Holy crap it’s hot out there. Here are some things for your consideration on this blistering Sunday.

feedle

Feedle is an RSS search service, billing itself as a search engine for blogs and podcasts. The obvious expectation would be that you could search for blogs and podcasts and add them to whatever RSS source you’re using (Feedbin over here). But each search generates its own RSS feed, so you can subscribe in your RSS reader to the search results. Very cool.

Swimming Pools!

I have always been a swimmer. Both of my parents could swim. We spent a lot of time at the beach and a local swim club when I was a kid. It’s something you take for granted but it’s a valuable survival skill for sure, and a tremendous source of pleasure. It’s good exercise, too. I had a couple of friends in the neighborhood growing up whose fathers installed in-ground pools, so I was lucky enough to always be able to find a cool place to swim in the summer.

I’m pretty sure Rhonda and I installed our pool back in 2012; it’s a memorable time not only because we opened it for the first time, but because a derecho hit this corner of southern New Jersey while we were filling it up, and it was a hell of a storm, with multiple days of power outages and considerable damage (not our property, fortunately). The pool, only partially full, served as a tank of water from which we could bail water to keep the toilet flushing. Not exactly the first week of ownership experience we were looking forward to, but it was helpful.

Anyway, we’ve replaced the liner once, but otherwise it’s pretty much still the same setup. I used to be neurotic about maintenance, but I’ve mellowed some over the years. Despite the apparent complexity, you can effectively manage your pool using bleach (which is chlorine), baking soda, and borax. These three ingredients, alongside a basic test kit, are all you need. And once you’ve dialed in the alkalinity and pH, they tend not to move around too much, so it’s really a matter of keeping the pool chlorinated. As with cars and lawn mowers and everything else that we rely upon for a more convenient and efficient life, the internet abounds with people who are happy to document and explain complicated things so you don’t have to figure them out for yourself. I used Trouble Free Pool and the Pool Calculator a lot when I was first getting started, and while many of the lessons have stuck and I operate from a place of experience now, I still rely on the calculator to get things up and running.

The kids, not being kids anymore, don’t spend a lot of time in the pool; we tend to sit in there on Sundays in the summer, draining spritzes and hanging out before dinner. It’s really nice and warms my heart to see the boys trundle out after Rhonda and I have been floating around in there.

Pool Calculator

I mentioned the Pool Calculator above; it’s worth the measly 10 bucks a year to subscribe. You can create a profile with your pool settings and come back to it all season for advice on how to dose your pool water to keep it safe and clean. There’s an app, but I tend not to use it. I don’t recall it being intuitive, and my pool isn’t so far from my Mac that I can’t just pop back inside to update my entries.