In my day job, I have a couple of stock responses to questions from clients or just to my (and their) experiences with computers. One of these stock responses is something which clients almost never like to hear, because it translates, roughly, to This may sound like a “yes,” but if you believe that you’re [...]

[Read more →]

[This borders on "for geeks only" territory. But I think it's worth at least some attention if you aspire to get -- and keep -- a reading audience for your words on the Web.]
A highly respected site for Web-site designers, typographers, and so on, is called A List Apart. It’s been around for years, freely [...]

[Read more →]

This March — the 12th, and isn’t it interesting I remember the exact date? — marks my 30th year as a computer guy.
When I started out at AT&T, my job title was Member of Programming Staff (with a digression into Managerhood); at my present job, I’ve been a Distributed Systems Specialist, a Business Systems Analyst, [...]

[Read more →]

At least one thing has surprised me about Running After My Hat so far: the extent to which I’m blogging about and incorporating music in my posts.
I mean, it’s not as though I actually know anything about the subject. I’m not a musician or musicologist or, well, much of anything regarding music — except maybe [...]

[Read more →]

When I first started programming, both I and a brother-in-law worked for AT&T. This was back in the days before all the local phone networks got spun off into their own companies — when the entire US phone network was called, collectively, “the Bell System.”
My brother-in-law, whom I will here call The BiL, was at [...]

[Read more →]

Okay, okay. We could quibble with the wording. Shouldn’t that be “the average blogger’s“? Does “81% shorter than” mean “81% as long as” or does it mean “19% as long as”? And who knows how accurate this is, or how they calculate the average length of a blogger (or his/her posts)? Surely it can’t mean [...]

[Read more →]

It makes no difference that I’ve been a computer programmer for nearly 30 years now. There are computer programmers and there are computer programmers. If your assignments (actual or potential) don’t require you to use a given technology, chances are you’ll never learn that technology. Meanwhile, the world passes you by in the form of [...]

[Read more →]

Last month, I reported on a new initiative which our local neighborhood was undertaking — a neighborhood crime watch. The Missus and I learned of this initiative, as I said, via a letter from our street’s block captain: “As your block captain, I will be asking for you to provide phone numbers, and e-mail addresses, [...]

[Read more →]

A while back, I said I’d be trying to fix things so that printouts of Running After My Hat posts would look more like “real” articles or stories as opposed to Web-based content: omitting the left and right margins, increasing text font sizes, and so on.
Just in time for the ginormous “Fay, Part 2” post, [...]

[Read more →]

In lieu of a longer post still in the works, and with a nod to writing in the water’s current discussion of knowing when the story is done, and done well and right: I offer this, Folk Tale #6 from Book Two (“Fire”) of The Zen of Programming:
Five novices went into the master’s office, crying [...]

[Read more →]