Category: Random Thoughts

I know so many people that love it. But every time I try to use it for any length of time, I just get frustrated and bounce off it.

It’s too big. Much like twitter being like drinking from a firehose, reddit has “too many” people. Yes, there are plenty of smaller communities, and those are possibly better, but most of the subreddits with thousands of members are just chaos which is exacerbated by it’s design.

Unsearchable. It isn’t actually unsearchable, but for whatever reason people don’t search it. So if they go into a subreddit and a thread about the thing they want to talk about isn’t on the first screen or two worth of threads, they just start a new one. So, for example, in a place like /horror this means that the same threads are started new every week or so, sometimes more often. “Unpopular opinion: I didn’t like Barbarian”, “Why is Barbarian so hyped? I thought it was dull”, “Unpopular opinion: Barbarian was the best horror movie in decades”, and so on. This example is dated, because my first draft of this post was a while ago, but the sentiment remains.

Threaded discussion hides discussion. On top of the repeat threads, within a thread, conversations repeat. It almost isn’t worth reading an entire thread because no one else is. The nested nature of the discussion means that if one commenter makes a good comment, and then three or four other people engage in a discussion that explains and expands on it, most people won’t see it. Instead, a few comments later, someone will say the same thing that was already said in a nested comment, and maybe other people nest comments under that. And now in one thread you have two parallel discussions both not following each other. And of course, you get people who do read the nested threads, find a good comment, then copy and paste it as a comment on the original post, un-nested, in order to farm upvotes. Are they doing us a service by surfacing the nested content? Maybe? But since they don’t attribute it and link to the source they don’t surface the discussion around it. A flat structure would be far superior.

Because of the “noise” created by those two issues above, every time I go to some subreddit that I’ve book marked, I feel like I’m just walking a treadmill. The same topics and comments going around and around with very little actual advancement. Maybe I just haven’t found the right communities yet. I don’t know. But for now, I still dislike reddit.

Oddly, reddit is useful if you don’t go to reddit to start. If you go to google and search for something and either look for links to reddit discussions/comments, or you specifically tell google to search reddit for your query, you can get some really good info, because reddit is so vast that it literally includes just about everything.

I closed out the old in the last post, so let’s ring in the new.

My last year of being a Staff Engineer was fruitful in that I undertook projects that I conceived of and brought them to completion. These projects improved performance, added features, increased reliability, and decreased costs. I’d like to think I’m a halfway decent mentor to some of the less experience developers, which is one of the reasons I have tried to avoid implementing AI into my work flow. I’ve heard many describe these AI tools like “having a junior developer in your pocket”, and I don’t doubt that is true, but then if you have a fake junior developer in your pocket, then how do you expect the real junior developers to improve, to become better at being able to spot when the AI tools’ work is crap? In the coming year I hope for more of the same. There is some work on the horizon I wish to undertake, and some I wish to oversee as others take on the work. And I’m going to continue trying to avoid AI where I can.

Because my work is awesome about my ability to vacation, we have 3 booked for this year. JoCo in March, another in June, and then a third in August. The JoCo is exciting, but the August cruise is unique. For that one we are doing an 11-day out of Dover that goes to France, Spain, Portugal, and I think somewhere else. But the real draw is that we will be at sea during the solar eclipse in the path of totality. I’m looking forward to this so much!

I’m looking forward to some improved health in 2026. I should be out of the woods, and my wife should be recovered, and we can both start exercising and other things. I plan to absolutely abuse our health insurance this year, just max it out and take care of every little thing we’ve been overlooking for years. I’ve said that before, but this time I mean it.

I resolve to read more, and write more, and do all the things more. Just more. Just better. And I’m going to make an effort to be more local in my purchasing and other dealings.

Last year’s wish, as covered in the last post, went horribly. So what do I wish for 2026?

Retribution. Comeuppance. I want a full throated revocation of authoritarianism and I want justice, real justice. I’m preparing to not get it though. I’m preparing for a slog. I’m also trying to prepare for these morons to push us into a completely avoidable depression. I’m not sure how I’m going to do that, but I’m going to try.

Happy New Year, folks. I truly do wish the best for all of us. Well, for those of us who aren’t pieces of shit. For them, I hope they get the misery they desire for others. Ten fold.

There was a version of this post that combined my 2025 wrap up and my 2026 kick-off, but after writing it I kept thinking about it and it kept pulling at me.

In the final week of May I came here and lamented not posting. Then I posted a bunch, for about a week, then vanished again. It’s my way. I did decide to abandon Substack without writing another post, and I’ve migrated almost all of my reading to other platforms where available. I figured it was time to stop supporting people and businesses who support Nazis, especially when it is very easy to do so. It’s not always easy because a lot of rich people and business owners are capitulating, which make it hard to avoid them.

This first year of the second Trump administration feels like a decade. I am fighting where I can, amplifying voices where I am able, and challenging “my people” whenever I see them out of line. That last bit means that I am making an effort to call out white dudes where I witness white dudes doing shitty shit.

My work has a bunch of ERGs (Employee Resource Groups) around a number of marginalized and underrepresented groups. None of them apply to me, and yet I have joined every one as an ally, because it is important to me to read about what is important to them on the company Slack. On social media, I seek out diverse voices so that my feed is full of theirs. I hope this helps me, and I plan to keep doing it.

In 2025 I voted so many times. I’m pretty sure they do all these various special elections, run-offs, and other stuff at irregular times, in ones and twos, on purpose to keep the turnout low, so that people don’t know when they need to show up. We had cases where I would go vote, and then later that day I’d get a mailer about an election and notice it wasn’t the one I just voted in, but one happening in a week or two. Anyway, I do my best to keep up, research the candidates, and vote every time the opportunity avails itself.

Last year I wrote:

My wish for 2025: May the worst people get none of what they desire and all of what they deserve. For the rest of us, I hope we can all avoid being collateral damage, and success in our resistances.

The absolutely failure of this wish to be delivered in any way is just so sad. With all the deportations and the rolling back of rights and blowing up fishing boats… sorry, I’m tired of listing things already and I only barely scratched the surface. I didn’t even cover any of the blatant quid-pro-quo and bribery going on. Just… ugh. Only at the end of the year did we finally get something with the release of the Epstein files, though that’s been a bit of a cock-up too, what with all the redacting, failure to redact, inclusion of fake stuff, etc. I’m not sure this is going to matter. You can already see people ignoring it. They are ignoring all the old crimes and the new crimes, it is like crimes don’t matter any more, if you are rich white conservatives anyway. Lots of people are learning that they were just useful idiots to elect the administration, one that is turning their backs on them now.

In part due to the constant barrage of misery, and a couple of personal family issues I’m not going to get into in any detail here right now, 2025 was a pretty unaccomplished year for reading, and writing, and exercise, and a whole lot of things. Think back on it now just reminds me of how much water I treaded, but also amazed that I managed to keep treading water.

It wasn’t all bad though. We took two vacations this year, the wife and I. In March we went on our first JoCo Cruise which was just all around amazing. We loved it so much we booked for 2026 while still on the boat, and we’ve already booked 2027. Assuming 2026 is as good as 2025, we’ll probably be doing these for as long as they have them. We also did an Alaskan cruise, which was incredible, and also sad. It was quite warm in Alaska, and while watching chunks fall off a glacier is awe inspiring, the receding and collapse of the glaciers is heart breaking. But it was beautiful to hike through the Tongass National Forest. We want to go back and do more than just the Inside Passage, maybe in a couple of years.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it in this year end wraps ups before, but I work for Dragon Con as a volunteer. My wife is the director of Charity Events for the con, and I work as her second. Each year Dragon Con picks a local charity to partner with and then at the convention we hold events, like auctions and a virtual 5k with a medal, and sell items, like a coloring book, and the various programming tracks hold events of their own, and we pool all the money and Dragon Con matches, up to $150,000. We raised over $350,000 for NAMI Georgia in 5 days. It feels good to do that every year. And I’m pretty proud of my wife, who came in to take over Charity Events in 2018, and she has made it better and more successful every year.

My work life in 2025 was pretty great. I like my job, I enjoy the work, I took vacations, and they were very accommodating when I needed a lot of erratic time off and work from home days outside my schedule due to those issues I said I wasn’t going to get into. Other people’s experience may not be the same, but my experience at my work has been pretty much all positive. Except for the push for us to adopt AI tools, but that’s a can of worms for another post.

I’m writing this on Christmas Day, and it’s been a weird one. I’ve been sick, my wife is recovering from one of those things I said I wasn’t going to get into. The decorations got halfway out, and I never carried the empties back to storage so the front room is piled high with totes. But the main room with the tree looks great and we even put the LEGO train around the base of it. Our childhood dreams coming true despite all the weirdness.

Anyway, I’m going to go watch a few last Christmas movies to finish out the season, and the next post will be in the new year.

Merry Christmas.

I made these on my iPad with the intent to get them printed to paste onto cardboard for the No Kings protest, but I ran out of time. Still might do it to prepare for the next protest.

If you stumble on these and need a sign, feel free to swipe these.

Most of the time when someone talks about empathy they talk about understanding another person’s emotions, understanding their feelings. They might also focus on “seeing things from someone else’s point of view”. But that’s advanced stuff.

When we think about empathy, we need to begin at the most basic level. And doing so doesn’t require having another person to try to understand. Empathy begins at home. The most basic step of empathy is understanding that your emotions and feelings, your thoughts and experiences, you, all of that is yours and everyone who isn’t you… aren’t you.

The first step of empathy is realizing that just because you feel and think some way doesn’t mean that everyone, or anyone, feels or thinks exactly the same way. But too many people skip this part of empathy. In fact, humans seem to almost always assume that other people think the way they do.

One of the places you can see this is in politics. Someone who is a lousy person, who thinks other people aren’t worth caring about, sees someone else caring about people and they assume that person is faking it, that they are “virtue signaling”. That person must only be pretending to care about others in order to get something, to win an election, or gain support for another reason. Because if the lousy person doesn’t care about others, and they have colleagues who also don’t care about others, then not caring about others must be normal. Nobody really cares about anybody, and anyone displaying otherwise is lying. Conversely, someone who does actually care about issues and is serious about their viewpoints assumes that their opponents must also be serious about the things they do and say. I hope you can see how this is going to lead to problems. On one hand you have a person advocating about education, and their opponent thinks “they don’t care about education, they are just trying to buy votes!” Going another way, you can have a person who is espousing divisive rhetoric just to pander for votes, and their opponent acts as if those views are deeply held beliefs.

Another example of this are places on the internet like 4chan. There you will find a message board of anonymous posters spewing a lot of racist stuff. I knew a person who hung out there and sarcastically posted racist and sexist “jokes” because it was funny and “nobody is serious”. But some of the people there ARE serious. Very serious. And there is no way to know for sure, being that it’s all anonymous. While the person I knew was just doing it “for the lulz” and assumed everyone else was too, there were clearly other people who very much were racists and sexist and assumed they’d found a community of like-minded individuals. It took a couple of shootings and manifestos for him to finally stop participating.

You have to be careful when you start assuming that everyone around you is thinking and feeling the same way you are for the same reasons you are. And that is the first step of empathy. You need to realize that your positions, your feelings, your experiences, they are yours, and other people don’t necessarily have them, they don’t know where you are coming from.

This leads us to Ted Lasso, and quite possibly one of the finest scenes ever filmed.

“Be curious, not judgmental.” – not Walt Whitman

A system built on the possibility of unlimited profits is guaranteed a foundation of exploitation.

If you own a business and at the end of the year, with all your costs and expenses paid, you are left with a sizable profit, you have failed. Plenty of people will tell you that you are a success, but they are mistaken. They have been deluded by the lure of profiteering and unlimited profits. Because you must understand that these profits are not conjured out of the æther, they come from somewhere.

The two primary sources of “profits” are:

• Overcharging your customers
• Underpaying your employees

The first one is easy. People blame “the market”. They’ll say that they are charging what the market will bear, but in the repurposed words of Dr. Ian Malcolm “so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should”. If everyone is always pushing the upper boundary of what they can charge, this is part of how you get inflation. And everyone will claim they aren’t responsible because the few cents or dollars they upcharge isn’t enough to be a problem. Of course, if everyone is doing it, the aggregate is that it costs a consumer dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of dollars more to exist. You are extracting the profits from the consumers.

Also under the umbrella of overcharging your customers is producing an inferior product. If you make your goods from subpar materials but charge premium prices, you probably think you are a very smart business person, but you are just someone who doesn’t mind exploiting their customers.

The second is also easy, if you want to see it, but hard if you want to pretend that “cutting costs” is always desirable. While I listed it as “Underpaying your employees” it goes beyond simple low wages. You could be cutting corners on safety, or making people share desks, or not improving your working environments when you have the ability to do so. You could have better pay, better benefits, better working conditions for your employees, but you are choosing not to in order to maximize your profits.

All of this comes down to many people being unable to define “enough”.

When I was young, I figured out that if I could just get $3,000,000 and put it in a high yield savings account or index fund investments, and earn 5% per year on that principal, never touching the principal, I’d be making $150,000 a year, which at the time was more than my parents made. I could live the life my parents had – them, three kids, the occasional pet, a house, a couple of cars, a vacation or two a year – and I could have that without working, just relaxing, enjoying life, reading books, writing, etc. It was an amazing idea. And I couldn’t for the life of me understand why there were all these millionaires still working 40+ hour weeks and not spending time with their families and just hoarding more and more money that they weren’t even spending.

My vision hasn’t changed, though the amounts have because inflation has. I want to be there by now, at age 50, but the math hasn’t mathed yet. Another thing that hasn’t changed is that I still see these multi-millionaires and billionaires who continue to keep hoarding more and more money, though maybe I do understand them a little. Maybe they enjoy the work. Maybe they loathe their families. Maybe they don’t like reading or vacations. Maybe what they like is piles of money. And probably power. And I find that kind of sad.

I hope that one day I can retire. And if I don’t, it’s because I run a wildly successful company where I overpay and over-employ and have really nice offices and great benefits, and I’m making enough money to live a good life on, and not a penny more.

I am someone who seeks to be right. I often don’t contribute to conversations on topics I haven’t spent at least some time doing research on. And in my desire to be right, if someone challenges me, I am open to being wrong. I will listen and evaluate, and if I determine that I am either wrong or just not fully correct, I will gladly adjust my position, because I want to be right.

Contrast that with the abundance of people currently on display in the conservative Right in America who are much more obsessed with being “not wrong”. Being “not wrong” is very different than being right. Being “not wrong” means that you will not accept challenges or corrections, you have your position and you will not be moved because you are “not wrong”. In fact, when presented with any information that contradicts your position you will essentially refuse to hear it, and you will double down on your position because you are “not wrong”. Even if someone were to show you that you aren’t at fault for being wrong, but that you have based your position on false information that someone else provided, on lies that someone else told, you will not move because you are “not wrong”. You have internalized that you are “not wrong”, made it your identity, and any suggestion that you are wrong, for any reason, is seen as a personal attack on you, and you will respond by, at minimum, putting your foot down and insisting that you are “not wrong”. You might even lash out at people, and turn things around, stating that clearly the evidence being shown to you must be fake, that the person saying you are wrong has an agenda, some nefarious purpose for convincing other people that your position is wrong when it is “not wrong”.

This is particularly prevalent in the Trump administration. They make decisions, those decisions turn out to be bad, but since they are “not wrong” they don’t reverse course unless they can frame as “part of the plan all along”. Like tariffs. Trump doesn’t understand how to employ tariffs in a good way, partly because he will not accept a situation that is mutually beneficial. He always has to win. And he defines winning as “paying him money”. You cannot explain any of this to him, because he has his (incorrect) understanding of tariffs and he is “not wrong”. When his tariff announcements are received poorly, he doesn’t listen to any of the criticism or analysis because he is “not wrong”. He knows that tariffs are the solution, he knows it, and he is “not wrong”, so anyone suggesting that tariffs are wrong, bad, or not working, they have to be wrong because he is “not wrong”. And further, how could he be wrong when people keep paying him money to get an exception to his tariffs, that they don’t want because they are bad and will ruin companies, so he must be “not wrong” since it is making him money.

Climate change is fake. They know this, and they are “not wrong”. It no longer matters how many studies there are, or how many scientists support it, or even how many wildfires burn, or if the sea levels rise as the glaciers melt, they are “not wrong”.

Masks do not work. They know this, and they are “not wrong”. Any attempt to require masks is a personal attack. It doesn’t matter if you can show that masks do work.

Vaccines make people sick. They know this, and they are “not wrong”. Decades of history with employing vaccines safely, mountains of supporting evidence. We have all the stats showing how many people used to die from various illnesses, and now people aren’t dying. But all that doesn’t matter.

Trans people are dangerous. They know this, and they are “not wrong”. It doesn’t matter how few trans women are actually in women’s sports. It doesn’t matter if every study on gender affirming care shows that it is at worst harmless and reversible, but more often is greatly beneficial.

Illegal immigrants are invading this country, mass murdering people, and stealing all our stuff. They know this, and they are “not wrong”. And no one will inform them otherwise.

I could go on. Every position they hold they are “not wrong”, and they are willing to burn down the whole system, the entire world, before they would ever admit to possibly, maybe, being mistaken.

We can’t go on like this. We will never survive if we keep periodically putting in charge people who are “not wrong”. We need more people who strive to be right.

We bought this house in January of 2020. That was a hell of a year to move into a new house. Just as we got mostly unpacked and ready to tackle some home improvements things shut down and the supply chain buckled and … well … not much got done.

That was okay though. We changed our minds of some things since then. But bit by bit we’ve been doing a bit of painting and moving something around. My home office set up has changed several times. First it was going to be in the basement. There is an unfinished room we were going to have finished. But back in 2020 we couldn’t get anyone to do the work for us, and we couldn’t find all the supplies we needed to do it ourselves, so it didn’t happen. So I set up my computers in one of the guest rooms. And then I set them up in both of our guest rooms, one for my fun/gaming PC and one for my work computer, because I learned that having the separate from work and home to be important. Then my gaming computer went to the “music room” on the first floor, and I moved my work desk into the closet of the guest room, which was now the “LEGO room”.

The closet was an inspired choice. It’s one of those shallow wide closets, with double doors, not folding or sliding ones, just deep enough to put an IKEA desk in. I put the desk and some shelves, and it works great. The inspired part is that when the work day is done, or on Friday when I sign off for the weekend, I can close the closet doors and work just goes away. Hidden from view, and, as they say, out of sight, out of mind. The mental load that takes off at the end of a day/week is so lovely.

The Issues

Once of the issues with the closet is that it, like most closets, doesn’t have any power outlets. So I had to plug in surge protectors with very long cords into outlets in the main room and then run them along the wall and under the door to be able to plug everything in. Another issue is that the light in that closet sucks.

This brings us to recently, when we finally began to do the work to implement the full vision of the “LEGO room”. We emptied out the room and I migrated my work to the “music room” for the days I’m home (our return-to-office policy puts me there two days a week). We painted, and now are in the process of buying wood to build the French cleat shelving that is going to cover most of the walls to maximize modularity of display for our LEGO sets, mostly buildings. So while this was happening, this was my moment to address the closet’s power problem.

The Project

First, replacing the light. The builders decided that the best light for this closet was one of those under-cabinet lights you usually find in kitchens. In fact, our kitchen had four of the exact same ones, which I replaced months ago with better adjustable lights since the old ones kept flickering. I couldn’t decide on what sort of light I wanted, and with the builder’s choice of light it meant their wasn’t actually a proper light box in the wall or ceiling to install a normal light anyway. Then my wife had an idea: what if I put in an outlet and then we could plug in some pendant lights we have from IKEA, which we could then hang from the ceiling wherever? Genius.

Second, a power outlet for my electronics, which include: a printer, laptop, a monitor, speakers, a GoogleTV connected to the monitor, and my Nintendo Switch. The monitor connects to the laptop, GoogleTV and Switch, and I toggle it to whichever one I need. I only use it as a second screen for the laptop when I have meetings, and the Switch is there because my team at work sometimes “commutes” on WFH days with Mario Kart 8. Luckily, there is an existing plug outside the closet on the same wall. It spends much of it’s time behind the open door, and it where I’d had my surge protector previously. I can jump off that and put a new outlet inside the closet.

Execution

We head off to Lowe’s to buy what I need, and I have to get them to unlock the cage the electrical wire is kept in, because apparently people will steal it for the copper. Wire, four outlet boxes, two outlets, and two cover plates. Just in case you are new to home improvement and electrical work, when you buy outlet boxes there are two kinds: new work and old work. It is literally what it sounds like. New work boxes are for when you have an open wall and can screw directly into the stud at a 90 degree angle. Old work boxes are for when you have an existing wall you are cutting a hole in and either need to screw into the stud at a 45 degree angle, or you won’t have a stud to attach to and need boxes with these little plastic flap things that brace against the drywall itself. Obviously attaching to the stud is preferred, but not alway possible. I bought both kinds of old work boxes because I hadn’t cut into the wall yet and my stud finder isn’t always reliable.

Back at the house I do the light first. The existing wire is in the ceiling, fairly close to the front wall. I make sure the power is off and then I verify the power is off with my tester. Then use the outlet box and the cover plate to judge where to cut the hole and the outlet box as a template to outline, and it happens to be around the existing spot the wire is coming out. When I cut the rectangle of drywall out I discover it is literally perfectly lined along the stud. I do some test fits and adjustments, and then I feed the wire through the box, put the box in the hole, and screw it’s two screws into the stud. I wire up the outlet, finish installing it, put on the cover plate, restore the power and test the sockets. Success! I hang the pendant lights.

Now the other outlet. On the outside I determine which side of the existing outlet the stud is on. On the inside I’ll want to be within the same gap between studs as it but against the other stud. I measure how far from the closet door the existing outlet is on the outside, then I go inside and measure the same distance. Now I know where my gap is. I use my stud finder to find the other stud, then I use my drill and do a test hole about an inch off where I think the stud is just to be just I’m in the gap. I use that pilot hole as a place to inside my blade and then cut toward the stud until the stud stops me. Now I know where the stud is exactly. I use my outlet box again as a template and draw out the hole I need to cut, then I cut it out. Because the outlet on the outside has it’s plate off and the outlet is hanging out, a little light is coming through, and from the inside I am able to verify that I didn’t screw up and I’m definitely in the same gap. From the outside outlet I punch open one of the unused wire access points in its box, then I feed my cable in. I fish it out through my inside hole and then pull enough wire through. With the power off, and verified off with the tester, I attach one end of the wire to the existing outlet in the appropriate spots, then reinstall that outlet in its box and close it up. I then go inside, feed the wire through my new outlet box, put the box in the hole, screw the screws into the stud, and then I wire up the new outlet and install it in the box. I turn the power back on and test both the old existing sockets and the new sockets, just to be sure I didn’t mess things up. All working!

Wrapping Up

Then I clean up all my drywall mess, and put away my tools, and pack up the extra wire (I needed like two feet but couldn’t buy less than fifteen), and put the two unused old work outlet boxes that are for when you can’t connect to studs in a bag with the receipt to return to the store later. With that done, we can move on to the next part, which is building a new desk and putting some better shelves in the closet for the printer and other odds and ends. There are plans for this space as it returns to being my office, among other things.

Throughout all of this, I was fairly confident in my ability to do the work. One, because I’ve done it before. In our old house, we had a bonus room off our garage, and the wall it shared with the garage had no power in the bonus room, so my father and I performed the same “add an outlet off the existing one on the other side of the wall” process, but with him leading as at that time I hadn’t done it before. But also because my father had taught me this sort of stuff, both when I was much younger and later when I lived in the house just three doors down the street from him. Not to mention I’ve always been a “figure out how stuff works” kind of guy.

Not everyone has a dad who can pass on this kind of knowledge, but as long as you are willing to learn, and do a little leg work to ensure you aren’t getting bad info, YouTube videos are a great place to pick up these sorts of skills. There are some good channels that just do thorough guides for simple home improvement and maintenance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying everyone can and should do this. Remember that unfinished room I mentioned? When we finish it I want to add three or four power outlets in there, and I’m not going to just daisy chain them off the one outlet in there. No, I’m going to hire an electrician and probably add a new circuit entirely, because that is not work I’m willing to do, and our plans for that room are bit more intense.

Still, this was a very satisfying project. I can only hope installing the French cleat shelving goes as smoothly.

More accurately, I keep not posting. There are drafts, many drafts. And a lot of them are political, and repetitive, because right now we are back in the Trump-cycle where he does something stupid or crazy or unprecedented or whatever, and the news reacts to it, and the people in power talk but do little else, and then he does something stupid or crazy or unprecedented and we repeat. The only difference between this term and the last is that the blatant open corruption, and the party behind him pretty openly supporting it.

And I keep writing these things, often specific, sometimes general, and by the time I’m done writing I’m just exhausted, and I don’t want to see it anymore, and I don’t post it. Which doesn’t totally make sense, because unposted means I’m the only one who sees it. If I posted then maybe someone might read it, and might respond, though likely not. Maybe that’s why I don’t post, because at least in draft form I have only potential rejection and potential no response, but if I post it will confirm that my efforts don’t matter to anyone.

I probably need therapy.

But at least I’m posting this.

Closing the book on 2024, that was quite a year.

Not for this blog though. As usual I started off with a couple of posts and then ignored it for eleven months. About halfway through the year I decided to focus on making posts on Substack, and I made one post then abandoned it too. I mean, I’d made one post there in 2023 as well, so maybe that can be a new tradition: a single Substack post in July each year. If you are curious, I recently posted both of those here.

But it was quite a year in other ways.

Work is still good. I enjoy the work and the compensation is enough. It isn’t perfect, of course, and there are issues with some aspects of the job, but nothing that sours the overall experience. I got a promotion this year to “Staff Engineer” which has meaning in tech circles, but not so much outside, and given the small-ish size of the company and the large number of Staff and Principle Engineers, my job hasn’t changed much – though I’ve had it hinted to me that there might be some things in the works for 2025. I generally go to the office twice a week, which is enough. While I am, in general, not one for casual social interaction, I have always loved crowds.

Dante Hicks: You hate people!
Randal Graves: But I love gatherings. Isn’t it ironic?

from the movie “Clerks”

Being around people, knowing they exist, is a good feeling, and enough of a touchstone that it gives me energy and allows me to focus better than when I spend too many days disconnected.

The other side of work is vacation. I may have mentioned it before but one of the reasons I love my employer is that they genuinely understand that turning off and getting away from work actually helps you be better at your job. To that end, this year was the most cruising we’ve done. The first was a New Year’s cruise that I mentioned it my wrap up post last year. Then we had the every-two-years Nerd Boat group of friends cruise. And lastly we went on one for my fiftieth birthday. We have two cruises booked for 2025, and two more for 2026. So yeah, I guess we are cruisers now.

I slipped in that last paragraph that I turned fifty this year. I don’t feel fifty. I’ve always felt younger than my age, because I tend to enjoy new stuff more than people my age who tend to hold on to the things they already love, and because I’ve generally tended to have friends who are older than me, making me feel like the “young one”. But 2025 is going to be the year I finally start doing all the health and doctor stuff I’ve been ignoring for too long, because, you know, fifty.

Anyway, after a 2023 where I blew my reading goal out of the water, I completely tanked it this year. I only read 11 books. There are reasons for this, one of which is that I have 3 or 4 books still “in progress” because they are work/career books that I’ve been reading in bits when I am motivated. Another reason is TikTok. Too many nights, rather than reading before bed, the wife and I have instead scrolled through an hour of videos. I like it, but also, it can be such a time suck. I need to work on tempering it.

Writing, well, this blog is about it. I need to do more.

Exercising went well until it didn’t. However, at work I won a raffle and there is a Tonal home gym coming soon, so I’ll have an excuse to get back at it.

Everything else… I didn’t practice much guitar. I fell off the Making Art Everyday wagon. I didn’t work on the personal projects. Too many home improvements didn’t happen.

And while things weren’t going gangbusters before, that Tuesday in November was a real gut punch. I was so excited, so motivated, everything was looking up, and then… it wasn’t. People voted to drag this country back to it’s worst eras by pretending they were awesome. We’ve elected a narcissistic, lying criminal to the office of the president. Part of me wants to say it is because people have believed the lies and been duped into supporting him, but even though that is certainly true for some, the fact that both times he won it was against a woman a part of me knows that there are a lot of men in the world who are sexist. They may not think of themselves that way, but all of the reasons they pretend are objective for not voting for her are all rooted in misogyny and sexism. I am disappointed. And I am tired. But I will keep showing up, and I will keep voting, and I will keep fighting.

My wish for 2025: May the worst people get none of what they desire and all of what they deserve. For the rest of us, I hope we can all avoid being collateral damage, and success in our resistances.

Happy New Year.