The world has shrunk, its borders frayed,
By forces I can’t bend or sway.
The tide of time, the weight of fear,
The walls close in, the paths unclear.

A silence falls where voices sang,
Connections lost, the echoes hang.
The children grow, their paths diverge,
Their laughter now a distant surge.

Eyes once bright, now look away,
The warmth of love, a fleeting stay.
And news rains down, a storm of stone,
The world turns colder, I’m left alone.

But as it shrinks, my sky unfolds,
A vastness deeper, rich, and bold.
For every door that time has sealed,
A boundless inner space revealed.

The shrinking world, a quiet plea,
To grow the universe in me.
What I can’t change, I will transcend,
And let this shrinking world extend.

— ChatGPT

Words 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.