Gabz/mL

I have not been using my 20L Peak Design Everyday Backpack and it has been fantastic.

half the room gasps in Spanish

I know, I have been wearing and swearing by this backpack ever since I have been at my current job, which is a little over 4 years now. In fact, I haven’t shopped around for another backpack ever since. That and I don’t want to make spending over 250 USD for a backpack a habit.

Sometime last year, in one of my Stitchfix box deliveries, I randomly received a backpack, THE NORTH FACE Vault Everyday Laptop Backpack and it is the most boring uncharacteristic, most basic backpack that you can possible imagine. Loved the color, though. Ever since I got it it sort of became my gym bag. We would occasionally use it to carry the iPads, headphones, and other stuff for the girls when going out and about, essentially a diaperless bag.

On my most recent trip to Yuma, I took my boring backpack instead of my everyday one. It was a super-short trip so I took very little with me. And I gotta say, it was a delight…

Let me explain. The Everyday Backpack is great, it’s got enough space for all my shit plus my camera. This backpack, however, is the first generation, it is so rigid and tough, plus, with everything I put in it, it becomes heavy and not very comfortable to carry around, at least for me. That said, I did not carry my camera with me although I could have possibly been able to.

Now I am in the market for a backpack, I think, perhaps not exactly a 250 plus USD one but something simple. What will happen to the Everyday one? I don’t know, perhaps It’ll get used in a much different way, I haven’t even been carrying it to work since. I have just been carrying my essentials, a notebook, a laptop, a pen, and a few accessories or cables and that is it. I think I need to rethink my EDC system, too.

So, here we are, the state of the backpack at the end of 2023, ish.

My blogging workflow has somewhat changed in the past month or so. Before I would compose and publish, strictly from Ulysses, at least long-form blogs with pictures — or without.

Lately, I have found myself just simply using a combination of Drafts and Mimi Uploader, all from my iPhone 14 Pro more and more. So far has worked well.

For example this post from a few days ago.

Mimi makes it so easy to upload images in bulk and get the markdown links from it for easy use. I selected all the pictures I wanted to post, copy the links to a Drafts note.

Since I am using Jason’s super-awesome GLightbox plugin I just needed to add some simple code to be able to generate a grid-of-images. A code that I have a text replacement shortcut for (😉). Then, I added some text, opened up the Drafts actions drawer, and selected this useful action which I believe was created by Craig, selected any categories if needed, and voilà!

Just note that if you are looking at this blog post with pictures on your mobile device, you might not see the nice-looking grid of images, you might want to use a bigger screen 🤷🏻‍♂️.

Mostly I have been posting short posts without a title but I think I will just do it all from Drafts. When I am not composing and publishing from my device, it is usually on my computer, and I just use Micro.blog’s web editor.

I’m sure someone who may or may not read this will think that this is a lot of clicking around and that there’s possibly a better way to go about it. And that might be entirely true, and maybe one day I’ll change my ways again, but this way works well and for now, this is the way.

Again, for now…

Yay for Trailer-Taco-Tuesday! In other words, we had Taco Tuesday in the “office” today.

Today is pharmacy tech day! Annie is a pharmacy tech and then some.

Today is new comic books day and League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong #1 is out!

At work, it was a very busy day, with lots of data to process. That meant do not disturb on Teams and that lots of music!

Here’s today’s rotation.

🎵 Lo Que No Te Dije - Gale

🎵 nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana - Bad Bunny

🎵 Smash - The Offspring

🎵 Godsmack - Godsmack

🎵 Nevermind (Remastered) - Nirvana

🎵 Something Like Human [Bonus Tracks] - Fuel

Also, yay for stickers and video games with instruction booklets, like it’s 1985 😅!

Today I changed my system’s settings to “dark mode”. It is nice, given that my corner of the office (which is really in a trailer) is not very illuminated so dark everything suits me nicely. The problem with this is inconsistency. Every app and every website has a different dark color scheme so it can get weird. And if a particular webpage or web app doesn’t have a dark mode (like all my work web-based tools), it is like taking a punch in the eyes. 😅

Ever since I have been blogging, especially since using Micro.blog as my platform, I have had this Day One IFTTT action that every post gets logged as an entry in Day One. I have had this for years and it is nice to use it’s On This Day to recall past events and posts. However, it can be weird at times. The entries aren’t necessarily clean, they always come with random ifttt links and the blog’s URL too, so is not the cleanest format. Also, if the post had multiple images, it’d only show (or import) the very first one and omit the rest. At some point, it would seem like I managed to clean up better whatever came from gaby.micro.blog’s RSS rather than from the main blog URL (Gabz.blog), and has no random links and such but still missing photos if multiple.

The good thing about this is that it all works in the background and I don’t even have to think about it or even manage it. That being said, since I have both recipes going, I do find myself now with duplicate entries, ups! Thus, I am thinking of a different approach. It would be more manual, but it is doable.

If I compose my post in Ulysses, I can always export it in markdown format to Day One, all pictures and all. Pretty straightforward. The Challenge will be when I am composing from my work PC, which I often do. Well, luckily, Day One has a web app, currently in beta I believe, so it is all about copy and paste.

We will see how it goes.

I know many people that run their lives, not only using some fancy task manager but also actually using, a calendar!

A Calendar, what a concept, right?

I have to admit that I am the most unorganized, most forgetful person ever. So you would think, that I would be taking advantages of all these amazing tools that I have at my disposal. Well, you would be surprised.

I do use calendar to a certain extent, for work mainly, and many of the events in my calendar are invites, nothing I actively create for future me. For personal life? Uff! Well, 99.00% of my calendar events, are also appointments, created by someone else, my wife. And just like my work calendar, if it doesn’t have a reminder of sorts, I won’t know what’s happening until 15 minutes before it’s supposed to happen.

Told ya’, I am super unorganized!

I need to get better at managing my life, especially my personal ones. Kids’ activities, family events, Parent-Teacher conferences, Disney Encanto: The Sing-along Film concert! And for now, I have it easy, there’s no sports or band practice, or any extracurricular shenanigans. So I better start changing my Calendar and life managing habits, and quick!

In other words, I have a super fancy calendar in all my devices, like Fantastical and I rarely look at then thing, I rarely use it our take true advantage of it. And unless Annie mentions anything, sigh, I never know what’s going on.

Now, can someone please explain my girls’ obsession with freaking Bluey!

1. Last night we made chicken-bacon-ranch mini wraps/soft tacos/burritos type thing, therefore, there was bacon! Of course, by the end of it, there was some leftover bacon. Bedtime came around, and we asked the girls to grab a snack before brushing their teeth. The next thing I saw was Luna snacking on a big piece of bacon while watching night-night stories.

2. Although I went to bed relatively early and had my super-magical melatonin gummies, I still had a shitty night’s sleep. It is going to be a rough day.

3. Looking forward to some Sea of Stars tonight.

Part of me just wants to leave work and nap. I am truly struggling and it is hard to concentrate on anything. Too many nights, and it is starting to mess me up mentally, and physically.

But then, what would be the purpose? For just to have the same issue tonight?

Even the thought of knowing is nighttime and that I need to go to sleep gives me anxiety.