🗳 I’m so excited to vote tomorrow I can barely stand it. I know things won’t radically change (they might not even change at all), but I am hopeful more folks than ever before will come out to vote.

🌎 On Friday (November 2), during my lunch break, I decided to take a long walk to clear my thoughts before wrapping up a week’s work. I live in a big city so endless noice is part of my life and it’s generally not a problem. On my walk along Prospect Park West there was some minor driving infraction that I imagine involved Car A cutting off Car B. Well, the driver of Car B sure let the driver of Car A (and everyone else within horn-hearing-distance) how unhappy he was. He laid on the horn for a good 10 seconds.

Yesterday (November 3), I was walking past a local store and saw in the window one of the employees had died. I hadn’t been in the shop in a bit, so I am not sure the last time I spoke with that person. While I had interacted with him, I never took the time to learn his name. Now I can never greet him by his name.

I am not sure why I am relating these events, but I can’t seem to stop thinking about them and combining them in my mind. The driver of Car A never learned the name of driver of Car B. And I never learned Issac’s name until it was too late.

This “war” for our precious time often has a casualty. Humanity.

⚖️ I keep reading about people who have never voted and it blows me away.

I’d love to read stories not just about first-time voters, but why they never voted in the first place. What circumstances led them to a life that voting was never something they needed to do? Was it never mentioned anywhere that reached them? Did work make it too difficult? Did family pressures stop them? Did they think it didn’t make a difference?

This isn’t meant to come across as judgey or “better than thou.” I really think these stories would be good lessons for our society.

Like all elections, I’m looking forward to voting on Tuesday. And my wife, who will be out of town, made sure to get her absentee ballot in time to mail it back so it would count. That’s someone who wants their vote counted.

Your vote counts because you count.

☕️ My superpower is being able to (continue to) drink coffee at the opposite temperature it was served.

🎃 When I was younger I used to think traditions only came from people trying to relive the past.

My wife’s tradition of insisting we watch The Nightmare Before Christmas on Halloween is now going on for four or five years. At first I didn’t like it.

I’m not anti-Tim Burton, but his movies make me feel weird. I used to think that was bad until I realized most movies don’t make me feel anything at all. Other than, I guess, antipathy to Hollywood.

Now, as we watch the movie, I have to admit that while I still haven’t totally embraced it (I’m sitting here writing this after all), I am thankful we have another tradition we can call our own. My daughter is old enough that she no longer goes out trick or treating, while my son does. He’s younger yet doesn’t want -or need- us to come along.

As I get older I am thankful for our traditions. It’s like we’re making the future.

💻 My daughter is in need of a newer computer for school. When it comes to schoolwork, it makes complete sense, in my mind, an iPad is the right machine for the job. Why an iPad? It simply feels like the future compared to Mac (it hurts less than I thought it would to say that). And with new iPads just being released, it seems now is the time to jump.

But, sigh. My daughter’s school relies on G-Suite and the Google experience on iOS is very short from spectacular. Apple has to do two things in order to make this work (Google should but will not do this, so it falls to Apple):

  1. Let Safari grow to be as capable on iOS as it is on the Mac.
  2. Let the Files app be as useful as Finder is. I know the learning curve hits a brick wall when it comes to file management and manipulation, but come on. Find the right researchers and designers to make this work. Let us plug in a hard drive and be able to import files!

Until then, I can’t recommend an iPad for folks who rely on G-Suite.

💻 I am insanely jealous of everyone who has already ordered an iPad Pro. But I am super happy for everyone who got something of what they wanted today.

These prices, however, have never felt more premium to me then right now. I reject the label of luxury when it comes to Apple, but there is no doubt these products are premium.

📚 I am not sure how I came across this app, but boy is Libby a piece of cake to set up, use AND (here’s where I’m going with this) get books from the library. Audio books too.

It even sent the book straight to my (dusty-from-sitting-on-my-nightstand) Kindle.

I remember using an early version of something like this from Overdrive and hating it to the point of swearing (which, really, is ridiculous and embarrassing to admit… I mean, just delete the app and move on).

Well done, folks.

📱 If you watched me use my XR you’d think I miss the home button. Muscle memory is a hard thing to break.

📻 I love podcasts. I listen to podcasts more than watch movies or shows, more than listen to music, more than read books (sorry, Ma).

Every once in a while, a podcast episode comes along and does that mind blowing kinda thing that’s best represented by 🤯.

I must have stopped this podcast five or six times to exclaim “I never thought of that!” (Or something along those lines). To be fair, that’s me during many podcasts and some bits on TV shows. I’m super annoying to be around with listening or watching anything.

In this case, I’m referring to one of my all-time favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible.* And the episode is Welcome to Jurassic Art. I also recommend you read the accompanying article because it, too, is so 🤯.

Man, I love podcasts.

Update
It was hard to decide on which emoji to choose from. Both 📻 and 🎙 are good choices.

*I’m Roman Mars.

📱 I haven’t had my iPhone XR 24 hours and it’s my favorite phone since the iPhone 5. I’ve had 5 iPhones and my most recent one, the iPhone 8 Plus, has been my least favorite. The XR is close in size and weight, yet feels totally different. I bet it ends up being a big home run.

📷 I wonder if I could do this with my X-100F which, predictably, sits on my nightstand as another object gathering dust. I mean, I could just decide to use only the viewfinder and not look at the images until I get home.

Right?

📚 I’ve been reading Arthur C Clarke’s book The Nine Billion Names of God. I read that particular short story in high school and it’s never left my mind. I guess because while it’s science fiction, it’s not the kind science fiction people immediately think of when they hear science fiction. You know, Pew! Pew! Pew!

I’m writing about it not because of the stories (which I’m enjoying), but because, it turns out, it reminds me of my childhood. Growing up my mom, despite being a big reader, didn’t buy books. All the books we read came from the library. In fact, I don’t think I bought any books until I bought textbooks in college. You know, now that I write that, it feels so odd to say.

In keeping with this tradition, I guess, this Clarke book I’m reading came from the Brooklyn Public Library. It had to come from the deep storage section which isn’t accessible to us mere mortals. It’s a really old book. And it smells differently than the new books I often buy now. Sorry, ma.

This book smells like my past, my childhood. It smells of stories.

💻 I find most of the complaints about Apple to be nonsense. It’s typically done for clicks: Put Apple in a headline and folks read the article.

Now @BradleyChambers wrote an article about Apple’s hypocritical stance on privacy that is excellent and something worth pushing Apple to fix. Well done, Bradley.

What is super frustrating is there was a solution at hand when Apple purchased PowerSchool. I understand why Apple had to sell PowerSchool, but having it in-house… And, boy, selling to Pearson was, in hindsight, blecch!

🚀 I’m with my son and we’re about to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey at Lincoln Center with the New York Philharmonic. I can barely contain my excitement.

Update: (11pm)
What a show! To hear the score and some additional sounds all performed by an orchestra and/or chorus was goosebumpy. I mean, to hear The Blue Danube live is nothing short of a treat. My wife took our daughter to see Amadeus done at the same place in the same way and now I regret not going to see that with them.

⌚️ The Apple Watch Series 4 feels like the beginning of something much bigger than a notifcation system slash fitness tracker. A device that has the ability to track falls and help monitor your heart is device you learn to trust and never be without. It becomes intertwined with your view of (and how you view) your health. In other words, it feels like version one of a device from a science fiction movie.

📱 I’ve been hoping for colors for all the products for a while now. I guess I’ll jump on the iPhone Xr wagon. Let’s try yellow.

❤️ The Apple Heart Study has ended. I submitted 1,560 heart rhythm data points. In the big picture I know it’s not much, but I feel good about it.

📚 I finished two books while on vacation. The first one was Unlocked by John Scalzi. I have no idea why I read this before his other book Lock In but I don’t think it was really necessary to read them in order. I’ll get around to Lock In before too long. The book’s style reminded me of World War Z by Max Brooks. I’m sure this style has a name, but I am not fancy enough to know it.

Anyway, I recommend Lock In (World War Z too).

The other book was Artemis by Andy Weir. I didn’t like it nearly as much as his first book, The Martian because it felt like everything had to be overly explained because the science is too far out of everyday knowledge. It just got in the way. I still recommend Artemis because Andy Weir’s love of space and science shines through and I like that.

🔥 I built my first campfire last week. It was pretty decent for a city slicker. We made s’mores.