How is this not the onion?

“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.” ― Jane Goodall 💙 RIP to a real one. My childhood hero

I recently had to connect Azure DevOps to Pulumi Cloud via OIDC and wrote a brief guide for those who need to do the same in the future. www.zac.direct/post/2025/09...

2025... The actual year of Linux on the desktop.

I do feel like part of the hatred extended toward Bluesky is a function of preferring to think that the alarm about the state of the country that’s common here is misguided or exaggerated. Dismissing the site as liberal doomers allows you to dismiss those concerns, too.

2 truths and a lie. --- I once brought prod down with a script that routed all traffic through a network that did not exist. I always turn in my compliance training 1st. My colleagues and I once met at a warehouse in the middle of the night to fix a prototype for a major held that weekend.

I've been using agent mode with Claude for a couple of weeks and I already feel myself getting lazy about actually reviewing it's work. This is despite egregious errors on the occasional prompt. Somebody get Frodo over here I need to talk to him about this.

I've not had a lot of time for side projects and blog posts so just keeping things really simple. I love building stuff in the cloud with @pulumi.com. That is all.

Pretty sweet to see the source for a publicly funded project that is dedicated to helping you fund the public. You actually can file with this repo's release.

I really love simple, but effective innovations like this.

I'm speaking at #PulumiUP 2025! 🚀Join us for a virtual event packed with real-world platform engineering / #DevOps stories, expert discussions, and technical demos. Excited to share #cloud and #platformengineering stories! Join us for expert sessions, live demos, IaC, and #CloudSecurity lessons.

I made a brand new site and have found that dealing with SEO sucks. Vote for me if you're local and like what I'm going for. Link to my "don't be a jerk platform" if you're not... but like what I'm going for. www.zac.direct/post/2025/03...

Had a tough week at work. Not as hard as many others so not really complaining, but I found a silver lining in an open box deal for a PS5 nearby. Still having a tough week... Still not as hard as others. www.pushsquare.com/news/2025/02... #HugOps

I really would love to see the protocol succeed. Eager to see how the public-interest foundation efforts go, and wishing them the absolute best.

Static Content Is Awesome www.zac.direct/post/2025/01...

I started an open-source platform for posting candidate profiles to give interested voters a search result for their local races. Additionally, and absolutely relevant. I am running for school board in my Chicago suburb. www.democracycandidate.us/candidates/z...

Any support for a friend of mine going through a tough time is really appreciated. #mutualaid

I wanted to resurrect my tech blog, but my last post was about the early days of COVID-19. It didn't seem right to ignore that and write about infrastructure-as-code, so I segued with a retro. www.zac.direct/2024/12/covi...

Arguably the first survival horror game: Project Firestart for Commodore 64 from Dynamix and Electronic Arts. (1989) I've gushed about Firestart in a few places, most recently in SCANLINES, but yeah. Fixed camera angles? Disaster logs? Limited resources? Cinematic horror? It was all here.

Turns out I can still get excited to play Tetris on Christmas 😂

Merry Christmas to everyone looking for an obscure AF alt rock anthem to add to your holiday playlist. This one is my absolute favorite. youtu.be/MzW8WSeIL6Y

I love what I do, and that means my 9-5 generally fulfills me enough to do almost anything else. Generally, Q4 leaves enough off time to find some OSS to contribute to or convince myself this is the year I actually update my blog. This year my personal site needed some attention. 🧵

I've imported my tweets to BlueSky using #TwitterSky! https://github.com/ilGianfri/TwitterSky/

I've recommended LastPass for ages, but the logmein acquisition didn't do them any favors and it seems they've gone private again just in time to not have the funds to pay out inevitable class actions. https://x.com/LastPass/status/1598047380305104896

I hope you find something in 2023 that makes you as happy as a bison ear makes these mutts.

Wow. This is one hell of a thread. https://x.com/michaelharriot/status/1607602867803766784

This has more merit than most of these posts. A little surprised at how many people think supporting billions of users in realtime is as easy as a weekend of coding and a big k8s cluster. Anyways, see y'all on untitled document! https://x.com/annevclark/status/1588341163341357057

I feel like this is the last product of a saga that started with a Cap'n Crunch whistle. https://x.com/doctorow/status/1583143915607060481

That's really good! I guess it's time to see what's still open downtown. https://x.com/chetdorn/status/1582457548484931587

NyQuil Chicken round 5 is upon us. This time, it's agricultural. https://x.com/RVAwonk/status/1572761767041798144

Mother of God https://x.com/shanselman/status/1570794782519349248

Can confirm, this is me. Although I have not avoided large gatherings when numbers/vax vs mutations allowed. It's not magic... https://t.co/X1g2o6xASL

Russia is the second best military in the whole Ukraine. https://x.com/SpencerGuard/status/1568623034856251398

I'm a music video star now. I'll try to enjoy all 15 of these minutes! https://x.com/wearepetneeds/status/1555479468231245826

It wasn't... but it is now and forever more. https://x.com/ChloeCondon/status/1531797907338235904

https://x.com/DanRather/status/1513172774528847874

Hopefully it never comes back. They should be funding their own propaganda, and it's sad to learn it was platformed and even monetized by Google at all. https://x.com/AuroraIntel/status/1498577896532807680

Dad, is this virus thing over? No, not yet I'm afraid. But Mom says it's the weekend, and every day is the weekend now.

Every newborn related thing is sold with frustration free packaging because the audience is exhausted new parents that can't remember their own names. Meanwhile... This app... 🤣 https://x.com/gillianmsmith/status/1233421294470823936

"So-and-so screwed that up!" It's not the people. It's your process. Fix your process.

That feeling when an author of SignalR reps your commit. Had I known, I would have put in more than an icon 🤪 https://x.com/davidfowl/status/1218976681177706496

Made a new blog post about 2012. The year I learned what burnout was really all about. https://blog.zac.direct/2020/01/2012.html

I roll this just for reading SQL queries. Time to get a stick for after hours. https://x.com/mathowie/status/1217892412804063239

Assimilate! https://x.com/slashdot/status/1216754879575650305

I wasn't around for it, but I still regularly hear co-workers talk about it. Fascinating root cause. https://x.com/IntEngineering/status/1215868476449067008

Between this and nullable reference types... C#8 is really making a good case to upgrade those old crusty projects. #csharp https://x.com/alvinashcraft/status/1214645379892953090

So well said : "Karabko also said that it’s important that developers don’t work in silos, which can stifle teamwork." https://www.builtinchicago.org/2019/12/17/chicago-scaling-software-engineering-teams