Recent content on Jay Little
YouTube Version So as I’m sure you all have noticed, PC hardware has gotten way more expensive. In fact it’s getting to the point where I’m beginning to seriously get concerned about my ability to replace hardware that dies. I’m primarily concerned about two categories of hardware. The first one is my Thinkpad laptop. The second one is the Raspberry Pis which essentially…
YouTube Version Sometime over the last weekend I was confronted with a thought that hadn’t occurred to me before. This thought might’ve been the missing piece of the puzzle that prevented me from being able to effectively grapple with the ongoing decay of the tech industry. So what was the thought? It was simple: The presence of rationality in our industry is no longer guaranteed. Why…
YouTube Version I am writing this post because I had quite the day at work a few days ago. In some ways it was no different than any other day. I attempted to build structured things while keeping from drowning in the torrent of chaos and uncertainty that is the environment where I’m paid to do such work. On any given day, I do not succeed in building quite as much as I had wanted to and…
YouTube Version Today is July the 4th and as it so happens this is the 250th anniversary of the day that our founding fathers declared their independence from their former parent nation, Great Britain. I hope that you all are just as grateful about that historical event as I am, but beyond that, I’m not really going to talk about it at all in this post. Rather what I am going to talk about…
YouTube Version So here I am sitting at a communal table in the lobby of the Sonesta Charlotte Lower South End hotel near the end of Southeast Linuxfest 2026 (aka SELF) pondering this weekends experience and I gotta say: It was a bit depressing. Why? Well in 2024 there was one session about AI. Last year there were four sessions that were AI related and those sessions were part of the…
YouTube Version I have effectively been exiled from Big Tech. In this post I’m going to give you my perspective on how that happened and my feelings about it. If you aren’t interested in hearing this tale, I’ll go ahead and summarize it for you up front: The values I grew to appreciate and build my work and hence my tech career of the last few decades around, are no longer in…
YouTube Version So before we get into today’s spicey and ultimately divisive discussion topic, I just want to say to those of you who have been following this blog for awhile, thank you. I haven’t posted here very often since I transitioned most of my takes over to a more anonymous blog a couple years ago. Looking back a few years later, I have to admit that I regret doing that. This…
This year has been a painful one. I’ve also been pretty quiet… here anyway. It’s been over a year since I’ve posted here as most of my musings have been published on my new anonymous blog. Nevertheless, I felt like I owed whatever readers remain here at least some sort of update as to what’s been going on with me this year and where my head is at. In truth my head…
On Friday morning September 27th 2024, Hurricane Helene introduced itself to the Southeastern United States. A few short hours later, nobody was sorry to see it go away but nearly everybody in it’s path had been effected in some significant way. It was a time that few of us will live long enough to forget. First off let me just say, Annette and I got off relatively easy. While so many that…
Well after nearly 23 years of largely uninterrupted and admirable service, the time has come to officially retire the custom Content Management System that has powered it all: Presentation Engine . I originally created and deployed the first version of PEngine back in late 2001 when I first created this blog before I registered the domain name in October of 2001. Back then it was nothing more than…
So it’s that time of year and I spent last weekend at SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF) 2024 in Charlotte, NC. This was my second year of attending and it absolutely lived up to the lofty expectations set by my first trip last year. This year was less about the sessions for me and more about the people. Which is interesting to say because if I’m being honest about my visit last year, it was…
As some of you may have noticed, I have been rather quiet over the last few months. There are a lot of reasons for my silence. The more observant among you may have even noticed that content has disappeared and reappeared from this site several times over the same time period. Long story short: The nature of this site and how and when I use it to express myself is changing. This change is long…
So as most of you know, I tend to take the last few weeks of every year off. Primarily I use this time to celebrate the year and reflect on its events. I also use this time to tie up any tech loose ends that I have… and boy did I have a few this year. My biggest piece of in-home tech debt was definitely my camera system. For years I have run a hodge podge front door camera which basically…
Yesterday I almost died. At least I came as close to dying as I have ever come over the course of my life. I hadn’t been feeling well since Monday morning. I was experiencing quite a bit of abdominal pain and bloating. It only got worse as time progressed on Monday and that evening I just wasn’t able to sleep. No matter what position I got in, I just couldn’t get to sleep due to…
Today’s post is about a subject near and dear to my heart: Laptops with Linux preinstalled. Sadly this is not a happy post, but rather one in which I share my recent angst about the state of Linux Laptop hardware and how I have maneuvered myself into a very neglected corner. So as regular readers know, I have largely only purchased laptops with Linux preinstalled for quite a few years. This…
While most of my readers probably think of me as being some kind of massive die hard Linux loving Penguin, the reality is that outside of servers, laptops and desktops I don’t use Linux very much. The purpose of today’s post is to detail the reasons and the journey of how I have basically become an Apple Fanboi nearly everywhere else. Let’s start with a disclaimer: If you want to…
As some of you undoubtedly have heard Unity , the company behind one of the most prolific game engines of our time called Unity Engine , recently announced some changes to their pricing . On the surface this may sound like quite a big nothing burger if you aren’t familiar with the process of how software is made, let me assure you: This announcement is rocking the entire gaming world. Note:…
As regular readers know, I have long questioned the value of social media and I have struggled with the question of how involved I should be with it. This morning I decided to quit Bluesky permanently because the bulk of the community there seems hellbent on ostracizing and ejecting anybody who doesn’t fully subscribe to their specific brand of group think. I wish there was a kinder way to…
If you’ve worked in tech and have any degree of actual talent, you have run into the following scenario: You are on a team and that team has at least one member that isn’t pulling their weight. The reasons why generally range from a lack of work ethic to a lack of talent. Regardless that person can’t seem to get themselves fired. Why is that? UPDATE 8/9/2023: Lutz, in this…
So over the last few weeks, I have been re-watching one of my favorite television shows of all time, The Wire. If you haven’t seen it, you should probably rectify that oversight. That being what it is, I’m currently making my way through Season 3 and I had a revelation of sorts: I might be a McNulty. Yeah okay, so for those of you not familiar with the show, you have no idea what that…
This post is the culmination of years of accumulated professional frustration. It will not be well received by some. That’s okay. If you make it to the 25 year point of your dev career and you spent most of that time writing custom software for clients and you still disagree, feel free to write your own take and send it along to me. I will afford it my due consideration.
So this morning I was listening to one of the Linux related podcasts, Coder Radio and the hosts read feedback from a listener who claimed that he was “bored” with PHP and ready to try something else. Now to be fair, in this particular case, the writer outlined some circumstances that made me sympathize with him. Long story short is that parts of the PHP based stack he was relying on…
I’ve been a Linux fan for almost 30 years, yet in all of that time, I never actually attended a Linux event (ignoring a handful of local Linux User Group (LUG) events here and there). That is, until this past weekend when I attended SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF) 2023 in Charlotte, NC. So what took so long? Well frankly, traditionally I have avoided socializing with others. COVID and age have…
As of late it has become rather fashionable for established tech orgs running established platforms to attempt to make their platforms profitable. While the exact underlying reasons for this in each case varies, the end result is the same: Whatever the secret sauce was, the org manages to forever taint the platform with the changes they end up making. Who are we talking about? Today we’ll be…
Back in 2016, a younger and mildly more optimistic Jay heard about a Kickstarter Campaign for a remake of the classic title, System Shock . Young Jay had fond memories of the original and immediately pledged $30 to help turn the dream into reality. Expected delivery was in December of 2017. Actual delivery for some was yesterday: May 30th, 2023. UPDATE 6/1/23: After logging onto the Discord server…
Everybody knows I got a big mouth. That’s why I have a domain for my name and I’ve been posting tripe to it for over two decades now. The surprising part is that every once in awhile I say something that resonates with other people. That happened last week and I’m happy to report that my website handled it wonderfully. For starters, if you haven’t read my post “Low…
I’ve been writing custom software for a long time and one of the things that annoys me most is when a client adopts the position that there is a silver bullet which will reduce or remove the inherent complexity of this task. This happens more often than you’d think and guess what? They are almost always wrong. Perhaps I’m getting a bit too old and loose lipped for my own good,…
Anybody even remotely invested in keeping up with current events here in America, knows that TikTok is on the verge of being banned. If you are a frequent reader, you already know that I am against that. Doubly so in this case as the US Government has yet to provide a single evidence based argument to support the move, much less addressed the fact that American tech companies engage in largely the…
Compared to most coders I work with, I’ve been coding a long time. Specifically since my father and uncle gifted me and my siblings an Apple II in 1985 when I was six years old. We also received a book called “Computer Fun” which attempted to teach BASIC programming to children. So despite all that youthful enthusiasm why do I feel like this career may not be for me anymore?
Much text has been written in recent weeks on the topic of the ChatGPT chat bot, its forthcoming integration into Bing and how it will change the world as we know it. While the commentary has run the entire gamut of possible responses, most of it is definitely more hype based than anything else. Today the hype dies. So lets start off with the most basic question. What is ChatGPT? Well as it so…
I recently took a new job and my new employer gave me a choice between a Lenovo Thinkpad with Windows and an M1 Macbook Pro with MacOS. Even my least dedicated readers know that I have no love for Windows and have spent literal years trying to rid myself of it. So of course I chose the Macbook Pro. Well dear readers, I’m going to be blunt: I wish I hadn’t. The reason why is simple:…
I’ve spent a lot of time debating on whether or not I should even write this blog post. Truth is that I was this close to just letting the entire thing fade into oblivion but after searching out some reading material on the subject, I decided that I needed to write about this, if only to remind future Jay what he just escaped from. Future Jay has a tendency to forget important things like…
There is no great way to put this without a certain segment of my readers recoiling in horror, so I’m just going to say it. I’m tired of fighting for things on the job. After over 20 years of professionally being combative when I thought the situation called for it, I have resolved to turn over a new leaf. If you’ve worked with me, you know how it can be at times. When the…
To those who don’t already know: I will be starting a new job next week. This is notable for one reason above all others: It marks my return to a much more normal situation. You see, for the last four and a half years I have actually had two jobs with two different employers. One of the conditions of the arrangement with one of my employers was that I had to largely keep this a secret from…
The point of today’s post, or diatribe if you prefer, is to push back against the notion that once you have a piece of tech integrated into a workflow, you are pretty much good to go barring any sort of critical failure. Sadly a lot of people believe this. However since the first rule of the “Set It and Forget It” club is that you don’t talk about said club, you rarely hear…
Before I launch into this month’s diatribe I want to offer my readers a word of warning: I’ve been feeling very pessimistic about tech in general as of late and this piece will expose a large portion of that to my audience. If you are already depressed about tech, you might wanna skip this one. In any event, I have been fond of occasionally awarding various industries / institutions…
Well two and a half weeks ago I finally put on my big boy pants and took Annette down to the local Apple Store… and bought two iPhones. That decision came about because of years of accumulated frustration with Android, Google and Android OEMs. If you want my overall opinion on the iPhone experience, here it is: It works like it should. Which is a back handed way of saying that the wide…
So its been a few months since I have posted anything here and the reason why is simple: I just haven’t been feeling all that chatty lately. Now you might be thinking, “Has Jay finally run out of tech things to talk about?” and let me assure you: This is absolutely not the case. It is the case however that despite all of the tech things that I’m embroiled in right now, real…
Some weeks it sure seems like things are always changing, doesn’t it? Well these past few weeks have definitely felt that way for me. Just when I think things in my tech landscape are solidifying to the point where I won’t have any more material for tech related blog posts here, lo and behold the universe delivers some. So last week I decided, in a huff mind you, to dump Pop! OS and…
So ya’ll have been following me on my hardware journey for awhile now and you have probably noticed that I keep focusing on different facets of the hardware experience. Well today I have some good news: I have finally found the exact combination of factors that are required to bring me joy on this front and I’m about to reveal the details of that secret sauce. Once upon a time, I used…
This is a post that I will probably come to regret writing and publishing in the future. The reason for that is simple. This post is going to make a lot of former, current and potentially future co-workers feel like idiots. That’s because the topic for this post is scams being pushed by our friends in Big Tech. So it gets somewhat awkward when you realize that I work in tech and plan to…
So long time readers will remember that about four years back, I posted a diatribe entitled “Repeat after me: Games are supposed to be fun” that basically railed against the realization that a lot of the new games floating around weren’t actually all that fun to play. Well today we are going to revisit that topic, freshly inspired by the time I’ve been spending with both…
So anybody who is even remotely paying attention to processors knows that Intel is in some really deep shit. Back in 2014 they were essentially riding high above all of the competition and nobody could even come close to challenging their vice like grip on the market. My my how times have changed. Fast forward to the present day, seven years later and you’ll find a situation that is almost…
As some of you may have heard, yesterday Microsoft announced the upcoming release of Windows 11. As an early build had leaked last week and Microsoft had dropped a number of hints this did not shock anybody in particular. What was rather shocking was how little Microsoft seems to give a shit about the normal everyday average computer user. Now if you are a frequent reader, you know that I…
I assume most of you didn’t already know this, so I’m going to clarify it up front. One of my favorite sci-fi trilogies is comprised of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Obviously they weren’t meant to stand alone as a trilogy as they are three movies plucked out of a larger group of films, but I don’t…
Anybody who has spent any amount of time reading my content over the past few years knows what my small server project is. For those of you not in the know, it was basically my attempt to stop using an old desktop as my home server and transition all of its duties to SBCs (Single Board Computers) which are smaller, quieter, cooler, less performant and most importantly, use way less power. That…
Over the last few months, I have been having trouble with the stability of my home internet connection. This became evident to me while live streaming to Twitch as my stream would begin dropping a lot of frames in a really short amount of time. For a time, recycling the power on the cable modem would make a positive difference, but after a few months that stopped working reliably. This post is…
In today’s world with everything either burning or smoldering, it can be distressing to wake up each day and face the latest developments. Everything that is happening now is happening because, like the Empires of yesteryear, systems rise and they fall. The sad truth is that most people have developed a blind spot when it comes to issues of this sort. That’s primarily because getting…
Whether we like to admit it or not, we all have boundaries. Part of growing older is being able to identify and knowing how to address our boundaries. Sometimes we find ways to transcend those boundaries and other times we discover, often as part of a painful journey, that these boundaries are in fact more permanent than we realized. I’ve got a couple stories about my encounters with my own…
So here I am sitting in an AirBnb on Christmas Eve in North Augusta on my laptop while Annette is watches Wheel of Fortune as she likes to do on weeknights. Inside I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for a full day of Christmas related events and visits with various in-laws tomorrow and thought to myself, “This would be a great time to spew out a new blog post.” Dare I say that…