Blog

I read a lot. As I'm writing this, it's the beginning of September and I've read 49 books so far this year. It's the most I've ever read in a year (though it's propped up some by me delving into audio books and being able to juggle 2 books at a time so long as one is an audiobook and the other is physical or an eBook). But the one thing I've sometimes noticed is that I seem to quite often read books that make me angry, and I knew they'd make me angry when I started them.

At the beginning of the year I took I want to say close to 2 months off social media. I stayed off the two platforms I have accounts on (Mastodon & Bluesky), I deleted the apps and signed out of my desktop sessions. I have since returned to the platforms, but I'm still trying to figure out how I want to handle my use of social media.

It’s been a mostly quiet month.

One of the things that has sometimes kept me from writing more on my blog has been my own insecurity. I'm not always convinced I have anything worthwhile to say, or am concerned that I'm flat out wrong on something, or will just sound stupid. I don't know how many people actually read what I write, but the introvert in me is concerned with sounding foolish.

In today's chaotic world, good journalism is more important than ever. Lately, we've been seeing too many of the biggest news outlets who could be relied upon to report on the news, resort to letting up to maintain access, or readership, or both. For those that continue to report despite an increasingly fascist and authoritarian administration in Washington, it's becoming even more important. I want to support them, but damn, it gets expensive fast.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had a damning dissent in a recent ruling in the NIH v American Public Health Association case.

As the title says, "cruel hoax" doesn't even begin to describe what happened at Villanova. For those who might not have seen the news, it appears someone swatted the Villanova University campus claiming a shooter was on the loose. Afterwards, all hell broke loose. Thankfully no one was injured or killed.

I want to start by saying that while I very much enjoy sports, I know I'm by no means an expert in them, and definitely nowhere close to being an expert in managing and building teams. It doesn't matter whether it's baseball, (American) football, or hockey, I'd be trounced by just about every other general manager (GM) in the league. But I then read about the NFL's New York Jets owner used Madden ratings to nix a trade and think that maybe I wouldn't be the worst GM in the league. After all, in the NFL, 31 out of 32 isn't last.

Ever since I was a kid I remember loving the library. I only vaguely remember my mom taking me to the one by our old house, but I remember vividly the many visits to the library near the house we moved to before I started Kindergarten. I even volunteered there for a while sometime around when I started high school. While I didn't take advantage of the library for a while after college, my love for them never went away and has only grown as I've really delved into reading more.

The switch to digital has provided us with many benefits. In the palm of my hand, I carry with me a device that can give me access to all the world's information. I can also use it for media. I can read books, listen to music, watch TV and movies on it. It's pretty fucking awesome. The addictive nature of things aside though, this migration to digital everything does have some drawbacks, especially when you think about actually owning things.

One of the things I've yet to really use for my day-to-day development are tools like GitHub Copilot. I've considered trying them from time to time, but the negatives I feel about them always outweigh any desire to try them. At the same time, there's still that nagging feeling I have that maybe I'm missing out or would get left behind if I ignore them.

One of my goals for 2025 was to write 100 blog posts. I'm currently at 50, so halfway there, but we're now almost 60% of the way through the year, so I'm a little behind. I think I'm going to try to schedule some posts from my backlog of half-written posts and ideas.