Still arguably the best drummer in the world. I love Jorge’s enthusiasm in this video, it expresses my internal dialogue when watching Danny play drums.
The first and only time I got to see Danny Carey play drums live was in Fort Worth in 2002 when Tool was touring for Lateralus, and it was the most mind blowing thing I’d ever seen (it’s still top 5). I was 16 at the time.
I just found the full show on Youtube:
Good morning friends, it’s Monday, August 11, 2025. The weather is: 85 degrees outside and sunny, and I am relaxing at my favorite coffee shop near my house in Fort Worth, Texas.
A year ago today, I was visiting my Aunt and Uncle in Hudson Wisconsin with my mom. I didn’t know it when we planned the trip, but my Uncle owns a Indian Scout motorcycle, and was happy to let me ride it. That turned an already fun week into an epic fun week.
On top of that, Wisconsin was having a cold spell, so the temperatures were averaging around 70 degrees, which is waayyyy cooler than then 105 degrees we have in North Texas during August.
The only downside was that Chartable (where I was working as an account manager at the time) had an epic fail after an update was pushed by the engineering team, and our customer’s dashboards and data were unavailable for pretty much the entire week. This is a worst case scenario for a software-as-a-service company, and our customers were understandably pissed off. Unfortunately there was nothing I could do about it but keep an eye on our internal Slack channels and wait for updates from the engineers.
So while I was having the time of my life riding a motorcycle around Wisconsin, our engineers at the company were having one of their worst weeks ever. A strange coincidence, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
Turns out my Uncle Scott and I wear almost exactly the same clothing sizes, so I borrowed his jacket and chaps for the ride from Hudson to Prairie Du Chien and back.
Here’s the journal entry from the end of the week:
So great to see Scott and Cheri, Mark and Tami, and a bunch of my Mom’s family in Prairie du Chien. Visited the dike and downtown in Hudson. Getting ice cream and pizza. Riding Scott’s motorcycle around Hudson and down the Mississippi River. Stopped in Red Wing MN to buy new Red Wing Chelsea boots. Stopped in Winona to get lunch with Brett Terpstra. Stayed at Mark and Tammy’s house. Getting dinner / breakfast at huckleberry’s. Watching the Brewers win while drinking Spotted Cow at the Sawmill Saloon. Walking home along Michigan street. Getting coffee and working at Simply coffee shop. Erik put on a great show at the concert in the park and then again after at the Tavern. Getting burgers and a T-shirt from Pete’s. Fish and chips at Blackhawk. Driving the motorcycle back to Hudson along Wisconsin’s west coast Mississippi River road. Shooting clay pigeons with Scott. Took mom for a motorcycle ride to give it a good clean and polish at the car wash. Playing pickleball and table tennis with Scott and Cheri.
Good memories. I’m hoping I’ll have time to go back soon. Trading the summer heat in Texas for the cool weather up north is definitely one of my all time favorite life hacks.
Thanks for reading,
Aaron
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Good morning friends, it’s Saturday, August 9, 2025. The weather is: 90 degrees outside and sunny, and I am relaxing at home (for the moment) in Fort Worth, Texas.
It’s my 40th birthday! A pretty significant milestone in anyone’s life. I’m feeling thankful that I’m still in good health, I have a life I enjoy that allows me equal parts being comfortable at home and traveling the world, and that I haven’t made any major mistakes so far. I have a lot of friends and family who care about me, and I have a good number of projects to keep me busy and learning.Overall, I think things are going well. I know that can all change at any time, so I try not to ever take a good life for granted.
For the next decade of my life, I want to focus on getting better at self-improvement. I’d like to eat healthier, lift weights more, lose that extra 15 pounds, read more, write more, be a better friend, and become a better musician and story teller. I’d like to spend less time worrying about the state of the world and more time doing things I find fulfilling and rewarding (especially if they involve friends or my local community).
Before I go, let’s look at a list of 10 highlights from my 30’s (2015-2025):
Can’t really complain about anything. I’ve been a lucky dude so far.
Thanks for reading,
Aaron
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Good morning friends, it’s Friday, August 8, 2025. It’s currently 96 degrees outside and sunny, and I am relaxing at home in Fort Worth, Texas.
I’m gonna keep this one pretty short today, as tomorrow is my 40th birthday and I have a lot I need to do to prepare for the pool & pizza party.
Last night I went and saw the new movie from producer & director Zach Cregger—Weapons.
TL;DR: If you like scary movies with a bit of humor to take the edge off, you have to go see this.
If you enjoy Stephen King as an author, you have to go see this. My first thought as I left the theater was “That’s the closest I’ve ever seen a movie come to capturing the vibe of a good Stephen King novel”.
Round of applause for Zach Cregger, this will be remember as one of the top-tier horror movies of 2025.
In other news, this is the 3rd day where I have successfully finished two new daily habits: A 20 minute run in my neighborhood, and writing and publishing a short blog post. Both of these habits are trivial when done once, but will add up to something significant if I do them every day.
For you open source nerds out there, here’s a new podcast episode from the Changelog that I shot and edited (with an extra camera angle provided by Mr. Gerhard Lazu):
Launching Pipely LIVE on stage in Denver | Kaizen 20 with Gerhard Lazu
That’s all from me for now. Thanks for reading!
Aaron
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Good morning friends, it’s Thursday, August 7, 2025. It’s currently 87 degrees outside and sunny, and I am still at home in Fort Worth, Texas.
I had the good fortune of joining the Changelog podcast in Denver Colorado a couple weeks ago to film their first ever live podcast event at the Oriental Theater. I had a great time, and learned a few things along the way, so I thought I’d use my writing time this morning to share a few lessons.
Overall, I’m happy with how the video I captured and edited turned out. I’m always looking for things to improve (and my list is long), but considering the limitations and the budget, I think I did a decent job of capturing the event and creating some good video for the Changelog audience and community to enjoy. All the skills I needed and knowledge to make specific decisions to get the end result were acquired over time, thanks in part to a lot of other people sharing their knowledge over the years.
For example, to capture the audio for the live show, I brought my Macbook, a USB-C adapter, and a USB-A to USB-B cable to plug into the venue’s soundboard and capture audio channels out into Logic Pro. I knew how to do this because it’s the same gear and process I use to record my band’s live shows. I knew how to mix, edit, and master the audio tracks because of the time I spent as a podcast editor, as well as the time I’ve spent mixing our live shows.
I also brought a formatted USB stick that was supposed to record the stereo track out of the soundboard, but something went wrong in that process and nothing was recorded to the stick. I still got all the audio tracks recorded to Logic Pro, which was what I preferred anyways, but the lesson there is to always have a backup recording going if you can, because you never know when one of your recording methods might fail.
One of the more stressful parts of the whole experience was knowing that I was responsible for capturing good audio, video, and photos from the event. It’s not an impossible task, but it did weigh on me because I wanted to do a good job. There’s a lot of things that could go wrong when recording a live event, but I stayed focused on doing the best I knew how with the resources I had.
Another example of rolling with the punches / dealing with unforeseen circumstances: I shipped two tripods and a DJI RSC 2 gimbal to the hotel, and when I got the package unpacked at the venue the morning of the show (we got to the venue an hour before doors opened, which meant I had to move quickly to get everything setup), one of the heads of the tripods wouldn’t lock in place (rendering it unusable). Two of the tripod legs on the gimbal were also broken, meaning I could hold the gimbal but couldn’t set it on a flat surface to use it as a tripod. I didn’t anticipate any issues with the tripods, and there wasn’t enough time to locate a replacement.
Luckily one of the tripods still worked, so I set that up by the soundboard to use as my primary camera angle, and decided I would handhold the gimbal and record a secondary angle.
Thankfully I didn’t have any issues with my main cameras (two Sony A7C cameras that always work flawlessly), but my plan B for video was a GoPro that I mounted up in the balcony of the Oriental Theater. I didn’t end up liking the footage I got from the GoPro so I didn’t use it, and next time I know what I should do differently with a GoPro to get good footage (get it really close to the subjects).
For audio, my Plan A was to record audio tracks straight from the venue’s soundboard into Logic Pro on my Macbook, and that plan worked. Plan B was to record a stereo track from the soundboard into a USB stick, and that plan failed.
There’s so much more I could share about the experience and what I learned, but my 20 minute timer just went off, so I’ll save it for another day (maybe tomorrow). In the meantime, check out the video for yourself:
Changelog: LIVE from Denver with Nora Jones! | Nora’s journey from Jeli.io to PagerDuty
Thanks for reading,
Aaron
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Original photos taken by Brian Andrews / Lone Pine Media
Good morning friends, it’s Wednesday, August 6, 2025. It’s currently 90 degrees outside and sunny, and I am at home in Fort Worth, Texas.
It hit me yesterday that this is the last week of my 30’s (I’ll be turning 40 Saturday). It feels a little surreal, seems the decade went by faster than the previous ones. I feel grateful to be here and in relatively good health.
I know I’ll have to have a few less drinks and sweets in the coming years, but that’s ok. I’ve had enough good times to last the rest of my lifetime and I’m excited to continue my journey into better health and fitness.
Reflecting on the past ten years… 2015 was a really hard year. I was barely paying bills, struggling to develop my career, and my dad passed away right before Thanksgiving. I had reasons for optimism, but the next few years were a struggle. Things started looking up by the end of 2019, but then 2020 and Covid-19 happened, and the world changed again. My fortunes really changed for the better when I joined Chartable in October 2020, and then started playing with my band again in 2021.
2021-2025 passed in a blur of remote work, concerts, tours, and making music. I bought a house in Fort Worth, TX from my older sister and started fixing it up. My band recorded 2 new full length albums and some singles, and went on multiple cross-country tours, and played dozens of shows regionally, and festivals too.
Chartable got bought by Spotify in 2022, then shut down in late 2024. I lost my account manager job there at the end of February 2025, but I was ready for it, and took the opportunity to rest for a bit and catch up on chores and projects I’d been putting off for years.
Now, I’ve got more time to work on projects that matter to me, and I’m loving it. Setting up systems for my band, helping with the launch of our new album and preparing for our upcoming 5 week tour in October, it’s all very exciting. I have to be a little more careful with money than I used to be, but I don’t mind. I’m happy to spend a little less if it means having more time to work on things that are important to me.
Ok that’s all the time I have for today. Back tomorrow for another update!
Thanks for reading,
Aaron
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