Frontdoor Benefits, my new startup, posted our first newsletter/update. In doing our “planning” for it I took a lot from how I apprach this blog:

  • We are writing to a single individual (”Dear treasured friend” not “Hey friends”).
  • We are writing from each of our personal voices (”This is Charlotte. I have… ” or “This is Ben. I have…”)
  • Tone is casual and informal, we are sharing the things we’ve done or are thinking about with a close and curious person.
  • We write about what we have done or thought about. Not so much what we intend to do in the future (definitely no commitments!)
  • We try to avoid talking about the newsletter itself. For example, we don’t say how frequently we want to publish, or apologizing for it being a minute. Every post of the newsletter just is.

It’s been successful so far, in that we asked for some things in it and people have delivered.

I have been doing lots of research and having interesting conversations about customer/client/caseworker/constituent relationship management. Not so much “salesforce” or “hubspot” but how to break down identities and artifacts and tasks; differentiating between task-based from case-based models, and worker activity from supervisory concerns. If you have experience, or opinions, or related traumas, I’d love to chat: [email protected].

I discovered that turbo-rails debounces Refresh Broadcasts; after being surprised for many, many minutes why a Rails runner script wasn’t broadcasting as expected. One of those things that simply manifests as strangely broken if you don’t go and read the code.

My new workday is settling down into routine, and now I’m trying to add a regular morning swim 3 days a week. I managed one. Progress!

I finished reading Space Between Worlds and its sequel Those Beyond the Wall. And started Kirstin Chen’s Counterfeit , which so far has me wondering whether phrases such as “nipple-length hair” is attributable to the character or the author (it was no mystery at all the last time this came up).

Katamari Damacy is on Apple Arcade, and I’ve been playing that. I also picked up The Long Dark again which I haven’t played since early access before they added a story mode; as a walking simulator it’s a little slow and bleak and I’m not a big fan of graphically dying… but it is a walking simulator and I like that.

Last night we saw Empire of the Sun at the Greek theatre.

I renewed my CPR training and certification. That’s content.

We’re fostering Dennis, a sweet tabby cat who needs a forever home.

Fuck, AmeriCorps is gone.