I honestly don’t care if we choose permanent standard time or DST. Either one would be better than having to switch twice a year. I’ll even propose a compromise: we can try one for a year, try the other for the next year, and see which one works better.

Not doing either because we can’t agree on which one should be permanent seems like the worst option.

If you want to do resource profiling, Visual Studio can do that out of the box. For simple benchmarking, specifically for seeing how long certain calls take, I just just the Stopwatch class and ouput the result to a log entry. Assuming you’re using C# that is.

It’s a bold strategy, Cotton.

Second Protectli. They are solid little x86 boxes with no moving parts.

I saw a job posting the other day that had a hard requirement of 7+ years of experience with a specific IDE. It was phrased as an absolute must have.

That’s how you know an organization is totally clueless. TBF, not all IDE’s are created equal but it would be kind of like a construction foreman refusing to hire a anyone who didn’t have 7+ years of experience with DeWalt power tools.

Mad Men. It’s one of the TV GOAT’s for good reasons.

Next week, we will spend 3 days trying to get the product team to pick out a dress only for them to insist that the one that is way too small “will fit” and that the dev can just “alter it real quick and it will be fine.” Even despite loud protests from the dev team that they cannot alter it and it will not be fine.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t fine.

Past poor decisions have taught me this:

Don’t do anything you’re going to have to lie about. If you do, don’t lie about it. If you do, make it right as soon as possible.

I have plenty of problems in my life but a guilty conscience isn’t one of them.

Eons ago, I had a guy bring me a non functioning Compaq desktop and say, “Wull the fan was makin’ a lotta racket so I greased it.”

What he actually meant was, “I sprayed the entire motherboard with WD-40 because I don’t know shit about computers OR lubricants.”

I gave it a bath in electronics cleaner and it actually fired right up after that.

Back in the days before cell phones, when landlines were ubiquitous, people in more rural areas had what they called “party lines.” It was a single telephone line shared between multiple houses. You knew which house an incoming call was for based on the ring pattern. Your neighbors could also pick up the receiver, very quietly, and listen in on your phone calls if they wanted too.

Party lines are long gone but Internet communications have their own ways of being “listened in on.” A lot of traffic transmitted over the Internet is encrypted; with TLS for instance. But, some of it isn’t. If you use traditional DNS – UDP over port 53 – everyone in between you and the DNS server can see which websites you’re visiting.

I’m not concerned about my privacy because I have something to hide. I’m concerned about it because my personal business is my business. Not anyone else’s.

I’ve been seriously thinking I need to go back to therapy. Thanks for the motivation!

Honestly? The last few years have been like a slow motion Trainwreck. My wife developed serious chronic health issues a few years ago and I’ve been unemployed for almost a year and a half. We’ve gone from being in a very good financial position to being virtually bankrupt. It has not been a good time.

The problem is that it’s not just software. Shareholders and corporate “leadership” have collectively decided that they are willing to sacrifice any and all future success in order to make stock prices go up today. They don’t know where the business will be in five years and frankly, they don’t care. Virtually all of the big names have completely stopped innovating. Cramming “AI” into their shitty products and trying really hard to pretend that’s it’s something different or “new” when it’s just the same shit but with more bloatware.

Manufacturing isn’t much different. I worked at a specialized industrial tool manufacturer for a few years. They were trying to add a new “smart tool” line and demoed it at an international trade show only to get completely excoriated by their customers who were all like, “Don’t even talk to me about ‘smart’ tools when the [very expensive] tools you already produce don’t fucking work.” But that’s how it goes when your business is built on acquisitions and the way you make your stock price go up is by coasting on your brand portfolios past success while simultaneously eliminating the people who made that success possible.

Only if it can also be a microservice.

I’m still looking for a good solution that includes support for notes. I’m migrating off Exchange Online and using mailcow temporarily but the built in notes feature is sorely missed.

Years ago, I heard a lecture by the guy who investigated the case referred to in the article below. Thieves and con artists are a legitimate concern. Or at least they should be.

From the Batesville Daily Guard - Batesville, Arkansas

After fighting identity theft for seven years, country singer/songwriter David Lynn Jones is ready to take back his life.

During that time, Jones, on paper, was three people – and at times, four.

“Two guys were playing me,” Jones said. “It’s unimaginable, until you go through it . . . that someone who doesn’t even look like you can steal your identity. The damage,” he said, “is incalculable.”

Jones may be ready to sing “I Feel A Change Comin’ On” again. That’s the title of one of his singles from his heyday.

During better times, Jones released four acclaimed albums – “Hard Times on Easy Street” (1987), “Wood, Wind and Stone” (1990), “Mixed Emotions” (1992) and “Play by Ear” (1994).

His charting singles include “Bonnie Jean (Little Sister)” which was also a popular music video on television, “High Ridin’ Heroes” (with Waylon Jennings), “The Rogue” and “Tonight in America.”

He may be best-known for writing “Living in the Promiseland,” a No. 1 hit for Willie Nelson.

While Jones kept writing songs during the past seven years, he could not release them because the identity theft culprits were getting his royalty checks by having the checks sent to their address. Much of the time, that address was in Colorado.

Now, Jones and his wife, Illa, who live east of Cave City, are looking forward to teaming up to record and release a new album.

He also has unreleased albums from the past that can now be put before the public.

“There’s five (previously recorded David Lynn Jones) albums that never were released,” Jones said. He plans to make those available to buyers on the Internet within the next few months.

Fans should be patient, though, because it may take quite awhile, he said.

In February, Baxter County sheriff’s investigators arrested Danny James Sullivan, who was working at a McDonald’s in Mountain Home under the name David Lynn Jones.

Sullivan was also drawing disability checks from the government under his own name while working at the McDonald’s under Jones’ name. His aliases include Danny J. Bass and Danny J. Rader.

A day later, acting on a tip, the alleged mastermind of the plot, Janis Rae Wallace, was arrested at a home in Fayetteville. Wallace is also known as Janis French and Janis Rae Jones, the name she used while posing as the real Davis Lynn Jones’ “wife.”

She’s even booked into the jail as Janis Rae Jones.

Wallace and Sullivan, both 51, remain in jail – she, on a $500,000 bond and he, on a $200,000 bond.

They are each charged with nine counts of felony financial identity fraud, according to an affidavit filed with the charges and signed by sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Buschbacher.

The information filed with the charges and in arrest reports matches the story told by Jones – the real Jones.

“Those are all federal charges,” Jones said.

The theft started, Jones said, when Wallace stole his driver’s license while working for him.

“At the time, my Social Security number was the same as my driver’s license number, and with just that information, they infiltrated my life,” Jones said.

Soon, he was getting no mail. It was all going to the fake David Lynn Jones’ address via an address change. The mail included preapproved credit card applications that the thieves filled out; after they maxed out the cards, they reported them stolen.

“Among the stolen items via mail were personal checks and business checks from music royalties the victim had earned as a songwriter and musician,” Sgt. Buschbacher said.

“They had ‘me’ moved to Colorado; my phone was shut off,” Jones said. “This was back in 2002 . . . . By the time we realized what was going on, we couldn’t get it stopped. They wound up with my royalty checks from publishing music,” including royalties from “Living in the Promiseland.”

Buschbacher said that in the beginning, to further the identity theft scheme, Sullivan, posing as Jones, filled out an identity theft passport request victim information sheet and submitted it to the attorney general’s office. Then, he obtained an Arkansas driver’s license in the victim’s name.

Meanwhile, Jones’ elaborate and well-known recording studio at Bexar was stripped of all its expensive equipment.

“I still own the studio,” Jones said Saturday. “It’s for sale and has been for some time. These people had gone out there and took down the for sale sign and put up no trespassing signs. They were drawing money out of my checking account, which eventually caused me to be overdrafted,” he said. His interest rates were doubled because of a bad credit rating.

And to add insult to injury, Wallace convinced people who dealt with Jones financially that someone was trying to steal her identity (“She was speaking as my ‘wife,’” Jones said). So, those who could have helped would not even listen to the real Jones.

“When we started talking to credit card companies and banks, they didn’t believe it (was me),” Jones said.

The crowning portion of the identity theft scheme was yet to come.

“They started telling everybody I’d been in a horrible accident in Colorado and I was in a wheelchair and I couldn’t play and sing anymore,” Jones said. “She even wrote a letter and sent it to all of my family saying that.”

Since he had been busy with his work during the earlier part of the problems and hadn’t been in touch with family members regularly, several of them even believed the accident story, he said.

“My mother (Verna Jones) passed away during all of this and we were trying to make funeral arrangements,” and a check his brother mailed to help with those expenses went to Colorado into the thieves’ hands, Jones said. “Even my own brother didn’t understand what was going on. I told him I never got the check . . . . It’s so crazy when you’re actually experiencing it.”

The investigation revealed that Wallace and Sullivan obtained a Social Security card, a Colorado identification card and the Arkansas driver’s license, all in the name of David Lynn Jones. Wallace then obtained power of attorney over Jones, claiming he was mentally disabled due to the fake “accident.”

Wallace and Sullivan were even filing joint federal income tax returns as Mr. and Mrs. David Lynn Jones. Those returns were filed in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Jones said as soon the investigation revealed the first name of the suspect, he knew who was behind the scheme even though she was giving her last name as Jones. Still, the identity thieves stayed one step ahead of authorities for a long time.

Before being arrested, Wallace and Sullivan were trying to get the title to some land Jones owns in Baxter County, authorities said.

A break in the case occurred 15 months ago when Wallace, as Mrs. Jones, and Sullivan, as Jones, applied in person for an identity theft passport at the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office.

As soon as Wallace and Sullivan were arrested, investigators obtained search warrants for their houses. Jones said several items found in their homes could only have been obtained by their breaking into his home east of Cave City, where he and his wife have lived for five years.

“We’ve known for years things were being pilfered, things moved around. They were hanging out in the woods, watching for us to leave (so they could get into the house).”

Investigators found pictures and other items taken from inside Jones’ house, as well as photos of the house taken from the driveway.

Jones said officers on the trail of the crooks had been advising Jones for months to be alert and stay well-armed, because one possible logical next step could be to eliminate Jones and his wife, so the identity thieves “could become us. That could have been the last (planned) step,” particularly with them applying for the identity passport, Jones said. “Who knows what would have happened next?”

He has high praise for the attorney general’s agent who felt something was wrong when Wallace and Sullivan approached him about getting that passport.

“That’s what got them caught,” Jones said.

The agent was suspicious enough to go into another room and look for pictures of Jones on the Internet. The pictures did not match the man claiming to be Jones.

“If it had not been for the attorney general’s office, it’d still be going on,” Jones said. “The attorney general’s officer said it was the worst case he’d ever seen in all his years of investigating identity theft.”

Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery said the investigation involved personnel from the attorney general’s office, the Social Security Administration’s Inspector General’s office and the sheriff’s office.

Jones said he expects he still has years to go to clear the damage to his name.

When asked what the identity theft has cost him, Jones did not give a dollar figure. Instead, he said quietly, “It’s cost me seven years of my life.”

I still write thank you cards. People really like getting them. In my mind, it’s worth the [small] investment of my time and effort to show my appreciation for something.

Fraternal orders. Elks, Moose, etc. The internal vibe is exactly like church but with beer instead of sermons. You do not have to be religious to join but some of them do require a belief in God.

I’m still a member of the Elks, although I haven’t been active in a number of years since I moved too far away from any local lodges. I made a lot of good friends when I was active. One thing that was always nice, back when I had to travel for work I could stop by a lodge, if there was one near by, and they would usually treat me like I belonged there. I always appreciated that.

What other things would be a big difference with the people today?

The lack of cigarette smoke everywhere, at least in the US and probably most other developed nations. In 1965, around 43% of American adults smoked. Today, just over 11% do. You no longer have to sit in the “non-smoking” section of a restaurant that still smells strongly of stale cigarettes. They no longer put ash trays or cigarette lighters in vehicles, which were a standard feature up to at least the late 90’s.

That’s a tough call. I would say the hardest was when I was on the board of a regional charity organization and we caught the CEO embezzling. If you’ve never dealt with something like that before, it’s hard to imagine the river of shit that is coming your way.

This dude, who was paid a decent salary and benefits, very smugly told us that he felt he was more entitled to the money than the people who actually needed it. I’ve never wanted to punch anyone so badly. Firing him was the easy part. Dealing with the criminal investigation and the loss of community trust was the hard part. That was more of an emotionally exhausting year and a half rather than just a day though.