The Art Of Not Asking Why

I mentioned “Blog Gardening” in a long vent yesterday and also previously. The core of this idea requires that I have an “On This Day” page on my blog.

The code instructions seemed simple enough, but I didn’t think it would be that simple. All I had to do was copy-paste.

To test, I went back in time and changed one of my old posts from [2023-08-09 Wed] to [2023-08-10 Thu] (oddly, I find that the old URL with the old post and its date still works, which means the original post is not deleted, just copied - should mention it to @manton perhaps). What’s a little time alternation for the sake of a good blogging experience, after all?

Taking Jamie’s advice, I will try to look into a couple of blogs before “On This Day” and a couple after and do some fixing.

In theory, it should work like this:

1. Go to “On This Day” and find the post from last year at this time (if no post exists, find the nearest blog post to that date).
2. Look and fix typos, broken image links, and broken links in general.
3. Add the post to a category if it belongs there
4. Add links and references on the old post if new references exist since then (for example, if a year ago I started a project that I wrote about 3 times since, link to those 3 posts)

And you know something? Jamie has another good point there: making these fixes does make me a little happy. It adds a sense of completion, and it feels good to maintain the blog because I like my blog, so I like to put energy into it. It’s a nice little positivity cycle.

I wanted to give Micro.blog’s audio capabilities another try. I got a few things I wanted to talk about and I just wanted to just go for it. I suggest you listen to this post rather than reading it, as it’s meant more of a vent, but I went through the transcript below and for the most part it’s spot on (I added a few notes where I needed to correct myself).

I wanted to go over a couple of things that have been happening in the last week or so.

Write them? Well, record them rather, and then see how Microblog’s feature of transcribing (note: actually called Transcripts on MB) would work.

There (are) a lot of areas to talk about, and I’m going to try to go through them quickly in bullet point style. In general, there are a lot of things I’m doing and I kind of feel like I’m losing track of all of them because these different things carry me in different directions.

On the blog, which I kind of put on the side for a little bit - not on the side, but I wrote less… That’s actually not true; I didn’t write less; I didn’t publish as much because of the whole Middle East political stuff I’ve been writing about recently, that took me a very long time to write, to actually get out It’s been hard stuff to write and also very hard to edit, to kind of put into something that would be read-worthy is one word, but also reflect in a way that makes sense back to me I didn’t want to erase the emotional load in these posts because that’s the point on one hand, on the other hand, I didn’t want to just come across too whiny or for it to be completely emotional to the point that there is no informational value in it.

It is still mostly, I would say, on the emotional side, but I kind of feel like it took care of the mental load I had in my head and now I can slowly deviate more towards more informational things, the way I see them like try to quote a couple of articles that I read, explain certain things, at least the way I understand them, and most of all this has been… not most of all, for the most part - this has been a positive experience. People read what I wrote they were kind, they replied with comments that reflected that they care in general, that they’re interested and those that were less interested or didn’t want to read just didn’t, which is fine, this is why the disclaimer is there but this was very important to me to write, I felt like the blog started to feel almost, I shouldn’t say almost, basically started feeling incomplete because these are such important things to me and they’re just missing from this personal blog, so I had to add them.

Now these two main pieces are there. There is another one that I feel I need to write. It’s not exactly leftovers, but it’s an additional thing that I need to write. The story continues beyond where I stopped writing, the period of a couple of months that I recorded has a continuation I need to write about.

In terms of technical things on the blog, there are two things I want to work on and add.

One of them is the “on this day” feature on the blog which takes a day from last year at this date and posts it. I have a post explaining - I forget the name of the person (note: Jamie Thingelstad) - someone explained the idea of blog gardening… the idea of blog gardening is that he looks at the post from “on this day” a year ago and then he goes to that post and he goes through it again basically to spell check, to reflect on it maybe things change, maybe take it off completely, it’s a way to prune and make sure the posts (are) staying in order.

He explains that he goes one post beyond that date and one post before, and he uses that as a way to clean up the blog. I like the idea. I want to implement this; I know where the code is on GitHub that’s supposed to work with Microblog, and there is a template… I have enough information to give it a try.

The other part, the other thing I want to add is… now there is a game page on the blog, games, games is another part of my day to day activities that I do, just like watching movies, reading books, and I think games are important. In my personal opinion, everyone should play games to one extent or another, it’s almost as important as reading books - it is important as reading books - as long as you don’t do it too much, or taking photos for that matter, because the level of interaction you have, and also the level you interact with other people if you’re playing games with other people, is something that we don’t get out of the other solo activities. It’s important to play games with everyone to an extent. I like to talk about games.

I have a page (for games), but I would like to add an introduction to this page explaining where to find out more… and TinyTheme, which is the theme I use for (my) Microblog, has a microhook that would allow me to do that, and I need to play with that to see that it works.

Speaking of the movies, I haven’t watched any good… What’s a good movie?

I’ve watched movies that I know are entertaining, that have an entertainment value, and that’s fine, but I kind of miss the movies that are different, that are independent, that make you think a little bit, or make you feel a little bit differently. This weekend I’m staying with a friend, and I think that would give me the option of watching such movie. I have a couple on my list. I’m just aware this has been a little bit missing from the blog, and I haven’t been watching anything that interesting, so I want to… (note: audio recording cuts abruptly here)

…Another thing I’ve been trying to look into is Dragons and Dungeons, Dungeons and Dragons, I forget which (note: it’s Dungeons and Dragons) …Tabletop RPGs I’m trying to get back to this; it’s always something I’m trying to get back into.

It captures the game itch but it also captures reading a good story or watching a good movie itch, and it’s also a very social activity with a couple of people I want to hang out with at once. Instead of just seeing one friend, I get to see four of them. it also really helps with, because usually it means I’m DMing, I have this creative itch, it takes care of but this. But it is one of the hardest, if not the hardest one to do because it’s not just up to me.

It means that besides just relearning the rules and coming up with everything, you (also) need to gather the people, you need to gather your friends, and I need to be that sort of a social anchor which is something that is alien to me. it’s not something I’m good at naturally. It’s not that it’s hard, it’s just that I’m very aware I’m doing this this part where you have to keep “bugging” people and chasing them and sending messages to make sure they follow up even if it’s an online activity, which is a must these days because we all have work and other obligations. Meeting in one place logistically is already hard; the distance is one problem, but then we also have the problem of actually finding the time. So that’s a big issue with RPGs.

There’s a new game I picked up, and I’m trying to (learn the rules), and that requires a certain level of solo-playing, which is a concept I’m teaching myself how to do. It’s basically like you play with yourself, essentially. It’s a make-believe. You switch between your own character to another character, and you roll the dice as a mechanism to randomize the world around you so you don’t completely predict the story (and) you have an element of surprise in the story you build, and then you kind of try to react kind of like improv, it’s a lot like “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

Different prompts are getting thrown at you and it keeps you on your toes. You try to react to it (as in) “what would I do if I was in this person’s shoes in this situation?” which is a lot of fun.

…This recording business proves to be more cumbersome than I thought it would be I have different parts that I have to connect together and then I have to edit them before I put it up and I’m realizing that writing it would be so much easier and I was trying to save myself time by recording nut I’ll keep going for now.

Another part that is left - last but not least - I want to go back to Emacs, which is of course the tool I use to write the blog and almost any technical document or anything that takes me more than 5 minutes to write. it’s also my scheduling and my to-do lists.

It’s time to go through (Emacs) again evaluating the rather recent project workflow I developed. I also want to go back into my Emacs settings and go through the different tweaks and changes I’ve made to see if they still make sense. For now, my Emacs configuration is not public. I wiped my Mac and I need to basically rehash my credentials with GitLab. (However) there are certain configurations there that are personal: for example, my RSS feeds I don’t want (to be public) because some of the RSS feeds I pay for and they’re specific and should be secret RSS feeds. I need to separate them from my configuration because Emacs is my RSS reader.

Certain directories and folders reflect my job and people I work with by name because it makes sense to me and I use it every day and it’s not appropriate for those to be in (publicy-availble) settings so I need to go through them, and it makes the process a little bit more involved, a little bit more complicated, and then I end up having a public(file) of settings versus personal.

I know you can go down to the level of leaving certain things out of the Emacs settings so Emacs will go look in certain folders for certain files that explain what are the specific paths or folders, but I don’t feel I necessarily want to go to that level just to have public notes. It makes more sense to me to explain on the blog what I’m doing instead of having (notes) going on, which is a whole different thing to take care of.

In terms of work, it’s been busy-ish. I’m getting some help at work. There’s a person who’s going to work with me for the first time in two and a half years or so since I changed roles. My position is pretty unique at this point; it’s pretty much what I make it. Of course it’s not like I’m my own boss, I have a supervisor and there is a level of expectations, but it is a lot things that I develop and I do and it’s my workflow. (in the past) we had a manager who knew specifically what I was doing and I had a team of four people working with me. I had to fit my workflow to an existing workflow, (while) what happens here is mostly I have a workflow and I need to explain to someone else, and it’s a totally different person who doesn’t use the same tools who might have different ways and different strategies to work. I need to be open to that while I’m teaching this person and see what ideas and suggestions this person brings to the table. That’s kind of an involved process that’s going to take a couple of weeks at work, but I’m looking forward to have help with some of the projects I just don’t have the time to start.

the last thing I want to mention… It’s more like a month (or) almost like a yearly summary: I’ve been more focused on my exercises.

I don’t think I published it, (but) there was a post where I explained I’m using TrainWell which is an exercise app which connects you with a real-life coach. it used to be called CoPilot, (but) they changed the name for obvious reasons… The coach is phenomenal. She’s very attentive, keeps listening to me and adjusting the exercises according to my feedback, not only the length and the difficulty but also what exercises work better in my space (and) to what degree, (and) what kind of weights I’m using. I’m enjoying the results and I have more of motivation these days to exercise basically four or five times a week, which has been a continuous struggle. I’ve been able to do it before but with a lot of willpower. I wouldn’t say I’m looking forward to the exercise, it’s still a struggle, but it’s easier to get into “exercise mode” in my head and into autopilot. There isn’t as much resistance.

I find other activities to do while I exercise; for example, I can watch something or even play relaxing video games that I can pause (while I) exercise. It ties in with the exercise in a certain routine that I like, (and) that’s been going very well.

They’re not paying me or anything, but I know there are a lot of people who struggle with exercising, so I really recommend this app if you have the money for it - it’s a hundred bucks a month (note: first two weeks are free to try it out) and I definitely think (it’s worth it).

I eat my lunch standing 🍱.

It allows me to stretch my legs after sitting down for a while, and since I make food or at least warm leftovers, I’m already on my feet.

The evidence against it that I found says that standing means rushing, and rush-eating is not good. But that’s not the case for me.

A long and thorough interview with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister and its leader. It highlights some of the main issues within the Israeli government, the conflict between the government and the Israeli people, and perhaps why Israel has been “stuck” for so long without a strategy.

Exclusive: Netanyahu at War time.com

I’ve discussed LibreWolf several times on this blog (and my old blog). The quick rundown goes like this: privacy on the internet is a routine, not a quest to be conquered, and LibreWolf is an important tool to have in your privacy kit.

On the Mac, LibreWolf can be downloaded directly as an App (a .dmg file that you need to install: double-click, then go to your security settings to open it after you get the warning) or through Homebrew.

The Homebrew approach is better in my opinion because it can be automated, and you probably want to check for updates for your browsers at least once a month or so. But there’s a problem: macOS will tell you “LibreWolf is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.”

As it turns out, this is a misleading message. As the folks behind LibreWolf explain:

This happens because we do not notarize the macOS version of the browser: we don’t have a paid Apple Developer license and we don’t want to support this signing mechanism that is put behind a paywall without providing significant gains.

So, Apple does not recognize the app, which means the built-in security measures on your Mac see LibreWolf it as a threat and flag it with a default (and wrong) error message.

I think it would be a good idea to pay for that license, just so that less savvy tech users won’t be scared of installing a good browser for their online hygiene, but I have no idea how much that costs. I just know this is a pain point for many developers, and I can understand how developers who are mostly Linux-oriented do not want to pay Apple’s fees. But I digress.

There is a manual solution to bypass macOS quarantine for such apps. For LibreWolf, in the terminal, enter the following: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/LibreWolf (assuming the application is installed under the Application folder).

Since this is mostly a Homebrew problem (if you manually install LibreWolf each time, you probably just allow it from the Mac’s System’s Settings), there’s also a Homebrew solution: brew install librewolf --no-quarantine or, if you already installed LibreWolf (as part of a routine brew upgrade for example), use brew reinstall librewolf --no-quarantine.

This will work for other apps with a similar problem, just be mindful what you’re letting out of quarantine of course.

I wanted to get a quick update on what changed and what’s new on the Micro.blog, and I went directly to see the @numericcitizen video from a couple of days ago. He has a list on YouTube with summaries. Very helpful. I love the added features!

An excellent exposing piece by Samantha Cole of 404 media shows (with several screenshots from internal Slack communications and spreadsheets) how Nvidia is currently scraping YouTube copyrighted video to train their own AI model.

This is for paid subscribers only, and I say again, 404 Media is worth every penny if you care about these things.

Leaked Documents Show Nvidia Scraping ‘A Human Lifetime’ of Videos Per Day to Train AI 404media.co

Yesterday, I finally published a post that had become a mental block. At this point it’s been in my drafts for over two weeks, very much against the “rules” I put up. I was aware of this, but at the same time I had to get it out of my system.

I went to a local cafe shop I know, got myself a too-sweet-for-me pistachio late and a dry muffin, and went to work. I didn’t let myself get off the chair until I hit the Post button. The piece still needs work and probably has several typos and such, being as long as it is, but it was at the point where I wasn’t able to read it when I looked at it; my brain half-memorized the sentences at that point.

With that, I hope to go back to a couple of other things I wanted to write about. Most of all, I want to go back to the quicker posts that I’ve been enjoying writing for a while now.

The following was hard to write - and this is an understatement. It will probably be difficult to read, also. If you don’t want to read about feelings of war and trauma or the situation in the Middle East overall, please don’t. You don’t need to.

Like an ant on a tree, I started climbing on a different branch after the events of October 7th, 2023, or “Black Saturday,” as Israeli media dubbed it. I didn’t know it back then, as the change was too slow and too big to grasp. It’s only now that I reflect on what I wrote and what I talked to people around me about since then, over a period of months, that I understand I’m not the same person.

Up until that day, my life in Israel was the past, and my life in the US was the present. Most of my family members are still in Israel: my father, my aunts, my cousins, a few friends, and many memories. The life I left there was of a different person, someone who didn’t just speak a different language but also lived in a different culture, had different beliefs and values, and had different kinds of friends. It was another life.

I’m jumping ahead of myself here, but it seems like a good place to mention that many of my values and beliefs conflict with my past life and with Israel in general. I grew apart from that, and while I miss some people and part of the culture, I feel this is a healthy distance for me overall.

Past and present collide

What Black Saturday did was create a wormhole that brought past me into the present. The separation line melted away, and with it, the familiarity and stability of my reality here in the US. I felt I existed in two places at once, both past and present. It’s hard to describe and exhausting to remember. Most of all, I hated being dragged into this confusing mind mess without a choice or a say in the matter.

To understand how something like this happens, let me share a memory with you. Let me take you back to The Gulf War.

I am 11. My sister, my mom, and I are sitting on the floor in my sister’s room. This room, the smallest in our apartment with only one window, was the dedicated “sealed room”: it’s a room sealed with sheets of plastic, duck tape, and wet towels under the door to create makeshift protection against chemical weapons. At the time, everyone in Israel had one.

The Air-raid sirens in the background, a wave pattern of ups and downs, were reflected in my mom’s heavy breathing. She reminded me of a terrified animal. I couldn’t see her eyes since they were behind a gas mask; mine were too, and so was my sister’s, with additional plastic covering meant to protect younger children from gas. My mom slowly worked the panic-menaced logic in her mind, thinking out loud if she should inject me and my sister with Atropine. Atropine came in plastic single-use syringes, which were meant to be used if we were infected by nerve gas. It is not meant to use as a preventative; the side effects can be really nasty.

Fortunately, we managed to talk my mom down, and Saddam Hussein “only” launched explosive warheads with his Scuds into Israel. But the memory remains, and with it, the feeling of total helplessness when all you can do is to sit, trapped in a room, and do absolutely nothing while missiles explode around you and shake the windows of your home.

I have this memory and a few others, but I’ll save you from those. The reason I’m bringing this up is to set up the stage for the reaction to such severe helplessness. The reaction is what I (and I believe many Israelis and Palestinians) would call “survival mode.” It’s when the planning and stargazing part of your brain shuts down to a narrow tunnel vision of what’s happening right now, this moment. Once this happens to you as a result of an event like I discussed above, this can happen again from time to time out of the blue. It’s not a matter of choice. It happens out of reflex. I discussed this in a previous post, and at the time, I wondered why I was reflecting on it. Well, here’s the answer. Mind’s working in mysterious ways and all of that.

Fear is the mind killer

A couple of days after Black Saturday, an entire country full of people switched into survival mode after the initial shock. What Hamas did that day was not something I can put into words, but I can still feel it. My family over there felt it. And the other survivors of families near Gaza, who were slaughtered in ways even animals aren’t butchered, felt it. Let me emphasize that I am not capable of feeling or even having a taste of what those survivors went through. I believe the human brain shields us from such things with denial and other methods to protect us from going insane, which some of these people probably did. All I go by is a hunch of a feeling.

For days and weeks after black Saturday, a whole country reacted out of a narrow tunnel vision of the need to survive. There was nothing else; no plan, no strategy, and no revenge. There was just a boiling, overwhelming rage and pain.

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much thinking since then. No long-term plan and no strategy. The whole thing reminds me of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan and Iraq on a smaller scale. But we’ll get there.

I was here, in New York City, when the demonstrations started, when people on the left - my left, my people - started chanting a slogan that came directly from the mouths of Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and other such terrorist organization who wanted to exterminate the Jews since 1948 onward. I don’t think (or I don’t want to think) people knew what they were saying exactly. I understand the point, and I understand what they were trying to achieve, but the extreme demonstrators' actions pushed me away toward the right. I did not want my opinions to change, just as I didn’t want my Israeli past to come back, but sometimes life punches you in the face for a wake-up call.

Despite all I felt and what I still feel, I understand. I wish I hadn’t, and I wish I could just be “pro-Israel” or whatever. It would simplify things. But I simply cannot accept what’s going on to Palestinians today, in Palatine, in their own homes, when bombs fall around them, and their windows are shaking, thinking if the next explosion is going to be the last sound they’ll ever hear. And this is something that drives me further away from friends and family who lean more toward Israel. I know a few Israelis like me, and most of them have left Israel for similar reasons I’m happy to be where I am today. I don’t think there are many of us.

What Hamas did is one thing, and Israel’s immediate reaction is something I still support. But we are almost a year into this mess, with no end in sight and just more bloodshed, most of which belongs to people who have no choice but to stand in the way of IDF’s bombs.

This is where I want to stop for now. I understand this is a sensitive topic for many people. Thank you for reading.

This is potentially huge if it means Google will no longer be able to practice its search advertising policies. The waves from this will affect how we search the internet and bleed into AI capabilities.

Google loses massive antitrust lawsuit over its search dominance | CNN Business

The court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly'

and:

Specifically, Google’s exclusive deals with Apple and other key players in the mobile ecosystem were anticompetitive

Google loses massive antitrust lawsuit over its search dominance | CNN Business cnn.com

October 19, 2023. I’m sketching an amulet my mom brought me from her last visit to Israel about a year prior in my journal. My head is heavy with thoughts.

The page describes a feeling that I had a hard time pointing down for a couple of days because it was too big to grasp: Fear. The heavy kind that smothers you slowly with its irrationality. The amulet’s sketch is of a shield of David, which I have hanging on my doorknob.

I’m not a religious person and never was. There was a time in my life when the thought of wearing anything religion-oriented would make me scoff. Over the years in the US, as I taught Hebrew to children in a synagogue, I learned that religion has shades. Not all religious folks are necessarily hard-headed Orthodox who can be distinguished by what they wear. Jews come in all shapes and colors, and I’ve learned that I can be Jewish to a certain degree without showing for it if I don’t want to. With time, I just learned to accept it as part of my past, and through that, a part of who I am today.

And so, on the 19th, for the first time in my life, I was scared of simply being who I am. Scared of being Jewish in the US, of all places. The absurdity of the situation was so pronounced that it alone was what made me realize that what I feel is not normal, at least not me. I took some time looking into space after I wrote in the journal, needing my thoughts to settle. I was happy I could frame what I was feeling though.

The fear sharpened my identity as a Jewish person and connected me to my past in a way I haven’t in years, possibly ever. To be clear, I didn’t want to be connected: not with being Jewish and not with my Israeli past. These are two things I don’t care too much for in my day-to-day life. After all, there’s a reason I still live here, in the US, and lead a religion-free life. This was a rude and powerful pull, as if I was dragged by my hair, kicking and screaming against my will. I didn’t have a choice. The helplessness of this whole situation hit hard and turned into anger.

What I want to expand on is that anger. But to do so, I have to recognize the fear it came from, a place I will probably revisit as I look deeper and explain what has happened since.

This is part 1 of whatever this is going to be. From here, I went on several tangents. I’m not sure what to write next yet; I just know that I need to do so, which is fine (this I tell myself more than to you). The point is to let it out, at least some of it. We’ll see how it goes.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been writing a long post on what’s been going on in my head since October 7th of last year, and I broke my two blog writing rules:

1. Don’t write a post for more than two full days.
2. Don’t write negative things about other people.

Let me explain first what I mean by these self-imposed rules.

Two full days mean usually two full mornings writing and not being done. I revise my posts and check for typos and grammar before I publish them, but this editing process is not part of “spilling the beans.” When I run out of time writing, I give myself the option to wrap things up the next day (or later in that day if I get the chance), but not to sit down and continue writing a second part.

Why not keep on writing? I found that if I’m not done writing down what I have to say in one sitting, I’m probably never going to publish what I’m writing. I will keep on writing until I forget my point and go into endless tangents or get overwhelmed during the editing part, which takes a decent amount of time, and the whole thing will feel like a chore. This used to happen sometimes with my old blog, and it sucks.

As for saying negative things about people, this is something I picked somewhere else a couple of years back: it’s a positive-karma-enhancing tool and a troll-preventative measure in one. It’s one thing to be grumpy and complain about an idea; it’s another to criticize a group of people (or someone specifically, which is even worse) in a negative light. This can be tricky at times, but usually, it means criticizing the idea a person (or a certain group) is after rather than the individuals themselves.

For my October 7th post, I gave up somewhere around the third day of writing. I was also getting too judgmental of people, and I came across as bitter and negative. The post started to look like the kind of post that makes me stop reading and even stop following a person, at least for a while. These are crazy political times for all of us, after all.

It’s natural that there are a lot of feelings about what happened and what is still happening, and it’s a good thing that I feel like I can talk about it more in length now. But. I must remember my two rules, they are there two help me. So, what can I do when approaching a difficult topic like this one?

For one, I should write one idea at a time without expanding on tangents and related events. For another, if I write about other people, I should focus on how they make me feel, not what they are saying and what I feel they are saying. One is authentic and honest, while the other is negative speculation.

I will try to salvage the big mess of a post I have for parts and see what I come up with. I’m also considering some sort of content warning for people who don’t want to read anything of the sort but still like other stuff I write about.

I gave up on The Last Girl Scout 📚. It started out OK, but it quickly became too “cute” for me with “Sugar” here and “Honey” there every time the two transwomen (which is important to mention in the context of the book) talk to each other. I’m not that kind of person and not that kind of a reader.

I’ve had my MacBook Pro docking station for a while, but this morning I was thinking that the term “docking station” is a bit vague. Wikipedia doesn’t help much: “Because a wide range of dockable devices—from mobile phones to wireless mouse—have different connectors, power signaling, and uses, docks are unstandardized and are therefore often designed for a specific type of device.”

This is why I couldn’t find a simple “docking station” for my MacBook Pro when I was looking for one about a year ago. It was (and still is) a long list of USB hubs, aluminum brackets, cables, and other things in between.

I found a MacBook stand in the end, which is a simple metal bracket. It’s a nice sturdy stand that holds the MacBook safe next to my PC. Here it is with the MacBook connected to everything I use daily:

The MacBook is connected to a KVM switch, which allows me to switch to my PC (the monster you see in the background) at any moment with a keyboard shortcut. I use it for gaming (Windows) and networking/private browsing/productivity (Linux). The KVM needs HDMI and USB connections, which you can see on the left. There’s also a small case under the HDMI cable to hold it up straight since it’s heavy and needs support in this position.

The MacBook needs to be connected to power to work with its lid closed (docking mode). I was concerned about the battery at the start, growing up at an age where keeping devices with batteries connected to power at all times is a bad idea and even a fire hazard, but the MagSafe connector (lower right) is a sophisticated chip that knows to turn off the power automatically, designed to work like this. This is why the LED is orange: the battery is never full when it’s like this; it keeps the battery at around 75-80 percent. I’ve had the Mac for a year now, and the battery can still hold a charge of about 10 - 12 hours of work.

The MacBook Pro came with USB Cs, and I had a perfectly working USB-A 4-port “dock” (see?), so I’m using a metal USB-A to USB-C converter. On the other side, I have cables for my Android phone if I need to load files on the Mac, and these days, a Wacom tablet for drawing. The charger for my Apple Watch is connected to the remaining USB-C port. I charge the watch daily whenever I take a shower (the Watch can take water no problem, but showers work as a good reminder to charge it)

I use the Mac remotely about once every two weeks. When I do, I carefully remove all the cables and place the Mac in a plastic shell (with stickers, of course) that goes into my backpack. I usually don’t even bother taking the charger with me, even if I’m going to stay overnight.

The MacBook is the best device I’ve ever had for work/life balance. It can run whatever I need for work (these days, it’s mostly Microsoft Edge) while providing me with classical music (IDAGIO), Signal (to chat with friends), WhatsApp (to chat with family, sometimes work), and all the other necessaries, from email to Photoshop, and of course, Emacs to bridge both worlds.

A few quick updates:

• Insomnia has been hitting hard for the second week in a row. My days have two parts: a small one from around 4 AM to 8 AM, and then after I get to sleep again, 9 AM to until 3 PM or so when I crash and take another 20-minute nap until later.

• There’s a lot going on out there. Some good, some bad, and too much to express, especially in my state right now. I’m aware and am following with interest

• Work’s been taking extra of my time with projects, and that was before the whole CrowdStrike thing. Yeesh. Between that, other hobbies, and trying to shove some exercise when I’m not a zombie, there’s little time left for other things

Hope everyone else’s doing alright, these days are a crazy ride.

This, in a nutshell, was the problem Friday, and it still carries on to next week in some places:

Crowdstrike : its fine u just have to manually visit the PC boot it into safe mode and remove a sys file

US Organization with 50,000 pcs and a completely outsourced IT department in Bangalore : what

— Hammancheez (@Hammancheez) July 19, 2024

Not only hundreds of computers stopped working because of CrowdStrike, to fix those, you had to manually get to the computer.

Not only do you have to get to these hundred computers with an IT department that has 10 or so people on call, but many of these computers are locked away in offices you don’t have access to or belong to people who happen to be in a different state or a different country.

Not only many of these computers were impossible to reach, but there were computers IT didn’t even know they had in their inventory until they got BSOD, and users who work have been remote since 2020 or were forgotten in the basement next to their red staple called the helplines until those collapsed.

Not only IT have computers they didn’t know existed, but management was (and is) in full panic mode and wanted a full report of inventory (how many computers you have vs how many are fixed) ASAP. Because IT can’t give them such a report because they don’t even know how many computers they have or are affected, management demands that IT keeps reporting every few hours for a meeting that goes for an hour between all IT departments in an organization while they are running around fixing issues.

The technical issue is always just the tip of the iceberg.

At least at my organization, most managers are IT folks themselves and have known the people they work with for years, even decades. They trust each other to do their job, and it shows. And I have to say (I wish for the day I wouldn’t have to say this and it will just be normal) that the few women who lead IT groups through all this did an amazing job. They led by example and came up with ideas that helped everyone. Happy to be working in a place like this.