It’s a little disheartening to realize how long it’s been since I’ve blogged here. I’ve certainly been active online over that time, but blogging has taken a back seat. Waaaaay back.
Although, technically, it hasn’t: I’ve just been blogging elsewhere, somewhere people actually read my content, and I know how many people read my content, and I can interact with people reading my content. World of difference.
So where’ve I been? Glad you asked. Oppositelock (affectionately known as “Oppo”), or more precisely, Just Jeepin’ @ Oppositelock, where I write about lots of random stuff, primarily lately ranting about our government’s Keystone Kops approach to COVID-19, but more usually about Jeeps.
Yes, Jeeps, something else I didn’t write/think about 6 years ago, the last time I wrote any blogs…but don’t expect it here, unless the rotating ownership of the Kinja/Gawkerverse finally kills Oppo.
So why am I here today? Because upon browsing Hacker News today I stumbled upon a really good idea I’m not going to emulate, but it nonetheless inspired me to fire up this blog and write a bit.
The good idea? Josh Branchaud’s TIL repository.
For five year as of this writing, 909 TILs, he’s been capturing things he learned that day.
I’ve started something much less ambitious and less public: recently I started learning [org-mode][], finally, after way too many years of using Emacs without actually taking advantage of the vast ecosystem and customizability it offers. So I have a file named it.org which I use to capture random thoughts and links of interest, and one named cooking.org where I keep recipes as I try to bake my way through this coronavirus crisis.
What else have I been up to? Well, last time I wrote a blog entry here I was working for Basho, which collapsed a few years ago under the weight of a convoluted ownership structure which led to a convoluted ownership battle and, well, failure.
I returned to my previous employer. Sorta. The IT consulting company I worked for before Basho was named Apparatus, here in Indianapolis, and while I was away doing Erlangy/distsys things Apparatus was purchased by a global consulting firm named Virtusa. Since I still knew people working out of the old Apparatus office, and since they needed someone with my (approximate) skillset, I hired on to work on…well, a tool that never saw the light of day. Another story I probably can’t share and regardless isn’t all that interesting.
Skills-wise I’ve been focused on AWS and Python; automating infrastructure at scale is pretty cool, but I’m definitely no longer on the bleeding edge of the industry. Which is ok, I’m old and startup life (and risk) probably isn’t for me anymore. Probably.
Will I continue blogging? Guess we’ll all have to wait and see. Catch you on the other side.
tools blogging