Bob Wertz

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. You are giving up a bunch of your free time and if you aren’t having fun, it’s not worth it.”

I’ve been thinking about that advice a lot lately and I’ve come to a realization. Our volunteer “opportunities” have become unpaid part-time jobs. (Maybe they always were…) We are saddled with job descriptions and expectations. We dedicate our time and energy to a cause because we believe in it, but we manage volunteer...

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.

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.

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.

Thankfully, they provided high res imagery and it’s easy to see the tire details — Pirelli Scorpion MS 235/55 R20. So based on a 20-inch rim size, and with a nice profile shot,² it’s possible to estimate the size with a little bit of simple math.

These numbers are rough, obviously. But here’s what I got:

Rivian...