Rob Fahrni

I had my final in home physical therapy session this morning. I’m always excited for PT days to see what the therapist has in store for me. Today was pretty straight forward. It was basically graduation day.

He had me walk about 10 feet, turn around, and walk back, all without the walker. It felt really great to be able to do that.

After that we chatted about how it felt. Then I had a do a timed version of that. While seated I had to stand up, walk 10 feet, turn around, and walk back. All controlled. It’s not a test meant to break records, it’s meant to compare to the same movement earlier on in the process. We didn’t do it early on so there’s nothing to compare to, but it felt natural and the leg felt strong.

The final exercise today was to do as many “sit-to-stand” as I can, in 30 seconds. Using one of our dining room chairs I would go from the seated to standing position and back to seated. I was able to do seven reps in 30 seconds. It also felt great! Toward the end my left quad was feeling it. That’s a good thing. These exercises are about strengthening the muscle structure around the knee. It’s working. 😄

To round things out he measured how far I could bend the knee. He’s been doing this all along. Today I could get to 90 degrees. I could t do that prior to surgery.

I’m pooped out because I’m very out of shape and still nowhere near a 100%, but I’m very excited about my progress and really happy with the overall improvement to my knee.

Exciting day!

Progress has slowed a bit. Last Thursday I woke up with a painful left ankle. I figured it was from physical therapy and was just sore.

It wasn’t just sore. I couldn’t work it out and I couldn’t walk properly because of it. I called the doc, she had me come in on Friday, and decided it could be one of three things; a stress fracture, blood clots, or tendinitis.

I got an X-ray which eliminated that possibility. The next order of business was to check for blood clots.

Saturday rolls around and it’s still painful, but as the day progresses I notice it’s feeling a bit better.

When I wake up Sunday I notice most of the pain is gone and I can walk pretty normally. Seems like it must have been blood clots.

As I get started this morning I feel like I’m back where I need to be to move my recovery forward. 👍🏼

I’m on week three of my post knee replacement recovery. This week has been full of ups and downs. I’ve had swings from great days to disappointing days.

Yesterday I had my left ankle — the ankle on the repaired leg — checked for stress fractures. Thank goodness it was negative. Could be blood clots, could be tendinitis. Not sure yet.

Overall it was still the right thing for me to do. Hiccups are part of recovery.

I went back to work this week. It was really nice to get back in the swing of things. It was tiring but fulfilling. I’m looking forward to a return to normal.

Felix Krause: ”Introducing InAppBrowser.com, a simple tool to list the JavaScript commands executed by the iOS app rendering the page.”

Felix found interesting JavaScript injected into Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

At first I thought this was a custom browser. As I read on and thought about it I realized it’s most likely the Apple supplied browser component supplied by their platform; WKWebView.

I use this very component in Stream to view feed content. It’s a critical part of many iOS and Mac apps.

In Stream support for JavaScript is turned off. To date I don’t see a reason to have it on.

The Verge: ”It turns out that JavaScript, the programming language that web developers and users alike love to complain about, had a hand in delivering the stunning images that the James Webb Space Telescope has been beaming back to Earth.”

Back when I started writing software for a living it was all about C. It was ubiquitous. If you wrote apps you did it in C.

Today the language of choice is JavaScript. Sure, we have all kinds of languages these days, but JavaScript seems to be king.

It looks like the James Webb Space Telescope uses a very old version of JavaScript, but why would it need a super modern one? It was also what we had at the time it was built

BBC: ”Twitter says it calculates the number of fake accounts through mainly human review. It says it picks out thousands of accounts at random each quarter and looks for bot activity.”

I think the man is going to be forced to purchase the company. His shenanigans end here.

Will Musk be able to get Twitter to turn the corner once the purchase is complete? Who knows. 🍿

Still waiting for you, Mr. Musk.

In 2006 and Apple Developer membership (small company/individual) cost $500 per year. pic.twitter.com/IGzUWIfM87

— Dad (@GeekAndDad) August 19, 2022

Wild how much a developer membership used to cost.

I’m happy it’s $99 today. At $500 there’s really no way I could justify keeping mine year-over-year.

Associated Press: ”SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple disclosed serious security vulnerabilities for iPhones, iPads and Macs that could potentially allow attackers to take complete control of these devices.”

Upgrade all your devices, today.

Molly Knight: ”After ten days of feeling the horrible flu like symptoms everyone else with Covid gets, things started to improve, then got rapidly worse. I couldn’t stand up without vomiting. The world was spinning off its axis. I couldn’t look at computer screens, my phone, or a television without feeling like I was going to pass out. Sometimes my vision would go black for no reason at all. Walking unassisted was not possible. Being alone was not possible.”

It is wild to see how COVID treats folks so differently. This is an absolute horror story.

I have a friend who suffered from long COVID and had to learn how to walk again. Two plus years later she woke up and things had gone back to normal. She’s one of the lucky ones.

Bottom line: COVID is still with us and it’s no joke. Do what you can to avoid catching it. Be cautious.

My cousin had to return to in-person work, got COVID from her boss, and passed away today. She leaves behind 13-year old twin girls, a husband, a mother who will now have to bury her last surviving child, and family who will forever miss her smile. The pandemic is not over.

— Elise V Mike, MD, PhD (@EliseVMike) August 16, 2022

Tragic. I have no words to describe how tragic this is. A family destroyed overnight. 😔

Robert Reich: ”After January, Liz Cheney will no longer be in Congress. But her role in American politics is not over. She is now the de facto leader of the Trump opposition — in the Republican Party and also, in a larger sense, in American politics.”

I don’t agree with 99% of what Liz Cheney believes, but I 100% agree with her regarding Trump. He has us on the precipice of a second Civil War and is destroying democracy a bit here, a bit there. If he’s not stopped and we cannot stamp out Trumpism we’re in big trouble.

Apple can’t revert to Sys Prefs because it would be an admission that this slide is wrong. So they’ll ship the abomination which will also show that the slide is wrong. pic.twitter.com/k5KtCEOkaB

— Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) August 16, 2022

Is negativity the right word if the framework is actually lacking pretty majorly on at least one platform and the people criticizing it genuinely want it to be better? https://t.co/vtOha9yOTT

— Collin Donnell (@collindonnell) August 16, 2022

John Gruber: ”But the basic fit and finish of Ventura’s new System Settings is just bad. It feels like there’s something deeply wrong with Swift UI that, even while in-progress, so many little layout details are apparently hard to get right.”

Most of the complaints I see and hear regarding SwiftUI have to do with its support of the Mac. It doesn’t seem to be as stable on the Mac as it does on watchOS and iOS.

Here’s the thing. The Mac market, while healthy, is much smaller than the iOS market — iPhone and iPad — so I can see them prioritizing iOS over macOS support.

Dog fooding SwiftUI on the Mac should cause Apple to improve SwiftUI support for the Mac but when will it?

I also wonder about the person or persons responsible for development of the System Settings application. I don’t doubt their intelligence or programming skill but SwiftUI is a paradigm shift that could trip up the most seasoned developer.

I’d also love to see Apple put its money where its mouth is and create a new productivity app or rewrite one of the existing ones to use SwiftUI. I’d pick Keynote as the guinea pig.

That’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed your coffee. ☕️

I can already see today is going to be a half day for me.

I’m having a minor setback in my recovery. Over the last couple weeks my knee has never been the issue during the recovery process. Last Friday it was a pulmonary embolism and I got past that.

On Monday I had a really great PT session and it felt amazing.

On Wednesday I had two different doctors appointments and walked a lot, which wiped me out.

Queue up Thursday. My ankle hurts, a lot. I’m not sure if it’s blood clots or I’ve somehow done some real damage to it. For the first time in over a week I had to use my pain meds.

And here we are, it’s Friday. My brain decided it wanted to be awake at 4AM and my ankle is extremely stiff and painful. Walking is a real bear, so of course I’m trying to avoid it, but it’s necessary for the recovery process!

I’ve taken some more pain meds and wrapped my knee and ankle in ice in hopes the ankle will start to feel a bit better because I have my final physical therapy session today and would like to make some decent forward progress.

More later. For now I’m getting some coffee in me. ☕️

Seems like a good fit, right?

At least Priss thinks so. 😃

Two doctors visits today, one for the PE last Friday, and one knee post-op.

The PE has been gone since Friday when it occurred. So I’m good on that front.

The knee is doing really well and I was able to get my staples out. That felt amazing!

All in all I feel really great and I’m excited about where I’ll be in four more weeks, but for now, I’m exhausted. I’ve walked more today than all PT days combined, which is really encouraging, but I am definitely pooped out.

I managed to work on Stream a bit over the weekend and once again I have that ”I wish I could do this full time” desire.

I have a list of things to do a mile long. I checked my checkins — say that five times fast — and I haven’t worked on the Mac version in well over a year. Pathetic.

I did manage to get very close to finishing off a new little feature over the weekend. This feature will allow you to set the number of days Stream will keep posts. It’s a sliding scale from one to 31 that defaults to 30, because 30 is the hard coded value in the version in the wild.

I like the way it’s come together and need to fix an annoying bug that cropped up on iOS 15.5 — possibly other versions — then I’ll get a beta out the door.

For the technically minded. This bug is clearly my fault. I have a layout issue my table view cells, there are two types. It would seem that iOS 15.5 has tightened up, or changed, the auto layout engine in UIKit that exposed my bug. I say it’s iOS 15.5 but it could be all 15.x. 🐞

I’m still digging. Hopefully I don’t wait another eight months to work on it again. 😳

Back to work today! It feels great to be engaged in more than staring at the walls, sleeping, or doing PT on my own.

Speaking of PT, my physical therapist came by and worked with me at 10AM. It felt great. I’m now walking without a walker using the countertop as a guide. Up and back we go. I was a bit apprehensive to try at first, but as I got moving I realized it was going to be ok. After that we did some squats, essentially box squats using a char as the base. Those felt amazingly good.

As for range of motion I can bend my knee to about 75 degrees, which I’m fairly certain is better than my pre-op range. That’ll be at 90 degrees soon enough.

All-in-all I feel good about where things are at the moment. I did overdo it a bit today which leaves me feeling sick to my stomach, but a little rest will take care of that.

More later.

Shhhh-thump, shhhh-thump, shhhh-thump, there’s that sound again. I hear it above me in the attic and always, I mean always, at 5:30AM on the dot.

We moved into our beautiful old home 23 days ago and I’m more than a little freaked out by it but too afraid to go look in the attic. I’ve dragged Mom and Dad in here a couple times and they don’t hear a darned thing. Old ears I guess.

More later.

Well, mystery solved. We have a ghost. No, I’m not kidding, we have a bonafide ghost living in our house. A ghost who likes to wake up at 5:30AM. This time doesn’t work for me, BTW.

When the sounds started this morning I was ready. I grabbed my flashlight, walked to the end of the hall to the door leading to the attic, took a deep breath, and opened the door. I was in the right place, the shhhh-thump sound was growing louder.

I walked up the stairs and peeked over the place where the hand rail meets the attic floor. There he was, sure as shit, an old man making his way to the corner of the room, his walker in front of him, shhhh-thump, shhhh-thump, shhhh-thump.

I took a deep breath and finished off the final few steps, and said “Hello.”

The old man stopped, turned around, smiled at me, and asked if I’d like to join him for his morning coffee. I accepted.

We sat around the old two top we found in the attic the day we arrived. He’s a happy old fart. He talked about his undying love for his wife, Lois, and how they enjoyed each other’s company, over coffee, at 5:30AM every morning, rain or shine.

Eventually I had to politely dismiss myself, school and all that. It’s nice to have a new friend and, at the same time, understand why every morning at 5:30AM I hear shhhh-thump, shhhh-thump, shhhh-thump.

Maybe I can get some earplugs?

Oh, the old man’s name is Julius. I hope to have coffee with him again soon.

It’s early in the Fahrni household as I’m composing this post. I’ve been waking up fairly early since the knee surgery and this morning is no exception.

Overall things have been moving in the right direction. My movement is definitely improving and my pain levels are way, way, down.

Since I’ve become more mobile I was able to make coffee on my own this morning with the aid of my walker. There has to be a good old man with walker joke in there somewhere. 👨🏼‍🦳

CNN: ”The Justice Department removed 11 sets of classified documents from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence while executing a search warrant this week for possible violations of the Espionage Act and other crimes, according to court documents unsealed and released on Friday.”

Of course TFG will get off without so much as a scratch. My faith in our democratic institutions is waning. I fear future historians — if they’re allowed to exist — will struggle to understand how we could piss it all away.

MotorTrend: ”Out of the 8.9 million barrels of gasoline consumed daily in the U.S. on average, only 1.8 million gallons, or approximately 20 percent, actually propel an internal combustion vehicle forward. The other 80 percent is wasted on heat and parasitic auxiliary components that draw away energy. As the world begins its shift to EV proliferation, the good news is electric vehicles are far more energy efficient on the road.”

On a positive note, EV’s are good! YAY! 🥳

Would I like to have one? Yep, I certainly would. I’m very cheap when it comes to cars so I’ll be waiting for the prices to drop dramatically before considering purchase of one.

Eventually we’ll have one.

The Verge: ”Last week, California’s DMV accused Tesla of falsely advertising its Autopilot and FSD features, alleging that the company made ‘untrue or misleading’ claims about its vehicles’ autonomous driving capabilities. The DMV’s action could result in the suspension of Tesla’s licenses to produce and sell cars in California, but the agency may not go that far.”

Speaking of electric vehicles. It seems Tesla is finally receiving the scrutiny they need to make their cars safer.

This curmudgeon believes Full Self Driving care are a pipe dream without full infrastructure support. That means roads should know to support cars with self driving capacity. Two way, active, communication.

Felix Krause: ”The iOS Instagram and Facebook app render all third party links and ads within their app using a custom in-app browser. This causes various risks for the user, with the host app being able to track every single interaction with external websites, from all form inputs like passwords and addresses, to every single tap.”

Meta(Facebook), what a scumbag company.

They need that user data so badly they implemented their own browser code. Of course if you open pages using the external browser, Safari, this scummy practice doesn’t work.

More like this. https://t.co/twq2zcTgL8

— Derek Powazek (@fraying) August 11, 2022

I really hope Beto O’Rourke can pull a rabbit out of a hat and win the Texas Gubernatorial election this year.

I know some folks needed their fainting couches when they heard someone say “motherf*cker”, but don’t say a word when there is a mass murder in their state.

To me this says we have a man, a very serious man, trying to solve serious problems against the backdrop of extremism.

Dropping a curse word in the proper context can drive home a point.

It was perfect.

Variety: ”Disney has set pricing and date for the U.S. launch of the version of Disney+ with ads, while also hiking the monthly price of the Disney+ tier with no ads. It’s also going to raise rates for Hulu — both ad-supported and ad-free versions — and introduce new Disney Bundle options.”

Well it continues to look like all that cheap, awesome, streaming is finally coming to an end. I can’t blame these companies for ratcheting up prices and offering an ad supported tier.

I know we’ve had many discussions about which service(s) to drop and Disney+ seems to be a lock because of the grandkids. 😄

This is a landmark event in 1Password history: The first time we’ve ever shipped both our iOS and Android apps on the same date with complete feature parity between them. It’s been a massive lift by our teams, and I couldn’t be prouder.

— Michael Fey (@MrRooni) August 9, 2022

Congratulations to the entire 1Password team. What a huge milestone!

It’s so satisfying to ship a new product. I haven’t installed it yet, but most certainly will at some point. It is a really spectacular service and worth checking out if you need password management for your family and/or multi platform password management.

Ars Technica: ”With Tesla stock on a rebound, Musk has just sold $6.9 billion worth of shares in his electric car company, a move disclosed in regulatory filings on Tuesday. Musk got an average of $869 for the shares, which is significantly more than the $628 that TSLA shares were trading at in late May.”

Gotta get those billions somewhere to pay that big Twitter $54.20 per share price tag later in the year.

Also, Mr. Musk, I still have the perfect domain for you.

I hope your enjoyed your coffee and the links. ☕️

Got my VAC bandage off today, managed to get a before and after shot. There are 28 staples in the incision.

I’m very emotional this morning thinking about my loved ones who’ve been caring for me. They’ve definitely taken a load off my back so I can focus on healing.

I am forever grateful. 🧡

I must admit I’ve not been good about doing my physical therapy homework. For past surgeries I was very diligent about doing what I was asked because I knew it was my quickest way to healing and feeling normal.

This time around is a different story. I lack the mental strength to cope with the pain involved. Prior to surgery I had times where I could not escape the pain in my knee. It’s wearing both physically and mentally. After surgery even though I feel pain in my comfortable position it’s nowhere near some of my more severe pre-op pain and I just don’t want to be in pain any longer.

The reality is, of course, that I have a long way to go and I am going to have pain. Just finding a way to cope, that mental toughness, has been extremely difficult this time around.

Have I regretted the surgery? Nope. It was absolutely the right thing to do. I know this is part of the healing process and one day I will be better than I was before surgery and that’s very encouraging.

I started watching The Sandman last night and it was amazing. I only watched two episodes because I’ve been watching on my iPhone. After episode two I decided I wouldn’t be watching any more episodes there and I’d be starting over on our TV.

The worlds and characters Neil Gaiman creates are absolutely beautiful. I’m obviously not a writer or critic but I know what I like and The Sandman has it all.

My lovely wife made me a mocha to go with composing this weeks post. That combined with oxycodone, ice, and elevation are doing their job. I can focus well enough to get this done. 🤞🏼

Shelly Rosen: ”The way Google’s two-factor authentication system is designed, sets up poor and elderly people to be locked out of their accounts again and again, and without access to their email, they lose their welfare benefits, their housing, and struggle to find work.”

I’m not sure what Google can do to fix this extremely important problem. Take some time to read Ms. Rosen’s letter it lays everything out for Google. As a developer this is the kind of feedback you hope to get from folks using your software.

TechCrunch: ”Amazon this morning announced plans to acquire Roomba maker iRobot for an all-cash deal valued at $1.7 billion.”

Alexa, don’t vacuum the cat. This seems like a really sweet deal for Amazon. I can’t believe iRobot couldn’t fetch a higher price.

Los Angeles Times: “The California Department of Motor Vehicles has accused Tesla of false advertising in its promotion of the company’s signature Autopilot and Full Self-Driving technologies.”

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Tesla has been touring Full Self Drive for years and they’re no where near the desired functionality. Is it novel? Yes. Do I trust it? No way.

I can’t wrap my brain around the challenges the developers must be facing. And the icing on the cake would be Musk breathing down your neck to get it done. No thanks.

My idea of a better challenge would be tackling mass transit with electric motors and making it easier to travel long distances on electric trains and busses.

Heck, the eBikes business is really taking off.

Cartoon Brew: ”Dreamworks Animation has unveiled plans to release its proprietary production renderer Moonray as open-source software later this year.”

I’ve had a fascination with rendering pipelines for years and years. As far as I know Pixar’s RenderMan is still the Cadillac of rendering software but having an open source choice from a heavy hitter like Dreamworks is worthy of consideration, and it’ll be open so folks can contribute to it. Amazing!

When the git repo is made public you know I’ll be there poking around. 😃

Makes you wonder if Pixar will follow with RenderMan?

TechCrunch: ”Infowars founder Alex Jones took the stand today in a trial that will determine what he owes to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting. Last year, Jones was found liable in a series of defamation cases brought by the parents of Sandy Hook victims.”

Alex Jones is a grifter. He has an unwitting audience of people willing to believe anything because they hate everything and everyone. Jones feeds their animosity with wild stories of the deep state and blood drinking Democrats to drain them of their hard earned cash. Who’s the vampire?

Vulture: ”It’s pretty well known and even darkly joked about across all the visual-effects houses that working on Marvel shows is really hard. When I worked on one movie, it was almost six months of overtime every day. I was working seven days a week, averaging 64 hours a week on a good week. Marvel genuinely works you really hard. I’ve had co-workers sit next to me, break down, and start crying. I’ve had people having anxiety attacks on the phone.”

I don’t think this is a new reality of the VFX business. Rather, a horrible expectation set by major studios.

Deadline: ”Even though Batgirl is in the final stages of post-production, Deadline has confirmed that Warner Bros. and DC Films will not be releasing the movie on any platform, including theatrically.”

This is a real bummer. I was totally ready for it.

As far as release platforms go, I was fully expecting it to appear on HBO Max. It’s the streaming platform I use more than any other. More than Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Apple TV. Each of those services has a place in my streaming lineup, but HBO’s ability to release new movies to streaming early is it’s real superpower.

The Washington Post: ”SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk’s countersuit to Twitter contains aggressive new claims about the social media site’s methods for tallying bot and spam accounts — as well as which accounts generate ad revenue — cementing the strategy the billionaire is using to attempt to back out of the deal.”

I suspect Musk will be forced to show up and pay $54.20 per share.

The big question is, once he owns it can he make it something better or will he lose an uphill battle?

How do you deal with bot problems and nihilistic American politicians hell bent on turning our democracy into a self serving dictatorship.

I’m sure Mr. Musk has some really great ideas. It’s the bad ideas I’m worried about.

That’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed your coffee or tea with your read. ☕️

“That knee was bad. I’m surprised you could walk.” - Dr. Edwards

The knee has finally been replaced. Tuesday was the big day and I’d hoped to come home that afternoon. Unfortunately my body had a different idea. When I’d stand my blood pressure would drop and I’d feel nauseated. 🤢

So I got to spend the night in the hospital. It was a good experience as far as hospitals go. All of the nursing staff were absolutely wonderful.

I was up early Wednesday morning, didn’t sleep much at all. Dr. Edwards dropped by as well as David, my Physical Therapist. Since I’d been able to use the toilet through the night safely and was able to walk to the end of the hall the Doctor and Physical Therapist signed off on me I was discharged around 10:30AM, Wednesday.

Thank you Sentra Martha Jefferson Hospital , Dr. John Z Edwards , and everyone I interacted with. Y’all are amazing.

Hello new knee!

So happy right now! 🙏🏼

Ms. Prissy Punkie Poopie Pants, AKA Priss, being her cute self.

I’m terrible. When my knees ache or hurt and I have household chores to do I tell myself “If you sit a while longer, they’ll feel better and you can go do your chores.”

I’m simultaneously negotiating with myself and willing my knees to feel better.

They’re not going to feel better. I just don’t want to fight through the pain to do what needs doing. 😂

Two more days to knee replacement surgery and it’s all I can think about.

I should’ve taken Monday off because I’m going to be distracted all day. 🤔

I bet getting an M1 MacBook Air would feel blazing fast given I’m still using a 2019 15in MacBook Pro.

Yes, it has the butterfly keyboard and my fingers don’t work on it. 😆

And, honestly, the old MacBook Pro is plenty fast for me.

Found this brand new little feller this morning slowly moving its little wings.

Today’s podcast queue should get me through the jungle I’m gonna tackle outside our backyard fence today, and then some.

The Takeout: ”Social media rumors don’t always prove to be true, but in the case of the Choco Taco, this one is sadly based in fact. RIP, Choco Taco, 1984-2022.”

This clearly the biggest, most important, news of the week. The Choco Taco wasn’t exactly a great treat but it wasn’t the worst.

I’m fine losing it as long at the It’s-it is never discontinued.

The Verge: ”Sounding like an exhausted parent, Mosseri agreed that Instagram’s new feed sucked and its recommendations might be bad and then told us it wasn’t going to get better. Instagram no longer cares about photos.”

I don’t have a lot of pity for Instagram. Unfortunately Facebook took a beloved application and platform and turned it into an ad platform. It’s not that businesses are bad for using it, why not use it? It’s bad because all I cared about was posting pictures and looking at my friends pictures.

There are much better alternatives today.

If you spent enough years using A/B tests to chase every little bump in engagement without any basis or logic behind what you’re changing or why, eventually people will find something else they like better for reasons you can’t understand.

That’s the lesson of Instagram.

— Ken Kocienda (@kocienda) July 26, 2022

Do you want a chronological feed?
No ads?
No algorithms?
Never having anything in your feed you didn’t put there?
No celebrities selling you crypto nonsense?
High quality photos with P3 color support?
No public counts anywhere?
Just photos?
Only photos?

You’ll love Glass.

— Glass (@tryglass) July 26, 2022

Glass is a wonderful alternative to Instagram and they don’t make you the product. The app just gets out of the way so you can see your feed of beautiful pictures. No ads, none of that Instagram garbage.

How do they manage to do it? By using an idea from long ago. They charge you $29.99US a year to use the platform and support running their business. Novel, right?

Oh, almost forgot, they have an iPad App and you can view pictures on the web without annoying prompts asking you to log in to view more photos. Imagine that, they embrace the open web.

Like most social networks I’m Fahrni on Glass.

Charles Chen: ”Whereas in the .NET ecosystem, Microsoft provides a rich set of professionally developed and curated first party libraries for many, many scenarios, JavaScript has no such governance.”

Look, I’m an old Microsoft Employee, via the Visio acquisition, and spent 20-years of my career building C++/Win32 applications. I still love using Windows and love Microsoft’s commitment to supporting old API’s, but .Net is amazing, especially when combined with C#.

I haven’t written any modern backend C# but I did enjoy the bit of time I spent developing backend code with it. It’s a really great platform if you’d like to be extremely productive.

I’d imagine that extends to the client side as well. My desire to write a cross platform Stream is dwindling. I believe I’ll do the Windows version in C#/.Net.

Robert Reich: ”Progressive states are becoming more progressive; regressive states, more regressive. As the states move to the left or right, state legislatures are becoming more active and important, while what happens in Washington is growing less so.”

This is a good read and worth a few minutes of your time.

The closing question is something I think about quite often.

The Verge: ”For Zuckerberg, the company he founded 18 years ago was facing existential threats on multiple fronts. Both Facebook and Instagram were being rearchitected to compete with TikTok. Apple’s iOS privacy settings had disrupted the company’s once-stable ad business, costing it billions in revenue. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg’s bet on the metaverse was a money pit that he didn’t see turning a profit until at least the end of the decade.”

I think we all knew Apple’s new privacy settings would put a dent in their earnings. Couple that with their constant morphing of their platforms; Facebook and Instagram, and their moonshot to be the leader in the Metaverse and it’s a perfect storm of misery. 🍿

### Black Lives Matter

It’s terrible that I have to write that little title for this section of my post. Of course black live matter. Until we can get over our long history of racism as a nation we will never be the truly great nation we strive to be.

If you say All Lives Matter and stop there you might be a racist. People saying Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean a black life is more important than yours. What is meant is ”My Black life is equally important as your life.”

Being able to say Black Lives Matter shouldn’t be hard to say because Black Lives are a subset of all lives.

It’s all about equity. Black lives are equal to white lives.

LGBTQ+

If you have a problem with LGBTQ+ folks you need to look deep inside and ask yourself why?

Let people live as they are. You have zero reason to judge or hate people just because they don’t fit your idea of who they should be.

Women are our equals

Another strange equity problem in our nation. My wife is my equal.

So many folks say Christianity tells them a woman is subservient to her man.

Hey, if you and your family believe that and you agree that’s how your family will operate, more power to you, but the entire nation shouldn’t be run this way.

Women need great access to reproductive healthcare and equity in every other aspect of their life.

We have a long way to go, and we’re currently going the wrong direction — backwards.

Universal, Single-payer, Healthcare

I’d like a system of healthcare similar to Canada’s. I want to be able to walk into any healthcare facility in the United States and get the same care no matter what, and I’d like to walk out knowing I’ve just received the best care in the world and on top of all that, I never receive a bill.

I’m sure that will trigger a whole lotta folks over Big Government or the Government being all up in our business. I know this troubles so many people and they’ll most likely never come around to having excellent healthcare for every American. But it’s what I want.

A healthy America is good for our country and our competitiveness on the world stage.

Free State College Education

I was born and raised in California so I’m going to use it as an example of what I’d like to have.

In California we had the California State University System and The University of California System.

The University of California System is seen as a more prestigious system than the California State System.

My thought on the matter is that the California State System would be free for anyone to attend as well as all Junior Colleges in the the state. The Junior College System could be part of the Cal State system. One big happy family with your first two years spent at a JC and your final two spent at one of the fine Cal State Universities.

The system could also include trade schools because, let’s face it, not everyone is cut out to go to a university. I wasn’t, so I didn’t go to a university. I went to a trade schools that taught me nothing and was expensive. I don’t recommend doing that.

Perhaps you go right to grade school, perhaps you do two years at a JC then choose to go to trade school or on to university. Doesn’t matter. The point is we’d have a better educated population with choice. There are plenty of kids with the means, like me, that fail at the Junior College level, but would do perfectly fine in a trade school. It also means that those bright, talented, folks without the means can get a proper education and go on to do the things they always dreamed of.

Again, a better educated America is great America.

Money out of Politics

In particular there are a couple things I’d like to see.

1 All candidates are funded by the State or Federal Government 2 No more Lobbyists. Zero, zilch, nada

My hope with point number one is to remove the rich and powerful from the picture. Every candidate is given a pool of resources to run their campaign and equal television and other media resource time. No extra resources allowed.

Level playing field.

As for point number two. I’d love to see Senators and Representatives actually represent their constituency, not be influenced by rich and powerful corporations.

Strict Gun Ownership Regulations

I’ve written about this before, but I’d love to see tighter restrictions and regulation around gun ownership, like; a national registration database, training, and licensing.

That’s it

If those little beliefs make me a “Radical Lefty”, then I’m a Radical Lefty.

I’m sure I’ll think of other things I should’ve written about here and missed. I’ll save them for another post.

I’ll finish by saying I believe in people, I don’t want to control them.