Tim Trefren

@staysaasy Watched the same eclipse from St. Johnsbury VT with my then 2yo/4yo - absolutely magical

Two years ago me, my dad, and a buddy from work saw a total solar eclipse. We decided last minute to go. The totality swept through northern New York and Vermont, but clouds were expected. We’d talked for weeks before - maybe Rochester, maybe Vermont, maybe Ohio, no definitely not Ohio. The day before we decided - let’s do Burlington Vermont. We met at 4am at a restaurant stop just outside New York. We drove my car up, a small stick shift hatchback. We snaked up the state barely hitting any traffic. By 9am I’d realized I’d missed a turn somewhere - we were on the wrong side of Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain is massive - it would take hours to circle back. But Google Maps seemed confident we could take a ferry across. So at about 10am we drove onto a small ferry with our car and I took my first ever car ferry. Perfectly blue skies above and shimmering water below. I showed my wife and baby on FaceTime. We drove off the ferry and to Burlington. None of us had ever been there. The town was packed. Down by the river there was a whole event with tents and speakers and music. We walked around and checked out some shops and decided that getting out of here after the eclipse would be difficult. Let’s go south of the city so we canescape faster. So we drive out of the city and stop by a Lowe’s use the bathroom. We buy some lawn chairs and the staff tells us there’s a park with a lake not too far away. We drive to the park and it’s great - in the middle of nowhere, lots of people but not crazy. We set up and wait. I didn’t really know what a total eclipse was supposed to look like. I always thought you had to look at it through special glasses and it was just a circle over a circle. I thought it was just gonna be fun to drive up and see it. When a total eclipse happens, a true total eclipse, the sky goes completely dark and the sun becomes a ring of burning fire around the moon. It is not like a partial eclipse. Birds stop chirping. You can take your glasses off. The sky is dark. The sun is a ring of fire. It is one of those nature events that makes the legends of history make sense when you see it. For about ten minutes things are like that and then it passes and we drive home. Along the route we stopped at a small town McDonald’s having the busiest day it will ever have. That was just about two years ago today on sunny crisp day just like today.

@AnElectricOcean @rohindhar Group mind medieval dog aliens wasn't your jam?! Fire upon the deep is easier to get into.

@ttrefren @rohindhar I tried reading this after a big X influencer mentioned it. Couldn't get past the medieval dog aliens ..shame because the overalll premise seemed cool Reading through The Culture now and very happy with it.

Just finished reading Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky Was a bit more about spiders than I was anticipating, but has to be one of the best contemporary science fiction novels I’ve read😅 Anyone have any other recommendations for recently written sci-fi (say written in the last 20 years)?

@thuddwhirr I think my favorite time to be in CA is the two weeks a year when the grass on the hills is green. Looks gorgeous out there

Finally finished my trail network! Steps steps steps steeeeeeepppppssss

@PatrickHeizer not arguing that it doesn't suck, obviously it sucks! The official DOT recall report seems to say it still meets federal standards but fails the Toyota standard, so it might be safe to drive in the interim. Unclear. static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2025/R…

@ttrefren That all seems true to me and does make me ever so slightly more sympathetic, what am I supposed to do? Just not use our minivan for who knows how long?

If you buy a Toyota Siena to transport your two young daughters, not only will they improperly weld the seats where they sit, but they'll offer no remedy, and simply tell you to not use the entire middle row. @Toyota how is that acceptable?

Imagine the logistics though. Usually (I assume) recalls involve a bad part that their service network can replace. If the welding is done at the factory—and I assume their servicing network is not prepared to do custom welding—executing the remedy seems like it’s going to be a nightmare.

@ttrefren No, I appreciate them telling everyone. My annoyance is over the no remedy. I don't know the first thing about car manufacturing, but isn't it just metal. If it's a faulty weld, then re-weld it?

@thaironius @clawrence @RecheckCo Craig, happy to connect if you’re interested in learning more: tim@recheck.co

@clawrence @RecheckCo utilitydive.com/news/recheck-r… cc: @ttrefren

Do not purchase solar from a door-to-door salesperson. Sorry to have to say this and I'm sure there are reputable people selling this way. But, I'm currently helping out a friend who signed an awful lease. Reality is, I can't help because those leases are ironclad. No way out.

@zachware Be curious to hear your thoughts on it vs Wispr after you try. I liked the idea of a local model for this. I mostly talk to llms now rather than typing

@ttrefren Funny, I didn't even know Mac Whisper did this. I use it for a bunch of stuff. I just set it up and I'm gonna try it now.

@kasrak @hamburger gonna try it

It took me a while to describe what I'm building. It's not quite a chatbot, or a journal, or a normal notes app @hamburger helped me figure it out We asked users what they do with it, and why they do it. The same words kept coming up They brain dump. Partially to get stuff out of their head, yes, but also as a way to get unstuck. To move forward. There's something magical about speaking a few sentences into a notebook, knowing it'll go find you related art, essays, questions while you sleep And when you need a thought partner, it's ready to go with all the context you've created over time So that's what it is A notebook that writes back. Use it to brain dump and move forward.

@zanehengsperger so is the bottleneck at that layer, and not the one nox is going after?

It's actually hilarious how the US puts tariffs on steel and aluminum yet domestic manufacturers of those materials will only sell to <20 firms because of their purchasing power and consolidated volume. Effectively recreated a private cartel under the banner of "national security."

@jjacobs22 Gemini frequently tells me I’m wrong and tries to defend its position, I often disagree but appreciate that it stands its ground.

@ttrefren Sonnet 4.5 has been helping me think through it, but only if I look at the stuff it tells me super confidently with a hyper critical lens

It’s annoying that the LLMs don’t defend their position, they just blow with the wind and tell you that whatever the last direction you proposed was is the most brilliant one yet. Stop telling me what I want to hear, I want the TRUTH!

@markskovorodko Thanks that’s very clear!

Hey Tim! Inside corners are what you most commonly see indoors, for instance the four corners in any room that's a standard rectangle. Outside corners most commonly emerge when you have a larger rectangular interior room meet a smaller interior rectangle but with no interior wall between the spaces (see blue circles).

One of my strongly-held design opinions is that outside corners should be hidden as much as possible in kitchens and living spaces, and one common move our team makes is adding an arched opening coming off these corners. Here's a rendering of an outside corner we hid in a recent single family gut rehab, and a quick modification to this great "baby-maybe" plan Bobby posted that pulls this off. Added plus of this move is it frames views of both the living and kitchen areas within a rounded arch, which creates a really great visual line of sight in the space. [Also, as a dad of two, love what Bobby is doing around encouraging floor plans built for young families. If you're in the design space and don't follow @bobbyfijan already, you should!]

@privateloanguy @ChrisRamsey60 A loan for a new build would need to factor ARV right? And in terms of logistics are you just asking for docs over email or do you have software that helps with this?

@ttrefren @ChrisRamsey60 That said, at 50%-60% as-is LTV, before work starts, the list is much simpler.

You hire and pay a contractor. Contractor hires a subcontractor. Subcontractor never gets paid by contractor. Lien on your project from subcontractor. Avoid this with progress payments. CONDITIONAL WAIVER AND RELEASE OF LIEN UPON PROGRESS PAYMENT

@privateloanguy @ChrisRamsey60 This is a long list, how do you handle getting all this?

@ChrisRamsey60 Here's a conservative checklist of items a lender may want when lending construction funds Far too often brokers think construction is "No big deal" but it is, especially for an inexperienced builder On an upcoming/in progress project, these items are worth asking for

I dunno. When we were starting Mixpanel we shared a 1 bedroom apartment, had no car, did nothing but work and sleep for a year+. Could we have worked smarter and wasted less time going down dead ends if we were more experienced? For sure, but we were 21, so what we had was the stamina to grind.

Seriously though these 996ers are full of shit. I remember being 25 and at a startup. Yeah I “worked” really hard. Late into the night and on weekends. But I was also super inefficient. Ate long lunches at “work”. Ate long dinners at “work”. Got into long conversations at “work”. Now I might work 9 hours 5 days a week and one or two nights on an average week. But I actually work 9 hours. I have zero breaks. I eat lunch at my desk. I don’t fuck around. I have about 19 cumulative minutes of shooting the shit per day. I do more in 2 hours these days than I’d do all day when I was 25. So if you act like you’re doing something crazily more productive by 996ing, in the words of Bob Dylan - I don’t believe you. And ps I know yall are waiting for agent responses all day long.

@thesamparr Not romance but just finished Heat last night. Incredible

I'm on an absolutely tear on 90's love movies. The ones with Kevin Costner, Tom Hanks, etc. You know what's up. - the 90's fashion. - warm cinematography. - the insane idea that a 45 year old can still somehow be a pro athlete AND pitch a perfect game. - the magazine editors. the women are ALWAYS vying for the editor job. - the most self destructive behavior of a 40 something year old bachelor who refuses to settle down and marry this clear smoke show woman who's pretty great. - and they always, ALWAYS say the best lines at the best moments. - there's always a kid involved who's super cute and says the darnest things God I love this genre.