Worked in tech for 18 years, now I fix rust old cars and try not to touch computers beyond looking up wiring diagrams and replacement parts.

I used to write html, JS, and CSS on long flights and saw some side eye looks, but then I’d have to test load the website I was working on for mom jeans and the jig was up.

The weather in New England and upper New York is very much like German weather, and sometimes worse. We’ve had snow on the grounds since the 30th of November and it’s only barely reached 0C in the last week.

It was -15C a couple nights ago at roughly the latitude of Rome, next to the ocean too. And only about 50km northwest (inland) it went down to -25C.

This has been a colder December than average for the last decade, but we have mountains that regularly get meters of snow each winter, and they are way lower elevation than the alps too. Also as we all know the last decade has been stoopid warm.

Mt Washington has measured the highest wind speed in the world.

I used to use ORMs because they made switching between local dev DBs ( like SQLLite, or Postgres) and production DBs usually painless. Especially for Ruby/Sinatra/Rails since we were writing the model queries in another abstraction. It meant we didn’t have to think as much about joins and all that stuff. Until the performance went to shit and you had to work out why.

Even then it would be most likely seeded by a probe from so distant that they’d never be able to travel here. Think Voyager probe, but maybe faster. If we’d sent one with a bio seed package and sent it right at the best life supporting planet we could find it’s still gonna be 10s or 100s of thousands of years before it even arrives, then a couple hundred million years for anything to evolve there.

It would be sorta hilarious if we were a distant science experiment though.

Good choice and those wheel weights aren’t too expensive either. Plus they stick in place. I’ve got a bunch left over from replacing rusty ones on my snow tires too!

It hit a phone pole 20 feet from our house once and killed our router and everything connected the the coaxial cable.

All the windows rattled in our house and if it weren’t for the flash you’d think a semi drove into it.

Lightning and distant clouds are the only thing I miss about living in the flat Midwest.

Mountains and blizzards are a good trade off though. We get thunderstorms too, but if you see a lightning bolt, you’re probably in danger of either dying or frying some of the electronics in your home. And your ears will be ringing.

I was working with the education division about a decade and a bit ago when they had an open source platform with sensors and motors. Then iRobot abruptly killed that division too, right as our project was getting going.

I haven’t felt good about that company since.

In printing it’s a little different, but if you need an exact color you can add it to the process, much like adding a varnish or other fancy finish.

Orange was always a problem when I was a designer. It had to be specific, you had to send a Pantone chip along, hope it hadn’t faded or changed color over the years (or buy new ones constantly) and then it still came out different than planned.

I thought that when I got started, but I really enjoy the building and briefly enjoy the results. Then I’m happy for the owner to take it away while I cross my fingers that it all keeps working.

It’s equal parts problem solving, fine motor skills, and perseverance that keep me working on old cars. That’s why I’m not at a dealership or quick turnaround repair place.

It’s also why I’m poor

I’ve been thinking of setting up a node at my local ski area, both for others to use, but also to make custom timing equipment that can send start and finish messages to the timing computer and keep us from having to haul wires up icy race courses all winter.

I’ve never actually set one up or used one yet though, so it’s probably a few years off.

I clearly remember it, I think you might be my little brother’s age.

I posted a couple things there early on but I’m generally terrible at documenting my work do there’s a decent back log of things I should share.

Thanks for getting that going way back, it was a nice place while it lasted.

365.25*10 would at least get you closer.

Ruby should add 10.years.ago.today

Haven’t seen an open Dairy Queen locally in almost 10 years.

I don’t know about you, but I quit doing that soul crushing work as soon as I could something I really loved.

If you were tall, it was more like an abusive relationship.

It’d smash you in the head, ear or shoulder before hugging you. And if you unhooked the shoulder belt it would yell at you the whole time.

Well we were in a 1990 Accord Coupe at the time, so it would have definitely crushed us.

Probably would be a windshield collision in modern SUVs though.