For the first time, in 2019, I have a doctor who uses email, and there's a portal where I can see results of my medical tests. How many people would be alive today if more doctors used email earlier. #
I'm moving apps from an old server where Dropbox stopped working to another old server where Dropbox still works. It's like taking apart a robot and putting it back together. Lots of wires to hook up. And just getting the old pieces off the old server without Dropbox was a pain the ass. Lots of chances for mistakes. I really need to make this kind of thing easy. I know just use containers. But it's at the next level up where I need more factoring and abstraction. #Imagine you were alive in the 1920s when cars became a mass market product. A movie star gives a speech saying Ford must make perfectly safe cars that no one ever dies in. Would you have realized then that it was unattainable? #
"You need to step outside your culture to see the shackles it has placed on your thinking."#
An idea for a New Year's resolution. At least once a day agree with someone. Not silently. Say "I agree with you." No qualification, not "I agree with you, but.." It's jarring at first, then liberating. And the responses will surprise you.#
It's the best time of year for binge-watching. I'm up to date on Mr Robot. As far as I'm concerned they could stop right here at episode 7. Best season yet. But there are still six more episodes in the series. Now I'm working my way through the third season of The Crown. Another tour de force. Waiting in the wings is Man in the High Castle and The Morning Show, which is fantastic even though it got awfulmixed reviews. I only watched the first three episodes, the ones that were released when AppleTV+ came out. I want to wait until the season is done so I can watch it in a binge. I'm not a big fan of waiting a week between episodes. I'm a fairly modal person in most things I do and TV is certainly one of them. I also know a few people who are just now catching up on Succession. Can't wait to hear what they think. No spoilers. 💥#- BTW -- the reason The Morning Show got bad reviews is that it isn't what a newsroom really is like. Because presumably the reviewers know what newsrooms are like. The rest of us don't. We loved The West Wing even though it was nothing like working in the White House. Dramas depend not on the reality of what they portray, rather the ability of the writers, actors and technical people to tell a story that pulls you in, gets you to care, makes you forget you aren't in their world instead of your own. They become your friends, and you develop an intimacy you can't get with your real friends and family. That's why The Morning Show is so good. The writing, acting, and everything else are done by people who know how to get you where you want to go. Whether it resembles the way newsrooms work, the only people who care about that are reviewers. #
Also -- one of the great things about Mr Robot is that the writers understand how software works. They do take shortcuts and at time make word salads of tech jargon, but most of it is about things that hackers would really do and use. One thing they gloss over is bugs. Elliot and Darlene's code always works the first time. They never get so much as a syntax error. I'm waiting for the next generation shows where the plot revolves around a platform vendor removing a feature that the firewall depended on and the hackers figure it out and Evil-Corp crumbles and the Dark Army takes over or someone worse than Trump ends up running the country. #