Good morning. Hello. How are you? #673
A parable about buying warts and a long GTD spiel about browser tabs.
Good morning, hello, how are you? All well? Week going okay so far? I hope so. I am okay. I have a toothache. Isn’t that weird? I’d go into a spiral of concern about it, convinced my teeth were rotting, etc., etc., except I just went to the dentist like a week ago, had my teeth x-ray’d and they were fine. So I’m sure it’s nothing. Also, it will probably go away now that I’ve told you about it. Just like that leg cramp I had for, like, three weeks, and then I told you guys all about it, and people gave me a bunch of suggestions, almost none of which I followed, and then it magically went away. I mean, I probably did follow some piece of advice someone gave, and that probably did help, but I have zero recollection of any of that happening, so I am going to go ahead and assume it’s magic.
When I was a kid I got a ton of warts all over my hands. This does not seem to be a thing that happens anymore, as far as I can tell — kids randomly coming down with cases of 10+ warts on their hands. Probably some 1980’s Simpsons-esque toxic exposure like DDT or somethihg who knows. Even as America burns the world down it does manage to get a bit cleaner, a real parafox, that one.
The first wart, we got removed medically. My pediatrician, Dr. Deely, applied some local anasthesia and sliced the thing off. My finger was numb for several hours afterwards. I was probably about ten years old. I remember after the procedure, my mom took me to the Woolworth’s Counter for lunch. I loved the Woolworth’s Counter, it was great. God. I am so old I remember Woolworth’s Counters. I remember this because I was so fascinated with my finger being numb, and I remember just repeatedly banging it on the actual Woolworth’s counter (as opposed to, you know, the restaurant Woolworth’s Counter). It was so weird to not be able to feel it. Very new sensation for a kid.
Anyway, the whole procedure was pretty elaborate and not really a viable option for the innumerable other warts that had sprung up on my hands. So many warts. I suffered through these warts for months.
Then one day we were down in Wasilla visiting Grandma and my mom was explaining the warts to her. And my grandmother said “oh, well, that’s no problem. I will just buy the warts off you. How many warts do you have?” This seemed ridiculous – at this young age I was already becoming a bit of a know-it-all scientist. But also it seemed like free money. My grandmother was offering me ten cents per wart. I had eleven of them. Sixty cents. Free. Score! I will take it if she’s offering it. I took Grandma’s money with zero expectation it would have an effect on my warts at all. That’s a free pack of Big League Chew right there. Or maybe that beef jerkey that came in a chewing tobacco container. (Huh a quick Google search indicates Jack’s Links and others still make jerkey in chewing tobacco containers really seems like that oughtta be outlawed).
Anyway, the thing is Grandma’s purchase of my warts worked, and within a week or so all ten warts were gone. This seriously messed with my sense of reality. I was very impressed. I have assumed, from then on, that this move works all the time.
Several times throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, friends of mine got warts on their hands, and I bought the warts off of them. A few times, the person came back to me later and said “wow! that worked! Thank you! I have no more warts!” And, more importantly, not once did anyone ever come back to me and say “that didn’t work, I got a free sixty cents from you, sucker!” So I assume it worked every time.
So, what I am telling you is that me telling GMHHAY readers about an ailment is like my Grandma buying my warts. The act of doing it cures me of the ailment. So, thank you for that.
Had a long talk on Slack last week about browser tabs. I was under the impression lots of people kept tons of browser tabs open, but this group seemed very disciplined about their browser tabs, and I had one of the highest tallies of browser tabs open at any time: 40 or so browser tabs across five browsers. I thought it would be fun to list them, and I guess today’s a slow enough news day. Maybe this surprise Jan 6 hearing will lead to something exciting for tomorrow, you never know, so I will take this opportunity while I can. And, of course, the usual caveat: discussion of any mundane topic does not evince an absense of existential dread about the state of the world. Wouldn’t want people to get the wrong impression that I think things are okay or something.
One more thing I will say is that I use two Google accounts all day long: my work one and my personal one. Switching between Google accounts sucks and it slow and tedious. Doubly so in my main browser Safari. So a lot of these tabs I keep open because there is zero other way to rapidly open a Google Sheet or Doc without going through a user-switch ringomorale.
So, without further ado, a list of my perpetually open browser tabs:
In Safari
Evernote
My Concert and Gig List Google Sheet (I am constantly referring to this, and adding forgotten shows)
My weight log
A list of every employee that works in or near NYC or goes there, and a note on whether they supplied us their vax card or not, since this is a NYC law, though Eric Adams just announced he’s not gonna enforce it, so I guess I can close that one now.
Company cap table
Our Company pricing and cost calculator worksheet
Nimbus’ DPAR, a document that the EU makes us keep about every company for whom we process data, what data we process, and what country this processing happens in
The virtual desktop interface for my QNAP
My Plex
My Youtube Channel
My Netflix physical Blu Ray disc queue
My Cointracker account
My Coinbase account
My Schwab account
My Robinhood account
A Politico link with the stats on the US House and the impact of redistricting, though it seems to have settled in now.
Six tabs with the map game I play every morning:
Europe
Africa
Asia
Central America
The Carribbean
South America
Two or three tabs of whatever I’m actuall working on
Firefox - I keep this browser in full screen on my far right monitor for “dashboard” - style things
Nimbus Dashboard for Timehop
Nimbus Dashboard for all of Nimbus
Our Bank Account
The Johns Hopkins COVID dashboard
The NC COVID Dashboard across several tabs for quick refreshing:
Wastewater
Hospitalizations
Chatham County
Positivity Rate
Justworks, our PEO software
Quickbooks, our accounting software
Brave - This is my “crypto” browser, though that is probably worth another long essay as my ardor has cooled somewhat (prior to the collapse, TBC). But Metamask does not work Safari so I needed one where it did.
A google sheet of my NFTs which I have not kept up to date
Coingecko
Cent
OpenSea
A Google Sheet for a project I am working on with some friends
A Google Doc for a project I am working on with some friends
A second Google Doc for a project I am working on with some friends
A third Doc for a project I am working on with some friends
Shift – Shift is a different kind of browser, if you run a single web app in it it can feel like that app is a native app, I kind of like it. I do, however, now have two tabs in it open at all times, so this ruins that. I used to use an app called Fluid for this: It just took a single website and made it “app like” and I loved it, but I stopped using it because it was not updated for, gawd, I don’t remember. Maybe 64 bit apps. One of the innumerable rewrites Apple has made devs done over the last decade or so. I should look into that again
Monday – our work project management app
Gmail – my Stodgy gmail, a third Google account I routinely use, except all I ever need it for is to type in dollar amounts from my Quicken transactions, specifically Amazon, so I can quickly tag purchases in Quicken. I use this mail account primarily in Apple’s Mail.app, but search in Mail.app sucks. And Amazon is absolute garbage about showing you the dollar amounts correspending to charges on their orders page. You have to actually search your mail for the dollar amount, then click on the email and have it open in a tab before you can see what the charge bought and I hate it so much but this is the fastest way I have found to streamline that workflow.
I also use Chrome, but only for Google Meet calls for work. This is because Safari intentionally breaks Google Meet, which is fucking annoying. You can fix it, change all the settings in Safari — disable content blockers and tell it to accept audio and video without asking. There’s an argument, of course, Meet is doing something nefarious and should be blocked by default, okay, fine, but after I make the changes, how about you respect those changes like you do with all other settings when Safari gets updated. I try to keep no other tabs open in Chrome, but sometimes a few work-related docs get opened there, since that’s the browser I’m using for work calls.
You’ll note I do not keep a zillion unread articles open. I try to be good about that. I modified my safari start page on my phone to only be my reading list, so that kind of helps.
As a bonus, here are my fourteen Spaces across three monitors:
Left monitor (this one is vertical):
Main desktop space with messaging apps, etc
Slack
Todoist
Messages
Telegram
FB messenger
Discord
Apple Notes.App in a full screen
Evernote Classic in a full screen. This is my main Evernote instance I only use the aforementioned web version when something goes wrong with the glorious old Evernote Classic
My Camera Uploads folder
A full screeen window of my master Photos folder
Center monitor
Main desktop space with Mail, Safari, and a ton of stuff hidden except when I use it:
1Password
Calendar
Keynote
Scrivener
Quicken
Brave
Four desktop Spaces of open folders for rapid photo sorting:
Main photo sorting desktop
Work photo sorting
Friends photo sorting
Family photo sorting
Righthand monitor
Firefox full screen with the dashboards
A desktop screen with:
Spotify
Activity Monitor with both GPU and CPU history windows open
Console
Remote Desktop
There you go. This is why I am not super good with using a laptop.
Okay Justa mix for you mix of old and new, new Soccer Mommy new Bartees Strange (so good!), Neneh Cherry, Stars, Brian Jonestown Massacre and a bunch of oldies, sort of a random batch but some goodies. Been listening to that Maren Morris album a lot. “Bones” is the best song and it’s the last one and I keep spending the whole album waiting for it. Been thinking a lot about that Eric Bachmann song, ole Eric trying to put in the world as an artist talking about the actual world we live in, good for him. Also, Taylor Swift has a new song called “Carolina” and I am profoundly disappointed it is not a cover of Eric Bachmann’s “Crolina” which is just a great song. John Stewart (the singer not the comedian-turned-anchor) has gone a bit MAGA but “Davey on the Internet” is a great late-career song.
Lol I thought that would be quicker than a regular entry and it took longer. Ah well. Till Tomorrow!
What map game do you play?
i have 40-something tabs open at all times (47 rn), and honestly don't understand how people get along with fewer. TAB HOARDERS UNITE!