In praise of simple tools

I write using Emacs and LaTeX. I’ll grudgingly copy and paste to other formats because the organization demands it but I do better work with the simpler tool. Some people prefer to use Vim. They are Wrong, but less wrong than people who use Google Docs, Quip, or (angels and ministers of grace defend us!) Microsoft Word.

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Broadly vs. Locally-useful skills

Early on, I programmed on mainframes in COBOL… I’m sure I could do it again. But I’d be tossing away some highly valuable, broadly-applicable and current AWS skills. Want me to to that? As a spiritual pilgrim once said to a penguin: “cough up some dough, mac.”

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How I became “glue”

As has often been the case in my life, I was in a category of people who were not supposed to exist. I was that “Type II misfit.” How I got there is the story.

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It’s not coming back

In 1945, some still expected the world to go back to familiar pre-crisis reality. They would be disappointed, as will those who are waiting for “the good old days” today.

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Software is hard

A horribly embarrassing software disaster happened on Monday. It was caused by a bad certificate, which is a mechanism used to verify and authenticate a software service. As big as it was, I doubt anybody will lose their job over the Microsoft Teams outage even though it had an impact on millions of paying customers….

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