Getting laid off just before the holidays has given me time to think about some things that, somewhat paradoxically, don't have anything to do with looking for a new job, doing paperwork, or worrying about insurance. Specifically it's given me time to reflect upon a conversation I had some months ago about how people relate to computers has changed in the last thirty years or so.
I'd been in a discussion about computers, how technology has changed over time, and how people have changed in how they interact with technology over the same period of time. Specifically, it involved folks …
Update: 20260315 - Another proof of concept in the wild.
It seems like everybody else is either saying that LLM technology is either true artificial intelligence and we should all bow down to it (it is not, and fuck that noise) and we'd best get used to it, or that it's going to destroy everything and we'd best get used to it (it's not but some mornings it feels that way). Plenty of people with more going on than I do have litigated this to hell and back, marketing companies are doing marketing company things, and frankly I don't care to …
nerd osmosis - noun phrase - The phenomenon in which one picks up a small amount of knowledge about something one isn't particularly interested in because they spend time around other people who are and who talk about it a great deal. For example, it's possible to pick up a little knowledge of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and its fandom without being a brony just because you are surrounded by people who are on a regular basis.
I've been asking myself that very question, every morning, for the last couple of weeks. The job hunt continues as well as before, which is to say not well at all. The only really noteworthy things that have happened were a couple of recruiters thinking that they were being cute by saying things that are highly inadvisable under any circumstances 1, and one "interview offer" (not even a job offer) for a security position which it would seem was a bait-and-switch to get me to sign up for yet another job hunting service that is a black hole for job …
Windbringer's internal clock tells me that, as I write this the calendar date is 27 December 2025. To be honest, I kind of lost track of the date just before Christmas of this year. Everything started blurring together around that time, in part because it had been raining so much in California and in part because my schedule - my usual sense of how things are supposed to happen - no longer exists. I'm still searching for a new job and while I might have one or two leads I have no details. Plus, hanging one's hat on a single option is …
Beginner's lock: When you get a new lock for your collection and pick it open a couple of times without a whole lot of trouble. Then you put the lock down for a day or so and subsequently have absolutely no luck getting it open again for weeks or months.
If you haven't been paying attention to social media lately (and for the sake of your mental health, I hope you haven't - ye gods, the world...) I got laid off in the last week of October without warning. A not entirely unprecedented early morning meeting rapidly turned into being told that my position was being eliminated, effective immediately. This was immediately followed by my work laptop and phone factory resetting themselves, while I was in the middle of typing a "so long and thanks for all the fish" message to my now-ex-cow-orkers. 1 So …
While tinkering with a new project last week that involved my old BBS tagline database I rediscovered the tagline that I used as the title of this post. I've been trying to keep up with my pattern of posting at least once every month but it's been hard, what with everything going on. Out of an abundance of caution I ran a post I'd been working on past my lawyer for advice and was informed that I should refrain from publishing it, even with multiple disclaimers because we live in a time that would have given Cardinal Richelieu an erection …
