More of Kim’s flowers. They’re very happy.

Our magnolia has been blooming for the better part of the month.

I love it because it reminds me of my Mom.

What if Texas secedes?

Eat your own dog food.Think about the repercussions of that. I can’t fathom everything that would change for folks in the new Republic of Gilead.

All connections with the United States would have to be severed for a period of time.

All government run services would be shuttered.

Any military bases would have to be closed permanently, equipment, and personnel reassigned.

Any companies operating in Texas would have to decide if they’d like to stay. If they do then they have to wait for negotiations between the United States and their new country to work out trade agreements.

If they decide to move, all that equipment and people, if they choose to go, all have to move to some new location.

What about friends and family? Potentially separated for an extended period of time, perhaps forever if agreements cannot be worked out with the US.

All services provided by US companies would have to halt.

Any transportation companies based on Texas would have to get out unless they wanted to stay.

Universities would have to work with the government to establish agreements for students to come into the country for their education. Would that education be worth anything in the United States, if folks wanted jobs in the US.

Agreements for resources and water rights would have to be negotiated.

All Texas representatives would be removed from their government posts and returned to Texas.

The United States would be well within its rights, unless otherwise negotiated, to raze any buildings and sell any properties owned by the government. Razing seems the most likely outcome. I wouldn’t want to provide Gilead with military bases. I’d strip them clean.

That’s just my naive take on the matter. It would be such a terrible outcome for the entirety of the United States. That includes Texans. They’d become a third world country almost overnight.

Texas is becoming a safe haven for the radical right. The MAGA crowd loves them some guns and loves to make women’s lives complete hell.

They really want to be Gilead.

Texas is going full nutters

Watch out! It's a blog fly!The Texas Tribune: “HOUSTON — Meeting at their first in-person convention since 2018, Texas Republicans on Saturday acted on a raft of resolutions and proposed platform changes to move their party even further to the right. They approved measures declaring that President Joe Biden ‘was not legitimately elected’ and rebuking Sen. John Cornyn for taking part in bipartisan gun talks. They also voted on a platform that declares homosexuality ‘an abnormal lifestyle choice’ and calls for Texas schoolchildren ‘to learn about the humanity of the preborn child.’”

Texas is getting more and more radical by the day. They may become the new Capitol of the next Civil War, at this rate. It wouldn’t surprise me if they started talking about secession again.

It’s gonna get really ugly in Texas I’m afraid.

Panic’s Nova Parser and Grammars

PanicPanic’s Nova Developer Forum: “Now, in my opinion and after laying all to bare in this way, Tree Sitter stands as the best path forward for both Nova’s team as well as our extension developers. Keep in mind, I know little about the actual performance of Tree Sitter against our current parser (both of which are marketed as very fast), and likely won’t until time is taken to actually try. There are more things to consider beyond the raw speed of its C source, as Nova’s features need to sit atop it and bridge to Swift, which may take time to get right. So, that’s all within a grain of salt.”

Panic is full of talented people and I love how transparent they are.

This would, obviously, be a huge change to the guts of Nova and I can see why they’re approaching it so cautiously.

In the end I’m looking forward to final decision and which direction they decide to go with.

Tree Sitter seems like a solid choice, even if it’s not created by Panic and being written in C should make for fast, small, code.

Hopefully the Tree Sitter folks will welcome Panic input and PR’s with open arms so Nova and all other developers benefit.

COVID, Day Nine

This is going to be my final post on the matter unless I take a turn for the worse.

I seem to be in a fairly steady state at the moment; exhausted, foggy head, runny nose, and cough.

It seems it’s been like this for a few days. I’ve never had a fever, at least none I was aware of.

And, yes, I can still smell and taste things. I consider that a major victory.

Unfortunately I didn’t catch these at the height of bloom. They’re still beautiful and smell wonderful.

Saturday Morning Coffee

Espresso ShotI’m sitting on the porch this morning, what’s left of it, enjoying a cool breeze and my morning coffee. The dogs are being their usual lazy selves, just chillin with me.

For the past week I’ve lived in the fog of COVID. It’s staying power is surprising. I felt pretty good a few days back only to hit a wall the next day.

Anywho, I hope you enjoy the links.

The Bulwark: “‘Team Normal’ is the latest example of a delusion that was ingrained deep within the Republican ruling class during the Trump era. It was filled with, as I categorized them in Why We Did It, “messiahs” and “junior messiahs” who told themselves they were one of the good ones, trying to nudge things in the right direction—from the inside.”

[Times Union - Maureen Dowd](https://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Maureen-Dowd-Donald-Trump-American-Monster-17236057.php ?utm_source=rob-fahrni): “It never for a moment crossed Donald Trump’s mind that an American president committing sedition would be a debilitating, corrosive thing for the country. It was just another way for the Emperor of Chaos to burnish his title.”

[Politico](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/11/pence-trump-jan-6-lawyer-memo-00038996 ?utm_source=rob-fahrni): “In the three-page document, attorney Greg Jacob concluded that if Pence were to embrace Trump’s demand that he single-handedly block or delay the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, he would be breaking multiple provisions of the Electoral Count Act, the law that has governed the transfer of power since 1887.”

We’re three days into a seven day presentation of crimes committed by and for the Trump Administration.

Trumpism needs to be burned to the ground. It has no place in the United States.

Trump, at a minimum, must be disqualified from running for any public office. He is a danger to the Republic.

No matter how this plays out I feel like we’re a stones throw away from civil war. It seems unavoidable. I hope I’m wrong.

Platformer: “Will Twitter’s mostly remote workforce be able to continue working from home? Maybe, if they’re ‘excellent,’ Musk said, according to Bloomberg’s live blog. But it’s ‘much better if you are on location physically,’ he said, according to the New York Times ’ Mike Isaac.”

Axios: “Our thought bubble: If Musk had anything new to tell the world about his plans, he didn’t choose to share it with his future employees, and rather than wooing them, he threw down a gauntlet: ‘If someone is getting useful things done, great. if not, why are they at the company?’”

As the boss you can do whatever the heck you want, especially if your company is privately held.

I don’t think this will end well for Musk. The “excellent” employees may bail out right along with the “normal” employees.

Heck, it may never come to Musk having any influence over Twitter staffing or the company as a whole. He balked at completing his agreed upon deal.

Here’s hoping he fails, pays Twitter a bunch of money because of his failure, and slinks away, back to his cave.

Linux Journal: “Linus coded in seclusion for a brief time, then shared his new conception with the world. Within days of beginning the project in June of 2005, Linus' git revision control system had become fully self-hosting. Within weeks, it was ready to host Linux kernel development. Within a couple months, it reached full functionality.”

The amount of amazing software created by Linus Torvalds is incredible. Every project I’ve worked on for years and years has used git as its revision control system.

Heck, I’d imagine most software development teams use it in some capacity. Wild.

Oh, yeah, and he created that little OS called Linux. Minor stuff.😳

Vox: “Andres is back to the office three days a week, and like many knowledge workers, he’s not happy about it. He says that while he and the other executive assistants at his Boston law firm have been forced back, the attorneys haven’t been following the rules. That’s partly because the rules don’t quite make sense, and people in all types of jobs are only coming in because they have to, not because there’s a good reason to go in.”

Last week at WillowTree our remote only branch had a quarterly on-site, our first. I was really excited about it. It was like going back to school after summer. I was all in.

I finally got to meet folks I had never met face to face, hug some necks, and enjoy pairing with people on code, all in person.

All-in-all it was a great week.

That Friday I tested positive for COVID. It absolutely sucks and makes me want to stay home forever, never returning to the office.

All this time I’ve been so cautious. I masked early on when others didn’t, then one day I let my guard down and didn’t mask. After that I just threw caution to the wind like everybody else and went maskless.

Of course I was the ONLY person at the on-site to get COVID. Yep, as of today I’m the only reported case. While that is very comforting, it’s also surprising.

Anywho. Being back at work with people was nice. I still prefer my home office, with my home food, and my short commute. Sounds like others do as well.

I’m grateful WillowTree saw the benefit of having remote employees. 🧡

Tiny Apple Core

COVID, Day Eight

I slept until noon today. My wife had to send our daughter up to make sure I was still alive. Thankfully, I am. I probably would’ve slept longer if not for my wife’s concern.

I’m wiped out. Yes, I’m still wiped out.

My foggy brain is a bit less foggy. I think I can safely say that’s due to the extra sleep I’m getting which is helping me defeat this nasty bug.

I have no commercial interest in DayQuil or NyQuil but I am grateful for them. Suppressing some of the symptoms has allowed me to rest.

Oh, I sat outside for a while today. That made for a really nice change of pace.

After dinner I’ll probably drift off to sleep again. Another day in the books.

COVID, Day Seven

I’ve gone backwards.

I’m absolutely exhausted and my brain is really foggy. I thought by today I’d be feeling close to normal. It’s a very disappointing setback.

My younger brother got COVID and he said he was exhausted for well over 14-days from the time he had a positive test. I’m not thrilled with the thought of that.

The cough is better, body aches are gone. I hadn’t mentioned waking up in a sweat in the middle of the night. That’s happened every night since I tested positive.

I’ve taken Friday off in hopes a long weeked will help get me over the hump.

Here’s hoping.

COVID, Day Six

Doing much better today than yesterday! 🥳

Am I at 100%, no way, not there yet, but getting closer each day.

My head is still stuffy and foggy and I’m tired. I still have cough but it doesn’t happen as often as it was happening, not even close.

My back and lungs no longer ache, that’s pretty nice.

I figure a few more days of taking it easy and I’ll be right as rain.

Today’s test was positive. Which surprised me. Total bummer.

COVID, Day Five

Better today than yesterday. I like the upward trend. I’d say I’m at about 80% now. A small bump from yesterday but a bump nonetheless.

My head is just as foggy as yesterday, no improvement there and I’m still really tired.

I’m not coughing as much. That’s definitely welcome, now maybe my lungs won’t ache as much.

My lower back pain has improved tremendously! It’s down to a minor ache.

Tired. That and a foggy head are now my biggest complaints. I just want to sleep all day.

I worked for a while this afternoon and now I just want to crawl back in bed.

Funny thing is, I’m craving a really nice Double IPA and some Popeye’s Chicken Strips. Is that weird? 😳

How cool is this? Our oldest daughters neighborhood has an albino squirrel.

It’s really beautiful.

COVID, Day Four

I think I’m getting better. My eyes feel better today. I know that may sound like no big deal but it was really bothering me how much they hurt.

My head is less foggy this morning, that feels rather nice.

I’m still really tired, even after a good nights rest and my cough persists.

My lower back seems to hurt more today than yesterday. I wonder if that’s because I’m feeling slightly better in other ways and I’m noticing my back pain more? Could be.

I still fee pretty wiped out. When I stand I’m a bit dizzy and still have that out of body experience feeling, but it’s not as bad.

Still no fever. That makes me wonder if I had a fever in the days prior to feeling miserable? Who knows?

I think I’ll get outside today and sit in the fresh air.

My Ben & Jerry’s Top Five

Number Five

PB Over the Top

This is a fairly new flavor to the Ben & Jerry’s lineup. My youngest daughter turned me on to it, said she liked it, so I gave it a go. She’s right, it’s a keeper. The ganache over the top of the ice cream is super tasty and I like peanut butter cups as well as peanut butter in general.

Number Four

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

I think it goes without saying the chocolate chip cookie is the best cookie in the world. If you don’t agree, you’re wrong.

Number Three

The Tonight Dough

The only way you could possibly make ice cream with chocolate chip cookie dough better would be to add some peanut butter dough to the mix. Nuff said.

Number Two

Cherry Garcia

No, you don’t have to like the Grateful Dead to like this ice cream and I know what you’re thinking “this can’t be number two?” Oh, but it can. Try the number one flavor first, then decide. The cherry flavor is perfect and I love the chocolate and cherry chunks. Super delicious.

Number One

Chubby Hubby

My wife bought Chubby Hubby for me as a joke. She thought it had a cute name and fit well with the state of her husbands physique. Little did she know it would become my favorite Ben & Jerry’s flavor. It’s really hard to find. We know of one Super Market in Charlottesville that stocks it.

And there you have it! 🍦

Mac Ventura Support

Red sock.Macworld: “There will no doubt be a few Mac users who are disappointed by that list. Many of the Macs that are not supported by Ventura were still being sold by Apple until quite recently. The 2014 Mac mini was sold until 2018, the ‘trash can’ Mac Pro until 2019, and the 2017 MacBook Air was sold until July 2019. We had thought that Apple wouldn’t remove those Macs from the supported list, since people might have purchased the model such a short time ago.”

No doubt indeed.

When I went to install macOS Monterey on my 2015 MacBook Pro, it failed. Turns out when I bought my used MacBook I didn’t know the original SSD had been upgraded. Apparently some sort of hardware check is performed and if the hardware isn’t all Apple original the OS wouldn’t install. That’s fine, time marches on.

I figured this year my 2015 MacBook Pro would fall off the list of supported hardware, and it has.

I was surprised to see how aggressive Apple is being about supporting older hardware.

This time around the 2015 and 2016 models were dropped.

We’re now left with 2017, 2018, and 2019 Intel based Macs. See where I’m going?

At this deprecation rate we may only have two years of Intel based support on new OS versions.

Ouch. 🤕

This cat.

He would stay here all day if I didn’t have to get up once in a while. 😄

Flynn doing what Flynn does best.

COVID, Day Three

Slept until 9:45 this morning. I really needed it. I’ve been taking NyQuil at night and it seems to help with the runny nose a bit and I don’t have fits of coughing through the nigh, just once in a great while.

I don’t feel any better this morning but, thankfully, I don’t feel any worse.

Exhausted, my eyes hurt, raspy dry cough, and a runny nose are still at work.

My lungs ache from coughing. I’m not sure if it’s the bed I’m sleeping in or what but my lower back hurts.

Since testing positive I’ve isolated myself in our guest room, worn a mask when I use the toilet, or get something from the kitchen. I’m constantly washing my hands and generally stay in the room. I have my kitty cat, Flynn, to keep me company.

Please, mask.

😷

Conducting a little experiment here to see if coffee helps cure COVID.

Even if it doesn’t, it still tastes great. ☕️

Kolby enjoying his time outside on the porch.

Such a proper young man.

COVID, Day Two

Watch out! It's a blog fly!I feel largely the same as yesterday. Here’s a list of my symptoms.

  1. Achy
  2. Headache behind my eyes
  3. Dry Cough
  4. Runny Nose
  5. Really Tired
  6. Brain Fog

No fever - at least none I’ve recorded. My lungs ache from coughing so much. I managed to get some rest after taking some Tylenol and NyQuil. I was surprised I slept so well to be perfectly honest.

Day One

I woke up yesterday morning feeling like crap. I figured it was all the events I’d been attending at our company on-site this week. Boy, was I wrong.

I went to breakfast with some coworkers unaware I was a walking virus factory. Had a wonderful breakfast, came home, still felt crummy so I decided to take a PTO day.

Around 1PM I decided it was a good idea to take a COVID test because our daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren were coming for a visit on Saturday. At that instant I was confident I was in the clear. I figured it was just severe allergies and being tired.

I read the test directions, did what it said, swabbed my nose, dropped it in the provided vile, and squeezed four drops into the tester.

It lit up in less than 30 seconds, in fact, mere seconds after the fourth drop hit the color was already starting to change.

Yes, I have COVID.

I reached out to our HR team, my branch leadership, my team, and anyone else I could think of I’d been in contact with.

I called the restaurant and the local coffee shops I’d visited during the week.

Here’s hoping I didn’t infect anyone. I think the chances of that are pretty slim. 😔

Is SwiftUI ready for prime time?

Brain in a jarTL;DR - Yes, for certain types of apps.

I know Apple has started to dog food SwiftUI, but it’s being used for UI that fits nicely into what SwiftUI is good at. It can create basic UI elements in a window; labels, text input, lists, checkboxes, etc.

Take the new System Settings App. It’s written in SwiftUI and it looks nice. The UI design is simple enough to use what SwiftUI is really good at!

Ventura System Settings App

I don’t want to discourage anyone creating a new app. By all means, start with SwiftUI, especially on iOS if you’re writing an app that is small to medium sized and doesn’t venture outside the things SwiftUI is good at. All of my simple little apps could be converted to SwiftUI today, if I thought it was a good use of my time.

How will we know when SwiftUI is a true replacement for UIKit and AppKit?

We’ll know it’s a real replacement when you can build Xcode, Keynote, Pages, or heaven forbid, Photoshop with it. When our favorite Mac shops like Panic and Omni Group can rewrite their flagship applications using 100% SwiftUI. It’s as simple as that.

Apple could really help propel SwiftUI into common use by starting with Keynote. That is an important application to many folks and having it rebuilt with SwiftUI and taking it to the next level would cement SwiftUI as the real deal.

For now it’s kind of wait and see. Apple has done a really great job of prioritizing features for SwiftUI to cover the 90% case on iOS; lists (table views) and basic controls used to make those. I’ll bet that accounts for a huge number of apps in the App Ecosystem.

I started Stream for Mac with UIKit and I’ll probably finish it that way.

Then I may do one of my apps in SwiftUI since they’re all very simple from a UI perspective.

A Swift Only Future? - Yours truly in 2016.

My thinking has shifted, slightly, on the topic. But only just.

Oh, one more thing. SwiftUI is the worst name ever for a framework. Just sayin’. 😄

Saturday Morning Coffee

Cold EspressoGood morning y’all. The big news this week is I have COVID. I’m not proud of it. We had an on-site at work last week and I attended. It was really exciting to meet a lot of my team I’d never seen in person. I was masked on day one and day two (most of the time.)

On day two after lunch I forgot to mask. Went about my day and realized I was unmasked at some point so I put it back on.

On Wednesday and Thursday I didn’t mask at all. Don’t let your guard down like I did. It’s so easy to do since the world has seemingly moved on from COVID. Everything felt normal, but it wasn’t.

Don’t be a dummy, like me. Stay safe out there. Mask.

Becky Hansmeyer: “Here are a few things I’m hoping to see, in no particular order:”

It was WWDC week last week, which is basically Christmas for the Apple Development world.

I love reading Becky’s site because she’s usually very upbeat. This post didn’t let me down.

Cliff Harris: “You might think thats an embarrassing typo, so I’ll be clear. TWO THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FILEs and 237MB of executables and supporting crap, to copy some files from a client to a server. This is beyond bloatware, this is beyond over-engineering, this is absolutely totally and utterly, provably, obviously, demonstrably ridiculous and insane.”

I was talking with a co-worker this week about this very topic. I feel pretty lucky as an iOS dev. I install Xcode and can write a fully featured iOS application. No additional code from the outside required.

Do I use some packages. Yes. I do try to limit them and I’ve started removing them as I move forward because I don’t want to rely on them. There are a few exceptions but I can do the work to replace them and make them work 100% how I want them to work for my app.

I feel really bad for web client and backend devs. Their setup seems crazy difficult and fragile.

Yes, this week the January 6th committee began presenting their findings on national television.

Nothing will come of it. Trump will become President again, Civil War will erupt, and our Republic will disappear (only for a while, I hope.) 😔

Hacker News: “Hello, I was hired as a remote full-stack engineer at Tesla during the pandemic. We were just told that remote employment agreements (mine was over email, not in my contract) are void, and we have to move to a Tesla office by August.”

I feel bad for this person, I really do. Life circumstances can make decisions extremely difficult, especially if you’re happy in your work.

I’d talk to Tesla HR, let them know my circumstance, and see if I could work out a short term deal so I could stay remote for the time being. This person mentions being able to move in early 2023.

If they won’t work with you, get that resume ready, and find another gig that works for you. There are so many wonderful places to work out there that don’t require you to be in the office.

CNN: “Del Bosque is one of the many Latino farmers and workers whose lives revolve around California’s agriculture industry and who have been forced to make difficult decisions due to the ongoing water crisis.”

This is going to bite us all. Much of the worlds fruits and vegetables are grown in the San Joaquin Valley of California. To lose a fraction of that production will show at the grocery store.

We are in a lot of trouble. It’s just starting. Climate change is real. Just ask Mr. Del Bosque.

Robert Sweeney: “I asked him what the on campus interviews were like and how I should prepare for them. He explained that they would ask a random programming question that I would need to solve on a sheet of paper. If you did well, then they would fly you out for a full day of interviews at the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. He had been asked to write a function that, when given an array of length n + 1 containing integers 1 through n, find the duplicate integer in an array.”

Bottom line. If you want to work at one of the BigCos you’d better know your stuff.

I tried to get on with Apple numerous times. Failed each time. It’s tough out there, especially if you’re working for a company making the underlying technology.

Study up! Don’t cheat if you can avoid it. 😄

David Smith: “This year, more than any I can remember, WWDC was the tangible manifestation of Apple’s genuine care for developers, and their desire to facilitate us to do our best work.”

I thought I’d end on a good note. David Smith is super upbeat about everything he does.

David’s post doesn’t disappoint. Go read it if you develop for Apple platforms.

Tiny Apple Core

It’s not a WWDC name tag, but I do plan on having a lot of fun this week!