Blog

By the determination of the FCC, I am extra (but you knew that already) 6 months ago
I passed all three levels of Amateur Radio written exams today, in one sitting, because of one of my spouse's friends. Passing all three is maybe unusual, but there's a story behind this and maybe some things to think about. Like, for example, why did I just swallow a giant gumball of knowledge…

Setting up a new HP networked printer (say, a Color LaserJet Pro M255dw or M283fdw) without getting HP crapware all over the place 1 year ago
I hate everything about printers. I especially hate the modern printer with bloatware, crapware, spyware, and who knows what else that they are going to push on you. So, since it became apparent that I ought to get a new printer lately, I ended up trying to get a printer going without any of the…

The User Generated Content myth that dates back to the early days of the Internet and must die 2 years ago
A friend was into one of those popular self-help books a long time ago and she ended up going to a meetup for the book and I guess one of the stories in the self-help book somehow involved a couple who got rich because the community around them helped out. Ergo, one of the couples at the meetup…

How the PC hardware market has changed in the past 5 years... 7 years ago
I've mostly ignored the hardware market for the past 5 years... until my desktop started acting up, which then caused an unplanned 2-week project to get my computer going. It all ended well. I didn't even need to resort to my BackBlaze backup. A bunch of stuff hasn't changed, not in the slightest…

Brian O'Leary, Ex-Astronaut 8 years ago
Brian O'Leary was one of the " Excess Eleven ", the second group of Scientist-Astronauts hired by NASA in the midst of the Apollo program. In terms of the space program, he's pretty much a footnote, one of several who left or were forced out of the astronaut corps throughout the past few decades…

This website should look a little different now 8 years ago
It's generally regarded as stupid to spend a bunch of time writing your own CMS. It's the website equivalent of spending hours fiddling with your vi config. Or the software equivalent of sorting your record collection in biographical order. Heck, I know folks who work on WordPress. They are…

Illnesses of the non-visible sort 10 years ago
Since Sept 19th or so, I've had a series of colds with a little bit of ‘normal' time but then it comes back. This has meant some working from home and some times where I had conversations at work that I wasn't fully present for. On the other hand, you can hear it in my voice... the blocked sinuses…

The tumblr of my mind... or... katas of more than one artistic pursuit 10 years ago
One of my coworkers joked that he'd really love to see a tumblr of "What's on Ken's mind". Because people get used to the idea that there's usually a bunch of stuff working it's way through my brain at the same time and that if I mention what I did lately outside of work in conversation, there's…

A few thoughts on Yahoo and Microsoft's respective troubles 10 years ago
When I was working at Yahoo!, Microsoft tried to acquire Yahoo!. And I generally thought of it as a bad idea. At the time, my feelings were that if the deal went through, it would almost certainly mean the end of both companies... and I wasn't too interested in working for Microsoft. Although I…

The frustration that is trying to do DRM-free eBooks legally 12 years ago
I've kinda come to terms with buying eBooks instead of physical books, even though there are a lot of archivist implications involved that bug me. However, I still heavily dislike the use of DRM, so I want to avoid this as much as possible. And this turns out to be tricky... The problem with DRM, in…