Good morning. Hello there! How are you? Sorry I’m a bit late, I got a new computer yesterday. I spent all evening getting the old one — a 28-core Intel-based Mac Pro, aka the fastest Intel-based Mac they made or will ever make — all taken out of the morass of wires and monitors and peripherals and surgically transplanting the new one — a 24-Core M2 Ultra Mac Studio, currently the fastest Apple Silicon-based Mac they make, though it’ll probably not hold that title in a year or so. It was quite the procedure, but I’m happy to report the patient is mostly up and running.
As ever, I chose to re-install everything rather than use Apple Migration Assistant, because by the time you get a new computer the old one is always showing weird signs of mysterious aging. Not that it’s obsolete, far from it, but the OS is definitely getting a little wonky. Plists get corrupted and things little malfunctions creep in. Man. Plists just love to get corrupted. Someone should fix that. My Mac Pro was no longer going to sleep automatically. Things like that.
(As an aside, Emma and I had a good bonding over this shared habit and annoyance yesterday while we were on our walk, and Jane was not happy that Mommy and Daddy were having a long conversation without her. But it is good to know we also share the same views of tediously setting up every new Mac manually.)
Also got most of my basic app and browser window infrastructure up and running, which is so tedious. Gotta get Dropbox installed first, cuz it has my vault, then 1Password, then I can move on to Safari and my main Gmail login, then I can get my 15 or so standard, main Safari tabs open. Then Chrome, work login, the standard ten or so windows open. Then Slack. Then Telegram. Then Messages. Then I go into the Apple System Settings which are so fucking horrible now someone should be fired for them and get all my internet accounts activated, so Mail and Calendar are working, then launch them, make sure they’re working. Then Things and ToDoist, then Microsoft Edge for the Contracting Company, then Brave for crypto shit, Firefox for work dashboards, Spotify, Facebook, Amazon, Activity Monitor in the right place. By that point Dropbox should have churned through enough that I can get the Scrivener files up and running that contain these daily updates. Then I can copy over everything that’s on the actual hard drive of the Mac Pro and not in Dropbox, which is mostly my iMovie library and my recovery codes. That’s as far as I got. iMovie library still copying. After that I’ll finally get my desktop and screensavers reconfigured. And then later today I will finally run the Ventura 13.4 update run. That’s a bit of a risk, I probably should have run it before everything else, but Apple’s lost its damn mind about its updates and they take hours and I did not have that kind of time.
It seems, however, that after all of this, I have done such a good job that I mostly don’t realize I am working on a new computer, which calls into question the purpose of the purchase. But that’s just because I haven’t actually done anything with it yet. And I gotta say, just seeing the CPU usage monitors actually use all the cores, all the time, is so nice. Such a change from the Intel-based architecture where every app had to specifically ask, please, sir, can I have some more CPU usage, or the extra CPUs would just sit there doing nothing.
But the fingerprint scanning is nice.
Oh and I can run iOS apps, which means I can run Authy on my computer, which is probably some sort of security breach, but no one can get into my home anyway, and the computer still has a password on it, so I think it’s fine.
Anyway, I will keep you apprised. So far, so good. Apple still makes a helluva Mac, even if they are terrible about software.
ANYWAY. Very busy day at work yesterday. If you did not see, we made a bunch of announcements of things that have happened this year. To whit:
Timehop the app and all its related assets have been sold to a company now called the Sincere Corp, who are the Boston-based (well, Framingham) company behind the apps Punchbowl and Memento, and if you look at those links you can see why we felt that this was the right home for Timehop. This move ensures Timehop will be around for years to come, in the hands of people who care about it and care about memories and nostalgia, and aren’t going to ruin the app. I am happy it’s found is permanent home and millions of people will still be able to use it. This was my mission when I took this job, oh, seven years ago and I’m glad it has finally been fulfilled. Matt, Timehop the company’s former CEO, and a few other team members dedicated to Timehop will be joining Sincere.
The remaining components of Timehop the company — specifically all of our Adtech capabilities — are spinning off into an independent company called Nimbus Advertising Solutions, or Nimbus for short. This will be a company entirely focused on, well, Nimbus. Nimbus is our in-app monetization technology that has kept Timehop in business for all these years (and will continue to do so) as well as hundreds of other apps across the internet.
I am becoming the CEO of Nimbus. Well, I have had the job for a while now but we didn’t announce it for myriad reasons, mostly related to this deal.
So, none of this was new to me but announcing it to the world was a lot of work. Plus work on my Business Epiphany™. Plus some other work emergencies. Plus my seven regularly-scheduled Nimbus 1:1 meetings. Plus the pool contracting company had a ton of bookkeeping work. Plus the new computer.
It was interesting, though. After seven hours of talking, I met my wife for dinner and I just kept talking. This is a thing with me. When I have a ton of work, I rise to the occasion and do the ton of work and then I am in that mode, and it’s hard to get out of it even when work is done. I just keep going. But if I only have a little bit of work, it is very hard to motivate. So I just gotta pile on the work all the time or nothing gets done.
In between all of that, well, during the phone calls actually, I added the fourth and fifth coats of varnish to the old workbench and IKEA desk and they both look great. Did I take a picture of it? No, not yet. But I will. I promise.
I also got my autographed Low poster from Things We Lost in the Fire hung and framed in the new house and my god it looks beautiful. Did I take a picture of that? No, no I did not. But I will. I promise.
And for good measure I unfollowed The Economist on social media, my migration to being a raving lunatic liberal complete, because I cannot handle their idiotic centrist both-sidesism. They’re like Luke Wilson in The Royal Tenenbaums these days: "Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is... maybe he didn't."
“Parental pampering comes with a genetic price.”
Thank you, Economist.
Jane threw a giant tantrum yesterday because we asked her to stop watching videos at lunch so I think it’s time for a pullback on the videos, which sucks. They are educational, she is learning so much from them, but she’s getting sucked in. She’s forgotten the rules we made around it. I used to be able to remind her of the rules and she would snap back to following them, but that has been slowly softening as she tests boundaries.
We are also both, at the moment, leaning toward actually sending her to Kindergarten vs home school. Neither of us is completely thrilled about this, and when we were talking to a neighbor about the drop-off and pickup procedures, I almost lost it then and there the whole thing seems insane. But I guess… steady as she goes. I guess. I do not feel happy about it.
Just a mix today but it’s a good one. Mostly new(ish) stuff. I have 14 hours left on my double-check the To Investigate playlist pass. So much good stuff. So much good new music. Music rules.
Him there seems to be some bug in the interaction between Safari and Substack on this new computer, who knows, so I can’t add a link to an image, so here is the link.