A blog of rants, screeds, and other nonsense

This was a draft. The final version is now available as a pay-what-you-want self-published book called Tom’s Finance Guide: Retire Rich!

Q: How do cryptographic hashes like MD5 and SHA work?

A few years ago I saw a group of guys with jackets that all had a patch that said, “Safety Third”.

I thought it was hilarious. I’ve heard the phrase “Safety First” since I can remember and this seemed hilariously contrarian.

Review:

• Aloft Charlotte Uptown at the EpiCentre
• 210 E Trade St, Charlotte, NC 28202

The Aloft Charlotte Uptown at the EpiCentre is an upscale boutique hotel with helpful staff, beautiful decor, and a unique theme that will surprise and delight the most jaded traveler!

Please don’t call me if you are selling a monitoring project that uses AI to do amazing things.

Since 1991 I have been contacted by sales people from startups that use AI to make their monitoring system awesome.

The first couple times I took their call and set up a demo. I was always disappointed.

Now I just ignore these phone calls and emails.

Here are the four most important reasons:

I’m reviewing a LOT of talk proposals, draft papers, draft chapters, etc. I’ve noticed that people’s titles tend to rarely be plainspoken descriptions of the topic.

(This was originally written in response to someone pointing out all the unethical things the GOP did to gerrymander the US to the point where we are no longer a democracy.)

I have no more patience for the “lazy libertarians”.

A lazy libertarian responds to everything with one of 3 messages:

If you don’t stop problems when they’re small, you f— it up in historically catastrophic ways.

(Originally posted on Facebook, Nov 9, 2016)

Dear docuSign,

Let me explain to you how you wasted an hour of my time today.

So, I met with a major hardware vendor today to talk about firmware update processes. They have a few different products for managing firmware. The “best in class” that they offer is… a reminder of why enterprise IT is so f—ed up.

The Sunlight Foundation spent years meeting with congresspeople trying to convince them to pass laws to get various government data (fundraising domains, government contracts and spending, etc.) published electronically.

In effort to shut down Telegram, Russia blocks Amazon, Google network addresses

The worst cut-and-paste error I ever made.

Some thoughts on the SO question about the idiot security consultant that demanded a list of everyone’s plaintext password plus some rather impossible things.

Expensify drives me fucking nuts.

You: Driveless cars? Oh no! What if the car is in a situation where the only way to avoid running down a baby is to crash into 4 other people? What will it do?

(Originally posted to Facebook on October 11, 2017)

Today is the 30th anniversary of the day I became an activist. Today in 1987 I went to the 2nd March On Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights. I drove down with four other students crammed in Joellen’s ludicrously bright orange station wagon. I was just going to be supportive.

I live in a nice quiet neighborhood. I’m proud of my neighborhood. When I walk down the street, if I see a scrap of litter, I bend down and pick it up.

Hell no.

Constitutional Convention

Don’t take these predictions too seriously. However, these are some predictions and/or concerns I have.