Even if you don’t consider yourself a “technology person” you’ve probably experienced “cloud” outages. We’ve had some large ones in the news recently; CDK Global last month (that was the car dealership one), Crowdstrike last week, and AWS seemingly always (they have so many they’ve become genericized and a meme).

A gallerist I follow on social media posted some advice for artists working on their artist statements (something like a professional bio but targeted at potential collectors instead of fellow art professionals). One of their key points was to make it more entertaining and less like a dry, just-the-facts-only resume. And so I present to you a sci-fi version of my professional background!

You may have spotted the mention of a Bitcoin discount in the rate section on the homepage, and this most likely led to the question of: Why Bitcoin?

You’ve most likely run into this before; you’ve moved to a new home, or your office has moved, or a new branch is opening, and you need an internet connection. Where do you even start? How do you pick the right one?

When trying to come up with a title for this post I wanted to use some sort of pop culture reference to note-takers, scribes, or secretaries, but all of the common ones that came to mind were at minimum vaguely sexist. Think of a woman walking into a male-dominated meeting and a crusty boomer exclaiming, “OH HEY the secretary’s here!” While bemoaning my dilemma over breakfast I exclaimed, “Why is it like this; writing things down is for boys too!” My wife responded, “I think you have your title.” And so I do!

“The year of Linux on the desktop” has been a running joke in the tech space for a while. Every time a game studio announces Linux support, or a major security vulnerability is found in one of the incumbent operating systems, tech publications and forums fly with the question of whether it’s “finally” time for Linux to take over as the de-facto desktop OS.

People seem to like organizing and categorizing things, including themselves. Hippocrates wrote of the Four Temperaments, Myers and Briggs published MBTI in the 1940s, and a modern version of the Enneagram of Personality has become popular in recent years. (One of my favourite books on personality types is The Treasure Tree.) I have my own theory when it comes to the workplace; that most people's motivations can fit them into one of two categories: True Believers and Mercenaries. Understanding your coworker’s, supervisor’s, and staff’s motivations can help you understand and predict their actions, and hopefully ease frustrations when they do things opposite of what you would choose.