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Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-07-01T03:06:32.000Z

Every moment matters.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-06-29T02:45:49.000Z

A Catch-Up Sunday is Like a Small Project Sunday — Bethany Gladhill

It was the kind of day to feel incredibly grateful for the friends and family we have, and the richness of the garden.

Indeed.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-06-28T20:18:28.000Z

Picked both our cherry and serviceberry trees. We’ve managed to get about a third of what’s ready to be picked.

Misdiagnosis is our biggest problem. - Garrick van Buren

2026-06-28T20:06:52.000Z

The post Misdiagnosis is our biggest problem. appeared first on Garrick van Buren.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-06-28T13:28:13.000Z

Need to Know: Your Power Tools Got Worse On Purpose – Who Really Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?

Bonus, the brands that are still privately owned and quality first.

The past two weeks have been full of... - Barry Hess

2026-06-27T16:01:00.000Z

The past two weeks have been full of marching band. We’ve been following our kids attending parades for eight or nine years now, chaperoning for most of those. It’s a fast and furious summer competitive parade season, and they’ve had a blast with it. Jesse and I marched when we grew up. All of our kids have marched. We are a marching band people.

As a result of the above, our summers don’t really get started until July, and I’m getting older, so the amount of tired I am right now is pretty notable. Upcoming we have some nice time with family as well as relaxing time next to a lake on the schedule.

Pika has been humming along very nicely, with our biggest update in a long time, The Pika Pulse, arriving this week. It has definitely been fun to read all kinds of different blog posts being written on Pika. There’s a fascinating diversity of writing going on there. 😻

I’m also trying my best to shift down a gear on work for the summer. I, and we, have been pushing pretty hard in 2026. For the rest of the summer I’d like to close the laptop a little earlier, and take some Fridays off to catch up on all the other things life demands.

I visited this Hacker News post at a moment with a very interesting comment count:

There was a time that our leaders took responsibility for their failures, even having the humility to prepare for that possibility before they knew the outcome. Dwight D. Eisenhower drafted a message in case D-Day failed (emphasis mine):

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.

We recently attended both Spamalot and Six. Since the theater was quickly turning around those shows, it led to a nice playbill balance for us:

Jesse and I had seen SIX before, but our youngest two hadn’t. It’s great! I’m a huge Monty Python fan, but somehow I had never seen Spamalot before. I was ready to go back the next week. Lovely! (It was also fun to witness how much my daughters laughed at the shenanigans on stage. ❤️)

I’m nearly two years behind, and was honestly about to start a “move off Obsidian” project due to my ongoing frustration, but ahhhhh is this ever an improvement to using Obsidian on my phone with iCloud sync.

I listened to a couple of very nice podcast episodes recently. The Case of the Missing Hit was a musical mystery. It’s wild that a 90’s song just disappeared like that! And the Rewatchables’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with Steven Spielberg (h/t to Mike) definitely made me want to watch 2001 again, as well as made me want to chronologically watch all of Kubrick’s and Spielberg’s movies.

It’s been a hot minute since I wrote one of these. I’m not 100% sure a weekly update post is my thing, to be honest. 🤔

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Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-06-27T15:42:11.000Z

Delightful cortado to start the day at Youngblood Coffee in Fargo. <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/890/2026/d831553d54.jpg" width="600" height="450" alt="">

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-06-26T12:56:53.000Z

For the record, I don’t believe in management. I don’t believe one should have to manage people. I believe if you hire the right people, they don’t have to be managed — the work simply gets done. If you have people you have to manage, you should fire them and replace them with people you don’t.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-06-24T12:46:57.000Z

An Important reminder at Hunter Gatherer 21C: We are never just ourselves.

We are ourselves plus the world we move through. A human being is not a sealed unit but a creature in constant exchange with its surroundings: light and dark, warmth and cold, soil underfoot, water, the company of others. Take the natural half of that exchange away and something in us quietly begins to fade.

It’s time to go outside and play.

Elixir's Agentic Product Team - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-06-23T02:30:00.000Z

I’ve been exploring and engaging in agentic software deeply for a couple of months now with a number of my own projects to learn with. Thus far, nearly all of what I’ve done has been driven by me often with an LLM assisting in the framing of the thing I’m looking to build. I decided to try using “agents” (of a sort) to create an entire execution loop to autonomously drive one of these projects. I decided to focus on <a href="https://poapkings.com/elixir/">Elixir</a>, the agent I’ve created to run <a href="https://poapkings.com">our Clash Royale clan</a>, and have now created six discrete automations for it. <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/890/2026/automations.png" width="600" height="373" alt=""> Here is a brief overview of what each does, along with a link to the full instructions they use. I created the instructions for each using Claude Cowork and this is the AI-generated summary of each entity. <ul> <li>Data Analyst — Watches the <a href="https://developer.clashroyale.com/">Clash Royale API</a> data, raw payloads, event streams, detections, and battle telemetry to find new data patterns, game changes, schema drift, unused data, and capability that the Product Manager should consider. <a href="https://github.com/jthingelstad/elixir-bot/blob/main/scripts/product-team/data-analyst.md">Data Analyst definition</a>.</li> <li>Product Manager — Turns evidence into direction: reviews clan needs, leader feedback, quality reports, <a href="https://discord.com">Discord</a> history, <a href="https://royaleapi.com">RoyaleAPI</a> content for editorial context, and data briefs, then files proposed issues for improvements that drive Elixir’s mission and await approval before build work begins. <a href="https://github.com/jthingelstad/elixir-bot/blob/main/scripts/product-team/product-manager.md">Product Manager definition</a></li> <li>Build Manager — Converts approved, ready issues into small, tested code; owns feature and bug-fix implementation, respects issue scope, runs tests/evals, and hands deploy/restart needs to Operations. <a href="https://github.com/jthingelstad/elixir-bot/blob/main/scripts/product-team/build-manager.md">Build Manager definition</a>.</li> <li>Quality Manager — Judges whether Elixir is actually working: checks recommendation accuracy, silence/noise problems, routing failures, prompt failures, leader/member feedback, and regressions, then files actionable bugs, regressions, quality issues, or eval requests. <a href="https://github.com/jthingelstad/elixir-bot/blob/main/scripts/product-team/quality-manager.md">Quality Manager definition</a>.</li> <li>Operations Manager — Owns production health: monitors runtime status, logs, telemetry, Event Core health, costs, retries, scheduled jobs, and delivery systems; fixes operational/reliability issues and handles deploys or restarts when needed. <a href="https://github.com/jthingelstad/elixir-bot/blob/main/scripts/product-team/operations-manager.md">Operations Manager definition</a>.</li> <li>Evaluator — Owns measurement: builds and maintains eval harnesses, datasets, scoring rules, benchmarks, and regression tests so the team can tell whether changes improve or degrade Elixir with evidence instead of vibes. <a href="https://github.com/jthingelstad/elixir-bot/blob/main/scripts/product-team/evaluator.md">Evaluator definition</a>.</li> </ul> The common interface that all of this runs through are <a href="https://github.com/jthingelstad/elixir-bot/issues">Elixir’s Github Issues</a>. All agents interface there and that is where “human in the loop” is happening before moving forward with changes. The automations are all setup in <a href="https://openai.com/codex/">Codex</a>, which is super simple and easy to engage with. I’m super curious to see where this goes!

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-06-21T13:32:46.000Z

Happy Father’s Day! Starting mine with a morning hot tub. 🔥💦 <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/890/2026/c6bbd22bae.jpg" width="600" height="450" alt="Minnesota souvenir mug and cork-sleeved Jarvi water bottle resting on the edge of a bubbling outdoor hot tub surrounded by trees.">

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-06-21T12:56:02.000Z

My Claude Code + Codex 30-day token usage versus my subscription cost looks good. Just about 2B tokens. I suspect this is going to go up even more as I’m venturing into autonomous coding agents. <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/890/2026/codex-30day.png" width="600" height="146" alt="">

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-06-21T12:40:44.000Z

Just told Claude Code “you have broad approval to do whatever is needed to execute this effort” and then made me double-take about “super intelligence” risks. 😅

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-06-19T22:25:09.000Z

We’ll see how this goes… I asked Codex to watch one of my agents, Elixir, and using suggestions from Elixir and its own observations automatically modify Elixir as needed with a GitHub Issue as a tracker. I’ll be curious to see what they do together.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-06-19T19:03:19.000Z

At Peavey Plaza in downtown Minneapolis for the World Cup United States v Australia match. ⚽️ <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/890/2026/ec054fb819.jpg" width="600" height="450" alt="">

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-06-17T12:23:18.000Z

My Back Pages: An Unwritten Book – The Homebound Symphony

The biographer of Robert Zimmerman cannot avoid seeking to disentangle the discoverable truth from the demonstrable untruth. Such disentangling is not impossible, but neither is it interesting, or so I believe.

I’d read this for sure!

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-06-17T03:29:47.000Z

This is my report:

Chateau Ste. Michelle, 2018 Indian Wells Cabernet Sauvignon is a stunningly good wine.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-06-16T16:05:37.000Z

How to make a lifetime customer:

Pressure warning went off on car I just bought in January, took it to Discount Tire, they diagnosed (nail), repaired the leak, and rotated the still good tires… FOR FREE. Did not get these tires there. Just pure good customer service.

What we believe in.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-06-16T02:25:08.000Z

With some trepidation I’m taking my third try with Obsidian. This time with the promise of using it in collaboration with various agents. We’ll see how this works. Obsidian being primarily used by Agents may actually be a worthwhile path.

20 Years - Patrick Rhone

2026-06-15T13:49:28.000Z

Before our daughter Beatrix was born, when we found out we were having a girl, Bethany asked mmm what I hoped she’d be like.

I said, “I hope she’s just like you.”

I feel like I’ve written enough about Beatrix here and elsewhere over the years that most of my longterm readers can probably imagine what she’s like.

I really meant it (and I’m glad I got what I wished for).

Bethany is, by far, the smartest person I know. The hardest working too. She knows a whole lot about a lot of things and uses every bit of it in service to the world.

She is sweet and thoughtful and generous with her resources.

She has opinions that are held firmly and fiercely defended. She holds those she considers friends in the same way. She is incredibly loyal.

Her wit is rapid fire. It cracks like a whip and can cut like a knife. Mostly, it makes me laugh. If someone could invent a weapon designed to make me fall in love that is hard coded to my DNA, it would work just like her humor and wit.

She rarely says no to anything that seems like an opportunity; to make our lives better, to provide for those she cares about, to make meaningful connections, to make a life — any life — a little bit better.

She is compassionate, loving, and beautiful inside and out.

But what has made our marriage as strong as it remains after two decades together it is that she’s an incredible partner. The way we are able to divide and conquer every daily duty and challenge that comes our way with grace and humor and love. But, most importantly, we remember to let each other know how much we appreciate that regularly and take time to acknowledge and celebrate how special that partnership is.

So, here’s a small public thank you to Bethany Gladhill in celebration of 20 years of marriage. She is the love of my life and I wake each day knowing the seemingly impossible will occur — I will be even more in love with her by the time my head returns to the pillow. Every. Single. Day.

Bethany, I love you most.