Don’t Stop the Disco!

August 6th, 2023

So I really haven’t done a good job of keeping this sucker up to date but hey, its still better than the several years of silence that it contained for years. And as I said before I don’t know that I will really keep up with it, the age of blogs is mostly past although at times I feel a resurgence here and there.

In very very minor site news I removed the long defunct twitter sidebar widget and a mastodon link got added at some point. Turns out I am way more active at bluesky than anywhere else at this point but even that isn’t as active as I used to be. Turns out my first rule of change management is right (in this case): Before you make changes understand why things are the way they are and what depends on that. But I don’t think elon is good at most things.

In other, very minor news, I am giving some serious consideration to migrating hosts. I don’t do much and I an cut costs and just make my life a little easier so if I don’t do it this go around I will probably take care of it in February the next time I am up for renewal. I am also planning on adding a farnaby.<tbd> mostly for bsky but also as a landing page for part of my identity. The government name page is also going to get an update to better reflect things like ‘who I am’ and ‘how to find me’ and ‘why hire me’

Speaking of that last bit, turns out I got a new job recently. Its a good feeling as I was in the running for 4 positions this year and feel like I probably ended up with the one that has the best runway towards the future although it does hurt leaving a lot of money on the table. All well, take it and run anyway.

Otherwise, life just continues trucking along. Busy with house stuff, busy with a partner, busy with work, frankly just plain old fucking busy.

But so it goes. So it goes.

It’s like trying to drink whiskey from a bottle of wine

January 29th, 2023

It’s been interesting sort of rejoining a different part of the internet than I have occupied fr a long time and also being unsure if I want to rejoin.

In other news, my trip to palm springs was pretty great. I totally understand why others (and myself) make a concerted effort to get away from MN for a time in the winter. Plus its pretty there in a way that it isn’t here.

A view from palm springs towards the mountains

I genuinely like MN, enough that I very happily bought a home here and continue to chose to live here. But the winters do get to be a bit much. This is probably also why I have a trip to Mexico booked.

One of the things that I am trying to do to make winter more bearable is winter biking. I was gifted a free (cheap) fat tire bike that will definitely need some work and components but at the same time it fulfills a few needs.

  1. It’s free
  2. It will be fun to work on
  3. I don’t care much what happens to it (see 1).
  4. I can ride it year round.

In terms of my house, I am still learning to live in it and honestly, having a lot of fun with it. We rearranged some furniture today and the living room feels better. More to be done for sure (for a long while probably) but its … honestly starting to feel like home in the right ways.

I have also rejoined the gym and OMG I have missed it. Talk about feeling good in the right ways.

Show us you care, Show us you dare

December 27th, 2022

I have been thinking about organization a lot lately both on large and small scales. This mostly came about because of a discussion at work regarding OneNote. Since I moved to my current position earlier this year (can’t say that for much longer) I have really gotten much more into OneNote because of a few simple reasons:

  • Its the only general note taking application available at work other than pen and paper
  • I am still learning my job and how it all works
  • I am juggling a few different projects and need to remember what is where
  • The integration is nice

Really though its that first one. For my personal life I use a variety of note taking apps, from the excellent https://joplinapp.org/ to Ruff on android, to a pen and paper. But whats really part of the chaos is that each one of these organizes things different and as I told a coworker – its all about how your head works. I need to have everything in compartments.

Whats kind of interesting to me is that there are so many different ways of putting things into boxes that work though. At home I do things by year, then categories in the year. At work I do things by broad categories. Say “Projects” then its type of projects, then the individual projects. I don’t know that any is any better than another but is genuinely interesting to me to see the differences.

But it also has me thinking about all the other ways that we put things in boxes and organize things. Some good, some bad, most indifferent. But I think that most humans are trying to find a way to organize the world in a way that makes sense to them. Problems come though when we try to follow other people’s ideas and they don’t work with how our brains naturally want to do it.

Damn the torpedoes, make your own categories.