from rscottjones

Thanks to Justin Searls for releasing POSSE Party, which will crosspost your blog posts to a bunch of social media platforms—freeing you from their grips without severing your friendships. It’s a free, self-hosted (docker-based) app, worth of your attention.

It’s that time again—another month in the books. Here was my November 2025 in 10 photos:

More cardiology appointments, and hopefully, a long-term solution on its way: I’m set for ablation surgery in mid-December. I can’t wait to get back to normal.

A birthday walk in the mountains, after finally getting the go-ahead to do some light hiking. Boy did I need some time on dirt!

And a big ass birthday beer pour at AZ Wilderness Brewing. I’ve never made it down for this special 52 ounce pour reserved for one’s birthday, so it was fun to finally do it, especially with several friends.

Friendsgiving - an annual event with some good friends.

ASU Football, as seen through Becci’s glasses. I think this marks 12 years that she’s been on my season ticket account.

Coffeeneuring with Jen

More ebike adjustments and accessories, this time while watching some football after finally getting a working antenna for our tv. Long live free broadcast television!

I managed to diagnose and fix our broken washing machine!

Visited with my mom several times this month, including this coffeeneuring stop. We also hosted her for Thanksgiving dinner.

Pregame tailgating, as I completed my 39th year as an ASU season ticket holder. Our team was held together with duct tape this year, but it was fun to spend pre- and post-game with these folks (and a number of others not in the photo).

If you’ve followed along on our misadventures in replacing our windows and getting shutters, you may recall that the entire fiasco was to finally end today, with the installation of the delayed shutters and the 5th (and final) attempt to fix the window install.

Welp, we’re on to round 6 in 3 weeks.

“Wait for a while”

Just renewed my membership at SunDevilSource. I’ve been a paid member for 232 months now (and I was a member of competing ASU forum communities prior to that)!

Whenever I hear about “sports twitter” I always shake my head—the best communities are, and have always been, the single-topic ones. The ones that create their own culture, their own inside jokes, their own shared history, their own unique personalities, their own traditions, their own unwritten rules.

We simply don’t need everything crammed into one feed.

Quite happy with this vehicle-specific magsafe phone mount by Course Motorsports. We’ve always struggled to find a second phone mount for Jen’s car that actually works okay (there’s really only one spot that works well), but this thing fits perfectly. Install was mind-numbingly easy, too.

I recently bought a vacuum sealer for sous vide and freezing meat, and damn I can’t believe I waited so long to buy one. Also added a dedicated sous vide container and set up an always-ready spot for it.

Today concludes ten seasons of ASU football games with Jen - Go Devils!

This is the first year we took the Coffeeneuring Challenge seriously enough to actually complete it.

For the unacquainted, coffeeneuring involves:

• between October 11 through November 24, 2025,
• ride your bike 7 times,
• to at least 6 different places (you can repeat 1!)
• at least 2 miles round trip every time,
• max 2 rides per week,
• drink 7 total cups of coffee (or another approved fall-type beverage), and
• document your coffeeneuring

Here are the full rules for this year’s challenge, as well as my own summary page (Jen has one too).

• Ride 1: Wren Südhalle
• Ride 2: Wren Südhalle, Part Deux
• Ride 3: Kolache Cafe
• Ride 4: Buzzed Goat
• Ride 5: Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
• Ride 6: Cotta Nosta
• Ride 7: Hillside Spot Cafe
• Bonus Ride 8: WhereUBean Coffee

Our prior two attempts were interrupted by travel, illness, and/or intensive prep for our 100-day adventure. We could have completed both of them, had we understood the rules to mean that we needed at least one ride per week, as opposed to simply a total of seven rides. So when we missed a particular week, we had assumed we had failed and simply gave up. Whoops.

Not this year, though. While my exercise and heart rate restrictions limited the length of our rides, it also kept us from traveling—and that meant that we were home on the weekends to do some coffeeneuring. Not only did we not miss a week, but we even snuck in a bonus ride too. Not bad for a non-coffee guy like myself—though yes, I did sub in some fall brew beverages. In fact, I could have only done fall brew destinations, but Jen really wanted to do all coffee ones, so we ended up in the middle.

While only one of our rides was longer than 5 miles, the rest were much shorter affairs: usually around the 3 mile mark. That was due in part to the aforementioned restrictions, but also simply because our targets just happened to be pretty close by. But our goal was never about getting in mileage as much as it’s simply getting out on the bikes. I suspect that next year’s rides will look quite a bit different.

The big change this year was also using our new Lectric folding ebikes. We’re still dialing in a lot on the bikes, especially the accessories (gah, finding a suitable back rack and/or pannier setup has required countless orders/returns). But they were a please to ride, and accounted I think for some of our excitement in coffeeneuring this year.

Overall, we had fun doing the challenge and I anticipate that we’ll continue to give it a shot every year for the foreseeable future.

Grabbed some new ASU gear before Friday’s Territorial Cup game. Go Devils!

We’re plotting out next week’s road trip around Georgia, Alabama, & Florida…and I realized we’ll likely pass close to Britton Hill—the “high point” of Florida.

Here’s a short video of my visit, part of my “High Points of Otherwise Flat States” quest [www.youtube.com/watch

It’s been a decade since I’ve had a desktop document scanner, and it’s time to remedy that. I’m looking at the ScanSnap iX2500. Anyone have one, or have a different one they like? I need duplex, single-pass scanning with an auto feeder, preferably one-click, via wifi or directly to a NAS.

Well, usually ChatGPT is, at best, a mixed bag. Far too often it’s simply full of shit.

But I have to admit that this chat REALLY helped me—by far the easiest diagnosis + fix I’ve ever had. For someone who is terrible at home repairs, it can be a very helpful tool, for sure. 🤷‍♂️