2026-08-30T00:00:00Z https://genehack.blog/ John SJ Anderson 2026-08-30T00:00:00Z https://genehack.blog/2026/08/weeknote-100-20260823-20260829/ <h2>meta</h2> <p>Wow, weeknote 💯. Please clap. Are folks still getting value out of these? Am <em>I</em> still getting value out of these? 🤔</p> <h2>did</h2> <ul> <li>With TheWife out in NY helping Mx19 migrate to their dorm for the next year, it was Solo Dad Week here — always a tiring exercise…</li> <li>Really didn’t do much other than keep up with work (actually, managed to catch up, a little, maybe…) and keep me and Ms24 whole (and randomly missed Sammy a whole bunch)</li> <li>Picked TheWife up at the airport Saturday night, which was a nice way to wrap up the week</li> </ul> <h2>read</h2> <ul> <li> <p>Still re-reading the older Bobiverse series books, currently on <em>Heaven’s River</em></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="https://notoai.org/">NOTOAI.org</a>, by old skööl blogger Jessamyn West</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/">“I’m done using AI”</a></p> <blockquote> <p>Upon reflection, I’ve come to believe that quality software is not about how many features something has or how quickly it is built but rather how cared for it is by the designers, developers, and product people who work on it. There’s an ineffable aspect to my favorite pieces of software where I don’t think of it is as feature matrix but rather as an interface made by a human for humans that’s a joy to use. And when you build software with AI, it leads to worse software. Sure, it’s faster to build initially, but I think to the detriment of the quality of the code and the user interface and the user experience.</p> </blockquote> </li> <li> <p><a href="https://jennifers-newsletter-9cb7e2.beehiiv.com/p/all-about-reacher">“All About Reacher”</a></p> <p>Maybe you (like me!) are re-watching <em>Reacher</em> the TV show from scratch before watching the new season 4 that just dropped …and maybe you (like me!) are interested in maybe picking up the books — all 24 of them. If so, this blog post is for you.</p> </li> <li> <p>current unread bookmark count: 185</p> </li> </ul> <h2>watched</h2> <ul> <li>Watched most of the two Leagues Cup quarterfinal matches on Tuesday; both MLS teams were spanked by their LigaMX opponents</li> <li>As I mentioned above, I also re-watched <em>Reacher</em> seasons 1 through 3, and then the available episodes from season 4</li> <li>Another great cover, Minus The Bear taking on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hju3F4YGSCw">“Waiting Room”</a></li> </ul> <h2>cooked</h2> <ul> <li>Monday: reheated leftover steak from last week — first time trying this approach, and I think it’s my new go-to: 30 minutes at room temp, 30 minutes in a 250°F oven, then about 45 seconds a side in a smoking hot skillet</li> <li>Tuesday: mesquite-grilled tomato-tomatillo salsa; mesquite-grilled marinated chicken thighs, for tacos de pollo (<em>nailed</em> this salsa, I think…)</li> <li>Wednesday: grilled sausages and hot dogs, caprese salad</li> <li>Thursday: grilled shrimp tacos with an <em>amazing</em> avocado/garlic/mayo/Serrano green sauce</li> </ul> 2026-08-23T00:00:00Z https://genehack.blog/2026/08/weeknote-99-20260816-20260822/ <h2>meta</h2> <p>Monday was the day we said our goodbyes to Sammy. Luckily I had a fairly meeting-light day, and I was also able to shuffle some things around, so by 11am I was “working” but only on pretty easy things that didn’t require a lot of concentration. Sammy and I migrated out to the porch, and whenever she wanted to walk around the yard, I indulged her. TheWife came out when she could, and we generally all enjoyed a pleasant afternoon in the shade of the porch. Around 4pm, we packed up and went to the vet, where Sammy was euthanized. It was about as nice a process as it could be, and we were able to get Mx19 on the phone so that they were present for it too.</p> <p>And then we came home, and here we are, one family member down, with new holes in several hearts.</p> <h2>did</h2> <ul> <li>The rest of the week was a little bit of a blur; it was hard to focus on work, and I kept getting reminders that Sammy wasn’t around anymore, which was sad</li> <li>Friday morning I ran TheWife up to PDX to fly out to NY to help Mx19 move into their fall dorm</li> <li>Last cheesesteak pop-up of the season was Friday evening; it made things a little less bad</li> </ul> <h2>read</h2> <ul> <li>Still working on the Bobiverse re-read</li> <li>Unread bookmark count: 212</li> </ul> <h2>watched</h2> <p>I ran across several cool videos this week:</p> <ul> <li>Sigur Rós - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEw--v19WyI">Andrá</a></li> <li>Rakim &amp; KRS-One - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0er0kCw_bk">No Weak Rap</a> ft. Ice Cube, Black Thought, Mos Def</li> <li>Daisy Dreams – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxXIJzpfUmo">Paper Planes / Straight To Hell</a> (M.I.A./The Clash Cover) — the bass lines on this one are <em>awesome</em></li> <li>Cursive &amp; Cymbals Eat Guitars - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMIecwPGWc8">Hey Jealousy</a> (Gin Blossoms Cover)</li> </ul> <h2>cooked</h2> <ul> <li>Monday: chicken nachos</li> </ul> 2026-08-16T00:00:00Z https://genehack.blog/2026/08/weeknote-98-20260809-20260815/ <h2>meta</h2> <p>Obviously, if you’ve read <a href="https://genehack.blog/2026/08/a-quick-note-about-sammy/">“A quick note about Sammy”</a>, you’re already up-to-date on the big event of the week here…</p> <h2>did</h2> <ul> <li>Monday I took a sick day — partially mental health, partially feeling worn down from travel. Had planned to use this as “catch-up” time for work, and ended up sleeping most of the day instead, so I guess I needed the break?</li> <li>Tuesday and Wednesday were both decent work days — Tuesday I had a lighter-than-usual meeting schedule and was able to get caught up on a lot of organization things (not much <em>doing</em>, but a lot of cataloging and accumulating). Wednesday was a more typical 6-8 meeting day, but I also managed to finish that processing, going from 4-5 piles of stuff to do, down to one large pile — which is progress even if it doesn’t sound like it</li> <li>Thursday was the start of the Sammy saga, and that kinda consumed most of the rest of the week, as you can probably imagine</li> </ul> <h2>read</h2> <ul> <li> <p><em>Rappaport</em>, the new Murderbot novella</p> </li> <li> <p>There’s a new Bobiverse book out, so I’ve gone back and started re-reading the series. I finished <em>We Are Legion (We Are Bob)</em> and <em>For We Are Many</em> and am currently on <em>All These Worlds</em></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="https://goodnameforablog.com/posts/very-average-prototypes/">“Very Average Prototypes”</a></p> <blockquote> <p>LLMs are averaging machines. Every answer they produce, everything they do, fundamentally comes down to the most likely result. Meaning for every tiny creative decision you cede, however small, the decision will be “made” by the LLM and given the most average possible answer.</p> </blockquote> </li> <li> <p><a href="https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-interracial-cuck-porn-theory-of-everything/">“The Interracial Cuck Porn Theory of Everything”</a></p> <blockquote> <p>What I propose today is perhaps even more important than a physical theory of everything: a theory that can connect and explain the wide array of right-wing psychosexual neuroses. The theory is that right-wing political narratives are significantly influenced by porn—specifically interracial cuck porn—and conversely the narratives of said porn are significantly influenced by right-wing politics. Pornography is the unseen dark matter molding and shaping how the online right speaks and thinks about politics, on anything from immigration to transgender people to higher education. Call it the interracial cuck porn theory of everything.</p> </blockquote> </li> <li> <p><a href="https://www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-cookware-got-worse-on-purpose">“Your Cookware Got Worse On Purpose”</a></p> <p>This went around a few weeks ago and you probably already read it; I’m sharing it here so I can quote this bit about Made In — we have plates and flatware from them and it is been <em>excellent</em>. Second the recommendation here.</p> <blockquote> <p>One DTC brand deserves the exception flag. Made In never raised the money that ruins these companies. Its documented funding totals <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/aprilhamilton/2019/04/03/with-growth-skyrocketing-made-in-cookware-raises-5-million-seed-round/">about $8.3 million</a>, against roughly $70 million at Caraway and the $100 million Gordon Ramsay’s studio put behind HexClad. The founders still run it. A company that can’t afford to buy its customers has to earn them, so the budget went into the product: family-owned partner factories in France and Italy plus American mills, a win in <a href="https://www.americastestkitchen.com/equipment_reviews/2045-cookware-sets">America’s Test Kitchen’s stainless rankings</a>, and pans in actual restaurants. Its nonstick warranty even admits the coatings are <a href="https://madeincookware.com/pages/warranty">“consumable by nature”</a>, which is perhaps the most honest sentence published by any cookware company this decade. Buy their stainless and carbon steel and treat every nonstick pan from anyone, at any price, as a consumable.</p> </blockquote> <p>Also appreciate the shout-outs to Lodge and Nordic Ware — those recommendations are also seconded here.</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/19/using-ai-makes-people-less-likely-to-admit-they-dont-know-something/5274567">“Using AI makes people less likely to admit they don’t know something”</a></p> <p>If you’ve got any LLM superusers in your life, this will probably be the least shocking finding ever, but I’ve saving for posterity.</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="https://davetang.org/muse/2026/07/18/bioinformatics-and-ai/">“Bioinformatics and AI”</a></p> <blockquote> <p>I can’t remember when the realisation hit me that Perl and bioinformatics back in the day is just like AI and bioinformatics right now. I wanted to write about it then but have put it off until now. Once again, we have a tool (AI) that helps us get work done quickly and this time almost effortlessly. You simply describe what you want to get done in a prompt and all the code and documentation (if you also included this) is outputted. You may argue that Perl and AI are two completely different tools, and they are, but to me, the issue is fundamentally the same: you have somebody without the background knowledge trying to create something that requires the background knowledge. Like Perl, you can use AI to speed things up but only if you are that seasoned sys admin.</p> </blockquote> </li> <li> <p><a href="https://lalitm.com/post/git-history/">“The git history command deserves more attention”</a></p> <p>I really need to try to remember that this <code>git history</code> command exists — I feel like every time I want to split a commit, in particular, I have go review docs; this makes it sound like <code>git history split</code> would be hella easier</p> </li> <li> <p>Current unread bookmark count: 210</p> </li> </ul> <h2>listened</h2> <ul> <li>A great <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvL-CHU_fKU">Bizarre Love Triangle cover</a> by Fukushima Dolphin</li> <li>A collection of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY74n7D4x6w">Joy Division covers</a> by NIN — particularly awesome because a couple of them are more obscure, rarely covered tracks; the “Disorder” cover is especially great</li> </ul> <h2>cooked</h2> <ul> <li>Monday: grilled sausages, caprese salad</li> <li>Tuesday: mesquite-grilled chicken tacos with mesquite roasted tomato-tomatillo salsa</li> <li>Wednesday: grilled burgers and corn</li> <li>Thursday: grilled albacore with chimichurri; I experimented with a soy/fish sauce/green onion/garlic/lime marinade on one filet, and it come out very nice!</li> </ul> <h2>photo</h2> <p><img src="https://genehack.blog/images/20260809-photo-of-the-week.jpg" alt="One more Sammy picture, just because…" title="One more Sammy picture, just because…" /></p> 2026-08-15T00:00:00Z https://genehack.blog/2026/08/a-quick-note-about-sammy/ <p>If you’re a reader of this blog, or if you follow me on social media — hell, pretty much if you interact with me at all, you’ve heard about Sammy. Maybe you’ve seen some pictures of her, maybe in one of the talks I used to give, back when conference speaking was kinda-sorta part of my job.</p> <p><img src="https://genehack.blog/images/20260815-sammy-1.jpg" alt="Sammy, back in the day" title="Sammy, back in the day" /></p> <p>Sammy joined our family late in our first year in Salem, after the two elderly cats that had been with us for almost 20 years passed away. I was firmly in the “maybe another cat?” camp — and I think TheWife was too — but the kids were adamant that they wanted a dog, so off we went, to the Humane Society, and we found a brave little puppy that had been picked up off a busy commercial street in Salem (Lancaster, IYKYK…), and she ended up coming home with us.</p> <p>Now, the kids went to school during the day, and TheWife went into her office, but I worked from home — so, while I might say, “the family got a dog”, really, <em>I</em> got a dog. She’s been a pretty constant companion for almost 14 years at this point, and on the odd occasion when I’m working in my office without her, it just feels …empty. I was thinking, recently, that she’s really my oldest Salem-specific friend — the first new person I met here, and really got to know.</p> <p><img src="https://genehack.blog/images/20260815-sammy-2.jpg" alt="Sammy displaying her &quot;resting stoned face&quot;" title="Sammy displaying &quot;resting stoned face&quot;" /></p> <p>Sammy has always been an interesting character — laid back when it’s just the family, fiercely protective whenever she hears a knock or a ringing doorbell, barking her head off <em>and</em> wagging her tail vigorously whenever somebody comes by the house. She was pretty reactive to most other dogs — probably an artifact of her early life on the streets — and we never managed to get her trained to the point where we could take her out with us in public, unfortunately.</p> <p>Recently, over the last couple months, Sammy has been showing her age. She’s had periods where she refuses to eat — deeply concerning because she’s always been extremely food-oriented and motivated, willing to eat <em>anything</em>. She’s had various GI-related difficulties, vomiting, loose stools, that sort of thing. We’ve worked through a couple of those periods, adjusting her food, adding probiotics, wetting her kibble, and those changes have gotten her back eating. Earlier this week, however, she started leaving her bowl full again. After a couple days of that, we got an urgent care appointment at the vet on Thursday, and ended up getting an x-ray, just to rule out any sort of blockage or obstruction. The x-ray came back clear, but the vet had also taken a peek with an ultrasound wand while Sammy was sedated for the x-ray, and he reported that her gall bladder looked like it might be inflamed. We ended up getting blood work done, primarily to look at her bilirubin levels and see if they were off.</p> <p>We got the blood work results back yesterday. Friends, they were not good — her bilirubin levels were okay, but her kidney-related numbers were very much not — her kidneys have basically shut down. She’s had some kidney issues in the past, but a few months ago these numbers were much closer to normal — whatever is wrong, has intensified rapidly. We discussed some treatment options with the vet — hospitalizing her for a few days so they could push a lot of fluids, that sort of thing — and in the end decided that we were just going to take her home instead. The vet said pretty clearly that the hospitalization was not likely to make any real difference, and instead of having her away from family and home, we’re going to make her as comfortable as possible for as long as possible — some appetite stimulants and anti-nausea meds to hopefully help motivate her to eat, and to keep the food down when she does eat it. The vet assured us she’s not in any <em>pain</em>, just feeling crummy and uncomfortable, and overall <em>old</em></p> <p>So, we brought her home. We’re doing what we can, and we’re waiting. Obviously, if things take a turn, we’ll help Sammy along, but for the moment, we’re giving her lots of pets and walks, letting her tell us what she needs. I suspect she’s going to decide it’s time to move on pretty soon, and then I’m going to have a Sammy-shaped hole in my life, and I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with that. Hug your loved ones, friends, whatever shape they happen to be. Enjoy them while they’re here, and while you’re here with them.</p> <p><img src="https://genehack.blog/images/20260815-sammy-3.jpg" alt="Sammy resting on my lap last night" title="Sammy resting on my lap last night" /></p> 2026-08-09T00:00:00Z https://genehack.blog/2026/08/weeknote-97-20260802-20260808/ <p>Flew down to Austin Sunday afternoon, and was there all week for work. Work was work, 'nuff said — some wins, some …let’s say “not-wins”. So it goes.</p> <p>Austin was hotter and more humid than I like. I stayed downtown this time instead of out in the Northern boonies where the office is, and that was a distinct improvement on available evening options. Had some decent food, found <a href="https://www.sanjacsaloon.com/">the place</a> that would be my local if I ever ended up living in Austin, saw quite a few good live bands.</p> <p>Short update this week, just because.</p> 2026-08-02T00:00:00Z https://genehack.blog/2026/08/weeknote-96-20260726-20260801/ <h2>meta</h2> <p>This was a long, dragging week, but I’m also somehow struggling to remember much of anything specific. <em>sigh</em></p> <h2>did</h2> <ul> <li>Sunday I did my semi-annual wooden utensil oiling. It was pretty satisfying</li> <li>Got paged out for work around 0230am Tuesday morning, and ended up being up <em>much</em> longer than necessary for reasons I’m not even going to get into</li> <li>Friday evening we went out to Bryn Mawr Vineyard for the member BBQ, which was great!</li> <li>Saturday we tried a new chop cheese place for lunch — the first time I’ve ever had one, and it was good!</li> </ul> <h2>read</h2> <ul> <li>Finished <em>House of Suns</em>; trying to figure out what to read next…</li> <li>Unread bookmark count up to 239 <em>sob</em></li> </ul> <h2>cooked</h2> <ul> <li>monday: grilled wangs and corn with new knock-off vortex</li> <li>tuesday: thai basil chicken with (some) garden basil and a few garden cherry tomatoes</li> <li>wednesday: chicken penne with pesto using fresh local basil</li> <li>thursday: red rockfish ceviche</li> </ul> <h2>looking forward to</h2> <p>I’ll be in Austin for work for a good chunk of next week, I’m looking forward to seeing some work friends …and I’m not looking forward to the heat.</p> 2026-07-26T00:00:00Z https://genehack.blog/2026/07/weeknote-95-20260719-20260725/ <h2>meta</h2> <p>I had kinda lost track of how load-bearing my typical Sunday afternoon at the local is — I do a good chunk of “weekly review” type stuff, cleaning out my email inbox, closing down open tabs, reviewing stuff in OmniFocus, etc etc. This Sunday I blew that off to meet up with a HS buddy and his family up in Portland, and <em>holy crap</em> I was just totally off-kilter in my personal life for a solid chunk of the week. Lesson learned, I guess…</p> <h2>did</h2> <ul> <li>As I said, Sunday I trekked up to Portland and met up with an old high school buddy and his family, in town on vacation, for some conversation, beers, and eventually a little sushi. It was very nice to see them all again, it’s been years…</li> <li>Monday was kinda meh, Mx19 fucked up a tire on their car (:eyeroll:), and I ended up crashing TheWife’s post work beers with her colleagues because it was that kinda Monday</li> <li>Tuesday was up very early, due to both an 8am meeting and a backlog of work that it feels like I’m never going to get back on top of…</li> <li>Also on Tuesday, I met up with an Internet buddy I’d never seen IRL before for lunch — I suspect we’ve been interacting on line for …fuck me, has it been more than 25 years? I think we started last century, so that tracks…</li> <li>Wednesday was a crap enough day that the trip to the grocery store for more limes was made via the not-at-all-on-the-way local, because TheWife and I were both at “need to just sit and drink a beer somewhere” after our respective days</li> <li>The bright point of Thursday — as un-bright as this sounds — was figuring out the reason I was having trouble deploying something in our internally managed k8s environments (and it wasn’t me, the platform folks had tweaked something earlier in the week and broken our deployment pipeline — not only did I figure that out I also suggested a fix). This was a bright point only because all the machinery in the CI/CD box is kind of opaque and all the people on my team who have been there way longer had no idea why things weren’t working, so go me!</li> <li>Friday was our wedding anniversary, so we both took the afternoon off and went out to lunch at the new dumpling place downtown, and then basically goofed off the rest of the afternoon</li> <li>Saturday we got up, went to the Saturday market, and then went over to a neighboring town for a pizza lunch; dinner ended up being grilled burgers eaten during the Timbers 2-1 defeat of RSL</li> </ul> <h2>read</h2> <p>Absolute fuck all, really — unread bookmark count back up to a staggering 222</p> <p>Slowly continuing through <em>House of Suns</em> though…</p> <h2>cooked</h2> <ul> <li>Monday: grilled hot dogs and sausages with a caprese salad</li> <li>Wednesday: grilled chicken tacos with a grilled tomatillo salsa</li> <li>Thursday: <a href="https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/shrimp-scampi-linguine/#wprm-recipe-container-11266">shrimp linguine</a> with some cherry tomatoes and basil from the garden added in</li> <li>Saturday: grilled burgers (pre-formed 80-20 “Waygu” patties that were 25% off because they were about to expire, score!)</li> </ul> <h2>looking forward to</h2> <p>I realized that the weeknote that happens the last Sunday in August will be number one hundo. That’s kinda cool.</p> 2026-07-19T00:00:00Z https://genehack.blog/2026/07/weeknote-94-20260712-20260718/ <h2>meta</h2> <p>Another week of fingers-crossed hoping for no production outages, along with a few new work project aimed at making the environment more resilient (and no, of course we’re not pausing anything we were already doing, don’t be silly…)</p> <h2>did</h2> <ul> <li>Tuesday, got back into the gym for the first time in a while. Regretted (or, rather, my thighs regretted) that for most of the rest of the week</li> <li>Wednesday, TheWife and I joined another couple for some bar trivia — our team name was “Parents Out On A School Night”</li> <li>I use this <code>cat</code> alternative called <a href="https://github.com/sharkdp/bat"><code>bat</code></a>, and I finally sat down and figured out how to make it <a href="https://git.genehack.net/genehack/etc/commit/4138670fb33515c2f2182f3d65a68578e65ab5e4">default to case-insensitive search</a> (which actually involves tweaking what options it passes to <code>less</code>, who would have guessed…)</li> <li>Saturday morning I did some gardening stuff I’ve been putting off — chopped the bolted-to-hell-n-gone romaine back to see if it will come back, pinched back the basil, staked up some droopy pepper plants, etc etc</li> <li>Garden haul so far: about a half-dozen (very small) cherry tomatoes, which were incredible; quite a bit of basil, and 3 or 4 assorted peppers (which are just hanging out in the fridge until I figure out something to do with them…)</li> </ul> <h2>read</h2> <p>Finally got around to reading <a href="https://blog.johanneslink.net/2026/06/09/the-jqwik-anti-ai-affair/">&quot;The Jqwik Anti-AI Affair &quot;</a>, which was pretty amusing</p> <h2>cooked</h2> <ul> <li>Monday: grilled sausages, caprese salad</li> <li>Tuesday: Ro-Tel nachos with leftover grilled steak from last week</li> <li>Thursday: Tuna fish sandwiches</li> <li>Saturday: Thai basil chicken (using some Thai basil from the garden!)</li> </ul> <h2>looking forward to</h2> <p>Meeting up with an old high school buddy and his family in Portland on Sunday</p> 2026-07-12T00:00:00Z https://genehack.blog/2026/07/weeknote-93-20260705-20260711/ <h2>meta</h2> <p>As I mentioned in last week’s note, I got paged out on the evening of the 4th and ended up staying up until around 4am Sunday morning. The whole rest of the working week pretty much felt like recovering from the hangover of that production incident. I <em>think</em> we’ve got things into a better place, but a whole lot of the week was just periodically watching logs and holding my breath waiting for things to fall apart again.</p> <h2>did</h2> <p>This week was mainly a whole lot of work and minimal attention to basically anything else — I did make sure the garden was getting enough water, made sure the fam had tasty things to eat, and tried to make sure that I was giving myself the chance to get some decent sleep and just breathing space.</p> <p>Saturday, we went down to Corvegas, as Ms23 was competing in the State Special Olympics golf skills. She ended up winning a silver in her division. I ended up winning a bit of a sunburn. So it goes.</p> <p>Also Saturday, Norway — the last team I had a lot of investment in supporting — crashed out of the World Cup. My sole investment at this point is in hoping that somebody eliminates Argentina before it’s all over.</p> <h2>read</h2> <p>This is from the most recent Warren Ellis newsletter, about Gen-X; it resonated (particularly that last bit…):</p> <blockquote> <p>Our generation were treated like feral monkeys, fed machine-washable bread and understood love to mean that someone expressed less disappointment in us than usual.</p> </blockquote> <p>Unread bookmarks back up to 218, because see above about minimal everything that wasn’t work.</p> <h2>cooked</h2> <ul> <li>Monday: grilled flank steak tacos</li> <li>Tuesday: spinach salad with bacon vinaigrette</li> <li>Thursday: grilled albacore</li> </ul> <h2>looking forward to</h2> <p>Kinda thinking about taking some time off towards the end of next week? We’ll see how things go.</p> <p>Also looking forward to having the time and mental energy to get back to some of my personal side projects, but no idea when that might actually be <em>possible</em>. Anyway, onward we go.</p> 2026-07-05T00:00:00Z https://genehack.blog/2026/07/weeknote-92-20260628-20260704/ <h2>meta</h2> <p>Thursday we got up kinda early and took Mx19 up to the airport so they could fly back to school in New York. They’re still on crutches, and their suitcase weighed in at 47 pounds, and to say TheWife and I were a little apprehensive about them doing this by themselves would be a colossal understatement — but in the end, they got back to their dorm without incident (or, at least, without any incidents they wanted to share with us…) So now we’re back to just me, TheWife, Ms23, and of course, Sammy. So it goes.</p> <h2>did</h2> <ul> <li>Sunday, Mx19 wanted to go over to the coast and have a corn dog before they went back East, so we all schlepped over to <a href="https://rockawayprontopup.com/">Pronto Pup</a> in Rockway. A good time (and corndog) was had by all</li> <li>In other eating related events: Friday was a cheesesteak popup at Bryn Mawr; due to scheduling of other things, I had to go by myself, but I happily fell on that <strike>sword</strike> Amaroso roll</li> <li>This week at work, I’m running the release process for our software again, and as usual, it’s frustrating and far more time-consuming than I want it to be. That on top of a series of production problems — I’m also the on-call engineering manager this week — kept me pretty busy</li> <li>Mostly an unremarkable week otherwise, other than the fireworks, which in our neighborhood first started up Wednesday and then (hopefully!) peaked Saturday with the 4th. We may have finally figured out a way to get Sammy dosed up enough — a combo of a CBD oil plus some “special” CDB dog treats — that she mainly just lays in a heap and quivers, rather than running all over the house trying to find a place to hide</li> <li>Also got paged out for a production issue around 9pm Saturday, which kept me up until around 4am — on the plus side, that means the round of mortars at 0230 didn’t wake me up and make me mad, they just made me mad…</li> </ul> <h2>read</h2> <ul> <li> <p><a href="https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/attack-on-competence">“The attack on competence”</a></p> <p>If we’ve ever worked together, or collaborated on, well, <em>anything</em>, you will have learned that “competent” is one of the highest compliments I feel I can give somebody’s work, so this post <em>really</em> clicked for me.</p> <blockquote> <p>This is a formulation of competence that is fairly stringent: it requires you, when developing competence in a field, to actually reshape your desires rather than simply learning skills. You have to reorient what you want and what you’ll work at to focus on what the field thinks is good, to develop a level of taste and judgement appropriate to the field, and to defend that against threats when the need arises.</p> </blockquote> </li> </ul> <h2>cooked</h2> <ul> <li>Monday: grilled burgers and corn off the cob</li> <li>Tuesday: grilled pork shoulder steaks and asparagus</li> <li>Wednesday: grilled chicken Caesar salad</li> </ul>