Geek

Spam.

My mother often sends me screenshots of emails and text messages without explanation. I know it’s her way of asking if whatever she’s sent me is spam or real. 99% of the time it’s a spam message.

At work the Cyber Security department often sends out trick emails to test the userbase on their knowledge of rejecting spam. If one clicks a link in the fake spam email, we’re taken to a website with the link “youregonnalovetraining.com” or something like that, and our supervisor is notified. This hasn’t tripped me up in a couple of years.

This morning I received notification that my payment for our Amazon Prime membership had been rejected. Since my husband and I had just had a conversation about our membership, I had to take a few extra beats to determine if the message was real or not. It wasn’t, however, my use of Apple devices makes that rather hard to determine for the average user.

On my iPhone, at first sight it looks like this message did come from Amazon. “Undisclosed-recipients” should be a clue that something is amiss, because logically something about my credit card would come directly to me, not to a bunch of people. However, because Apple likes to hide things, you have to tap the arrow to the right of the “From” field, then expand it and try to open a contact card to see the actual address.

In MacOS the behavior is much like that in iOS. However, Apple is kind enough to show the “From” email address on the first click instead of just burying it in a contact card.

We have a webmail interface on our hosting server for our personal domain, and it gives the opportunity to get to the information by clicking “Headers”, but will standard users know what the means?

And finally, going in full blown geek mode, I often use the application Alpine on my personal Linux server to triage my email throughout the day. Hearkening back to the old school terminal (green screen) days, Alpine gives me a pure text view of my email.

Unsurprisingly, Alpine gives me the information right up front, just like email did 20, 30, hell, 40 years ago. There’s no GUI (Graphical User Interface) magic trying to hide pertinent information to make it look pretty.

I don’t have my accounts set up in the ways of Microsoft Outlook to see how this would have been handled in that arena. However, looking through similar emails on my work provided Windows 10 laptop with Microsoft Outlook, the “From” would have appeared much like it does in Alpine. That’s a good thing, and something Microsoft gets right.

If you ever receive an email and you’re not sure of its validity, tap or click around until you can see the actual address of the sender. That will generally give you a clue as to the authenticity. “Headers” can give you all sorts of information. Unfortunately, this is where Apple products fail the most, with their insistence of hiding as many technical details as possible.

Sometimes the technical details is where the dirt is at.

Protection.

I have owned MacBooks of some vintage and designation for the past 20 years. My latest computer is a 2022 M2 MacBook Air, and I just love this computer. It’s fast, it’s light, and it does everything I want it to do. It’s become my daily driver and while I jump to my older ThinkPad T460s with Linux for dabbling from time to time, the main focus of my computing experience is my MacBook Air. I have the “Midnight” variant.

And fingerprints and smudges love the midnight finish.

My previous MacBook Pro had stickers proudly proclaiming my various interests. I have the same on the aforementioned Lenovo ThinkPad as well as the case of my iPad Pro. I’ve been toying with the idea of putting stickers on this MacBook Air, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, not yet.

The lightness of this computer makes it a little more easier to drop, or I’m getting clumsy as I get older. So, for the first time in my computing life, I ordered a protective case for my laptop.

I found a case that fits the bill; I saw it used in an Army article on the U.S. Army’s Cyber Security website and discovered it was rather inexpensive on Amazon. The case is from SUPCASE and it snapped right into place with little muss nor fuss.

I really like the way it looks and I like the slight heft it has added to the MacBook Air experience. I didn’t realize the case would be so shiny; notice the wall receptacle in the shot below.

Overall I am quite pleased and I’ve had the case for just over an hour. I hope to never test the survival of a drop metrics, but knowing I have a case on my computer in case I do get a case of clumsiness is quite reassuring.

Launch.

Last night, Jamie came running upstairs exclaiming “you gotta see this!”. He then talked about a huge shooting star and it was amazing. I walked out on his patio and saw this:

I immediately knew it was a rocket launch, apparently somewhere over California. Space X launched a Falcon 9 rocket last night from Vandenberg Space Force Base last night and living in Southern Arizona gave us the opportunity to witness the event. The rocket was carrying 15 Starlink satellites that will be used in the existing “mesh” network of satellites providing Internet connectivity to rural areas.

The Falcon 9 rocket is designed to return to Earth for reuse after a successful separation in orbit.

The Death of Ads.

Nick at “The Linux Experiment” talks about why he thinks the ad-based Internet is dying.

God, I hope so.

Threads.

Meta (the company that owns Facebook and Instagram) released a Twitter clone called Threads. Based on your Instagram account, Threads is another social media platform design to bring people closer together through a “global town square” type conversation experience.

Meta also really wants your data. Take a look at the screen shot above at all the data points their app is monitoring on your phone.

While I really want to see Twitter fail under Elon Musk’s leadership, as he’s done everything he can to make it a creep cesspool of awfulness, there are better options out there. Meta’s Threads is cool and millions and millions of people are already using it. People are looking for an alternative to Twitter.

But the data scraping is so cringey.

More Clickity Clack.

Earlier this week I mentioned that I was rebuilding my keyboard on the gaming computer with some new keycaps that would provide a more retro feel. Here’s the end result:

I’m quite pleased with the result and the overall feel of typing on this keyboard.

I also mentioned that I have a similar keyboard setup on my work computer. This makes for writing prose and code a delight, except when I’m on conference calls. During these moments I use a Microsoft bluetooth keyboard that tries to mimic the Apple Magic Keyboard experience. It’s close, but not quite there. I still find it enjoyable for the limits runs it provides.

Click.

A couple of months ago I purchased new keycaps for the mechanical keyboard I use for work. I’m particular about the keyboards I use, much to the chagrin of my husband. My fussiness around keyboards comes from the fact that I’m a fast touch typist, averaging 100 words a minute and creeping higher on a good day. I’ve also been a touch typist for a long time, and I grew up with electric typewriters and the mechanical computer keyboards of the 1980s. I like to bang along when I’m working, and to keep things calm during my team meetings, I employ a quiet keyboard that I keep to the side when I’m taking notes. I don’t want folks thinking there’s machine gun fire in the office when there’s not.

I’m also particular about keycaps and the aesthetics of the keyboard. When I replaced the keycaps on my mechanical keyboard earlier this year, I went for the retro terminal look of the early 1980s. I have been quite pleased with the results, and the new keycaps provide the exact clackity-clack feel I enjoy on keyboards, especially when I’m writing long presentations, emails, or writing a lot of code.

Older shot from May, can you tell which keycap I installed upside down by mistake? I’ve fixed it since then.

The folks at Drop.com occasionally have a sale on keycaps sets, so I ordered another set of similarly styled keycaps for the Linux computer used for gaming, flight simulator, and the like. They are slated to arrive this weekend and I’m looking forward to seeing how they hold up. I decided to step away from the Dasher terminal blue and went with an orange theme that will compliment the Starfleet accessories I have around the computer.

I’ll be sure to share a photo when I get things set up.

Omm.

Many years ago I had an iPad app called “Ommwriter”. It was nifty. The software provided a calming background, with fonts encouraging focus. The really cool thing I enjoyed about the software was that you could listen to music that encouraged focus. The music was punctuated by sound effects alluding to the keystrokes on an old IBM Selectric typewriter. It gave the whole experience a hipster twist without hauling a typewriter to Starbucks.

I liked it.

Ommwriter went by the way of the dodo back in the days of iOS 11 and the application is no longer around on the App Store. I checked to see if there’s a Mac version, and there is, but the website makes it seem like it hasn’t been updated in a long while, so I decided to figure out my own thing instead.

For years I’ve been using an app called “Pzizz”. While I don’t listen to the app every night before sleep, I do use it from time to time when I’m having a hard time sleeping. The application also has a “nap” function that I used to use when I’d sleep in the Jeep during my lunch hour in the shopping center parking lot when we lived in Upstate New York. [[]]

So I’ve cobbled together a workflow that resembles my Ommwriter experience, especially when I’m using my iPad Pro to write blog entries. I’m a plain text kind of guy, so I’m using an application called “iA Writer” to capture my text and using the “focus” mode session on Pzizz to generate music that encourages, well, focus in a way much like Ommwriter did back in the day.

I’m writing this blog entry in my office waiting for a software update activity to start at work. The music is calming, the words are flowing fairly well. I’m feeling that “in the zone” feeling that I don’t find enough these days in our frenetic world. I think I may have found what I need to bring some calm to the chaos I’ve been experiencing lately.

As I get older I find my ability to focus waning just a little bit. I blame this on age but I also attribute this to the changing world around us; everything demands our attention all the time. Social media, collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, a never ending litany of Zoom-like calls, news alerts, flashes of lightning, and the constant barrage of email all demand our attention. Being able to a few moments and look at an application that does one thing while listening to calming music is a godsend.

Sometimes we need to carve out a few moments in our own little paradise.

Astronomy.

My husband and I celebrated my Christmas present. I had a gift certificate to visit the SkyCenter atop Mount Lemmon. One of the larger telescope installations in the U.S., we joined 26 other folks in using the largest telescope available to the public. Our guides showed us many nifty things, we talked stars and suns over a box dinner, and we saw a stunning sunset.

It was absolutely wonderful. We had a such a good time!

No photos from after dark! We didn’t want to ruin our night vision.

Promotion.

I don’t usually talk about my job here on the blog these days. I’ve been at the same company for eight years, as of this month, and things are going well. I lead a team of application developers scattered all over the country. As a people leader I am generally well liked by folks up and down the org chart and I feel that I’m a success in what I do. It’s funny, because when I shifted from radio to technology at the turn of the century, I thought I would just write code and do geek things. Now I lead a team of 22 people that do the tech things, though I still do a bit of code writing on a daily basis. I like my job.

Earlier this month I was informed that I had been promoted to a director level position and that the promotion was “very well deserved”. A director level position in a company this size (I work at one of the major telecoms in the U.S.) and once all the databases and other applications at the company adjusted themselves to my new title, I still look at the title “Associate Director” next to my grinning face and I can’t believe I have a director level position.

I’m in a great place in my career. The team is a really great group of people and the folks above me in the org chart are a great group of people as well. I am very fortunate, and I’ve gotten to this place with a lot of knowledge, determination, intuition, and a healthy dose of good fortune.

Being recognized for my achievements as a leader and this advancement has given me a much needed confidence boost. My plan is to continue onward and upward.