It’s great for anyone who has to fill in a timesheet and bounces around between multiple clients and projects. No cloud sync. No subscription. No account.

Features

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Support the Project

Ticklet is free. If it saves you time, consider giving me a tip. Every bit helps keep the project going.

The post Ticklet – Remember What You Did Today. appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

FF Quick Commands brings a Vivaldi-inspired command window to Firefox. Hit Shift+Cmd+K on Mac (or Shift+Ctrl+K on Windows/Linux) from almost any page, and you get instant access to your open tabs, recently closed tabs, bookmarks, browsing history, and built-in browser commands, all in one searchable view.

You can navigate results with the arrow keys, hit Enter to go, or Escape to close it. You can also customize which sources show up in the palette via the extension preferences.

Want to try it out?

Problems? Want to help build it? It’s on GitHub.

The post Quick Commands for Firefox appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

FF Tab Exposé brings Safari like tab overview experience to Firefox. It’s a lightweight extension that gives you a bird’s-eye view of all your open tabs in a clean, visual grid that is searchable. It supports multiple windows and Firefox Multi-Account Containers and comes with a keyboard shortcut or a toolbar button.

Want to try it out?

Problems? Want to help build it? It’s on GitHub.

The post Tab Exposé for Firefox appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

I decided to give Claude.AI a shot at creating a new WordPress theme for my site. The promise of AI-assisted development is tempting, so I gave it a go to see what it could do.

I started by explaining what I wanted:

“I want to redesign my blog. Something modern, minimal, colorful, professional and techy. Have any ideas for what my site could look like?”

At first, I was genuinely impressed. Claude created a design that felt good. From there, it built out all the WordPress theme files. We began iterating together, and every time I asked about supporting a new feature, it quickly added what I needed. When it was all done, I had a full WordPress theme that seemed amazing. This was all accomplished with the free version, which made it even more impressive.

The sales pitch Ai gave me was huge.

Efficient animations (GPU accelerated)
CSS-only dropdowns (no JS required for functionality)
Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA)
Mobile-First Design
CSS-first approach
All code is production-ready
Fully translatable (i18n ready)
No external dependencies
Optimized for performance
SEO friendly
Security best practices followed
Escaping and sanitization throughout
WordPress Coding Standards compliant

The theme worked right out of the gate. Off to a great start.

Then I started noticing issues. First, the single post template was broken. I opened up Visual Studio Code and fixed that with GitHub Copilot. Then I started looking around more and found more and more problems.

The code wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. JavaScript was doing a lot of work that could have been handled in CSS, and there was significant duplication in both JS and CSS.

It wasn’t long after viewing the site in my browser that I realized something was wrong. My browser was using an excessive amount of GPU resources. Turns out, many of the modern effects the theme relied on were CSS blur effects, which are extremely browser intensive. All of that had to be refactored.

As I had GitHub Copilot clean things up, things only got worse. I’m not sure if it was Copilot’s terrible job at refactoring, but it continued to write new CSS instead of using existing styles, and it often wrote invalid PHP and didn’t notice until I said something.

I also discovered that Claude had decided to use a CSS trick to load the page superfast, but that caused a lot of content shift. It didn’t really think that one through.

As I tried to clean things up, AI frequently wrote new styles instead of using existing ones, created multiple classes that fought for specificity, or refactored things at different breakpoints that didn’t need refactoring.

AI doesn’t do well with DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) coding principles I’ve figured out. Rather, it focuses on the immediate task at hand and just creates new code. Case in point: I asked it to add some fields to WordPress’s customizer, and it did, but it set defaults in three different areas even though only one default is actually needed.

I also had issues where Ai would build out the backend functionality for parts of the site, but never add the UI.

The theme was also supposed to be mobile first, but it wasn’t, and, when I asked AI to re-write the CSS, it’d work really hard and not do much at all. We had many rounds of cleanup to make things mobile first, only to end up with items that still weren’t mobile first. I had to do a lot of this manually.

Eventually, I reached the point where I just started updating things myself. It worked much better, and quicker, than asking AI to make a fix and watching it over-architect a solution.

AI works great at small, targeted tasks, but not at larger tasks where it needs to actually think holistically about the codebase. AI also has a memory issue where it reverts code I write, apparently not understanding why that code exists in the first place. That got annoying REALLY fast. Or, the opposite, where I’d decide that the code AI wrote was bad, and removed it all, and later on it’d decide to add it back in for some reason.

Did AI help me build a WordPress theme faster?

Technically, yes. It did a lot of coding, laying the groundwork and getting things moving forward. But the polish had to be done by hand. There are just so many things that AI doesn’t understand. It’s one thing to look at code and think it’s great, and it’s another to see it in the browser and actually use the site.

In the end, it all worked out. This theme took about a week to put together, and most of that was in random blocks of time when I had time available. It’s still not perfect, but I can always find something to improve. I feel the CSS is overdone in spots, and it’s still not 100% mobile first, but it’s in good shape. I’ve wanted a new design for a while, and I’m happy to have something new.

The takeaway? AI is a powerful tool for getting started and handling some tasks, but it’s not a replacement for human judgment and refinement. At least not yet. I don’t see a point in time where I can trust AI to do a great job like I could trust my co-workers, but it did help get the job done faster.

The post Creating my new WordPress theme with Ai appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

If you’ve been running a WordPress site for a while, you’ve probably noticed your media library has gotten messy. Since WordPress doesn’t automatically delete media files when you delete the posts they’re attached to, it can grow and grow. Over time, this leaves you with hundreds or thousands of unattached files cluttering your library.

In theory, cleaning these up sounds easy. In practice, it’s risky on larger sites because you can’t easily tell what’s actually being used. Delete the wrong file and you could break something on your site.

I ran into this problem with one of my own sites. I was planning to migrate hosts, so I decided it was a perfect time to do some serious cleanup. The site had thousands of posts and a massive media library, and I wanted to remove over 8000 low-quality posts along with their associated files. Since WordPress doesn’t have a built-in way to do this safely, I wrote a couple of custom plugins.

The first plugin, Attach Orphaned Images, searches through unattached images and checks if they’re actually being used anywhere. If they are, it automatically attaches them to the correct content. In just a few minutes, it scanned and attached over 3000 images.

The second plugin, Delete Attached Media on Post Deletion, inserts itself when you delete posts. When you permanently delete a post, instead of leaving the media behind, it grabs any files attached to that post, verifies they’re not used elsewhere on the site, and then deletes them. Since verification takes time, this runs as a background process.

Between these two plugins, I was able to clean up the site and free up a significant amount of disk space. The solution wasn’t perfect, and I still had to do some manual cleanup afterward, but the plugins handled the heavy lifting.

The process did take time. The plugins try to do things in batches to keep from overloading the server, and the verification step added hours to the timeline. Most of that was automated, though, just a cron job running in the background.

In the end, I reduced the media library by three quarters. That kind of cleanup makes all the effort worth it.

If you’re trying to clean up your WordPress media library, take a look at my plugins and see if they’ll work for you. And, as always, backup your site before running the plugins, just in case.

The post Cleaning Up Your WordPress Media Library appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

In June, I was laid off from Nerdery after 14 and a half years. By the end of July, I had applied for 77 jobs. By the end of September, that number climbed to 152. During those months, I interviewed with 6 companies, received 51 rejections, and was ghosted by 101.

I also spoke with at least 5 recruiters, most pitching contractor roles that needed to be filled ASAP. None of those conversations led anywhere. The roles either stalled indefinitely or vanished completely.

This is what the job market looks like in 2025.

The Numbers Game Doesn’t Work Anymore

Right now, there are more people looking for jobs than there are jobs available. A single job posting can attract over 1,000 applicants. Some of those applications are automated, with candidates spamming every remotely relevant opening. Others are genuinely qualified. Either way, I’m not competing with a handful of good candidates, I’m competing with hundreds.

The result? Companies are overwhelmed. They struggle to review all the applications, pick a few promising candidates, and eventually give up on the rest. Cold applying simply doesn’t work when you’re one of hundreds and your resume likely never reaches human eyes.

What Actually Works: Connections

So what does work? Connections. Leveraging family, friends, and former coworkers seems to be the only reliable way to get in front of companies.

Almost every interview I’ve landed came through a referral. Those connections got me in front of real people, which moved the conversation forward. But even then, I’ve had great interviews that didn’t lead to a job. Either the company ghosted me, the role was put on pause, or they chose someone else.

Quality Over Quantity

A friend keeps telling me that “more hooks in the water” is a good thing, but I’m not convinced. More applications haven’t gotten me anywhere. I’ve tried everything from applying for jobs I’m perfectly qualified for, to targeting local companies, and even lowering my salary expectations. More hooks doesn’t seem to work.

It’s not about the quantity of applications, it’s about the quality of connections.

I’ve started shifting my strategy. Now I find a job posting, research who works at the company, and try to leverage connections. To be honest, it’s a pain because I don’t have connections everywhere. I have plenty of good connections, but matching who’s hiring with someone who can vouch for me is tricky. However, when I manage it, I’m far more successful at landing at least an initial interview. With that said, I still do cold applications just in case.

If you’re in a similar situation, hang in there. You’re not alone. I’ve heard similar situations from many other people, even in completely different industries. It’s not you, it’s the economy right now.

The post My 2025 Job Search Reality Check appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

My annual 5k run happened this past weekend, and I came in at the fastest time yet: 29:34.

I felt less prepared this year than in years past, but a week before the race I asked ChatGPT for a plan. It guided me through what days I should run and what days I should rest, and even gave me advice for when is a good time to walk during the race. Turns out, the advice was pretty good.

I’m not quite sure how people get addicted to running, but one 5k a year is enough for me. Might consider another one if it was more of a themed run.

The post Another Year, Another 5k appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

The result is JobTwister, an experimental macOS app that helps track job applications. It’s built using SwiftUI and SwiftData, runs natively on macOS, and was largely written with the help of GitHub Copilot.

I started by asking Copilot to build the app from scratch and told it what fields I wanted to track. It handled that surprisingly well. From there, I kept adding features—sometimes it nailed them, and sometimes it completely missed the mark (as expected with any AI).

One highlight was asking it to export all the data to a CSV file. It completed that with no problem. Importing data from a CSV? Also smooth. That was important to me, as I wanted users to back up their data or bring in data from other tools.

The trickiest feature was supporting multiple interview stages (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.). We went in circles on that one, and it still hasn’t been implemented. I suspect I need to refine how I communicate in Swift-specific terms to get better results.

One thing I learned: the GitHub Copilot Xcode extension isn’t great. It often said it updated code when it didn’t. I ended up using Copilot in VS Code and switching over to Xcode to test and run the app.

Along the way, I started learning Swift myself. Sometimes, it was just easier to make small changes manually than to wrangle with Copilot-generated code that felt overly complex.

Right now, the app is in a decent place, but it’s not actively being developed. I don’t have a Copilot license at the moment, and job hunting takes priority. I’m slowly picking up more Swift, but not enough to move development forward significantly just yet.

If you want to try it out, you’ll need to clone the repo and build it in Xcode yourself—I don’t have an Apple Developer account, so I can’t distribute it.

And if you’re interested in contributing, feel free to jump in!

The post Experimenting with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode to build a macOS App. appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

AI is everywhere. Every time you download an app, login to a site, or buy a product, they’re all talking about how AI is being integrated. We’re definitely in the AI bubble.

One of the big advancements has been the ability for AI to write code, and replace all those pesky developers out there.

😕 Wait, that’s me.

In May, Microsoft announced GitHub Copilot Agent mode. Agent mode allows anyone to ask AI to write some code, and it’ll do it. Not just some code, but all the code. You can ask GitHub Copilot Agent to write an entire website, or an entire mobile application. The best part is, you don’t even need to know how to code. To be honest, though, that’s also the worst part.

I was curious. How good is GitHub Copilot Agent? Is it going to replace me?

So I took it for a spin, and I’ve been using it for the past few weeks creating all sorts of things.

TLDR: GitHub Copilot Agent is pretty good at what it does, but it has so many rough edges. Don’t go replacing humans yet.

The first thing I did was ask GitHub Copilot Agent to build a one-page React site that just showed me the weather in both Fahrenheit and Celsius. This was something I wanted to do, but never got around to. I already had an API to use, so I asked GitHub Copilot Agent to build it. And it did. In less than a minute.

Amazing!

I then spent the next few hours asking GitHub Copilot Agent to enhance it. I asked it to create a modern look and feel, and it wrote all the CSS and HTML for me. I asked it to add in input, so users could input a location, and an option to geolocate them. GitHub Copilot Agent had no issues doing all that. I asked for more weather details like feels like temp, highs and lows, and even the forecast for the next three days. No problem.

🤔 This was amazing, and concerning. Maybe AI can really replace me!

Then, we got ourselves into trouble. I decided that I wanted that app to be in Next.js. GitHub Copilot Agent said it’d create a new project in Next.js and copy everything into the new framework. Only it didn’t. It got about half way done, and it got confused, and quit. I then had to finish the job myself.

Remember, this is only a one-page site and Next.js is based on React so it shouldn’t have been too hard to do.

Now that my weather app was in Next.js, I continued to make updates.

Sometimes it was great, sometimes not so much. I’d ask for functionality to be added, and it’d do that, but also change some of the design for unknown reasons. I’d ask it to make the site mobile friendly, and it destroyed the desktop view and replaced it with the mobile design. I asked it to save the user’s location in local storage so that it could re-load their location on their next visit, and it had a hard time understanding how that flow would work when there was a location input, and geolocation, and yet the user could change their location. I eventually had to intervene and write the code myself because no matter how many times AI tried, it couldn’t successfully figure it out.

That’s when I really started to understand that prompting AI to do something only half the battle. You have to ask for what you want, but also tell it what you don’t want. You have to ask it to use specific frameworks, and packages, and standards, otherwise it’ll just pick some it likes.

AI is smart, but they’re more like a know-it-all new programmer. They can do a lot, but they don’t understand the full scope of what they’re being asked, and they don’t ask clarifying questions. Sometimes it forgets the obvious too. Like when I asked to add a shared footer to the site. It had no issues creating the file and adding it to one page, but it only added it to one page. 🤦

In a different app, I asked AI to create an AI image generator written in Python. Again, AI did a good job, but I wasn’t specific enough. It created the site using OpenAI’s APIs, which cost a lot and I don’t pay for. So I asked AI if there was a free API we could use. It said yes and updated the code to use Midjourney. Midjourney’s API allows for about 8 free photos and then costs too. Eventually we did find a free API, and I’ve been able to build out a pretty cool image generation app using Python. Again, sometimes it did great, other times I found myself being frustrated that it couldn’t do what I thought were simple things.

Fun fact, I don’t know Python very well. I have a fully functional app that does what I want though.

In all the different little projects I built out, it became clear time and time again that AI doesn’t often think outside the scope of what you ask.

• Is the site accessible?
• Is the code secure?
• Is the code optimized?
• Is there documentation?
• Is this based on [programming language] standards?
• Is the site mobile friendly?

These are all the things that AI can do, but doesn’t usually do them unless you ask. Even then, sometimes you have to ask it multiple times because it’ll make things accessible, but after adding new features you’ll realize that those new features aren’t accessible because it didn’t think of that.

🫣 On the flip side, AI can also over do things.

I asked AI to create a WordPress plugin. I gave it clear instructions of what I needed to be done, and it did an amazing job of outputting a basic plugin.

I then asked it if the code was optimized, which it honestly answered that the code wasn’t great, but it could optimize it for me. The code that it just wrote, it admitted, wasn’t good. WTH.

I asked it if the code was secure, and it said no, but it could update that. Great, but why aren’t we putting security first?

I asked it if it was based on WordPress standards, and it said no, but it’d update everything to follow WordPress standards. In doing so, it created a package.json, install and uninstall functions and files, and a composer file. However, my plugin didn’t install anything. It only swapped out a shortcode for some JavaScript. I pointed that out to AI, and it admitted that it over did it. It added files and functions it didn’t need, but it could clean them up for me.

🤖 It’s examples like that that show how amazing AI can be, but also how AI isn’t ready to replace people.

GitHub Copilot Agent is great. I love it for spinning up new projects, and writing code, and helping me fix something when I don’t really know how the code works, but human oversight is necessary.

This is what scares me about AI. If people use it without looking at what it’s outputting, then you have no idea what’s really going on. Sure, you can build a web or mobile app in no time, but is the user’s information safe? Is it accurate?

At the end of the day, companies can blame AI, but they’re at fault for what they created with AI.

And, in case you’re wondering, this post was not written in AI. That cool robot image at the top was created with AI, though.

The post AI’s not taking my software developer job… yet. appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

This Easter image was generated with Ai and it’s fantastic. It’s everything I hoped it would be. Look how adorable, and a bit crazy, he looks.

It didn’t turn out right the first time, but after some editing of the prompt and a few tries, I ended up with something I was very happy with.

Prompt:

overly stimulated, crazy, super fluffy white Easter bunny with bright blue eyes, eating a chocolate bunny amidst a colorful pile of Easter eggs. The bunny has a huge smile, and mouth covered in chocolate. The scene is magical and whimsical, and over the top, with vibrant pastel-colored eggs, scattered all around and flying in the air. Colorful confetti and sprinkles float in the sky, adding to the festive atmosphere. The background is a dreamy sky

Full disclosure, the text was added on after the image was generated. Ai still doesn’t know how to do text very well.

Happy Easter Everyone!

The post Happy Easter appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

It looks like Ai doesn’t quite understand what Where’s Waldo is. I thought I was providing a good prompt, but every image always had Waldo front and center.

Here’s what I started with:

A vibrant, hand-drawn Easter scene in “Where’s Waldo” style. A busy meadow filled with people hunting colorful eggs, playful bunnies, chicks, and lambs. Waldo, in his red-and-white striped shirt and hat, is hidden among the crowd. Cartoonish, cheerful, and packed with springtime details.

No Luck. It seems “is hidden among the crowd” wasn’t understood. Then I added “Waldo should be hard to find” at the end, and still no luck. I then updated it to say, “Waldo, in his red-and-white striped shirt and hat, is hidden among the crowd and hard to find” and still, Waldo is front and center.

The last version of the prompt, I updated it up to say “One person, in red-and-white striped shirt and hat, is hidden among the crowd and hard to find.” I was thinking that maybe if I don’t say “Waldo” specifically, maybe it’d catch on, but nope. Still got an image focused on Waldo.

This proves nothing, except that Ai image generation isn’t always as intelligent as some worry it is. Sure, it’s smart, and it cranked out Where’s Waldo style images in seconds, but it didn’t provide what I wanted. Even the images I did get had malformed people and animals. It’s impressive that it could understand what I was going for; too bad it missed the mark.

I’m sure if I were running my own Ai image generator, and had spent countless hours training it up on Where’s Waldo, I could output something great, but I’d rather just play with what’s out there today and see what it can create. Sometimes it’s amazing, sometimes it’s questionable. Either way, it’s fun.

The post Where’s Waldo – Ai Edition appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

If you’re online, you’re being tracked. Every site you visit, every video you watch, every location you go, they’ll be tracking you. They can track you in ways you don’t even realize. That’s why I started down a privacy path. First up, NextDNS.

I’ve been researching ways to stop all the intrusive tracking that sites are doing these days, and I came across NextDNS. It’s easy, cheap, and works very well. NextDNS will block ads and trackers on websites and in apps, protect you from security threats like malware and phishing domains, and help give you control over your online privacy.

In the past 7 days, NextDNS blocked 43,741 items for me and my family. These could be ads, trackers, or other threats.

NextDNS works by sitting between you and the internet. It then blocks some requests from going through. It has a list of known bad actors and stops them before they ever get to your device.

It’s similar to ad blockers in your browser, but they protect your entire device, or network.

The easiest way to enable NextDNS is to add it to your router. Then everything on your network is protected without having to set up each device. The downside to installing it this way is that it’s harder to disable if you need to disable it for any reason.

The next best option is to install the app on your devices. This way, if you want to turn it off, you can easily do that, do your thing, and turn it on again. If you work from home, maybe your work computer has its own protections, so that computer can still be on your network, but not utilize NextDNS. The downside to this approach is you have to install apps on all devices, and some devices (like Roku) don’t allow for DNS configurations.

Neither way is wrong; it just depends on your individual situation. I started with NextDNS on my router, but my work computer needed access to things that NextDNS blocked. I switched to using apps, and everything has been running smoothly.

Overall, I’m not a fan of outright blocking of ads and trackers. I’d rather have the option to block the bad sites and allow the good sites, but bad and good is subjective. I do want to support sites that have a reasonable amount of ads that don’t harm my viewing of their content; however, companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are taking tracking too far, so I’m out.

You can always try out NextDNS for free and see how it works for you. It’s as easy as installing an app and setting up an account.

The post Easily block ads and trackers with NextDNS appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

Click to view the full size image.

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Sure, you can use CSS animations, or JavaScript, to do a lot better animations, but there’s something fun about old school code that still works.

The downside here is that every browser and platform has its differences. The main issue is that every platform has its own emoji designs. No clue how this looks on Windows, Linux or Android. The other issue is rendering engines seem to have implemented marquee a bit differently. This is smooth in Firefox, decent in Chrome, and a bit choppy in Safari.

Whereas I wouldn’t recommend using the marquee element for anything important, it is fun to play around with.

The post The Marquee Emoji Life appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

I assume you’ve already connected all your controllers to the same network, and they’re all up and running. If not, do that first.

Now, go into the one you want as the main controller and go into config > sync interfaces. In the sync group section, choose a group number. I chose 2, but you don’t have to. Then ensure Send is checked and Receive is unchecked. Leave the rest of the settings as they are and Save.

Go back out to the main screen and turn on the Sync button. This will tell it to send out the signal to anyone listening. It has to remain on.

Next, go to your other controllers and go to config > sync interfaces. In the sync groups, set them to Receive the same group number as you set on the main controller.

That should do it. They should turn on, off, change colors, and effects based on the main controller.

Sometimes, out of the three that I’m syncing, one doesn’t always listen. It’ll be right 90% of the time, but every so often, one doesn’t change when it should. This can happen if there is WIFI interference. You can help avoid this by going back into the main controller, to config > sync setup. Scroll down to UDP packet retransmissions. Change it to 2 or 3. This will tell the main controller to repeat the config change notification so that if anyone didn’t get the first update notification, maybe they’ll get the second, or third. You can set this number to whatever you want, but I’ve never gone higher than 3.

That’s all you have to do. Your WLED controllers should now be in sync.

The post How to sync WLED controllers. appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

The first set contains:

• Beetlejuice Mouth Monster
• Unimpressed
• Creepy Face 1
• Creepy Face 2
• Michael Myers

The second set contains:

• Invisible Person
• Skull and Crossbones
• Skull Smile
• Jagged Teeth
• The Hand
• Venom

The post 2024 Halloween Pumpkins appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

Turns out, ValleyScare is a lot of fun.

The biggest thing to know about ValleyScare is that you can get light-up Boo necklaces which tell the performers not to scare you. It won’t always work, as you are at a haunted theme park after all, but the performers won’t be targeting you. The only exception is haunted houses. You can’t have them on in haunted houses. Out of four people, two in our group had Boo necklaces, which didn’t include me, and so we were relatively safe.

The other big thing to know is ValleyScare performers can’t touch you. They can’t sneak up behind you and tap you on the shoulder, they can’t grab you so you can’t get away, they can’t even give you a high five. This lowers the scare factor quite a bit in my book. I’m not a fan of being scared, so knowing they can’t actually get me is reassuring.

Walking through the haunted walkways was actually a lot of fun. Especially when there was a group of people in front of us who took the brunt of the scares. They’d scream, I’d laugh, and then I’d hurry by.

We did do three haunted houses. The first was Cryptid Land. It was pretty nerve wracking and supposedly was one of the scarier ones. Lots of dark, narrow hallways full of twists and turns.

The second was Blood on the Boundary Waters. This was the least scary of them all. It was actually outside, so no narrow, winding, hallways. Plenty of room to keep yourself away from the performers, and pretty short.

The third was Berserkers. This was another inside haunted house, much like Cryptid Land. The dark, narrow hallways allowed plenty of spaces for the performers to hide. It was pretty good, and I didn’t get too scared, but I was also glad to be out of there.

There were a few other haunted houses, but they had long lines and some got pretty gory from what we heard.

I have to say, it was scary enough for me. More of jump scare, rather than terrifying. Enough to get your heart racing, but not enough that you couldn’t sleep at night. Oh, and it turns out, when I get scared, I talk to people. I would things like “oh hi, how are you today?”, and “hey Bob, you look good” as a way to normalize the situation and reduce the fear. Or do a friendly wave. In one of the haunted houses, I even started telling the performers what to do. It was something like “No. No. No. No. No. No. You don’t jump out at me.” My wife found that hilarious.

We also tried to go on rides, but the lines were extremely long. That was the biggest disappointment of the night.

In the end, it was a fun night, and I’d do it again. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. Granted, being with my family helped me feel safe.

The post We Survived ValleyScare appeared first on Thomas McMahon.

Each year, I do a bit better. This year, I added more compost and 10-10-10 fertilizer to the soil before and during the growing season. We also lucked out with a decent balance of sun and rain this year, so they seemed pretty self-sufficient. The only downside was that some animals nibbled on a few of them. Pumpkins seem pretty tasty to wildlife.

So far, growing a giant pumpkin hasn’t happened. I got a few to start this year, but they didn’t get too big before they rotted out. I’m guessing giant pumpkins need a lot more attention than I give them. That, and a ton more fertilizer.

Huge thanks to our neighbor for letting me grow pumpkins behind their house! It’s a great sunny spot, and hopefully next year will be even better!

Related Post:

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Sharky first lived in a 2 gallon tank that we borrowed from the neighbor. Then my wife found a 14 gallon tank for free on Facebook that came with rocks, decorations, and a friend. Now Sharky is swimming in style in a much bigger home with some pretty nice decorations. The new tank even came with a friend. Plinko is a Pleco fish that helps keep the tank clean. We don’t see him too often, as he likes to hide, but he’s doing well.

The cats love Sharky and Plinko too. Gonzo especially loves to just sit and watch the tank. She’s like a kid in front of the TV, as she just sits there and watches for hours. She does get a bit adventurous at times, though, and has knocked the lid in and tested the water. She really just wants to give Sharky a hug.

We’re learning about fish as we go. We didn’t realize Sharky’s first tank was almost too small for him, and definitely too small for him and a friend. We also found out that fish don’t really like lights on their tanks. Sharky would swim erratically around the tank every time we turned on the tank light. I guess it was too bright, or maybe it’s just the wrong kind of light?

Now that we have a bigger tank, we have more space for more fish! Either that or Sharky will grow to fit his tank, and he’ll be huge. Either way, it’s a fun little adventure.

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Once in the park, you feel surrounded by water. Riding Steel Venom feels different when all you see when you look down is water. There is one spot in the park, near Steel Venom, where there are sandbags keeping water out. They’re doing a pretty good job, but water is still seeping in. They also have quite a few pumps, pumping water back out of the park.

The views from the top of the coasters, or other rides, is amazing, though. To see so much water spilling out of the banks of the Minnesota river is unreal. Quite a bit of the back of the park, like where they store the Halloween decorations, are completely flooded. I swear I saw coffins floating in the water. Some of the decorations were moved up to dry land, but there’s still quite a few Halloween decorations underwater. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of that, as I could only see it while on the rides.

Even though things were surrounded by water, most everything in the park was open; except for Renegade, Excalibur, and Thunder Canyon. That whole back area is blocked off, so you can’t even wonder back there to look.

Our day in the park was amazing though. There were no lines anywhere. We walked right onto most rides. Not sure if it was the threat of rain that day, or the flooding, but it’s a fantastic time to go to Valleyfair.

Note: You should be able to click, and then zoom in, on all photos to see a larger version.

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