Mar 20
Category: Personal
Jan 23
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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Jan 22
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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Sep 6
Rosh Hashana (New Year) Update
It’s been a busy year with a lot of changes, both Covid-related and otherwise. As is my custom, here’s my update for this circle around the sun.
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Jun 13
How I got hired at AWS
Being yourself matters as much as anything.
And be nice to the airline staff. They can really make or break your life.
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Jun 7
What the fuck are you doing there?
“Hey man,” I said in my native New York tongue, “You’re not gonna believe this, but I’m calling from Frankfurt…”
“What the FUCK are you doing there?”
It was a pretty good question.
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Apr 28
No Undoing
The joy of photography for me was never in the finished product, and certainly not the moment of capturing the image on film. The joy was in that painstaking work that it took to bring my vision of what the negative could be, into being on paper.
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Feb 14
Lessons from the top of a snowy hill
Things are rather treacherous out there. In my neighborhood, we have new-fallen (unplowed) snow, on top of wet (now frozen) fallen, partly-decayed, slippery leaves that were never swept or cleaned up because nobody seems to deal with those here either.
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Jan 18
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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Apr 18
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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