The New World of Lonnie Mandigo

A sleepless hour at 2 AM. A new expedition idea. The annual fall color drive with Bob. The Umpqua maples. Lunch in Reedsport. A location scout at Cape Blanco. Dinner in Bandon. Home by way of Florence. A nightcap at Suds.

Morning routine. Weekly review at Coffee Culture Annex. A long session repairing the health-tracking pipeline. Floated a November studio shoot. A rainy walk to Suds, planning Tuesday's road trip by voice. Suds Monday with Tim, Brian, and Jack.

Morning routine. One last run-through of the Salon talk. An hour of work in the wine cellar. A rainy walk to Tacovore and WinCo. Set up the living room. Hosted the Philomath Salon and gave my data center talk. Good discussion afterward.

Morning routine. Worked on the Philomath Salon talk. Set up new AirPods. Bus downtown to meet Tom at Old World Deli for the recorder. Dinner at Common Fields with family and friends. The Umbra Vipera album release at Old World Deli. The Fifth Element. A data center talk takes shape, and a family night out ends at Sam's show Events and activities that occurred on Saturday, October 24, 2026 Most of the day went into the talk I'm giving at Sunday's Philomath Salon, "What a Place Can Carry." Its argument is that whether a data center is good or bad for a town depends less on how big it is than on how big it is compared with the place that hosts it. A deck is never really finished the day before a talk, but by Saturday this one had reached the stage where each pass made it a little sharper instead of a little different. Between sessions at the desk I set up a new pair of AirPods Pro with their hearing-assistance mode. It's a small thing that matters more than I...

Morning routine. Rack install. Birthday lunch at Pastini with Sydne and Deaken. Ulta and Guardian Games. A visit with Sage and Tree at The Wheel. A nap. Walked to Suds for pizza and Antarctica planning with Tim. Set up a shared Antarctica calendar. More Spy Game. A rack settles down, a birthday lunch, and Antarctica comes into focus Events and activities that occurred on Thursday, October 22, 2026 The morning belonged to the equipment rack. After a week of shuffling power cords and replacing a storage unit that had quietly died, the new pieces finally settled into place. There is a particular satisfaction in infrastructure that stops asking for attention, and the rack is getting close to that point. The real test came afterward, when a backup job that had faltered during the migration recovered on its own overnight, which is exactly what a well-built system should do. Midday turned to family. Sydne and Deaken picked me up for a birthday outing that started with lunch at Pastini. We...

Morning routine. Weekly review at Coffee Culture. A Zoom catch-up with Emma. A walk to Suds talking with Claude. Beers with the Monday crew. A ride home with Brian. Hot tub. The Bedford Incident. A rabbit hole of techno-thrillers. From Coffee Culture to Suds to a Cold War thriller Events and activities that occurred on Monday, October 19, 2026 The week began, as Mondays now do, with a weekly review, this time over an americano at the Coffee Culture Annex. Looking back at the previous seven days, the verdict came out in a single sentence: the builder ate the photographer's hours, and sleep paid for it. Two strength sessions set new highs, yin yoga came back into the rotation, and the Philomath Salon talk took real shape around the idea of carrying capacity. But roughly two dozen infrastructure sessions had spilled past every guardrail I set for them, and they took the Thursday photo block with them. I don't think I shrank during the week. If the photographer faded a little, th...

Morning routine. Planned the day. Published "Running Below the Nameplate." Grocery run. Reworked the data center slides around carrying capacity. Talked the Salon talk through while editing. Leisurely walk to Suds, mapping the route. Gracie behind the bar. Walk home. Rebuilding a talk around carrying capacity, then walking it off at Suds Events and activities that occurred on Sunday, October 18, 2026 The morning opened with publishing "Running Below the Nameplate," the post about derating, and by midday it had also earned a place in my story collection. The idea at its center, that a part rated for one load should run below its nameplate when conditions turn harsh, has stopped being a metaphor and become a way of running my days. Most of the day belonged to the Philomath Salon talk, now a week away. I rebuilt the data center slides around carrying capacity, so that it became the spine of the argument instead of one point among several, with The Dalles, Memphis a...