New casual gaming platform, using on-device AI. Hope to have something to share and get feedback in a few weeks.

• Putting out the app I’ve been working on for the last year.
• More hugging the family (and general appreciation).
• Catching up with friends more often.
• Ignoring the news.
• Not having my back go out and ending up in ER, like last year.

• Practice triage: start with small, achievable projects that can be done on a weekend. Don’t get overwhelmed. Be kind to yourself. Not every problem is immediate or needs fixing.

• If you have access to a local tools library, avail yourself of it fully. The staff are a treasure-trove of wisdom and knowledge. If not, talk to the oldest, crotchiest person at your local bardware store.

• There are so many single-use tools out there (favorite one is so you can unscrew the faucet bolt under a sink). If not, see if there’s a community online board and post a request.

• Vintage appliances, windows, doors, etc are cool. A little elbow grease and they’re in good shape. Junkyards and recycling centers are a treasure trove.

• If it involves anything hazardous or too heavy (gas, electricity, foundation), bite the bullet and seek professional help.

• Ants and cracks are small-fry. Baits and fillers are easy fixes. Focus on big ticket items. And remember, some things are best left alone (see triage, above).

Ran a hairdryer all night, propped against my Mac laptop keyboard after a friend knocked over a full pint of beer onto it.

The next morning the whole bathroom reeked of stale beer, the power bill was astronomical, and the left quarter of the keyboard never worked again.

Took it in for repairs and was grateful AppleCare swapped it out without a peep. This was a while back, before the embedded moisture strips that void the warranty.

Richard Scarry/Busytown fans. Wife got a cat during COVID and named her Sally Cat.

I saw the security article, but that sounds like it needs to be tackled by MSFT, the way Google has to handle Chrome extensions.

Have been a paid Jetbrains user for years, especially PyCharm. But recently, I had to do some front-end web development with ionic/Capacitor and Vue, and ionic only had a VsCode plugin. A few weeks later, came across Cursor which is a fork of VsCode with LLM support, and all the same plugins worked.

Still keeping my PyCharm subscription, but am wobbly on whether I’ll re-up next year.

The cat suddenly parked itself on the stairs. Some day, she’ll cause serious harm. Until then, pet, pet you cute assassin.

Working on a new online gaming platform. There’s internal debate as to whether to allow players to message each other and post in public spaces. It would make it a lot more fun for playere, but the risk of losing Section 230 ‘safe harbor’ protections is a big concern. Also, the cost of moderation.

72 hours to finish a design project for a client. Hard deadline to make it to the printers in time for a trade show. By the end, I couldn’t see straight. Slept for 18 hours after handing it in.

Saw the end product at the trade show. Horrified to pick out so many small errors. Customer was happy, though. Got two more projects.

Never did it again, but it was good to know I could.

A works/construction department in a medium-sized town. They had an Excel spreadsheet that had a HUGE number of screens. Anyone wanting to do commercial real-estate construction had to not only fill out these forms, but keep them uptodate and submit the updates at end of each work day.

The thing was HUGE and had lots of interdependent screens, where if you picked an item from a dropdown menu, it unlocked a bunch of other complicated screens or panels, and so forth. Each screen had 30-40 items and fields on it, and there were multiple dozens of screens you had to tab through.

To run it on the jobsite, construction contractors HAD to buy a pen and touchscreen Windows ‘tablet’ ($$$). The whole thing had been written and maintained by one guy over the course of a few years.

EVERYONE hated it. The guy who had written it wanted to get promoted to management, but nobody else wanted to maintain it so he was stuck.

Sorry, but this country fully deserves where it ends up.

I shut off all news and social media, stopped checking newspapers, TV, and podcasts, and unsubbed from all politics and news mailing lists and communities. Told family and friends and they’re being cool about it.

Dove into 60’s detective novels. Anything by Ross Thomas, Donald Westlake, and Lawrence Block. Have stocked up on at least a year’s worth of out-of-print epubs. Will reevaluate once they run out. Mixed with a lot of outdoor walks.

It’s been glorious.

If they show up. Have done phone-banking. Hard to beat apathy.

Fat old Hamburgler vs ripped, brook-no-shit woman.

Good luck with that.

Firefly

Ask about ‘Independent Study’ from your faculty adviser. If you don’t have one, go to your Department head. If you don’t have that, ask the Registrar.

Independent Study means you get to propose your own coursework and, if approved, get to do it and get credit for it. You still have to deal with faculty supervision but the subject is specific to you. Think about what you would love to learn and propose a way to get there.

Just wait. It’ll all work out fine.

• Any work or study done during an all-nighter is a waste.

• If you meet someone and all they do is talk about themselves, they won’t be a good friend.

• Nobody really cares how you look or what you wear. And anyone who does has bigger issues they would rather not deal with.

“Did I already shampoo? Can’t remember.”

(Apply a small dab of shampoo. Foams up instantly).

“Dammit, yes.”

• Do unto others, etc…
• Don’t punch down. Ever.
• Hydration is key.