Dear Kogi

Mister Kogi. Buddy. Buttmunch. My silly, smelly little Kogi Bear. 10 years is so long yet so short. You filled my home and my heart with a lifetime of love and memories. Yet, it feels like just yesterday that I was still counting down the days until I could finally bring you home. You've crossed the rainbow bridge now, but your little paw prints on my heart will be a part of me forever.

I remember the day I brought you home. Truth be told, I told Mark about you but kept you a secret from my parents. When my dad found out, he told me that he doesn't want a dog. I told him, "Fuck you Dad, I do what I want!" (Not really) But the day I brought you home, literally all it took was just one look and you won him over instantly. In that exact moment, you wiggled your little puppy face into his heart and turned my dad into your Lolo. He didn't stand a chance.

In no time, you became the glue for the family. We used to always just do our own things, but with you joining as the youngest family member, everyone had their hand in raising you. Lolo would teach you how to catch tennis balls and food with your mouth. Lola would feed you every morning and clean up whenever you had diarrhea. (Man, do you remember that one week??) Mark would play fetch with you and eventually introduce you to your favorite treat — baby carrots.

For me, well, you became my everything.

From that first day onward, it wasn't just about me taking a crash course in being a dog parent — it was a crash course on figuring out your weird-ass quirks.

I never told you this to your face, Kogi, but you are by far the weirdest eater I've ever known. For whatever reason, I had the hardest time getting you to eat as a puppy. I eventually threw in a tennis ball to turn dinner into a game. Next thing I know, that became your thing for the rest of your life. Dinner time = slowest-game-of-fetch-ever time. One toss = one bite. That's not normal, Buttmunch. But you always cherished it…and so did I.

Also, I'm 100% sure I’ll never find someone so eager to lick the meat-sweats off my bald head the way you did. You always did it so passionately, with your eyes closed so tight, like the ending of a love story.

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if that was your love language or because you thought that was mine. To be honest, it's not my thing...and my bald head has smelled like your breath for the past 10 years straight. But you always cherished it…and so did I.

You had this really weird love-hate relationship with back rubs too, Kogi Bear. Every morning or mid-afternoon while you were barely awake, I would rub your back and watch you squirm all over the bed, purring like a kitten for a solid minute…and then you'd suddenly roll over, stand up, and shake it off like, "No! I hate this! You stress me out!" Don't lie, you know you loved it…and so did I.

Oh hey, do you remember your first week home? I think it was your fifth day, I was messing around with my friend's Google Glass while you were sniffing around. This was the moment I learned your signal for going potty. I'm sorry I flipped you over mid-poop and then dropped you as I tried to catch your turd. But hey, we managed to keep that poop off the carpet! High five, buddy! It's all about developing team chemistry right from the beginning.

Do you remember the time I took you to the dog park and you were supposed to be my wingman? You were supposed to go up to those two Asian girls and lead them to me. Instead, you ran up to them, started snorting / reverse-sneezing for a full minute, and then came running back to me. Not exactly the smoothest move but who am I to judge? You're the one with the ability to go up to any woman and just kiss them on the mouth without getting a restraining order.


Looking back at all our cherished memories, I realize how you taught me so much about living in the moment. You taught me to find joy in the simplest, everyday things. Every single time I took you on the same walks on the same few routes, you would always take the time to sniff every freakin' bush and blade of grass like you've never sniffed them before in your life. Every single walk for you was like a brand new book that you had to take your sweet time to read, from beginning to end. You always cherished those simple moments…and because of you, so did I.

Our walks together were your most favorite thing in the world. I promise to keep going on our daily walks for you, Kogi, with your collar in my hand, and your joyful sense of curiosity in my heart.

While your presence will be felt on every walk, there are so many things I will miss without you:

  • I will miss seeing you napping in my bed and my bean bag chair while I work.

  • I will miss you waking me up every weekend, getting clingier and clingier until I finally got out of bed.

  • I will miss our mid-day weekend naps together.

  • I will miss holding your hind leg while you pee so you don't step in your own puddle.

  • I will miss your ears perking up and you barking every time I say, "Who's that??"

  • I will miss you guarding me with your life while I'm sitting on the toilet.

  • I will miss hearing you running up and down the hallway frantically when you were playing fetch with Mark.

  • I will miss hearing your high-pitched "Hey, get me the fucking ball" bark whenever it rolled under the couch.

  • I will miss the sound of you walking up to me and dropping your favorite stuff animals at my feet when you wanted to play. And when I didn't respond to you immediately, you would sit there patiently and politely, like the goodest boy ever.

  • I will miss you sprawling all over my packed clothes whenever you noticed me packing up for a trip.

  • I will miss rolling up your favorite toys in my blanket and watching you spend 10 minutes straight trying to dig them out. You're so cute when you're tired, lol.

  • I will miss you chasing me around the house whenever I have a fresh handful of baby carrots in my hand every night.

  • I will miss all my days beginning and ending with you, your cuddles, and your big fat sloppy kisses.


The paw prints you left on my heart will never fade, and for that, all I can feel is gratitude.

Thank you for teaching me patience.

Thank you for teaching me to live in the moment and to find joy in the simplest things in life.

Most of all, thank you for teaching me unconditional love. You were my #1 from Day 1. And you made sure I knew, every single day, that I was yours too.

Although our time together came to a sudden end, I am at peace knowing I was able to be there with you, talking to you, and comforting you, face-to-face, right up until the moment passed. You were always there for me. I was always there for you.

Whenever my time on this earth is supposed to come, I look forward to waking up in a grass field and seeing you running to me in slow motion. I promise you an eternity of long walks, games of fetch, back rubs, baby carrots, and all the bacon-licious meat-sweats on my head for you to lick as much as you want. Until then…

Aloha for now, Mister Kogi. My goodest boy. And my bestest friend.

Forever and Always,
Mel

WWDC 2024 →

A quick rundown of all my most-anticipated announcements (and unannounced tidbits) from WWDC 2024:

visionOS

  • Mac Virtual DisplayHuge updates for productivity!
    • Mouse Support — This makes working with Vision apps and Mac Virtual Display way more seamless.
    • Wide and Ultra Wide Screen Options — YES. I can easily see myself downgrading from the 16-inch screen to 14-inch for my next MacBook Pro.
  • New GestureWay easier and efficient to invoke Home View and Control Center! Also alleviates my annoyance with how inefficient it was to see the time.
  • Create Spatial PhotosFucking. Awesome. All of my food photos can be transformed with AI into Spatial Photos. I've already done a few and this is just mind-blowing. It's hard to describe, but the experience is somewhere between looking at a two-dimensional photo and actually being there in the moment.
  • Rearrangeable Home View
  • New Bora Bora Environment — Great addition! These immersive environments are going to be such delightful additions like getting new watch faces in watchOS.
  • AirPlay Receiver — Not sure exactly how I will use this but I appreciate any feature that let's me bring non-AVP things into my AVP.
  • Improved Hand Tracking — Upgraded from 30Hz to 90Hz to make my hands feel more realistic when immersed. (For context, Meta Quest is 60Hz.)
  • Improved Full Screen Videos in SafariHuge improvement for watching videos on YouTube, Hulu, and other streaming services that can only be played on AVP via Safari. This gets the YouTube experience from completely unbearable to totally doable. Nothing will beat a native app but this is good enough to significantly increase my AVP usage.

Apps

  • New Passwords AppGoodbye, 1Password! For me, this will be a game-changer for helping me manage my parents' passwords.
  • Messages Improvements — Some of these are catch-ups but some are also enhancements to subtly keep iMessage blue bubbles positioned above SMS/RCS green bubbles.
    • Scheduled MessagesFinally. I constantly find funny links that I want to send to certain friends but know it's inappropriate to text late at night.
    • Easier Tapbacks — Love to see iMessage adopt this from Slack/Discord.
    • Text Effects — This will be fun to play around with.
    • Messaging via SatelliteWow. Maybe I can start doing more outdoorsy, off-the-grid type things when I travel?? Very curious to see how this evolves.
  • Reminders in CalendarGoodbye, Fantastical! This alone will save me $57/year.
  • Math NotesGoodbye, Soulver! (Assuming this works as I hope it does.)
  • Highlights in Safari — A welcomed enhancement for browsing websites. I like how Apple is using AI to enhance the web instead of trying to replace it like Open AI and Google.
  • Redesigned Photos — The navigation is controversial but customizable so we'll see how this pans out.

iOS & iPadOS

  • Home Screen and Control Center CustomizationsFinally. Not sure how much I will personally use these new options but this should've been implemented years ago.
  • Customizable Lock Screen Buttons — I'm looking forward to replacing the bottom-left Flashlight button with Camera and the bottom-right Camera button with Overcast. This just makes so much sense for me when I'm taking food photos with my left hand or opening Overcast when I get in my car.
  • Lock/Hide AppsFinally. Also, this will be awesome for parents who let their kids play with their phones.
  • Remote Screen Control during Screen ShareHuge for being our parents' tech support.
  • Vocal Shortcuts — Custom voice trigger words!
  • Custom Charging Limits — A nice little improvement for maintaining battery health.
  • T9 Dialing for iOS — A nice little quality-of-life improvement that is a welcomed copy from Android.
  • Calculator App for iPadHoly. Shit. A basic calculator app should've been added over a decade ago but they just dropped this bomb like Taylor Swift.
  • Smart Script for iPad — As someone who has struggled with chicken-scratch handwriting all my life, this thing is absolutely mind-blowing.

AirPods

  • Head GesturesWow. Such a brilliant feature to answer/reject voice calls.

tvOS

  • Subtitles on Mute — A delightful enhancement for such a common use-case.
  • InSight for Apple Originals — This won't replace Callsheet for me because it won't have actor ages and heights, but this is a welcomed enhancement that I could see being added to to any video played in the TV app.

watchOS

  • Double Tap for Third-Party Apps
  • Live Activities
  • Distance and Route Maps for More Workouts
  • Vitals App
  • Custom Ringtones and Text TonesFinally.

macOS

  • iPhone MirroringWow. Apple's Continuity continues to be the gift that keeps on giving! I totally expect this to come to Apple Vision Pro but I'm also curious to see if this will eventually evolve into something like Samsung DeX.
  • iOS Notifications on MacFuck yeah. Back in 2011, I wrote about how redundant push notifications will be a problem. Apple went a different route than I proposed but I'm here for it!
  • Window SnappingFinally. Not sure if I will personally use this but this is a welcomed copy from Windows.
  • Keep Downloaded for iCloud Files — Big quality-of-life improvement for managing offline assets that are hosted on iCloud Drive.

Apple Intelligence

  • Onscreen Awareness and Personal Context — Because the system has an understanding of what you're looking at, what your tendencies are, and what actions your apps can do, Siri can take action inside and across apps. Fucking amazing and I'm dying to play around with it.
  • ChatGPT Integration — It's here! It's free! And it's private. (Love how it'll seamless upgrade to ChatGPT Pro too.)
  • Priority Notifications — Curious to see how this pans out, especially with the auto-summaries.
  • Reduce Interruptions Focus Mode
  • Clean Up in PhotosFinally we'll be able to remove people and things from our photos in the native Photos app.
  • Smarter Search in Photos — I just want to be able to say, "Siri, show me everything shot on this day."
  • "Siri, how do I…?"Huge for my parents.
  • Genmoji — This honestly might replace GIF reactions for me in my daily interactions. Can't wait!

Overall, this would have to be one of the best WWDCs I've seen. It had an excellent variety of quality-of-life improvements, nice catch-ups from Android, meeting AI expectations, and a few mind-blowing announcements. Can't wait to get my hands on the public betas!

Persis & Crystal: Surprise Proposal Turned Into Same-Day Wedding →

The Knot:

Though Crystal knew Persis would be the one to ask the question, she couldn’t have imagined just how grand that proposal would be. The groundwork for the actual moment was “a grand adventure that spanned years and continents.” Persis drew inspiration from a song she loves: “Girl in L.A.,” by a pop-folk act called Us the Duo. The song narrates a long-distance love story, much like Persis and Crystal’s. The lyrics mention various locations around the globe: “I’ll yell it out from Nashville, a little closer to your ear...I’ll scale the China Wall to have you closer here to me...I’m in love with a girl in L.A.” As part of her plan, Persis planned trips with Crystal to all the spots mentioned in the song. At each location, she captured footage to be compiled into a proposal video.

“Persis and I are a couple of travel bugs, so when she suggested hitting these spots, I was all in but had no idea why [we were going],” recalls Crystal. “Sure, China in the middle of winter seemed a bit out of left field, but hey, who am I to turn down an adventure? Little did I know, each destination was part of her grand plan. The big reveal happened at The Hummingbird Temple in Los Angeles. As soon as I saw Us the Duo set up with their instruments, I knew something was up.” The musicians began to sing “Girl in L.A.” while Persis’ proposal video lit up on a big screen. After the song, a few friends Persis had recruited led Crystal to the backyard. There, Persis was standing in front of towering letters spelling out “Marry Me Today.” Talk about a moment for the memory books.

So happy to have played a small role in Persis' grand master plan and watched this unfold in person!

Jillian Michael's Anti-Keto Campaign →

I take all information — especially in this political climate — with a grain of salt. So when people are hyping up or advocating against something like keto, the only thing you can do is try it for yourself and see what works for you.

With keto, not only did I lose 58 lbs, but I reversed my fatty liver and lowered my triglycerides from 169 to 69.

Sorry Jillian, I trust my blood test results — keto works.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it. They just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while; that’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

—Steve Jobs