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hi everyone.

As you may or may not know, due to the incredible generosity of you wonderful people, we’ve raised over $2300. Even after Pledgie takes the standard 3%, we’ll still have a remarkable amount of money. I am astonished. 

Lisa, Bailey, and I have been emailing back and forth, coordinating. Michaela, who is an absolutely amazing person, went above and beyond: She drove to Seattle to get the cats. We’ll be covering her expenses (and buying her a drink). 

In one email, Lisa let me know she spoke with Jeff’s aunt. As you may know, his few family members live on the other side of the country. The aunt said his mom is, quite obviously, devastated at the loss of her son. She is also dealing with many other difficult situations at this time. We immediately decided, rather than donate the extra funds or give them only to the cats, to help his mom in the only way we can and alleviate one tiny burden, which is a financial one. Lisa explained about the money we raised and offered to help pay for Jeff’s cremation. 

I hope this is okay with all of you. This is your money you have freely given, but I want to be very open about where it goes. I am fairly certain we can pay for it in its entirety. Even if we do this, there will still be plenty (plenty!) of money left to take care of the cats’ transport (again, major, major thanks to Michaela) as well as any vet bills, etc.  

When Lisa told Bailey and me, we knew immediately the right thing to do, and we hope very much you will agree. If you do not, please let me know, and if any of you change your mind, I am happy to work with you to give your money back or to make sure it is earmarked in some way.

This morning I spoke with someone who was very close to Jeff (I won’t say who unless she tells me it’s okay). I told her what we planned to do and she said she thought it wonderful and absolutely what he would have wanted: He never, ever would have wanted to burden anyone, and this makes things the tiniest bit easier. 

Your money allows us to help his mother and it’s also helping his cats, which is what he asked us to do. Thank you.

I really hate a lot of things, so when I find stuff I like, I love sharing it with my friends.

In that spirit, I’ve identified my five favorite things across a number of topics. Because I love them, and I love you, and I want to set the two of you up on a date. I think you may really hit it off with this stuff.

Books

• Predictably Irrational: Dan Ariely is really awesome, and discusses a lot of the ways we make decisions that run contrary to rational economic thought in repeatable, predictable ways.
• Open: Andre Agassi will always be my favorite tennis player, even more so after reading his book.
• Getting Things Done: David Allen wrote one of the single most important books in the realm of personal productivity.
• The Wages of Wins: David Berri (no, not the funny guy) examines sports economics using basketball as the backdrop. Turns out shooting the ball lowers your odds of winning a game of basketball.
• The Complete Works of Gilbert and Sullivan: Because fuck you if you aren’t down with Pinafore or The Mikado.

Podcasts

• You Look Nice Today: This picture is all you need to know about the Journal of Emotional Hygiene.
• Harry and Jake Speak Politely: I have a question, and its very important. What’chu watchin’?
• Mike & Tom Eat Snacks: Ed co-stars Michael Ian Black and Tom Cavanaugh eat snacks and talk about them. Awesome.
• Back to Work: Hi. Can I aks you a queshun? Do you like funny stuff that’s helpful? Before you answer, let me aks you another queshun. Hi.
• Build and Analyze: “Welcome to Build and Analyze, a weekly discussion show about the world of iPhone, iPad, iOS, coffee, and BMWs.”

Tumblrs

• Mom Effect: A dude plays Mass Effect while his mom makes all the decisions and provides commentary.
• Animals Talking In All Caps: Photos of animals captioned hilariously in capslock.
• Screenshots of Despair: Our interconnected lives can sometimes be very incredibly lonely.
• Text From Dog: Text messages from a Dog.
• Clients From Hell: True stories from the people who have to deal with shitty clients.

Apps

• Trello: Trello is an organizational and collaboration tool for teams and solo freelancers.
• 1Password: One of the best password managers available today.
• Quicksilver: Quit surfing through applications folders and Finder to locate your programs and files.
• Grand Perspective: Map your hard drives, manage your file systems, and locate ways to free up space.
• Contacts Cleaner: Your phone’s contacts are probably a fucking mess. Contacts Cleaner un-fucking-messifies them.

Alcohols

• High Spirits Distillery: Arizona’s premiere distillery, producing gin, single malt whisky, and vodka.
• Buffalo Trace Bourbon: Probably my favorite bourbon. Super mixable, super smooth, super flavorful.
• Boca Loca: Cachaca is awesome, and Boca Loca is one of the best.
• Bluecoat Gin: Probably the best of the new school of American Dry gins that have invaded the marketplace.
• Wyborowa Vodka: Listeners of The TKast will wonder why I’m putting a vodka on this list, but ice cold shots of vodka are a guilty pleasure of mine, and this is my favorite.

Music

• Camp: One of my current favorite albums.
• WZRD: I’m a huge Kid Cudi fan, and this album is a fantastic departure from his normal brand of hip-hop while remaining accessible and familiar to fans.
• Ninja Academy: Ninja Academy released their new self-titled album under the pay-what-you-want system, making it ostensibly free. I paid $15, though, and it was worth every penny.
• Born to Run: I have 5 different versions of Born to Run on my computer right now. The rest of the album is really, really, really awesome too.
• White Pony: I’ve been listening to a ton of Deftones lately, and its usually the White Pony album when I do.

Movies

• Protégé: A kind of Donnie Brasco-esque Hong Kong cop drama. Really strong performances throughout the cast; nobody was actually bad in this movie.
• Haywire: For an action movie, its still very Soderburgh, which is convenient since he directed it. Gina Carano was suprisingly good, especially acting against a cast full of heavy hitters.
• Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol: I might be in love with Paula Patton. This was the second most fun I had at the movies last year, behind only the time I got totally blitzed on 120-proof bourbon at Fast Five.
• Redbelt: David Mamet wrote and directed an MMA movie that isn’t at all about MMA. Gun to my head? Its my current favorite movie.
• Glengarry Glen Ross: This is the only other legitimate contender for my top spot. Not a single weak performance.

Text Editors

• Byword: I write almost everything on my Mac in Byword now. Also has an iOS app.
• nvALT: Brett Terpstra forked Notational Velocity and its pretty fucking rad.
• Nebulous Notes: I write almost everything on iOS devices in Nebulous Notes. TextExpander support and Dropbox connectivity is sweeeet.
• PlainText: PlainText is pretty nice for a free iOS app. Connects through Dropbox, supports TextExpander.
• TextMate: I personally don’t need a lot of the things that TextMate brings to the table, but Bundles are pretty awesome.

And that’s it for the innaugural edition of Stuff Toku Likes. I hope you find this useful, helpful, or - at worst - not totally masturbatory.

Thanks for reading.

I appreciate you.