In a somewhat peculiar order:

  • Getting 17 inches of snow on Thursday was not amusing.
    • Getting the snow plowed was a pain
    • We had snow emergencies declared by the sheriff for the first time in decades on Thursday
    • The snow happened Thursday and my car only got unburied on Friday
  • “Torchy The Battery Boy” is premium nightmare fuel, it seems
  • Twitter is imploding
    • Some reports indicate the company is down to ten percent of the headcount it had on the day before Elon Musk took control
    • The engineers required to keep systems running are now gone
    • Despite people claiming online rather earnestly that the banks that backed the deal will earnestly attempt to keep Twitter running there is the slight problem of staffing. Software engineers are not interchangable widgets. Twitter is a complicated, complex product with some homegrown components. People with the relevant domain knowledge walked away. Anybody who is brought in will have to be brought up to speed on something that will be ultimately foreign to them and might be impossible for them to master.
      • What could go wrong?
      • Since there are some “invented here” pieces of the Twitter tech stack the loss of so many engineers leads to the problem of finding replacements. Could anybody step in to replace those who left? If they can’t find anybody the site’s days are going to start running out.
    • API failures are increasing as the day goes on
    • I can’t successfully post there now
  • I am still looking at things like this post to Medium in terms of setting up semi-unattended streaming from the Raspberry Pi 4.
    • The big push for this is to create a online television station on a shoestring for the local area.
    • People flailing about without access to reliable information sources during Thursday’s Level 3 Snow Emergency is a big reason for this.
      • Facebook is not a reliable source of information.
      • Local radio stations all broadcast feeds from distant networks and have no local air talent. They’re no help.
      • Our “local” television stations are based in Cleveland and cover a 17 county area equal in size to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We’re an afterthought to them more often than not.
    • Considering how many people locally think Facebook is the answer for all their information-seeking needs we may have a few problems having this accepted
      • This is a high COVID-denialism area and high COVID transmission area
      • Culturally this area is extremely reactionary rather than accepting of new things
      • Facebook is treated like AOL was treated 25-30 years ago
  • Church continues to be interesting
    • Livestreaming for Geneva Church of Christ continues
    • I will be preaching for the regular morning service on December 11th
  • Other projects
    • Not everything can be openly stated yet
    • Other irons are in the fire, though