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May 14, 2024: I have an IKEA Dirigera hub connected to my HomeKit setup. I also have a bunch of Nanoleaf Matter A19 bulbs in my house. I bought a new $8 IKEA …

May 14, 2024: Old computer ads are something else. Source: BYTE, Vol. 6, No. 9, September 1981, page 299

May 14, 2024: Python 3.13 is removing more Amiga “dead batteries” modules, like chunk: The chunk module provides support for reading and writing …

May 13, 2024: We bought a flower kit from Costco. It had some potting soil, pre-planted seeds, and a pot — just add water. It looked fun and easy. That thing …

May 11, 2024: I lost my Diablo 4 level 71 hardcore rogue today. Although I was momentarily bummed, I feel good that I got my first ever hardcore D4 character that …

May 10, 2024: My buddy picked us all up to go rollin’.

May 9, 2024: How I’m working right now. I couldn’t move if I had to.

May 7, 2024: I’m dying to know the story here.

May 7, 2024: Apple: "What's a professional?" Apple announced their new iPad Pro and I couldn’t care less. The hardware itself is brilliant, yet Apple insists on artificially limiting what …

May 7, 2024: You know how sometimes you come to decide that an entire niche market is so filled with awful and overpriced alternatives that you’d rather just …

May 6, 2024: Gigi turns 15 today. We’re celebrating with lots of cuddles and ancient dog appropriate treats.

May 6, 2024: Demand that car companies respect your privacy How to escape Honda’s privacy hell: With sensors, microphones, and cameras, cars collect way more data than needed to operate the vehicle. They also …

May 4, 2024: Previous lock picking sets having been sneaked out of my possession by various household children, I’ve now bought my own nice meant-to-be-permanent …

May 4, 2024: Very fancy electronic badges at BSidesSF this year.

May 3, 2024: Conference tracks where more than a few people are wearing khaki: Defending your AI assets Defending your assets from AI Defending your assets with AI …

May 3, 2024: While I dropped a friend off and helped him unload his stuff, I told him about the Oakland Ballers cap I was wearing and how I’m glad we have a …

May 2, 2024: My credit union called this morning: “Did you just make a purchase from OnlyFans?” Nope. Thus ends my longest recent streak of not having …

May 1, 2024: Keeva wants pets.

May 1, 2024: The BASIC programming language turns 60 | Ars Technica The BASIC programming language turns 60 | Ars Technica Like so many others, I got my start typing in program listings for games, utilities, art …

Apr 30, 2024: What sadist invented this captcha?

Apr 30, 2024: What's my Apple Card balance? I spent 1 hour and 25 minutes on a call with Goldman Sachs about their mistakes on my Apple Card statement. It’s not resolved but I think we’re …

Apr 30, 2024: Today’s first software update for the Rabbit r1 adds missing keys to its on-screen keyboard, and now I can type in our Wi-Fi password. That’s a nice …

Apr 30, 2024: Drug Scheduling On the subject of Drug Scheduling: Schedule IV Schedule IV drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with a low potential for abuse and low …

Apr 30, 2024: US will reclassify marijuana in historic shift: AP sources | AP News US will reclassify marijuana in historic shift: AP sources | AP News: Once OMB signs off, the DEA will take public comment on the plan to move …

Apr 29, 2024: My Rabbit R1 just arrived. I haven’t played with it enough yet to have an opinion on the software’s usability. The hardware itself is nice, though. …

Apr 17, 2024: I wish OmniFocus used perspectives in Forecast I wish OmniFocus would replace the way its Forecast view selects items to display with a user-selectable perspective. Then I could make my own choices …

Apr 16, 2024: Palo Alto's exploited Python code watchTowr Labs has a nice blog post dissecting CVE-2024-3400. It’s very readable. Go check it out. The awfulness of Palo Alto’s Python …

Apr 8, 2024: I fought State Farm (and won) State Farm claimed we owed them money. I said we didn’t. They pursued it. I countered. They ended up owing us money instead. My wife’s small business …

Apr 3, 2024: Tennessee bans kids playing in sprinklers Tennessee’s new “chemtrail bill” is inherently ludicrous. It’s also as poorly written as cold be expected. From the bill itself: The intentional …

Mar 28, 2024: Fixing Things with Keyboard Maestro I can’t help playing with Things sometimes. Even though there are plenty of reasons not to use Things, it’s pretty. It’s my attractive nuisance. …

Feb 26, 2024: Testing my fountain pen inks' water resistance I wondered how water-resistant the inks from the various pens on my desk would be. For my unscientific test, I wrote a small sample of text with each …

Feb 9, 2024: Reliable Shortcuts with Stream Deck and Keyboard Maestro I talked myself into buying a Stream Deck to control my Mac. I didn’t want one for the media features. I wanted a cool, programmable external …

Feb 1, 2024: Opt out of Hulu's new binding arbitration clause Hulu’s new subscriber agreement claims to require users to resolve significant disputes through arbitration. It specifically prevents us from …

Jan 17, 2024: Making Notes look like a Markdown editor, if you squint I use Apple’s Notes app to, well, take notes. It’s the only non-Markdown I regularly use for such things. While I can, should, and mostly …

Jan 5, 2024: Adding CarPlay to our Toyota's Entune system Our 2016 Toyota Sienna is perfect, except for its janky entertainment system. Every time I plugged in my phone, the Entune radio started playing “A a …

Dec 22, 2023: Biden pardons cannabis users US President Joe Biden pardoned all Federal convictions for the use and simple possession of cannabis. I don’t use cannabis. If it were to go …

Dec 21, 2023: One Pill Can Kill I’ve seen things that looked like ads for apps in the iOS App Store. Today, I saw an ad for something else altogether. It’s a public …

Nov 25, 2023: In the beginning was Word My kid is home from college. I’m watching them do their homework while struggling against the shortcomings of Microsoft Word. It’s the …

Nov 8, 2023: Fixing the Casper Glow Light charger Our Casper Glow Lights are nice. However, their charging bases are poorly made, and as seen in user reviews, they often break in a specific way. …

Nov 3, 2023: Back to OmniFocus. Again. I know I said I’m using Things to manage all the things I need to do, but I’ve switched back to the OmniFocus 4 beta. I like Things. …

Oct 30, 2023: Kitty likes her SureFood microchip pet feeder We have 2 cats. One of them1 requires a prescription food. Predictably, because he’s a cat, he hates his food and wants to eat the other …

Oct 27, 2023: Review job applications quickly I got an automated response to a job application that said: Over the next several weeks, one of our recruiters will spend some time reviewing what …

Sep 28, 2023: An Amazon seller tried to bribe me I bought a suitcase from Amazon, partly because of its good reviews. The suitcase is alright. It’s not the best I’ve ever seen, but the …

Sep 26, 2023: macOS 14 Sonoma is out, and mostly OK Apple release macOS 14 Sonoma today. I always install the major OS beta versions on my work Mac when they’re first released, to see if anything …

Sep 25, 2023: Newsom vetoed self-driving truck bill California governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required self-driving vehicles to have a human driver. “Considering the …

Aug 29, 2023: TriNet shares employee PII without controls My employer’s HR department asked me to validate a coworker’s identification documents and attest that they’re legitimate, for …

Aug 4, 2023: Veilid in The Washington Post I’ve been helping on a fun project with some incredibly brilliant friends. I found myself talking about it to a reporter at The Washington Post. …

Jul 31, 2023: Simply Sabotaging an Office The US Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of today’s CIA, wrote the Simple Sabotage Field Manual in 1944. Its goal was clear: The …

Jul 1, 2023: Happy 25th birthday, honeypot.net! In times of yore, my friends gave their computers cool cyberpunky names so that they sounded cool at LAN parties: “Hey, can you toss me an …

Jun 30, 2023: Twitter went dark. Now what? Twitter is in a race with Reddit to see who can ruin their service more quickly. That’s the simplest explanation I have for Twitter’s …

Jun 28, 2023: Quitting Reddit I’ve spent way more time on Reddit than I should have. I justified it to myself by saying it was a great way to stay current on news and …

Jun 20, 2023: Fake landlord tried to scam my kid My kid and their friend are looking for a house to rent. They found a perfect match, with a nice house in a pretty neighborhood and accommodating …

Jun 14, 2023: Language Server Protocol Launched a Golden Age of Editors Microsoft developed Language Server Protocol (“LSP”) a few years ago to make it easier to add support for new languages to VS Code. Lots …

Jun 9, 2023: I use Things without encryption Update 2023-11-03: No, I don’t. I tell people not to use Readdle’s Spark email app. Then I turn around and use the Things task manager, …

Jun 2, 2023: iA Presenter Public Launch I’ve used iA Writer on Mac and iPad for years as my main writing environment. I’m typing this in it now. It’s strongly opinionated …

May 30, 2023: Accidentally Hacking the Planet Last summer I tried to hack the Wall of Sheep at DEF CON. It didn’t work. The short version is that I tried to make a Cross Site Scripting (XSS) …

May 18, 2023: Favorite apps: PastePal I used to think the Copied clipboard manager for Apple devices was spiffy. I don’t know how or why, but that app disappeared from the Internet …

May 16, 2023: Pianos. I worked as a software developer with a strongly opinionated manager. He believed that we’d achieve Peak Programmer Productivity™️ by …

May 13, 2023: eero + Firewalla = perfection I built our home Wi-Fi network on eero Pro 6 mesh routers. It’s great. I love it. It works as advertised. If your household is like most others, …

May 5, 2023: Wake up, little sunshine I prompted ChatGPT with: “Write a song I can sing to my son to get him awake and moving to get ready for school.” It replied with: Verse 1 …

Apr 28, 2023: The Internet is a rough neighborhood This week I stood up a new firewall in front of my home network. This one has much better logging than the old one, and I’ve been watching the …

Apr 24, 2023: Fox News fired Tucker Carlson However it’s spun, Fox News fired Tucker Carlson. Carlson had the most popular cable news show by a wide margin, and it’s inconceivable …

Apr 18, 2023: Integrate Things with Focus I use the Things task manager to keep track of what I need to do. I use the Focus pomodoro timer to help myself focus on a task that I’m …

Mar 23, 2023: Apple won't totally block unwanted emails Apple’s email apps and services don’t allow users to completely block senders. If someone is sending you messages you don’t want to …

Mar 20, 2023: Upgrade your Raspberry Pi with an SSD

I upgraded my Raspberry Pi to use an external SSD drive instead of its built-in SD card reader. If you use your little computer for anything …

Mar 17, 2023: A Boston Terrier Married a Cat I prompted ChatGPT: “Write a Shakespearean sonnet about a Boston terrier marrying a cat.” It replied: “Oh, wondrous sight! A terrier and cat In …

Feb 24, 2023: Easily copy file contents with ForkLift I use the ForkLift 3 file manager on my Mac. Part of my job involves copying-and-pasting the contents of various files into web forms. I made a …

Feb 20, 2023: Recovering a Raspberry Pi password on an M1 Mac I would never accidentally change my Raspberry Pi’s account password before clicking “save” in my password manager, therefore …

Jan 28, 2023: I watched the Tyre Nichols video I watched the Tyre Nichols video. I didn’t want to because I knew what it was going to contain and dreaded the idea of seeing it, but I felt …

Jan 13, 2023: My travel project template In an older post, I talked about making a project template for trip planning. The goal is to build a comprehensive list of everything I might want to …

Jan 5, 2023: Muradin wallet doesn't block RFID My wife bought me a cool Muradin RFID-blocking wallet for Christmas. I like it a lot, except for the fact that it doesn’t actually block RFID if …

Jan 1, 2023: Happy 2023! 2022 was a whirlwind of disasters, plagues, wars, elections, recession, inflation, and other stressors. It was a challenging year. If it had a theme, …

Dec 8, 2022: SteerMouse makes my Logitech mouse better I bought a Logitech MX Vertical Wireless Mouse last year. The mouse itself remains delightful and my carpal tunnel aches have disappeared. I’m a …

Nov 30, 2022: Audrey Auden's "The Voice in All" I read Audrey Auden’s new book, “The Voice in All”, the first in her new “The Artifex and the Muse” series. Auden …

Nov 20, 2022: Easily delete your Twitter account the hard way The folks at Conscious Digital have a nifty website, yourdigitalrights.org, that makes it easy to file a CCPA or GDPR request asking a website to …

Oct 2, 2022: Of course dogs smile I hang out on parts of the Internet where people often post pictures of happy animals. All too often, someone will share a photo of their smiling …

Sep 29, 2022: California 2022 Midterms Voting Guide These are my recommendations for the November 8, 2022 midterm election in California. Propositions Direct democracy looks like a great idea on paper. …

Sep 16, 2022: Winding down I knew the conversation wouldn’t be easy when the veterinarian asked if this was a good time to talk. I still think of her as a puppy, even …

Sep 6, 2022: Surprise eero hardware end-of-life Amazon is ending software support for 1st generation eero devices at the end of September 2022. That’s fine. You can’t support old …

Aug 21, 2022: Trying (and Failing) to hack the Wall of Sheep The Wall of Sheep is a popular exhibit at DEF CON. Participants run packet sniffers on an insecure Wi-Fi network and try to catch people logging into …

Aug 8, 2022: How QBasic jump started my career When I was an enlisted sailor in the US Navy, I spent an awful lot of time on a deployment hacking away on our ancient laptops to write QBasic …

Aug 5, 2022: Slack was broadcasting hashed passwords for 5 years I received an email from Slack on Thursday, 2022-08-04: We’re writing to let you know about a bug we recently discovered and fixed in Slack’s Shared …

Jul 29, 2022: Not Upgrading for Stage Manager Apple’s iPadOS 16 features a new multitasking mechanism called Stage Manager, but only on very new iPad models equipped with Apple’s M1 …

Jul 28, 2022: How to give compliments It’s fun to receive compliments. It’s as much fun to give them! That can be intimidating, though. “What if I say the wrong thing? …

Jul 18, 2022: Don't buy a cheap Apple Watch Series 3 Don’t buy an Apple Watch Series 3. Many recent articles enthuse about its current wonderfully low prices, but it’s a trap. The Series 3 is …

Jun 19, 2022: The dynamic range of emotions “Dynamic range” describes the difference between the softest and loudest bits of a musical recording. If the sound was recorded poorly so …

Jun 15, 2022: Internet Explorer is finally dead I was working the night shift at a motel while going to school during the day, when my parents saw a help wanted ad for a local ISP. This was in the …

Apr 3, 2022: Do not use Readdle's Spark email app I’ve written before about Readdle’s Spark email client, which is popular, highly rated, and a beautifully powerful app. It’s also …

Dec 30, 2021: Microsoft's gotta Microsoft A long time ago, back in the dark days of the Browser Wars, Microsoft hated Free Software, especially Linux and the GNU General Public License. We …

Dec 19, 2021: Dealing with Princeton's flawed privacy research This has been an odd week. Last Friday I got an email from someone asking about my hobby website’s CCPA compliance, ending with I look forward …

Dec 8, 2021: ...And Back to OmniFocus I recently wrote about switching from OmniFocus to Reminders and gave a lot of reasons why I thought that was a good plan. I was wrong and I’ve …

Dec 7, 2021: About the Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking I’ve written before about Hook, a nifty way of linking things you’re working on together so you can seamlessly bounce between them. …

Nov 11, 2021: Better incentives for showing web ads I use ad blockers on all my devices. Still, I understand that the sites I enjoy depend on ad revenue. When a site I visit a lot asks me to add them to …

Nov 10, 2021: AirTag lost its way Apple released their new AirTag product six months ago, and as competent as it is for finding lost gear, Apple’s done everything possible to …

Nov 5, 2021: From OmniFocus to Reminders My wife’s been a Mac user much longer than I have. Years after she’d been happily using an iMac G4, a family friend asked if I’d …

Nov 1, 2021: Notability's subscription model is an insult Ginger Labs’s Notability is a popular note-taking app for Apple computers. It’s a nice way for taking and organizing handwritten notes and …

Oct 1, 2021: Jira is a code smell Good Project Managers are important. As an Application Programmer, they’re your Interface to the rest of the organization. They’re your …

Sep 25, 2021: Introducing Glass Knife I’ve been using Obsidian lately for taking notes and I’m certain I’ll be saying more about that later. I’m a convert. …

Sep 24, 2021: Released The Policy Wonk Today we released the first public version of “The Policy Wonk”, or just “Wonk”. It’s a nifty tool we’ve been …

Sep 22, 2021: Unusual shipping fail from Apple I ordered a couple of Apple AirTags and keychain holders this weekend, and UPS dropped the package off on my doorstep a few minutes ago. The outer box …

Sep 4, 2021: Fact-Checking Snopes I want to like Snopes but I’m not convinced that they weigh evidence correctly. As a personal anecdote, I found what I thought was a problem …

Sep 3, 2021: GoDaddy Terminates Texas Spy Site GoDaddy gives Texas abortion website notice: Find new host ASAP: The highly controversial and regressive Texas abortion law went into effect on …

Aug 23, 2021: What HIPAA's Privacy Rule Says As someone who deals with HIPAA’s privacy compliance as part of my job, I don’t ever want to hear the word HIPAA again from someone who isn’t …

Jul 29, 2021: The Itanic Has Sunk By today, July 29, 2021, Intel has shipped the last of its Itanium processors, the last holdout of a rough decade of their history. You’d be …

Jul 6, 2021: Opt-Out Tracking is an Awful Idea Someone invented a new standardized way to opt out of telemetry for command line applications. This is a horrid idea. The existence of the setting …

Jul 1, 2021: Quackbooks. It seems like Intuit is never any the news for anything good that benefits normal people. Previously: “Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop …

Jun 28, 2021: Antivaxxers not owed a soapbox In a new post in Science Translational Medicine’s “In the Pipeline” blog, Derek Lowe announced that he’s tired of antivaxxer …

Jun 26, 2021: Digital notes are better than paper Techie people regularly rediscover paper and write about how they’ve created a good note taking system with it. I’m envious of them, as …

Jun 21, 2021: The Risks of Third-Party Email Clients There are a lot of neat third-party email applications available for Mac and iOS. From an end user perspective, many of them are amazing and useful. …

Jun 20, 2021: Pain-free with a Logitech MX Vertical Mouse When I spend my days programming, I don’t often use a mouse. I have a nice keyboard and use as many keyboard shortcuts as possible so that I …

Jun 4, 2021: Bing is censoring Tank Man search results Bing is censoring images of the Tiananmen Square “tank man” image. DuckDuckGo, who uses Bing’s search backend, is too. Here’s …

Jun 3, 2021: Uniquely bad identity branding My company has an account with a certain identity provider so we can test that our single sign-on feature works. Today one of my coworkers asked for …

Jun 2, 2021: How I get things done After years — decades — of experimentation, I’ve learned this about myself: when I follow a certain workflow, I’m happy and productive. …

May 30, 2021: Tripping on a Cracked Sidewalk Amazon Sidewalk is a new project which allows Amazon devices (like Alexa, Ring doorbells, etc.) with different owners to share their Internet …

May 22, 2021: Can't hire? Pay more. Many recent news stories feature companies having a hard time hiring workers. In capitalism, this means one thing: they’re not paying enough. Period. …

May 19, 2021: Wisdom of the ages The iOS App Store recommended that I check out a meditation app named “Calm”, featuring “Wisdom from Shawn and Camila”. Shawn …

May 19, 2021: Taking one for the team Scene: Nick’s intermediate league baseball game. Bottom of the last inning. Other team at bat. 2 outs. 2 on base. Winning hitter at bat. Fly to …

May 17, 2021: Signal was cheeky, but right In her article “I Have a Lot to Say About Signal’s Cellebrite Hack”, the extremely qualified Riana Pfefferkorn argues that Signal’s …

May 16, 2021: Review: Jellycuts Jellycuts for iOS and iPadOS is 2 things: A text-based language for writing Shortcuts, A compiler that turns the text language into “real” …

May 3, 2021: Review: Apple Fitness+ I’ve been using Apple’s Fitness+ service since it came available. It’s still a young product and has lots of room to improve, but …

Apr 25, 2021: Review: Hook by CogSci I’ve been playing with Hook, an app I’ve started hearing about. It’s an interesting bird, and its own docs didn’t explain why I …

Apr 25, 2021: Mastodon apps for iOS Updated: November 11, 2022 There are several excellent Mastodon apps for iOS and iPadOS. These are the ones I’ve tried. Criteria: A good app is …

Apr 5, 2021: Google v. Oracle - victory! This morning the US Supreme Court ruled for Google in Oracle’s case against them. This is wonderful news for American software engineering as …

Mar 20, 2021: Favorite apps: Copied I think Copied is the best clipboard manager available for Apple devices. I use Copied constantly. It lets me copy 3 different things I see on a web …

Mar 4, 2021: Smart progress bars Progress bars suck at predicting how long things will take. I’ll tell you what I want (what I really really want): a system-wide resource that …

Feb 28, 2021: Little League wants all your information To sign kids up for our city’s Little League baseball program, you have to prove that they’re residents, which is reasonable. What’s not reasonable is …

Feb 26, 2021: New favorite command: Zoxide My favorite new command is zoxide. It’s like a faster z, autojump, or fasd. In summary, it learns which directories you visit often with your …

Feb 26, 2021: "Let''s Fix OmniFocus", indeed If you use OmniFocus, you should check out Paul Sahner’s Let’s Fix OmniFocus post: But lately there has been a growing demand for the …

Feb 20, 2021: Use local Git repos for personal work I’ve heard a lot of online arguments about whether you should host your Git-based projects in GitHub or GitLab, but a lot of them miss an …

Feb 19, 2021: Dell doesn't honor warranties In late August 2020, I bought my kid a new Dell SE2419HX monitor for his birthday. School was starting back and his laptop’s built-in screen was …

Feb 5, 2021: Automating this static website I use the Hugo website generator to create this website out of a bunch of Markdown fils. A lot has been written about this approach, but the main …

Feb 3, 2021: Security training for the masses My company is going through its annual HIPAA privacy and security refresher training. This is a good thing and I wholeheartedly support it, as …

Jan 13, 2021: Google v. Oracle, by analogy Suppose Joe opens a restaurant. He hires a waiter who is really great at following directions, but speaks no English. Over time, Joe comes up with a …

Oct 17, 2020: November 2020 Voting Guide These are the notes I collected to determine how I’m going to vote on November 3, 2020. I’m posting this not to tell you how you should …

Apr 15, 2020: Staying away from WD NAS drives for now Western Digital just admitted to Tom’s Hardware that they use a notoriously slow technology, shingled magnetic recording (SMR), in the WD Red …

Feb 20, 2020: The Kansas City Wormhole I’ve had one inexplicable thing happen in my life. I remembered it today and texted an old buddy about it, and his memory of it was identical to …

Feb 10, 2020: More apps lost to subscriptions Two more apps I really like(d) have recently announced that they’re moving to subscription models: Fantastical and Paste. The Internet almost …

Apr 29, 2019: Commodore declared bankruptcy 25 years ago today Commodore International declared bankruptcy on April 29, 1994, and pretty much sealed the fate of the Amiga. I couldn’t care less about …

Feb 1, 2019: A standard for describing a site's password rules There’s not a universal standard for what a valid password on a website must look like. Some sites allow you to use any four letters. Others …

Sep 18, 2018: Ringing the bird I was on an early morning walk and came across a guy staring at the telephone wires. As I approached, I caught the distinct aroma of marijuana. I …

Aug 16, 2018: Heavy traffic is not a DDoS Ajit Pai claimed that when the FCC asked citizens to comment on Net Neutrality, their website was attacked with a distributed denial of service, or …

Jun 30, 2018: Happy birthday to me! I registered Honeypot.net on July 1, 1998, so today is its twentieth birthday. We’ve had fun, little domain. Here’s to twenty more!

Mar 27, 2018: "At a Crucial Juncture, Trump's Legal Defense Is Largely a One-Man Operation" At a Crucial Juncture, Trump’s Legal Defense Is Largely a One-Man Operation — The New York Times Highlights: Joseph diGenova, a longtime Washington …

Jan 8, 2018: How many minutes of Internet are you paying for each month? If you pay for a 100Mbps cable connection to the Internet and your plan sets a 300GB data cap, you can use your connection at full speed for 8.3 hours …

Dec 8, 2017: Airlines Restrict 'Smart Luggage' Over Fire Hazards Posed By Batteries Airlines Restrict ‘Smart Luggage’ Over Fire Hazards Posed By Batteries : The Two-Way : NPR: “Beginning Jan. 15, customers who travel …

Aug 12, 2017: App subscriptions must offer value Software authors are increasingly switching to subscription models to make their work “sustainable”. Too often they’re forgetting to make a value …

Jun 11, 2017: Introducing metric quantity units for computing In computing, metric-sounding prefixes almost universally refer to sizes expressed as powers of two: kilo = 2^10 = 1024 mega = 2^20 = 1,048,576 giga = …

May 14, 2017: Traveling with OmniFocus and OmniOutliner I don’t travel a lot, so when I do I invariably find that I’ve forgotten something important (9 PM the night before: “say, dear, where are we boarding …

Mar 29, 2017: Provider The shield was half-heartedly poking at her keyboard when the car started to move. Oh. “I guess I’m rolling. Coverage is sketch here so I …

Feb 28, 2017: America's military versus the world I am pro-military. I think having a strong military means we’re unlikely to have to use it to protect ourselves. But how strong does it actually …

Feb 23, 2017: Search-proof your devices when traveling Over-eager airport security has recently taken to making travelers unlock their phones and tablets for examination. This is both unforgivably invasive …

Dec 15, 2016: Rebooting I started this blog twelve years ago. I always meant to update it regularly, but… life intervenes. After recently coming back to it, I decided it was …

Dec 14, 2016: Purge your Yahoo account (but don't delete it!) There are about 1.5 billion reasons to want to cancel your Yahoo account. Don’t do that! According to Yahoo’s account deletion page, they …

Dec 14, 2016: Migrating off Evernote In late 2016, Evernote updated their privacy policy to explicitly grant their employees the right to view your personal information. In their own …

Dec 12, 2016: Focus. I was in a meeting when I noticed the sun was hitting my water bottle just right.

Dec 8, 2016: It's still there, isn't it? Gigi isn’t so sure about our new decoration.

Dec 7, 2016: Technology IS Politics It’s not possible for technologists to avoid politics because technology is politics: You’re writing an instant messaging app that can …

Nov 25, 2016: Electronics Kit for my Kids Cory Doctorow mentioned that Elenco makes a perfect copy of the Radio Shack 200-in-One electronics kit. I hadn’t read to the end of his article …

Oct 23, 2016: We had a scary basement When I was a kid, my parents had a horror movie basement. It was unfinished, poorly lit, and apparently designed to terrorize kids. It was divided …

Oct 17, 2015: My phone was Lyfted My son needed a ride to a Boy Scout campout yesterday and neither Jen nor I were home to take him. I had the idea to call a Lyft driver for him. My …

Sep 22, 2015: Christmases Past How I imagined the backstory of the dad from “A Christmas Story”: I’ve seen things. Lots of us have: it was a long war. Terrible things, …

Sep 12, 2015: Adventures in Comcast support We live outside San Francisco, and Comcast is our cable provider. We wanted to watch college football on TV so I visited Comcast’s website to …

Oct 8, 2014: What I Tell My Kids About The Internet Hi kid! You don’t know me, but I’m one of those “Internet expert” kind of guys they interview when something bad happens. I …

Sep 13, 2014: My FCC Net Neutrality Letter This is my letter to the FCC on September 12, 2014 regarding the upcoming net neutrality decision making process: I am a Comcast customer, and I am …

Aug 14, 2014: Cut Hoodies Some Slack No good article about the Bay Area misses jokes at hipsters in their hoodies, whether biking through The Mission or chairing board meetings in The …

Apr 8, 2014: Scaling with Eventual Consistency Originally published on the Crittercism Engineering Blog and reprinted with permission. by Kirk Strauser on April 8, 2014 CAP theorem hates you and …

Apr 6, 2014: Wet Shaving: A Year Later I’m a sucker for the idea of ritual. When I learn about a traditional, labor-intensive practice like shining shoes, oiling boots, or a …

Mar 29, 2014: Great Expectations I probably sound like I gripe all the time, but that’s really not what I’m like. I’m an optimist and happy by nature. It’s …

Mar 18, 2014: Making Devonthink Sync Between Computers Update: 2021-05-27 This is still getting traffic for unknown reasons. Today, in 2021, the problem is long solved. DEVONthink 3 syncs perfectly with …

Oct 20, 2013: More Shoe Fails I had a wonderful experience buying new Rockport shoes from Brown Brothers Shoes in Alameda a couple of months ago, to the point that I wrote a …

Aug 19, 2012: To Sell A Car In the process of moving to another state, we decided to sell my car to some friends. This turned out to be much harder than anticipated. I admit that …

May 4, 2012: Applecareless While I almost never buy extended warranties, conventional wisdom is that you should always buy AppleCare for an Apple laptop. You have up to a year …

Dec 15, 2011: Omaha World Herald Makes School Remove Christmas Message The Omaha World-Herald published a story about a Lincoln public high school who wrote “Remember the Reason for the Season” on their …

Nov 11, 2011: On Generated Versus Random Passwords I was reading a story about a hacked password database and saw this comment where the poster wanted to make a little program to generate non-random …

Oct 27, 2011: Stop The E Parasite Act This is the letter I just sent to my representative, urging him to vote against Hollywood’s E-PARASITE Act: Congressman Fortenberry, please vote …

Oct 11, 2011: Making DOS USB Images On A Mac I needed to run a BIOS flash utility that was only available for DOS. To complicate matters, the server I needed to run it on doesn’t have a …

Jun 4, 2009: Taken To The Cleaners By Abe's Detailing I read a nice newspaper story a while ago about Abe’s Detailing in Norfolk, NE. When I wanted to have Jen’s minivan detailed as a present, …

Dec 3, 2008: Guest Post By Gabby Crazy Squirrel I was at grandma’s house last weekend, and there was a power outage.Turns out, it was a squirrel chewing on the power lines, and got …

Dec 3, 2008: Guest Post By Gabby It Snowed It snowed!I went outside today and played! bet I would have stayed out there if it had snowed more and if my feet didn’t freeze, I would have …

Oct 23, 2008: Just Get Home Already While waiting for Jen to return from a conference, I thought about calling her to get her estimated time of arrival, or her ETA. I realized she might …

Oct 19, 2008: Guest Post By Gabby There Here Grandma and Grandpa got here yesterday!My camera is working again to!I took a picture of a mirror,and when I saw the picture I saw me and my camera …

Aug 15, 2008: Open Letter To KCAU TV As of mid-August, I can’t watch the local ABC affiliate TV channel over my satellite dish because they tried to jack up the rates they charge …

Jul 8, 2008: Guest Post By Gabby I Went To The Lake We took a trip to Grandma’s house on Thursday last week, and on Saturday we went to the lake.A couple hours before we left we went boating.It …

Jul 1, 2008: Dropkick Murphys The Meanest Of Times This is kind of a hard review to write. Short take on the music: it’s brilliant. If you like Irish folk or punk, you’ll like “The …

Jun 3, 2008: Baseball Chatter Hi! You’re the guy who sat behind me at my 8-year-old daughter’s teeball practice. I thought you’d want to know that you were …

May 29, 2008: In Defense Of The Model M There are few joys in life like using something that is the perfect expression of its intent. Each trade has its representative tools, and their …

May 19, 2008: Shades Of Green In Nebraska’s May 13 election, two Green Party candidates ran for Douglas County Commissioner, District 3. Between them, they received one vote. …

Apr 23, 2008: Sue For Mayor I’m voting for Sue Fuchtman for mayor of Norfolk. I know her personally, and she’s the sort of intelligent, decent, detail-oriented person …

Mar 15, 2008: Fun With Software Licenses Did you know that you’re probably not allowed to make backups of your computer? It’s true, if you believe in the legal fiction known as …

Mar 13, 2008: Hot About Warming Global warming is real. Forget the arguments about what’s causing it. Forget trying to figure out whether it’s going to be good or bad. …

Mar 11, 2008: Why Is Cloning Bad? I haven’t figured out exactly why human cloning is a bad thing that should be opposed. It intuitively feels wrong, but that’s a pretty …

Feb 14, 2008: Nebraska Wants To Adopt Your Kids Senator Brad Ashford of Omaha has proposed criminalizing the act of keeping your kids home from school. This is abhorrent for many reasons, and should …

Feb 9, 2008: You Want How Many? I used to work near a little restaurant called “Rasta Grill”. It was this weird fusion of Italian and Jamaican food, and everything was …

Jan 28, 2008: Buffer Overrun In Antitrust Skip this unless you’re really, really geeky. Still with us? OK. In the movie “Antitrust”, there’s a screenshot of some code …

Jan 28, 2008: Don't Bump That Flash Drive From the manual of an Asus Eee PC: The solid-state disk drive’s head retracts when the power is turned OFF to prevent scratching of the …

Jan 17, 2008: Guest Post By Gabby My Other Cat Another blog about a cat!I had a cat named Oat meal.We gave him away 4 years ago.He hated us, he hid behind the dryer, but he loved his toys only!

Jan 17, 2008: Guest Post By Gabby The Ancient Shark There is a extinct shark called Megalodon.it lived 45,000 million years ago! Fact:Its teeth are seven inches long!I don’t no how it died and I …

Jan 4, 2008: How Not To Save A Game I was about halfway through a game called “Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings” on my Nintendo DS. I was having a great time and loving it …

Dec 10, 2007: Vick Sentenced Michael Vick was sentenced to 13 dog years.

Nov 23, 2007: Guest Post By Gabby Hatchetfish The hatchetfish spends the day in deep water and rises closer to the surface at night to feed.It has light organs on its upper surface to attract …

Nov 19, 2007: SCOX Is Deficient And Bankrupt Right now, as I type this, the Yahoo! Finance page for SCO has a caution sign and the text: “SCOX is deficient and bankrupt.” We’ve …

Nov 7, 2007: Guest Post By Gabby Goalsgoalsand More Goals At school we divide the school year into four quarters.In each quarter we have a reading goal.A reading goal is a set of points.This quarter my goal …

Nov 6, 2007: It's Been A Long Time Since I Rock And Rolled It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled, It’s been a long time since I did the stroll. Ooh, let me get it back, let me get it back, …

Oct 25, 2007: Guest Post By Gabby My Morning When my alarm went off at 7:00 I got out and landed on my sister, Ari.She fell out of bed and I fell to.I got into my clothes and went out of my room …

Oct 25, 2007: Guest Post By Gabby The Fall Festival There was a Fall Festival at school today I first went to the sign that said sandy candy.We got a tube and filled it with sand-like candy.It was …

Oct 24, 2007: Guest Post By Gabby Dad Is Funny Dad is funny.He played a trick on my sister.He says somthing like “Guess what?“Ari would say"what?“Dad would …

Oct 24, 2007: Guest Post By Gabby Jake Is Crazy My brother Jake, is crazy!In baseball he ran with his jaw open and his arms in the air!He whacked my dad with a bat!He even says funny things like …

Oct 24, 2007: Scam Calls From Card Services I just got a phone call from a “private caller” (that is, with no caller ID information) and heard a recording from “Card …

Oct 23, 2007: I Guess I Do Really Hate Shopping At Wal Mart Jen and I were in Kansas City for a convention when Jen decided to exchange some newborn-size diapers for a larger size. Unfortunately, we’d …

Oct 17, 2007: Yam No More Back in my Amiga-using days, I had an email program called YAM. It was excellent and ubiquitous; almost everyone used it. It had three unique …

Oct 10, 2007: My Ecco Shoes Are Junk I bought a nice looking pair of Ecco shoes a couple years ago. Actually, they were probably the nicest shoes I’ve bought before or since. I …

Oct 8, 2007: Winning By Any Means I was walking through our house when I saw Jake. He was watching me stone-faced with eyes open wide and bugged out. In our house, that means one thing …

Sep 24, 2007: Becoming Unrooted So, I forgot my root password. For non-technical types, that’s pretty much the key to the kingdom when you need to get full access to a …

Sep 5, 2007: baby.lisp In our household, a baby just ain’t a baby without an appropriately geeky birth announcement. And since Nick is mostly functional — I mean, he …

Aug 18, 2007: Vapor Rises Dan Feather, aka “Vapor”, died today after he lost control of his motorcycle. Dan was remarkable for his quiet decency. There were many …

Aug 15, 2007: Down To The Uptown As our anniversary dinner tradition, Jen and I drive to Stanton to eat at the Uptown Brewery. Each year, we ask each ourselves if we really want to go …

Aug 12, 2007: I Am Awesome I got the best fortune cookie ever a few days ago: Your modesty will shame those with lesser knowledge. What can I say? It was right.

Jul 14, 2007: Electronic Survival Kit So, you’ve made a survival kit to keep you alive until the good guys come to rescue you. Well, now you’re starting life over in a new …

Jul 14, 2007: Negotiations With Western Digital We bought a Western Digital external hard drive for Jen’s computer while we were in Omaha. I hooked it up when we got home and it was dead on …

Jul 13, 2007: Fresh Sushi Better Jen and I took Jake and Ari to Omaha. I had joked with Jake that I was going to make him eat sushi, and to my surprise he loved the idea. There was a …

Jun 4, 2007: Mowing With Max I have a nice Craftsman lawn mower. I like my lawn mower. I have no desire to get another lawn mower. And yet, I got another lawn mower. Jen bought a …

May 30, 2007: Pre Packaged Sushi Not Bad I was buying groceries and saw a new display of pre-packaged plastic boxes of sushi. In the middle of Nebraska. Supermarket sushi. The idea kind of …

May 26, 2007: Long Weekends Summer’s upon us again. The kids just got out of school on Wednesday, which reminded me that my last post was to say that the kids were just …

Aug 18, 2006: Up In The Morning And Out To School Well, it’s officially school time again. Gabby and Ari started back yesterday, and Jake went this morning for the first time. Gabby seemed …

Aug 4, 2006: Tilden Days Last weekend, we took the kids to Tilden’s “Prairie Days” festival, a celebration that raises money for various local organizations. …

Jul 10, 2006: Running Before Walking The kids started swimming lessons yesterday. They all had a great time and left smiling. As I was putting Jake to bed, I asked him about his day: Me: …

Jun 7, 2006: If God Meant For Man To Roll It seemed like such a simple idea at the time: I’d buy a cheap bike and ride to work whenever possible. I’d get fresh air, exercise, and a …

Feb 9, 2006: How To Make A Survival Kit On my birthday in 2005, I read a Slashdot article discussing what things you might want to take with you if you had to evacuate your home. This was …

Jan 31, 2006: Our Bird Is Dead Gabby was in the preschool at Christ Lutheran School, and her classroom had a caged parakeet. One day Gabby told me that their bird was dead. Since …

Jan 31, 2006: The Piano's Broken We got a used piano a few months ago. After we cleaned it and put it where we wanted it, I played a few short songs (poorly). Throughout the rest of …

Jan 17, 2006: They Were How Big? Well, today was the big day — Jake and Ari had their tonsils removed. The doctor said Jake’s were nearly as large as golf balls, so the poor …

Jul 3, 2005: Filtering Spam With Postfix If you are responsible for maintaining an internet-connected mail-server, then you have, no doubt, come to hate spam and the waste of resources which …

Aug 25, 2004: Strangers In The House On Tuesday evening, August 24, 2004, I left my wife and three young children (ages four, three, and sixteen months) at home for a couple of hours to …

Aug 14, 2002: The Amiga Alternative Audio Page Note: This is an exact snapshot of the page as it was last modified by CISC back in 2002. I hadn’t bothered importing the page into the new site …