I've worked in education since the 90s. December is one of my favorite months, particularly now that I am in higher ed. Our final exams were last week and the students are gone until the middle of January. The only ones left on campus are our contingent of international students on Davis scholarships, most of whom cannot afford to fly back to their country of origin for the holidays. In the IT department, the first part of the month is reserved for projects we can't do while school is in session. This year we are replacing wireless access points in a couple of buildings, which involves much climbing of ladders and talking on radios to make sure the new devices come online.

On the personal side, even though we are not religious, Wonder Woman and I still have a tree and decorations inside the house. My only contribution to that happening is carrying the boxes of supplies from under the house into the living room and then getting out of the way. She gets everything put up efficiently and quickly because that's the way she moves through life. She gets things accomplished while I am still deciding how to get started. Today I worked on a couple of my own projects while she did her thing while Christmas music filled our living room.

We, and by we, once again I mean she, buys all the Christmas gifts online. We are not the type of people to go bargain hunting in crowded stores with crowded parking lots. For a couple of weeks at the beginning of the month, we come home to what we call "papages," a word coined by our grandson for the boxes the man in the brown truck leaves on your porch. Then, in one marathon session, she wraps them all and puts them under the tree. My part is staying out of the way.

I enjoy some special foods during the season. I am partial to Clementines, the small, easy to peel tangerines and lots of salty country ham and southern style biscuits. Although I love the taste of eggnog, I avoid it because it reminds me too much of my drinking days, when I used to have it with bourbon at Christmas. My sobriety date is December 28, so the last days of my drinking career sadly happened during Christmas of 2008.

Our travel during the holidays is pre-determined and has changed little over the course of our marriage. On Christmas Eve, we gather at my in-laws, who live near the coast. They are of Italian heritage, so the big meal is lasagna. After we eat and exchange gifts that evening, Wonder Woman and I will drive another couple of hours up the coast to my mother's. She is a widow and without us would be alone. We will spend the night with her and visit some in the morning before making the drive across the state to my daughter's house.

We often take a getaway trip during the holidays, usually to the mountains. This fall, our favorite mountain towns were all extensively damaged by the flooding resulting from Hurricane Helene. The town of Asheville just started pumping potable water two weeks ago. As a result, this year we are traveling down to Savannah, Georgia to enjoy its delights. We thought about taking the train, but our recent Amtrak experiences have not been positive, so we are going to drive.
Whatever your December plans happen to be, I hope you get some time off and an opportunity to relax and to see your family if that brings you joy.

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Request These Days Off to Maximize Your PTO in 2025 | Lifehacker

Meet Vito the Pug, Winner of the 2024 National Dog Show | TIME

What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2025? — The Public Domain Review

The History of Playing Cards: The Evolution of the Modern Deck

Best Soccer Goals of 2024 - A Playlist

Madeleine Riffaud, resistance fighter, internationalist 1924-2024 – Workers World

You don’t actually have to stay on Twitter. - Laura Olin

The longer you use a computer, the more access to resources you accumulate. I'm old, so I have more accounts than I know what to do with. When it comes to cloud storage, I have access to Google Drive, One Drive, Box and Dropbox, although I only pay for Google Drive. I once signed up an entire middle school's faculty to Dropbox with my referral link, so I have a large sized free tier. I got 50GB from Box so long ago that I no longer remember how. OneDrive is provided by my job.

Each of these providers, along with other cloud storage solutions, provide their own software for mounting your storage at login. There's no way I want to have four separate apps running in the background when I can consolidate them into one app that does the same thing and in some cases provides more utility. Mac users can choose between three types of access. I prefer using a network drive mapper. The app I use is CloudMounter because it is included in Setapp, although it often goes on sale. A similar product, Mountain Duck, is currently on sale for $7 at Bundlehunt.

Here is a list of options for Mac users.

File Managers/Browsers

• Odrive - $99 a year
• Multcloud - $189
• Raidrive $34 a year (limited free tier)
• Expandrive $75 lifetime

FTP/SFTP/Cloud Clients

• Cyberduck - FOSS
• Transmit - $45
• Forklift - $20

Mounters (Network Drive Mappers)

• MountainDuck - $39
• CloudMounter - $75
• Netdrive - $50

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I'm maintaining a growing collection of links to various Mastodon resources. You can bookmark this page or subscribe to the collection via RSS.

With these tools, you can do things like:

• View RSS feeds as Mastodon links using RSS Parrot
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It's early December. The sun is setting about as early as it ever does. I don't know about you, but it's very nearly dark by the time I get home from work. It's been about a month since an election that shocked and saddened many people. Politically, things are happening exactly like we knew they would when Trump won. The felon is nominating other criminals for jobs. So far, he's selected over a dozen current and former staffers from Fox News for government positions. There are less than 20 shopping days until Christmas, if you're into that. Hopefully, you aren't an employee of UPS or FedEx because December has to be the hell month of all hell months for those folks. One more year and we will be halfway through the 2020s. How in the hell is that even possible?

The people reading this are an eclectic bunch. One big group is my family. We are loyal, and also we like to know what's going on with each other. There are the folks I know in real life who see these links on social media and stop in from time to time. Then there are my Internet friends, many of them bloggers themselves. We have a sort of mutual support group where we read each other's blogs. Finally, there are a bunch of Internet strangers who know me through one of my many passions, but most likely through my witty political commentary or through my many posts about all things technical on the Mac side of the house.

If you are reading this, and we are strangers, feel free to introduce yourself. I take pride in answering every email I get. I follow most folks back on social media, too. Likewise, I may not always have the best in-person social skills, but I'm generally pretty nice on the Internet. I want to make sure that folks have someone to talk to during what are really some frightening times, and for many lonely ones to boot.

Please let me know how you are holding up after the election. Are you scared? I am. Are you mad? I am that too. Do you like the holiday season, or is it stressful for you? I'm on the side that likes it. I get a good long break from work. I like my family, and I am happy to spend extra time with them during the holidays. Even though Wonder Woman and I have a whole pile of kids and grandkids, we can afford to remember them all. It wasn't always like that. If you struggle with that part of the equation, I will understand.

Do you have any plans for the new year, any resolutions you are thinking about making? I want to be able to go on longer walks again myself. I'm hoping to take a fun trip with Wonder Woman in 2025, and I don't want to have to stay behind while she goes for runs or climbs mountains, not that I will be doing either of those things, but I would like to have some leisurely lakeside strolls. Not only that, but I am also contemplating retiring for good. I like the financial freedom working my post-career job brings, but there is more to give life meaning than one's occupation.
The universe is neutral. It doesn't hate you, but it certainly doesn't love you. The Internet can be a frightening morass of noise at times. There are people trying to cut through that. Personal independent bloggers offer little pieces of themselves all over the place. Some of them are quite funny. Others are strident but will give you real food for thought. If you take time to investigate this little slice of the online world, you're almost guaranteed to find someone who resonates with you. If you can't, please let me know and I will offer you some suggestions.

It's tempting sometimes to create an online persona, but it isn't worth the effort. Just be you. You have value, and you're special because you are unique. Don't try to model yourself on some plastic influencer. Live your life and share the parts you feel comfortable sharing. Start a blog. Get a pen pal. Find people who are interested in the things you like. We are all out here looking for one another. Get found. Don't forget to check in once in a while.

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During my time as a long distance hiker, I spent a lot of time fantasizing about food. I was constantly hungry, desperately trying to take in more calories than I was using making my way north through the Appalachian Mountains. More often than not, my go to order when I was lucky enough to find a diner or a deli while passing through the small mountain trail towns was the humble hamburger. There was a place in Hot Springs, NC that had a burger called the Hiker Special weighing in at 12 oz of ground beef. I ate two of them.

I still enjoy hamburgers and other sandwiches of all kinds. My favorite fast food-ish restaurant is Jersey Mike's Sub Shop where i get the #13 Italian fixed the traditional way plus banana peppers. They have gluten free bread for Wonder Woman who sticks with the lower calorie turkey and provolone.

Other than liverwurst, I've never met a sandwich I didn't like. They are best with good fresh bread and the toppings piled on, but I've eaten many, many plain bologna and cheese sandwiches on loaf bread in my day.

Here's the fascinating story behind some of the most popular sandwiches in America.

The History of the Hamburger

Who Really Invented the Reuben? | Saveur

Cuban Sandwich: The Complete History and Guide

The History of the Grilled Cheese | The Committed Pig | NJ

The Fried Bologna Sandwich Is A Southern Classic

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In my day job, I provide IT support at a small private university. Because I have a good boss, the computer I use as a daily driver is am M3 iMac. Most of the users I support are using Windows 10 and 11, however. Microsoft doesn't make a version of server tools for ARM processor-based computers. This means that I am unable to use a VM to run Windows apps like Active Directory Users and Computers or SCCM. On my Mac, I can use browser-based tools like InTune and Entra but for other apps, I rely on a remote connection to a Windows machine for access to the tools I need.

My solution is the lite version of the app, Royal TSX. This free version lets me use up to 10 connections to remote computers and 10 sets of credentials. I primarily use the RDP plugin, but Royal TSX also supports:

• TeamViewer sessions
• Apple Remote Desktop and VNC
• Terminal sessions
• File transfers
• VMWare connection
• HyperV connections
• Running Power Shell scripts on remote computers

When I have issues using the new Windows app for RDP for unknown Byzantine reasons, Royal TSX comes through and allows me to connect. It's a neat tool to have in my bag. The paid version is $53 and allows unlimited connection and unlimited credentials.

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In September 1991, I was working first shift at the medium-sized prison that had employed me for the previous five years. My co-workers were a mixed group of white folks, African Americans, Native Americans and one officer from Puerto Rico. Most of us had served in the military. Almost none of us had any college. Our spouses worked in various places: the few remaining textile mills, a Converse shoe plant and various chicken and turkey processing facilities, including Imperial Foods, located in Hamlet, NC, about 30 miles away. We'd finished the inmates' breakfast meal and were in the process of getting the prison through its daily cleaning when the switchboard starting putting through calls to the officers wive's who worked at Imperial. Something bad had happened, a fire. Over 100 firefighters had been called in, and the news was grim. There were many, many people on route to the hospital, many missing and the first bodies were being brought out. We had to call in people from second shift to come in early, so the worried husbands could get to the site of the fire.

During the next few days, the survivors began to tell the story of the rapidly spreading fire that was fueled by an ad hoc repair to a hydraulic line that burst right next to a sizzling hot fryer for cooking chicken. Few people knew that although the plant had two previous fires within the last decade, it had never had a state safety inspection. As the workers fled, they encountered locked and chained fire exits, closed at the order of the company's owner, who was worried about people stealing food from his company. Only one group of employees managed to kick open a door. That door, covered in sooty boot prints, is on display today at the museum of American History in Washington, DC. It bears testament to one of the deadliest industrial disasters in state history. Of the 90 people inside Imperial Foods when the fire broke out, 25 died and 54 were injured, many of them suffering lifelong ill effects from smoke and chemical inhalation.

Eventually, the owner of the plant, Emmet Roe was charged with 25 counts of manslaughter, He pled guilty and was sentenced to 20 years, of which he served only four. He was also fined the equivalent of $1.8 million. The plant was permanently closed. Based in part on public outrage, Jim Martin, only the state's second Republican governor in 100 years, nearly doubled the number of industrial inspectors to make workplace inspections more common.

The Hamlet fire is remarkable because it actually resulted in some accountability and change. For years, American companies scoffed at toothless safety laws and the relative impotence of inspectors. Paying fines was easier than paying for safe working conditions. There is an ongoing and concerted effort currently under way to cut through the so-called red tape of government regulations that supposedly make it too difficult to do business. Many of the regulations are ones created for worker safety. The state of Texas repealed a regulation that mandated water breaks for outdoor workers in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave of 100+ degree days. It interfered with worker productivity.

Even before the US elected a 34x convicted felon to be its president, most people were already aware of the two tiered justice system under which this country operates. We saw Bill Cosby released from prison despite evidence of dozens of sexual assaults. We saw Trump pardon crony after crony. Even in the local news in my hometown, there have long been reports of the wives of generals from the nearby Army base, Ft. Liberty (née Bragg) getting traffic tickets fixed, of the sons of prominent businessmen getting caught with drugs and guns at a public school and getting away scott free. The owner of a local car dealership not only bought his way out of charges for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy, the judge would not allow the records of the court proceedings to be made public in violation of state open records laws. It's an old story and one that gets repeated frequently.

When I see a rich and powerful person get real justice and pay a tangible price for decisions that have had horrible effects on working-class people, I really don't care whether the punishment was extrajudicial or not. The system we have is designed not to punish the powerful, but to keep the poor in line. Eat the rich doesn't have to be an idle threat.

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It's common knowledge that the for-profit medical industrial complex in the United States is broken and has been so for a long time. Bills are inscrutable. Insurance companies provide little help when trying to determine the cost of care patients are considering, if they have that luxury. There may be occasional bright spots, but almost everyone who deals with the system has a personal horror story. For-profit companies are beholden to their stockholders, not patients, you know—sick people. Even non-profits have dubious decision-making skills. I am in long-term (16-year) recovery from substance abuse. I have a mood disorder that requires me to take medication daily. It's no big deal. I was diagnosed in the '80s, so I've dealt with it almost all my adult life. I once got a letter from my insurance company that explained they noticed how expensive my medication was. They suggested I ask the doctor to prescribe Valium instead, a highly addictive and often abused drug. They suggested that to me, a recovering addict.

I dealt with bone-on-bone arthritis for years. The only relief was a shot that I could get every six months. The red tape, delays, and stalling by my insurance company (I was a state employee in NC) would often result in delays of two to three months, stretching the time between shots up to nine months. Arthritis is a painful and debilitating condition that doesn't just get better. The policies of a company trying to save money resulted in my being denied coverage I was promised as part of my employment. I lived in pain and grew depressed when I met so many stone walls. This went on for years.

I am sorry that the CEO of United Healthcare was murdered in the street outside of a meeting for investors in that company. I am not surprised, though. If I thought some exorbitantly paid executive was responsible for the pain, suffering, and death of someone I loved because his company was trying to provide maximum value to shareholders, I might just consider violence myself.

Health insurance CEOs rake in millions: Here's the top 10 list

How Insurance Companies Get You to Pay Higher Costs for Less Coverage

Whistleblower Exposes Health Insurers' Most Evil Scheme

3 Medical Billing Horror Stories that Prove the Healthcare Revenue Cycle Is Way Too Complicated | AKASA

Health insurance horror stories

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Remote Helper for Mac is the companion for the iOS app, Remote Mouse and Keyboard. When used together, your iOS device can control a Mac, a PC, an Apple TV or an iPad.

The features include:

• Control the cursor on a Mac and serve as a virtual mouse to select, double click or right click any element
• Enter text on a Mac from the iOS keyboard
• Media controls - mute, pause, volume up, volume down, next track, previous track. Works in multiple apps
• View your computer screen on your phone
• Issue system commands from your phone to your Mac - sleep, shut down, restart
• Launch any app on your Mac from your phone
• Use Siri on your phone to send commands to your Mac
• Run custom AppleScripts on your Mac from your phone. An example script is included that opens Netflix in the Chrome browser.

The Mac app is free to download, but it requires the iOS app to actually do anything. The iOS app has a lifetime purchase. The amount differs depending on where you are. Today in the US, it was $10. There is an option to subscribe on a month by month basis for $1.99 with a seven-day free trial.

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I am not one of those people who longs for the good old days. For big groups of people, the progress made in gender equity, civil rights, LGBT rights and other areas was much too hard fought to ever consider going back. I am very fond of progress, technology and medical advances. I'm happy to live in a time when HIV is no longer a death sentence. Likewise, I resent the hell out of the empty-headed RFK's of the world who poison people's minds with their anti-vax rhetoric. Having said all of that, I will admit to missing little pieces of the past.

I miss affordable prices a lot. Getting any beverage in a restaurant costs several dollars. I saw an app today that does one simple thing for Mac users. It toggles a feature (the FN key) on and off. The developer was asking a modest twenty-five dollars for the privilege of using it. As someone who has owned several thousand-dollar cars and who currently drives a 2005 Camry, I am outraged at the people who think a $30K car is cheap. The margin on simple things like shoes and eyeglass frames is robbery by another name. Going to the movies, a concert or a ball game is outrageous. I know, I know. Get off my lawn.

I miss the time when our society wasn't polarized about politics the way it is today. Sorry, Obama, there definitely is a red America and a blue America. I can't even.

I miss the time when people could live off a single income earned by a high school graduate. I supported my wife and son in the 80s by framing houses and serving in the National Guard. Twenty-five years later, my youngest daughter and her husband both worked full-time and had a lower standard of living than we did back in the day. 

Oddly enough, in my own experience, racial self-segregation was less pronounced in the 80s than it is now. At my high school, the sports teams, student government and clubs were all diverse. Over the past forty years, I've watched the younger generation choose to have white and black clubs and white and black activities. Other POC just try to get in where they fit in. By the time my kids got to high school, the football team was almost all POC, while the cheerleading squad was lily-white.

I miss the days when security wasn't the overarching, ever present concern in tech. The impediment to efficiency at work because of security is huge. We can't put local admin accounts with static passwords on workstations to facilitate getting access to them. They have to use a server generated rotating password that I have to look up whenever I need to do something. I can't even use an admin account to log in on my own computer (on the PC side). I have to elevate privileges using my super-extra long admin password to each app I need. Two-factor authentication is neat, as long as it works. The aggravation of dealing with people who get new phones or have other hardware issues is just another wrinkle. Passkeys seem neat until you try to use them when you work on multiple devices.

Like I said initially, I don't want to go back. I don't think life was better 40 years ago, but that doesn't mean every change has been positive.

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For some reason, resisting fascism and the historical lessons from courageous Germans in World War Two has been on my mind lately. Having been involved with social movements and protests over the last quarter of a century, I'm aware of the conservative attitude towards any group of people who don't wrap themselves in the flag. Modern police forces are terrified of ANTIFA and anarchists while they simultaneously ignore or tacitly support right-wing groups. Republican led legislatures across the country have passed laws designed to crack down on protests and those laws are always enforced selectively against POC, the poor, young people and anyone who opposes the power structure. Some states have made it legal for drivers to run over protesters who block traffic, essentially creating a de facto death penalty. Such is the morality of the "all lives matter" crowd.

For information about role models from the past, see these links.

German resistance to Nazism - Wikipedia

German Resistance to Hitler | Holocaust Encyclopedia

A Brief History of Anti-Fascism | Smithsonian

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This month's IndieWeb Carnival is hosted by Zinzy and the topic is belief.

This is what I believe:

The Universe is Neutral. It Neither Loves Nor Hates You - I am all for the power of positive thinking. I tend to act as if things are going to turn out my way most of the time. Pessimistic people, and you surely know a Debbie Downer or two, are a drag to be around, and they grate on my nerves after a while. I am not a Pollyanna, though. I do not believe that "everything will be all right" because I am fully aware that I could be in a car accident on the way home or that my house could burn down tonight. Bad things happen to good people every day. What I believe, based on evidence, is my absolute ability to deal with whatever happens. I have a proven track record of living through everything that has ever happened to me. Everything can be overcome. If you don't believe that, read Mans Search for Meaning about how concentration camp inmates survived.

People Are the Most Powerful When They Are Organized - Most of the rights and privileges we enjoy today, our freedoms, if you will, were not won on the battlefield. They were won on picket lines and in mass movements against the entrenched power structure. The rights of women, people of color, children, workers and the 99% were won by organized groups of people who strategized, struggled and fought and sometimes died to demand rights we take for granted today. The powerful know this and do their best to keep us divided along racial, cultural and class lines so that we won't do it again.

It Is Possible to Overcome Nature and Nurture - We are not locked into an immutable set of values instilled in us by our genetics or our environment. Free will is a hell of a drug, to paraphrase Rick James. I am a son of the South. I have been surrounded by conservative Christianity, institutional white supremacy, patriarchal behavior patterns and unquestioning nationalism my entire life, but I am not an adherent to any of it. The easier and softer way is to go with the flow. Don't make waves. Accept the status quo. Countless people can't even define their belief system because they are too damned busy getting ready for the next MCU movie or the coming weekend's football games. I'm sure there are areas where I need to increase my awareness too, but I try as best I can to be a part of the solution to society's problems. I am not neutral about much.

Curiosity and Sense of Humor are The Most Attractive Human Traits - I'm not an education major. I haven't studied learning styles, but I know there are plenty of ways to add to one's personal knowledge base. Whether it's reading books, surfing the Internet, interrogating the people in your life, or something else, there are an infinite number of things to learn. People who have a sense of wonder and a thirst for knowledge are my favorites. When that is coupled with the ability to laugh, to see the absurd, and to enjoy little moments of serendipity, it's hard for me not to be drawn towards a person.

When You Live a Fearful Life, You're Living Like All the Bad Things Have Already Happened to You - I am firmly in the camp with those who believe that asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission. I do not have on ongoing CYA strategy at work or in my private life. There is something inauthentic and sad about people who constantly self-censor or wait for others to make decisions for them. Granted, I am not rich nor am I a CIO. What I am is generally happy and productive, with plenty of room in my mind for things that I enjoy. I believe in acting in good faith. My experience has shown me that doing so is what works for me, more so than endless plotting to get ahead and avoid ruffling feathers. I feel confident that I can defend most of what I do to anyone who questions it.

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After the Ohio State vs. Michigan football game this past weekend, the players (ages 18-22) got into a scuffle on the field when Michigan players attempted to plant their team flag in on the Ohio State logo at midfield after winning. Within moments there was a massive police presence on the field. The police tried to separate the players, and when they didn't immediately comply, some of the officers deployed pepper spray - against student-athletes on national television. It wasn't a good look.

I've never been a police officer, but I worked within the criminal justice system for seven years as a correctional officer, spending eight hours a day with convicted criminals so I have some understanding of the stress of the job. Not everyone is cut out to be a cop. If you are easily frightened, angered or slow to make important decisions, being a police officer is probably not the job for you. There is no shame in that. Unfortunately, the US court system is set up in a way that allows police to assert that they fear for the safety to justify just about any action up to murdering children holding play toys.

Nationwide there is an issue with sub-standard police officers moving from one agency to another as they get fired for incompetence or misconduct. President Trump has promised to give police blanket immunity for crimes they commit, regardless of the circumstances. Under his policies, police will be free to choke people to death whenever they feel like it without ever facing justice. The evidence proves that they will do exactly that.

National Police Misconduct Database - Center for Justice Research

10 Outrageous Police Misconduct: A Compilation of Videos - YouTube

"The Wandering Officer" by Ben Grunwald and John Rappaport

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These days, it is not uncommon for someone to have hundreds of open tabs in as browser. I usually run about 40-50 myself. I've tried several solutions to quickly find the tab I'm looking for without much success. Since installing Browser Deputy, I've been pleased with the way it incorporates into my workflow. I can summon the app with a hotkey and quickly find a tab, a bookmark or an item from my browser history, no matter what app I am in.

Browser Deputy works with the following browsers:

• Safari
• Chrome
• Edge
• Brave
• Firefox
• Vivaldi
• Opera
• Arc

Aside from providing a quick search for browsers, Browser Deputy also lets you perform web searches with various built-in engines or custom ones that you add yourself. I use a custom Google search that removes all the AI crud and provides the good old ten blue links that we once took for granted. It was easy to add to the list.

The other useful feature in Browser Deputy is the ability to search menu commands in whatever open app you happen to be in, not just browsers. It doesn't give you a heads-up display of the commands like KeyClu, but it will activate any command you search for.

Browser Deputy is available for download from the dev's website. A three machine license is $11.99.

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A few years ago, a man in his 60s here in NC, an amateur cyclist of some renown, won a race against a field of mostly younger riders. He was selected for a random drug test, which he failed. In his quest to remain competitive, the man, who was already legendary in the local racing community, a mentor to many and a man held in high esteem, resorted to cheating to increase his chances of winning a relatively meaningless bicycle race. In the process, he made the news, was banned from racing and severely damaged a hard-earned reputation. When I heard about it, I was livid. I didn't know the man. I knew of him. Some of my friends frequently made the one-hour trip to his hometown to train with him. Everyone called him The Old Man. My attempt to carry on a lifelong love affair with sports was already severely damaged by the steroid era in baseball. I adopted pro cycling as my new favorite, only to discover that almost every famous racer of the era was a cheat. It deeply affected me then and now.

I took to social media to vent, as one does. I guy who knows me and The Old Man asked me a question that stuck with me about the whole situation. Is it fair to judge someone solely for the worst thing they have ever done? Is it? Society does it routinely in criminal justice cases. Sure, they take some mitigating circumstances into account, but if you mess up bad enough, you are going to prison despite your otherwise saintly life. I knew more than one person serving a life sentence when I worked in the correctional system who had but a single yet horrible conviction.

In the army, a well-worn but true statement is that one “oh shit” wipes out one hundred “attaboys.” People remember Bill Buckner a lot more for making an error in the World Series than they do for his otherwise illustrious career. In my own tiny little personal Internet, one developer's failure to adequately address a mistake is still reverberating in our community months after the fact.

I suspect that in moments of absolute honesty, most of us could make a confession that could potentially turn large swaths of our acquaintances against us. Maybe we bullied someone or we were needlessly unkind when we didn't have to be. Perhaps as ignorant and uninformed youngsters, we indulged in behavior that we are ashamed of now, like listening to Rush Limbaugh or voting for Reagan.

I believe in extending grace to my fellow humans these days to the extent that I am able. I believe, as I said, that everyone has that one worst thing, and I try not to define people by that. If they are serial assholes, I let them go on their way, but in most cases, people aren't that way. I learned in 12-Step recovery that resentments against other people are the number one offenders in a person's life who is trying to stay sober. I was a miserable person with a whole pile of grievances 16 years ago. In the intervening time, I've worked hard to become forgiving, not for anyone's sake but my own. It's liberating and a heartily recommend it. You aren't letting your ex off the hook when you stop centering on your grievances, You are letting yourself off.

I'm not one who preaches against being judgmental. Frankly, I think using your judgment is a survival skill, and it is impossible not to exercise it. You can't stick with the winners if you don't decide who they are. So judge away, but be careful what you do with your decisions. Don't write people off as a matter of course. Offer them a silent chance at redemption if you can. Put yourself in their shoes and treat them like you would want to be treated. In the long run, you will benefit. They will benefit, and we will be one step closer to a better world.

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