TCM’s are well-timed-explosions that engineers apply to spacecraft in ways that a bowler wishes he could apply to a ball after it’s released from his hands. They are also what fathers do with their daughters.
The Parable of the 2x4s
Steve was a super likable guy who recently got out of the Navy, so naturally, had a ton of excellent drinking stories involving far-off ports of call and exotic locales in the south Pacific. While he wasn’t super skilled when it came to the trades, Steve could handle a saw and a t-square, so he worked as a kind of floater—going back and forth from area to area where there was need for roughing in.
Chicago & the Sandwich Deliveryman Hypothesis
I lived in Chicago for 14 years, and during that time, before going into tech, worked as a grocery bagger, a cashier, a caddy, a lifeguard, an elevator operator, a landscaper, a knife salesman, an adult literacy advocate, a portrait framer, a shirt steamer, a forklift driver, and an usher at Soldier Field. Eleven of those years were spent working in the restaurant business—as a line cook, dishwasher, busboy, waiter, barback, bartender, and shithouse sommelier. I learned how to size people up based on their accents, cuff links, shoes, conversation topics, and the kind and quality of bullshit coming out of their mouths. The time I spent in Chicago, working these weird jobs makes me (I think) a crackerjack spotter of a whole range of put-ons, bullshit, ass-puffery, and weasel wording.
Note to daughter from dad
Berry Berry Hi Krass
A Game of Pool
Being Very Very computer — How Tech Workers’ Attention Spans Wander
The internet is really good at helping you waste time – often during the pursuit of a work-related goal. Something like that happened to me this evening while I was hunting down the answer to Proxy server & NET:ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID . By 7:45, I found myself reading the origins of Care Bear tummy symbols. This post is a recap of my findings…
Covid Christmas
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 648
So Long Shotgun / Autodesk!
Illusions of Explanatory Depth (IOED)
In 1993, everyone seemed to know of a pool cleaner who could also build a web site. That’s no longer the case. Now, there are too many sub-disciplines within software engineering for a single person to know how to design, build, test, and deploy a secure application from scratch. Most software engineers know this, but some are convinced they know more than they do – a completely normal phoneomenon known as the illusion of explanatory depth.
If Anthony Bourdain built CI pipelines, they would contain exactly Zero bullshit
Inferred competence is the act of correlating performance of a highly complex range of tasks from a single performance of one (or a few) tasks. When Anthony Bourdain wanted to hire a cook, he’d invite the candidate into his kitchen, and issue a single command: Make me an omelette. A thoughtful CI pipeline tries to duplicate that same simplicity.
How To Open a Lockbox Gets 100K Views
9/11 Weekend in New York City
On September 11, 2001, my wife lived less than a mile away from ground zero. We hadn’t yet met. I went to work that morning, at my office in San Francisco, not even aware that thousands of people had already died in New York. On the 20th anniversary of the attacks, I told my daughters how I found out about the airplanes hitting the towers.
Five Types of Celebrity in the Disinformation Age
E Pluribus Unum: 13 Republican and Democratic States in Charts
Contrary to the absurd belief that republicans are rugged individualists, born in log cabins they built with their own bare hands red states like Texas frequently receive WAY MORE from the federal government than they give. Put another way, red states, on average, enjoy the redistributed wealth produced in places exactly like New York and New Jersey. This blog post lays it out in a series of charts.
Feats of “Dad Strength”
Dad strength is the kind of physical strength that’s useful when stuff goes wrong and people are depending on you — in clutch situations. Every dad ought to meet or exceed his own minimal definition of strong, but I think these strength benchmarks are generally applicable because they scale to any weight.
Concerns of July 13, 2021
Simple Randori Check List
Improving your Jiu Jitsu is a bit like software development in that you want to be able to try new things, experiment, and collect data – when the stakes are low. Effective training should be empirical, not emotional. Stop giving a crap if you get tapped out during randori, and become more interested in collecting data.