The Thursday Newsletter - Issue #14

Now I cannot wait to move…

As I write this issue of the Thursday Newsletter, I hear my upstairs neighbor trudging around, back and forth, as usual. Each morning there’s a loud thud, which I’ve likened to a dumbbell rolling off the bed, possibly off of the person, when the alarm goes off at around 4am to wake up the poor sod in the apartment below. That would be me.

I moved in to this apartment complex on moving to Las Vegas from Sunnyvale, Calfornia, after a house fire in April 2013 and a few months looking around what was back then an expensive Silicon Valley. The move to someplace new was a good idea, looking back, but there was a certain amount of pressure to find a place in which to plant some roots. I’ve been here since, and that’s not necessarily a great thing.

While I do not recommend the chaos of a house fire, a floor, or some other disaster that leads to a residential evacuation, I think that perhaps my own personal “sweet spot” for staying in one place is less the the eight years I’ve spent here. There are some caveats… there are almost certainly factors that would make my current abode more appealing, including perhaps condo or townhome terms rather than a lease from a property management company. Owning a home in Las Vegas, today, is probably a cool thing, but buying one here today, not so much. With the plug having been pulled in Lake Mead, it seems it is only a matter of time before we see the last little toy boat circling and then spiraling down the drain. Then what?

I like the geographical area, and there are some things about Vegas that are appealing for someone in the software engineering field (or several other fields), most notably the tendency of people in my profession to visit here for CES, maybe NAB, and some other events, and in general Vegas is the sort of destination that is not unreasonable (though some do not like coming here at all and avoid it at all costs… can see where they’re coming from). So I’m moving to the place I checked out eight years ago and should probably have considered more seriously, with high hopes.

More as the big days (moving out, moving in, etc) grow near.

Also as I type this, Las Vegas (er, Clark County, er, Southern Nevada) is the hottest hotspot for covid-19 test positivity and other unpleasant indicators. I’m afraid I saw this unfolding back in May, as surely most sane people who were watching the pandemic data through 2020 and the maskless throngs wandering Vegas the moment they were able.

I’ve been posting news links to one thread that I began back on May 17, 2021, about what has turned out to be predictable growth in prevalence in and around Las Vegas. The link here is to a tweet in the thread, about Vegas being that hottest metropolitan area. If you scroll through the thread, you’ll see the numbers grow and more recently, the push-back against mitigation measures. The detachment is troubling, to say the least.

I have a profile on Buy Me a Coffee, for out-of-band promotion of my newsletters, podcasts, projects, and whatnot, and then a place to accept gratuities as well. If there’s one thing anyone learns in Vegas if they didn’t know it already, it’s the language of gratitude, which is unfortunately cash money. I’d like to think it takes other forms, but at the end of the day…

So BMaC (they go by BMC) just kicked off a linktree competitor for easy links via a personal/vanity url. Another out-of-band place for some vectors, I signed up and created my

It’s quick and easy enough, and while out-of-band vectors are useful and have their place, this and they do not replace self-publishing, self-hosting, and generally the recapture of personal agency online.

I’ve had my vanity domain for years and rarely did anything with it (other than another personal email address), but I continue to examine options and creative methods to take back my online agency. I have always liked Tumblr (acquired by Automattic most recently), as far as the typed posts (text, audio, etc) and their liberal use of syndication, though I was never a fan of the reblog and notes concept. Not uncommon, we like some things, we don’t like other things, it’s a mixed back when we cede control to others.

I think all content creators (basically anyone expressing themselves online, for personal or professional pursuits) should be able to operate their own online presence with agency, not relying entirely on the likes of Facebook or even Wordpress or other platforms and tools that might come close, or might not, to doing what each person wants to accomplish.

I’ve been off the Facebook for a couple of months now (not deleted, not disabled, but also not logging in), and while I still use Twitter now and then, I think the value there is as a stream of receipts. Post a link to twitter, then some time later point back at it and declare, “See, I knew that back then!” For example, my twitter thread about Las Vegas covid numbers, above…

I uninstalled the Twitter and Instagram mobile applications, and the same goes for LinkedIn. As long as web browser features are usable, there’s no reason to hand over so much data through an installed native mobile application. I’ll continue mentioning this sort of stuff as the potential of personal agency becomes easier and easier to realize for anyone.

I mentioned my Buy Me a Coffee profile page, on which you will find links to the Hugo Floss podcast, the Quoggling Sand podcast, and the FFS Talk podcast, not to mention the associated Show Notes newsletters and then as they go live, links to other software projects I’m working on.

Of course, there is some coffee-related detail there as well, because while there is no obligation, any proceeds found via BMaC do indeed go toward coffee, or coffee-making paraphernalia, or the odd visit to an independent coffee shop.

You show your support for me and anyone doing creative or interesting work by reading newsletters and blog entries and generally participating in interactions not owned and advertised on by the usual social media places, and for that I thank you.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash