Well, here we are at the end of 2022 and frankly, I'm hoping 2023 will be better. Is it just me or do things seem to continue getting worse? The economic uncertainty, war, inept governments, broken medical systems, intolerance across the board, and everyone seeming angry about everything... this year …

For a number of years, since getting more and more into management, I've had less time to do any real programming. So a highlight of the year, for the first few years at least, was to take time during the Christmas break to do some work, mostly on this blog …

I think, like many people, I did not expect to be writing this at the end of 2021 and still be in the COVID-19 pandemic. Simply to get it out of the way because COVID certainly wasn’t the most exciting thing this year, the entire family got COVID in …

It's taken me some time to even get to the place where I wanted to stop and think about 2020. We're just over 2 months into 2021 and I've been thinking about writing this since December, but between being plain old tired (physically and mentally) and being busy, every time …

While the Alberta government has some excellent visualizations about COVID-19 statistics in Alberta, I felt there was a little too much missing. The province is quite transparent and you can export the data in CSV. Since these days most of my "technical work" is dorking around in spreadsheets, I fiddled …

Yesterday we had someone at our home to look at replacing the front and back doors. The rep for the company was exceptionally personable and we probably spent more time with him than the simple transaction of selecting and ordering new doors for our home warranted, but my wife and …

I've enjoyed reading (and writing) these annual retrospectives. This will be the fourth that I've written. There are two recurring themes I read from the past retrospectives: tough and hope. Life is tough -- be that in work or personal life. But there is hope. Every year I look back and …

I recently got another yubikey and due to poor handling of the old key (can't load it onto the new card) I've generated a new key. I've revoked my old 2017 key (key id 0xBD51CB9670DF9DE7) and replaced with my new key (key id 0xDAE4D06F77191ACD)

My new key's fingerprint is:

AD05 …

As I sit here taking my first real break of the year, suffering with fever, chills and a ridiculously stuffy nose that has lasted since before the holidays began, I turn once again to a retrospective of 2018 after reading the one I wrote last year. Once again, life provided …

Have you heard the parable of the stonecutters?

This is one of my favourite parables/stories because it speaks of purpose and passion in a very simple to understand way. If you’ve not heard the parable before, let me relay it briefly. There are three stonecutters doing the same …