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I seem to have a habit of announcing my return to blogging roughly every six years. One might reasonably question whether someone who has to post 3 “hello, world” announcements is truly committed to this whole blogging thing. Maybe it’s a sign that I can’t help myself. That no matter how hard I try, I just can’t quit you, dear reader.

Even though some of my old posts make me cringe, and even though I’ll likely feel the same way about my next batch of posts in a further 6 or 12 years, I still think writing in public is an important exercise. Maybe more important than ever. As I’ve said before :

Anyone who read my post yesterday is probably confused by 1) this domain name and 2) my mention of it being my “first post”. This blog is a reboot of my previous site (where the older posts came from). I’m starting over in hopes that it will incentivize me to take blogging seriously again. This post will explain my plans for this blog, and with any luck, convince you to come along for that ride. I had imagined writing a longer and more thoughtful introduction, but events have conspired to force my hand. When in doubt, start.

It’s never a good time to suddenly find yourself jobless. But it’s never a bad time to evaluate your skills, your goals, and where you’re headed.

We all want to be a valued member of a winning team on an inspiring mission

• Graham Weston

It’s easy to get complacent after a few years in a good job. You tell yourself, “I’m doing such important work! We’re making so much progress! I love my team!” You’re churning out pull requests, responding to emails and Slack messages, burning through your JIRA backlog.

I’ve become somewhat obsessed with Pokemon GO since I started playing it, and I’ve been trying to cobble together a mental guide for how to be successful from a hodge-podge of sites, people I’ve met while playing the game, and some of my own experiences. Here’s what I’ve got so far. Items in red are ones I’m less sure of.

Finding Pokemon #

1. The panel at the bottom right tells you what Pokemon are near. 3 feet = far, 2 feet = nearby, 1 foot = close, none = very close

Tonight on the program “Last Week Tonight” on HBO, John Oliver exhorted his audience to go file comments on the FCC website to address their proposed rules that many believe will destroy Net Neutrality. In visiting the page, it is clear that people are interested in commenting on this particular item.

A few more comments than usual. I suspect this didn’t happen in the 5 minutes between when John Oliver made his comments and when I visited the site. What if we look back in time? Did this all happen very quickly and overwhelm their servers?

If you’re like at least a quarter of the people who read my original article, " Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun? " a few days ago, you probably read the title of this post as “Killing parents part 2” or “Killing patients part 2.” I have to wonder how many people originally clicked it simply for that reason.

This is but one of the many responses I got, however. Overwhelmingly, people who responded to the article were in favor of at least reforming software patents, and many favored getting rid of software patents altogether. I expected at least a few responses to my challenge, but so far the only patent posted is one that hasn’t yet been granted, and I suspect won’t be.

In the spirit of April Fool’s, but also because I think it might actually make me more productive, I’ve made a Google Chrome extension to slow down Facebook’s timeline feature.

Long for the days of 56k? All this high-speed gigaboot Internets nonsense got you frazzled? Just install Slowpoke in Chrome by going to chrome://extensions/ and dragging the .crx file onto the page. Instantly, your Facebook addiction will be both sated and abated.

As some of you may know, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein from California has introduced a bill called the Fisa Improvements Act that she is portraying as a reasonable reform of mass government surveillance. I’ve been skeptical from the beginning, reading headlines like " Stop the NSA ‘Fake Fix’ Bill " from EFF and others. I’ve read through some of the bill, but here’s a list of reasons why this bill should be dumped that don’t even require reading it.

Welcome to my blog! I’ll be posting random musings about technology, privacy, entrepreneurship, politics, college, and everything else here. I’m always looking for interesting people with interesting ideas, so get in touch with me if you think you’d make a good fit as a contributor.