The fact that video games exist at all is pretty remarkable.

Not only do I have a program that creates a beautiful high-resolution image of an entirely separate world, it can create dozens a second.
Often more than a hundred.

And not just that, it changes the image based on what buttons I press.
Often based on what buttons someone three countries away pressed in the last tenths of a second.

And it keeps the images consistent for everyone.

That's pretty impressive when you think about it.

affirmation for today:

yes, you are an irritable little chaos gremlin, but that is how you make the chaos emeralds

For no reason in particular (🙃), here's an invitation to spend 5 minutes thinking about whether you have any critical data lying around somewhere that you can't afford to lose that should be backed up on a separate machine or - better yet - several separate machines.

I shan't go into details publicly but let's say it's always possible to lose access to any machine at any time through no fault of your own.

Ult: I will *never* forgive search engines for messing with my beloved quoted search terms.

No, I don't want something sort-of similar to this, I don't want you to guess what the average user might have meant with that search term, I want the results with this *exact* string in them and only those!

The process of getting API access to a Nest thermostat is completely nuts. It requires some arcane Google Cloud voodoo and, for some completely unexplained reason, a one-time $5 payment.

Every smart home product should support direct access via local network without having to rely on some terrible third-party cloud infrastructure. Seriously thinking about replacing two thermostats now. 🙄