Tonight I played my clarinet for the first time in a couple years. I was ashamed that I had to get the vacuum out and clean off the layer of dust that was caked to the outside of the case, having sat in my closet untouched for so long.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend the Fall 2022 concert of the Cache Symphony Orchestra. It's a community orchestra made up of mostly volunteers, including my wife who plays the violin.

The program was an ambitious one. It made them stretch. And it paid off. The performance was excellent.

A couple weeks ago I was perusing the #christian tag on Bandcamp and the first result that came up was an album called Future Foreverby Jonathan Ogden. I'd never heard of him or this album, but I gave the track One Day a listen and was hooked.

Like many of us in the year 2022, I spend most of my weekdays on a computer. It's how I work to support my family.

But then what do I do in my spare time? Most of the time, I get on my computer. I watch TV shows or Movies, play video games (Minecraft these days), listen to music, catch up on social media, write blogs, etc. I do read books, spend time with my family, and other non-digital things, but my current ratio of connected to disconnected free time is extremely skewed towards connected.

I tend to experience bouts of nostalgia – longing for the past. Sometimes I even buy gadgets that I once owned because I remember them fondly and regret letting them go.

I’ve been using the same wallet for nearly 20 years. I purchased it in January 2003 shortly after I returned home from my 2-year church mission to Brazil.

For several years I've been paying for a Family plan with Apple Music for me, my wife, and my son.

I've been willing to pay the $14.99 per month ($16.04 including tax) for this family plan because of the convenience in being able to listen to their vast music library ad-free, on-demand, on a variety of devices.

Last week I received an email from Apple informing me that, starting in November, they are raising the price of this plan from $14.99 to $16.99 per month.

Pharmaceutical companies being allowed to market directly to consumers has resulted in a lot of ... creativity ... in the names they come up with for medications. Most of them are pretty weird, and I wonder how they come up with them. Do they come from the minds of their marketing team? Do they have software they've created or paid for to come up with these?

Back in January I wrote Why I Use Librem Social. Librem Social is a social media network that is based on a fork of Mastodon. About a month after I wrote that, I decided to migrate to a different instance. Fosstodon is where I landed and I've quite enjoyed my experience there.

This morning we were greeted with a stunning explosion of orange, pink, and grey in the sky as the sun prepared to rise over Bear River Range.