Our local minor league team, the Columbia Fireflies announced an alternate identity… the Carolina Grits. This is in addition to their La Copa de la Diversión look, the Chicharrones de Columbia. One alternate is fun… two might be overkill. Minor league teams will do anything to sell merch, though.

After all the upsets yesterday, I was surprised to see my ESPN bracket is in good shape. My entire Elite 8 is intact, I’m at 96.1% among the ESPN brackets and first in my office pool. Not too bad for someone that didn’t watch a lot of men’s basketball this season. 🏀

Liz and I walked a couple miles in the park behind our house. Everything is starting to turn green. The birds are out in force. And the pollen. Springtime in South Carolina.

Image of a creek with trees reflected in the water.

I’ve gotten back into designing shirts and I’m sharing them on Cotton Bureau. Today’s shirt is a salute to the 3.5 inch floppy disk. As a student, I swear I could fit an entire semester worth of work on one of these.

Grey shirt with a black 3.5 inch floppy disk.

As a creative person, your job should not be your sole creative outlet. Even if you work at the coolest design firm in the world, you still have clients and deadlines. Maintaining personal creative outlets is a key to remaining creatively fulfilled.

More car manufacturers are showing interest in developing less expensive electric vehicles. This report from Ford caught my eye. I saw an old Ford Ranger on the road the other day and commented that they don’t make small trucks like that any more. A small EV pickup would be a great option to have.

Green beer for St. Pats at Craft and Draft in Irmo, SC. 🍀

Green beer on a wooden table.

The Jobification of Volunteer Work

Almost 20 years ago, I was in San Francisco for my first AIGA Leadership Retreat. AIGA is a national organization for design1 and I was a first-time president for the South Carolina chapter. I’d just finished attending a session on leadership and one of my new friends who’d been a president before pulled me aside and gave me some advice: “This is supposed to be fun. If it stops being fun, ask for help.

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A new BBQ restaurant opened nearby and I was excited to try it. My wife and I ate lunch there today and it was terrible. Really terrible. I’m so disappointed.

Started writing a blog post about how local call-in radio shows are just like modern social media. And then, I remembered that I already wrote a post about this over a year ago.

On April 8, a solar eclipse will occur over the middle of the United States. If you are going to be near it this time and want to celebrate the occasion, I updated my shirt from the 2017 eclipse and you can buy it on Cotton Bureau. But order soon to make sure it gets to you before the big day.

Image of a black shirt with a stylized eclipse corona and date of the next solar eclipse.

Watching an old episode of MacGyver where he’s trying to find a crashed experimental aircraft, the GX-1. The GX-1 is an F-14 and the aerial combat footage was lifted straight from Top Gun. Also, the Russians have a psychic.

I put Jump Around on my grad school study playlist. Good choice, although it’s impossible not to dance when it comes on.

The South Carolina women had a buzzer beater yesterday. I was waiting for a take out order at a Chinese restaurant and following along in Apple Sports on iOS. The time went to 0:00 and assumed they’d lost. Then, a second later, the score changed. When I saw the replay, I realized the shot was taken right before the clock hit zero, and went in the basket after time expired. So Apple Sports was showing it as it happened. Pretty impressive.

South Carolina Women’s Basketball goes to 31-0 on a last-second three pointer by Kamilla Cardoso. Her first made triple of her college career. Incredible.

How big is the Rivian R3?

Electric truck and SUV manufacturer Rivian announced their new R2 SUV today, but surprised everyone with a smaller R3 version as well. I love smaller cars and I’ve been waiting for new smaller EVs to hit the market, hopefully at a lower price point. The R3 looks adorable and it reminds me of a VW Rabbit, which I used to drive.1 But Rivian didn’t publish any specs so it’s hard to gauge how big R3 is.

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The Rivian R3 looks exactly like what I’m looking for… And by the time it comes out, I should be in the market for an electric car.

Took today off because I knew I had grad school work to do. One task is to write a review of a journal article for the health and science communication class I’m taking. Opened the article and the topic is news coverage of suicide and cyberbullying. Challenging topic to start my day off with…

Went to the Apple Store in Charlotte for an Apple Vision Pro demo. It’s an experience. I can absolutely see the potential and the flaws, but I’m impressed.

That time my 89-year-old grandmother “helped someone old”

I used to dread calling my grandmother on her birthday. My mom died on that day and so every time I’d call, she’d start with “Well, you know, I wish Nancy was still here.” And that always bothered me and usually made me tear up, so I would wait as long as I could to call. I was pretty sure that I was the last grandkid to call each year.

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