Posts

YouTube Version So here I am sitting at a communal table in the lobby of the Sonesta Charlotte Lower South End hotel near the end of Southeast Linuxfest 2026 (aka SELF) pondering this weekends experience and I gotta say: It was a bit depressing. Why? Well in 2024 there was one session about AI. Last year there were four sessions that were AI related and those sessions were part of the “Emerging Technologies” track just like in 2024. This year there were seven sessions and they were part of the “Artificial Intelligence” track. Technically that’s only three additional sessions, but I guess this year it officially became impossible for me to escape the feeling that AI is literally everywhere now. ...

YouTube Version I have effectively been exiled from Big Tech. In this post I’m going to give you my perspective on how that happened and my feelings about it. If you aren’t interested in hearing this tale, I’ll go ahead and summarize it for you up front: The values I grew to appreciate and build my work and hence my tech career of the last few decades around, are no longer in vogue. I refuse to apologize for this and I refuse to shift my position, hence the growing impasse. ...

YouTube Version So before we get into today’s spicey and ultimately divisive discussion topic, I just want to say to those of you who have been following this blog for awhile, thank you. I haven’t posted here very often since I transitioned most of my takes over to a more anonymous blog a couple years ago. Looking back a few years later, I have to admit that I regret doing that. This is primarily because I can’t help but to feel that adopting some anonymity has inherently reduced the range and impact of my diatribes on the tech industry and the world in general. This post marks the very first step that I’m taking to reverse that change. ...

This year has been a painful one. I’ve also been pretty quiet… here anyway. It’s been over a year since I’ve posted here as most of my musings have been published on my new anonymous blog. Nevertheless, I felt like I owed whatever readers remain here at least some sort of update as to what’s been going on with me this year and where my head is at. In truth my head isn’t in a good place. The world is going to shit. Regardless of which slice of the spectrum you are interested in, it is hard to maintain any kind of optimism about the direction things are moving in. Politics has finally turned into the complete and utter dumpster fire that I always knew it was capable of becoming. Be sure to thank Donald and his fascist enablers for this wonderful gift. Big Tech has finally begun its metamorphosis into what was probably always going to be its final form: an endless sea of the completely enshittified platforms dedicated to entrapping and enslaving unwitting prey (aka customers) by pushing an endless stream of lies and bullshit. ...

On Friday morning September 27th 2024, Hurricane Helene introduced itself to the Southeastern United States. A few short hours later, nobody was sorry to see it go away but nearly everybody in it’s path had been effected in some significant way. It was a time that few of us will live long enough to forget. First off let me just say, Annette and I got off relatively easy. While so many that we know have lost irreplaceable things and continue to suffer as a result of the storm, things here went rather well. We lost power and internet for only a day and a half and we happened to have a lot of items lying around like a camping propane stove, some propane tanks, lots of candles, battery powered flashlights and a battery powered AM/FM radio that really helped. We also had solar rechargeable power bank which proved helpful as our smartphones and their associated, not to mention overloaded, cellular networks were basically our only way to talk with others during the actual storm. ...

Well after nearly 23 years of largely uninterrupted and admirable service, the time has come to officially retire the custom Content Management System that has powered it all: Presentation Engine. I originally created and deployed the first version of PEngine back in late 2001 when I first created this blog before I registered the domain name in October of 2001. Back then it was nothing more than a shoddily put together classic ASP application with an Access DB driving it that I threw together in a hurry. Until today, some variation upon that original codebase has been delivering content to my readers despite the fact it has advanced significantly over the years. ...

So it’s that time of year and I spent last weekend at SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF) 2024 in Charlotte, NC. This was my second year of attending and it absolutely lived up to the lofty expectations set by my first trip last year. This year was less about the sessions for me and more about the people. Which is interesting to say because if I’m being honest about my visit last year, it was also similar. ...

As some of you may have noticed, I have been rather quiet over the last few months. There are a lot of reasons for my silence. The more observant among you may have even noticed that content has disappeared and reappeared from this site several times over the same time period. Long story short: The nature of this site and how and when I use it to express myself is changing. This change is long overdue. ...

So as most of you know, I tend to take the last few weeks of every year off. Primarily I use this time to celebrate the year and reflect on its events. I also use this time to tie up any tech loose ends that I have… and boy did I have a few this year. My biggest piece of in-home tech debt was definitely my camera system. For years I have run a hodge podge front door camera which basically amounted to an indoor web cam mounted in my front window which was pointed at the foot door area of the porch. The web cam was hooked up a to Raspberry Pi 4 running an RPI distribution called MotionEyeOS. Sadly this software hasn’t been updated since mid 2020 as the maintainer had stepped away and nobody has stepped up to maintain it since. ...

Yesterday I almost died. At least I came as close to dying as I have ever come over the course of my life. I hadn’t been feeling well since Monday morning. I was experiencing quite a bit of abdominal pain and bloating. It only got worse as time progressed on Monday and that evening I just wasn’t able to sleep. No matter what position I got in, I just couldn’t get to sleep due to the aches and pains. Finally right before 3 am on Tuesday the 14th I woke Annette and she convinced me to let her take me to the emergency room. ...