May 2026

Baseball is going strong with both boys' teams doing well. My youngest's team is off to a 2-1 start and just played in their first tournament. They played hard in the tournament and hung with every team they played against. Unfortunately, baseball luck was not with them and they didn't advance into the championship bracket. Everyone had fun playing, coaching, getting a little sunburned, and hanging out with a bunch of young goofy ballplayers.

My youngest got to pitch his first inning ever this month! He wanted to try pitching this season and has been practicing and working on learning his form. He's been the beneficiary of some bonus coaching from his older brother.

His first inning went great. There were a couple of walks, a few hits, and then he settled down and fanned 3 batters. He was super fired up. We celebrated the inning with a trip to DQ for some ice cream after the game.

My oldest's team is off to a 4-1 start with a handful of walk-off wins. Their only loss was a walk-off (a blown call by the umpire--who's just a kid and learning--that's the way youth baseball goes). They are the most encouraging, never give up, amazing attitude kids I have ever coached/helped coach. They are so fun to be around and watch play.

I'm excited to continue to see the growth of both boys and their teams and where the rest of the season takes us!

For both boys, school is out for summer. Summer break is officially underway. They've started their break by exploring the woods and being outside. Enjoying quiet days at home while the rest of their friends and cousins are in school. I am enjoying my break from making peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches in the morning. The morning light comes bright and early, the days are getting long and the weather is amazing. Soon my favorite bugs will be out, fireflies. And soon my least favorite bugs will be out, mosquitos.

Fireflies are my favorite creature. They are little lighthouses, lighting up the darkness. A reminder to be hopeful and shine bright in stormy seasons.

I made a few updates to this site and wrote about them here, May Site Update. I won't go into much more detail but hopefully I'll get some of my photos shared in June. This morning I was reading about Shantell Sans. I really like the font and want to incorporate it into the blog somehow. Some ideas I have are to make it the default font for the unicorn theme and/or make a font picker.

At work, I celebrated 20 years with my company. I started as an entry level web developer in 2006 and have grown into a soon to be Enterprise Architect position. Over the years, I have built many applications supporting the company. One of my first apps is about to hit its own 20th anniversary of running in production. As the web changed, so did the things I built and designed. I am incredibly proud of my craftsmanship. Signing my name into the things I created. I really do love the web and its technologies.

20 years is a long time for my work to be in production. And it's a long time for a company to not experience any major changes. I've written about/alluded to what's going on at my job (without much detail intentionally). I've written a little about work and stress, etc. My work of 20 years is being replaced with "off the shelf" software. I've seen a huge increase in AI slop and ideas being rushed. Developers not understanding what they're building, not caring, not thinking. To top this month off, a mentor and leader I respected was let go.

All change is hard. But these changes have been especially hard. There has been a lot of mourning with seemingly no end in sight. I am keeping positive--best I can--and hopeful that things will settle down again. The pendulum will swing back the other way.

For now, I'm grateful for baseball, summer evenings, and fireflies.

- Ben