A scene I love from The Hunt for Red October was the communication through sonat pings. Later, when I worked in IT, the use of SNMP pings became a core part of my troubleshooting an issue. I thought of this scene every time. These days, another form is most of my work with humans. These…
People aspiring to work in information technology may think they just need to learn to read and write software, learn databases, networking, operating systems, and similar. They may overlook how important literary tools are to the above. Metaphors are everywhere in IT. It’s a crucial part of the language and context around the things we…
Back in the wake of Obergfell v Hodges, I talked with some friends about a news story of a court person refusing to sign off on gay marriages after the Supreme Court allowed them. My friends were confused. They wanted to know: How can they refuse the authority of the Supreme Court?!?! I had a…
Something I’ve noticed over the years is more “thank you”s in late November through mid-December. It might have something to do with Thanksgiving. Starting about Monday before and running at least a couple weeks after, I notice supervisors, mentors, and clients express more pointed expressions of thanks. That’s not to say I don’t see them…
NOTE: I put this into the schedule, so don’t read too much into the post’s date in determining who inspired me to write it. Facebook has that “happy birthday” feature which I think is pretty neat because it encourages connection. Where it gets weird for me is people who are dead. I don’t feel comfortable…
The bullshit of QAnon was bad. People were threatened or killed over the conspiracies it circulated, but what’s worse is that Stephen Miller, Fox News, Newsmax, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, and others all realized they could craft Q-like conspiracies to get loyal viewers and sell so much stuff. (Ads and merch).…
This risk of a reality TV star being President is you get what they know: drama every day about obviously bad decisions that could have been avoided with a modicum of thought before executing them. Personally, I feel like the government works well when it is doing what it needs to do without causing drama.…
I see quite a bit of worry about how the mainstream media doesn’t cover Trump and Biden the same way. Biden makes mistakes in the way he speaks and its breathlessly covered for weeks. For months Trump made the same mistakes and barely a story. Why? The news covered Trump’s mistakes and stumbles in 2016…
Several United States political parties routinely appear on the presidential ballots every four years. But, I think they go about it all wrong. Let’s say the Libertarian party wins. Chase Oliver becomes president. He’s president with a Congress that’s Democratic or Republican in one or both chambers. He’s going to have a hard time with…