Sun, 19 Jul 2026 01:07:45 GMT

Have I ever told you the story about how I "almost" adopted a cat? Through social media, I learned about a cat named “King Street" (after the street it was found on, on a streetcar here in Toronto). Said cat is beautiful, a black cat, with amazing eyes. I made the "mistake" of telling co-workers about it, so they started bullying me and telling me I should adopt it. (It wasn't bullying, it was enthusiastic encouragement.) So I put my name in. It turns out, thankfully, that 50 (five-zero) people had put in requests, and that he had found a good home. What a relief! To not adopt a cat, I mean. I would have had to take a lot of things off of shelves, invested in a lot of gear, cleaned up a lot of cat stuff, and figure out what to do about a lot of damage to my furniture. (A lot of which needs replacement anyway.)My biggest regret would

My biggest regret about adopting a cat would be not giving it an interesting life. It would be confined to my very small apartment, which has high ceilings. Meaning I would probably have wanted to give it ledges on the wall to climb. But I would be paranoid about letting it out. No balcony access, and even if so, I would put up netting, which it would outsmart. Cats notoriously outsmart humans basically at any opportunity.

I still subscribe to the RSS feed of Toronto's humane society's blog, where they showcase beautiful cats who need a new home. It's just to live a little vicariously. It would be a huge mistake for me to visit the humane society's headquarters here (which they open to the general public once a year during Doors Open Toronto) because I would leave with an animal that I would be crazy about and do anything for, but which would exhaust me.

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 23:43:48 GMT

"Career break" is the most interesting entry in people's LinkedIn profiles. I wonder what they did during that period. If it was "Basically nothing" or "Relaxing" I would want to ask how they achieved that. Those things are possible? How?

The one I saw just now has vague explanation, which is valid. I have my (currently dormant) sole proprietorship to activate whenever I have a "career gap" that I need to explain. "Consulting," I'll say.

I'd love a real career break, though. What's that like?

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 15:52:37 GMT

https://justagwailo.com/2026/07/16/aquafit-and-swimming-lessons

It's also in my RSS feed: https://justagwailo.com/rss.xml

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 03:32:50 GMT

If I could do it all again, I’d do it with style, whoops, I mean, with a different domain.

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 02:04:10 GMT

Kudos to Past Me, who came up with PEACE (Posting Elsewhere, Aggregating Comprehensively and Eternally), seen here on my indieweb.org profile.

I actually came around to POSSE (Publish [on your] Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere), though I don't actually believe you can own anything in the end. You'll die, and then what? You can't take any of it with you. It's more like you control what you publish on a domain that you "own" aka rent until…that's right, until you die. I'm more of the opinion that you should save a copy of what you produce, to elongate the life of that thing just a little bit, after where it has been published ceases to exist. What's the catchy acronym for that?

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:58:47 GMT

This is why I think there are multiple webs, not just one. Allegedly "open" by default ("the open web" is a redundancy like how "PIN number" and "ATM machine" are), there's the "behind a paywall web" and the "filled with ads and redirects web" and the "blocked because you don't live in the right region web" or the "blocked because your intense web use flagged you as an automated agent web", and so on. There's also the cozy web (where one only talks about how cozy their web is). This is why I want to leave the web: Every time I get it to a "Goldilocks"/just right web, something knocks it out of whack.

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:53:28 GMT

I have a long-running support case with the support team WhoSampled, recently purchased by Spotify, about being blocked after visiting the site once. It's necessary to have a firewall these days, but because of the aggressiveness of automated visitors, website owners have to be overly protective. My work IP is banned from Wikipedia because it's behind a "VPN". (Technically, yeah. But the "Get a VPN" advice is now no longer a guaranteed way to see content on the web.) I wish I could prove my humanity if not once and for all, but for the next, say, 5 years, and then renew my validation. I want 5 years of not having to prove I'm a human being. Make me have to show up to a post office if it comes to it. Assuming those are still around in 5 years.

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 03:20:22 GMT

If you have a website, if you don't have a WAF (web application firewall), you've basically committed malpractice. But that's incredible, right? Automated traffic can just take down your website or crawl it and duplicate it and easily re-publish it, which is actually better than when it brings down websites. Again, you now have to add software to keep things running.

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 03:16:14 GMT

I mean, it's embarrassing right? We have this thing that we almost universally think is awesome, the web, but we have to have a Swiss Army Knife of extensions to install and tweak just to have a tolerable experience? Sites that tell you to turn off the extension that you installed to hide ads, to show the ads, so that you can read the article?

It's astonishing that you have to add software (browser extensions) to simplify things. "Oh yeah, just get an ad blocker." What? I have to add complexity so that I can get simplicity?

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:57:56 GMT

I don't do any of the shopping, other than clicking a bunch to get the meal kit orders scheduled weeks in advance. I can't stand shopping, for anything, really. All parts of the process are not good, and I don't even like online shopping that much. Meal kits got me into cooking about 10 years ago, and I continue to marvel at how good the meals I make are (some being bland, but none ever being bad). Every now and then I'll make something from scratch, but months and months will go by. I thought about what it would take to level up, and it would have to be an in-person course.

About a year ago, maybe longer, I gave up using my oven for anything other than storage. It's either air frying for roasting or picking an alternative method to cook something. I don't make any desserts or anything like that. I haven't used my slow cooker in years, and I only use my Instant Pot for making rice (it's kind of awesome, though overpriced if I'm just using it for one function).

It feels like my instincts are good after the amount of experience I have now. The recipes I have seem to want me to overcook things, so I only do the bare minimum in terms of time, then let other processes do the cooking. Meat cooks when the sauce it's in is simmering, right? Stuff like that.

The recipes also call for "While [x] is cooking, do [y]" but I can't multitask, so I do all of my cooking sequentially. Meals take about an hour to make, which feels like too long. I've experienced joy when cooking with people, and it really does halve the time. I miss that about cohabitating with somebody.

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:21:41 GMT

I've been eating an apple either for breakfast or as a snack for over a year now, mainly as a way to introduce fruit to my diet (otherwise it would be absent). I couldn't tell you that I feel better as a result, or that I'm measurably healthier, or even that I feel like I've eaten something afterwards. That's one of the points of snacks, is it not? To not be hungry for a little while? Since there's no real downsides, and it really is healthy, I'll keep doing it.

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 03:14:05 GMT

Writing is painful for some people. A lot of people! And just because you do it a lot, it doesn't mean you're good at it.

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 01:51:02 GMT

I'm actually thinking of leaving computing (outside of work) but that would be a big sacrifice, since a lot of wondrous things (movies, TV shows, music, trying to meet possible mates) require a computer these days.

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 01:46:17 GMT

Butterflies, yes!

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 01:39:55 GMT

I couldn't do it for work, at least not right away, but I'm contemplating leaving the web. Despite best efforts of those who are trying to save it, the web sucks. I almost think that that if was once worth saving, it's not anymore. It's too hostile an environment for gentle people, and I don't want to be anywhere where I have to grow a thick skin or have to dismiss the garbage that pops and tries to distract me from whatever I set out to do.

There's cozy corners of the web, but the people in those cozy corners only ever talk about how cozy it is there. They never talk about plants or swimming or lovemaking or settling disputes. It's only just about how great their corner of the web is. Boring.

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 01:29:59 GMT

How long can you go without your smartphone? As in, leave the house without it and not need it? I've been trying little experiments like going for an hour-long walk, or going to the pool, and not bringing my iPhone with me. I don't recommend it for people who are somebody else's emergency contact, or if you need it to live.

For context, I'm a late-forties white male who lives in the middle of a large North American city that's extremely safe. I think I'd need it if I want ride on the local bikeshare, because I can't find the card for it, and that may not even work anymore. Maybe I only need a credit card? I'd miss playing music or listening to a podcast or audiobook on longer walks.

A Year of AquaFit and Six Months of Swimming Lessons

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:53:37 GMT

(This is an uncorrected draft of a blog post going out tomorrow.)

A friend's wife suggested, about 10 years now, and I consider AquaFit for physical activity. That was during my running phase, so I didn't outride reject it if maybe keep it as an option along with yoga.

Fast-forward a decade, and a move across the country later, I started living in a neighbourhood that had a YMCA being built, one that would be a few years behind schedule. On July 16th, 2025, the second day it was open, I took my first class. We were all facing towards the shallow end, and I, not knowing too much about where to to, took the shallow end. At 6'3", I stuck out of the water a bit, but had a great workout, a gentle and low-impact aerobic workout that had elements of strengthening. Perfect! After the next few classes, we switched to facing the sides (perpecticular to either the shallow or deep ends). Since then, I am in the middle, with just enough water to cover my torso with the ability to touch the bottom of my feed. A month in, I noticed the impact already: Stronger arms and an earlier rise than I normally would to make the 8 AM classes. I'm now part of the 8 AM crew's group chat, and we have coffee every now and then and see each other on the street. It's one of 3 neighbourhood groups I'm part of, the other being the neighbourhood association and a friend group that grew out of that.

Over the summer, in my hometown of Courtenay, I took to swimming in the river, telling my dad that I'm leaving my phone at home, and that I'd be back in an hour, and would just dry off on the way back. That experience was so good, but my swimming so obviously degraded that, in the new year, I started taking swimming lessons. I decided to take "intermediate" lessons since I figured I knew how to swim already, but needed bolstering of my technique. What I didn't know that I needed was a lot of work on breathing and endurance. Since then, I'm now in my third "semester" of that lessons group. I'm close to feeling confident in the front crawl (commonly known as freestyle), somewhat confident that I know what I'm doing with the back crawl (backstroke), and have the beginnings of a breast stroke (with a long way to go).

That gave me the idea to do training in basketball, my first love in sports. More on that if I end up going through with that.

What I hope by talking about it is that others will think of doing it, too. I tried to tell as many men I know that they should come to my Yoga for Stiff Men class, which was very similar to the Yoga4StiffPeople™ (originally Yoga4StiffGuys) that I love so much when I lived in Vancouver. It seems to have taken off quite a bit since I left (good!) and is not much of a thing here in Toronto. (It was later re-branded as Stretch + Strength without changing the routine because not enough men were signing up. I did what I could!) I have heard from my 8 AM AquaFit crew that they're considering lessons (yes!) and that one is taking the "free lessons" the lifeguards teach when they're bored. Amazing!

If you did something in your youth, and you miss doing it, and you want to be better at it so that you can enjoy it again, look up whether there's lessons. The amount of shame in my swimming lessons group is very low. Everybody has to introduce themselves at the start of lessons and why they're there, and there's always two people who want the same thing. One woman in my current group said the same thing I did, that she enjoyed swimming but was gassed after a lap or two. Everybody else had different reasons, but everybody else had at least one other person in the group who had the same goals.

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:40:09 GMT

A thought that occurs to me a lot while living alone in a small apartment: I'm the only person responsible for myself. It comes up when I hear about men in straight cohabitating couples do less than half of the housework. I'm not here to deny that. I'm here to say that people who live alone do all of the housework. I do all of the cooking, all of the dishes, all of the tidying up, all of the cleaning of surfaces, all of the laundry, and most of the maintenance.

(I did hire a handyman for 4 hours to do some random things like help remove my stuck ceiling light covers [which I had to finally accept was a two-person operation], install a light switch and switch the direction of the door on my fridge. Money well spent! I do also hire a cleaner to do the surfaces once in a blue moon [before every long trip so that I come back to a clean abode].)

Again, this doesn't deny or erase a truth about how much men do around the house when they live with others. I'll tap that sign again if you bring it up.

I resent some of it, yeah. It's not about having to do it in the first place (OK, yes it is), but doing exactly half of the housework would be a measurable improvement in my life. At least I don't mind it more often than I resent it. After all, it's nice to do something that doesn't require a lot of brain energy. And it's the time I can listen to a podcast or an audiobook (not possible for me while having to think). And whenever I think "I have nobody to bring home, so why am I doing this?" I try to remember that the answer is "I bring myself home almost every day."

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 10:46:18 GMT

If you need to “let go” of a feeling or an unwanted thought, try visualizing it. What works often enough for me is taking a thought or feeling, and imagining putting it on a raft that’s floating on a river and watching, in my mind, the river take the raft away. If the raft comes back, so be it. But it usually doesn’t.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:27:26 GMT

I got a lot of love to give, and right now my only outlet is my demo.rss.chat.