There are people who say things like, “You can’t possibly keep the sleep schedule that you do and survive.”

Then they stay with me or are around me for a bit and see that it’s true — that I have no discernible circadian rhythm and only take naps. It’s funny how often in my life that has happened. I don’t know why I am the way I am. Just am.

But it’s not hard for me. In fact, the opposite. It’s quite easy. I don’t get jet lag and I sleep when I am tired. Nothing difficult about that at all.

I wrote my own Firefox extension:

None of the existing ones did quite what I wanted or had a single right-click menu entry. My little extension does what it says on the tin: It converts text to title case, ignoring some words that aren’t typically capitalized. It’s signed and everything (though that is an evil scheme).

The extension is not available in the Mozilla Add-Ons site as it’s about as tested as a wombat in space, but it works for me.

NO I AM NOT A DEVELOPER LEAVE ME ALONE

I’m disagreeable – and it’s backed by science.

I’m disagreeable and I love it. I don’t give a fuck about the science!

West Point graduate becomes first woman to complete Army Ranger competition.

I went to (did not participate, watched!) the Best Ranger competition back in 1997. That thing is intense. I have respect for anyone who can complete it. The majority of the teams drop out each year.

This is what I do routinely as well. I am the final tier. Often when I get a problem, it’s been through three layers of helpdesk at two different vendors, two or three levels of sysadmin types, several tiers of developers, and frequently even more resources than that.

Many times, a team of 2-10+ people has been working the issue for weeks.

Most of those problems I solve in 20 minutes or less. When you’ve been doing the same sort of thing since 1980 and professionally for 25 years, you’ve seen a whole lot. And I just have a brain that is optimized for troubleshooting for some reason — probably because I have a great memory, accept nothing at face value from anyone, try things everyone “knows” cannot be the cause, and am relentless. These qualities take you very far in figuring shit out.

In the time it’s sunny here (mid-March through November), we generate so much electricity that we’re net producers:

Tons of big-ass solar panels on the roof. Depending on when we use electricity and when/if we have to run the AC, our power bill often goes down instead of up. If it stays sunny the next few days, it’ll likely go negative for electricity charges (power company will be crediting us).

Done told y’all.

Glad we prepped. It’s nice to be able to see a bit of the future sometimes.

Wish I’d been wrong. It happens sometimes, but it’s rare.

Here’s all the icons on my Mac Finder toolbar of the various little apps I wrote myself:

I like ’em.

Have you ever truly thought you were living the wrong life.

I felt that way when I was growing up in rural North Florida with everyone — including much of my own family — telling me how worthless, weak and terrible I was.

I thought, there must have been some mistake. And there was. I was born in the wrong place, among ignorant losers who hated anything intellectual and anyone with more than half a brain. Luckily, I had a big ego and am more stubborn than a herd of rhinoceroses.

So I escaped, made my own life, and prospered. But those were rough years. I’m frankly glad nearly all of those people are dead now.

Something I have long believed is that being thin is in large part based on not really enjoying food pic.twitter.com/2RgQRjvrow

— Misha, Photographer, Eligible Bachelor (@drethelin) January 2, 2025

I fucking love food. I could eat a whole large pizza, easy. And did back in the day. But I do not now.

I am thin because I willed it. No other reason.

I’m in the pedal to the metal phase of the project I am doing alone at work that would normally be undertaken by 8-10 people for a company of this size.

At another company I worked for (which was larger, but not enormously larger) we had 12-15 consultants going full-time on the same project for 18 months. And its cost was $1.5 million.

Not including my own salary, I’m doing it for less than $30,000 and in around six months. I’m a big bargain, in other words. We unicorns have shiny, resplendent coats and glorious horns. And we tend to be divas. But we also fuckin’ deliver.

Would 14 year old you be proud of who he became, why or why not?

Oh, for sure. My path at 14 looked like either death or prison, or that in the opposite order. My life was very terrible when I was 14, for a variety of reasons.

But now, I own my own place¹, have plenty of money, friends, and most importantly I have a loving, lovely and wonderful partner to spend my days with. And who tolerates my incessant punning, sometimes across 3-4 languages at once.

I fucking won at life and my 14-year-old self would both be surprised and could not wait to be out of that hell and to be here instead. But I’m here now, and I’m very grateful for it every day — and that my past self had the will and resilience to endure what I did. Many people tried to break me. None succeeded.

1. With my partner.

I think it’s pretty flattering when I show up on a call and someone says something like, “I see they’ve called in the big guns now.” Happened to me today in a troubleshooting meeting.

About eight people had been working on the issue since last week. I solved it in 15 minutes.

Big guns indeed.

I wrote a little GUI application to unlock a drive on the Mac. You can paste the password in and it gives a success party cat message if all goes well:

I think party cat is cute. Or if it doesn’t work:

It also displays the actual error message — or at least what the mount process returns.

I think it’s pretty cool and even though I hate programming, this was quite useful to me to have done.