Chaos Server

After a time you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing--after all--as wanting. - Mr Spock (Amok Time) I'm not sure what Apple will be releasing next month, but it's an interesting time to do the thought exercise of deciding if I'm going to buy anything sight-unseen and, uhh, how much money I will be paying in annual tribute. New iPhone. I don't think I'm going to buy this version. I'm iffy that I might buy it because I recognize that my iPhone is the computer I have on me all day every day and I feel like as a Apple fanboy technologist I should have the best of this for my life. Two years ago I got the iPhone X because it was such an innovative change. Last year I got the iPhone X Max because I wanted to get back to the big phone screen size again to have the most productivity. I'm not sure what this year's phone could give that I "need." A new camera with time-of-flight? Probably not, since the Mrs. does the majority of the photo...

Kids just trying to make a living are always the good guys. - Papergirls On of my fun little side projects, Weather.Next, it sends a weather forecast email if the temperate in the next seven days meets a criteria you configure such as "raining" or "high above 100 degrees." I built it years ago and every once in a while do a security update to a library, but mostly it just runs fine - but then I decided it would be cool if the email told you why the message was triggered. I thought it would be easy, but uhh, the way I designed the code is that the when the trigger happens the trigger thread makes a web request to pull down the email content from a JSP page. So like, it's in two totally separate execution threads without any good way to pass a large data block. I could theoretically post all the trigger reasons into the page to have it echo out... but that's kind of a gross hack. So instead, I did a different gross hack that I love to hate. I stored all the...

I’m dead to everyone unless I try to become what I may be. - Paul Atreides When you ask Americans what is their top fear, the #1 answer is "Public Speaking," outpacing such other popular fears as death. If you're an extrovert you've got a small advantage on not being terrified of public speaking, but not a very big one. Almost everyone has an innate fear of doing a big prepared or impromptu presentation in front of an audience. There is only one surefire way to work past this fear: desensitization from repetition. You need to present as frequently as you can as often as you can. Let me suggest ways to make it easier. If becoming better at public presentations is your goal, tell your manager and get some buy in they can help you. Next look for every opportunity you can do presentations to others. Start presenting in small meetings of three to five people. This should be your immediate team you're close with. When this type of audience becomes no big deal, ask thos...