Working Notes

Today marks the 17th annual Give To The Max Day in Minnesota, our statewide day for showing up and supporting Minnesota’s nonprofit ecosystem. (For my Arizona friends and connections, this is the same thing as Arizona Gives Day in April.) As nonprofits navigate increased uncertainty following a turbulent year, it’s up to our individual contributions to help sustain and uplift these critical institutions.

Here are some organizations worth considering for your support. In full disclosure, I am affiliated with them.

MEDA, the Metropolitan Economic Development Association, supports Minnesota’s underserved entrepreneurs through business consulting, access to capital, and connections to potential business partners.

Public Art Saint Paul shapes public spaces in Minnesota’s capital city through the inclusion of public art into the public discourse.

I will always be partial to Game 7 of the 2001 World Series being the best one (because floater, center field, the Diamondbacks are World Champions!), but my goodness: Game 7 of this World Series had everything. You just didn’t want it to end!

As a Phoenician, I will always say “Beat LA!”, but congratulations to the Dodgers for outlasting the Blue Jays in 7 games and 11 innings of said 7th game, and on back-to-back wins. And congrats to the future HOFer Clayton Kershaw, who apparently was in the Dodgers bullpen getting ready to pitch in a possible 12th inning that he didn’t know the game was over, on a great career. What a way to wrap that up!

Commiserations are due, of course, to the Blue Jays. And the kid from Saint Paul, Louis Varland, tying an MLB postseason record in this series for appearing in 15 games. Fun fact: I was at his debut when he was promoted to the AAA St Paul Saints in 2022. “Louuuu…….”

The good news is, of course, that pitchers and catchers report to 2026 spring training in like what, 4 1/2 months?

In the “and other duties as assigned” bit of my job, I had to punch a two-inch hole in a steel cabinet for cords. Here are things I’ve learned:

• Go slow. Slow and steady wins the race. If you feel your drill fighting you, slow down. You’re working together!
• Make sure you have a hole saw that can cut through steel. The hole saw kits you get at the home center are good for wood, PVC, and perhaps light aluminium. They’d never stand a chance through steel.
• When you’re finished, protect the cut edges of the new hole you’ve created with electrical tape.

Welcome to the working notes feature on the site! This is a place where I’ll share updates that aren’t full blog posts/essays in their own right, but deserve to be catalogued and archived on this site. There’s a special RSS and JSON feed for these working notes, and the main site RSS/JSON feeds don’t capture these working notes…for now.

What are working notes? Think of it as a blend of Instagram stories, long-form social media posts, and the occasional GitHub gist. I’m excited how this will develop, and I’ll share more on the main blog how I’ve created this feature.