π« Week Notes 051
ποΈ // Dec 14, 2025 - Dec 20, 2025
A big week for my younger son, Nathan. He had his last winter concert with the local high school he attends part-time. They have a fantastic music program, and he's had a great experience taking part over the last two and a half years. I'm kind of sad that we're at least two years away from having another one of our younger kids be old enough to take part in those programs.
π« We got the big news Thursday that Nathan has been accepted at Gonzaga University (where I've worked forever), and I'm super excited for him. He's always wanted to go there, and I'm really happy to finally be able to take advantage of the child tuition benefit I get as a long-time employee.
π As everyone who works in and around academia in the United States knows, there are a lot of financial headwinds right now. Gonzaga is no different,and we had a university-wide staff assembly meeting midweek where we saw some pretty stark downward trends. We're in the belt-tightening and staff reductions via hiring freezes and attrition phase right now, but it will get even more painful if we can't find new ways to maintain our enrollment targets.
β½οΈ Spurs 1-2 vs Liverpool, completely wild and chaotic one. Liverpool was vulnerable, and yet somehow it took Spurs losing Xavi and then Romero to red cards for Spurs to start outplaying the visitors. It was borderline miraculous that it didn't somehow end up a 2-2 draw as poorly as Liverpool finished.
Playing
βοΈStill playing Minecraft with the kids in a shared world, although we had to miss a few days this week because of the schedule. My dramatic personal highlight was when I set up a lava farm in the basement of my house and accidentally burned down half of it. I was able to repair it pretty quickly, but a really funny newb mistake to make.
π§ββ Staying on top of my Daily Quests and Mastery Pass progression in Magic Arena, but not drafting enough to make much progress on my Avatar set collection. Hoping to catch up on that during my winter vacation.
Watching
π·πΊ Lots of Bald and Bankrupt YouTube videos this week from his travels in Russia and the former USSR. The absolute highlight being when he traveled 30 km on foot across a desert in Kazakstan to break into the abandoned, but boarded up and guarded, hangar where they still stored two Soviet Buran shuttles at the time of filming.
πΊ Pluribus S1E8 ππ Great Carol - Zosia episode, but I fear Manousos's anti-hivemind zeal is just going to end up screwing himself and Carol over when it comes to restoring human individuality- something they both still want. Also, you don't keep applying hydrogen peroxide to healing wounds.
Projects
π A lot of Mac update maintenance as I try to get all of our computers around the house on the latest 15.7.3 release, given the second major zero-day patch for macOS since August.
πLots of Christmas gift-related stuff, nothing I can reveal in public currently, on the off chance future recipients will read this!
π‘ Finally fixed the loose lock hardware on our front door and door frame by replacing a couple of little screws with much longer and stronger ones with enough purchase to keep everything aligned properly.
Listening
- πNothing too exciting, just Christmas playlists mostly.