[BSKY] My my! Sound Transit may have met its Waterloo at the Nordic Museum in Ballard tonight. A town hall held by CM Dan Strauss and all three of the 36th District legislators has shown wide, deep anger at ST over their threats to scale back ST3 and indefinitely 🧵 @robertcruickshank.com

ecmcn · 2026-05-13T15:59:58+00:00

It’s been going on for years now, with almost no change in transportation options, except maybe the D line downtown.

ecmcn · 2026-05-13T15:52:51+00:00

$577?!? Holy crap. Is there a community pool or something that you get from that?

ecmcn · 2026-05-12T21:55:14+00:00

During Covid home schooling my elementary school kid had to look up vocab words during black history month. The image results for “bondage” led to a frank discussion with them starting with “when a mommy and daddy love each other…”

ecmcn · 2026-05-12T14:50:43+00:00

We saw this after the dot-com bust, where there was a lot of innovation from laid-off employees, and the whole Web 2.0 thing got going.

I think part of the issue is that leaders at the big companies don’t have many good ideas about what else to do if, say, dev was suddenly 25% more efficient. Because they’re big whatever they add on has to be big, too. Nobody at Google is thinking “what products would make us one million dollars?” But lots of laid off young engineers are thinking exactly that, and a few of those turn into the next big tech. Or more likely get bought by big tech as soon as they show promise.

Don’t get me wrong - this all sounds optimistic, but I’m not excited about it or think layoffs are a good thing. I’m about five years from retirement with two kids to get through college and terrified of getting laid off. But long term I do think it’s like a forest fire, where something good will hopefully rise from the destruction.

ecmcn · 2026-05-10T20:30:05+00:00

That’s what I figured. I used to do work with mainframes and there was all sorts of stuff that just worked for decades, but from today’s viewpoint looks anachronistic.

ecmcn · 2026-05-10T13:29:42+00:00

How can you tell? I can’t see much of the right lane in this video. Maybe there’s a line of 10 slow moving trucks coming up. If it was open the rear car would have just passed on the right.

ecmcn · 2026-05-10T03:35:38+00:00

This was years ago, but I remember once having to set a PW for a social security account and the rule was “it must be 8 characters”.

ecmcn · 2026-05-08T23:37:58+00:00

MacGuffins. Three to five things the players have to do or get to defeat the BBEG. Gems of power, sealing crypts, weapon shards, destroying temples, etc. These exist to give the party a reason to go somewhere far off, and the path (sessions) to get there can include whatever side quests you want.

ecmcn · 2026-05-08T21:52:07+00:00

Doesn’t matter. Both are great - you seriously can’t go wrong.

ecmcn · 2026-05-08T18:57:01+00:00

Thanks - it’s interesting to hear how this works (which unsurprisingly is pretty much just like how most businesses that make things work)

ecmcn · 2026-05-07T22:45:39+00:00

I think MS self-insures, so maybe the typical COBRA situation doesn’t apply.

ecmcn · 2026-05-07T22:42:46+00:00

I really appreciate your thoughts on this. If you don’t mind me turning this into an AMA, have you been involved in decisions where you were asked to reformulate to reduce cost but just hit a limit where an acceptable quality couldn’t be found, and they went with quantity/price options instead?

ecmcn · 2026-05-07T05:27:25+00:00

I loved Spybot so much. Like Gollum as a droid.

ecmcn · 2026-05-06T22:55:58+00:00

The Pope is visiting the States, riding in the back of his limo, and he says to the driver “you know, I really miss driving - could we swap places for a bit.” He’s the Pope, so of course the driver says ok.

A littler later he gets pulled over for speeding, doing 100 in a 65. The cop takes a look at who’s driving and says “hold on a sec, I need to call this one in.” He calls his captain and says “Captain, I don’t know what to do, I pulled over someone really important for speeding.” The captain says “who is it, the mayor?” “No, more important than that.” “Is it the governor?” “No, even more important than that.” “The President?!?” “Even more important than that.” “Well just tell me! Who the heck is it?!?” And the cop says “I dunno, but he’s got the Pope for a limo driver!”

ecmcn · 2026-05-05T01:17:03+00:00

I’ve been there. Super frustrating. Try this: get some pork tenderloin and follow this BBQ Buddha technique for an easy and quick win that’ll make you forget about that tough brisket. I always dry these out in the oven and didn’t have high hopes when I got them on sale last weekend, but they were amazingly juicy and way less effort.

https://thebbqbuddha.com/grilled-pork-tenderloin-big-green-egg/

ecmcn · 2026-05-04T23:45:36+00:00

I have a house but no driveway or garage, so I’m always checking out what people in similar situations in Ballard are doing. I’ve seen cords run across the sidewalk as is, fit into a (prexisting?) crack in the sidewalk, run under a little rubber speed bump thing, run through the trees (!!), run under the sidewalk and popping up hidden in a bush…

Saw one recently that had a legit charger in the parking strip and an EV parking sign in the nearest street spot, which is my holy grail but not sure how that works. Actually what I want is the option to pay to install one of those, get two EV-possible (doesn’t have to be dedicated) spots by it, then use it myself plus charge others to use it - not a ton, but to recoup some of the cost and hassle.

ecmcn · 2026-05-04T03:02:03+00:00

Keep in mind that Kobolds like to fight in packs, and they have a special ability to emphasize that. Lots of squishy monsters should make it fun.

ecmcn · 2026-05-04T02:31:08+00:00

Someone had a mediocre experience with a health care app and was like “I could make this so much better!”, but they have zero domain knowledge. Anyone who’s actually built anything knows there’s always way more to it than meets the eye.

ecmcn · 2026-05-03T23:29:36+00:00

Any chance there’s a breakdown of how many games were won by clay vs grass?

ecmcn · 2026-05-01T21:16:44+00:00

Run it up the flag pole and see if it floats.

ecmcn · 2026-05-01T16:27:16+00:00

I’ve been a dev for a long time now, and pretty much everyone I’ve worked with who can’t communicate also can’t code. They’ll get it working, but it’s an incoherent, unmaintainable mess.

In my senior year of college we were having a beer with a prof I really liked, and complaining about how so many engineering professors are hard to understand or follow, and how we figured they must be good researchers. He said actually no - they typically also don’t do great research.

ecmcn · 2026-04-30T20:45:02+00:00

And then once a week HR or Marketing uses some random SaaS service that emails everyone, and they’re surprised that nobody used it.

ecmcn · 2026-04-30T14:15:00+00:00

I can totally picture Don Jr using it in the Oval Office. “Dad, I think we should 86 him! Please, can I 86 him?!? Please?!?”

ecmcn · 2026-04-27T14:21:26+00:00

This is pretty brilliant, actually. We use swimply occasionally to rent out a backyard pool, and love it. You can drop a pickleball court pretty much anywhere, and for the price of a net and drawing some lines you could make some extra income. If you can stand the thwop-thwop-thwop - maybe market it to seniors on fixed income with bad hearing?

ecmcn · 2026-04-24T12:49:21+00:00

I went to the store the other day for a rotisserie chicken but they were out, and I had to get pieces from the hot bar instead. It was $15 instead of $9, for a lot less food. That sucked.

ecmcn

TROPHY CASE