iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

“What the HELL do you think you’re DOING?!?!?” “It for Dale.” This is really funny to me but I don’t have a place to put it.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Studying up for my amateur extra ham radio license. I had forgotten how to convert polar coordinates to rectangular and vice versa. I was able to derive the method based on what I remembered from high school trigonometry. Makes me feel good that I’ve still got some game :)

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I’m on a West Wing rewatch and I forgot how much of a drag Season 5 is. Josh gets exiled, Leo is a huge asshole to everyone for a stretch, Will’s heel turn, etc. The politics of the show hit different in Current Year but it’s still comfort food for me. Except for Season 5.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

That TQ isn’t even tight enough to constrict the sleeve on his jacket, let alone an artery.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Just spam pictures of Kyle Rittenhouse in response to all “but why did he have a gun at a protest?” posts.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

I suffer the effects of Raynaud’s phenomenon pretty acutely. My fingers get cold easily, hurt a lot when they get cold, and hurt even worse when they warm back up. Of course I learn that chemical hand warmers expire, and mine all expired in 2024, on a 7 degree day with a windchill of -3.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

…seems like a deliberate choice. I really think they’re deliberately being as confrontational as possible to incite some kind of conflict to distract people from the Epstein files.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

The wild thing about Alex Pretti’s murder is that it would be SO EASY for DHS leadership to circle the wagons, say “we are investigating, we don’t comment on ongoing investigations,” and put a coverup together. The media is used to uncritically repeating those lies. They didn’t do that which…

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

The Wobblies are still around and it looks like they’re becoming more relevant recently. I’m cheering them on.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

I have spent my entire professional career probing the frontier of what is possible with Google Sheets’ formula language. Put me in, coach.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

My partner is an ER nurse. The experience of being a nurse post-COVID is already pretty fucking radicalizing. I truly don’t know why they’re not all on strike already. Something’s going to be the last straw and it could be this.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

A 2026 version of John Henry in which John Henry, the greatest programmer, has to out-code a LLM. …which he does easily because the LLM’s output is trash. But everyone keeps vibe-coding anyway and he dies of sheer frustration.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Learning fragments of Korean bit by bit as my kids force me to listen to the K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack on repeat.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

And an Adam Sandler novelty track! There was a time when 10 year old boys would huddle around a portable CD player, laughing hysterically at a man making fart noises on his guitar. Couldn’t play it too loud because Brendan’s mom might hear a swear word and confiscate the CD. A magical time.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

“I got my brown belt in BJJ!” he screamed into the empty federated void. I hope all 5 of my followers are excited at this news.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

I wonder if the last season of Stranger Things will lead to a resurgence in interest in A Wrinkle in Time. I sure hope so. More people need to hear that learning and compassion can push back the darkness.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Sending love to my inner child, specifically the one from before I heard The Cramps.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

If you’re about to interview for an #infosec position, be sure to brush up on how the TLS handshake works! I have never, in ~15 years of academic or professional work in security, needed to know what a pre-master secret was for, but BY GOD do interviewers love to ask about it.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Have any other lavabit users lost access to email? SMTP and IMAP are both borked and their website is down. It’s been since last Wednesday.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

“When am I ever going to have to use fractions in real life?” *dumps your SAE hex bits on the ground* “Now, motherfucker.”

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Well, sheeit. I guess I'm behind the ball. I'll come to you for advice when I decide that I've outgrown my Baofengs and Quanshengs, or when I finally decide to try my hand at CW.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Do all nerds develop an interest in HAM radio as they approach middle age? One day I got the sudden urge to buy a couple Baofengs and study for my Tech license. Came out of nowhere.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

YES YOU ARE A BLACK BELT YOU KNOW THIS BY NOW

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

Currently resisting the urge to refer to myself as “your friend and humble narrator” in technical documentation.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

My younger child has learned to point at my plate and say, “a bite!” It’s all downhill from here, folks.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

If we were to start a church of Dale Earnhardt, what would the equivalent of the cross be? A wall?

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Working with process control systems is like this. “Our equipment is managed by this server that only runs on Windows 98 because the company went out of business 30 years ago and never updated it. We’ve…isolated it the best we can.”

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

I remember being SO PSYCHED for our new computer that had a Pentium II processor *with MMX extensions* and a 2G hard disk. And it came with Windows ME installed. Millennium Edition. We were living IN THE FUTURE.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

I would like to thank the movie Clerks for teaching me that you can mix and match to get a full dozen unbroken eggs at the store.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

“Those who don’t read history are doomed to repeat it. “Those who DO study history are also doomed to repeat it, but it’s still a good read.” — My high school history teacher.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Why yes I did copy-paste my comment from before :D

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Cause she wears short skirts, my crew has a preacher She’s Cheer Captain and I’m fleeing Reavers

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Cause she wears short skirts, my crew has a preacher She’s Cheer Captain and I’m fleeing Reavers

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

I am staunchly anti death penalty. I think that if you ARE going to have a death penalty, it should be done by something like firing squad. Unlike lethal injection, it’s humane and the tech is hard to mess up. And it forces us to confront the brutality of sentencing someone to death.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Hopefully this kicks the Passive Status Quo Liberals into some kind of action. Some kind of meaningful resistance.

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Have you ever opened a help ticket? And then gathered extensive logs to add to your help ticket, because you want to be a good customer? And in the process of gathering the logs, you debugged your own issue and closed the help ticket? I just did that (SPOILER ALERT it was DNS)

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

fuckin shit I have to rebuild my whole following list from birdsite huh

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Haystack (he/him) @haystack-tm.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

I've read a bunch of protocol specifications and I thought I was good at parsing them. Then I saw AUTOSAR docs. I yearn for the days when I didn't know what SOME/IP was.

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