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

Office desk detail.

I enjoy listening to Henry Rollins

This performance needs more views. That is damn impressive.

“[Untitled]” by @dimsumthinking got me thinking. He makes some good points (scan-ability, for instance), but for me it’s not that short posts need a title —I’m totally fine with that aspect— but seeing that ‘title’ in regular RSS readers makes it feel a little like a placeholder for an unfinished draft (though, perhaps, one might argue that a short post is the draft idea for a long post).

But I’ll take it for now, and I hope Micro.blog and its mission continues to grow in success in 2019.

Addendum: A feature-request for @manton: the option to specify a custom string for an account’s untitled posts. I might pick, for example, “muncman’s status at {timestamp}” or even “(short post).” (I wonder if this is already on the roadmap… or if it is not part of some spec default and even possible.)

Planning to simplify, reduce and minimize some things this year. I’ve begun by trimming my podcast subscriptions. Started easy with defunct ones. On to some harder ones now. My “completionist” tendencies are fighting me — but year-end is as good a time as any to make a break.

This instance is not a big deal, but I just followed some loose ends and found myself checking Google’s cache and the Internet Archive for the iLike page about my college band, Stalking Jeremiah.

This is where I had put our bio and some basement tape tracks (literally, that’s what they were) from practice sessions in 1992-1993. I’d guess that I created the page in 2007 or 2008.

I got my son a 5-by-5 Rubik’s Cube (normal size is 3x3) for Christmas. As he just set it down on the table, completed again, he declared it is too easy and he needs more challenge. 🤦🏼‍♂️ 😂

Current status: playing with the Moog Etherwave Theremin that my wife gave me for Christmas. 🎵🎼🎶

On breaks today, I’m learning how to play something on guitar that my son wrote.

Back in 2001 I started using a wiki for my team. Over time, I was repeatedly told to shut it down, and it was repeatedly challenged by Confluence, but it had legs, grew more popular, and last I heard was still in use and even on the company’s high-availability servers. :) Just now, I looked it up and saw that at some point it became an official Apache project. 👍

Getting really tired of Atlassian’s two-step log on process: first enter email and submit, then get to enter password. I use a password manager, so I have to call it up twice to complete the process (or enter my email address manually). And, since both of my current clients are using Jira/Confluence, I’m having to log in and out a lot.

I have used apps for this, and I used to have these commands installed as system services, but now I think simply having them as shell aliases on macOS is the most useful way to hide/show the flotsam & jetsam that has accrued on my Desktop at any point in time.

alias hidetop='defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop false; killall Finder'

alias showtop='defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop true; killall Finder'

My tech skills came in handy for helping my daughter with homework tonight.

She came to me saying she couldn’t save work she had done for Physical Sciences class. I open up Developer Tools in the browser and see that she’s hitting 401s that the UI is not telling her about. She logs in and all is save-able.

It’s poor that it didn’t prompt properly for this. It is also poor that it let her session die while she was still active on a page. (It is built in Unity, from what I gather.)

Then, she cannot get the next step to load. I look again, and now see 500 errors. Server-side issue. We try a few things (a different browser; tethered to her phone, off the home network) just to eliminate possibilities, but in the end a screenshot of the JS console showing the 500 error is sent to the teacher via email.

My daughter really seemed to appreciate the help. 😃

Last night we went to a friends’ Stanley Kubrick-themed holiday party wearing leather masks (inspired by Eyes Wide Shut) that my wife made over the last week or so. 🥳 Mine actually attaches to my glasses, so I don’t need an elastic band around my head, which is nice. I can eat and drink with it on, which is also very convenient.

Unsurprisingly, though, Face ID doesn’t work with it on. 😂

Current status: watching a GG Allin documentary while I fold laundry.

Two offer emails, to two different addresses, ten minutes apart. Same offer (a Guitar World + Guitar Player magazine subscription combo). One offer is $2 less than the other.

Why?

TIL: there are metal versions of Studio Ghibli songs.

The world is a fantastic place sometimes. 🤘

I could go for a new album from Toad the Wet Sprocket. 🎧

If I’m on the ‘features’ page for your desktop email app, and a search for “security” has zero hits, I’m stopping right there.