This is a re-write of a post I authored back in 2017. Our situation has changed enough since I first wrote about budgeting that I didn’t feel like it was useful anymore as-is. The job, house, wife, kids, dog, car and beer drinking all caught up with me a couple years ago. We were spending more than we were making, forcing us to budget for the first time. Previously, we were lucky to have enough for our lifestyle, but overtime, we were having troubles paying down the debt and money started to become an uncomfortable part of life....

I have been working with some GeoJSON files lately for work and at first I was having issues with the large size of the files. For the web (displaying it on a map), this is not good so I went in search of some ways to reduce the file size. Trim (Truncate) Coordinates I read that, “for most web maps, decimals after the 5th decimal point are essentially meaningless,” so using the find and replace functionality in Sublime Text:...

Here is a follow-up to my previous post, 2017-ragbrai-packlist. Based on this year, I made some last minute decisions on what to pack. Here are some factors that changed what ended up on the ride: Supported by my team bus. Riding/camping with my wife. Riding my single speed. Only camping four nights (22nd-25th) and only riding three days (23rd-25th) In addition, the weather is looking pretty decent for July in Iowa....

I have been on RAGBRAI (Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) several times since 2005. Over the years, I’d like to think I have figured out a pretty good list of gear. In general, this list is usually what I start with when planning a bicycle touring trip, not just for RAGBRAI. An asterisk denotes a “luxury” item that I only take when riding supported (team bus). Otherwise, everything can pack on the bike (except the bike itself of course)....

These days, I don’t always have the personal time to maintain a bunch of Drupal sites. Heck, it has taken a while for me to even find time to write this post. A Drupal site is rarely a “set it and forget it” type site. There are updates, security vulnerabilities, tweaks and major releases with weak upgrade paths. Well, for one of my sites, the Perineum Falcons (PF) website, I decided that Drupal was no longer the best solution and turned to Jekyll of all things....