Much Love to the Drang Family →

Heart-breaking news in our community this evening from Dr. Drang:

Four years ago, my wife was diagnosed with stage IV endometrial cancer. Today, after many treatments — some quite helpful for a while, others that just did nothing for her — she passed away. She was the bravest and best person I knew, and I don’t understand how she could possibly be gone.

I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Dr. Drang personally over the years, and this Mastodon post really hurt to read. Send some love in the direction of Doc and his kids this evening.

Dooce →

There is some sad news in the blogging world today. Alex Williams at The New York Times:

Heather Armstrong, the breakout star behind the website Dooce, who was hailed as the queen of the so-called mommy bloggers for giving millions of readers intimate daily glimpses of her odyssey through parenthood and marriage, as well as her harrowing struggles with depression, died on Tuesday at her home in Salt Lake City. She was 47.

Pete Ashdown, her longtime partner, who found her body in the home, said the cause was suicide.

I met Heather a couple of times over the years, as we graduated from the same high school — albeit a decade apart — and I’ve got family members who are friends with her parents. She was one of the first people I read on the Internet who really had her own voice, and it’s clearly one that had plenty of pain mixed in with the joys of life, as Andy Baio wrote today:

Maybe it’s appropriate that she leaves a complicated legacy. Life is hard and messy, sad and angry, dark and beautiful, miserable and hopeful, all at once.

Let’s Find Out →

Matthew Bischoff has written something that really encapsulates what I loved about my time in Apple Retail. They worked in Retail a few years after my stint from 2006-2008 was over, but this really grabbed me:

My training for the job involved being clapped at a lot while donning the signature blue T-shirt in a room full of folks learning how to sell iPhones and iPads and create Apple “customers for life”. Our teacher was a blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer-turned-computer salesman named JB who wore white earbuds as a necklace. As he taught from the printed material and screened Apple videos for the class, he kept harping on one point that’s stuck with me in the decades since.

I don’t know, let’s find out

JB taught us that there was no way we could know everything there is to know about every Apple product, let alone every app that runs on them, and every way they can fail. He taught us that rather than making up an answer, guessing, or shrugging our shoulders, we should instead say, “I don’t know, let’s find out”. Admitting that we didn’t know was the first step. Then, we were to find out together with the customer by walking over to a Mac and looking up the answer or pulling in another employee who might know the answer.

The lessons in Matthew’s post go way beyond selling devices at an Apple Store. We should all be more willing to learn together.

A Lawless MacSparky →

My pal David Sparks:

I’ve spent the last few months shutting down my legal practice. I’ve made arrangements for my clients to get to other lawyers that can take care of them. I’ve spoken personally to all of my clients to explain why I can no longer be their lawyer. I’ve spent a lot of time on this transition, but I wanted to end this phase of my life in the right way.

So here goes. No longer do I split my time between two careers. For the first time since 1992, I will have complete control of my schedule. No longer will a client emergency force me to set aside the work that has become my calling. I’m all in, and I have big plans.

To begin with, I’m turning up two dials on my MacSparky work: quality and quantity. With me able to give this my sole focus, the content is going to get better, and there will be more of it on this blog, in the podcasts, in the Field Guides, and in everything else I ship as MacSparky. I can’t wait to get started.

I couldn’t be more excited for David. He has been working on this for months, and as you can hear in today’s episode of Mac Power Users, he has put a lot of thought and care into how is he going to pull this all off. I was happy to join MacSparky Labs, and I think you should be too.

The ALS Tree →

When I left the Apple Store in 2008, my team gave me a framed piece of art: a tree made up of these ambient light sensors from the iMac G5. We replaced a ton of parts in those machines and had these piled up everywhere.

During a move years ago, that piece was sadly broken, but I saved a bunch of the cables. I’ve had one framed to hang in my new studio as a reminder of those friends, including one who lost a battle with cancer within the last year. Andy, Ian, Kevin, Cole, Viki, Ryan, Kate, Zac, Steve, Brian and Marlena were the first people in my life who taught me that it was okay to be a big nerd.

Dreaming of WWDC

A few years ago, I started writing down my dreams in Day One. This morning’s entry shows what’s on my mind, I suppose.


We were all back at WWDC. Myke and I didn’t have press access, but several of our friends were able to talk Eddy Cue into it. This conversation took place near the theatre across the street from the middle school I attended.

We then went inside, and ran into Craig Federighi. He was tense and and seemed a little on edge. I asked him if he still got nervous before keynotes and he said he did. We then talked a little about sports and he brought out a soccer ball from behind the check-in desk.

He kicked it past me, and some other people started playing with it, so Myke, Ticci, John, Marco and I started to go into the venue. I turned around to see someone drill the ball right into Craig’s face with a powerful kick. As he fell to the ground, someone else returned the kick with one that sailed into a large glass panel, smashing it.

At this point, we decided to find seats in the back of the theatre and pretend we had no idea about what was going on in the lobby.

That didn’t last long, as a bloodied Craig and an angry Eddy found us pretty quickly. They took our credentials and told us they’d make an example out of Relay FM on stage, in front of the world.

As we left, my friends were mad at me, thinking the soccer ball thing had been my fault. I insisted Craig had produced the ball but no one believed me. We were taunted on the street as we walked out of the venue and back down the street.

I flew home the next day in shame.

On Digital Reminders of Painful Memories →

Lauren Goode has published an amazing piece at Wired about calling off her wedding, yet being reminded about it over and over from algorithm-powered services from Facebook, Pinterest and even Apple:

I still have a photograph of the breakfast I made the morning I ended an eight-year relationship and canceled a wedding. It was an unremarkable breakfast—a fried egg—but it is now digitally fossilized in a floral dish we moved with us when we left New York and headed west. I don’t know why I took the photo, except, well, I do: I had fallen into the reflexive habit of taking photos of everything.

This column really hit me hard.

Over the last several years, I’ve been dealing with something similar. While not a broken engagement, I’ve been stopped in my tracks any time I come across — or am shown by a computer — photos of the time before our oldest son was diagnosed with brain cancer. When a photo would show up, I would tell my phone I didn’t want to be reminded of it anymore, but it would still be burned into my brain hours or even days later.

That diagnosis came when he turned six months old, but in photos leading up to it, I can see the symptoms clearly. His head is often turned to the side. He can’t quite lift his eyes to meet the camera.

Of course, back then, we didn’t know these were signs of something life-threatening. In fact, we didn’t know enough about the world of neurology to notice them at all. The truth is, no normal parents would have seen them.

Like the slow-growing fractures in a doomed relationship, these symptoms were subtle and hard to detect until one day they weren’t, and he was suddenly having an MRI.

When the Photos app creates a memory with one of those pre-diagnosis photos, it hits me like a train. I feel guilt and shame that we didn’t see things sooner. I focus on those feelings rather than the good. The truth is that his cancer was caught, he underwent life-saving treatment at St. Jude and today he is 12 years old and doing well.

However, I’d rather sink into the misery of the past than feel the warmth of hope and thankfulness here in the present.

At the end of 2019, I knew this was a problem that needed addressing. I felt chained to the past, unable to move forward. It was like a weight threatening to pull me under and to be perfectly honest, I would have been okay with that outcome most days. I was barely treading water, and I needed help. I saw my doctor and restarted medication, and have been working on dealing with these issues in the safe bounds of therapy, armed with a PTSD diagnosis. Some weeks it feels like I’m digging through wet sand, watching it slump back into the pit, but progress is being made thanks to many people in my life.

I share this to say this: if you like me have memories that you can’t move past, there’s hope. The darkness doesn’t have to win.

Weird Al, on Writing →

Sam Anderson has a wonderful profile of Weird Al in The New York Times Magazine. I read through it all this morning, and when Yankovic talks about his writing process, it really jumped out at me:

But it turns out that Weird Al approaches the composition of his music with something like the holy passion of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Looking through the “White & Nerdy” file felt like watching a supercomputer crunch through possible chess moves. Every single variable had to be considered, in every single line. The song begins with a simple sentence — “They see me mowing my front lawn” — and even here Yankovic agonized over “lawn” versus “yard” and “my” versus “the.” He sifted through phrases in gradations so small, they were almost invisible:

Escher’s really still my favorite MC.
Tell ya Escher’s still my favorite MC.
Escher is my favorite MC.
Escher’s still my favorite MC.
MC Escher’s still my favorite MC.
MC Escher is my favorite MC.
Y’know Escher is my favorite MC.
Y’know Escher’s still my favorite MC.

For weeks at a time, Yankovic told me, he goes into a creative trance — what he calls “the zombie phase.” “I walk around the house with a thousand-mile stare,” he said. “My wife asks if I’m OK.”

This attention to detail clearly pays off in Weird Al’s music, and is something I’d love to be able to do in my writing, but rarely get to do.

So why does he work this way? The answer speaks volumes about how the musician thinks about projects:

“I could have written a whole second ‘White & Nerdy’ based on the alt lines,” Yankovic said. “I figure I’m going to be living with this song for a long time. We’ll probably be doing it onstage for the rest of my life. It’s got to be right.”

Moments

A decade ago, my wife and I saw our entire lives change in a moment when our oldest son was diagnosed with brain cancer.

That moment, of course, was a series of events. First, a checkup at the pediatrician’s office that ended with our doctor raising some concerns. Then the ultrasound the next day that ended with the doctor telling us to drive to the local children’s hospital, without stopping. There was a team of doctors and nurses waiting for us, he said.

Then there was the first MRI which showed the extent of the tumor. When they sat us down to tell us, we learned how bad it was.

It was bad.

The moments picked up speed. The number of scans and surgeries started to grow at an alarming rate, and before we knew it, we had been admitted to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and they were hooking up the first round of chemotherapy.

At the other end of that bag was our six month old.

After that first round, the moments came so fast that even now, ten years later, I can’t quite pull them apart from one another. Chemo, blood draws, pneumonia. MRIs, feeding tubes, seizures. Rinse, wash, repeat.

It was bad.

But it wasn’t all bad.

In that season, we were surrounded by friends and families who cared for us, and not just in the handywavy fashion of tweets about thoughts and prayers. We were carried through these moments by members of our church who did our laundry, cleaned our apartment, paid for our groceries and more. They sat with us, cried with us, prayed with us and shared in our deepest days and darkest nights. It was life together, despite the messiness and pain we brought into the community.

Eventually the moments slowed down. Josiah completed his last round of chemo and our daughter Allison was born. We had been into the arena and came out alive, but heavily scarred. The marks on his scalp were ever-present reminders of the damage done to each of us.

When he came off treatment and we were thrust back into everyday life, the wheels came off for me. The trauma hit me all at once, but thanks to my pastors, friends and an incredible therapist, I’m still here today.

The years since have been marked with ups and downs. The truly scary moments have become less frequent over time, slowly fading away as joyous moments have become brighter. Kindergarten graduations, church musicals, good MRIs. Learning to walk, learning to run, learning to ride a bike. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Josiah is not out of the woods, but the challenges have changed as he’s grown. Seizures and other echos of his past continue to be obstacles, but celebrating ten years with his diagnosis is a true gift.

Not every family with a sick kid get to celebrate this milestone. We have friends who are burying their child this week after a years-long battle with a catastrophic disease. The contrast is blinding, and the survivor’s guilt is heavy. Being around so many of our friends this week to honor this family has been hard, but so many of our conversations have been full of thankfulness for Josiah’s wellbeing. It’s humbling that so many people care so much, even ten years into this battle.

I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know why kids get sick, or what we’re supposed to do when they die, but I have come to believe that all things can be used for good, and for the benefit of those still here. I see that in the lives of every sick kid I have ever met, regardless of how their story ends.

It would be a lie for me to say that I am thankful for the last ten years, but I am stronger for living through them, and hopefully, a better person, husband and father.

Casey Joins the Ranks of Indie Nerds →

Casey Liss:

In around a month, I will no longer have a traditional job. I will be focusing my energy most especially on my family, with my two podcasts and side projects like Casey on Cars following behind. I do have some other things in the hopper, other than Casey on Cars, but I’m reticent to announce them before I know they’re ready.1

I’m also entertaining other kinds of work. The impetus for this change is about being around for my family, so I don’t want to take on a 40 hour per week gig. However, if you need a hand with something interesting — especially if it involves either teaching or leveraging RxSwiftlet me know.

I’ve been rooting for this day to come for a long time. I have no doubt that Casey will find success in this new adventure.

Congratulations, buddy.


  1. Casey talks more about this on today’s episode of Analogue. It’s at the top of my queue. 

On Unpublished Thoughts

A friend of mine who works in this weird market of indie tech content has a saying that he doesn’t “have a single unpublished thought.”

I don’t really know what Sparks means by this phrase, but it’s one that I turn over in my mind quite often.

One on hand, this phrase could be applied to work. Building an audience over time means sharing a lot. Blog posts, podcasts, tweets and YouTube videos begin to add up, and the machine always has to be fed new content or the whole thing comes to a screeching halt.

It could also be applied to life in a broader context. I see it every time I open Facebook or Instagram and scroll through the feed of someone I went to high school or college with. None of those people have “a platform,” but are still sharing boatloads of stuff on social media. As I’ve gotten older, the landscape has shifted from engagement photos to baby announcements and 2nd grade graduation videos.

Social media has given everyone with a smartphone a way to share the moments of their lives with the rest of the planet.

I was recently revisiting my thinking about Sparks’ phrase when my wife and I watched May It Last, a documentary about the band The Avett Brothers. Amanda Petrusich at The New Yorker recaps one the final scenes of the film, as the brothers record the final lines to a song titled “No Hard Feelings:”

Moments after they finish, [producer Rick] Rubin pops in and says, “Excellent work, everybody! Excellent work! Really good!” Both the Avetts look shell-shocked. Seth drinks some tea, wipes his brow, exhales. He goes to his brother. “It’s weird to be congratulated on the mining of the soul. It’s weird,” Scott mutters. Rubin reappears. “What’s next?” he chirps.

“Well. I feel like we need some space, you know?” Scott says. He and Seth stagger outside and sit on the studio’s back porch, drinking water in silence. It’s dusk. “The elephant in the room is that the song sells, and I can’t get away from that feeling. That it’s congratulated upon — I’m deeply conflicted about it,” Scott says.

I’m not saying that what my old school friends are doing is mining their soul for a like on Instagram; they aren’t.

Nor am I saying that the podcasts I put out every week are some deep form of art; they aren’t.

Writing about old Macs and talking about space policy and debating about iOS’ future and making marginally-good YouTube videos all require creativity and research and technical skill, but they don’t cost me anything.

To borrow a phrase from the Avetts, I’m not mining my soul for any of the content that fuels the Relay FM / Hackett Technical Media empire. And, quite bluntly, I think work like that is important to undertake sometimes, despite the downsides outlined above.

I have written things on this very blog that were incredibly costly in the past. This post and this post and this post come to mind.

I haven’t written much about this part of my life in a long time, outside of fundraising for St. Jude every September.

There are a lot of reasons for that. It was easier to share about Josiah and his cancer when far fewer people read this blog or followed me on Twitter. It was easier to share when he was younger and more unaware of his own situation. As my audience has grown and he’s gotten older, I’ve valued his privacy more than my need to share publicly.1

But a funny thing has happened over the last few years, mainly since I left my job to work on Relay FM full-time. As I’ve ramped up how much content I create and share, I’ve stopped making things that will never be shared outside of a Field Notes notebook or Day One.

I’ve slipped into Sparks’ thought of no unpublished thought, but ass-backwards.

It’s not that I share everything I create, it’s that I’m not making anything just for the sake of creating it.

I’ve coupled the act of creation and publishing so tightly, I’ve given up the instances of the former that don’t flow into the latter.

I don’t know what the answer to this problem is yet. Since I’ve realized that the reason Sparks’ turn of phrase has been nagging me, I’ve been more aware of my need to create just for its own sake. This may mean I get back into the habit of writing just for writing, or pick up my camera to shoot photographs of more than just old computers in my studio.

Whatever comes of this, you probably won’t be privy to its output. And — no offense — that’s the point.


  1. By mere circumstance, he’s having a checkup MRI this week. If it goes well, he will be at the seven year mark of no additional treatment past his initial chemotherapy. He’s a walking miracle, in the most very real sense of that word.