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 …
Not even on fumes, mind you. Entirely unpowered and moving by momentum alone.
I'd say that 2024 has been a hell of a year, but I don't have to tell you that. If you've been paying attention at all to everything going on chances are you're feeling a mixture of dread, resignation, frustration, and most of all weariness. Bone-deep tiredness, and you can feel each and every one of your cells marinating in it. Or possibly frying like a whole turkey in peanut oil. But trauma dumping is Not A Thing We Are Allowed To Do, so I'm going to …
It's been another one of those months, where just enough is going on that it's hard to keep track of what, actually, is going on, but not so much that it's impossible to put together and write about. Yet, weirdly it's ideal for lots of shower thoughts that, individually, don't add up to a whole lot. It's the exact opposite of a sweet spot for somebody with ADD. So I'm more or less forcing myself to sit down and write this to keep values in those registers. It's undoubtedly going to suck but I figure I have enough editing time …
It's been a while since the last time I wrote anything. It's been a bit longer than that since I routinely schedule blog posts days to weeks in advance. To put not too find a point on it, I've been taking it easy, or as easy as I can under normal day-to-day circumstances. The anniversary of my mom's death was, as the publication of this post would have it, ten days ago, and it's always a rough time of year for me. The hardware in my head came to terms with it a long time ago, but the organics? Not …
After things slowed down a bit at work over the summer, I finally took some advice given to me by a number of people in various capacities and took a vacation. When your boss orders you to take a couple of weeks off because he's afraid that you'll spontaneously combust, it's kind of hard to argue the point. So, I put in for almost a month off, rented a car (because my family wanted to retain the option to travel as necessary), and scouted out someplace suitably far away in the mountains for as long as I could afford (which …
I've spent the last couple of days trying to figure out how to write this post. And I'm not sure, even now if I know how to write this. I've been struggling with it for a couple of days and, somewhere deep inside my software, avoidance has been keeping me from thinking about or writing about it.
I mentioned last year that my mom had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and was undergoing treatment for it. I stayed with her for a couple of weeks to take care of her. Let's start there.
Content warnings: Cancer, medical science, stuff in …
It seems as if another summer is rapidly coming to an end. The neighbors' kids are now back in school, school buses are now picking their way down the streets, and due to Burning Man coming up it's now possible to eat in a real restaurant in the Bay Area for the next couple of days. I've been pretty quiet lately, not because I've been spending any amount of time offline but because I've been spending more time doing stuff and just not writing it up. I've been tinkering with Systembot lately, adding functionality that I really have a need …
Proper channels excise tax - noun phrase - The markup paid on commonplace things when you go through proper channels at work to do something rather than going rogue, buying it yourself and filing an expense report. For example, a flight from Chicago to Boston might cost $176us if you paid for it yourself, but by using your employer's internal processes and vendors the cost of the same flight is closer to $630us.
Last weekend the twelfth Hackers On Planet Earth conference, subtitled The Circle of HOPE was held at the Hotel Pennsylvania by 2600 Magazine. As with most years, I made my cross-country pilgrimage to New York City to attend. I flew out on Thursday morning with the eventual goal of making it to my hotel early enough that I could order in, relax a bit, and get to sleep early to shake the inevitable jet lag so I could be somewhat functional the next day. Modulo the usual difficulty in catching a ride from JFK, I made good time and accomplished …
