My grandmother loved games. She and I and others would play all the time. If she was bored, then her go to way to break the lull was “How about we play a game?” I inherited most of her games. My dining room has a shelf full of them. They include the inheritance, a few…
Doing a software inventory of what tools I use in order to migrate to a new work computer. I make a private blog post of what software, extensions, and customizations to facilitate the move. Work provides software, but I prefer different web browsers, text editors, SSH clients, etc. I have posts from 2009, 2011, and now 2016.…
Working in a cube farm, my ears perked up to an NPR story about how other people are distracting. “In general, if a sound is coming from another person, it’s much more disturbing than when it’s coming from a machine,” Alan Hedge at Cornell says, because, as social beings, humans are attuned to man-made sounds. He…
In the eyes of the law, your race is considered immutable because it cannot be changed from its natural state. This made me laugh. Being mixed the perception of my race is very mutable. People often have no idea what to make of my skin color, hair, or facial features.The day-to-day decisions I make influence…
Sadly information technology conferences give our email addresses and phone numbers to the vendors who attended. That results in me getting an uptick of spam especially in the weeks after it. It is easy to tell the spam from the conference because the vendors mention the name of the conference. All the conferences do it. It…
Noticed “Election Day” was in the wrong place in my work calendar. It was on November 1st when it ought to have been November 8th. This is because the date is the first Tuesday after the first Monday giving it a potential range of November 2nd through 8th. The Microsoft Outlook / Exchange pattern for…
Growing up my names were strongly identifying. If someone learned of my first or last name, there was a fair chance they knew of me. Almost no one else around was named Ezra. In college, there was a guy whose last name was “Esra” that caused a bit of confusion. But, all I had to…
Listening to C.G.P.Grey talk about too much stuff in a room making it difficult due to the visual noise. I agree. But I also have an issue with chatter. Lots and lots of people talking over each other bothers me. The inability to follow all of them is part of what I dislike about them. One-on-one…
Here is an update on my progress for each resolution with a quarter of the year remaining. In other words, it is crunch time. Read 75 books. Three Quarters is 56.25. I have read 57. Hit 25,000 pages. Three Quarters is 18,750 pages and I have read 18,286 which puts me 464 behind. That is not terrible, but I slid further…