Just noticed that the Mercedes F1 team is sponsored by Crowdstrike. Funny that a racing team is sponsored by a company that’s now known for the biggest crash of all time.

Then: 7.20.24

Posts in the “Then” category were originally shared on my “Now” page.

Weird week. I got randomly sick for an evening. I woke up at 2 AM with a fever that only lasted a couple of hours and no other symptoms. So strange. Whenever I get sick now, I worry about COVID and getting others sick, but I’m pretty sure this was just a random virus.

Feels

  • I’m excited about upcoming vacation. It’s been too long since I took a significant amount of time off.
  • I’m worried about the state of our nation.
  • Grateful for some rain. (We needed it.)

Projects

It’s an early beta, but I really like where Iconfactory’s Project Tapestry is going.

That fact that one bad update to a third-party system can completely shut down businesses, hospitals and airlines… scary. You’d think these systems would be more resilient than that.

Woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep so I finished submitting a manuscript to a journal for peer review.

Sticker Mule: A bad equation

The Sticker Mule email arrived in my inbox, but I didn’t see it at first. Instead, I saw the backlash on Threads.

Here’s the thing, I knew the owner was conservative, but it didn’t really matter to me. I’d randomly order stickers (or keychains) whenever they had a great special. And they ran specials a lot.

Many companies take stands on issues as a way to signal their values. But most of the time, those topics are carefully chosen to align with their customer beliefs. There is an entire discipline in public relations scholarship called Corporate Social Responsibility that studies this strategy.

But this crosses a line. Blasting your entire business mailing list with a political message — a mailing list that is a massive asset to your sales funnel — is just stupid.

Why? You are choosing to voluntarily spam your mailing list with a political message that half of your list likely...

Continue Reading →

Comfort Star Trek

I’m home sick today and was thinking about shows I watch when I’m just killing time. Episodes I love to just put on in the background when I’m working (or sick). Most of the time, I open Paramount+ and play Star Trek. I figured I’d share my favorite “comfort” episodes. Warning: A couple of mild spoilers below for really old episodes.1

Mariner and Boimler on the USS Enterprise.

Star Trek: The Original Series

  • S1 E15 Balance of Terror. A “submarine” battle between Kirk and the Romulan commander.
  • S2 E6 The Doomsday Machine. The race to stop a machine before it destroys more planets.
  • S2 E15 The Trouble with Tribbles. My parents loved this episode when I was growing up and it’s one of my favorites. Sometimes, I pair it with DS9’s Trials and Tribble-Ations.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Spent the evening troubleshooting some fonts that I’m going to sell through MyFonts. Finally think I’ve got everything fixed, but I want to look at again with clear eyes in the morning.

The ACC and Florida State/Clemson are going to settle, right? These cases will be in the courts for years, probably heading all the way to the Supreme Court. The uncertainty will hurt the ACC and Florida State and Clemson will end up in the Big 12, where neither of them want to be.