Word don’t do justice to how dissapointed I am in my fellow citizens.

I fear for many, but in particular, for my immigrant wife and non-white children.

America elected the first convicted felon to serve as president of the United
States. Trump - the twice-impeached, multiply indicted, once-defeated
former president overcame 34 felony convictions, 88 criminal charges,
accusations of insurrection as part of his attempt to overturn the 2020
election, civil lawsuit judgments totaling more than a half-billion dollars,
allegations by his entire first-term cabinet that he's unfit to serve, his
openly fascist intentions, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, his failed response
to the Covid-19 pandemic that led to more than 400,000 deaths from a virus he
repeatedly claimed was going to disappear, his repeated overt acts of
racism, at least 26 public accusations of rape, kissing, and groping without
consent, his promises to prosecute his political opponents, and the threats
encapsulated by the Project 2025 agenda to become the nation's 47th
president. Trump is the second president - and the first since Grover
Cleveland in the 19th century to retake the White House after a
reelection defeat. And, at the age of 78, Trump is the oldest man ever elected
president- breaking a record held by Biden, whose mental competence Trump
repeatedly savaged.

Source: https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2024/11/06/day-1387

I signed up for Ironman Canada at the end of 2023. I had big plans for getting there.

Alas, it was not meant to be, and I focused myself on Ironman California in October.

In September, I attempted to resume running but quickly ran into persistent challenges, including tweaking my knee when standing up from my desk at work.

I had little choice but to stop running, focus on the other sports, and hope for the best day of. I continued to attend Taekwondo, which may not be the most helpful for recovery, and I did a lot of walking.

It turns out it wasn’t something that rest and physical therapy could ultimately help.

I had torn the medial part of my left meniscus. The doctor said it wasn’t from a particular moment per-se, but rather just wear & tear given my activity level and age.

It is the most common form of knee injury for athletes.

So after three months of PT and two months of rest, an X-ray, and an MRI, the fix took less than two hours - and supposedly the entire procedure was only 20 minutes for the doctor.

I felt completely at ease as I lined up at 5th and Harrison to start the 2023 Seattle Marathon: my only expectation was to have a good time.

Two weeks prior I had strained my right calf while hustling down a steep section of Discovery Park’s loop trail; I blame it on the two would-be Arizona Iron wo/man at my heels.

I hadn’t run in two weeks and had no idea what my calf would do; I had not “tested it” (although I lightly jogged from the car to the Westin to pickup my packet, and felt great.)

After several years using Google’s firebase, I’ve decided to return to S3/Cloudfront.

Ultimately, I never took advantage of any of Firebase’s capabilities, and now it’s easier for me to lean in on what I use regularly then have an odd ball.

https://www.nick.org and https://www.kirsch.org/ are both CloudFront’d again.

It took a long time just to start typing this … as I realized that I’m not sure what I want to talk about.

Why am I talking at all? Who are these words for?

One clear beneficiary is my future self. My older self. Will you find me naive or prescient? How many other things will you wish I had talked about?

My children. They certainly don’t look at this now, but perhaps someday they’ll have questions about me that this could answer?