4grams

I have a google voice number for that. Most things no longer accept it though.

I had delusions of trying to keep track of which address is sold by who which is why I did the hide my email addresses. But I’ve always kept separate personal and spam accounts. This was my attempt at combining to a single account.

https://xkcd.com/927/

Illogical meat brain that thinks odd numbers are more random that even I guess.

Don’t get me wrong, there are systems that work. I built up a very successful smart card based system many years ago after a failed audit. I initially hated the idea but in the end we built a crazy secure environment that was very easy to use and maintain. That project is long since obsolete but after doing that one, over a decade ago, I figured things were headed in the right direction.

I think I’m extra sensitive right now because my aging mom has made the issue acute. She’s not the same as she was a few years ago and helping her with all her online accounts has become a nightmare. It’s just too complicated for many folks.

Yeah, I’m up to 40 hide my addresses for that same reason. Figure if the password sucks, at least the email can be unique and obscure.

I call that a feature.

This shit pisses me off so bad. I had an identity theft a few years back, took ages to undo, and my credit score is still impacted by it. At the time I moved to a password manager and all my passwords are 31 characters of garbage. I’ve got several, highly sensitive accounts that my passwords don’t work for, in fact one a bank, until fairly recently, had repurposed a phone number field in the DB so passwords were limited to 10 characters numeric only (I managed to get one of their IT folks on the horn to explain why the password was so awful).

I cannot believe we live in 2025 and we still haven’t figured out passwords.

Oh, that makes it so much better…

There are so many flags right now it’s just a sea of red undulations. Done by design, so that we don’t notice the death of democracy.

I hate going there these days. I’m not sure if it was a frog boil or what but the site now is a shadow of the one I left during the big mod exodus. It’s terrible now, so much less info, user base has devolved, riddled with ads.

I imagine if I was still there all the crap would feel normal but having left, every time I visit now and see what huge changes have been made. Every time i visit the quality of the site has tanked even more.

Feel like these days it’s “do unto others what you imagine others would to do unto you.”

America, by far, and that’s from someone living here. I’ve been to England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Iceland, Mexico, Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Canada, and probably a couple others I can’t remember. I’ve been treated nothing but friendly, with genuine curiosity, even when I shouldn’t have been.

Every day in the US, someone swears at me.

ha, of course my t-deck plus just arrived today…

Yeah, I’m a fancy bricklayer these days…

My most recent job hunt has me thinking the same. I used to be a dime a dozen, and young folks were real and serious competition in the job market, but I’ve been in IT since before the .com crash and now my skills are once again becoming unique.

I’ve been raising my kids, warning them about the shit state of IT. Maybe I should have been nerding them harder.

Don’t forget, his own wife is a dei import, dude can’t find himself a good American woman so he’s got to outsource. Irony is dead.

I just got a job with an EU company, doing business through acquisition in the US. I don’t report to anyone in my office, or even this country. I’m building the US infrastructure based on the designs coming from the EU and integrating with their cloud.

Was an intentional move to get employed by a non-us based employer, but so far I think I really lucked out.

Ok, this is what social media is for. Thanks everyone, so much good stuff in here. Glad I have similarly esoteric tastes…

Very limited so far. I don’t have much near me but there has been enough sproradic connectivity that I pick up the occasional chatter in the default channel and have about 145 nodes it’s aware of.

Mostly been my son and I playing around. He wants to get his neighborhood friends involved :).