Almost nothing makes me despair more than seemingly intelligent Americans saying they avoid politics because “both parties are bad”. Bad enough they disengage from an important part of civic life, worse because they draw a false equivalency without concern for the consequences.

I was thinking about using Photoswipe.js to my blog, but thanks to this post I’ve discovered glightbox, which has gallery support. Adding this should be fun.

Workshop with me, Internet. The traditional engagement gift for a man is a Mac Pro, right?

Hi Internet. We got engaged.

It’s the end of the year, so of course I’m thinking about redoing my whole blog.

I’m working on a post to summarize the decade, and I think I’d like to have some nice photo galleries. I’m too lazy to build myself, what’s a nice small, FOSS snippet I can add to hugo-based site?

Reform the Senate— make it out of congressional districts just like the House. Except they can cross state lines, must be of equal population, and house congressional districts have to cleanly aggregate into Senate districts. We don’t need representation of states in congress.

It is better to give a risky gift than a safe one.

At the Indieweb meetup at XOXO Fest this year I was talking about the need for more ephemeral spaces on the web. Yap seems like a great idea.

I have had a year very much worth reflecting on. I may try and do a blog post on all this. It’s tough, because there’s a lot of work stuff I can’t really talk about.

Not in love with the instructions for Day 4, but think it’s hilarious I did a bunch of work and then realized regular expressions were the right answer.

I just had a thought— how much would I pay for a Mondo poster of Baby Yoda? The answer is far higher than I am comfortable admitting.

Day 3 of #adventofcode2019 using #rstats complete. I found today pretty challenging, even though it resulted in pretty unremarkable code. If this is the ramp. I doubt I’ll make it to double digit days.

Finished Day 2 of Advent of Code in #rstats. That wasn’t so bad, but I’m still being lazy about tests and refactoring for now.

I just completed “The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation” - Day 1 - Advent of Code 2019 adventofcode.com/2019/day/… #AdventOfCode – I did some gnarly recursion in R that I’d like to think about how to refactor, but I only remembered about AOC at 10:30pm so…

‪I had a great overall reading year but have actually ready very little the last two months and have been slogging through. I want a book that will make me cry a lot. Give me your recs! SFF preferred, other genres (or non-genres) welcome. Non-fiction need not apply.

This article just alerted me to the fact that Galaxy Quest is 20 years old and now I want to die.

I have a lot remaining to accomplish this year.

I haven’t watched Chapter 4 yet, but boy I love that The Mandelorian is making episodes as long as they need to be.

‪When I was sick, my heart rate was more than 20 bpm faster while sleeping than when I recovered. I find that remarkable.‬

‪When I’m sick my body can never decide what temperature it is. Crazy hot?! Take off sweatshirt. Now freezing. Go under a blanket. Nope burning hot again, but just my left ankle.‬

Since it’s funding formula time in RI again, here’s a list of things I’d change, in no particular order.

1. Use AEWAV for state share of pension costs.
2. Increase state aid significantly that goes through the formula— say at least 25% over 5 years.
3. Lower base and add weights for home language (ELL proxy not determined by school staff) or “ever ELL” (ELL, but count a student who was ever and ELL and not just current).
4. Fully fund high cost SPED circuit breaker. Add a weight for high service percent per day SPED students, probably somewhere around 50% in service.
5. Double pay about 5% on charters (districts hold back 5% of total per pupil, state kicks that in extra for charters). Require districts offer underutilized space to charters with something like right of first refusal to try and reduce overall systems capital costs. Districts should risk forfeiting 5% if fail to offer space to charters.
6. Consider state wide minimum property/land tax to raise more money to go through the formula, reducing incentive/ability for high wealth districts to raise so much from local taxes the overall distribution of spending becomes highly regressive.

I’ve always felt like I slept poorly in hotel rooms. Using AutoSleep the past three months, I’ve seen a clear pattern of 5-7 bpm higher heat rate during sleep when not at home, with a more pronounced pattern when changing time zones. Wonder if that pattern will hold up.

Things that surprised me this decade: I have achieved ownership and autonomy over my work and I’m so proud of it, and I’ve traveled way more for work and way less for fun than i thought I would.

Also, people have too much capacity for cruelty, and too little for empathy.

Find your product breaks when shipped? Just disguise it as a different, fragile product and get better treatment.

See also: get harrassed everytime you say something on the internet? You’re probably a woman, just pretend to be a man to be treated with respect.