One day when I was in the third grade, our music teacher, Mrs. Lafayette, had the class compose a song together. Words and music. It was only about 10 seconds and it went like this:
“Early in the morning
Standing by the road
I jumped when I saw a little toad.”
(Then two more lines here with the same beats as the first two. I don’t remember those lines now.)
“Then I caught him nibbling at my sock.”
55 years later, sometimes I catch myself singing that stupid song, inaudibly, under my breath.
I use an app called Lose It to track calories, and I have cottage cheese with lunch nearly every day. I bought a different brand than usual recently, and Lose It lists it as “cootage cheese.” This amuses me to an unreasonable degree.
Cootage cheese.
Link and ephemera Wednesday 7.30.2025
Cloud-native becomes telcos’ new baseline after supplier upheavals. fierce-network.com Recent industry M&A shook the virtualization market and pushed telcos to rethink their infrastructure strategies. Find out how telcos are adapting and thriving in our latest Fierce Network research report. My latest on Fierce Network.
Links and ephemera Tuesday 7.29.2025
Currently reading: The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World by Harry Harrison 📚
Links and ephemera for Monday, 7.28.2025
✪ The Department of Homeland Security is tweeting Nazi propaganda. msn.com
✪ Passkeys won’t be ready for primetime until Google and other companies fix this zdnet.com — I don’t use Passkeys. I don’t quite understand them. I researched them when they first started hitting the mainstream, but have since forgotten what I’ve learned. I fear I could be locked out of my accounts if Apple and/or Google take a dislike to me. Passwords and 2FA are faulty, but they’re devils I am familiar with.
✪ How chat-based LLMs replicate the methods of a psychic con. softwarecrisis.dev
✪ This little boy is why we need live music in public spaces.
✪ Anthony Bourdain on In-N-Out: “My Favorite Restaurant in L.A.” youtu.be. I like, but do not love, In-N-Out.
I had an actual, legitimate wrong-number text just now, followed by a phone call. They weren’t trying to get me to invest in crypto or a pump-and-dump meme stock. They were just trying to reach somebody else and got me instead.
What a refreshing novelty.
I went to Comic-Con yesterday. Here are some photos
More precisely, I went near Comic-Con. I didn’t get tickets. But that’s OK — Comic-Con takes over all of downtown. I like to ride the Trolley in, walk around, people-watch, take photos, look at all the wild decorations and themed attractions studios put up to advertise the big movies and TV shows. I like to rack up the steps. I did 23,000 steps yesterday. A friend came down from Orange County, and it was delightful to see him.
I’m on my way, looking dapper, if I do say so myself, wearing a tasteful shirt.
This is not a Comic-Con photo. It’s just a nice scenic photo of the San Diego embarcadero.
Another scenic San Diego photo.
In past years, there used to be a couple of dozen of these guys hanging out at the trolley stop. Now I only saw two or three scattered around. We used to be a country, I tell ya.
Dozens of downtown skyscrapers are wrapped to advertise TV and movies. This is just one example.
At first glance, I thought this gentleman, who I saw on the Trolley ride home, was cosplaying. Upon further scrutiny, I think he is just exquisitely fashionable.