Technologist, dad, author, ally if you want one. Writing site used to update weekly.
Public Key
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2026-09-20T21:37:23Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely My #dog now reacts to the word "doorbell" like he just heard it ring. Ridiculous. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely I have an idea for a paper that would totally win the #Ignobel prize but I'm too lazy to do it: a statistically rigorous study that sums up the amount of time saved across the world by people not having to rewind things anymore. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely It's 2026, and "devil's lettuce" now refers to actual lettuce. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Beancounter: "We can save buckets of money by using AI to pick thumbnails for news headlines." npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely If I knew any religious Trump supporters I would be having so much fun razzing them about the weather in DC right now... "surely it's a sign from God, right?" :D npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely No joke here - I had a friend who suffered from this (pre-Internet) and it completely overwhelmed her life. It was truly debilitating, and the feedback loop where she'd see medical professionals who constantly told her it was in her head only served to drive her into deeper conspiracy land. I'd imagine an effective treatment would involve a great deal of patience, listening, and building trust - and even then that's a fragile situation. Kind of like telling someone that ChatGPT doesn't really intend to inhabit a manufactured human body and become their lifelong partner... they won't believe you because they won't _want_ to believe you. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @nprofile…harz Tridge is using AI? LOL, that's damn funny to be honest. Also I thought he only worked on core Samba code. Maybe he should only work on core Samba code. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @nprofile…f86m as someone who's close to finished with a first novel (and a very good one at that), this is... not encouraging. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely 1992 was optimistic. Trying to get that kind of image quality off an acoustic coupler at 300 baud (if you had a very quiet room) would have taken hours. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @nprofile…hl5c can't believe I'm saying it but go Cubs! This Giants fan needs something to be happy about since tonight's starter has over 1.000 OPS against him from all left-handed batters. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely I just want to thank the archaic stuck-in-the-1800s-literally US banking system for making this the most reliable way to pay for a used car that you're not financing. It was hella fun carrying this on BART, let me tell you. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Got pathology results back from a skin thing I had taken off the other day and sure enough: actinic keratosis, which is precancerous skin. So I probably just dodged one here. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @nprofile…cm0q only now figuring this out? npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely When people say Shakespeare isn't relevant to modern life it's good to have people like Sir Ian around to prove them wrong: npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Many of you in the Fedi have seen @nprofile…ugpy posting his thoughts, often in the form of long threads. His thinking has always been sound, and in the one direct interaction I've had he strikes me as an overall good egg. Here's an opinion piece from him that's well worth reading - grounded in reality through and through: npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @nprofile…eqsh the fuck, man? They just up and rammed his car and then demanded papers. People don't understand what this is when it's right in everyone's face. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @nprofile…hpz8 René Descartes has entered the chat. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Would you name your table "select" or, you know, "from?" I don't think so. #sysadmin #dba npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely We've been on like a 5+ year campaign to try and convince the boss types to let us install Linux on our laptops but, ironically, they tout "security" as the reason we can't. Meantime in the usability department... npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely You haven't truly lived the life of a #sysadmin until you're googling around to figure out some issue and find a post about it where someone's asking the exact same question and... it's you. You, asking the exact same question ten years ago. And nobody answers. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely I just spent an entire freaking hour doing low-level TCP tracing to figure out why my test wasn't working, only to discover that the "Test item" dialogue doesn't freaking work with net.tcp.service checks. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Sign I carried today at our local #nokings gathering: npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @nprofile…ge8h great. Now do the one about why French counting by tens is so weird. For those who don't know it goes like this: npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Network admins who disable ICMP: do you also take the numbers off the front of your house to keep the burglars out? #sysadmin npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely THIS IS WHY WE DON'T FEED WILD ANIMALS! Some blithering idiot has been feeding the deer around here. I've had three different deer come up to me rather aggressively demanding food, and attempting to haze them by foot-stamping, yelling at them, throwing things etc only results in them pinning their ears and not giving ground. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @nprofile…u8sc I call it the fugly bloated bill. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Friends don't let friends fly #jetblue - they are not your partner in #aviation, at least if you're a paying customer. Here's what I left them after yesterday's BOS->SFO trip: npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely People who take photos of every slide at a #tech #conference where all the slides are published online at the end of the event need to be kicked out. So annoying, every time a slide appears fifty phones go up in the air, pulling focus away from the content. Stop it! npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Why, I ask, does #linux do all manner of nifty stuff to make reboots go faster when server manufacturers continue to take the attitude that 20 minutes is perfectly fine to initialize all the firmwares and bios and whatever else they want to ever-so-slowly bring alive? npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @nprofile…u8sc @nprofile…6mg3 aww, did you get that castoff from the Giants and is he performing just like the primadonna we were happy to see in the rearview? He fits right in as a Yankee lol npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @nprofile…adzx what I think happened has everything to do with what's on the floor of the car in front of the passenger seat. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely This ad is inadvertently hilarious. "Hit in the front," he says. Looking at the second interior photo, I think I can guess what actually happened. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @nprofile…v6nv (assuming you're a US citizen) be polite, and try to waste as much of their time as you possibly can. Go onto tangents, act as though you don't understand their questions, answer their questions with questions, ask them about their jobs, where did they get those shoes, etc. If you've ever heard of "It's Lenny," do that. If you haven't heard of It's Lenny, go to YouTube and watch a couple examples. Then once you're done laughing, do what he does. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Due to the recent #aviation tragedy in New York City (although the cause appears to be different) this absolute gem of a period piece is currently trending on YouTube: npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely https://social.taupehat.com/system/media_attachments/files/114/221/829/390/840/667/original/f5318bc4feb7cbe1.png npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely When my daughter was in sixth grade her friends invited her into a group chat. At some point they started telling each other all the swear words they knew. Not cussing at each other, just listing all the words. This was when they discovered that instead of my daughter they had invited her grandmother who Does. Not. Cuss. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely The world owes @nprofile…qz4x an unending debt of gratitude for the word "enshittification," a word so useful that even my browser's spell-checker recognizes it. As a succinct way of conveying a somewhat broad concept, it has opened up space for a lot of thought and conversation... and the occasional not-terrible listicle. Thanks, man. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Making it clear when and why I'm leaving #Meta npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Well, Threads was fun for a while, but the #Meta content policy changes about using disparaging language toward LGBTQ people was beyond not ok with me. Guess y'all will have to put up with me over here again lol npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Damn I hate this time of year. Just heard two planes with high-performance engines turning overhead, checked out adsbexchange, sure enough they're both #CalFire, oh shit oh crap etc. then I see they launched from their base, went out a little ways, and then were told RTB/not needed and that just happened to happen right over my house. Scared the hell out of me. #cawx npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Thought it was odd to be feeling so sleepy already and then I realized it was just the damn #wildfire smoke making my eyes burn. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely One of the things I find somewhat entertaining with #perl is how you can fill code with benignly malicious antipatterns like: npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Well, I've absolutely had it with #PGE - our power went out about fifteen minutes ago, right as it was time to start dinner, same time as it went out on Tuesday, same time as it went out Thursday before last. Always the same block of 1250-ish customers, always out for a couple hours. It's been crap reliability for months now. npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely Coworker wrote a very useful in-house utility that they named "ATH." I of course made a joke about the next version needing to be called "ATDT." Half the team didn't get it. We work in telecom. I feel old. #sysadmin #bofh npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely After a long and busy day of fetching tennis balls, waiting for people to come home, gnawing on his bone and barking at his reflection in the window Milo has finally reached the end of his day. Rest well everyone! #dogsofmastodon npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely @npub10fm…x0qg TIL. Thanks! npub19hx92r39h623da4em2grl03m6zer7rw5dkeqh3qu8tcx7lyjq3tq69ffga Mike Ely In the quest to find an email client that Doesn't Suck, well, the quest continues. #thunderbird #mozilla
