Reshaping

This blog has never been directly about me. It's always been mostly how-to guides that are reflections of problems I've encountered in adventures in tech. Maybe you know, maybe you don't, but the cliff notes are I've been working in tech since 2010. I moved from Eugene, Oregon, to Portland, Oregon, in 2013. Many people visit my blog, in fact nearly 20,000 people do a month. Despite the numbers, I don't know if I have any connection with readers.

So I've decided to shift the blog a bit as it seems impossible to just mindlessly blog about tech without addressing the elephant in the room. This means letting my actual life bleed into this blog. I haven't decided on a format, but I'll let it organically evolve, as such things have had a habit of working themselves out. It probably won't be daily, and it'll probably occasionally have politics, which professionally I tend to avoid. It'll also still contain helpful blog posts around silly technical issues, as always

Portland's downtown isn't a ghost town, but it feels perpetually like Portland's downtown at 7 am on the weekend. There's some bustle, but a bulk of businesses are closed, and offices are empty. I have the luxury to work from home, but in an ironic twist, for once, I do not want to as my apartment starts to feel more like a jail shared by two people. Thus, I'm the only person in an office space that's designed for roughly 45-50 people and usually occupied by about 25. As such, there's no one really to endanger, although I have a feeling I'll see a coworker or two finding the same sort of solace in an office space of all places.

It hasn't hit me hard, as inconveniently dodging mindless people involved with their cellphones still feels like a relief. I'm, however, far from an introvert, and thus, even the basic interactions of getting take out are welcome from Cafe Yumm.

The iconic coffee shops are closed for the most part (tried both Stumptown and Heart in my area), and restaurants have desperate "We're open! Take out only!" messaging. It makes me wish I had more money to give. It's strange to see so much infrastructure dedicated to people be somewhat void of them.

One of the more ironic fates is for years has been a sense of paranoia and fear from people of many political persuasions that big government is bad and inefficient. Here we are, makers of our own doom with a president who shut down an NSC pandemic unit despite being briefed on an eerily similar scenario and incapable of understanding basic facts and now we're forced to come to terms with slash and burning of the government. Death and taxes are the two truisms but have ever considered death being delayed by taxes? Perhaps a functional federal government isn't so bad after all.