Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Importance and Urgency
November 17, 2024
urgency work management importance

One of the weird things about being an Engineering Director (ED) is that the stuff that lands on your plate is almost always very important but not urgent. This happens often and is a constant cycle of evaluation. Misjudging urgency or importance can cause a ton of problems for you and your team. Here’s how I think about navigating this.

The first big pitfall is treating non-urgent tasks as urgent. This feels good in the moment—it’s nice to check something off your list or swoop in to save the day—but it doesn’t take long before the cracks start to show. Constantly working in “everything’s on fire” mode will:

Earbuds Don't Fit Me
November 11, 2024
earbuds

I really dislike the shape of my ear. It makes it difficult for me to use earbuds like I assume normal people do. The cartilage in my ear doesn’t allow enough space for the earbud to sit properly. So, anytime I put an earbud in, it doesn’t seem to fit the way it’s supposed to. Apple AirPods, which have a large body and seem to shape the speaker to point a bit more forward, don’t sit very well in my ear at all. There’s nothing in my ear to hold them in place. The little bits of cartilage that it seems like normal people with normal ears have either don’t exist in my ear or are pointed in a different direction, making Apple EarPods not fit and sit properly.

Traditional earbuds, like the ones with tips you insert into your ear canal, also have difficulty fitting normally. My right ear has a smaller ear canal than my left ear, so I have to use totally different ear tip sizes, and they never fit quite right. The AirPod Pro earbuds that I have probably fit the best out of all the earbuds I own, but only because I use aftermarket foam inserts that conform to the shape of my ear. Each one is a different size, and even then there’s some kind of gap around the one for my left ear which messes with the noise cancellation and makes it less effective than it should be. I’m constantly having to adjust them because the cartilage in my ear does not hold the pods properly, and there’s always a drag pulling them down even though they’re more firmly affixed with the foam than with silicone tips.

Single-Issue Voter
November 11, 2024
voting,election

I think I’ve become a single-issue voter. This election has been very contentious, and there’s been a lot in the news about how it’s a very close race that the election is too close to call, particularly for the presidency, but also for the Senate. A lot of the issues they’re discussing are related to economics and the economy. The dollar that people bring home from their jobs isn’t stretching as far as it used to. People are talking about the border and immigration, and how there are people coming into this country who, some say, are taking away jobs. Certain candidates claim that these people coming in from outside the country, illegal immigrants, are a danger to us in some way.

There are also other issues like women’s rights, the right to choose what to do with one’s own body, or just plain old abortion issues related to Roe versus Wade and its overturning in recent years. But ultimately, the issue that I don’t hear anything about on the news, and the thing that concerns me most, is climate change.

Pizza Quest 2024
October 25, 2024
pizza,food,Chester County

At the beginning of the summer, the family embarked on an expedition to find the best pizza in Chester County. We did this because every time we went out for pizza or ordered delivery, we’d end up with something that didn’t satisfy one of us, or any of us. I thought we had found the best pizza place—one that satisfied all our needs—when we discovered a nearby spot called Revival Pizza.

Revival Pizza was initially pretty good. They had unique toppings, used different cheeses with distinct flavors on various pizzas, and their crust was nicely cooked and flavorful. Plus, it wasn’t too far to drive for pickup. Everything seemed perfect. But at some point, either Revival changed ownership or they altered their menu. Fundamentally, their pizza changed and no longer satisfied everyone. The cheese, which was an interesting factor at first, became less flavorful or too garlicky in some cases. They also used to have a really nice spicy shrimp pizza, which might sound odd to some folks, but it was amazing. Unfortunately, that pizza is no longer on their menu, nor is shrimp available as a topping anymore, which is kind of sad because I occasionally crave shrimp on my pizza.

Tin Update
October 23, 2024

It’s probably not apparent from what you see here, but I’ve made a pretty significant breakthrough with the way the software works to display this site. I want to get back to the note-taking exploration, but I’m pretty excited about this change and I want to make use of it.

One of the big intended features for the software that runs here is to be able to set some environment variables and then run the software and have it offload all of the storage to a git (not necessarily GitHub) repo. There would be no local storage. Everything would run in memory. When you write new posts, it would simply commit them to your repo for you directly from memory.