Pain

Not the emotional kind I've spent entirely too much time (and too many blog posts) thinking about and dealing with, but true physical pain. The kind of pain where it feels like every muscle and bone in your body is on fire.

I never realized how much one type of pain can help you manage the other.

When I first decided to get healthy it was done for the usual reasons. Wanting to live to past 50. Wanting to see my son grow up. Wanting to wake up and not feel 60 when I wasn't even 40 yet. The vanity aspect of it wasn't bad either. Fitting into clothes I hadn't been able to wear in years was an added bonus. What I didn't know was the wonders it would do for the other parts of my life that were just as unhealthy as my body.

When you feel like your arms are jello and you couldn't possibly lift a thimble, picturing that girl who broke your heart can push you to finish those last 3 reps stronger than the first 3. A quick reminder of lies and betrayal can make you hit that last mile harder and faster than you ever knew you could run.

Depression still creeps up and can blindside me without a moment's notice, but instead of my old instinctual method of survival which was disappearing and wallowing in a bed of my own self pity now I take a deep breath and punish the physical side of my being to the point the psychological pain doesn't stand a chance.

I never understood people who were into self harm. Cutting myself or putting cigarettes out on my arm never made sense to me. Now I get it. I just chose an approach with a few more long term benefits. Emotional pain makes you feel dead. Physical pain lets you know you're alive. As long as you're still alive there's still hope.

And as long as there's hope you keep on fighting. Never, ever, ever stop fighting.

Link: An Open Letter From Tech Leaders

An open letter from technology sector leaders on Donald Trump’s candidacy for President

I may just be a lowly "IT Guy" and blogger, but I've never been prouder to be a small part of this tech world:

We believe in an inclusive country that fosters opportunity, creativity and a level playing field. Donald Trump does not. He campaigns on anger, bigotry, fear of new ideas and new people, and a fundamental belief that America is weak and in decline. Donald Trump proposes “shutting down” parts of the Internet as a security strategy — demonstrating both poor judgment and ignorance about how technology works.

The whole letter (linked at the top of this post) is worth reading.

Re: Evernote

I tried.

After my impassioned rant about the direct correlation between Evernote's declining quality and rising cost I gave Apple Notes an honest to goodness try.

I exported what I considered to be the 100 or so most important notes out of EN and into Apple Notes and went about my daily business. There were problems almost immediately. Notes freezes for a good 30 seconds every time I open the app, regardless if it's already open in memory or a totally fresh start. When attempting to scroll through the list of notes freezes happen every single time. Swapping between folders also causes freezing. Starting a new note? Same thing. That's just with text. When opening a note with images or attachments the entire app grinds to a halt for almost a minute. Searching was practically hopeless. I'd scroll through to make sure a note was present, then search for it. Nothing. No results. The way Notes handles websites through the Safari share extension isn't ideal either. Where Evernote will clip the entire page making a permanent record of it, Apple Notes simply saves a snippet of the site as a link. If the page ever disappears the note links to nothing. The "feature" of using Siri to add to a note doesn't work 90% of the time either. Dictating text to add to a note almost always leads to "Sorry, you don't have a (insert name here) note" reply. All of this happens on a 2012 MacBook Pro running 10.11.5, and an iPhone 6 and iPad Mini 3 both running iOS 9.3. Hardware's not to blame. Not being able to append to a note using my beloved Drafts and the lack of IFTTT integration are almost dealbreakers by themselves, all other issues aside.

After struggling with this for 72 hours I've had enough. Evernote is far from perfect but at least it works. I know my notes are there and I can find them. That's really all I need from a notes app. Fingers crossed Evernote's price hike will lead to improvement and stop the downward trend the app has suffered from the last couple of years. If not, hopefully the next time I try this there will at least be worthwhile competition.

Link: Changes to Evernote’s Pricing Plans

Full Story At Evernote's Corporate Blog

I've long espoused the beauty and simplicity of Evernote. Having been a heavy user for 8 years I've accumulated almost a decade's worth (over 2100) of notes, receipts, PDFs, links, screenshots, etc. all happily syncing among multiple devices and easily searchable from anywhere.

The last year or so though the apps have become increasingly bloated with new features added and removed regularly, increased sync times and generally poor performance issues across the entire platform.

About 6 months ago I began worrying about the future of Evernote. After a shakeup at CEO, massive layoffs, not living up to it's previous funding goals and the above mentioned decline in quality it didn't seem the company was long for this world. I slowly began exporting all of my written notes to plain text files, downloaded all of my receipts and PDFs to a structured file system on Dropbox and saved the links that were worth keeping to Pinboard. I didn't stop using the service, but I prepared myself for the worst: complete migration.

First and foremost, I don't begrudge software companies for trying to make a living and have no problems paying for a service I use many times daily. It's only when an increase in price is concurrent with a decrease in service I have to cry foul.

I'm not sure which direction I'm going to go in yet. I like the portability and long term storage of plain text, but the ability to add images and attachments was what first drew me to Evernote. Apple Notes looks like my best bet, but being forced to use a Windows PC at work means having to log in to the dreadful iCloud.com interface. Microsoft One Note has similar functionality and is cross platform, but I've been a Mac user so long that anything MS still makes my skin crawl. Luckily there are enough options I can give them all a go and see what sticks.

I'd hoped I could stay with Evernote, but I'm not going to pay more for something that only seems to be getting worse.

The Joys of Analytics

I've written a couple of times before about Squarespace's traffic overview section where I can see how many visitors this site gets on a hourly/daily/weekly/etc. basis, including the ability to see where the traffic is coming from thanks to IP tracing. As expected there's a lot of traffic from Nashville and the surrounding area, as well as a few usual places where I have family and friends. The majority of it though is spread out all over the world. Just this month there's been 27 different states, Ireland, Canada, Germany, England and Italy. Some of it comes from Google searches for specific keywords where a post I've written shows up in the results, a lot comes from direct Twitter links, and some navigate directly to the homepage.

Tonight while going over the stats for this past week 3 items in the traffic logs stood out:

IP addresses originating from Cupertino, California. 1 running iOS 10 and the other 2 on macOS 10.12

I'm not saying Apple employees are reading this site, but I'll be damned if it sure doesn't seem that way.

When I was a kid and dreamed of being a rock star I always imagined what it would feel like to have Joe Perry listen to one of my songs. Now I know exactly how that feels.

Revisiting My iOS 10 Wishlist

3 months ago I made a list of things I'd like to see in the next release of iOS. With iOS 10 being revealed today I thought I'd look back and see how well I did:

  • iCloud Account Merging: I knew it was too much to ask for. Sigh.

  • Multiple Airplay Speaker Support: It wasn't mentioned, but I'm not ruling it out just yet, especially since Google announced it with existing Chromecast hardware.

  • Mail.app Overhaul: Unfortunately not a word was even said about Mail. Thinking it's time to make that switch to Airmail permanently.

  • Better Healthkit Integration: Boom! My first wish to be checked off. Literally everything I asked for is happening in iOS 10.

  • Apple Music Overhaul: In my best Jim Dalrymple voice, "yep". I'm 2 for 5 now.

  • Third Party Siri Integration: Another one in the win category. Can't wait.

  • HomeKit: Another example where it's like they read my list and went point by point. I'm batting .500 now.

  • IFTTT Integration: I knew there was no chance in hell of this all along. It's one of the few downfalls of a company that takes privacy that seriously.

Overall I I got 3 (maybe 4?) out of 7. Not too shabby, especially when a couple of them I didn't honestly expect anyway.