Nothing makes me love my past self more than finding the check list of all the things to do when getting ready to teach a course again.

Some things we've been saying in a place where you can see us say them...

I don't know who pushed for the overleaf list-of-projects page to have a pdf button for each project, but I bet they had tenure.

From an information theory perspective we should have a process for replacing rarely used short words with longer words in order to free up room for new short words. Lute, asp, vex, yak, cud — these are so inefficient. Please nominate others and propose new uses for these.

The main daily newspaper of a major American city -- my city -- has an interactive graphic that the editors allowed to be called the Dumper Dinger Tracker. And I love it.

There are only two ways to feel like a wealthy professor: 1. Actually be wealthy 2. Get all-new whiteboard markers for your office

Phenomenal work by folks down the metaphorical hall

We’re doing a thing. Tell your Seattle friends.

The penduluum-swing of emotions as you go to find the video link on your calendar for your 9AM meeting, see there are two separate meeting entries for the same meeting (uh-oh!), but they both have the same link (mayhem averted!)

Why is it called "cut and paste with formatting" and not "a bold move"?

Some days I'm just regular evil and then there are the days like today where I'm nested VLOOKUP plus an INDIRECT evil.

401notok

There's something oddly exciting about snoozing an only modestly-important email until mid-summer and it stems from the notion of, "oh, this will surprise in a small but positive way my future self."

The world is so irrational it’s like every day is Pi Day

This was in the context of a thread, but it might be funnier without the context.

I have made this plea before. I am begging for someone to point me to a desktop utility that lets me point at or select a portion of the screen containing a qr code and then follow the link. I should not have to point a camera at the screen to test it.

One of my most old-fashioned / dinosaur-like opinions is strong opposition to having staging/test versions of course websites. Version control is fine, but just push straight to production. If you break it, fix it. Forgetting to post something is the far bigger issue.

New favorite computer-science typo: treat model

Young enough to typically be able to get the printer to work, but old enough to be surprised when I am able to get the printer to work.

I did not know until today that Dvorak patented his eponymous keyboard while a professor at the University of Washington. I've still never used it, but it does make me slightly more curious.

I’m not a tax professional but removing a forced-air system from your home is surely a deduction.

The first decision to actually make sense is designed to literally not make cents

I am actually, unironically, a big fan of what I've seen of elementary-school math instruction over the last several years. And I think they should add a unit on how a 50% surcharge means ONE THIRD NOT ONE HALF of the total charge is the surcharge. Apologies for yelling.

Today after a presentation showing UTF8 is backward compatible to ASCII (every ASCII file is a UTF8 file), I recalled this is only my 2nd-favorite backward-compatibility story. The winner: Every Windows executable is a DOS executable that prints, "This program cannot be run in DOS mode" and exits.

Remembering my friend and colleague Gaetano Borriello on the 10th anniversary of his untimely passing on February 1 2015. A super computer engineer, a superb person, and a superb role model and inspiration for us all.

Students may be surprised to learn that [long-distance] phone companies used to be in the taxi business -- the longer the meter ran the better -- but managed to switch to the gym business -- maintain membership fees and hope there isn't overuse. The point is funding models can change.

This is peak trolling

One of the surer signs that I am Older and Wiser (tm) is that I'm much more likely to write "final (?) version" than "final version."

Today is a uniquely (???) Seattle holiday-not-a-holiday. Our sunset today is at 5:00pm and will be no earlier until DST ends in the fall.

Apparently this conversation keeps re-happening independently: "Our customer database has date of birth" "Yes, so?" "So we could script sending Happy Birthday emails" "But, why? Our product has nothing to do with birthdays" "Because we can" "Okay, let's do it"

It’s day 366. How are your assertions holding up?

Nobody knows me less well than the people who put tags on sheets. I don’t care what they are made out of. I want to know what size they are.

It’s hard to catch

Okay, my new pet peeve while paper-reading is introductions that are perfectly fine context-setting/motivation except they are technically inaccurate in a way that doesn't otherwise hurt the paper. For anonymity, here's a made up example of the phenomenon on a topic I'm not reviewing on... 1/2

Presents unique challenges

I call this piece, "Correct indentation is required for yaml well-formedness"

@shriram.bsky.social I madr something just for you:

Time for an amusing bug story. A course I haven't taught in a year has had 3-4 instructors and, as you'll see in a moment is highly relevant, one has taught it the last 3 terms after not teaching it before. 1/

For all the academics who spent today cleaning their house instead of starting on the work that has to get done before the end of the calendar year, rest assured you are not alone.

Apropos nothing (seriously), it had not previously occurred to me how the idioms 'war chest' and 'nest egg' basically refer to the same thing.

A rule I don't live by but I should: Any spreadsheet cell should either be a constant or contain no constants.

The inanity of people arguing about what’s the most important ingredient in pecan pie — it’s nuts

The West Coast of the United States is now firmly in the interval where if someone would prefer to read your email next Monday rather than today you are morally obligated not to send it yet.

I know nothing about UX. I just find it weird that I just got a text from someone for the first time in over 10 years and my phone treats it exactly the same as if they had texted me five minutes ago except the preceding text in the conversation just happens to have 2014 timestamp.

Modern society, or what's left of it, is weird: I live in a major metropolitan area. I order a dozen 4"x4" glossy prints from Shutterfly. They ship them to me from 1400 miles away.

I just had this idea that I should start bringing an actual can of worms and can opener to meetings, put both in front of me, and make people nervous by moving my hands toward them when the mood warrants. Great idea or the greatest idea?

So this is basically like Friendster, right?