If you want to try the official beer version there’s a Duff brewery at both Universal Studios Hollywood and Orlando

Somewhat related PSA. I used to have an unscreened window in my home office and started noticing birds would fly into it on occasion. Found out it’s actually pretty common and can be fatal to the unwitting bird, so I put some post-it notes on the window to help them see/avoid it. There are ready-made products for this exact purpose as well. Both seem to do the job and cut down on collisions.

As a bonus, King’s Canyon is also adjacent to Sequoia National Park, which is equally stunning and home to the largest single stem tree, the General Sherman giant Sequoia.

Looks very relaxing and peaceful. Some of my favorite camping trips have been in the eastern Sierras.

$6.4B for HashiCorp on the heels of $4.6B for Apptio and $34B for Red Hat back in 2018. I wonder how long until they expect each of these acquisitions to be accretive?

Recently moved over to porkbun after dealing with a couple billing issues with namecheap and not getting the best customer service. Been pretty happy so far.

Kyoto is a magical city, rain or shine

Those are rookie numbers, gotta pump those up. First world ballers are working 140+ hours/week. /s

Years ago I bought an insulated coffee cup and water bottle (klean kanteen) that get used every week, especially if I travel. When I get iced coffee and I can walk around sipping it and there’s still ice floating around hours later. Plus I can avoid single-use plastic cups if the coffee shop fills personal ones (some even give a discount!). The water bottle has saved me from having to buy overpriced bottled water dozens of times over.

Another one is my bike. I bought a used Marin Muirwoods commuter bike from a local co-op and it’s saved from having to drive to any place less than a few miles away, like the gym. Less gas burned and wear & tear on my car. Plus it’s fun cruising around and is great exercise.

Terrible. Getting caught up in a geopolitical fight while you’re just trying to eke out a living. Hope their families find peace.

The area has witnessed increasingly frequent run-ins between Philippine vessels and tiny wooden fishing boats against much larger Chinese coast guard ships and what Manila says are shadowy Chinese “maritime militia” fishing vessels.

Wooden fishing boats vs. steel hull ships tells you everything about who’s the aggressor. Hope they find a resolution.

Basics:

• Cut down on subscription services: We started using our library more, reading/watching stuff we already own, and taking advantage of what’s already free on the internet
• Buying used: I’ve gotten some big ticket items and smaller stuff for less than half the price of new. Mainly through OfferUp now since I deleted FB, but I’ve heard marketplace can work too
• Mainly drink tap water (RO filtered), coffee/tea, and oat milk. Healthier than when we were buying sports drinks and soda. Also, kombucha is pretty easy to make once you’ve got a SCOBY.

Advanced:

• Insulating our house. Reduced our electric bill in the summer and gas bill in the winter. Prolongs the life of our AC unit.
• Getting an electric vehicle. Wife has a longer commute and the savings on gas is significant. Plus no oil changes and less overall maintenance. It’s been a great experience and I can’t imagine going back to an ICE vehicle in the future.
• Biking or walking whenever possible. This was easier when we lived in the city, but even in the suburbs we can walk to the gym or grocery store. Driving to the gym to hop on the treadmill always seemed counterintuitive to me.
• Installing solar panels. Don’t have worry as much about our utility bill fluctuating, peak hour usage, or annual rate hikes. Plus there were government incentives that lowered the upfront cost.

I’m a fan of insulating first because I find it more pleasant to have the house stay at the same temp longer rather than cycling between too hot and then too cold when the AC is running every couple of minutes.

We did a combination of R-38 batt insulation in the attic and blow in (i.e. drill & fill) for the exterior walls and it’s helped tremendously. Also, we added radiant heat barriers in the garage where there’s no HVAC. We had pros install all of this since it is fairly labor intensive to crawl around in the attic. They knocked it out in 2 days.

Another thing we did was get solar panels. Depending on your state’s current net metering policy, this could more than offset your entire usage. For us it made sense since we were also getting an EV in addition to having ever-increasingly hot summers.

If I had to replace the AC unit, I might look into a heat pump/mini-split like you mentioned since you don’t have to cool/heat the entire house if you don’t need to, but ours is still fairly new.