The Importance of Greeting Strangers
Greeting strangers is actually good for you.
Posts on Christopher Hicks
Recent content in Posts on Christopher Hicks
Latest posts
Shell Programming Best Practices
Practical advice for writing reliable shell scripts, covering strict mode, quoting, conditionals, parameter expansion, functions, traps, shellcheck, and when to reach for a different language instead.
My first 8 months with AI
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from the trenches with AI
Announcing the California Weather Refund Form
A Programmer's Approach to Atmospheric Disappointment
Announcing gh-observer: Waiting for CI Should Not Be Misery
I got tired of watching `gh pr checks --watch` fail me, so I built something better
Backing Into Parking Spaces
There’s more to parking than we learned to get our licenses.
Zip is the King of Stealth File Formats
You are using it everyday without realizing it.
DEI equals American Values
DEI Initiatives and American Values: A Foundation Built on Founding Principles
Glowing review of "Evolution of Lua, continued"
An excellent retrospective on programming language evolution
Vocal Media is hiring for a Data Warehouse Engineer
Is anyone in my network looking for work these days? One of our family members works at Vocal Media . They’ve been very happy with their role, so I hope this Senior Software Engineer role could be worth your time to check out. It sounds focused on the data warehouse from the job description. So you don’t have to worry about me competing with you. Feel free to comment on this post or DM…
Man in Finance in LEGO
He is also good with spreadsheets.
DNSControl + CoreDNS Container Example - Announcement
Project announcement on the official dnscontrol mailing list.
How Rust Had to Save Python From Itself: The uv Revolution
Rust saves the bacon for python packaging and formatting.
John Schreiber passed on July 29th, 2025
Rembrances were held on Saturday 23 August 2025.
Lorakeets at Busch Gardens Williamsburg
My third short starring my wife
Charities that I Respect
Introduction Like many, I’ve usually kept my charitable giving private — and I’ve respected that choice in others. But recently, a few people have asked where they might consider donating. Since I don’t see a need to keep it to myself, I’ll share my recommendations for anyone interested. I’ve organized this around a few themes. For each one I will link to the organization’s website and the Charity…
Redis backslides into open source community
But will the community slide back into redis?
Scheduled Send in Slack
What would motivate us to take advantage of this feature?
Lee Hall VA graffitied coal cars
Watch the tail end of a long train of empty graffitied coal cars.
Review of Microservices Pros and Cons
Review of Microservices: Pros and Cons article from Ovid
Tubi Streamed Superbowl 2025
Tubi streaming the 2025 Superbowl was a huge success!
Before the flower market
Heading to the San Francisco Flower Market for a family wedding.
Using just to speed development
Just is a make-like tool and this video is an introduction.
The Onion is back in print!
Europe's finest news source covers America's finest news source.
Neckties of July 2024
See the neckties I wore for July 2024.
Our First Youtube Short: Baby shark at bakery
You never know when or where you will run into baby shark. It is like a ghost that pops up at the weirdest occasion.
Pool Rules
A comparison of pool rules regularly used in the US.
Chicks.net Site Relaunch
Explain the relaunch of www.chicks.net
Tech Pro Grandpa Outwitted by Toddler
Conversion of linked-in share into blog entry
Canadian Petition That Games Must Remain Functional At EOL
Conversion of linked-in share into blog entry
You could be the Director of Infastructure at Tubi.
Conversion of linked-in share into blog entry
The Banality of Genius
Conversion of linked-in share into blog entry
I'm the new Observability Lead at Tubi
Conversion of linked-in share into blog entry
Chicks on Community
Youtube video of chicks talking about how companies are treating the open source community
Tubi is competing with subscription services
Conversion of linked-in share into blog entry
Pismo Beach: First Visit
Youtube video of our first visit to Pismo Beach
Creator of Clippy
Conversion of linked-in share into blog entry
"LinkedIn is better on the app" is the subject of the email.
Conversion of linked-in share into blog entry
Great coverage for McD Tech Labs
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Try Personal Capital.
Conversion of linked-in share into blog entry
It is funny that this happens a week before
Washington Post headline: Sales of Essure birth control implant to be halted by Bayer; U.S. last to sell controversial device It is funny that this happens a week before http://bleedingedgedoc.com/ is released. Thanks to everyone who advocated for this. Links http://bleedingedgedoc.com/ Washington Post article Sales of Essure birth control implant to be halted by Bayer; U.S. last to sell…
Once again the forces for copyright have reduced the rights of normal people
Once again the forces for copyright have reduced the rights of normal people who have done nothing wrong. Any chance of a lost nickle is too much for the copyright advocates. And they get to demand these rights for life+70 years. That’s no good for the public domain, but that’s an easy to ignore consequence if they can be $20 richer in the 145th year of publication. As China has amply…
Steam preferences set to Linux
I wish I had known this earlier, but I finally set my default in my preferences to wanting Linux. It does’t seem to limit my ability to see Windows-only games in the store or discovery queues. See https://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/311702/100715 to learn how to set your preferences. Links https://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/311702/100715 Steam now lets developers know how many users want…
Wow, that's too bad.
Wow, that’s too bad. Links Linux Journal Ceases Publication | Linux Journal Shared with: Public
Higher tax rates for the rich could actually make the world a better place.
Higher tax rates for the rich could actually make the world a better place. See the charts to prove it… Links Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart - The New York Times Shared with: Public Comments Theresa Sawyer - 2017-09-05T14:50:36Z Awesome graphs! Theresa Sawyer - 2017-09-05T14:50:36Z Awesome graphs!
To protect our government we should insist on a preference for open source so...
To protect our government we should insist on a preference for open source solutions. It is cheaper initially and overall. There are fewer bugs. There is less motivation for nefarious deeds. Vendor lock-in goes away. All of this is true for businesses and home uses as well. Links To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software - The New York Times Shared with: Public
I usually don't have much sympathy for Microsoft, but this is so classic ...
I usually don’t have much sympathy for Microsoft, but this is so classic I can’t help but laugh. Links That time a customer reported an error in the map used by Flight Simulator Shared with: Public
This is the future of computer security. I hope you've got flexibility a...
This is the future of computer security. I hope you’ve got flexibility and rhythm. Links Stack Overflow Unveils the Next Steps in Computer Security - Stack Overflow Blog /usr/sbin/amavisd-new - why is pcmd/regex not working for this command in csf.pignore? Shared with: Public, Anonymous Pro +1’d by: David Swift Comments Anonymous Pro - 2017-04-09T12:55:32Z What is this nonsense? I use…
The solution to your Debian problems is to completely disable ipv6. This is ...
The solution to your Debian problems is to completely disable ipv6. This is not the awesome I was looking for. Links How to fix the slow apt-get update issue on Linux machines - TechRepublic Shared with: Public +1’d by: David Swift, Wing Wong Comments Wing Wong - 2017-01-17T22:50:53Z I’ve seen the same thing happen on things other than package installations. ipv6 slows down ALOT for…
Cloudflare: thanks for keeping up the good fight
@+Cloudflare : Thanks for keeping up the good fight. Links Cloudflare’s Transparency Report for Second Half 2016 and an Additional Disclosure for 2013 Shared with: Public, Cloudflare