Alex "Gus" Gustafson

Category: Life

  • Raw

    Wonderful little moment of zen to start the day. Especially if you like sheep.

    dannygregory's avatarDanny Gregory


    I woke up at 4 am and this was in my inbox. I watched it in the dark and it filled my heart.

    When I decided to share it with you, I thought I’d make a joke of it. Call it, “Cure for Insomnia” or some such.

    But every time I watch it, it fills my heart again. Fills it with peace, with sweetness, with raw simplicity. I think of my boy, standing on a hillside in Sicily, filming this on his phone, hanging on till the end of an extraordinary moment.

    I love the beauty he sees. I hope you like it too.

    Suggestion: watch the whole thing. Give yourself a two-minute experience before clicking away.

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  • Election Day

    No stickers available, so I used the sign instead.

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  • Halloween Signage

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  • Could I Even Handle Pandemic: Legacy?

    You have exactly 12 months to play one of the year’s best board games || Polygon

    Stickers on the board? Tearing up character sheets? I dunno, this will be hard on my table rules that include only the utmost respect for my board game components. Something within me says I need a copy though.

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  • Sick

    Hate being sick. Can’t think clearly and really can’t do any of the things I do on a daily basis. The things I do for fun at home still require thinking and problem solving.

    Internet videos on a playlist while drifting in and out of naps is all I’ve been able to manage. Hopefully a full day of rest is all this stupid sick needs.

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  • The Best Thing About Javascript

    The best thing about JavaScript is its implementation of functions. It got almost everything right. But, as you should expect with JavaScript, it didn’t get everything right. – Douglas Crockford

    from Javascript: The Good Parts

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  • Baby Talk

    This is the most prepared I’ll feel for the next twenty-five years. Because right now I’m an expert on everything pregnancy, infancy, and child rearing.  Unfortunately I’m all too aware that I’m currently on “Mount Stupid.” Once this baby comes into the world I’ll be totally knocked down by everything there is I don’t know.

    Amber and I went to a maternity class this weekend at the hospital where we’ll be delivering. It was a good firehose of information and we left more confident than when we came. But the main gist of it ended up being “keep your common sense and we’ll give you more instructions as you need them.”

    Knowing where to park was nice info.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a go-bag to pack.

     

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  • A Really Good Time

    I told Ber that she should read a particular blog post I just finished. She responded with a groan.

    “You don’t have to do it right now, just sometime,” I clarified.

    She replied:

    “Good, because right now I’m having a really good time looking at food.”

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  • Caturday

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  • Small Engagement with Big Results

    One of the lessons I learned from Susan Cain’s Quiet is that when you find yourself in a social environment outside your comfort zone, you can mitigate it by finding more reasonable avenues of engagement within the same setting. The “deep conversation” in the corner of a crowded dinner party comes to mind. While at the Grand Meetup, I’ve been doing my best to not be overwhelmed in the more populous moments. 400 people altogether can lead to being lonely and surrounded at the same time.

    My main tactic for this has been to force smaller groups on myself and engage as best as possible with them. Anyone else I meet and converse with is just gravy. Some of these moments would be:

    • The 4-to-6 person dinners we have each night
    • The 15 people in my Javascript class
    • The 1 person whom I’m playing Magic: The Gathering with at any moment
    • The person right next to me at a larger breakfast or lunch table
    • The players of the Dungeons & Dragons game I run

    These are all much easier for me to handle, and I’ve found that by focusing on how to meet people through these avenues I’ve been able to give myself plenty of time to recharge socially and still meet a ton of new folks. It’s unreasonable to expect myself to feel truly comfortable in the loud party room, but absolutely expected of myself to feel comfortable playing Magic 1-on-1 in that room.

    As of this writing, I’ve met 161 of the near-400 automatticians. This is far more people than I’d meet if I came here flying by the seat of my pants socially. But not once have I dived in headfirst to a crowd of strangers (which is terrifying,) it was all through small, expected engagement with opportunities I could easily find (which is fun.) Good results also makes me feel less guilty about spending a couple hours each day in my room to both call my wife and recharge my batteries.

     

    Photo by Payton Swick

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