Category: Random

  • A New Chapter

    After 16 years, it is time to make a change. With that change, a bit of self reflection never hurts. Getting here At this point, I have spent more time in corporate full time employment than any other aspect of my life. I started my first full-time, salaried role in November of 2002, which I…

  • Aging into fun

    It is obvious that my posts have been, well, tech-centric for the better part of the last year. I do my best to not post specifics about my kids because, well, their life is theirs to live, not mine to post. But I have to credit them with introducing me to an activity that keeps…

  • Badges… We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

    Well… Maybe we do. This is a quick plug (no reimbursement of any kind) for the folks over at Shields.io, who make creating custom badges for readme files and websites an easy and fun task. A Quick Demo The badges above are generated from Shields.io. The first link looks like this: My Github username (spyder007)…

  • Information Overload: When too much data becomes a problem

    I have had this post in a draft for almost a month now. I had planned to include statistics around the amount of data that humans are generating (it is a lot) and how we as are causing some of own problems by having too much data at our fingertips. What I realized is, a…

  • Node_Modules is the new DLL hell… Change my mind.

    All I wanted to do over the weekend was take a React 16 class library, copy it, strip out the components (leaving the webpack configuration intact), and upgrade components. To call it a nightmare is being nice. My advice to anyone is this: upgrade components one at a time, and test between each upgrade voraciously.…

  • Free Guy and the “Myth” of AI

    I have been able to get out and enjoy some movies with my kids over the last few weeks. Black Widow, Jungle Cruise, and, most recently, Free Guy, have given me the opportunity to get back in the theaters, something I did not realize I missed as much as I did. The last of those,…

  • At long last… new input devices

    I have spent the better part of the last ten years using the Microsoft Wireless Natural 7000 keyboard and mouse… The only link I can find is to this Amazon listing, which is clearly inflating the price because it is no longer available. I broke the keyboard about a year ago, so I substituted the…

  • Why I am deleting Facebook

    This is extraordinarily random, but I thought it worth mentioning why I decided to finally request a full delete of my Facebook account.  The short answer:  I feel less connected when I am on it. The Why This was a fairly lengthy decision making process on my part, and there were a few big questions…

  • Let’s try this again.

    Throughout my professional career and personal life, I have made several attempts at “resolutions” to blog more.  I’ve gone through several iterations of software, including some home-grown solutions, then wordpress, then blogger/blogspot.  I’m back to WordPress hosted on a small server here at home. The goal of this whole endeavor is to document some of…