Some of my favorite things...

As 2023 winds down, I have some notes. Further posts will cover some of the less-good.

It is now 12:30 PM on Friday, December 22, and I am about to log out of my work computer. I have been thinking about a few things to write about.

First, I would like to say thank you to those of you who have subscribed. I created this a year ago (during last year’s shutdown from work), and really had 0 subscribers. Now I have almost 20. I know that isn’t huge, but I don’t mind. I do almost no lead generation, and this is really a vanity project.

Speaking of that. I would like to ask a favor. I have a pair of product management focused newsletters. One formal and professional, and one that I was taking a snarky, sarcastic, and at times rude take on product management.

The Favor

Last year, I moved all three of them to Substack. But the latest kerfuffle around that Nazi problem here, and the absolute bonkers response from Substack’s Hamish, made me get serious about moving away.

For the sarcastic product management newsletter, I made the decision to shut it down in August. The struggle to maintain anonymity¹ was getting more and more difficult, so I posted a swansong, and yanked all the goodies off Substack, assuming that it was gone forever.

But, with the troubling take of the founders and tech-brah illuminati here on Substack is giving me cause to seek other outlets. The one that caught my fancy is Buttondown. It tickles my inner geek erogenous zones. Fairly utilitarian, you get access to use CSS to format things the way you like, and you can craft your posts using Markdown or directly in HTML².

But I do not want to turn my old subscriber list to do quick checks, so I am going to ask if any of you want to poke around my snarkier side. If so, check out The PM Dude. That will be the subscribe page, click on the archive, and look around. If you find anything wonky or odd, drop me an email, or a comment here, and I will look into it. I do know that most of the internally referential links are broken, so no need to report those.

I have cleaned out all the posts that could get me fired, but I left plenty of snark.

What I am Streaming/have Streamed

2023 was a pretty good year for streaming TV. Some of my favorites:

Poker Face - Peacock

We get Peacock streaming gratis with our Comcast(Xfinity) service. A Peacock Original is Poker Face. Starring Natasha Lyonne (playing Charlie Cale), she is a gritty protagonist, who has a knack, and can tell if someone is lying. It starts with her working as a cocktail waitress in (I think) Bullhead City. The top guy is the son of the owner, and he drafts Charlie to help him fleece a whale who is using his status to host private high roller games in his comped room (that is really bad behavior). This whale also had something “bad” on his computer, that. a cleaner found and reported.

Charlie short circuits this, warns the whale, and fucks up the chief guy’s shit, he commits suicide, and his father turns on the manhunt to find her.

The rest of the series is her traipsing across the country, staying off the grid, and stumbling into in situations where her bullshit detector can solve mysteries.

It is just outstanding from the beginning to the end. I am hoping that the next season is totally killer.

Shetland

I am a huge fan of British police procedurals, and in 2023 two seasons dropped (7 and 8, 8 is still dribbling out) and while the landscape (Shetland is set in the Hebrides Isles north of Scotland) makes me feel cold, the show is just outstanding. The character development is great, and you really get fully immersed in the tales.

There are plenty of others in this genre, including Chelsea Detective, Happy Valley, Hinterland, Broadchurch, and more. All of them are great.

If you like something lighter, then I can recommend Father Brown, Agatha Raisin, and Sister Boniface.

Rick and Morty

I also have a personal soft spot for adult focused animation shows. The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, South Park, I just love them ALL.

But my latest infatuation is Rick and Morty. The latest season just wrapped up, and while I was worried that the loss of Justin Roiland (co-creator, and the voice of Rick and Morty, he was cut loose after being arrested for DV, and while those charges were dropped, the scrutiny uncovered some skeevy behaviors with underaged girls in the early 2010’s - ewwww) would really degrade the experience.

I needn’t have worried. Sure, I can tell if I hear clips of the before and after, but it is really minor. The 7th season was great, and I will be pre-ordering the BD set to add to my Plex server.

Runner up is Little Demon. This is a series that features Danny DeVito as Satan, and it is just a ton of fun to watch.

On the food/Diet front

Since I have a history of coronary artery disease, I have been told to eat more seafood and meat free meals. I don’t eat much red meat, mostly poultry, and the occasional pork meal.

I have begun seeking out recipes for tofu, and frankly there are plenty of good things.

We also eat fish at least once a week, sometimes twice. The go to is farm raised Salmon that I bake. I really like the Northwoods Fire seasoning mix. Smoky, spicy, and a good flavor. Add a Caesar salad, and a great meal is about 20 minutes away.

I have lost about 15 pounds (but I am likely to eat my body weight of Christmas cookies this week tho) but I have probably 20 more to go.

The Dogs

Our two hounds remain in good health. I get 3.5 - 4.5 miles of walking in each morning with Cerberus, and we continue to work on getting Lizzie more explorable in the neighborhood. She is getting better, and has come so far from her timid shivering pooping in the house self when we got her.

Of course, it seems like every time we go the vets, about $1,000 flies out of our wallets. Damn, veterinary care is ludicrous, but I do not want to save money, and thank god for insurance.

But they still bring so much love into the house.

Wrapping up

Well, I have dodged enough of work this afternoon, so I will wrap this up.

I am officially off work through January 8. I have plenty of tech-adjacent things to work on, and I will be glad to have some down time to play games, to write for my blogs/newsletters. Expect plenty of posts.

Thanks for those who have joined my audience. I appreciate any and all attention that I get. I am still surprised that anyone reads me at all.

1. This was important as I once lost a job because I assumed I was writing in an anonymous venue, but someone who had stalked me outed me to my then employer, and I was fired almost on the spot.

It was annoying, scary, but it was also probably a life saver. That job was going to kill me.

I used separate computers, isolated browsers, and completely different identities, but that wasn’t enough to prevent a former boss from leveraging it to get me chased out of the industry entirely.

Balls.

2. I LOVE Markdown, and it was one of the reasons I originally moved from Wordpress to Ghost. Plus you can use in-line HTML to make things render EXACTLY the way you want.