Rob Fahrni

The Bulwark - Morning Shots: “Right now, the pro-Putin (or anti-anti-Putin) faction is clearly in the minority, but they continue to have out-sized influence, especially on Russian state TV, where they provide aid and comfort to the Kremlin.”

For some strange reason one of the two political parties in the United States loves autocrats, dictators, and megalomaniacs.

I don’t understand it and they don’t understand my desire to have a better America, a people focused America. One with a few social services that make us better, stronger, and equitable.

A couple I can think of right off the bat; Universal, single payer, healthcare and a university education for anyone who wants it, for nothing out of pocket.

SFFWorld: “On the other hand, John Scalzi all but admits he’s going for pure entertainment with this novel and he most definitely hits the target.”

I really enjoy following John Scalzi on Twitter and his weblog, not to mention loving Old Man’s War.

I don’t read very often. That’s not something to be proud of, it’s just who I am, but I do have Kaiju Preservation Society and hope to dig into it.

The Atlantic: “Russian President Vladimir Putin is in trouble. Despite his limited gains on the ground in Ukraine, he is facing strategic defeat in a war that no one (including me) would have expected him to lose.”

Here’s hoping the people of Ukraine continue to lay the wood on Russian invaders and are eventually joined by the people of Russia to oust Putin.

The Verge: “The real issue is that $1,599 is a lot of money, and here, it’s buying you panel tech that is woefully behind the curve. Compared to Apple’s other displays across the Mac, iPhone, and iPad lineup, the Studio Display is actually most notable for the things it doesn’t have.”

So, I was kind of excited by this announcement, but a friend brought me back to reality.

It’s the same panel in the current Intel Mac, for like the past 10 years.

The \*exact\* same panel. For $1600.

Totally half-assed.

— Oluseyi Sonaiya (@OluseyiSonaiya) March 17, 2022

It’s a good display and you can get something just as nice from Samsung for less. It just doesn’t have the nice case around the display and, by all reports, has a really crummy stand. I’d personally use a VESA mount, so it wouldn’t bug me.

Hey, I’m still using some $300 Dell 24in display I bought years ago and I’m happy with it.

I also believe 27in is about as large as I’d like to go. I’m a single monitor guy and 27in should do nicely.

Mental Floss: “But Uslan wouldn’t be talked out of his dream. He convinced the father of a co-worker, former MGM executive Benjamin Melniker, of the project’s commercial potential, and in October 1979, after six months of negotiation, against all advice or logic, the production partners acquired Batman’s film rights for a reported $50,000. Uslan immediately quit his day job.”

This is a wonderful read about a kid who never gave up on Batman!

I also love me some Dark Knight action and I’m hoping the new, grittier, Batman is able to give us A Death in the Family on the big screen. Affleck’s Batman gave us a brief glimpse of Jason Todd’s Robin suit in Batman vs. Superman.

Cult of Mac: ”During the fighting, Petryk is hunkering down with her teenage daughter and husband. The family has been sheltering for days from Russian bombardment, sleeping in an underground parking garage at night and venturing upstairs to their apartment to work during the day.”

Great piece. I can’t imagine trying to work while my city is being bombed.

If I take a couple minutes to clean this stump up it might make a decent seat or place to put a flower pot.

CNN: ”Police in St. Petersburg arrested at least 350 anti-war protesters on Wednesday, taking the total number of protesters detained or arrested to 7,624 since the invasion began, according to an independent organization that tracks human rights violations in Russia.”

Al Corbett: ”Now, the idea is to throw low-level optimization questions at you that you will never need to deal with in your professional life — it’s not like we’re writing operating systems anymore…”

The interview process can be quite hellish. We have a live coding session with candidates at WillowTree, but to be fair I would call them different than the “Hey, write this complicated algorithm thing for me” interviews.

We work in teams. On those teams we need to make sure we can actually work with our co-workers. The coding exercise tests the grasp of your chose platform as well as how you interact with others.

If that type of exercise doesn’t work for you, you can choose to walk folks through some code you’ve written and explain it, as well as answer questions about it. Think of it as an interactive pull request.

Vanity Fair: ”Then, the day before Ratliff was supposed to shoot his scenes, Hanks fired him. The stated reason: Hanks felt Ratliff had ‘dead eyes.’”

I haven’t listened to this episode but I’m looking forward to it.

Hollywood Life: ”Barry makes a brief appearance in The Batman, and his scene teases his hopeful return as Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime.”

Our youngest daughter and I caught The Batman yesterday afternoon (it was empty.) We both enjoyed it.

That scene with Joker, however brief, was a great scene. Only the smallest glimpse and I knew who it was.

I liked Pattinson as Batman, well done. He’s definitely a brooding version of Batman, but I like it. Gordon, played by Jeffrey Wright, was also a nice imagining of his character.

Fingers crossed they make another one.

This is not exactly encouraging.

Dave Rogers: ”But people are weird. Many, perhaps most, don’t leave. Maybe they don’t feel they have anywhere to go, maybe they feel defiantly that it’s their city, their home. I don’t know. But even with the Russians just kilometers outside the city, people went to the movies.”

We’re so fortunate we’ve never had to live in a country with war raging all around us.

Слава Україні 🇺🇦

The Loop: “Over the past couple of years, I have taken time to address issues in my personal life. In that time, I realized that there is so much more to life than work—I’ll be honest, that revelation came as a massive shock to me, but I couldn’t be happier."

All he best, Jim.

LONG LIVE THE BEARD!

Steve Beschloss: ”It’s hard to quantify the impact of Zelensky’s decision thus far to stay in Kyiv and fight with his countrymen against the invading Russians. But his rejection of the US offer to evacuate—‘The fight is here,’ he reportedly told the Americans. ‘I need ammunition, not a ride.’—is already the stuff of legend. I wouldn’t underestimate how meaningful his courage is in sustaining morale and motivating Ukrainians, be they trained soldiers operating sophisticated weapons or even college students and grandmothers producing home-made Molotov cocktails to fend off their attackers.”

It has been very inspiring to see Zelensky stay and prepare to fight. The fight is coming and I hope he and his fellow citizens can continue to repel Russian forces.

Robert Reich: ”The biggest difference between the old cold war and the new one is that authoritarian neo-fascism is not just an external threat. A version of it has also taken over one of the major political parties in the United States.”

I hope we don’t see World War III or a new Civil War. Here’s hoping Putin and Trump end up in the despots waste bin of time and Democracy survives.

Who knows, maybe Russia can finally become a true Democracy once Putin and his Oligarchs are out of the picture.

Where were you when world war 3 started?

— Derek Powazek (@fraying) February 24, 2022

The snow is pretty much gone from the storm on January 3.

Today I’m going to cleanup some of the damage caused by it. Dragging busted branches and parts of trees into the backyard for cutting up later.

I also need to shovel off a big pile of snow at the top of our driveway and haul wood up from the lower part of our backyard, stack it under the deck stairs, and put some on our front porch for easy access.

The forecast was fairly grim earlier in the week. They were calling for over a foot of snow. Recent forecasts are showing between six and nine inches.

The thing that concerns me is the call for a mix of sleet and freezing rain that is supposed to follow the snow.

When all is said and done I hope we still have power, then the cleanup begins. 🤞🏼

I enjoy snow, I really do. It’s peaceful, fun to watch while is falling, and the ground covered in white fluff is really beautiful.

On Monday, January 3, we got somewhere between ten inches and a foot of snow. It caught everyone off guard to get that much, about half that was forecast. The amount of snow was fine. The wetness of the snow was a problem.

When we expect snow you’ll find Dominion Energy trucks staged at various places throughout the region. Power goes down and they bust their butts to get it back up. They really do, no sarcasm in that statement at all.

Monday morning I got out of bed and the snow was really coming down and had been for a few hours by that point. No sooner had Kim started making a mocha and I making a pot of coffee the power went out and was out until early afternoon, Friday, January 7.

By around 10AM we started hearing trees break and fall. Our own beautiful magnolia lost a couple fairly big branches and the top broke off. That’s a real heartbreaker. I have no idea what it means for the future of it? Fingers crossed it doesn’t have to come down.

Around 11AM I could hear chainsaws firing up all around us. Our neighbor across the street and one house down lost half of a tree. It fell into the road and had to be cut into chunks to clear the road. Not long after our neighbor directly across from us lost a fairly large tree, I’d say 30-foot. It fell across the roadway and was blocking our driveway. We fired up the chainsaw and got to work on it.

Our neighborhood is amazing. Folks from all sides descended on this monster and we were able to chop it up and clear the roadway in no time. I’m grateful for our neighbors.

It was pretty frigid that day with temperatures in the high 20’s during the day and teens overnight. Of course that meant that wet snow iced up.

Tuesday we started working on the driveway. My gut told me Monday afternoon I should go out and start clearing the driveway. I was cold and decided I didn’t want to do it. That was a huge mistake. Wet snow and low temps cause ice. Duh. It took forever to clear it up. Our daughter, Taylor, slipped on the ice and landed hard on her hand and hip. She was done for the day. Kim helped her in and took care of her. They’d done amazing work clearing the snow and ice. I was able to work on a particularly stubborn bit of ice with help from the sun and cleared off a bunch of it. Kim joined me after a while and we got it cleaned up. Kim was able to back the car up the hill at that point. I’m thankful for my family.

By late Tuesday roads started to improve from Palmyra down the hill into Charlottesville. Kim took me for a ride so I could check Slack and let work know I was ok. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention our cell service stopped working Monday afternoon. No communication in or out.

We decided to take a trip to check out the roads. They were mostly in good shape. Trees down all over the place. There are some steep S curves not far from home that looked like a war zone. That mess was cleared up by regular folk. They spent hours down there clearing the way. I’m thankful for kind, thoughtful, caring people that think of others.

We decided we really wanted a hot meal Tuesday night, our house was a freezer with the exception of the room around the fireplace. We found that our favorite Japanese place was open. We had great hibachi chicken and steak that night. So delicious! I’m grateful for folks that brave the elements so we could have a hot meal.

I’m thankful we have a fireplace and wood to burn. We had bread, cheese, and some frozen ham leftover from Christmas dinner. We pulled that out and thawed it and we’re able to get along with sandwiches, mostly. I’m thankful for leftovers.

This week has been great. The snow is still hanging around, but it is melting. Our driveway is clear and the roads are dry. There is danger around the corner. We’re expected to get up to a foot of snow between Sunday night and Monday morning.

Here’s hoping the power doesn’t go out.

I decided I’d go to my favorite coffee shop to work on Stream.

I’m sipping my cofffee, coding away, distanced from folks, of course.

A lady walks in and starts loudly discussing how, on Christmas Day, while the family was together her sister finds out she was exposed to someone with COVID. Swell.

Turns out she’s an employee coming in for her shift.

I just packed up and left. Will this mess ever end?

There is a part of me that would love to put together an alternate podcast directory to Apple’s.

Apple has given so much to the podcasting community, but you never know how long they’ll continue to make it freely available. Remember, they’re a services company now.

The service I’m thinking of would provide a shared web crawler, Administrative UI, and a nice Dashboard for supporters and advertisers. It would also have its own API and provide one compatible with Apple’s offering.

I don’t think it should be run by an individual, or a small company. It should be a cooperative, supported by the podcasting applications and podcasters using it.

Another thing that could fall out of it is an ads business that small podcasters and podcast app creators could take advantage of.

Maybe that’s just too much to expect from a small collective of podcasters and podcast app makers?

Just a thought I needed to get out of my brain.

I had to capture this for future reference. This is astoundingly sad.

At its peak (1952), polio killed 3,145 Americans. After a vaccine became available in 1955, all 50 states passed laws requiring polio vaccination before kids can enter public schools.

COVID killed 345,000 Americans in 2020, and has killed 416,000 more so far in 2021.

— Montana FTW! (@dmahugh) November 14, 2021

Ten months ago today, the sitting President incited domestic terrorists who then breached the Capitol during which time he told them he loved them in front of everybody.

— rands (@rands) November 6, 2021

Of course we the people have zero power to do anything about it. Fortunately he left the White House but he’s still free to do whatever he wants and has wacko backers in the Halls of Congress pushing his fascist agenda.

We will have a king dictator in office if we cannot stop him and his ilk.

Really happy with how the finished product turned out.

Fabric in, pipe in, filled with rock, wrapped, and fully covered.

When I plant lawn next spring you’ll never know there’s a French drain under there.

I have a bunch of extra dirt to shuffle around the back yard, but that’s a good problem to have.

Progress!

Dallas Morning News: ”One post from a widely-followed QAnon social media account said that after being reinstated as president, Trump would step down. The post said JFK Jr. would then become president, Michael Flynn would be appointed as his vice president, and Trump would ultimately become the “king of kings,” according to Newsweek.”

The QAnon people are completely insane.

Dave Rogers: “I think many people who enjoy posting and sharing on Facebook, would be better served by creating and maintaining a blog. You can achieve nearly the same level of ease of discovery through RSS and readers/aggregators, that you curate. What appears in your timeline is under your control. And there’s just enough friction there, in terms of reacting or responding, to serve as kind of a dampening force. Responses can be more thoughtful, the “hot take” can take a moment to cool."

Of course that paragraph caught my eye, but this is a very thoughtful piece by Dave that shares his rekindled enthusiasm for blogging.

CNN: “The report also details an extraordinary three-hour meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump tried to win support for a plan to install as acting attorney general a loyalist, Jeffrey Clark, who he thought would help him overturn the 2020 election. In the end, the ex-President was talked out of the move after being told it would trigger mass Justice Department resignations."

If our country cannot arrest, try, and hopefully convict these people of crimes then we deserve to lose our republic and have Trump as dictator.

It’s unbelievable to me that nothing has been done, that Trump is telling his chronies to ignore subpoenas. We’re going to mess around and let our country fall to this man that causes only grief and destruction wherever he goes.

We have to rise up and war must be waged if the Justice Department refuses to take action and Trump is reelected in 2024. Especially if he refuses to leave office after his second term. Then war is inevitable.

Let’s not allow it to come to that. I’d rather see Trump and his associates imprisoned. It’s what they deserve and don’t pull that “We can’t jail a Presidet” bullshit with me. It’s time we did. Trump is dangerous.

Brent Simmons: ”But I kind of think not, because there’s a bigger issue: I expect and hope that eventually I will no longer be a public person — no blog, no Twitter, no public online presence at all.”

Wow. This could be a big move by one of those early Mac developers and bloggers I looked to for inspiration.

Of course I can’t say these thoughts haven’t crossed my mind and I definitely blog less these days. Our hope is to someday live a more nomadic lifestyle, travel the country. I expect that would lead to more blogging.

I can totally see where Brent is coming from.

I know of one person who did this; Mark Pilgrim.

UPDATE: Brent replied to my tweet that linked to this article and thought the title was a bit strong. He’s correct, it is. My mind went to Mark Pilgrim’s “digital disappearance” and I applied that to Brent’s post.

It is a bit over the top. I am sorry for that, Brent.

If you’re a recruiter from Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or Facebook please save yourself some time and don’t pursue me as a candidate.

I’ve been around for a long time as a developer but I’m not someone you’d want to hire.

I’m not that smart. More than likely I won’t be able to get through your interview process. I do ok as a developer but I’m not an algorithm guy. I try my best to write easy to read, maintainable, and stable code.

I’m not a ninja, rock star, or 10x developer. I’m kind of slow paced, iterative, and discerning. Definitely not a code factory.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Bull Durham I’d compare myself to Crash Davis – played by Kevin Costner. My best days are behind me. I had my time in The Show as part of Visio – which became part of Microsoft – but that was over 20-years ago. I’m in that stage of my career where I’m trying to help younger developers learn the business so they can get to The Show.

I still like to write code but I’m not a good fit for Big COs. I don’t have the energy or desire to work 80-hours a week for months on end. Living for the company.

I’m beginning my twilight season and I’m certain you’ll find your perfect candidate.

Take care, and remember, we only get one shot at this beautiful life. Make the most of it.

P.S. - If you’re a Facebook recruiter, this is the page I want you to see. You should really question why you work for a company like Facebook. If the answer is “because money” you’re doing it wrong. Facebook is a vile company.

Quartz: “The investment in Redmond also assumes workers will be be using offices in the future, when it’s clear many won’t. When given the choice of working remotely, many workers opt to stay home (or find a nearby coffeeshop), to the extent that Automattic, maker of Wordpress, shut down its San Francisco office because no one was using it."

This is from a late 2017 article. Clearly folks have wanted to work remotely for quite a while. COVID-19 has definitely driven that point home, no pun intended.

I’ll continue to advocate for it.

Kim and I

Bubblegum Alley, San Luis Obispo 2013

The weather is conspiring against us. It makes working outside fun when all it does is rain all weekend. 😀