My current ear worm is a song I’ve been a fan of since its release in 1980. And it is almost certainly the BEST song to ever feature a singer wearing a calculator watch in the video. ⌚ 🎵

Just playing around with posting from IG.

Sounds like Instagram is toying with hiding like counts, which is very interesting.

I keep hearing the fans blasting on my MacBook Pro when I’m not doing much on it, and so checking Activity Monitor only to find Dropbox is the top CPU hog.

This could drive me to another solution – anybody have an alternative they like?

TFW you reach for the top of your iPhone screen to hit Save only to have a notification come down into that space and steal the tap.

This is the touch version of my traditional OS pet peeve of the hated “stealing my focus.”

”…interrogate the architecture of social networks that incentivize and reward the creation of extremist communities and content.”

Burn those networks down and come to Micro•blog / Indieweb.

wp.me

NextDraft: Everything in Moderation

TFW you struggle to find where the log statements that you temporarily added for debugging are at so you can delete them before committing, only to then remember they are inside automatically continuing breakpoints.

I don’t check my Mastodon timeline(s) often, and maybe I’m not following enough people there (is that a problem?) but when I do, not a lot of scrolling is necessary to catch up.

Is that a failure of Mastodon, a triumph of Twitter, or merely a characteristic of my social graph?

The other day, I dusted off an older MacBook Pro so it might be able to swap in for me when(ever) I take my current one in for its long-dreaded keyboard issues (ugh).

As part of the hours-long update process, rather than update Little Snitch on it, I decided to try an alternative I’ve had my eye on: Objective-See’s LuLu.

(Another alternative that I have yet to try –which looks like it also has other features to compare with Little Flocker-to-XFENCE– is Hands Off!.)

So far, I’m really liking LuLu. It doesn’t have Little Snitch’s Network Monitor view (with map!), but it’s also free & shared source.

I like and use nearly all of Patrick Wardle’s Objective-See apps, and I follow his blog, as well, to keep some high-level of awareness of the security threats related to macOS. I have yet to download anything from the Malware page, however. 😅

If you check out his free apps and end up using some, you can support his work on Patreon, as I do.

I have begun my binge-listen catch-up for this new-to-me podcast: Hi-Phi Nation – A show about philosophy that turns stories into ideas.

TFW force-quit itself freezes.

Got to see Jon Batiste perform live last night.

Super fun. 🎵

Still thinking about it.

“From Bacon’s utilitarian perspective, knowledge, in the sense of truth, no longer had intrinsic value, but derived its value from the practical purposes it served.”

Reading this made me think about politics.

I used to take advantage of windy days like this as a kid. I’d get a plastic bag, hold it above my head until the moment of a good gust… then chase it wherever it went!

Memories of running, bags aloft, just out of reach. Fun. 🌬

I’m enjoying this episode of Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History: Addendum. It’s striking some chords with my thinking wrt topics like the “spectrum” of politics. Good stuff to think honestly about and talk respectfully about.

I might write more about this later, but today I made a decision.

I had intended to re-embrace Vim for my non-iOS coding. I like Vim, I was comfortable and productive in it, and it’s a mature stalwart of a tool.

Visual Studio Code is, of course, the new (or, rather, most/semi-recent?) hotness, relatively speaking. It’s not “native”, which is a negative for me, but I’ve been using it regularly for about six months now – and I like it.

So, I have decided to forego rejuvenating my Vim chops in favor of increasing my fluency in VS Code. One less thing on my task list!

(If/when I do write more on this, I’ll likely add details, such as the Vim vs. Neovim flavor choice(s), as well as mention a selection of VS Code extensions that factored in my decision.)

Ah, Philosophy. Aladdin’s Wish - Existential Comics

This Intermittent Fasting thing is getting easier.

Uh oh.

I just had that awe-ful/-some thing where, while looking into a new book I would probably enjoy, I discovered several more recently released “must reads.”

Machine Learning knows me well. And I don’t have time for this. :)

I deleted 50 apps from my phone yesterday.

I plan to remove more tomorrow.

Would Marie Kondo be proud?

Reading this article made me reminisce about that event.

That promotion would have been to “senior” CSR, answering phones in a financial services company. Accepting the promotion would mean more money, but it also would ‘lock me in’ against lateral movement inside the company for 12 months – and by this point, I knew I wanted to become a computer programmer!

This was way back in 1997.

Mind you, I didn’t know what I wanted to do career-wise until right before this decision. But that decision allowed me to move into my new target/dream career within weeks.

My next declined promotion came around 2006. I had been serving as the unofficial Application Architect for a stack in a Fortune 100 company for several years by this point.

As the ‘official job title’ was to be rolled out, I got the sense that things around my day-to-day role would change. I thought about what I enjoyed, and what put me more in control of my options with regard to those factors.

I considered all of the interviews and annual employee reviews that asked “where I saw myself in X years.” My answer was never climbing a ladder; it was always about getting (even) better at what I was doing.

I had also seen the most valuable people on my CSR teams either reluctantly take promotions because CSRs don’t make a lot, or else stay where they were both happiest –and, in my opinion, most valuable to the company– but continue to be underpaid with regard to the value of their contribution. (Fixing this is a key, strategic advantage waiting to be leveraged that I have yet to see a CxO/HR dept. recognize.)

So, I scheduled a meeting with the CTO. I asked about his vision and the nature of the official role.

After listening, I told him I didn’t want to spend more time in meetings and PowerPoint than in my code editor, so I elected to “drop down” to a tech lead role.

I have never regretted it. Not for a second.

If I had taken the title, maybe I’d still be at that company (I left in 2009). I’d probably be spending my days reading IBM white papers and pontificating about the merits of “well-established (safe!) technologies”, scoffing at the risks of the cutting edge. Not to demean it, but it’s not what I wanted then, and still not what I want today.

That’s how I imagine it, anyway. In other words: making more, steady money (at least potentially over the long term), but being less happy, with less freedom of movement within the marketplace.

I’ve found (to my surprise, honestly – but that’s for another post) I enjoy forging my own path far more than following a more comfortable path someone has already laid out for me.

TIL (or, rather, relearned) that David Coverdale and I share a birthday.

He’s 19 years older than me, and still making music (new Whitesnake album due in May). I wonder if I’d have the stamina to tour now let alone in another 19 years. :)

Lol. www.factstream.co

Bloggers: NASA has discovered a new planet covered with marijuana Rated Pants on Fire by PolitiFact – Via FactStream

birdandmoon.tumblr.com

New comic about climate concerns. You are not alone.

Juice from the buzz in the air. overcast.fm