The PolyBlog

Can I have a do-over for Friday?

November 22 2025

Andrea had physio at 8:30 a.m., and I set my alarm Thursday night for one to go off at 7:30, and my “backup” to go off at 7:40 or so. Instead, I woke up at 5:00, tossed and turned until 6:30, finally fell back asleep, and then blew through both alarms somehow. Andrea came back into the bedroom at 8:05 and said, “Hey, we’re leaving in 10 minutes, right?”.

Crap. Yes, we did leave in that relative timeframe with the plan for me to wait for her while she had her appointment and then drive us both to a co-working space in our ward.

As we were leaving the physio clinic, I’m driving through a parking lot that comes to a T intersection where I have to go left. There’s a stop sign and everything. As I go to turn, I realize there’s someone coming up on the inside of the driver’s side, and I thought they were just being an a**hole, so I blew the horn and hit the brakes hard to avoid turning in front of them. She had her passenger window down and was waving at me. I’m not in the mood, still feeling half-asleep really, and not ready to engage. But wtf, someone wants to FAFO, sure, why not. Nope, she was letting me know my right front tire was flat. Oh. Oops.

Sure enough, when I pulled over, it was pretty low. Not 100% flat, not riding on rims yet, but definitely in need of serious air.

Which was a bit interesting. I replaced all my winter tires a week ago. And I don’t mean just swapping them over from summers, I mean I bought all new tires. It was a lovely service for the car. Major service. Air filters. Plus tire swap. Annnnd, they recommended new tires as they were pretty low, which back in the Spring they said might get another season, but they wanted to flag for me anyway. Screw it, put new ones on. I need them, was just hoping to push another season, but I know the way my brain works. If I had a problem, and somebody got hurt, I would always blame myself for trying to save a few bucks until later. Oh, and my brakes were down last time and time for servicing, could wait, but blah blah blah, same deal. Did them too. A couple of other minor things that were “due”, I was just hoping to ignore until Spring. Nope, I did them all, get it done, move on. $2100 later, I had my car back.

Yet 10 days later, I now have a flat on the new tire? Hmmm…

I called CAA, that’s why I have the membership, right? A few minutes in a chatbot to get them to dispatch, but less than 30 minutes later, closer to 20, a guy showed up with a flatbed towing truck. He said he could do air only, but if I drove too far and it was a continuing problem, I could find myself stuck in traffic somewhere. Or he could put on the spare. Which I didn’t seem to have the keys for the lug nuts for (although it turned out I did, natch). But one other tire was low, too, not a problem YET, but down. And another could have used air. One was fine.

Last week, I felt like I was having trouble with that tire already. Not “flat” but “something”. I decided it was my imagination, just from switching over from summers to winters, and new winters at that. Just a rougher ride. I tested it, it wasn’t pulling when driving, all good. I don’t think I actually looked it when I was in the garage at home or out anywhere. I rarely go to the passenger side of the car; maybe it was like that the whole time.

Screw it, let’s just take the whole thing to the dealership and let them sort it out. No difference in cost for me, covered by CAA. Up on flatbed, the car went, and I had a nice conversation with the tow truck operator all the way to the dealership. In the meantime, Andrea took a cab to work, abandoning me (sob!) in my hour of need (sob!).

The guy at the dealership said immediately, “It’s not the tires. They’re ALL low.” Which was now more apparent in a brightly lit bay. You see, dear readers, I have had those rusty old winter rims for 16 years and they are plennnnnty rusty. So much so that the tires were not sealing properly on the rims. Now, you can clean them up, try to refurbish them a bit so to speak, and keep using them, but eventually they’ll still leak. I don’t have time for that sh**.

I ordered new rims, $500. I didn’t feel like grousing that they should have figured that out the week before and mentioned it when they installed. Although I probably would have ignored them, thinking it was simple upselling. But no, they were done. I know that there are aftermarket options for this, even some scrap metal $$ if you recycle them, but I don’t have time for that sh** either. I asked them to dispose of them for me, which they were happy to do. I wonder if any employee at the dealership took them home for some TLC and resale. They’re practically indestructible.

Okay, one Uber later, I was back home. My day was already in the toilets, and I didn’t have a car to get around in. So I worked from home. The system for booking spaces let me cancel my booking, but normally we post availability in another channel which didn’t like me anymore. Whatever. Moving on. The day was mostly okay, although I’m acting right now with my boss away.

Just after lunch, I had a meeting with one of the provincial partners. Just as we were about to start the meeting, Windows decided that I absolutely 100% needed to reboot immediately. Stuff was crashing, blah blah blah. Okay, reboot. It finished the reboot and hey, look, I need to reboot and install something. Immediately, again. No other options presented. Great, reboot again. Only for it to finish and force a third reboot to have everything set up special and nice and tidy, or something. I know I missed the meeting, with the partner and my boss’ boss. Who I was supposed to support in the meeting. She said, no worries.

I had hoped to have the car back by 2:00 to get J at school, but no dice, he took a cab.

A great day so far, but at least getting closer to being over.

Around 3:30, I got the call to get the car back. Yay, done in time for the weekend, they didn’t need it overnight. I took their Uber offer, got there, it looked a bit like a ghost town for techs, but there were about 8 clients waiting in various chairs. Ah end of day pickups.

But my car was indeed done, all good.

Except I suddenly realized that I didn’t have my wallet with me. I normally carry it in my bag, in an interior pocket. Nope. Not there. I remembered I had it in the morning, cuz I had to get my CAA card out of it. Then I had it getting out of the car to get into the tow truck cab. No memory of anything after that, just my phone and the loose card. So, let’s do the math for possible options:

I left it in the car although I was sure I put it in my bag (possible);
I dropped it on the ground outside the car at the pickup point (possible, but not probable);
I somehow left it in the tow truck (unknown but probably unlikely);
I had left it on a counter at the dealership in the morning, while checking in (unlikely);
I left it in the Uber, although I never had to pay for anything (unlikely);
I left it at home on the shelf by the front door (possible);
I had taken it out of my bag when doing some online financial stuff, even though I didn’t need it (unlikely);
I left it at home on my desk downstairs where I had taken stuff out of my bag (phones, notebook) (my best guess); or,
I left it in the Uber on the way to the dealership (very unlikely).

Nine options that came to be in about 2s when I realized I didn’t have my wallet. Checked the car immediately, wasn’t there, but well, if it wasn’t there then, it didn’t mean it hadn’t been there before. Nevermind, don’t go there. The dealership let me do multiple taps with my phone to pay for everything, and I headed over to pick up Andrea.

In the meantime, I called Jacob and he looked at the two places in the house where it might have been.

It was on my work desk, my best guess, where I had taken stuff out of my bag to set myself up to work at home instead of the office for the day. Whew.

Everyone knows that feeling of thinking they’ve lost their purse or wallet, and it is never fun. For me, it was mostly the administrative headache of cancelling stuff if it was gone. Not the risk, just the bandwidth.

The rest of the day went fine. Not least of which was because I napped before dinner for 2+ hours. We played some board games after dinner and I even won a game (a rare occurrence). Then Andrea and I watched two episodes of The Diplomat before bed.

“All’s well that ends well”, or maybe it is just “All’s well that ends”.

But I still went to bed thinking I would have liked a do-over. Or just slept through the whole day.

Someone as crazy as me about goals

November 3 2025

My wife sent me a reel from FB of Matthew Dicks talking about his 2025 goals, and reading it made even me think it was “too much”. The same reaction I have when I look at my huge goal lists of the past. But I admire the dive technique. Let’s pick some of them apart to see if they give me inspiration or can help me progress in my own thinking. There’s a video version, but his blog post has the content in a more easily digestible format (https://matthewdicks.com/resolution-update-september-2025/). I love the fact that someone else blogs about goals in a similar fashion to me — setting them, monitoring them, and holding themself accountable publicly.

Status	Career Goals	Career To Do	Home Goals	Home To Do
Progress		8th novel Advice for Kids book Write solo show 150 letters Homework for life app 25 more videos on YouTube, TikTok Perform solo show Revise Storyworthy Academy Storyworthy courses 6 Speak Up events Pitch 3 TEDx Attend 8 Moth events Attend MothSlam Win a Moth GrandSLAM Pitch Marc Maron x 3 Newsletter x 50 Self-confidence course Anti-loneliness product	Don’t die Organize basement Clear garage	Lose 10 pounds Pushups Situps Planks Cycle Medical scans Replace backyard shed Refinish hardwood Travel to Europe Text siblings Photo children x 365 Avoid comments on bodies Play poker 6x Memorize lyrics 5x Read x 12 Digitize DVDs Memorize poems Monitor x 12
Stalled		Golf memoir 3 picture books Childhood memoir 3 Op-ed pieces 4 letters to father 6 letters to authors Pitch show to 6 theatres 24 Eps of podcast Standup x 6 Pitch American Life x 3		Eat new vegetables Golf handicap Get together with siblings Photo with Elysha x 52 Playhouse reunion Surprises x 12 Time with Bengi 6x Practice flute 4x / week Dinner parties x 3 Time’s list of children’s books Wedding footage

If you’re following along at home, my analysis isn’t about his goals or level of progress. It is more about insights into another dataset to see if I see any challenges. He includes both personal / life goals and professional / career goals in the overall list, some with progress and some without. Yet I find it interesting that many of the ones he made progress on seem more like sub-goals or metrics to me, not full goals.

For example, he says his goal is pushups+situps+planks+cycling, along with weight loss, and to eat 3 vegetables he’s never tried. While most people would treat weight loss as perhaps a goal, all of those to me seem more like “functional health and fitness metrics”. Maybe even put that under “don’t die!”. If you took the pushups as one of them, would it be “bad” or lack of progress if instead of doing pushups 4x in a week and situps 4x in a week, you accidentally did pushups 5x and only managed situps 3x? Different parts of the body, sure, but they are complementary activities not competitors, other than for time.

Maybe it’s clearer when it comes to writing. His intention was to write 1 novel, 3 kids books, and 3 non-fiction titles, as well as a new solo show. And 24 episodes of a podcast. These activities are NOT complementary — spending time on one is at the expense of the others. And there is only so much gas in the tank. An author at Bouchercon talked about how they are writing 4 different series currently, and as they schedule time for one, it comes at the expense of readers who want one from the other three series. I have had similar concerns about the different projects that I want to do…even with yesterday’s post about a new Quest of the Quill 2025 (trademark pending, hehehe), I designed it around any type of writing counts, not one specific form. Obviously, this author’s goal was to produce more written content, and I think that might be a better goal, with each of the 32 other products adding up to a single wordcount metric. And yet, with some of them down, maybe there’s a complementary metric for how many combined minutes the videos are + the solo show + courses + speak up/moth/pitches.

I also feel like some of the items that he did are more “to do” items as you only do them once. Like replacing the shed, in comparison with a more general concept like organizing the basement or clearing out the garage, both of which have sub-elements that are likely vague.

When it comes to family, it does seem like there’s some sort of overall engagement goal. Writing to his father. Texting his siblings. Getting together with his siblings. Photos with his kids and wife, even digitizing old stuff or making wedding footage. He shows progress on some, and not others, but some of the others are tradeoffs…similar to the gas analogy above, you only have so much social battery energy too, and it takes more to “increase” than to “maintain”. I found that when I disaggregated things as much, I felt like I was “not progressing” when in fact, doing ANY combo of the items counts as progress towards an overall “engagement” goal. You can’t improve all things at the same time.

There is one goal I find fascinating. He wants to win a Moth GrandSLAM. For most of his goals, particularly writing, he talks about “pitching” rather than “placing” articles, op-eds, etc. Because he can’t control the outcome, he can only provide the input and hope. For others, he’s focused on the “how” or what he can control, like texting or travelling. But this one, he wants to “win”. Having seen the Toronto Blue Jays just lose to the LA Dodgers after going the whole season and post-season, all the way past the 9th inning of game 7, and in the end, all the winners or losers can do is play their best to give themselves the best chance at winning. They can’t control the outcome, however much the sports rhetoric is after the fact, claiming that they “set a goal”, never lost sight of it, and landed it in the end. Yet a puff of air or an extra bounce, and the game goes the other way. So why isn’t the goal written as “get to a GrandSlam?” You might want to win an Oscar, so you take roles that lend themselves to Oscar consideration, and do your best, but after that, it’s beyond your control.

Did I get anything out of reading someone else’s goals?

I’ll check out StoryWorthy and his app, that’s pretty direct. Mostly, though, it was just cool to use a dataset other than my own to try and figure out how I would structure things. Of course, that doesn’t mean he should. Our brains all work differently, and what might work for me, wouldn’t work for him. I simply enjoyed seeing his thoughts and tracking…

The duality of digital me

October 20 2025

So, I have two main websites:

www.ThePolyBlog.ca — aka this site, which has a bunch of blogging stuff that I do. There are lots of subjects, and it has generally reflected the tagline / slogan — My view from the lilypads.
www.PolyWogg.ca — aka my writing site, The Writing Life of a Tadpole, which has been primarily been about HR and a bit of other stuff.

I’ve played with the sites over the years, moved stuff around, even debated the locations of certain types of files. However, that’s not surprising…how can the PolyWogg site be about my “writing”, yet I have over a million words on the ThePolyBlog site? Isn’t that writing too?

The funny part is that I asked for advice from friends some time ago, and one who has a marketing background saw it very clearly — PolyWogg was my professional writing stuff, ThePolyBlog was my personal stuff. I didn’t quite see it that way, too far in the weeds, but it was compelling if a little bit too early to commit.

The challenge was what to do with about 200 blog posts that rode the line between the two.

My dual life confuses even me

Take, for example, some blogs I have written about life in government. It’s not exactly about my HR guide, but it’s not unrelated either. I wrote about Phoenix audits, and audits in general, and how they work in government. But then the question — is that me writing about professional topics, as I do intend to do some writing on a series of government-related topics? Or is it me blogging about a current issue that I just happen to know more about than the average bear?

Or some articles about performance measurement or libraries, both of which I will write about in the future. Those are a little more related to future PolyWogg guides, and if I already had those guides written, these blog posts would clearly be housed in the same area as the guides.

Astronomy presents a different challenge. I write about MY experiences with astronomy, clearly a personal area, and thus clearly it should be on my personal site, right? Except I also intend to write a multi-stage PolyWogg Guide that will draw on a lot of those blogs, and like with performance measurement, if the astro guides were already done, then astro blogs would clearly go with them, right? I’d be blogging in support of my astro guide. It gets more complicated when I think about astro PHOTOS. I generally publish ALL of my personal photos on Flickr with links to my website, EXCEPT if I’m doing an Astro Guide, shouldn’t my astro photos be with it? Particularly as all of the photos in the guide will come from the same galleries.

And then just to really confuse things, I do book reviews. Almost EVERY writer out there who writes their own stuff AND also does book reviews keeps the book reviews on the same site as their own writing. Except I don’t really see it that way. My book reviews are just me writing about what I thought of the book, it isn’t something I’m doing to market myself or anything else. So, since they are more like my own book diary than anything to do with writing, I feel like they should clearly be on my personal site. Along with TV, Podcast and Movie Reviews. Seems logical to me.

Except I’m also doing music reviews of decades, which I will turn into books/PolyWogg Guides. So theoretically the music blogs should be with the future Guides and thus on my writing site where the books will be…yet then all my reviews aren’t together. I feel the same way about recipes — they’re mainly personal, but perhaps, someday, I’ll publish a collection of them…is that enough to put them all on the writing site?

I know what you’re thinking

You’re likely thinking that I’m being overly anal-retentive and over-thinking it all. But it does bear some thought.

When I came back from Bouchercon, I came back with a renewed sense of “writing” purpose. I am closer to retirement, and I have very concrete plans. Some of that starts with my PolyWogg site as my primary professional writing site, as my marketing major friend suggested as a way forward.

And here’s the weird part. Over the last year, I moved almost 140 posts from PolyWogg to ThePolyBlog so that PolyWogg was very clearly focused on my HR guide and a little bit on my Astronomy Guide. I spent a lot of time cleaning up the posts, keeping it lean. Then, after attending BoucherCon2025, I realized that a lot of content that I moved away are actually better placed back on PolyWogg and that I should start arranging my menus better. I have more content already written than I thought, across a broader spectrum of topics that will mushroom after I retire.

And if I’m frank with myself, likely before I retire. Or at least sooner than my original planned retirement date, regardless of when my date actually turns out to be. It’s in a state of flux at the moment.

So, this past week, I found 185 posts that I needed to move back. It could be another 300 if I moved my book reviews, which I’m not going to do. Another 300 if I included all my TV posts and reviews over the years, but again, those will stay with my personal site. I could probably conjure up another 30 things that COULD go to the writing site, but I feel like I’m moving towards the writing site only being those things that I intend to publish in some form other than my website, or at least are linked to similar publishable content.

But the truly funny part? I moved it around not that long ago, it made perfect sense to me, and this weekend, with a new “vision”, I moved it all back plus some more.

Even I don’t understand the nature of my digital duality. But I’m starting to, I think. Heck, I even ordered new business cards that say “writer, blogger” that I quite like even if I’m not using them yet.

Yet, partly as part of my retirement plans and partly as a result of Bouchercon convincing me that I need to be more entrepreneurial and perhaps more media-savvy with my approach, I’m working on ideas for a third site focused exclusively on a more marketable niche. I’ve been toying with some separation of content to prevent overlap between the non-fiction, fiction, and media-friendly stuff, even to the point of considering alternate noms de plume and trade names to protect some of my life from the net. But I know too that some of that is a fear that one of the three will fail i.e., I know the non-fiction is solid, but maybe the fiction won’t take off as I hope, or that the media-friendly stuff will fail spectacularly. Old-style concerns in publishing used to recommend using different names for each bit so that any failure in one area wouldn’t hurt your brand in another, but well…I am my brand. I’m PolyWogg. Have tail, will hop and type. Read, ribbit, repeat. If I want to really overthink things, there are MULTIPLE rabbitholes in the three areas to avoid or embrace.

But my first two sites are (not quite) locked and loaded, and I’m working on the third. I may not know ALL the versions of me yet, but I know the core one.

So I was hacked, but I don’t know how

September 25 2025

Earlier this week, I got an email saying one of my social media accounts had an unusual login, but it was nearby, and sometimes that happens normally when my one tool uses a different server, etc. or a bot runs from another setup. Not necessarily “me” accessing, but things that I authorized to access showing up on a server in another city nearby. It usually doesn’t do anything else, and often it isn’t even successful. I have a few accounts that didn’t quite have my latest passwords on them, but they were decent enough.

Tuesday, I went to a coffee shop in Nepean, and my VPN on my laptop wasn’t working. However, I also played an online game on Tuesday night that has a lot of stuff going on to run it. One or the other could have compromised my access, I suppose.

I’ve spent a lot of time tonight rebooting accounts, changing passwords, logging any other access out, and generally being paranoid AF. Of 8 things I use regularly, it compromised the four easiest. The second tier wasn’t hacked, and the third tier doesn’t look like it was even viewed. I still upgraded a ton of passwords tonight using a combination of tools and double-checking 2FA. Most are fine, and are the reason I was able to recover what I did. One remains outstanding, not that critical.

Still, quite annoying and tiring. My protections around the castle engaged when the Trojan Horse was opened, and mostly worked as intended. I’d like to write in more detail, but that would be incredibly stupid.

The bigger question is the vector of attack. One of the vectors may have started before Tuesday, except I can’t think of where or how really. The wifi network would be the obvious idea, or if I had used wifi while I was in New Orleans. But the whole time I was in New Orleans, I only used my phone as a hotspot, no wifi. Hmmm…

The fun that remains is when I go to access an app on my phone or load something on another computer and it says, “NO! You shall not pass!” because I haven’t logged into it with the new passwords.

How was your night?

R.I.P. Robert Redford

September 17 2025

I rarely react when I hear that a celebrity has died. Often, it is authors that affect me more than actors or musicians. But Robert Redford was probably my mother’s favourite actor, partially (hah!) influenced by looks. And so I react a little more knowing that she would have been said to hear of his passing at 89 years. (Although she liked Paul Newman more, I think).

For me, I don’t have strong views about his role as a director… Ordinary People, The Horse Whisperer, and the Legend of Bagger Vance were all enjoyable, but didn’t move me deeply. Equally, I don’t have strong attachments to any of the movies he produced.

But his acting chops? IMDB has 82 entries as an actor for Redford, and I’ve likely seen about a quarter to a third. More in the middle than the beginning or end of his career.

Like most viewers, I probably noticed him for the first time not in his TV episodes but in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Obviously not in 1969 at its first release, since I was only 1yo at the time, but in subsequent reruns on TV. I’ve never seen The Candidate (1972) from start to finish, only bits and pieces. My mom loved The Way We Were (1973).

But The Sting (1973) is one that I think I actually saw at the drive-in with my siblings when I was only five. I’m not kidding. I remember the bicycle scene and the song (Raindrops keep falling on my head…). I’ve probably seen it front to back about three times, and another ten times in bits and pieces on TV runs.

I found Three Days of the Condor (1975) too confused, even after seeing it when I was in my teens. And I have to confess, I found All the President’s Men (1976) way too slow. I’ve survived it once, and perhaps watched bits and pieces here and there another two-three times. Great story, way too slow of a movie.

I enjoyed The Electric Horseman (1979), although it was a bit campy. I remember finding Brubaker (1980) quite dark, although outside of the basic plot of a prison warden cleaning up a prison, I remember almost none of the movie.

But 1984 brought out The Natural, the best that ever was. That’s a direct quote from the movie about baseball player Roy Hobbs, where all he wants is to walk down a street someday and have someone say, “There goes Roy Hobbs. The best that ever was”. It may not be the best movie of all time, but I think it may arguably be the best role that Redford ever played. So subtle in places it’s staggering.

I know that many people consider Out of Africa (1985) as the best movie of his career, but I found it soporific. I have never made it through from start to finish without falling asleep.

Yet I have no credibility at all. Legal Eagles (1986) was a light version of a courtroom drama, with near RomComAction on high alert. Darryl Hannah was relatively fresh off Splash and Clan of the Cave Bear, and despite playing a kook, she just came off as a kook. Spaced out and hardly present. By contrast, Debra Winger was just coming off An Officer and a Gentleman and Terms of Endearment, and I thought she was awesome. The movie is not great, I won’t lie, but I really enjoyed the three of them together. I wanted a better editor, but well, I enjoyed it anyway.

Sneakers (1992) is really quite popular with certain age groups, and while I enjoyed it, the plot was weak with quite a few scenes straining the suspension of disbelief.

He lent his voice to narrating A River Runs Through It (1992), but it was Indecent Proposal (1993) that really caught people’s attention. If you don’t remember the premise, he played an eccentric billionaire who sees a young married couple being affectionate and it prompts him to enter their lives with an indecent proposal — if they agree to let him sleep with the wife for one night, he’ll give them $1,000,000. He’s a bit sleazy with his offer, which is not his normal pure, ethical character choice. And a large number of late night comedians made the same joke — most wives would waive the money for a chance to sleep with Redford. Yet there was a deeper storyline about the couple considering it and what even the proposal itself does to their love and marriage, regardless of their choice. I liked it, but I had three regrets … first and foremost, that they had spent too little time on Redford’s character, maybe other indecent proposals he might have made. Secondly, the pacing in the movie is off, with much need for a better editor. But lastly, I hate to say it, but Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson as the couple don’t really work for me. They don’t seem to have the right chemistry, and while Woody comes off as a relatively dumb schmuck, Demi doesn’t rise to the level of even Striptease.

When it comes to Up Close and Personal (1996), I really want to love the movie. Michelle Pfeiffer from my teenage crush days and Robert Redford in a love story, complete with a journalism / reporting storyline? What’s not to love? The plot, the dialogue, the lack of chemistry between the two of them, the camera work, the pacing. I come close to hating it, just because I had high hopes for it.

I don’t have strong views on The Horse Whisperer (1998), the Last Castle (2001), or really any of the next 13 years until he shows up in the Marvel Avengers movies. Where he has virtually nothing to do. He has gravitas enough to hold a senior position in the Marvel Universe, but it doesn’t do much more than a cameo would have done. Nor any of the acting roles until 2020.

As I said, I liked him best in the middle of his career, not the TV stuff at the start or the movies in the last 20 years.

My final rankings

If I reduce all of it to my five favourite Redford movies, I would choose:

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
The Sting (1973)
The Natural (1984)
Legal Eagles (1986)
Sneakers (1992)

And if I was to only watch one? That would be really tough. He has some really great scenes as Sundance including “I can’t swim”; The Sting is one of the best ensemble casts; and The Natural is sublime for understated acting.

I’m going to have to go with The Natural and Roy Hobbs. I don’t know that I would say Robert Redford is the best that ever was, but he’s in the running. If they are looking to bury a souvenir with him, I hope it’s a bat with a lightning bolt.

Thanks for entertaining us.