In the interest of having fun, I opened up my holiday gift today and built my first Lego set in over 20 years.

Plotting the number of bagels my body wants over time, as I approach bagel eating, the curve rises to a local maxima of 1. Just after finishing the bagel, the plateau shoots up almost instantaneously to 3.5 bagels. This is known as the “peak of deception”, because if I’m smart enough to wait t=10 minutes post bagel, the curve dips to -1.

Over an hour delay post boarding. I will be demanding a full can of Diet Coke for this inconvenience. At least I had time for Root Down before the flight.

Estes Park, Colorado

Resisting the urge to pour several cups of rice into the remains of these ridiculously good Dan Dan noodles.

It was dark and I missed a lot of plates, but Suraya was 💯.

Looking at some real data¹ in Allocate, Allovue’s tool for resource allocation modeling. Two different funding formulas, with a total cost with in 0.5% of each other. Look at the swings on a per-school basis.

Without reviewing results, both models seem like reasonable choices. The variance is astonishing.

The last few weeks I have been experimenting with a new focus mode setting. I call it Down Time, and I now have it turned on most of the time when I am not working or in Sleep.

The only notifications I receive are messages from Elsa. I have no apps on the Home Screens for Down Time. All widgets, except for my home row.

I originally let a few other people and apps “through” my notifications. Turns out, there’s really no app that deserves to break through. Maybe something like Flighty when traveling. And the people? I pretty quickly realized that no one I talk to had any expectation of immediate responses always. They sure don’t respond right away most of the time. So it turns out letting them notify me was more like feeling good someone “liked” my post on social media. It was about a little endorphin hit because someone was thinking of me. Those hits are hollow though, and the addiction is shockingly easy to break.

Overall, the feeling is one of just a little more quiet. I like that in focus modes I can still see there are non-Elsa notifications when/if I want to look. I check my phone often enough that I don’t really miss anything— sometimes there’s a message that’s been sitting around for 10-30 minutes. I never miss anything critical, and I check my phone often enough that nothing sits for hours unless I let it intentionally. Maybe this is more extreme than how you want to spend your weekends, but I would strongly recommend zero-basing your phone and only adding back what you miss. It will probably be less than you think.

Forgot to take a picture of the mac and cheese.

I guess she had too much to eat this holiday.

Home again

Dwell is thinking about how to define a “livable” city. It seemed like it was going well until the last criteria— community agency. If I’ve been convinced of anything when it comes to planning, it’s that concentrating power locally preclude all other elements of livability.

Trying something new this vacation, which may turn into my new evening and weekend routine. No app Home Screen. No notifications except from Elsa.

Milk and cookies at a bar with a book? Alright.

We take our hot sauce seriously.

She knows how to make me feel loved and appreciated.

The colors this morning.

Coming Soon

After presenting at the annual conference of the Colorado Association of School Business Officials (on equity-based budgeting), I got to stick around for a weekend in Vail about a week post peak foliage. No complaints about being back on the road for work.

Sometimes it’s a real sacrifice to travel for work.