Steve Sawczyn

  • The campaigner at my door

    I just had someone at the door who is running for local public office. She said how wonderful it was to see me again, so I told her how wonderful it was to see her too. We talked about the weather, my job at 3M, her kids, she even asked about my four-year-old who must be getting so big now and so I assured her that yes, yes he sure is. I asked about her teenaged daughter and is she still enjoying sports? She does, but she’s growing up so fast; where does the time go anyway? this went on for about ten minutes. Thing is, I don’t have a four-year-old, I’ve never worked for 3M, I have no idea who she is, no idea if she has any kids, and I’m pretty sure she’s never met me either. Still, she did such an amazing job of keeping up the pretense for so long that I’m tempted to vote for her anyway. I only hope she is as impressed with my ability to make stuff up on the fly as I am with hers.

  • Well this is a bit strange: Trying to configure an IFTTT applet to do something with a micro.blog feed and I keep getting “RSS new feed item trigger failed”. Trigger failure message, “There was a problem with the trigger”. I guess IFTTT gets kudos for telling me, in multiple ways, that something isn’t working without actually telling me what’s wrong?

  • Testing, testing, is this thing on? Take two.

    Hello, I tried sending out a message earlier, however there were apparently a few things I didn’t quite have migrated properly, mainly Email subscribers. Everything appears to be migrated to Micro.blog from WordPress, for real this time. Hopefully, Emails will send out correctly. For anyone wishing to follow on the Fediverse, you should hopefully be able to do so: @Steve@Steves.life .

    I’m not going to make this too long in case there’s something else I don’t have properly set up,. Assuming I have everything set up correctly this time though, stay tuned for hopefully some more interesting content coming soon.

  • Migrating to Micro.blog, a really neat service that I'm hoping will help me blog more regularly

    Hello, remember me?  I’d totally understand if you don’t, after all, I haven’t been blogging very often of late, well, even longer than just of late, something I’m again hoping to change.  The reason I’m writing today though is because I’m about to migrate my blog away from WordPress.  WordPress is a fantastic platform, but for me, it’s a really distracting one. Every time I log in, it seems there’s a new plugin to investigate, a new update to install, or a new block in the Gutenberg editor that I just have to understand how to use even though I know I’ll likely never actually use it.  Long story longer, I’m migrating my blog to Micro.blog, a service I’ve subscribed to for quite a while, but which I’ve been hesitant to use as my primary blogging platform…until now.

    Micro.blog for those unfamiliar is an extremely easy-to-use platform which is tightly integrated with the Fediverse.  From the Micro.blog About page:

    Micro.blog is a unique platform that combines blog hosting with a social media-style timeline and community.

    It’s a paid hosting service for personal blogs that makes it easy to publish short or long posts. Use it for short thoughts, longer essays, photos, podcasts, what books you’re reading, links to news articles, and more.

    It’s a community whose members share posts via a timeline that is a safe space for conversations, free from advertising, trolling, and abuse, with community guidelines that are enforced.

    I really love the social aspect of Micro.blog and I love the idea of consolidating various apps that I already use into one feed.  After all, this blog is Steves.life and so it just sort of makes sense for it to be a place that combines the various apps and services that I already use to keep track of what’s going on in my life.  Couple all that with an interface that is simple to use and doesn’t contain the elements that tend to distract me and this seems like a good idea.

    So, what happens next?  After sending this post, I’m going to start migrating everything over to my Micro.blog instance.  Micro.blog has its own Email newsletter feature and so if you’re already subscribed to receive Email versions of my posts, you should continue to receive them.  If you’re subscribed to my RSS feed, I’m not exactly sure how that will migrate over, my hope is that the feed address will be similar enough that RSS readers will just pick up where they left off, if not, you may need to resubscribe with a slightly different RSS feed address.  Unfortunately I’m not sure how that will work until after I switch everything over.  If you follow this blog on Mastodon or a similar Fediverse service, you will need to re-follow as there’s no way for me to redirect Fediverse followers given limitations with the WordPress Fediverse implementation.  So unfortunately, you too may need to re-follow, more info will be forthcoming after I finish the migration.  So, long and short is that the URL will be the same:https://steves.life, Email subscriptions should continue to work, RSS feed subscriptions may continue to work although you may need to resubscribe, and ditto for Fediverse followers.  After the migration is successful, I’ll post updated Fediverse and RSS info for anyone who needs it.  Most importantly though, I am hopeful that migrating to Micro.blog will make things easier and less distracting for me and that ultimately, this will help me do more blogging and less talking about how I want to do more blogging.

    With all that said, it’s time for me to publish this and to begin the migration.  Wish me luck and I hope you’ll continue to follow me and to enjoy Steves.life.

  • OK, I just have to try their new crabby patty meal because it’s all I keep hearing about. :)

  • Checked in at Target

  • Checked in at Park Nicollet Clinic and Specialty Center Burnsville

  • Checked in at Park Nicollet Clinic and Specialty Center Burnsville

  • I’m not really here, but I’m curious if cross posting is working.

  • Concierge Apartments.

  • Checked in at Concierge Apartments

  • Full Tilt Tavern. absolutely amazing food

  • absolutely amazing food

  • It’s an absolutely gorgeous Fall day here, the only question is: What shall I do with it?

  • Testing out Micro.blog's newsletter functionality

    This isn’t going to be an informative post or even a good one, I’m just thinking of moving everything from WordPress to Micro.blog but wanted to test the newsletter feature first. On second thought, if you’re a Micro.blog fan – and you should be – then maybe this post is exciting after all. :) Does this give me enough characters to be able to add a title? Gosh, I sure hope so as I’m running out of nothing to say.

  • Another day, another inaccessible app. This time, it’s Trust Wallet, the app I use on iOS for managing crypto. Most of the app is pretty accessible with VoiceOver…but not signing transactions. And that’s kind of an important function. I guess now I can look at balances that I can’t actually do anything with? If anyone knows of a native iOS crypto app that might be more accessible than not, I’d definitely be curious.

  • It boggles my mind that there’s still no iPad version of WhatsApp. They have Mac, Windows, iOS (iPhone only), Android, and I think even Android tablet, but no iPad. Anyone have thoughts about why? It seems weird that I have to put down my iPad and pick up my iPhone to reply to a WhatsApp message, would be so much more convenient if I could just split-screen it or float it over whatever other iPad app I’m using.

  • You know what I love most about Apple updates? I often get to learn to spell interesting words that I otherwise never would have, take “Sequoia” for instance…

  • If only I had a nickel for every time I’ve been out snorkeling and said to myself, “Gosh, I sure wish I had a snorkeling map on my watch…” :P

  • You know what the most frustrating thing is ever? Going to cancel an annual subscription only to find that it just renewed. For another year. No warning or anything. Yeah WordPress, I’m looking at you. :(

  • Curious, what are people using for password managers these days? I’m using Bitwarden, but always open to what others are finding useful or helpful.

  • In today’s why does this happen to me? I was making a cup of coffee when my AirPod popped out of my ear, bounced off the counter, and landed right in the coffee cup… just as coffee started dripping into it.

  • Oh yay! Another one of these “Slide to complete the puzzle” CAPTCHAs. It’s just a banking site this time, and it’s not like I need access to my own money or anything. Not much fills me with the amount of rage I feel when encountering an inaccessible CAPTCHA.

  • Wow, either a bunch of people have suddenly become really interested in blog articles I published years ago, or I don’t have antispam configured correctly. I’m just gonna assume it’s an unexpected spike in popularity because that feels much better. :)

  • The joys of a summer cold and the weird voice that came with it

    I’m actually feeling OK, but this summer cold I have has sure affected my voice in an unexpected way. summer-cold-may-19-2024-at-18-05-08-ss.m4a

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