Bob Wertz

March 3, many years ago, my mom died unexpectedly. In perhaps one of the greatest understatements ever, I struggled with her loss. Some days, I still struggle with her loss.

I discovered that on March 3, every year, I was grumpy. Kinda pissed off. And in general, not a fun person to be around. So I declared the day “International Bob is Grumpy Day.” Gave it a silly name. Explain to people how I’m feeling. I told coworkers that it probably wasn’t the best day to ask me challenging questions. Or rely on me to be particularly tactful. In short, March 3 was the one day a year that it’s best to leave me alone. It worked. People left me alone, and I, predictably, was grumpy.

March 3 was also my grandmother’s birthday. I’d call her and she’d mention how much she missed mom. And usually, I’d tear up. Maybe the anticipation...

Tina Roth Eisenberg (aka Swissmiss) commented over on Threads that she misses the in-person office culture. I agree completely. I understand why others don’t miss it, but I think we lost something that can’t be replicated by Teams or Zoom.

Apple has canceled its decade-long program to build an electric car. And while I think it’s probably the right call to end the program, I do understand why Apple tried.

Ten years ago when Apple started the project, it was the perfect moment to rethink the automobile. With the change to battery powered electric powertrains, many of the traditional constraints of car design were no longer relevant. You no longer need a motor, or a gas tank. Cars are more reliant on their technology stack. There were very few competitors and they were almost all selling cars at the high end of the market. It seemed like a perfect time for Apple to step into revolutionizing the design of cars, questioning the established conventions of the past. Changing how cars were designed, manufactured and sold.

And yet, today, that’s not what happened. In general, electric cars today look like gas-powered cars,...

Today, I learned that Tim Hortons has locations in the United States. Had coffee this morning at a location near our hotel in Atlanta.

My first guess in Wordle today eliminated all but one word. Solved in two.

The Apple Sports app for following games in progress is so much better than using ESPN’s web site. Simple, but really well done.

Just thinking … @manton … would it be possible build a Facebook import into Micro.Blog, similar to how the Twitter import works? I shared family memories when my kids were little, and I’d love to have it on my site. Facebook allows an export, but I don’t know how challenging it would be to import.

I’m really glad I was able to export my tweets and move them to Micro.Blog. It gives me a record of all of my activity on Twitter on a site I control, but it also discourages me from going back to Twitter because I know the listing at bobwertz.com/tweets/ is complete.

The price of taking yesterday off is seven meetings today.

One irritating thing about working on your PhD at the same university that you work at… If you take the day off to do school work, and you need to email someone a school-related question, you see all of your work email that you were trying to avoid.