this is my memento mori

I just realized that the reason there was a seat left on my recent flight to LAX, is that it is a Boeing MAX-9, row 26.

If you have read the NTSB Preliminary Report you will recognize this as the “door plug row” that caused a lot of excitement in January.

As an automotive engineer that works on safety relevant systems every day, I have pretty high confidence that lighting won’t strike twice, but I am still keeping my seatbelt on the whole flight.

Starting to see flowers coming up in Portland. The daffodils are always first, but whatever this bush is comes in pretty close after