Week In Review 2026-08-15

15 Aug, 2026

This update covers Sunday 08-09-26 through Saturday 08-15-26 (icon Glossary, if needed).

LIFE

• 🈁 Once again, it’s just too hot to think. Or do.
• 📕 When reviewing old posts for my Les Ketchup project, it’s clear there were a couple of patterns in my life for 2026. Apparently, I needed some distance to recognize these patterns, but now they’re impossible to miss.
• 📜 In spite of the heat, my wish was to be more outgoing and social this week, and I think I was successful?
• ❤️‍🩹 Only two 7-minute workouts this week, but I compensated for the third with a pool workout in the evening on Tuesday 08-11. Walking around the fairgrounds at the Illinois State Fair on Saturday 08-15 will also count as a workout, especially in the heat. I also started an anti-fungal treatment for my left foot on Saturday 08-08, so that’s been a joy to slather on twice a day.

EXPLORE

• 🎨 I finally started the prep work for another Les Ketchup post, where I’ll follow up on various posts from last October to the present day. Looking back at my posts from today's perspective, it's really clear to me that I spent most of 2026 in a depressed state. My grandmother's death in January was quickly followed by the San Diego vacation, where I unknowingly tried to hide these feelings of sadness, only to have them come back stronger than before as they combined with unresolved issues over my mother's internment. Now that my mother has been formally laid to rest and has a proper obituary covering her death and burial, my depression has lifted like a fog dissipating in the sunlight. Maybe it’s time to start 2026 for real.
• 🔬 That Dark Hours (iOS) bookmark I touted last week? Oh boy. That was a big-ass mess! Speaking of messes, my iOS screen layouts were disasters, as I waited for the latest beta update to drop before I rearranged my icons. Beta 5 of iOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate finally arrived on Monday 08-10, so after a frustrating amount of time moving icons around, my iPhone’s layout feels “natural” to me again.
• 🪟 The usual round of church, coffee, and shopping on Sunday 08-09. It was too hot to venture outside that day or the day before. Worked remotely on Tuesday 08-11 at Comet Coffee prior to my haircut, then on Wednesday 08-12 at Living Room. Spent a few hours at Side Project Cellar on Thursday 08-13. Only one walk this week on Friday 08-14 in our complex, and the heat made that difficult. L. & I will be sweating profusely at the Illinois State Fair on Saturday 08-15; more on that in a future update.

MEDIA

• 📰 Southernmost ATM, Atlas Obscura. I don’t see the point of using actual currency in this ATM, given that it won’t be spent anywhere except a store on McMurdo Station. You could honestly get away using scrip or POGs or Pokémon cards as currency in this store, and it won’t matter. Everyone could get a small deduction from their monthly paycheck to stock the store, and you'd just pay with an ALF POG or Psyduck card or some made-up denomination on a piece of paper.
• 📰 Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand how to live, The Verge. The AI world described by Zuckerberg sounds as soulless and empty as his own life must be. His idea of agents always working for you, which is nothing more than a form of slavery, is pitched as a way to allow yourself to maximize productivity, but life isn’t lived on a spreadsheet or a pie chart. I’d say this man is empty, but that would be an insult to empty sets both within and without the mathematics world. He needs something more substantial in his life so that he will leave the rest of us alone, like a Buddhist retreat or something similar.
• 📰 IBM i (OS/400) The Database Operating System, OSAdmins. My last job used AS/400 clients, which is what I still call the systems regardless of IBM’s updated naming schemes. Somewhat unfairly, as there were plenty of more legitimate subjects of criticism, I used the existence of these clients to joke about how antiquated and out-of-date my former employer was with technology. Turns out I’m the idiot here, as this long (but not long enough, apparently!) introduction to the “mini-computer” world illustrates. It’s likely that AS/400 devices will still be around after a nuclear blast, programmed by cockroaches and fueled by Twinkies.
• 🎬 Japan’s shortest train railway is just like a theme park!, CAPSULE JAPAN. More and more, I appreciate the coverage of depopulated Japan as seen by various Japanese tourist bloggers like CAPSULE JAPAN. The clip title is a bit disingenuous, in my opinion. I get the gist of what he’s trying to say here, that the railway is so short that it may as well be a theme park ride, but it’s still a functional railway that serves a transportation purpose, small though it may be.
• 🎬 MST3K 1303: Beyond Atlantis, Mystery Science Theater 3000. I liked the overall approach of Season 13 for MST3K, as Emily fit in perfectly as a host. Her bone-dry humor has much more in common with early Joel, so I can see the affinity between the two. It’s a shame that Joel’s proposed Season 14 never took off, though it’s likely that it would have been his last (and possibly the show’s last), meaning that the upcoming RiffTrax Experiments “takeover” of MST3K may not have occurred. I’m still unsure what to think of the “takeover,” as one part of me knows that this crew will do a great job, a second part says that it’s unnecessary as they already have RiffTrax, and a third part of me worries that the RiffTrax “takeover” is yet another reactive response towards a more modern (daresay “woke,” whatever that word means anymore) take on the subject--witness the fanboy reactions to changes in Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Doctor Who, etc., and how there was in most cases a concerted effort to negate most or all of those changes to ease the fanboys’ so-called wounded egos. I don’t think this playbook is in effect for the RiffTrax “takeover,” but it fits in too well with these other overreactions, so I’m not sure how I’ll approach them next month. Anyway, you mother-crabbers should watch “Beyond Atlantis,” as it’s one of Emily’s best in her too-brief run on the show.
• 🎬 Well There’s Your Problem | Episode 201: Ycuá Bolaños Supermarket Explosion, Well There’s Your Problem Podcast. Absolute nightmare fuel (no pun intended). A crowded shopping store in Paraguay, a defective vent in a kitchen, drop ceilings hiding sins, discussions of pyrolysis and flashover, and stupid managerial decisions to protect property instead of people all combine for a horrific tragedy. You’ll learn a lot of what to do and what not to do, especially if you’re a store manager trying to handle a disaster in the making.

WORK

• 🏥 The quarterly Epic upgrade came and went without too much incident. A somewhat related issue regarding out-of-date Apple hardware blew up on the WashU side, but the real issue there is more how that school handles its obsolete hardware and less about running new software on old devices.

OTHER

• 🗣️ August is both a slow month and one bursting with anticipation. The heat and final days of summer vacation both hover over August, with the promise of new activities kicking off once September starts up. Even though I’ve been divorced from the academic calendar for decades, it still amazes me how much of a hold it has on my life today.

NEXT

• 🔮 When this post goes live, it will be 9 days before Virgo ♍ Season! Hooray! It will also be 29 days before my 55th birthday. Um…hooray?

PICTURE

• 📸 I have mentioned before about the mistake I made when I bought an Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera, largely due to its retro aesthetic, so there’s no need to dwell much further on that topic here. Reviewing old photos revealed highlights I’d overlooked because of my feelings about the camera, such as my photo from the August 2017 total solar eclipse as viewed from a winery in De Soto, MO. Given the recent eclipse in Europe, I figured it was timely to dig this one up. In my opinion, this photo ranks as one of my better ones, so perhaps I should worry less about the gear I use and pay more attention to what I can do with it.