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Jessamyn West, longtime Vermont librarian, technologist and one of the first generation of bloggers, remembers Tracy Kidder, author of “Soul of a New Machine,” who died recently. West’s father was the main character of the 1981 book and he and Kidder were friends.

“Tracy basically lived at our house on weekends while he was writing Soul of a New Machine. Sometimes he and my dad would go sailing, sometimes he’d just hang out at the house or go to work with my dad,” West writes.

While Tom West was legendary for his commitment to work, that meant he was an absentee father.

“My message to the men who told me how much the book meant to them when they were entering the world of technology (and it was always men even though I’m sure the book was useful for other genders of people in tech as well) was to find a more well-rounded life for themselves, to value being a good partner and parent as much as being good at their job,” writes Jessamyn West. “I work in technology now, but I’ve managed a balance that I’ve had to work for. Tech will take your life if you let it.”

This was No Kings in La Mesa, California, a suburb of San Diego. We had about a thousand people by my guess, which is a lot, as the big San Diego event was nearby and easily accessible.

I am catching up on expense reports. Why does “Fontainebleau” have so many vowels? How do they expect anybody to spell that?

The FCC’s new restrictions on foreign-produced consumer routers could gut the home Wi-Fi market, as most routers — even American-branded equipment — are manufactured overseas. By my colleague Monica Alleven on Fierce Network.

Rediscovering the iPad: Go commando

A few days ago, in an online conversation with a friend, I said:

I was a heavy, heavy iPad user through the 2010s to about three years ago. Now I barely use it. My MacBook Air is my desk computer, my travel computer and my secondary couch computer. My phone is my main couch computer. Indeed, the iPad lives right next to my couch, and usually I don’t bother picking it up — I just get out my phone instead.

I’ve made this point multiple times over the past few months, maybe years. I’ve gone from using the iPad daily, to rarely, to never. I’ve thought about donating it. I’m a little surprised people are buying them.

Last night I said to the same friend:

My iPad lives in a keyboard case. Tonight I glanced at it while sitting on the couch and reaching for my phone, and I said to myself, “Maybe if I took it out of the keyboard case I might like using it?” And I did and I do.

My Facebook Reels are showing me short videos of cats being dusted with flour and kneaded like bread, cats cooking and eating steak, a cat in a chef’s outfit cooking and serving mac and cheese. The videos are realistic but I think they may be AI-generated.

A Reddit discussion of how people organize their podcast playlists.

I use three playlists: One playlist, called “Queue,” is for timely podcasts that I want to listen to that day. These are generally news podcasts.

I have a playlist I call, imaginatively, “Playlist,” that is filled with episodes of podcasts that I know I want to listen to but they’re evergreen podcasts I can listen to any time over the next few weeks.

And there’s the “All” podcast, where new episodes come in.

When I’m going out to walk the dog, or do chores around the house, or driving somewhere, I check the “All” playlist to see what’s new. I move stuff to the Queue, to the Playlist, remove the episode from the “All” list but leave it on my iPhone if it’s slightly interesting, or I delete the episode entirely if it’s of no interest to me.