@mikesusz social feed.

@m750 yeah it’s been slowly creeping back toward the proscribed schedule, i suspect once we’re comfortable with that, they’ll zing us

looking at everyone else’s well-composed ‘first day of school’ photos with their kids and realizing i should just stage those the day before or something, because on our first day the bus showed up 10 minutes early (at 6:46am) and ain’t nobody standing around smiling with a sign at that time of day anyway

@jerzone when we drove up north for the eclipse, it was wild to see the connecticut being narrow and squirrely, when we usually see it down here as we cross into brattleboro and it’s massive

@atpfm john talked about the camera not being able to capture tiny text well. when i use the Magnifier function to view tiny text (ahem like the low-contrast 3px font on apple chargers) it seems to do okay, even if you ‘save’ the image and check it out later. do you know if Apple processes the image differently via Magnifier or am i enjoying my yummy placebo?

@threetonesun same people who negatively review products on Amazon because the delivery company lost or damaged their package

@jerzone or more deceptively, my wife’s flex has “buttons” that aren’t real buttons, but just touch sensitive areas, that get activated when they are touched by the cable that goes to her phone when it is in its dash mount.

she said to me “the temperature in my truck just keeps going down and down”

dearest microsoft
i cannot figure out why
there is a dot here

@akahn indeed, straight line cuts with a jigsaw are a path to madness. (a wobbly, crooked path)

@akahn nice! the plunge cut always freaks me out.

it got better when i got a drawing tablet with a puck-mouse and i assigned one of the buttons on the puck to ‘enter’

now i didn’t even have to move my keyboard hand over to hit ‘enter’ for things that needed confirmation.

my lesson in all this is, optimize all the things? just enough that the optimizing doesn’t detract from the task itself.

my dotfiles repo is here if you’re curious https://github.com/mikesusz/dotrepo and i throw extra aliases in a local file ‘.dotlocal’ and reload everything with ‘pro’

today i’m updating my local dotfiles again (i have 2 or 3 character aliases for almost everything i do from the command line) and i recalled how way way back when i was an architecture student and draftsman, the thing i liked most about the DOS version of AutoCad vs. the Windows version was that i never had to click on menus or buttons -

i would hit a hotkey to select a tool or perform an action, then use the mouse to draw. hotkey/draw. hotkey/draw.

@jerzone oh also bearing design might be the problem there - they’re resisting load sideways when designed to mostly hold weight in the other direction

@jerzone ah yeah disadvantage is they can’t spin faster than 1x wind speed. but they can be deployed in lots of weird places. i’ve seen them on roofs of urban buildings (attached was in Wicker Park, Chicago)

@jerzone is that a VAWT or just for funsies?

this is said somewhat cheekily. i consider myself an IBMer but my loyalty only goes as far as it’s reciprocated.

i just wish (in the IBM Consulting organization) we spent more effort on scoping, sizing, and staffing projects correctly. this is the long-term (sustainable) solution to increasing profitability. the focus seems to be on whip-the-developers / short-term solution for short-term increasing profitability.

if this sounds like your workplace, i’m sorry and i feel your pain.

if this doesn’t sound like your workplace — are you hiring? https://mikesusz.dev

once again, i’ve been parachuted into a project at work that is nearing a deadline with a lot of functionality left to complete. this wouldn’t be too terrible, but i’ve also inherited a half-built thing and have been expected to just ‘finish it up’ except it’s deeply flawed and should be rebuilt completely (conveniently, nobody told me why the former developer was removed from the team)

and did i mention an arbitrary deadline?

@hotdogsladies i think i got non-consensual push notifications about it so i blocked apple tv+

@jlengstorf (hope you’ll recover quick!) there are two types of people in the world: those who have already cut themselves on a mandoline slicer, and those who will in the future. (and some people are both. hi! 👋)

@sarajw so i’m being self-deprecating and/or my own story is familiar and feels less fascinating. :) what i love is the common feelings of discovery, innovation, sharing, and responsibility. and there so far has been no mention of … profit?

the web 1.0 era was super wholesome.

@jerzone i gotta schedule that but i try to get it close to a weekend because it usually knocks me down for about a day

after writing and posting my own web origin story i’m reading a lot more of them from other people and quite frankly theirs are more interesting and you should go read them. @sarajw has been boosting a lot of them.

@annika you’re in the five-timers club!

@m750 @jerzone i could get a piece of hardwood and make new handles. gotta check if the metal parts are still up to the job.

it has wheeled its last barrow

@jerzone i am generally against bumper stickers so i will have to find a way to incorporate this. maybe inside the hatch.

today i drove up Mt Washington.

@hotdogsladies you’re one of them fancy lads, aren’t ya?

@hotdogsladies there must be dozens of people there. dozens!

@jerzone when i lived in washington we would go to a dogpark that was nearby a tennis club and the club would put a bin of expired tennis balls out for the dog owners to collect. it’s a great relationship!

@annika are you saying … hot trans on trams action?

i love it when i open Chrome Dev Tools to Console and they put a Console under my Console i call this Xzibit Dev Tools

@andybaio this is getting in-tents!

@annika lol i have similar thoughts when i drive by a business near my parents house "Arthurs Executive Cleaners" i bet they have quite a lot of work available

@jerzone i had donated all my dotcom bubble startup swag to the mission in Seattle. i hadn't considered the irony of that.

@annika i wish i’d been able to get out there for any of them. i will be watching the videos intently.

@annika wow that’s a heck of a flight. have fun!

@hotdogsladies i think Alvvays should tour with Chvrches

not sure why i have to say this out loud, but one incomplete sentence is not a ‘user story’

Neutral/Good vs Chaotic/Good

@fox i have seen @jsnell do some deep-dives on e-ink readers, https://sixcolors.com/post/2024/01/two-e-readers-that-made-me-reconsider-why-i-use-e-readers/

❯ git checkout main
Switched to branch 'main'
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/main'.

this really, really needs a timestamp of the most recent fetch, e.g. “up to date … as of Monday Aug 12, 2:34PM”

@revmem i don’t know if they designed it that way, but i figured it out and it’s the easiest way to remember that it’s closed on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday.

@revmem i always see your updates and think “oh i need to go to the transfer station” except ours is closed on days with an “N” in their name.

@annika @LexPendragon … eww

@LexPendragon @annika this. i’m wondering if literally or figuratively

@jerzone this is awesome. my two boys would probably handle this very differently. my oldest is quite … content? to let others handle arrangements and logistics. my youngest wants to be in charge and already is testing the waters with independence (e.g. how far can i ride my bike? can i ride to the grocery store? the next town?)

also kind of a sad statement on our rail infra and reliability. when i had to work in NYC i drove in. which is nuts, but i couldn’t rely on amtrak to be consistent.

everybody needs one of these. or two.

@marcamos oh that’s a mini golden retriever i guess

@revmem this time i was surprised, we actually got an ETR from eversource (11:30). and surprise again, when i shut down the gen for the night and flipped back over, we had grid power. no idea how long it has been back.