Rubenerd

Merlin Mann says he loves asking people what they’re excited about, as opposed to what they’re interested in, or what they’re doing. People are happier and more engaging when they start talking about it. I’ve also found it to be a great social lubricant to overcome social awkwardness.

• Using and upgrading to FreeBSD 12.1, at the cloud company that I work at, and on my personal machines. I feel this is the best point release in terms of features and goodies that we’ve had in a while.

• Upgrading and making our home nicer for Clara and I. Finally getting new tables, nicer computer chairs, and organising things better.

• Learning everything I can about oksh(1), the portable Kornshell variant from the OpenBSD project. It does so much cool stuff, especially the auto-completions.

• Packaging and selling stuff on eBay, after a long reprieve. I had convinced myself that nobody would want my second-hand wares, or that they wouldn’t pay enough to justify the time or cost. But I’m already up a couple hundred dollars for stuff I haven’t used for years.

• Resuming my RDF archiving project, and my silly light novel and sci-fi books I started a decade ago and never finished. This has lead to all sorts of bizarre but fascinating world-building research, like whether there’s a standard labcoat length, and what size a firehose would need to be to blast sufficient water pressure to lift a hapless operator into the sky.