested in the character’s plight. There’s a strong sense of injustice, profiling, and abuse of power that is done so well I found my blood pressure rising throughout the story.

About 2/3rds of the way through the book, things start to slow down. The main character has an overall goal but it never feels like you’re making progress towards that goal. The story seemed to transform into more of a character study which isn’t really my jam. Then the end comes hurtling at you at 200 mph, leaving you a little unsatisfied.

I’m still glad I read it but just wish my excitement was maintained through the entire read.

With my mother’s passing, I’ve been compelled to share my grief publicly. I’ve been struggling to understand where this drive is coming from and have spent a lot of time thinking about it. At last, I have an answer.

The thought of sharing more personal things on my blog started before Mom’s passing. It started when I began accepting friend requests on Facebook from people I work with. That’s historically been a no-no for me. I’ve habitually drawn these lines in my life across persona boundaries. Who I am at work would be different from who I am at church, which might be different from who I am at home. All of these personas are truthful but with an emphasis and focus on different aspects of my life.

My online persona followed suit. What I post on LinkedIn differs from what I post on Medium, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. When I started accepting friend requests from people at work on Facebook, there was a moment of catharsis in knowing that some people were getting to know more of me. I had similar feelings when people from church stopped being “people from my church” and started being people I call friends.

That’s when I recognized my desire to be known. Don’t confuse being known with being famous. I don’t want to be recognized in the streets. I want people who are in my life to know me at a deeper level. When I journaled, I realized that I was journaling with the perspective that my children and other family members would read them and get to understand me more completely. I wanted them to know me, even in death.

My online writing has always been segmented based on my audience. My Medium articles have a technical bent. This blog often served as a catch-all for my entertainment hobbies (Movies, comics, role-playing games), but I never had a home for all the facets of who I am. That’s my new goal.

This space will be for all of the aspects of my life. One day, I might write deep thoughts about productivity. Another day, it might be a rant on parenting or combat systems in D&D. The content won’t be curated other than the fact that it’s about me, my life, and my perspective on things.

I’m not writing it for clicks or an audience. I don’t even track readership, and I have no desire to implement a comment system. It’ll just be me, sharing my life and my thoughts.

It’s possible no one ever reads it, but that’s alright. Nobody reads my hand-written journals, yet they’re still helpful for me as an exercise. I think this will be the same.

This year’s in-house Easter Egg Hunt is gonna bring tears. Ella is at a sleep over. Xander struggled to find his. I hid Ella’s this year and I got DIABOLICAL with my hiding spots. MWHAHAHAHAHA!!

This series was recommended to me quite some time ago. It’s hard for me to find time to watch something my wife isn’t interested in but this was worth the wait. The animation is amazing, the performances fantastic, and the story is solid. Classic revenge/outcast story with a minor twist. Not incredibly original but still done very well.

It’s worth checking out for sure.

Living that girl Dad life.

Going through my Weekly Review and came across a project that I’d been putting off for a long time. Now it’s too late. Don’t wait for tomorrow.