Not much today, just cleaning up the queue. Wastebook“Look, it’s a Cybertruck!” - yelled out by a Bay Area co-worker I was talking with on the phone as they drove into work. “In one way this is ‘just’ the evolution of the comment section.” Here. If you’re saying something you believe to be true, you don’t need to tell people you “honestly think it’s true” or that you “actually think” it’s the case.

Here are the other three things I’m going to watch in 2024. By “watch,” I suppose I mean “I really hope something interesting and definitive happens here instead of just a continuation of what was going on in 2023.” I put the first one (our old k-friend) in yesterday’s episode. Backstage - in 2022 and 2023 Backstage became super popular, at least in interest. I don’t know how widely it’s used now.

I don’t like annual predictions. Thankfully, no one’s asked me to do a big post about them this year, but usually I’m asked to do something formal. I always end up just predicting the same thing - predictions turn a lot more into hopes and dreams. I do like flagging things to pay attention to, and especially in a sort of “will this finally happen, or will we start re-calibrating our expectations from the apex of inflated expectations.

American Christmas, part 3Kids out and about in their pajamas. “Help me remember that our full size mini-van is hidden behind this Suburban.” Adults out and about in their pajamas. “Here’s the check. No rush, though!” Massive, high capacity washing machines that would fit a calf. The cheap wine is still expensive. Free electricity in AirBnBs. 15 types of cauliflower frozen pizza. “Please be respectful of our neighbors and the residents living above us.

American Christmas, part 2Stores that are open on Sunday, and don’t close until 9pm. People saying “sorry” for no reason. Bagels. Top sheets. Ceiling fans. HVAC. Warmth from the sun. Massive amounts of water in toilets. Bottle caps that come all the way off. Colby jack. Cheddar. Ritz crackers. Crushed ice from your home refrigerator. Oceans of lotions: ten versions of every product (sometime more than ten). 45mph. Self-service checkout machines that insist in weighing every grocery.

We throw around the term “waste” a lot in software. It’s been around since the 2000s, at least since the Poppendieck’s book Lean Software Development. DevOps really took it and ran with it, it was renamed “toil” in SRE, and now the concept is pretty solidly part of how we think of software. Italked with Steve Pereira on what “waste” means exactly. We talked about value stream maps as well, another concept that’s so common that we don’t define it much anymore.

Only In AmericanStill warm tortillas. Adults wearing joke t-shirts. Yoga pants. Free packets of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. Ice with every drink. 75 mph. Stern TSA. Little plastic shopping bags. No GDPR pop-ups. 20% tips before checkout. Donuts. Right turn on red. Ice machine in fridge. Very big bowls. Eggs in the fridge California wine. Closed blinds. Toilet next to bathtub/shower combo. Formal dining room. Formal living room. The soothing hum of lawnmowers in the distance.

The discussion below was fun: we starting talking about alignment ambiguity in Dungeons and Dragons, then went to the role of tech debt in large organizations, and threw in some “this meeting could have been an email” like thinking at the end. Check it out! WastebookI’m super busy right now. I’ve got a lot of stuff to not be doing. Alternate: I’ve got stuff to not be doing, I’m kind of busy right now.

I really liked my co-worker Paul Kelly’s post on this topic, plus some anti-patterns. So I made the video above! You may recall him from a discussion with Cora and me a few months back as well. Even if you don’t deign to watch my silly shit above, you should check out his post. Relative to your interestsIs the Texas boom town of Austin losing its luster? - “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.

I've played solo D&D with ChatGPT for three months. It's not that great at the pure mechanics (for example, combat), but it has some great uses. This video is a little screwed up, but the audio is fine, and the content is even better...if I don't say so myself! Relative to your interestsCoincidently for me, there’s been a few things on remote work versus return to office. Gartner Outlines Three Ways Organizations Can Successfully Motivate Employees Back Into the Office - Summary: prove that it’s more productive to be in the office than working online.