My dad’s boat went in the water today! The winds were pretty strong, which made for some challenging moments, but it was a fun time overall! Here’s a link to an Instagram post with more photos.
Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms out there! Thank you for all that you do! I hope you have a great day!
My dad came over tonight and we fired up the grill for the first time this season!
Happy Teacher Appreciation Day! Thank you to all of the educators out there who teach, inspire, and dedicate their lives to helping students achieve success everyday! I know it can be an exhausting and, at times, thankless job, but it’s essential work that really does make a difference! Thanks for all you do! (And a special shoutout to my favorite kindergarten teacher - my wife Zeba)!
Celebrated my cousin’s birthday at TopGolf earlier today and had a great time! That said, my golf skills could probably use a little work!
Started watching “The Pitt” on HBO Max last night and think it’s a great show! In fact, Zeba and I may have stayed up a bit too late watching it, as we kept wanting to watch another episode to see what happens next!
Had a great time in Boston with Zeba! Her and her cousin, Denyse, got to read their books at Beacon Hill Books & Cafe, which was pretty cool! Then, Zeba and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary in Boston. We stayed at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, checked out View Boston, and then took a nice walk through the Boston Public Garden! Check out my Instagram post for more photos!
Happy Easter! I hope everyone has a great day! Started the day off with a walk at Houghton’s Pond with my uncle and brother!
Remotely attended the “New England CFI/DPE Hybrid Seminar/Webinar” that was put on by the FAA Safety Team in partnership with SNHU this evening.
The event consisted of a panel of DPEs who answered questions and provided insight into a variety of topics related to FAA practical tests, such as trends, issues, changes, etc. Thank you to all of the panelists and to SNHU for hosting the event!
Did a check-out flight in the Piper Archer II today! It was great to get back up in the air after not flying for a little while!
Just had a quick bout of freezing rain roll through our area! Thankfully, it didn’t last too long, though!
Had a great time skiing at Steamboat Resort in Colorado with Zeba today!
Apple Reportedly Removing One-Time AppleCare+ Purchase Option
Mark Gurman, of Bloomberg, on Twitter:
A notable change coming to AppleCare+ next week: Apple is dropping the 2-3 year pay in advance option at physical retail stores and on devices and will only offer monthly and annual subscriptions. You’ll still be able to get those multi-year plans on the online store.
If true, this is just one of the many services out there that will have gone to a subscription model. I do wonder, though, if users will be able to purchase an Apple product at a physical retail store and then make a one-time AppleCare+ purchase online, after-the-fact, like users can currently do.
As it stands today, if a user wanted to purchase AppleCare+ for an iPhone 16 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro Max, the one-time purchase price would be $199 for two years of coverage. The monthly option for the same coverage would cost $9.99/month, which would renew until cancelled. Assuming the user kept paying for monthly coverage for at least two years, they would end up spending $239.76, which ends up being $40.76 more expensive than purchasing the one-time plan for two years of coverage.
Whether or not Apple will update their pricing remains to be seen, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out and what users think of the changes.
It was windy today, so much so that our screen door, which wasn’t latched, took a bit of a beating! It ended up breaking such that it couldn’t fully close and latch anymore. Thankfully, my dad offered to come over and remove it so that it wouldn’t keep blowing open.
Had a great time in Vermont this past weekend! Despite the cold temperatures, we did some skiing at Sugarbush and had some great food at American Flatbread!
Apple's Severance Balloon Generator Promo
John Gruber, writing at DaringFireball.net:
Another fun promo for Severance season 2.
And a promo on Apple’s homepage featuring a computer made by another company. And a free in-universe book, The Lexington Letters, at Apple Books.
It’s great to see the fun ways that Apple has been advertising Severance Season 2 recently! In addition to this, Apple also created a live “Lumon Employees” display at Grand Central Station, complete with working employees!
Welcome!
Hello and welcome to my new blog, hosted on Micro.blog! My name is Jamie McGibbon and I am a technology enthusiast based in Massachusetts, USA.
I’ve been blogging in one form or another for a number of years, mainly about computers and technology on TechnicalCafe.com - a blog that I started in 2008 or 2009, back when I was still in high school. During that time, I also started a YouTube channel, where I posted tech-related videos, with a focus on computer programming and web development (with a few other videos thrown in for good measure).
That said, if you were to look at the above-mentioned blog and YouTube channel, you’d notice that I haven’t published much content over the last few years, with the exception of a few “recent” technology-related news posts on the TechnicalCafe blog.
That’s where this new blog comes in.
I have been following bloggers like Paul Thurrott, John Gruber, Jason Snell, and M.G. Siegler, among others, and enjoy the type of content that they create. In particular, I have been enjoying the link-style posts that Gruber and Snell publish on their blogs, which are often short-form posts that contain a link to an article or other source coupled with their personal thoughts on it.
I’m not sure if this blog will end up taking the “link blog” format, but I do like the idea of posting about recent happenings and providing some personal opinions about them, along with some occasional commentary posts, technology tutorials, or even the occasional update on what’s going on in my personal life.
While I have done the majority of my blogging on WordPress in the past, I have wanted to give Micro.blog a try for a while now and figured this would be as good a time as any to do just that. I admire what the Micro.blog team has created (shout out to Manton Reece for creating such a great platform) and look forward giving the service a try with this new blog.
With the backstory out of the way, here’s a bit about me:
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I live in Massachusetts with my wife and our two black cats - Sully and Taco.
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I earned my Private Pilot certificate in 2021 and enjoy flying small airplanes for fun!
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I enjoy playing video games, with Old School RuneScape and Call of Duty being two of my favorite titles.
In addition to this blog, I am also available on a variety of social media platforms including X (formerly Twitter), Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, and Instagram, among others. And, occasionally, I like to stream on Twitch, though please don’t watch if you’re expecting win after win in Call of Duty - you likely won’t find it when I’m playing, ha!
Thank you for taking the time to read this post! I really appreciate you checking out this new blog and look forward to creating more content in the future!