2026-06-18 12:00:00
Teddy Ballgame, aka Ted, aka Teddy, aka Theodore J. Dog, crossed the rainbow bridge yesterday.
We found Teddy at Petsmart where the Orange County Humane Society was running an adoption event in 2017. One of our senior dogs had recently passed on and the other was really struggling without her partner. So we adopted Teddy. The shelter told us he was six. Our Vet at the time guessed 3.
Ted drew the short straw in the genetic lottery. He was likely the product of a puppy mill dachshund and a puppy mill Jack Russell. He struggled with bad skin allergies, more food and environment allergies than I can count, and he developed thyroid disease, pancreatitis, and Cushing’s disease while a member of our pack. Last week he started vomiting every day, and when we saw the vet last week, she determined he had added kidney disease to his collection of ailments. She also told us there was nothing more to do for him but take him home and spoil him for a few days while we decided. He was deteriorating every day, and getting him to eat was becoming a challenge, so we knew it was time.
The Vet administered a sedative a few minutes before the final shot. I picked him up after the sedetive injective, and he was snoring in my arms 3 minutes later. When the Vet came back in she said he looked so comfortable we were just going to do it right there. So she administered the injection with him sleeping in my arms, and then he just wasn’t breathing. His last memory will be of me picking him up to hold him as he drifted off.
I can only hope my time is that peaceful.
Teddy’s last selfie
2026-06-16 12:00:00
A couple of months ago I did something very stupid and bricked my desktop. Then I realized that my source markdown directory for blog posts was not syncing with my cloud storage. So that left me with hundreds of HTML page blog posts, but no markdown.
Oops.
I’ve been blogging at chrisod.org since then and it’s fine, but I wanted everything back in one place. This weekend I gave it a try.
So I started with Duck.ai using Claude to vibe code a python script that used Pandoc to revert all those HTML pages to markdown. The 2nd iteration of the script worked perfectly. Then I loaded everything up to a GDrive folder and bought a month of blot.im to see if I could use it as a blogging engine. Blot is a headless CMS for blogs, sort of. There is a config UI, but to blog I just drop a file in a GDrive directory and it shows up on the blog 30 seconds later. Pretty nifty. Then I exported the dozen or so posts at chrisod.org and added them to the Gdrive directory. After a couple of hours of fiddling with Mustache templates and CSS, I had O’DonnellWeb back together again.
I’ve added a redirect for both blog posts and RSS and it all seems to be working fine in my testing. I am aware of some pages with broken embeds, and I’m making a list of pages to fix.
So AI saved me who knows how many hours of work unwinding hundreds of HTML pages back to Markdown. If you are an AI hater that just lost all respect for me, so be it.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled blogging.
2026-06-14 12:00:00
I was supposed to get up and go birding this morning, but it was going to be 87F (28C) and very humid by the time we finished, so I’m here blogging from the comfort of my air-conditioned home instead. We planned on heading into Richmond for Sailfest today, but that same weather issue is making it increasingly likely that I’ll spend the day on the couch. As I get older, the list of things I’m willing to suffer miserable weather for is getting shorter and shorter.
If you are wondering why I live in a hot and humid southern city with this attitude, welcome to the club.
This week is the one-year anniversary of me creating an LLC and going all-in on self-employment. I was going to congratulate myself on making it a year when over half of business startups fail in the first year, but it turns out that statistic is a myth. About 80% of businesses survive the first year, so I’m not that special. But overall, the business is going well. Health insurance continues to be a PITA, and presently I really don’t know what we are doing next year. I’ve got a couple of options that I’m looking into and many more that I’ve written off as not helpful. Something has to give, though, as the current system in the US is failing in every possible way.
In other news, all the native plants I put in the ground this spring have doubled in size. I’ve noticed birds poking around the backyard bed, so I assume they are finding caterpillars on the plants. My backyard bed is all late summer and fall flowering, so I’m looking forward to all that color in the backyard in a couple of months.
I’ve had the new Red Clay Strays album (Grateful) on repeat play all week. This has to be a serious contender for record of the year. Their range from country to blues to Americana to southern rock is wonderful, and the songwriting is top-notch. I strongly recommend that you check it out if your musical tastes stray anywhere near the roots/Americana genre.
Robert Jon and the Wreck also have a new record, and we have tickets for their local show in July. Robert John is what you would get if Greg Allman had grown up in Southern California listening to the Eagles. It’s a wonderful mashup of classic southern rock and California vibes a la late 70s Eagles.
Jesse Welles also has a new album, and we have tickets for his local show in July. If you are not familiar with Jesse, think Woody Guthrie with amplification. Jesse has a lot to say about the state of the world, and it’s the kind of stuff that gets people disappeared living under totalitarian regimes.
For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, try to stay cool. And stay warm for those of you on the other side of the planet?
2026-06-09 12:00:00
Trip: 57
Nights: 189-190
It was 92F (32C) in RVA. It was 75C (23C) and breezy two hours away in Shenandoah National Park. We chose wisely.
It was a very chill weekend. We arrived around 430 PM on Friday, and after setting up camp, we did some birding in the campground. Dinner was our traditional arrival night meal - sandwiches from WaWa. We had no cell service at the campsite (rejoice!). Friday night was consumed by card/board games and an early bedtime.
On Saturday morning we drove about 30 miles North to the Big Meadows area of the park and logged 30 bird species, including Cerulean and Blackburnian Warblers that I can only see at home when they are passing through during migration. After a picnic lunch at Big Meadows, we headed back to camp, where I spent the entire afternoon in a camp chair with a book and a couple of beers. A perfect afternoon. On Saturday night we hung out around the campfire before heading into the camper for board games.
Sunday was go-home day. Weekend trips never last long enough.
Collage of photos from a weekend camping at Loft Mountain Campground in Shenandoah National Park
2026-05-25 12:00:00
We should have been camping this weekend. The weather had other ideas. All of Virginia is in a moderate to severe drought, but of course Memorial Day weekend was a washout. I cancelled camping plans last week, and instead we did a local staycation. On Friday, we had dinner at our favorite local Greek joint, followed by a movie at the fabulous Byrd Theater. The movie was The Notebook (my wife made all the weekend plans.) I was entertained, which is all I ask from a movie.
Saturday was a day of constant rain. Other than grocery shopping, we didn’t leave the house until we went out for dinner at our local bar and grill. We hung out, watched some TV, and played 2 games of Wingspan.
On Sunday we went to the Virginia Capitol and took the guided tour, then wandered around the building on our own. Most of the building is open to the public, a nice change of pace from the locked-down environments that seem to rule these days. After dinner at home, we played another game of Wingspan and then did a rewatch of About Last Night.
Today is the actual national holiday. It rained most of the day. I worked most of the day. The joys of self-employment.
2026-05-20 12:00:00
I went viral on LinkedIn again.
Viral post about Cigna dropping out of individual healthcare market
