As Thomas Paine coined in The American Crisis
These are the times that try men’s souls.
February is near done. Spring comes, but what Spring will that be? The Spring of destitution? The warm rebirth of tyranny?
Paine would be laughing at us now, handing over our country to either side, frankly. To the feckless Democrats unable to govern, or to the bald-faced Republicans governing only for the “Techn-Anarcho-Fascist Oligarchs”–either way he’d be disgusted.
I maintain the second half of February, after Valentine’s day is just…depressing.
Above: the Author’s house back in Kentucky 10 years ago today
I’d write about DOGE and the collapse of our government, but plenty of other people are ahead of me. Seems you wring your hands, threaten revolution, or stick your head in the sand to some degree.
I got my first taste of office life when I worked a Summer in the basement of the Breathitt County Courthouse as a gopher/assistant for my paternal Aunt Lena. Her office, like that of my maternal Aunt Lenora, handled paying people. That cigarette-smoke infested basement was so bad that one weekend I had nicotine withdrawl, and I wasn’t a smoker. But, everyone was congenial enough, a group of women who got along on a molecular level. They covered for each other, looked out for people in trouble, and generally had a “work to live” attitude.
So this is going to be odd coming from a guy working at a place with a Leadership Principle saying “Speed matters in business”
If I’m doing my job right, I consider myself to be a “slow” developer.
I’ve watched the recent explosion across my social feeds about AI SUPERCHARGED DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS! like Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, Claude, and Warp Terminal. They all seem neat, and this seems like a Nova (if not a Supernova) of dev tooling we haven’t seen since Netbeans/Eclipse/IntelliJ battled it out 15 years ago to see who could make IT departments upgrade from 512 MB developer machiens fastest.
All the Leaves are Brown
And the sky is grey
I’ve been for a walk
On a Winter’s Day
My college roommate Chris died last week. He was 46 years old, the same age as me. I have no idea what he died of. I was a groomsman in his first wedding in Orlando, Florida, though I don’t remember what year that was–early 2000’s likely 2001-2002. Chris was a guest at my own wedding in 2005, and likely would’ve been a groomsman if it was a larger affair. Chris & Jessica stayed in contact with Whitney and myself until they divorced, though again I don’t remember when that was…the latter part of the 2000’s.
Since moving 45 minutes north of Austin in 2020, I drive at least 90 minutes every work-day. Some days (especially if it’s raining), that can total 2 hours. This year mark’s Amazon’s return to 5 Days per week in-office so that will be 10 hours a week on the road, 50 or so weeks a year.
To maintain sanity, I did two things:
I’ve loved podcasts for a long time. Here’s my list from 2012 They’re the soundtrack to me doing things: Yardwork, ranchwork, driving, travel. In general they ease the loneliness that is modern life–Someone’s voice in your ear, helping you learn or laugh.
So, it was quite a year, of some advances and pain. I’m still here, so let’s get into it.
Last January was probably the lowest I’d been in many years. I was looking for a new job. I managed 6 people in Seattle from an office in Austin, I’d been converted in January 2023 officially from Software Development Engineer (SDE) to Software Development Manager (SDM), though I’d been doing the job from April 2022. (This will become important later).
