Friday, December 22 2023

I'm writing this post to kick start my blogging habit. Hopefully it sticks this time. Lately I've been writing about how to fix bugs or set up environments, but the more I read about writing the more intrigued I am to make writing in public a habit. I subscribe to the People & Blogs newsletter and find it fascination how people are still using normal blogging the same way they did in the early 2000s.

Back in the 2000s I had a local blog with two friends that was semi-popular. We'd write about our things in Minneapolis and I'd post some life updates. This was before Twitter took over and people who wanted to post something in public did it on the Internet.

Winter Break

Today technically marks the end of the work year for me and the start of winter break until January 2nd. I plan on working a little bit here and there, enough to manage projects and clients but I'm really going to try and take a break this year. There are some side projects that I have been itching to get done or make progress on, too. This next week feels like the right time to make some head-way on those.

Some of the projects I want to focus on:

  • Today's Record High
    • Talking to some other developers at my co-working space has renewed my interest in this project. Which isn't too hard, but when I know someone else feels the same way I do about a project it gets me excited to work on it some more.
  • Armchair Media Explorer
    • This data set of all the books/movies/shows that are mentioned on Armchair Expert is a little over a year old at this point. Given this good size dataset we should be able to create some pretty graphs and charts.
  • JetTip Data
    • This is a project that my software company is partners with JetTip. We've developed a consumer to feed the JetTip mobile app/website with real-time FAA flight updates. There are some error handling and service configurations that I need to put in place to make sure that the hosting is as rock solid as it needs to be.

T is off school this entire week so we have some time together. I think some nice warm winter walks, a snowboard lesson and general overall just hanging out enjoy time off from work and school.

I hope to work on my latte art as well. I'm getting better at it since I started drinking a cortado every morning instead of making a pour over. I still make pour overs for K. She prefers straight up coffee to espresso drinks.

Record Highs for Christmas

It's been the warmest December that I can remember in Minneapolis this year. It's an el nino year so the weather will naturally be warmer, however with the impact of climate change it appears that this year is kind of crazy. With Christmas around the corner I looked up our record highs on Christmas Eve and Christmas where in Minneapolis. It looks like we are going to be close if not breaking these records this year.

Looking at the temperatures as a record is kind of wild, we have been close, if not above those temperatures for the past couple of weeks it seems. The temperature might not have broken any records over the last couple of weeks but it's been freakishly abnormally warm here all December and November.

Here is a look at the record temps for Christmas Eve and Christmas in the Minneapolis area.

Christmas Eve

Maximum 1-Day Mean Max Temperature
for Minneapolis-St Paul Area, MN (ThreadEx)
Rank
Temp (F)
Date
146.01957-12-24
245.01881-12-24
344.01940-12-24
443.02021-12-24
-43.01994-12-24
-43.01889-12-24
742.02011-12-24
-42.01877-12-24
941.01928-12-24
1040.02006-12-24
Last value also occurred in one or more previous years.
Period of record: 1872-10-01 to 2023-12-21

Christmas Day

Maximum 1-Day Mean Max Temperature
for Minneapolis-St Paul Area, MN (ThreadEx)
Rank
Temp (F)
Date
151.01922-12-25
246.01881-12-25
345.01994-12-25
443.01999-12-25
-43.01943-12-25
-43.01928-12-25
742.02011-12-25
-42.01936-12-25
941.01940-12-25
1040.01919-12-25
Period of record: 1872-10-01 to 2023-12-21

Here's a look at the recent temperatures for December here as well. I took this screen grab from my side project, Today's Record High.

That's about it for today. I seem to have written a good amount of information here which is pretty awesome considering this is the first blog post that I've just let my stream of conscious go. It feels good to let your brain run and get those thoughts out onto digital paper.