Foreword

I used to keep a blog where I would write a combination of stories I thought were funny, along with occasional long rambling pieces about politics or technology. After doing this for a few years I realized I’m ok at writing funny stories, but that when I wrote about politics or technology it was boring as ass to read, mostly because I tried to make it sound like I was some kind of expert on politics or history. I labored under the fantasy that impressionable people would wander across these posts and be moved by them in some way. In reality, the readers were almost all friends of mine. They already knew how I felt about stuff. They liked my funny stories and would endure the other stuff.

I am a compulsive reader of sites like Hacker News, lobste.rs, and Lambda The Ultimate, as well as an awful troll on the programming and Unix subreddits. Playing music is my other major hobby, and the people I know who play music for a living all acknowledge how blogging (I guess non-stop Tweeting also qualifies) is a good way to raise your own share price, so to speak. The problem is, I am neither an entrepeneur nor a genius; I had planned to title this site “Average Programmer”, after I read an annoying article about the “Unseen 99%” of developers who toil in anonymity sans blogs or tweets. I love the social part of being a programmer, but I despise the overabundance of elitist groupthink in the field; if nothing else, it bores me to read. So I figured, what the hell, I’ll write my own stuff.

So here’s my disclaimer; I am not an expert, but I’ve been doing this a long time and I have some opinions. My main goal here is entertainment, not enlightenment.

By the way, if I never get around to adding credits to the template I’m using, it comes from here. If you’re that person and you’re reading this, I really appreciate that you made the template available.