tilton

tilton, 6 months ago to random

There's a certain brand of leftism that insists you can't enjoy anything as long as anyone anywhere is suffering. You can't live like that, though, you'll burn out and you won't actually help anyone. If you want to help people, you need to help them find some joy in this bitter world, no matter how small, and you can't do that if you won't let yourself experience any either.

tilton, 6 months ago to random

I first saw "American Movie" in 2005 when my future husband showed it to me. I was enthralled by it, chuckling and sometimes laughing the whole way through. After it was over, I turned to him and said "Wow, that was a fantastic mockumentary! I can't believe I'd never heard of it before!" He just stared at me. He said "Uh... it's not a mockumentary, it's a documentary" and I died inside. All those moments I laughed at suddenly became tragic. I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it again.

tilton, 6 months ago to random

Our production SSH keys expire every 60 days and must be manually rotated using a process that takes at least half a day to complete, involves a Change Control Board review, and requires updating our public keys in at least 5 different git repositories.

I can't believe I work here.

tilton, 6 months ago to random

I bought fast food for the first time in ages last night and was pretty shocked to find that a 5 strip combo meal from Popeyes is $17.50 now. I mean, I knew inflation was bad just from grocery shopping, but that’s pretty shocking.

Back in the late 90s we jokingly called a $20 bill a “Yuppie food coupon” because that’s what you’d spend on a night out at like Cheesecake Factory or something. Now it’s just a Subsistence Coupon.

tilton, 6 months ago to random

People love to shit on Java nowadays, and honestly I can see why, but speaking as someone who started professional software development in 1995: Java was a huge step up in productivity from what we had before. For a while, it dominated because it was so cool, and hip, and honestly pretty fun! Now that it's firmly in "Enterprise Boring" land, it's way less fun, but I still appreciate it for what it once was.

Ninji, 6 months ago to random

An old lady on this train asked me if I could put her bag up on the overhead rack because I have "muscles" (I barely do), and I obliged

Then a string of 3 other nice old ladies with bags appeared behind her, all wanting the same

I didn't mind but it took me by surprise, haha

tilton, 6 months ago to random

tilton, 6 months ago to random

Since the UNIX time just passed 1700000000, it's time to tell you about my favorite bug! Back in 2001, I'd just implemented a database backed job queue at work. It was all going great, and then suddenly on September 10, 2001 (I know I know...), we noticed it was hung! No jobs were getting taken. It took ages to figure it out: The UNIX clock had just rolled over to 1000000000. The jobs were sorted by timestamp, but the timestamps were stored as strings. Since the most recent completed job started with a 9 as the first character in the job ID, it was being sorted after the new jobs, and since the "most recent" job was already completed, the system just assumed no work needed to be done. That was a fun one to figure out!

tilton, 6 months ago to random

One huge drawback to running my own Mastodon instance is that when I click on a popular post from somewhere out there, I don’t get to see the replies to it. I have to click through to see the post on the original server if I want to see replies. It’s a bother and a real issue of federation.

Sominemo, 6 months ago to random

I use vanilla mastodon server and it's annoying with its quite short character limit, but bluesky is even shorter than that, geez.

tilton, 6 months ago to random

I can't believe I used to like web development.

tilton, 6 months ago to random

Holy cow, this might actually get me to use Signal! I've hated their "phone number as username" policy since day one. https://community.signalusers.org/t/public-username-testing-staging-environment/56866

tilton, 6 months ago to random

Jeez, it’s no wonder Putin admires Stalin so much. In 1923, Lenin and Stalin got into a big fight because Lenin believed that all the Soviet republics should be independent and that ethnic minorities should be protected. Stalin was like “nah fuck that, Russia should just own them all”. Lenin’s last and most debilitating stroke happened a few weeks later.

tilton, 6 months ago to random

Some of the license plates I saw back when I worked in Palo Alto

AMP X OHM
INOVATR
LOL PWNT

tilton, 6 months ago to random

The thing I hate most about writing C is that if you want a data structure, you'd better already have one in your code base ready to go, or you have to write it yourself. Want a hash table? Sorry, write it yourself, hope you like void pointers. Want a growable array? Or a heap? Or a slot map? Same, enjoy writing it, don't forget to check for off-by-one errors in your shitty implementation that you banged out in a weekend just so you could solve the actual problem you care about.

tilton, 6 months ago to random

I've been playing with the ITS operating system on an emulated PDP-10 computer the last couple of days, and it's really nifty. It was written by the MIT AI Lab hackers in 1967, originally for the PDP-6, and became hugely influential. It inspired UNIX in a few, but of course it's very different. For one thing, there are no passwords, because why would you need that? You can just log in as any user. You can even log in as a user that doesn't exist and just make a home directory for yourself. Ah, simpler times.

tilton, 6 months ago to random

I want Apple to introduce a new color they call "Pro Beige" just to troll the industry

tilton, 6 months ago to random

I started working full-time remote nine years ago, long before the pandemic. It's worked out great, but I'm real worried about the backlash against remote work now. I don't live commuting distance to any major job center, so if I end up getting called back into an office, I'd have to move. What a hassle.

tilton, 7 months ago to random

The whole “Blue and White G3 Macintoshes are vintage computers” thing makes me feel so uncomfortable because I bought one of those fuckers at Fry’s Electronics brand new and used it as my primary desktop for a few years. It can’t be vintage. That would mean I’m… old

tilton, 7 months ago to random

STOP ALL THE DOWNLOADIN'!

tilton, 7 months ago to random

I've been off of Twitter for a full year now, but honestly I don't know where I belong. The Fediverse is drowning in too much internal infighting to be enjoyable any more, but I stick it out anyway. Bluesky is too... well, whatever the hell Bluesky is, to be enjoyable. Social media just feels bad. I guess I'll keep doing it to myself until morale improves.

tilton, 7 months ago to random

I reaaaaally want to go back to Iceland next year. Icelandair's cheapest direct flights would be $2,300 round trip for two people. That's before hotel and ground transportation. The West Coast Tax is a really high price to pay for visiting anywhere in Europe.