Bob Wertz

Posts in the “Then” category were originally shared on my “Now” page.

Weird week. I got randomly sick for an evening. I woke up at 2 AM with a fever that only lasted a couple of hours and no other symptoms. So strange. Whenever I get sick now, I worry about COVID and getting others sick, but I’m pretty sure this was just a random virus.

Feels

• I’m excited about upcoming vacation. It’s been too long since I took a significant amount of time off.
• I’m worried about the state of our nation.
• Grateful for some rain. (We needed it.)

Projects

• I published two longer blog posts this week. One about the Star Trek episodes I tend to play in the background, and a second post about the whole Sticker Mule debacle.
• More progress on fonts. I inched closer to releasing my new typefaces. Just some refinements to make sure everything passes...
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It’s an early beta, but I really like where Iconfactory’s Project Tapestry is going.

That fact that one bad update to a third-party system can completely shut down businesses, hospitals and airlines… scary. You’d think these systems would be more resilient than that.

Woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep so I finished submitting a manuscript to a journal for peer review.

The Sticker Mule email arrived in my inbox, but I didn’t see it at first. Instead, I saw the backlash on Threads.

Here’s the thing, I knew the owner was conservative, but it didn’t really matter to me. I’d randomly order stickers (or keychains) whenever they had a great special. And they ran specials a lot.

Many companies take stands on issues as a way to signal their values. But most of the time, those topics are carefully chosen to align with their customer beliefs. There is an entire discipline in public relations scholarship called Corporate Social Responsibility that studies this strategy.

But this crosses a line. Blasting your entire business mailing list with a political message — a mailing list that is a massive asset to your sales funnel — is just stupid.

Why? You are choosing to voluntarily spam your mailing list with a political message that half of your list likely...

I’m home sick today and was thinking about shows I watch when I’m just killing time. Episodes I love to just put on in the background when I’m working (or sick). Most of the time, I open Paramount+ and play Star Trek. I figured I’d share my favorite “comfort” episodes. Warning: A couple of mild spoilers below for really old episodes.¹

Star Trek: The Original Series

• S1 E15 Balance of Terror. A “submarine” battle between Kirk and the Romulan commander.
• S2 E6 The Doomsday Machine. The race to stop a machine before it destroys more planets.
• S2 E15 The Trouble with Tribbles. My parents loved this episode when I was growing up and it’s one of my favorites. Sometimes, I pair it with DS9’s Trials and Tribble-Ations.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

• S2 E10 The Defector....
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Spent the evening troubleshooting some fonts that I’m going to sell through MyFonts. Finally think I’ve got everything fixed, but I want to look at again with clear eyes in the morning.

I wish Cotton Bureau made stickers.

The ACC and Florida State/Clemson are going to settle, right? These cases will be in the courts for years, probably heading all the way to the Supreme Court. The uncertainty will hurt the ACC and Florida State and Clemson will end up in the Big 12, where neither of them want to be.

We bought our soon-to-be middle schooler a phone today. Pretty sure he was the last in his friend group to get a phone. We’re still not letting him get social media apps, but he was cool with that because none of his friends use social media. They just text each other.