Well, it’s that time again. Today, I’m looking back at 2023 - a year that went by oddly fast.
Reengage with blogging and writing. I’ve been updating the blog slowly, but much more active in doing some personal writing. This year, I’ve taken the approach of doing some “personal writing” - building stories with the intention of deleting them. It’s oddly freeing to write with the knowledge there will never be an audience. Win.
About a month ago, I noted here my intention to work toward less ‘big tech’ in my life.
Over the years, I’ve invested in maintaining a few web properties, keeping up-to-date tooling, and building infrastructure for remote work. The assorted services (domain registrars, ISP services, Google Drive, GSuite, Office 365, etc..) amount to several thousand dollars spend each year. Ouch.
I’m hoping to reduce costs by consolidating but a big chunk of our costs lie in underutilized ISP services. Our prior strategy has been de-facto ‘Google everything’ - from e-mail to document storage. Despite paying for substantial IT infrastructure, we’ve let it sit largely unused.
If you’re seeing this message, then you are reading this blog on a brand-new hosting service - complete with (hopefully) more regular backups and improved bandwidth. My hope is to rent a more expensive server for all my random online activities instead of the multiple VPS systems I used before.
In a few days, suburbanreject.com will temporarily go offline.
I’ve been irked by big-tech shenanigans for a while. The ‘usable’ internet seems to be shrinking daily, despite more people signing in. Simple google searches for basic tech hobbyist information result in ever increasing bullshit of SEO optimized bullshit content for ads. And, as Fin might tell you, that’s not limited to tech - the knitting / spinning / art communities are in the same dire straights.
Lately, I’ve had a lot of “old man screams at cloud” energy. In fact, I opened the editor with a vague idea for a long rant on the ever-increasing enshittification of the internet. And while I’d love to write pages of undirected ranting on the cancer that is the modern connected world, I can’t help but consider the irony that the same cancer is fed by such diatribes. So, instead, I bring an update on new hobbies Fin and I have taken up.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my college age self. This version of me held dreams of working in an industry that would change the world for the better. I’d found a startup or join an organization “disrupting” an industry. Lately, as I watch the tech news, I feel like a passenger stuck on a runaway train, shouting to the engineer to stop so I can get out.
This post has existed in multiple drafts for over 3 years now. Previous titles include “Singularity of Bullshit”, “Tech is a Dumpster Fire”, “Eternal September of AI”, “Manslaughter for Profit”, “Software Engineering Dumpster Fires”, … the list goes on. The real problem is that my desire to write a cogent persuasive thesis on the tech industry is not matched by my ability to write, the format of this blog, or the general appetite for long form content of the public. Should by some miracle I manage to pen said thesis, my reach is limited to a few chance readers. And I can’t help but feel many share the same underlying existential crisis.
The first daffodils of spring are up and starting to bloom on the property. I’m not sure who before us planted those, but they’ve come up every year since we moved in. This year it looks like some animal did some spreading of them. I would really love the property to come alive in the spring with flowers like this but I guess I need to plant them first…..or wait a really long time for them to spread, its been five years!
See, I can do clickbait headlines too!
I’ve been working on a personal mission to rebuild a list of active local (extended Kansas City region) bloggers, and bloggers directly and indirectly associated with blogs I followed. The results have been interesting to say the least.
Observationally, the timeline within Wikipedia appears fairly accurate for the local blogosphere (haven’t seen that word in a while). My first personal website which included a web diary of sorts was published around 1999, and this pseudo-anonymous incarnation started in the 2007. My previous tech blog would see potentially hundreds of views per day, but suburbanreject itself has never been nearly as popular with view counts in the tens on a good day. View counts today just remind me that I’m writing for myself.
It’s a little over 2 months since I walked the stage and got my super-fancy degree. The day-job started a new project, and I’ve been stressing about general economic uncertainty and the weirdnesses of being a fully remote employee. Somehow - the entire month of January managed to float by. I’ve been focusing a bit on rebuilding the nerd lab, and Fin and I have started making some active efforts to organize. While I know there’s been a lotta progress on both fronts, I can’t help but feel like yikes - that’s it - almost 2 months and WTF?
You might have observed the lack of a 2023 resolutions post. The situation will be rectified here!
I’m fairly amazed that in my social group, it appears the big winner of Twitter’s ongoing meltdown has been…. RSS. I’ve seen numerous threads and discussions on reddit, zombie twitter, and others on finding RSS readers and switching back over to RSS for news instead of reading twitter feeds. Unfortunately, this anecdote is likely reflective of my techie circle friends - but hopefully the ‘social web’ as a whole will be better off having with a bit more distrust in recommender systems stoking outrage.