Brendan Barker Obituary (1974 - 2025) - Legacy Remembers
Oh man, this hurts. Brendan umped our kids’ baseball games and he was wonderful, both MLB-level good and unfailingly fair. We’d chat and joke with him before games and during slow parts, but it didn’t matter: he’d still call our kid out a minute later.
RIP Brendan. You were a true role model for hundreds of kids.
Bob, being dogsat, likes to perch on the back of the couch behind my head.
She stood a cautious distance from the racked spamcannon, its GPUs glowing with malice and infrared as LLMs cranked out personalized spells. The tokens oozed out to the fediverse through a web of fake egirl accounts: “OMG… You would… look so cute… in these Skechers! ”
It was as profitable as it was horrible.
Because my ex-employer pays for a “platinum plan” health insurance policy, with family premiums of like $6000 per month, when I had a routine medical procedure last week, my out of pocket expense was “only” about $2000.
‘Murica. Shit yeah.
I’ve been using Just for a while as a task runner. It’s similar to Make, but optimized for developer ergonomics with a vastly simpler syntax and a wonderful CLI. I’d also been using Mise for other environment management things, such as installing specific versions of Python and NPM and other tools in a project directory.
Someone introduced me to Mise’s own newish task runner, and it just might win me over from Just for most things:
- Instead of using 2 tools, I can use 1.
- Just still feels nicer to me, perhaps because I’m more used to it, but Mise is good enough that I don’t think I’d miss the extra features.
- Mise lets you write tasks in separate files, which lets any editor handle them well without having to support justfile syntax, but still shares a CLI with inline tasks.
I like it.
I had a patch embroidered for my wife, a foot doctor.
Today I’m trekking the 1.5 mi walking part of my commute with 20 lbs of iron in my backpack. I’m reasonably confident in my ability to get it there with me intact. I’m less confident of my power to schlep it back home tonight.
Waking up to KMFDM blasting in the bedroom, a very surprised looking cat, and the HomePod she just accidentally coaxed into life by sniffing the top of it.
When an email’s footer starts with “The content of this email is intended for the person or entity to which it is addressed only”, the desire to turn it into a blog post is almost irresistible.
I’m super excited to be joining a small company next week as their first dedicated security engineer. After being at much larger companies for a little while, I’m ready to be back in the trenches.
What a job search looks like in 2025: 4 weeks, 27 interviews, with 20 different recruiters and employees of 21 different companies.
This is the one day a year I immerse myself in Apple news. A buddy and I have a decade long tradition of watching the WWDC keynote together. Then I’ll go back to mostly ignoring the hype for another 364 days.
We worked to lose a nice bit of weight over the last 6 months or so. Today I hit the treadmill carrying a backpack loaded with the same amount of weight I’d lost. Holy cow. How did I do that every single day?
The new Apple News daily Sudoku results page is sloppy. As screenshotted on an iPhone 15 Pro, you have to scroll down about 1/8” to see the whole Leaderboard button.
I will not lose sleep over this, but it’s still sloppy.
Infomaniak breaks rank and comes out in support of controversial Swiss encryption law | Tom’s Guide
Infomaniak argued that anonymity prevents justice, saying there must be a “happy medium” to prevent the digital landscape becoming a “Wild West.”
They further state that demands for anonymity show “lack of knowledge of Swiss political institutions”.
If you’re an Infomaniak user, you should stop that ASAP.
I just successfully performed concussive maintenance on a recalcitrant smart speaker.
Me: Hey Siri, play music for me.
HomePod: Here is some music just for you… Sorry, there was a problem with Apple Music.
Me: bops the HomePod in frustration
HomePod: Here is some music just for you… 🎵🎵🎵
Me: That worked?
(If I asked it other questions, like “Hey Siri, what’s my next appointment?”, it’d correctly answer with my personal information. It only affected Apple Music.)
I’m not a huge fan of OSI — I prefer my software Free — but their idea of Open Source is the only one I’ll accept. I’m frustrated by the number of companies who want to claim their proprietary shared source licenses are open source just because you can look at the code.
No. You cannot convince me.
My house has old plaster and lath walls, aka “a Faraday cage”. My kid’s bedroom is 20 feet from a Firewalla AP7 Wi-Fi radio, but their PC still only got a 2.4Mbps speed test result.
I bought them a $20 external Wi-Fi antenna and that jumped to 5.8Gbps.
I highly endorse this upgrade.
I just got this email from someone who’s definitely not a North Korean agent seeking to work for American companies.
Text of the email:
Hello,
I’m Akira Nakao, a Senior Software Engineer with over 10 years of experience in full-stack development, system design, and leading technical teams.
Due to certain regional limitations, it’s been challenging for me to access higher-paying roles that align with my skill set. To navigate this, I’m looking for a trustworthy U.S.-based partner to help establish a compliant and straightforward collaboration setup.
I’ll handle all technical work and delivery. Your role would involve minimal administrative support — mostly acting as a point of presence for registration or formalities required by some clients. The structure would be simple, legal, and transparent.
What’s in it for you:
- A passive revenue-sharing arrangement
- No coding or tech experience required
- Clear, low-effort expectations
If this resonates with you, I’d be happy to share more details and answer any questions. There’s no obligation — just an open and honest conversation.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Best regards,
Akira Nakao
Senior Software Engineer
Yep, seems totally legitimate.
Microsoft released a new PostgreSQL IDE for VS Code. It has a proprietary license with deal-breaking terms:
The software is licensed, not sold. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you will not (and have no right to):[…] d) use the software for commercial, non-profit, or revenue-generating activities
Oops. Better not install this on your work laptop! Too bad. It looks nifty, and might be fun to play with if it weren’t illegal to use in most cases where you’d want to use it.
Thanks for letting me know, Signal!
